Last Things

by Jenny Offill

  At the church library, I found a book about saints that was so small it fit in the palm of my hand. In it, I read about St. Anthony, who preached to the fish and the birds and was so holy a donkey knelt before him. St. Anthony is the patron saint of lost things. He will help you find whatever you have lost, if only you come forward with a believing heart, the book said. Then there were the saints who ate only bark and dirt, who threw themselves on funeral pyres crying, Praise be to the Lord above, Glory to God in the highest.

  I put away the book and took out my homework. Dec. 29: First primates, it said at the top. My mother came in and showed me a tape about a gorilla in California who had learned to talk with her hands. Her name was Koko and her favorite word was “gorilla,” my mother said. Does she think she’s a person, I asked. Oh no, my mother said. She fast-forwarded the tape to a scene where Koko was being shown different skeletons, one a bear skeleton, one a dog skeleton, and the last a gorilla’s. The woman who showed her the skeleton was her trainer, my mother said, and her name was Penny. In the movie, Koko is asked to point to the gorilla skeleton. Right away she does.

  Penny (says and signs): Is the gorilla alive or dead?

  Koko (signs): Dead, goodbye.

  Penny: How do gorillas feel when they die? Happy, sad, afraid?

  Koko: Sleep.

  Penny: Where do gorillas go when they die?

  Koko: Comfortable hole, bye.

  Penny: When do gorillas die?

  Koko: Trouble, old.

  The screen went black, then the credits appeared. My mother clapped her hands. “See, she knows all about it,” she said.

  DEC. 30: FIRST HOMINIDS

  The first hominids, known as Australopithecines, lived on the African savanna nearly five million years ago. They were small, ape-like creatures who walked upright but had not yet lost the ability to climb trees. Scientists believe they were an evolutionary dead end, but similar hominids arose in their wake. Over time, these primitive humans learned to make tools and conquer fire. They hunted communally and may have communicated with simple signs. Perhaps one of the earliest consequences of their developing consciousness was a dim awareness of their own end.

  A sparrow’s heart beats four hundred and sixty times a minute. A man’s, just seventy-eight. But sometimes, at night, my heart approached sparrow speed. This happened when the darkness crept into my bed and wrapped itself around my feet. It made a low whirring sound when it touched me. Then it crawled onto my chest and lay there, daring me to breathe. If I did, it would kill me, for this was the agreement we had made.

  I never knew how long it would stay. Once, it seemed to curl up on my arm and fall asleep. Another time, it brushed across my face and left through the window with a quick rustling sound. This was the sound of all the creatures that waited in the dark, I knew. At night, they roamed the woods behind my house, calling out their names to me.

  I was afraid that one night these creatures might come for me. I thought this because of a story I had read in The Encyclopedia of the Unexplained. The book said that once in China a creature who was half man and half ape climbed through a window and carried off a girl. This happened very early in the morning when no one else was awake. The creature ran with the girl through the empty streets, dragging her long hair along the ground. She screamed and screamed, but no one heard. But then, just before they reached the woods, some women working in a field saw the beast and chased after him. They rescued the girl and hacked the beast to death with their metal hoes. Some of them took home bits of his hair as souvenirs. The dead beast had hair like a yak, but his hands were smooth like a man’s. A young biologist who lived in the town cut off its hands and preserved them in a jar. “I think he was in love with the girl,” my mother said. The biologist, I thought she meant, but later I wondered if it was the monster.

  In the winter, there was an owl that lived in the tree outside my window. The call of an owl meant a baby would die, my mother had told me. In Africa, when this happened, the woman nearest the owl cried, Ameliliwa, which meant, “My baby has been hooted over,” and everyone in the village came to see the baby one last time. Sometimes, after it died, the baby’s father went into the woods and shot an owl, but this only brought more bad luck. Had my father done this when Sophie died, I wondered, but my mother wouldn’t say.

  The darkness moved through my room like smoke. Sometimes I saw it and other times I could see right through it. I never told anyone about the way it moved across me, but one night my mother opened the door and scared it away. When I saw her, I screamed without making a sound. Only my mouth opened.

  My mother rushed to my bed. “What is it?” she asked. “Did you have a bad dream?” I tried to speak, but no words came. I could feel the darkness in the corner watching me. My mother turned on a lamp. When she did, the darkness slid under my dresser and hid there.

  “What were you dreaming?” she asked. She stroked my hair with her cool hands. Now that my father was gone, I sometimes dreamed we were the last two people left on earth.

  I shook my head.

  “Tell me what happened,” she said.

  There were still a few shadows left in the corner. I closed my eyes. “My legs wouldn’t move,” I told her. “I woke up and I couldn’t breathe.” I shivered a little, thinking of how the dark thing had pinned me down. My mother pressed her hands against my chest.

  “Like that?” she asked.

  Yes, like that. In the dim light, her face looked strange. For a moment, I thought she might be someone pretending to be my mother and not my real mother at all.

  She took my hand. “This thing that comes is called the Old Hag,” she said. “All over the world, people speak of it, though they call it by different names.”

  “Does it come to you?”

  “Sometimes,” she said. “And when it comes, it brings with it every black and terrible thing. Some have claws and teeth, some wings, but each has a horrible voice that whispers and whispers in the dark.”

  I thought of how the voice I heard at night started in my head, then moved to fill every corner of the room. Was it the same as the voice she heard?

  My mother squeezed my hand tightly. “I’ll tell you a secret, Grace. All you have to do is say the name of the Old Hag out loud and she will vanish. One brave word and she will disappear.”

  This was no help, of course, for how could I speak when I couldn’t breathe?

  “I can’t,” I said.

  “Practice with me, then.”

  “No,” I said and started to cry. Soon she would go away and leave me in the dark again, I knew.

  My mother went to the window. The wind was bending the trees back and forth. On my wall was a map of the world. As I watched, a tree’s shadow covered China like the fingers of a hand.

  “There is another way to get rid of the Old Hag,” my mother said, “but it’s much worse because it means you must become a black thing too.”

  I stopped crying and looked at her. “What is it?” I said.

  My mother knelt beside my bed. “If you say the Lord’s Prayer backwards, then call out ‘Hag. Good Hag,’ your enemy will be visited by the Old Hag that night instead of you.”

  “But what happens to the enemy?”

  “He dies of fright.”

  She lay down beside me on the bed. “I’ll stay here until you fall asleep,” she said.

  I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. I could hear her breathing and the sound of the clock ticking away. Otherwise, it was quiet. But soon there was the voice again. It began very softly, hiding itself in the noise of the wind. I’ll wait, it said. I am quiet but I am here.

  I started to shake. My mother woke up and stilled me. “What is it?” she said. “What were you dreaming?” She stroked my hair with her cool hands, but I could feel the darkness burrowing into me. I closed my eyes, but it came in my ears. I covered my ears, but it came in my mouth. Then it went to work sealing my throat. When I gasped for breath, my mother laid her hands on me and started to pray.


  Amen, ever and forever glory the and power the and kingdom the is thine for, evil from us deliver but temptation into not us lead. Us against trespass that those forgive we as trespasses our us forgive and bread daily our day this us give. Heaven in is it as earth on done be will thy, come kingdom thy, name thy be hallowed, heaven in art who father our.

  Her voice was like water falling. It made me want to sleep. When I closed my eyes, the house of my mother’s enemy appeared. Inside it, someone was dancing, following footsteps along the floor. One two, one two three, a woman sang. The music stopped and it was quiet again. There was a sound like the beating of a heart. Suddenly the darkness flew through the window and leapt at the dancer’s throat. “Hag. Good Hag,” my mother said.

  DEC. 31: FERST HUMANS

  Modern humans, known as Homo sapiens, first appeared on Earth forty thousand years ago. We walk upright, use tools, and live in complex social groups. We communicate through a shared language of signs and symbols and spend an extraordinary amount of time raising our young. Our species invented agriculture, the alphabet, arithmetic, and art. We are the only animals to have left a deliberate record of our history and the only ones to have devised a means with which to end it. On the cosmic calendar, we do not appear until the last few hours of New Year’s Eve.

  On the last day of the year, my father came back. His hair was combed differently and his eyes were blue. He took out his keys and tried the door, but already my mother had changed the locks. He stood outside in the snow calling her name. “Let me in, Anna,” he said. “I have something for you.”

  My mother sat in the living room with me, debating whether to let him in. It was their tenth wedding anniversary. “He’s supposed to give me paper,” she told me. “What do you think it could be?”

  Finally, she undid the dead bolt and opened the door. My father was wearing a gray suit and holding a bottle of champagne. He kissed her cheek and handed it to her. My mother wrinkled her nose and held the bottle at arm’s length. “Is this the gift?” she asked.

  My father laughed. “No, no, no.” He blindfolded my mother and led her down the street. She kept tilting her head back so she could still see. “This better be good, Jonathan,” she told him.

  When we reached the end of the street, my father stopped in front of a big purple car. Purple was my favorite color, and my mother’s too. He took off her blindfold and handed her some keys. “I put it in your name, Anna,” he said.

  My mother walked all the way around the car, kicking the tires. Then she got in and sat behind the wheel.

  My father stood on the curb, waiting nervously. “There’s air-conditioning,” he told her. “Power steering too.”

  Finally, my mother got out of the car and kissed him on the cheek. “You’re supposed to give me paper, silly,” she said.

  That night, he took her to dinner at the Flaming Sword. This was my mother’s favorite restaurant because every dish on the menu was set on fire as it was served.

  Edgar came over to baby-sit and sat glumly in the kitchen, drinking chocolate milk. “I can’t believe she took him back,” he said.

  But just before ten, my mother came home alone. Her lipstick was smeared and her coat was wet where she’d dragged it through the snow. “Your father’s running off to Brazil for two months,” she said. “Some stupid special about the rain forest, he claims.”

  She threw her wet coat on the floor. Edgar picked it up and smoothed the wrinkles out. Where was Mr. Davitt now, he asked.

  My mother shrugged. “Halfway to the Amazon, I hope.” She took out the champagne and poured herself a glass. “Would you like a little, Edgar?” she asked.

  He straightened up in his chair. “Yes, please, Mrs. Davitt,” he said.

  My mother went into the living room and put a record on. She looked out the window and sipped her drink. Edgar drank his champagne quickly, then poured himself another glass. My mother came back in the kitchen and sat down across from him. Every time her glass got low, he filled it up again. “Whoa there, cowboy,” she said, covering it with her hand.

  She went into the hall closet and took down a box. “Do you know how to play backgammon, Edgar?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “I’m not much for games, Mrs. Davitt, you know.”

  My mother opened the board and set it up on the table. “Don’t worry. I’ll show you,” she said.

  They started to play. Edgar kept stopping to read the rules. “I’ll tell you if you’re cheating,” my mother insisted, but he checked them anyway.

  I put on my coat and went outside to look at the new car. My mother had parked it under the streetlight and it gleamed in the dark. The Purple Pig, she’d named it. After my father, she said. I imagined him trekking through Brazil, where the monster who was half pig and half worm lived. What would he do if he saw it, I wondered. Would he bring it back alive?

  I lay down in the snow and looked at the sky. It was a clear night and all the stars were out. Too many to count. I could feel the cold seeping in through my coat and wrapping itself around me. I closed my eyes and pretended I was a cave girl who lived in the Ice Age.

  My mother came out on the steps and called for me. Her voice sounded odd, like a record slowed down. She stood on the porch, holding her drink. “I’m not kidding, Grace,” she said, then turned and closed the door.

  When I came in, Edgar was wearing my father’s fur hat and dancing around the room. The backgammon board had fallen off the table and the pieces were scattered all over the floor. “Did you know Edgar’s half Russian?” my mother asked.

  He took her hands and spun her around. On the record, a man yelled, “Aye! Aye! Aye!”

  “Can you speak Russian?” my mother asked.

  Edgar shook his head.

  “I can,” she said. She collapsed on the couch and winked at me.

  Edgar sat beside her with the hat in his hand. “Say something, Mrs. Davitt,” he told her. “Anything at all.”

  My mother leaned forward and touched his knee. “Pnyy zr Naan,” she said, then fell fast asleep.

  To celebrate the end of the cosmic calendar, my mother proposed a trip to New Orleans. She had lived there as a girl and it was the only city she ever loved, I knew. My grandfather was buried in New Orleans, and when we went there we would visit his grave, she said. Also, we would ride on a riverboat and watch the parades. What else was there to see, I asked her. Sunshine and zombies, my mother said.

  I thought the trip to New Orleans was another of my mother’s passing plans, like the one to become a beekeeper or learn Tai Chi, but that night she stayed up until dawn and packed our car full of things. She packed the monster photographs and the dishes and the badminton net. Also, the complete set of encyclopedias and her wedding dress. In the box she gave me, I packed my detective kit and my globe and the ice-cream scoop for digging holes. Good thinking, Grace, my mother said.

  There had been a snowstorm the night before and the driveway was slick and wet. I stumbled a little on the walk, handing my mother things. She chattered happily to me, slipping back and forth across the ice. She had bought some rope to tie the trunk of our car shut and we struggled with this, looping it through the luggage rack. Already, the Purple Pig was filled with boxes. Wait here, my mother told me. She went inside and returned with her bathing suit and the fondue pot. When were we coming back, I asked her. Oh, you never know, she said.

  Early the next morning, we went to the bank. My mother retrieved my father’s credit cards from the safe-deposit box. There were three of them fastened together with a rubber band. Use only in the event of an emergency, the note on top said.

  We stopped at the general store and bought snakebite kits and fifty cans of mosquito spray. My mother was talking so quickly that at first the clerk couldn’t follow what she said. “There’s no time to waste,” she told him. “We must be off today.”

  When we got home, my mother pulled the curtains closed and shut the door to every room. She locked up the shed and unpl
ugged the phone. Did my father know where we were going, I asked her. Of course, of course, she said. She helped me carry my suitcase and sleeping bag outside. The car was so full that I had to keep them in the front under my feet.

  We went inside and waited for Edgar, who had promised to look after the house. When he arrived, he had a present for my mother wrapped in tinfoil. “A present!” she said. She opened it and inside was a book called Your Dreams Interpreted. The book had been published in 1907 and had listings for carriage and cavalry but not for car. “How marvelous,” my mother cried. “I’ll consult it every day.”

  She hugged Edgar and smoothed out the collar of his shirt. “Well, we’re off, then,” she said. “Remember, not a word to anyone until we return.”

  Edgar nodded gravely. He blinked his eyes like he might cry. Just before he came over, I’d asked my mother if he could come with us, but she said we could never afford to keep him in soap.

  It was snowing steadily as we made our way down the slippery walk. “Soon we’ll be in sunny New Orleans,” my mother said. Edgar stood on the front porch without his coat on, waving goodbye. As soon as we pulled out of the driveway, he put his hand to his head and went inside. “Poor boy,” my mother said.

  When we got to the end of the block, my mother remembered the photo albums in the cabinet under the TV. “I knew we’d forgotten something. Just you run in and get them, Grace.” As I started to get out of the car, she caught my arm and said, “Sneak in, so Edgar won’t see you. We don’t want to say goodbye all over again.” She handed me her set of keys. “Quickly now,” she told me.

  I ran through the snow to the back of the house and let myself in through the side door. I could see Edgar in the kitchen, but he didn’t see me. I snuck into the living room and got the photo albums out. One was missing, I noticed. I looked in the other drawers but it wasn’t there. I tiptoed down the hallway and looked through the open door. Edgar was sitting at the kitchen table surrounded by dirty dishes my mother had left behind. On the chair beside him was the photo album I was looking for. Edgar picked up a glass smeared with my mother’s lipstick. He turned it around in his hand, then matched his mouth to the print.