You Have Never Been Here

by Mary Rickert

  A shadow passes overhead.

  The door opens. Theresa stands there, her expression aghast.

  “I’m Shreve Mahar,” she begins, but Theresa runs right past her, brushing her shoulder, so that Shreve has to spin a half turn to maintain balance.

  “Where? Where?” Theresa cries, staring up at the sky.

  Shreve and Emily exchange a look. Elli Ratcher comes running out of the house, holding a screaming baby. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she cries. “I’m sorry!”

  “Matthew! Matthew!” Theresa Ratcher hollers.

  Jan pulls into the driveway and surveys the scene before her. A barefoot woman stands, shouting, in the yard, her face craned to the sky. Beside her stands the young red-haired girl, carrying a baby. On the porch is the dark-haired yoga teacher with a diaper bag, flowers, and a baby in a carrier. Standing at the foot of the stairs is a short woman who Jan thinks might be named Emma or Emily. Jan cranes her neck and looks up at the sky. She thinks they must have lost a pet bird, though the hysterical woman and the crying girl seem to be overreacting.

  Jan is tempted to stay in the car, in the air-conditioning. She doesn’t know any of these people. She should have come with Sylvia and Cathy. She realizes that the two women who are not looking at the sky are staring at her. She turns off the ignition. When she opens the door, she is hit by the heat and screams.

  “Mom! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” Elli screams, over and over again.

  Theresa stands with her hand shielding her eyes, shouting Matthew’s name.

  Jan thinks she should get back in the car and turn around, but Jack gurgles at her from his car seat. She can’t leave until she finds out whatever she can about the wings.

  Theresa shouts for Matthew over and over again. She doesn’t know what else to do.

  Elli cries, holding Timmy against her chest. Why couldn’t it have been you? she thinks.

  Pete Ratcher comes out to the steps. Shreve begins to introduce herself, but Pete runs into the yard, grabs Theresa by the shoulders, and shakes her. Elli lunges to push him away with one hand, and Pete pushes her back. Not hard, they would later agree, but enough to cause Elli to lose her balance. As she tumbles, she opens her arms. All the women scream as Timmy falls, but the screams are abruptly cut short when dark wings sprout through the baby’s little white t-shirt and he flies out of Elli’s reach, over all of their heads.

  “I thought he died,” says Emily.

  Shreve shrugs.

  “Don’t touch the wings,” Jan shouts.

  Shreve and Emily look at her and then at each other. “How does she know that?”

  Little Timmy, laughing, flies in lazy circles and frightening dives, just out of reach of Elli and Theresa Ratcher, who jump at him as he passes. Pete Ratcher just stands there with his mouth hanging open. I have been drinking too much, he thinks. This can’t be happening.

  The Mothers

  Even now, we the mothers find ourselves saying this can’t be happening. This isn’t real. Why, in the face of great proof otherwise, do we insist on the dream of a life few of us have ever known? The dream of happiness? The dream of love? Why, we wonder, did we believe in those dreams and not the truth? We are monsters. Why did we ever think we were anything else? Why do we think, for even a moment, that this is all a horrible mistake, instead of what it is: our lives?

  Tamara

  When Sylvia Lansmorth and Cathy Vecker drive up, they see Jan, Shreve, and Emily with their baby carriers, diaper bags, flowers, and foiled plate, Theresa and Elli Ratcher screaming, and Pete Ratcher, standing there, shaking his head.

  “Is that him?” Sylvia asks. “He looks like a child molester.”

  Cathy points at the flying babies, swooping across the sky. “I told you things were getting strange.”

  “Matthew! Timmy! You come down here this instant!” Theresa shouts.

  Pete turns and walks back to the house.

  Emily sets her baby carrier gently on the ground and places the foiled plate beside it, then shrugs out of the diaper bag. She checks the straps on her baby’s carrier, making sure they are tight before she walks over to Theresa Ratcher. “Try your breast.” She has to say it a few times before Theresa hears her.

  “What?”

  “When I have this problem, I just take off my shirt. He always comes down for my breast.”

  Theresa hesitates only a second, trying to process the strange revelation of this woman she’s never met acting as though losing a winged baby is a common concern. She pulls off her tank top and lets it drop to the ground.

  “You have to take off your bra,” Emily says. She turns to Elli. “Watch your mother. Do what she does.”

  Sylvia and Cathy sit in the car and watch in amazement as Theresa and Elli Ratcher take off their tops and unfasten their bras.

  “Maybe we should come back later,” Sylvia says, but another car pulls in behind them and they are blocked in the driveway.

  Lara Bravemeen heard about the winged baby from the mailman, who heard about it from the senior Mrs. Vecker. When Lara drives up and sees the two women disrobing, the babies frolicking in the sky, she thinks she has found nirvana. She shuts off her engine, jumps out of the car, peels off her t-shirt, and unbuckles her bra.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Cathy asks.

  Theresa and Elli Ratcher stand with their arms spread, tilting their faces and breasts toward the sky. The babies begin a lazy glide toward them.

  That’s when the shot rings out.

  Shreve jumps about a foot at the noise; turns and sees Pete Ratcher, standing there with a gun.

  Emily looks from him to her baby, sitting in his carrier on the ground.

  Theresa and Elli both turn, their mouths open in horror.

  Pete Ratcher shoots again.

  Shreve drops the flowers and runs with her baby.

  The small body of Timmy Ratcher falls like a stone. Elli tries to catch him, but he crashes to the ground at her feet, and she falls over him, screaming. Matthew Ratcher stops his gentle glide and, wings beating furiously, shoots toward the sun.

  Theresa Ratcher makes an inhuman sound. She runs at her husband, her fists raised.

  Pete Ratcher watches her coming with his arms at his side, the gun hanging from his hand. Theresa dives at him and they both crash back into the house.

  Tamara and Raj turn from their baby’s corpse at the noise. They’d heard the screams and the gunshots, but were so absorbed by their grief they hadn’t tried to process any of it. Now they see Theresa Ratcher, bare-breasted, straddling her husband, pounding him with her fists.

  That’s when Emily comes in, picks up the gun, and rests the muzzle against Pete Ratcher’s head.

  Raj steps toward them. Emily says, “Come any closer and I’ll kill him.” She turns to Theresa. “Got any rope?”

  “It’s in the barn,” Pete says.

  “Shut up.” Emily presses the muzzle to his forehead.

  Pete glances at Raj, who is standing in the doorway between the kitchen and the living room. Behind him stands his wife, but she doesn’t look like she cares much about what is happening. Over her shoulder, Pete can see the dead baby; his small gray wings folded around his tiny shoulders.

  Theresa comes back into the kitchen with a coil of rope. Several women with babies follow her. Cars pull into the driveway, the sound of crunching gravel audible even through Elli’s screams.

  “Who are all these—”

  “Shut up,” Emily says. “You”—she glances at Raj—“tie his wrists and ankles.”

  Raj opens his mouth to protest.

  “Do it,” says Emily, “or I’ll shoot.”

  Emily is amazed anyone believes her. Pete Ratcher continues to lie there, though he is at least twice her size and actually knows how to use a gun.

  “No,” Emily says as Raj begins to wrap the rope around Pete’s wrists, “tie them behind his back. Roll over. Slowly.”

  Pete makes a sound that might be a chuckle, but he rolls over, slowly.
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  The mothers heard it from their mothers, friends, even strangers. Lucy, of Lucy’s Diner, heard about it from Brian Holandeigler, who’d heard it from Francis Kennedy, who’d heard it from Fred Wheeler, who said it was all over the canning factory. “Did I tell you we had a call there?” Francis said. “I knew something odd was going on in that house.” Maddy Melvern heard about it from Mrs. Baylor, who had come over to talk to Mrs. Melvern about Melinda Baylor in Iraq. “At least my Mindy ain’t gotta contend with no asshole like Pete Ratcher, who molested his daughter and gave her a baby with wings,” she said. (Maddy made her repeat it twice.) Roddy Tyler heard it from Mrs. Vecker and Mrs. Vecker Senior, and when he walked to the post office that afternoon (in his duct-taped shoes), he told everyone about it. Maddy found Leanne and Stooker outside the drugstore, and after they oohed and ahhed at JoJo, she told them she needed a ride to the Ratchers’. “I didn’t know you were friends with her,” Leanne said. Vin Freedman heard it from Stooker’s older brother, Tinny, and he told Mickey, who called up Elli, but nobody answered the phone there.

  Everyone was talking about it. When one of the mothers heard, she could not pretend she hadn’t. The Ratcher girl had a baby with wings. How could any one of them resist this revelation? The mothers packed diaper bags, left work, left home without explanation or offered a poor one, a scribbled note on the kitchen table, or attached to the refrigerator with a magnet. “Went out. Be back soon.”

  What they found was a bloodied, bare-breasted Elli Ratcher, kneeling in the dirt, holding her dead baby with his broken wings (right out there for anyone to see) and screaming, “No! No! I didn’t mean it! No!”

  The mothers were confused. How long had she been doing this? When had this baby died? And what was all that blood about, anyway?

  The mothers, holding their own sons, approached Elli with caution. They circled her and said, “There, there,” or “Everything’s going to be all right.” Some of them got close enough to pat her hot shoulder and get a good look at the baby. Definitely dead. Definitely wings.

  When Theresa Ratcher came out of the house, the mothers—thinking she’d come for her daughter—parted. But Theresa only looked at Elli with a confused expression, then spread her arms and arched her back, her skin freckled at the throat but pure white on her breasts, which hung loosely toward her stomach. She stood there, her face upturned to the crows and the clouds and her eyes closed, until a shadow crossed the sun and came diving down. It was a baby, its gray wings pulled back, diving right for Theresa Ratcher, landing on her with arms spread like a hug. With a sob, Theresa’s arms wrapped around him as he repositioned himself and began suckling. The mothers sighed. Theresa Ratcher, slowly, carefully, sank to the ground, kneeling in the dirt, smiling, and running her hand over her baby’s hair, just five yards away from Elli, who keened over hers.

  The Mothers

  Everyone was at the funeral. Even Pete Ratcher, his wrists and ankles tied, though none of us are sure how he got there. We suspect Raj Singh helped him, though Raj should have been helping Tamara. Tamara has no memory of that day. From the time she fell asleep on the Ratchers’ couch until after the trial, Tamara walked with open eyes, but remained in some kind of slumber. Perhaps Pete just hopped out there by himself—he hadn’t been tied to anything, so it wouldn’t have been impossible. We suppose that could have happened without any of us noticing. We were busy. There were two babies to bury, Ravi Singh and little Timmy Ratcher, plus all our own babies to attend to.

  At that point we were still hiding the secret of the wings, which (we did not yet know) we shared, though several of us considered how much we should reveal about our own babies. If Theresa based her belief in Pete Ratcher’s incestuous culpability solely on the evidence of wings, how much responsibility did we have for clarifying that wings weren’t proof of incest? Still, we mothers—thoughtful, contemplative, responsible women—were not inclined to share our secret, even if it could save a family. Why save one family, if it would ruin our own?

  Tamara

  Carla Owens and Melinda Stevens fashioned caskets out of wooden crates they found in the barn, cutting the lids out of planks of wood Pete Ratcher had been using to shore up the beams.

  Bridget Myer, who was such a fan of Martha Stewart that she cried when the homemaking diva went to prison, assembled a group of women who traipsed through the Ratchers’ massive yard, picking dandelions, daisies, wild lilies, Queen Anne’s lace, lilacs, and green stalks of corn for the altar—a card table covered by a white cloth and two white candles in the fake crystal candlesticks on either end.

  It was just after noon. Elli Ratcher had washed off the blood and changed into a white sundress. Theresa Ratcher didn’t change her clothes, though she’d put her shirt back on.

  The crates were so small there was no need for pallbearers. Carla carried one to the front, set it on the altar, and Melinda carried the other. The lids were off at that point. The babies, cleaned and dressed by Shelly Tanning, Victoria Simmington, Gladiola Homely, and Margaret Satter, looked real sweet, surrounded by flowers.

  Brenda Skyler, Audrey Newman, and Hannah Vorwinkski sang the opening song. They walked to the front and signaled when to start with little nods toward each other, but still didn’t get it exactly right. They sang “Silent Night,” because it’s hard to find funeral songs with babies in them. They hasten to point out, in defense of their controversial choice, that there is no mention of the word Christmas in the entire carol. Also, instead of singing the word virgin, they hummed.

  “I’d like any of you guys to think of a better song for a baby’s funeral,” Audrey says, if any of us mocks the choice. “And I don’t count that Eric Clapton song. We ain’t professionals, you know.”

  Shreve Mahar stepped to the front of the crowd. She glanced at Elli Ratcher, who looked like a bored but polite schoolgirl at assembly, and at Tamara Singh, who wept into her open hands. Theresa Ratcher rocked her baby in her arms, humming softly. Pete Ratcher, still tied at the wrists and ankles, leaned against the apple tree, close enough to follow the proceedings but not so close as to be a part of them.

  Shreve opened the book to the previously marked page and read from the Upanishads.

  “In the center of the castle of Brahman, our own body, there is a small shrine in the form of a lotus-flower, and within can be found a small space. We should find who dwells there, and we should want to know her.”

  Shreve read the passage into a stunning silence, as if even the babies were listening. When she finished, Raj Singh stepped to the front.

  “We are here today,” he started, his voice breaking. He looked down at his feet, cleared his throat. “We are here. Today.” Again, his voice broke. He took a deep breath. “We are here.” He shook his head, raised his hands in a gesture of apology, and shuffled back to stand beside his weeping wife.

  He did not notice how Elli Ratcher had snapped awake at his words. In the confused seconds after Raj’s departure, she stepped forward, turned, and faced the mothers, glowing in the sun. “We are here today!” she said, in an excited voice. “That’s it, isn’t it? We are here! We are here!” She was quite giddy, as if she had only just discovered herself in her life. Eventually, Shreve escorted her back to stand beside Theresa. There was an uncomfortable period of uncertainty before everyone realized the funeral was over. Several mothers noticed flies gathering near the babies in their little wooden crates on the card table, and Shreve brushed them away.

  Raj Singh spoke quietly to Theresa, then walked to Pete Ratcher and began to untie him. The mothers protested, but Theresa said, “He’s not going to hurt anyone. They’re going to dig the graves.” Raj and Pete went into the barn together and came out with shovels. They walked over to the apple tree and began digging, as the mothers drifted back to the house.

  The Mothers

  We came to the Ratcher farm because of the rumors about a winged baby. We were determined not to leave that strange and unhappy place without some information. Tamara Singh was a w
reck, and nobody could get anything out of her. She lay upstairs in Elli’s bedroom while her husband and Pete Ratcher dug two tiny graves beneath the apple tree.

  Elli was also of little use. “We are here,” she kept repeating, her eyes wide.

  “Grieving,” some of us said. “Nuts,” said others.

  We did not mean it as judgment. We held our babies close and shuddered to guess how we would behave, should something so terrible happen to us.

  “Her baby didn’t just die,” Emily said. “He was murdered by her own father.”

  It was a long day. We drifted in and out of conversations and emotions while the two men continued digging. We felt horrible for the mothers of the dead babies. We really did. But, also, we were there on a mission.

  Tamara

  When it was revealed that Elli and Theresa Ratcher’s babies had been seen flying, the mothers (after dismissing Elli, with her “We are here” glassy-eyed uselessness) turned to Theresa. “Yes. So what?” she said to anyone who dared ask outright, did her baby fly? By Theresa’s reasoning, this was no longer the point.

  The mothers, most of whom had carried their heavy secrets for months, confided in Theresa Ratcher. By seven o’clock, the house was a riot of noisy babies; the plumbing just barely keeping up with the women’s needs; the hot kitchen cluttered with fresh-baked casseroles, frozen pizza, and dishes in a constant state of being washed.

  Finally, Theresa Ratcher called for everyone’s attention. The mothers hushed the ornery babies, who, irritated from confinement, would not be hushed, and tried to listen to what Theresa was saying.