by Cat Rambo
The blobs dimmed, and the accompanying sounds faded. Garibaldi stiffened in visible anticipation. The screen was blank and silent for a quarter of a second before bursting to life again.
The living room’s occupants found themselves watching a crowd of toddlers rushing across a field, round, peach-fuzzed heads seen from behind and slightly below, so that viewers felt themselves rushing along with the children.
The angle widened steadily, simultaneously hinting at the herd’s destination and creating the impression that the viewer was falling behind. In a moment it became clear that the babies were running toward an enormous woman, easily eighty feet tall.
The ur-mother towered above the field, her arms extended to embrace any and all, including viewers if they hurried. Backlit by the soft yellow light of the sun, her smiling features were indistinct, universal. Her body was soft and round, comfort and nourishment made flesh. But for the scraps of shadow that lay across her in several places, she was nude.
Her right hand was empty. Her left held a squat glass jar of brown goo, whose label proclaimed Mister Bowser’s Semi-Natural Baby-Food-Product, Caramel Carrot Flavor. Guaranteed Fully Digestible.
“He’s gonna buy that,” Al predicted sagely.
The others turned their eyes from the screen to Garibaldi, who was rocking back and forth in a vain attempt to rise and join the pack; he was still some months too young to stand, let alone run. His chubby arms wavered in the air in front of him, straining toward either the woman or the jar, if indeed his mind was capable of separating the two.
“He can’t,” said Patricia, sounding far from sure. “He’s still got seven cases of Little Prince’s Dinner in the cupboard. That stuff expires.”
“Even still.” Al was remorseless.
“And he hates Mister Bowser’s,” Patricia said. “He bought a whole pallet last month. When they had the singing butterflies? I swear he threw up more than he ate. I had to chuck it all.”
“Still, though.” Al nodded at the screen, where the frame had begun to tighten on the jar, the camera drawn there as irresistibly as a falling man toward whatever lay below. “They changed the label, see? He can’t read, Mom.”
“No.” She seemed about to say more when, of its own accord, her mouth shut firmly in a brave grimace. The screen glowed pale green, except for the jar, which stood out in soft relief. For a moment, Garibaldi’s plastic cap glowed the same shade of green. Then a column of small white numbers scrolled quickly up the lower right corner of the screen.
Patricia was grateful the bill rolled by too quickly to read, but couldn’t resist squandering this small mercy by asking, “He bought the large?”
Al’s only response was a nihilistic little giggle.
“I hate it!” burst Samantha suddenly. “When’re my shows gonna come back, and my commercials? I wanna buy something!”
“What do you want, sweetheart?” asked her mother.
“I don’t care. Something that’s not dumb baby stuff! For dumb fat babies!” She looked pointedly at Garibaldi, who was immersed in another commercial, and paying no attention to her or anyone else.
“Stupid,” muttered Al, though it was unclear whether he was agreeing with his sister or insulting her. He didn’t hate Garibaldi, as she did, since he knew the downward trend in entertainment had begun months before the baby had been born, with the invention of the My First Consumo-Cap. He didn’t know whom to blame, and so had adopted an attitude of amused detachment.
“It’ll be okay, honey,” Patricia said meaninglessly. It was true there wasn’t much left on television—or in movies, or the internet, or anywhere else—aimed at anyone over the age of eighteen months, and what there was was relegated to a small, ill-funded cultural ghetto. But it had been inevitable, as soon as people had begun giving their babies allowances. No demographic spent as profligately as infants. How could you blame the entertainment industry for shifting in that direction? How could you do anything but embrace it?
“It’s not so bad,” Patricia said, watching a cloud of winged kittens swirl into space for some reason. She almost believed her own words. She was getting better at that all the time.
“Bullshit,” croaked Gloria. They all jumped, even Garibaldi; they’d all forgotten the old woman’s presence. “Nothing new. Sinking tide lowers all boats. Give teenagers money, down she goes. Kids, down some more. Even let the babies choose their own names now. Nothing new. Just the last logical step.”
No one was listening. They all knew, even Garibaldi, that the old woman was a crank. And her last assertion, at least, was demonstrably false: just then, the dog wandered in, his Best Friend K9 Consumo-Cap glowing green as soon as his gaze fell on the television, as he ordered God alone knew what, and lots of it.
About the Author
Conor Powers-Smith grew up in New Jersey and Ireland. He currently lives in Massachusetts, where he works as a reporter. His stories have appeared in Analog, Daily Science Fiction, Nature, and other magazines, as well as several anthologies.
Editor’s Note
I knew as soon as I read this, early on in the winnowing process, that it was surely a keeper. The humor of the piece and the wry look at advertising, one of the forces shaping American consciousness almost every waking moment, made it something that I wanted to include, particularly when I first started reading for the anthology and was worried that we were going to end up with one of the grimmest books of all time.
You can often look at an ad and know exactly what demographic it’s tailored to. Add in advertising’s desire to catch consumers at as young as age as possible, using tactics like cartoon animals to sell cigarettes, and this story might be read as an interesting update of “It’s a Good Life,” written in 1953 by Jerome Bixby.
Mustard Seeds and the Elephant’s Foot
Priya Sridhar
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”
—Desmond Tutu
It has been sixteen years since I last spoke to my uncle. The clearest memories I have of him are when he bought me a giant brick of fudge from a touristy aquarium. The fudge had a stamp of a dolphin breaking through the waves. I managed to finish it in a matter of hours.
I don’t go to that aquarium these days. When I was a young adult, people protested because it kept a giant orca in a relatively small tank. They had a point. It’s remarkable how things that seem innocent when you are a child appear differently when you age. You can see the nicks in the polished wood and the grime.
This past Tuesday I held a funeral for the aquarium’s memory. In my tiny planter that I keep in my apartment, I planted another mustard seed. This would sprout into a green shoot, which in turn could gain large, curving leaves. A tiny camera was set up on a tripod, so that I could record the moment. For some reason people enjoyed seeing the videos on my social media.
The seeds gave off a faint smell. I always bought them from seed bags. When I poked a finger in the dirt, the planter seemed to shake. Vibrations made my hands rattle. The mustard seed bag fell into the planter. It collected moist soil.
I froze on camera. Where I lived, earthquakes didn’t happen. The construction on my street had ended for the day. And something about the ground shaking made my stomach sink below my hips.
The vibrations stopped. I took a deep breath. Then I turned off the camera.
At my day job, I write emails, arrange meetings, and vacuum the carpets in the morgue. We did have a cleaning service, obviously, but I preferred to handle the carpets. It was hard to get dust and embalming fluid out of the fibers unless you looked carefully.
As I was untangling the plastic grey cord, I got a text from my mother.
Can you plant a flower for Asok Mama? He likes marigolds.
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br /> The text made me pause. I was already mourning so many events and people that day, as had become commonplace for the last two decades. You couldn’t turn a corner without finding a new tragedy there. My heart seemed to find new ways for the organs to rip apart. The only neutral news was how strange holes in the ground had appeared near graveyards.
No, I texted back. I am not planting a flower for Asok. Also, I don’t plant flowers. I plant mustard seeds.
It was blunt, I admit, and disrespectful. My mother responded.
He is your uncle. I could hear the grating in her voice, the way she would needle and nag until she got her way.
I could have lied and said I would check my schedule, and put it off until she stopped trying. That’s what I would have done for less petty requests. But my insides told me that I planted mustard and watered the sprouts to heal. My uncle was not a part of that healing.
He voted for Donald Trump, I texted.
She didn’t respond. I have memories of my mother watching the Trump speeches, even after they proved that he was a liar and a rapist several times over. She hated that I kept calling her out for it.
I spend my days planning funerals. It’s not that hard. You answer the phone, study various forms of what people want for their corpses after death and for their relatives. I write about ten blog posts a month about how we want to handle life and tackle it by the jaws, or let it pass us by when we are too tired to handle it. If I didn’t blog, I’d pitch the stories to various magazines. It was amazing how death could be a novelty.
On the side, I plant mustard seeds for mourners online. It started twenty years ago, when a certain President had entered office, one that my uncle had liked. A lot of ideas, hopes and beliefs died that year: the belief that life was fair, that justice would mete out what it should, and that I could trust my family. The innocent little toddler who had grown into a promising college student had also died; I told my uncle to his face that he had betrayed all the women and me in his family, and that he made Indian people look bad. I did the same to anyone I found out who had voted for Trump.
So I bought a tiny planter for my apartment and a packet of mustard seeds meant for growing. I planted one, mourning the belief I had in my uncle. Then I planted another, mourning the belief in my country. Those plants sprouted, grew, and wilted.
I had posted a picture to my Instagram as partly a joke. Then I offered to plant mustard seeds as mourning for anyone who wanted to grieve. A few friends responded, and I planted for them. Word of mouth spread, and people liked the idea. They asked why mustard seeds and I told them.
There is a Buddhist folktale about a mother who lost her baby, a woman named Krishna Gautami. She carried her dead baby to the Buddha, a prince who had decided to leave his own wife and child to pursue philosophy in the woods.
The Buddha didn’t tell her that there is no way to revive the dead. Others had tried. Instead, he told her that she had to gather mustard seeds from a house in which not a single person had died. K.G. went from house to house in rags, with a pot. Everyone generously offered their mustard seeds, but they all admitted that a parent, child, or uncle, or grandparent had died. Eventually K.G. realized that every family had suffered a loss, as she had, and this moved her past her grief. She left her husband, who was also grieving the loss of their son, and became one of Buddha’s disciples.
I called bullshit on this tale when I was a kid, reading a brightly colored comic version. The Buddha said that all suffering is the same, and that statement is supposed to be comforting. That’s not true. Your circumstances in life and personality make your suffering different and varied.
That’s why I plant mustard seeds to mourn. People started sending over a few dollars by PayPal. It wasn’t enough to become an online sensation, since I wasn’t attending conferences in Silicon Valley, but it provided some comfort. Every family has a death, but not every house does. These days, houses are short-lived, like mayflies. A family may not have a death in their house before they have to repack the cardboard boxes and argue in email about mortgage payments.
More giant holes appeared in our graveyard. I could see them from the parking lot in the morning. Each was as big as a human head, and a few feet deep. Some men from the maintenance crew walked around the holes; I recognized Eric Jimenez since we often vacuumed together. He was staring at the holes and shaking his head.
“They were here last night,” he said. “I heard the ground shake and then Brito was shouting that these holes were there. I swear there were no kids trying to pull pranks. They’re always so loud!”
“And the night guard saw nothing?” His coworker David said. “Brito has sharp eyes. He would’ve chased kids away.”
“Maybe it was a large crab,” someone offered. “It’s crab season. They dig giant holes anywhere they want.”
“Then where did the crab go?” Eric knelt by the hole. “It’s not deep enough for them to hide.”
“Morning, guys,” I called to them. They turned and waved, unhappily. Even if I rolled up my sleeves and cleaned, I was still their boss.
I had been standing outside my car listening. Now that they saw me, I locked my car and headed towards them. My purse straps dug into my shoulder since I had packed a heavy coffee thermos. With my black suits, the fabric was less likely to show off stains but I didn’t like having to take them to the dry cleaners.
“The news mentions that holes have shown up in other graveyards,” I said. “If it’s a prank, it’s an elaborate one.”
“Brito saw no kids,” Eric repeated. “He would have heard shovels. The man can hear cookies being unwrapped four doors away.”
The holes went on to the edge of the graveyard. Then they vanished. I stared in the distance. The holes seemed familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
“Let’s set up security cameras,” I said. “About three or four to overlook the graveyard. I’ll do the ordering and explain to Finance. They’ll understand the necessity.”
Another story, this one about the Hindu Underworld. Eight elephants hold up the Hindu Earth, and it also floats on a vast ocean. Contradictory, I know, but bear with me.
One day, the Rain God Indra stole a sacrificial horse from a king. The king sent his sixty thousand sons, born to him by one wife, to find the horse. To do so, they tunneled under the Earth and encountered one of the load-bearing elephants in the Underworld.
Being arrogant and sure of their actions, they merely observed that it was there, ignoring that their tunneling had caused earthquakes above. The elephant worried that they were heading to their doom. And doomed they were; a sage burned all the boys to the ground with magic when they found the horse near him and accused him of stealing it. All that remained were their ashes, while their souls were condemned to hell for not receiving a proper funeral.
Their step-nephew, Asuman, who was the grandson of the king’s second wife, followed their traces. He greeted the load-bearing elephant, who showed him the path that his uncles took. Asuman didn’t cause earthquakes going this way. He greeted the sage, who did not burn him. The sage told him what happened, and how to free his uncles’ souls: bring the river Ganga to Earth. Asuman vowed to accomplish the task, but he died before he could succeed. His grandson Bhagirath would succeed in the task, after praying to Shiva for thousands of years. Sixty thousand princes went to heaven, and we got a river.
I don’t believe the river Ganga can actually purify souls. For one, the river is really dirty due to thousands of humans dipping their hands in the water. The elephants are different in that it’s nice to believe that there are pachyderms under us, trying to bear our weight.
There isn’t much talk about the world-holding elephants in mythology. They just exist. I wonder how they hold our problems up, our sorrows, and our joys.
It took two weeks to install the security cameras. In that time, more holes appeared in graveyards, and in rich peo
ple’s yards. The ground shook everywhere. We printed warning cards about what to do during an earthquake and chained the funeral parlor furniture to the floor.
The news reported that an elephant-hunting politician was found pinned to a wall by his trophy’s tusks. It had been a large, dull grey elephant’s head. People shared the photos before the news deleted them, courtesy of his family filing a lawsuit. They called various funeral parlors to prepare the body. One of ours was contacted.
“I’m sorry, but we cannot,” I said over the phone. The owner had told me to talk to them.
“What?”
“We are booked for funeral preparations for six months,” I said in a neutral voice. It was a natural lie, and I didn’t feel guilty.
“That’s what the other parlors said,” the mournful voice over the phone said. “Oh, I never expected this to happen.”
“It must have been a shock,” I said, feigning sympathy. If it had been someone like my uncle, maybe I could have mustered real sorrow.
“We don’t even know what happened!” she sobbed. “There were no burglars, and I don’t know who would have stabbed him with an elephant head!”
That got my attention. I wasn’t going to schedule a funeral for this schmuck, but I wanted all the gossip.
“Oh? I heard that the elephant head had gotten dislodged by accident.”
“It was nailed to the wall!” she shrieked. “We had heavy-duty nails inserted. Someone must have wrenched it off. He was killed by someone! Probably a handyman seeking revenge.”
“Very peculiar,” I said. “I am sorry for your loss.”
