by Ruth Ozeki
When he got tired out, she liked to lie down on the floor next to him, resting her head on her arm so that her face was on level with his. He’d look at her with his black eyes and reach out to touch her nose or put his fingers in her mouth so she could nibble them. She started calling him “little bear,” because that was what he looked like.
Sometimes she’d take him shopping in Pocatello, put him in the shopping cart and push him around the aisles at Wal-Mart or ShopKo, watching the mothers cast sideways glances at his curly black hair and chocolate skin. If he fussed, which he rarely did, she’d carry him on her hip, holding him to her cheek or sitting him down by the cash register while she wrote out her check. The cashiers watched as he clenched her blond hair in his dark fingers.
Is he yours?
That’s what they wanted to ask, but mainly they didn’t dare. Most people thought he was from the reservation, and Cass noticed that when she had him along, some people treated her differently, too. It wasn’t so much what they did but rather what they didn’t do. She grew to recognize the slight hesitation before they spoke to her and the glance, back and forth, between his face and hers. But Poo would stare at them, eyes steady and old seeming, until they glanced away.
When she had him along, the world looked different, and she liked the way she saw things she’d never noticed before. Some were just little things—the way bright candies were displayed down low, close to the ground, on eye level with a baby in a stroller, or the way that certain pebbles, or clods of dirt, or clumps of grass might look delicious to a baby, who was learning to taste the world. But she noticed other things, too—the way she herself felt acutely visible with the baby in her arms, and the way some people’s faces lit up when they saw a child. His warm weight was like living ballast, thrumming with energy, giving her substance. Folks were drawn to that.
Cass thought about this afterward, lying on the bed during Poo’s nap. She had turned up the space heater, and the baby, dressed only in a fresh diaper, lay warm and heavy against her chest. When she had him along, she could tell a lot about people. She could recognize the mothers immediately from their knowing smiles, and she was surprised at the bond she felt with them. She could tell the women who didn’t have children, too, the ones who looked longingly at the softness of Poo’s cheeks, imagining what it would be like to finger his supple spine or to feel his little paws grip her sweater, like he was doing now, in his sleep. These women scared her, and she turned from them quickly, as though what they did not have was catching.
It was hot in the bedroom. Gently she tipped Poo over onto Will’s place in the bed next to her and took off her sweater. She paused, then took off her shirt, too. She gathered the baby up again and rolled onto her back, holding him securely against her.
“Hey, little bear,” she whispered.
He smacked his lips and wiggled his fingers, but soon his long eyelashes were still against his cheek, and his sleep was sound and deep. She could feel his rapid heart beating against hers. She felt his breath tickle her skin. Secretly she believed that his infant proximity, his naked belly pressing against hers, might increase her chances of conceiving. She would never tell Will this—it was a superstition, and she knew it was silly—but it couldn’t hurt to hope either.
A short while later, when Will came in for a cup of coffee, he saw the baby’s blanket spread out like a small sea on the living room floor and the baby’s toys scattered around it like boats. In the kitchen a few rubbery cubes of carrot littered the sink.
“Cass!” he called, but she didn’t answer, so he followed the trail of infant gear up the stairs and into their bedroom. There he found his wife, sound asleep in the middle of their bed, with Yummy’s diapered baby lying, bottom up and belly down, on top of her. It was hot in the room. The baby’s little brown body almost hid the scars that ran across his wife’s pale chest.
Will watched for a while, then walked to the bathroom, shutting the door quietly behind him. He lowered himself on the edge of the bathtub and stared at the faded pink bath mat, waiting for the tears to come. When he finished, he wiped his face with a towel and smoothed back his hair, redoing the rubber band on his ponytail. Then he went downstairs to make a fresh pot of coffee, thinking how Cass would surely like a cup when she woke up.
seeded
One problem with having children is this: You can easily miss the moment when some twist of your fate unfolds. I was doubled over the back of the car seat with my butt in the air, looking for a teething ring, which Poo had thrown to the floor and was now vociferously demanding, when the black-and-white cow approached the Pontiac.
“For God’s sake, Poo! Hang on to the damn thing, will you? Now, wait here.”
When I turned around, the cow had her big black nose pressed up against the driver’s-side window.
“Hello,” it said in a masculine voice, knocking on the glass with a front hoof. “Hello . . . ?”
“Aaaaagh!” I screamed, which in itself surprised me. I am not usually a screamer.
“Sorry,” said the cow. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Oh, jeez!” My heart was pounding. “What the fuck?”
At the sight of the cow, Poo started to clap his hands and bounce up and down. The cow cleared its throat, and the deep voice climbed a precarious octave toward something approximately female. “My name’s Daisy the Dairy Cow, and I’m here to tell you some very interesting facts about the milk your children drink. . . .”
I opened the door hard into Daisy’s round stomach.
“Listen, Cow. That’s just great, but I’m late picking up my kids, and I have to get my father out of the hospital.” Daisy didn’t budge, so I tried glaring. The threadbare beast had three goofy flowers growing like sparse hairs out of its large head. I gave up. It was hopeless. “Why am I telling you this? You’re a cow. Could you get out of my way please?”
Daisy’s voice returned to its normal male pitch. “Sure. But here . . .” He dug around in a woven basket that hung on his foreleg. The basket was filled with crumpled paper flowers and a sheaf of flyers. “Just take this home and read it and if you have any questions, there’s an 800 number at the bottom.” He handed me a flyer with his hoof. I took it and dropped it on the seat of the car.
“You’re not going to read it, are you?”
“No.”
Daisy sighed, then leaned over and looked through the back window at Poo. “Moo,” he said, knocking on the window and waving a hoof. Poo gurgled and wiggled his fingers like a sea anemone. “Cute kid,” Daisy said. Poo hurled his teething ring to the floor again.
Phoenix and Ocean were nowhere to be seen. I had told them to be ready and waiting. I scanned the entrance of the school building. Several young people, ratty and earnest, were darting forward and waylaying mothers. They were dressed in jeans and headbands and tie-dyed scarves and layers of shaggy knit things that looked like matted fur.
“What’s wrong?” asked Daisy.
“Nothing. Just the way those kids are dressed.” I was feeling homesick. We had a lot of kids like this in Pahoa—hippies, earthmuffins, white rastas, and back-to-the-land types. They came for the cheap real estate and excellent pakalolo, and because you won’t die of exposure if you happen to smoke too much and pass out on the beach or by the side of a road.
Daisy ducked her head apologetically. “Usually we try to dress a little more straight when we’re doing an action, but this was kind of spur of the moment.”
“Spontaneous, huh? Far out. You mean, like a happening?”
“No,” he said stiffly. “It’s more political than that.”
“Political? Well, now, we don’t get too many of you hippie-agitator types ’round these parts,” I drawled, trying to hit the right twang of hostility and suspicion.
Daisy backed off and nodded his large head so mournfully that I felt sorry for him. “Listen, Cow. I’m just kidding around. The dress code reminded me of my misspent youth, acid flashbacks, Berkeley in the sixties or something.”
“Oh, right,” said Daisy, relaxing. “Hey, cool. I can relate.” He cocked his head. “You’re too young to have been dropping acid in the sixties.”
“You’re right,” I said. “It was the seventies.”
“Oh, man, the seventies sucked,” the cow said sadly.
“Sure did.” Together we watched the raggedy crew dart around with their pamphlets. Phoenix was talking to a skinny boy wearing a ski cap pulled down low over his eyes and big, baggy pants.
“Phoenix!” I yelled. “Get over here.” Phoenix looked up and flapped his hand impatiently. “Who’s he talking to?” I asked the cow.
“That’s our Frankie. Our Frank Perdue.”
“What a name!”
“You said it.”
“Poor kid.”
“Totally.”
“Phoenix!” I hollered again.
“Phoenix,” Daisy said. “Now, that’s a cool name,”
“Thanks. I like it, too. But he hates it. Prefers to be called Nix.”
Ocean emerged from the school building and looked around, then spotted the Pontiac. I waved, and she came running like a good daughter.
“So how come you call him Phoenix?”
“Habit, I guess. Nix sounds so negative.”
“Gotta get through the negative to reach the positive.”
I looked at the cow. “Good point.” I took a deep breath. “Nix!”
Startled, Phoenix glanced up, then high-fived Frank Perdue and started loping toward the Pontiac. His sister skipped up and tagged the fender, making a big show of getting there first.
“Hi,” Ocean said, panting. She looked from mother to cow and back again. “Who’s that?”
“Get in. We’re in a hurry. We have to pick up your grandpa by three.”
“I’m Ocean,” said Ocean to Daisy. “Who are you?”
“I’m Daisy the Dairy Cow. Do you like milk?”
“Cows are girls,” she said accusingly. “You sound like a boy.”
“Well, I’m not really a cow. I’m a man in a cow costume.”
“Is that like a wolf in sheep’s clothing?” she asked me.
“Ocean, get in the car. We have to go.”
“Well, is it?”
“Yes.” I got in behind the wheel.
Ocean turned to the cow. “I don’t think I’m supposed to talk to you, then.” She climbed into the backseat next to Poo, who had fallen asleep.
Phoenix jogged up.
“Nice of you to join us.” I reached across the front seat and opened the door for him. “Get in.”
Phoenix sighed and rolled his eyes.
I started the car. “Good-bye, Daisy.”
“Hey!” Daisy banged on the hood of the car. “Check out that flyer, okay? It’s unbelievable.”
I pulled away and looked in the rearview mirror. Daisy was watching us go, waving his foreleg.
“Oh, gross,” Phoenix said, picking up the flyer from the seat. “This is so disgusting! ”
“What? What’s disgusting?” Ocean cried. She undid her seat belt and hung over into the front seat to get a look, but Phoenix held the flyer just out of her reach.
“Ocean, sit back and buckle up. Phoenix, tell her what it is and stop tormenting her.”
“It’s this stuff called bovine growth hormone, and they shoot up cows with it.”
“You mean like drugs?” Ocean asked. “Why do they do that?”
“So the cows’ll make more milk, stupid.”
“What’s a ‘bovine’?”
Phoenix ignored her and started to read. “ ‘This overmilking leads to a condition called mastitis, resulting in open sores on the udders of the cows . . .’ ”
“Ewww yuck!” said Ocean, throwing herself against the backseat. “What’s an utter?”
“. . . that leak pus and blood into the milk you drink.”
“I’m gonna puke,” said Ocean.
“You don’t even understand what it’s about,” Phoenix said.
“I do, too! It’s about blood and pus in milk. Mom, I’m never gonna drink milk again, okay?”
“No, it’s not okay.”
I glanced over at my son’s profile as he read. “Listen, son, that’s all just fine, but you can’t believe everything people tell you, especially some guy dressed up in a cow suit.”
“Oh, Yummy!” he said. He hates it when I call him son. “They’re activists. ” He folded up the flyer and stuck it in his knapsack. Like that explained everything.
I winced. “Especially activists, son. Especially activists in cow’s clothing.” Listening to the words coming from my mouth, I was struck by how easy it was to sound like a parent.
My father sat in the passenger’s seat, wrapped in a blanket like a mummified cadaver, shrunken and hauled from a crypt. The kids, scared by his extreme fragility, were in the back, lined up, neat and quiet. Lloyd kept his eyes half shut, his gaze fixed on the landscape passing outside the window. I didn’t know what he was watching for, but somehow I doubted he was finding it. There was nothing out there. Finally he gave a deep sigh and closed his eyes.
“You okay, Dad?” When he didn’t answer, I figured he must be asleep, or maybe he just hadn’t heard, but then I caught Phoenix’s eye in the rearview mirror, silently asking the real question—Is he dead?—and I understood that while he was still alive, this question would accompany his every pause or silence. I tried to smile reassuringly at Phoenix. When we had gone another mile or two, Lloyd spoke, so soft and slow it seemed his answers were part of a conversation happening somewhere else, far away, in a different life or time.
“I’m fine.”
And then, “I’m just tired, that’s all.”
“You can rest when we get home. You’ll be in your own room.” I was thinking about the room and the work I’d done to get the house ready for him, worried it would not be right.
“Oh,” he whispered. “My own room!” His head dropped back onto the padded headrest, and I glanced over to see a tear leaking from his wrinkled eye. “That’s exactly what I want . . .”
When I was a little girl, I used to make him presents—ashtrays from plasticine and macaroni paintings. I would wait, so excited, for him to come home from the fields before my clay cracked or my noodles came unstuck. Darting to the window or onto the porch, I’d search the horizon for the cloud of dust that signaled the approach of his pickup. When he finally walked through the door, he would see me waiting and bend down and coax the offering from behind my back.
“My, my, my,” he’d say, turning the object over in his hands. “It’s exactly what I wanted.”
Cass was waiting for us. She and Will were in the house, and their Suburban was parked in the driveway. Next to it, in the middle of the turnaround, was the most bizarre vehicle I’d ever seen. It was covered with armored plating and looked like something that you might want to take camping in Beirut or Bosnia.
Phoenix exhaled. “Awesome!”
Cass and Will came up as I got out of the car. “What is it?” I asked.
“Used to be a Winnebago, by the looks of it,” said Will. “They showed up about an hour ago.”
“Who did?”
Cass shrugged. “Some young people. I’ve never seen them around here before. They said they knew you.”
The way she said it made me nervous, as though the apparition were my fault. Phoenix and Ocean edged closer for a better look. Will peered into the Pontiac at my father.
“Hey there, Mr. Fuller. How you feeling?”
Lloyd looked up weakly. “Will Quinn? That you?”
“Sure thing, Mr. Fuller. Here, let me give you a hand getting out.” He took Lloyd’s elbow. Lloyd tried to sit forward, and you could see how, in his mind, he was swinging his legs toward the ground and lifting his body out of the car the way he’d done all his life, but this time, after jerking his torso a few inches forward, he fell back against the seat and closed his eyes. Cass squeezed my arm. “This isn’t going to work,” she whispered.
Will looked over at me. “Maybe I should carry him?”
“Could you?” I said.
But Lloyd opened his eyes and held up his hand. “No!” he said, still catching his breath. “Wait.” He closed his eyes. We waited.
Just then a noise from the camping car made us all look up as the armored door swung open and a tall man emerged. He had a long, flowing beard and hair matted into dreadlocks that hung below his shoulders. He was draped in a caftan. A second guy followed, clean-shaven and stockier, wearing glasses with thick, round lenses. They took in the scene and sauntered over to the Pontiac.
“Hey,” said the bespectacled guy. “Is that your dad?”
I nodded. His deep voice sounded familiar.
“You just getting back from the hospital?”
I nodded again. We watched as the bearded man walked over to the passenger’s seat. He bent to look inside. “Hey, dude,” he said.
Lloyd opened his eyes, and a strangling noise rose from his throat. He stared at the man, taking in the beard, the dreadlocks, the garb. “Oh,” he whispered. “My Lord!”
The man leaned in toward my father and reached out his arms. “Can you put your hands around my neck?” he asked. “It’ll make it easier.” Then, without an upsy-daisy or another word, he scooped up my father.
For a moment Lloyd looked stricken. Then he raised his arms and encircled the man’s head. He closed his eyes, and his lips began to move in prayer.
“Where do you want him?” the man asked.
