A Stranger's House

by Bret Lott

  Even though this was my room in Chesterfield, it had our bedroom furniture in it: against the wall before me was the dresser; on Tom’s side of the bed was the armoire, and here was our bed. The walls were clean and white and free of the ugly paneling, the room just as I had imagined it would be, just as I’d wanted it, except that this was now our bedroom. It was no longer my room, but ours, and I did not mind. I felt good in here, as if this were a better idea, the way things should have been all along.

  The children still held their hands out to me, and the baby, my baby, nodded at me, her fingers closing over her palm and opening again, closing and opening.

  I could move. I leaned toward her, and I hesitated a moment, swallowing at the thought of putting out to her one of my stumps, but I went ahead, and as I did I saw I had my own hands again. I put my left hand out to her, amazed that those black threads had disappeared, and that here, here was my hand again. I looked at it and saw, too, that there was no scar there, those two raised pieces of flesh like short, red worms gone, the hand perfect and unblemished, just as it had been before Mr. Gadsen’s rabbit.

  Fear was gone, and when our hands touched, hers warmer than mine, the three of them moved back from the bed a little to allow me room to climb down. This is what they wanted, I knew, though no one spoke, no one motioned. We were silent.

  I stood, the hardwood floor glistening and warm, the linoleum long gone. I looked down at the floor, and saw that I was naked, remembered I hadn’t put my nightgown on after having made love with Tom, that sweet love in which we’d conceived our first child. This I knew, still holding my baby’s hand, the three of them standing around me, smiling up at me. Then the boy took my other hand, my right, and started across the room, slowly leading me, half-turned toward the fire, his face toward me so that he was silhouetted by the orange embers. I felt my daughter’s hands on my legs, too, gently prodding me to follow.

  For some reason I felt full, almost bloated, and I felt strange walking across the room in our finished home, felt as though my center of gravity had been altered somehow, that if I had leaned forward only a little I might fall, and still I followed her.

  We were headed for the armoire, I realized as we passed the hearth, the fire’s warmth on me, led by a boy who seemed familiar and seemed a stranger, though I knew he was my own. He brought me to the armoire, and the three of them moved behind me, and I could feel on the backs of my legs three sets of small hands, on my body the warmth of the embers.

  I looked in the mirror on the armoire door, and I caught my breath.

  I stood naked before the mirror, my abdomen swelled with a child. I was pregnant, before me my image, bathed in the sweet glow of that fire, illuminated. Immediately I put my hands to my abdomen to touch myself, to make sure this wasn’t some trick, some distortion of glass. To make sure that at least in my dream I was pregnant. And it was true: the skin was swelled out and hard, taut, a child inside me. The skin, too, was smooth, and as I caressed it with my fingertips, swirled my hands over it again and again, I felt the silent flutter of a kick, my baby’s kick, inside me.

  I looked back to the mirror, looked at myself. I wanted to see, see what I would look like nine months from then, this dream a prophecy, I knew, a promise.

  My breasts were now round and full, my nipples and aureoles large, soft with the warmth of the fire, the light moving across me. I touched them, touched the nipples to try to raise them, to see if perhaps the first traces of warm liquid were there, to see if I were ready yet to nurse, though I knew milk came in only after birth. Yet it happened: my left breast, the nipple now aroused, erect, gave out a single drop of liquid, and I put the tips of my first two fingers in my mouth, tasted precisely what I had hoped for: the sweet, sweet milk that would charge my child with life.

  The children, still behind me, leaned their faces toward the armoire, and we looked at one another in the mirror. With one hand I touched the crown of each child’s head, and they smiled up at my reflection.

  Then I brought up my hands and let them fall slowly down my abdomen, lingering as long as I wished, registering in my brain the feel, touch, tightness of skin. In the light from the embers it seemed I could see a shine in places where the skin had been pulled too taut: stretchmarks, I knew, small vertical shiny lines beside my abdomen that signaled my baby was ready to be born. Stretchmarks, something I’d not thought about before, but which now, as I took myself in, I did not mind. They were signs of life.

  I touched my navel, too, felt and saw how it protruded, a hard, tiny knot at the apex of this swelling, and for a moment I imagined the umbilical cord of the child inside me, and my blood passing through that cord and into that baby, me inside it, it inside me, a miracle.

  I let my hands go even farther down, and looked at myself in the mirror, in the light. My pubic hair was thicker now, had grown broader below my abdomen, a confluence of vague lines that met at my pubic bone, and I felt the softness of that hair, wondered at why the body decided growing more hair would accompany a woman’s bearing children.

  I looked at myself. I looked and looked, not daring to close my eyes, not daring even to blink, for then, I knew, the dream would be over, and I would have to begin the nine months of waiting before me. I wanted to savor this vision as long as I could.

  And I looked at the faces of my children, because I wanted to remember them, too; remember their clothes, their white, soft hands on my legs; remember each child’s eyes and nose and mouth and cheeks and hair, because they were the ones who had brought me here, who had given me this vision. I looked at them: at the tallest, oldest, who came to my waist; at my first daughter, who stood to the left of me, the side of her face pressed to my thigh; and at the youngest, only a little taller than my knees, who held onto my leg the most ferociously of the three, the material of her white dress soft against my calf.

  Then I felt it, the flutter again, and I looked at my abdomen. In the dim orange light I could see the movements of the baby, evidence of life inside me showing outside: high on the right side of my abdomen my flesh poked out momentarily, a shadow raised, a simultaneous kick inside me, like some gentle bird slowly spreading its wings, proof enough for me that I had conceived this night, had made life with Tom. The baby kicked again, and again the skin pushed up, a shadow formed. Lower and to the left was another movement, another push of skin, and I knew then how the baby lay in me: its feet tucked high and up, just beneath my ribcage, rows of bones spread and distended to allow for the great size in me. Its feet were up there, and down below, on my left, were its head and arms, and once again I ran my hands across myself. The lower left side felt fuller, rounder, and I knew this was its head. I knew.

  Just as suddenly I felt a drop in me, a quick shift in my center of gravity, a falling, and I saw my abdomen move, too, all of it seeming to slip lower as I watched, and I knew that this was birth, and I could hold in me no longer the elation, the joy I felt at this fruition. I put one hand on my lower abdomen, and with the other moved to touch again the heads of my children.

  I looked in the mirror as I brought my hand down to my son’s head, my left hand, and saw on the flesh between thumb and fore-finger those ribbons of scar tissue, the remnants of that bite back now, and I shuddered.

  The boy had lost his smile, and I looked at his reflection, hoping for some show of emotion, some shine of happiness in his eyes, but there was nothing. Only his sharp, ebony irises and blank whites of his eyes, and as I watched in the mirror his face suddenly went deep gray, the cheeks sunken, the eyes drawing back into their sockets, his hair—that glossy, black hair—lifting and flying on some invisible, untouchable wind that shot through him.

  I could do nothing. I needed to scream, to move away from him, but nothing happened: I only opened my mouth, trying to let out that scream, but felt cold, dead air shoot into me, fill my lungs. The shifting in my abdomen continued, weight moving lower and lower, and still I tried to scream.

  I looked at the girls, hoping somehow that they
might comfort me, but their faces, too, were going over to the gray and black of my son’s, their hair flying, eyes sunken. Then they opened their mouths, and I was not surprised to see black holes again, the girls’ dresses pick up and dance on the wind in the room. All three opened their mouths, and I could feel the cold wind on me, my skin scratching over with goose bumps, the back of my neck drawing tight, my eyes tearing with the cold.

  They flew through the room, their faces gone to black, the embers in the fireplace dying and shooting up sparks and dying again, the warmth here and then gone. The children flew, and as always imploded, disappeared into themselves.

  I put my hands to my face, and between my fingers I caught the last glimpse of me before the mirror, my pregnant body, my abdomen huge with the advent of birth, the dead room behind me, my own face ashen, my eyes lost in their sockets.

  I screamed, finally, the strength given me from somewhere, and then I closed my eyes, shut them as tight as I could, my scream letting loose the terror I felt, and launching me into the pain of imminent labor I felt low in my abdomen. I shut my eyes tight, my hands still at my face, and screamed, before me now the same circling squares I’d seen when I’d passed out after having been bitten.

  Then the wind stopped, and my scream tore into the black quiet around me. I stopped, and my ears filled with the rush of blood through my head, the pierce of that silent, high pitch.

  “Claire?” Tom shouted from behind me. I heard him throw back sheets, turn in the bed, his feet on the floor. Then his hands were on my shoulders. “Claire?”

  I opened my eyes, took my hands from my face.

  In the mirror was my reflection. Me. I stood before the mirror, my body the gray of moonlight through a window, my skin covered with goose bumps. I was not pregnant, my abdomen flat and shallow, my navel a small black hole leading back into me. My pubic hair was the same small black triangle there between my legs. And my breasts were small again, insignificant, the nipples and aureoles the same size as always, the nipples erect, not from being ready to give milk, but from the cold of the room.

  Our room, the same old room in the same old apartment, the same old walls around me.

  Tom said, “Claire?” again, and I felt his warm body next to me, pressed into me. “What’s wrong?”

  I was shaking with the dead adrenalin in me, and I wanted to tell him it was a bad dream, a terrible dream, but I wanted to take those thoughts back, because I remembered the glimpse of the future, me there and pregnant, my body with our child, and I knew, knew that even though the children had disappeared I was still pregnant, that we had but nine months to wait: we would by that time have finished work on the house, my room in the home in Chesterfield changed magically into a nursery, waiting for this new baby.

  I still felt pressure down below my abdomen, still had that bloated feel, and I felt in spite of this dream somehow happy, rewarded for having come through, and I turned around to Tom, and I held him, felt his warm hands on my back again.

  But then there came a sudden, small movement deep inside me, and I felt the wet issue descending, and I felt the warmth between my legs.

  I pulled away from Tom, still without having said a word. I put my hand down to my vagina, gently placed my first two fingers there—the same two fingers with which I had tasted my own milk—and brought them close to my face. The blood there on my fingers was thick and sticky, as black as blood ought to be in the dark of a cold bedroom. My period had begun.

  “What is it?” Tom said. “Claire?”

  I said nothing, merely turned from him and headed, still silent, still in darkness, to the bathroom.

  I listened all that week, waiting for my father’s voice, waiting, waiting. I listened for him when I stood in the shower, and when I climbed down the stairs to the car, and when I drove over the bridge into Hadley, headed for work, the fields dead, covered with ancient corn stubble like long rows of twisted and broken bones sticking up from the earth. I listened for his voice as I ran the rabbits, Chesterfield and all the rest now, as planned, successfully void of any remembrance whatsoever of that conditioned behavior. Now, when the tone came, they did nothing, only let the electric shock spark into them, rush through their bodies in some sort of tacit agreement that, yes, their brains had been tampered with; yes, they could not remember that they should wince at the coming pain; and, yes, the search for Artificial Intelligence moved on.

  And I listened whenever I saw Sandra, paler now than ever, her face fatter, her hair greasy. I listened when I passed her in the hall, listened as I caught glimpses of her staining and mounting, listened as I saw her walk into the computer room at lunch now, alone.

  I listened, and listened, ignoring everything and everyone around me. The rest of the week I spoke little to Tom who, I assumed, only imagined it was me having my period, that I ought to be feeling this way, that it was my right to say nothing, to do nothing, only come home at night to lie on the couch with the television going until after midnight, then coming to bed and sleeping as far away from him as I could possibly get. He said nothing to me.

  The next day, Friday, was the day perfusion began.

  Sacrifice was the word used, uttered by Will and Sandra and myself and in all the literature, a word that veiled what we did, hid the fact that we killed them next; a word that elevated things some-what, and made us feel, perhaps, that indeed we were doing some sort of favor to these animals for whom we’d already destroyed some center of thinking, cells that made them blink in anticipation.

  Sacrifice.

  Still I was listening for my father, the image of my dream still with me four days later, seared into my own brain every time I went to the bathroom, each time I had to pull out the swelled and brown-red tampon and drop it between my legs into the toilet, where I would flush the thing down, those bits of possible life shed voluntarily by my own body, a traitor. Still I bled, and bled, and bled, as though this steady flush from my own system were one long reiteration of the truth: I could not have a child, my pregnant body only a dream. Nothing more. Some accident of God, who’d given me this. An accident.

  Sacrifice.

  Chesterfield was the first to go, and I felt nothing. I wore no gloves, merely picked him up from the cage in the basement, walked with him upstairs, cradling him, his paws up in the air as I scratched his chest. I felt nothing for the animal, felt only its rapid heartbeat beneath my fingertips.

  I started down the hall, and saw that Paige and Wendy’s office door was open. From inside came a low voice, Will’s, perhaps, speaking in a quiet monotone, and then it stopped. I was even with the door, and looked in.

  There were all four of them: Paige and Wendy both leaning on the edges of their desks, heads down; Will leaning against the back wall, his arms crossed; Sandra in the oak rocker, her elbows on her knees, looking at the floor.

  They all looked up at me, as if they had prearranged it, the four of them waiting for me to pass. Their faces, though, were blank, eyes dead. They didn’t move, say anything.

  I hesitated a moment, wanting to know what was going on, but then I moved on down the hall. I had a rabbit in my arms. I had my job to do. I was listening for my father.

  I moved down the darkened hall, all the way to the far end, to the perfusion room, a room whose walls were covered with green tiles, what had once been the dorm showers. When I reached the heavy wooden door, I leaned my back against it, and looked down the hall, half hoping Sandra would be following me to fill me in, and half hoping that no one would be there.

  There was no one, and I pushed hard against the door, and moved in.

  The room was actually two rooms, the front room set up with necessary equipment: water bottles, tubing, metal shelves laid out with scalpels and Rongeurs shears, hemostats, boxes of syringes and surgical masks and gloves, bottles of Nembutal. Everything needed to sacrifice an animal.

  In the room beyond was the stainless steel sink, over it the rack with its four small pieces of nylon rope, one fixed to each corner,
upon which the rabbit—Chesterfield!—would lie; above the sink was a shelf holding two huge plastic bottles, one of saline solution, the other of Formalin.

  Chesterfield lay still in my arms, content, his nose slowing down, his eyes nearly closed.

  I took him to the table, where sat yet another Gormezano box, and I placed him in it, closed off the two Plexiglas ends. I got a syringe from one of the boxes, and drew from a bottle of Nembutal a little over three milliliters. A lethal dose, one that would lull him at first, then slow his heart rate down next to nothing.

  I pulled up the scruff of his neck with my left hand. There, on the back of my hand, was the scar. That God damned scar on my hand, that pregnant rabbit never leaving me, and though I’d no reason to, though Chesterfield had never been anything other than the calmest, most cooperative, most peaceful rabbit I’d ever handled, still I took the syringe with my right hand, held it up to pop off the last small bubble at the tip of the reservoir, and I jammed the needle into the rabbit, jammed it hard, so that Chesterfield, startled and pained, let out the first scream I’d ever heard from him, a small shattering of sound that broke through the room and boomed and ricocheted across the tiles and stainless steel to settle into my ears, the sound magnified by the room, loud and shrill and cold.

  I pulled out the syringe, and I started waiting.

  Ten minutes later he was out. I took apart the Gormezano box, and laid Chesterfield on the table. I put my hand to the fur of his chest, felt his brittle ribcage. His heartbeat was almost nonexistent, just a small, muffled vibration every second. Almost nothing.

  I picked him up, limp in my hands, so much dead weight, as though he had doubled in weight since just a few moments ago, when he had been in my arms and awake.