Wild Creatures Bear No Crisis

Wild Creatures Bear No Crisis

She watched the boy– her rock– sleeping so sweet and pure and... safe?

Yes, safe. He had to be.

This was her purpose...

The woman killed the light and moved by tired memory through their room, now black as the empty void. She found her makeshift pile of blankets and heaped herself upon them.

She shut out the sounds of wind buffeting their house, blocked out images of a mid-November snowstorm and focused: she listened to the boy’s voice in the darkness, the soft comfort of his steady breathing... the baby’s gentle sleep-sighs caressed her ears and squeezed her heart with longing.

And her heart yearned so painfully.

An inarticulate cry fought its way from pit of her stomach up her trachea. It welled up between her lungs– a sharp pang that she could not swallow– and spilled through her quivering lips in a high, pitiful moan.

She heard him stir and gritted her teeth to clench the flow of her sobs, for she knew she shouldn’t wake her sleeping baby.

At that thought, her tears burst free. They flowed down her face, warm and slick and real– but there in the pressing dark those tears were invisible. Non-existent, to the wider world.

And that was good, because they belonged to her alone. She was the only person in the world who could understand. The only person in the world who should be allowed to feel them....

She buried her face in her white cased pillow and let her tears soak through the clean white fabric to deepen the stains beneath.

And the night was long, for she did not sleep.

***

“Babe come on, you’ve got to stop putting him to sleep in the crib. He’s too old for that, and think about what the hell you’re doing to the poor kid’s sanity. And you’ve got to stop sleeping on the floor. Please.”

Her husband’s voice pulled her out of her dream, teasing her back to the life she was so unwilling to remember.

He held her around the waist, held her tight and pulled her close against him.

It almost felt right.... It felt normal.

And sunlight poured through the open window- no, not sunlight! The light from the hallway. Cold and artificial, forcing its way through the nursery door.

There was no normal.

Not here. There was only crushing grief.

The windows were black mirrors hiding the world beyond.

It was still night out there, windswept and subdued by ice and snow. She could have been dreaming still. He had taken that from her.

She pulled away from him– desperate for an escape.

And she saw the light from the hallway, spilling on an empty crib.

She leapt to her feet, spurred into fury by a fear that burned away all senses; a fear that caused her to cringe away and rush forward all at once. Sputtering and shaking all over she let out a shriek, “HOW!”

The word itself didn’t make sense, at least not any sense she had intended.

But it carried the full weight of her anguish, her panic.

She stumbled to her feet and ran at a dead sprint. Her husband chased her.

She flung open the door to the boy’s room, it slammed into the drywall with a heavy crack. A thought registered: she had probably put a hole in the wall, with the door knob. But that felt good.

Good to be able to do anything, even if that thing was destructive. It meant she wasn’t actually as powerless as she felt.

But when she saw her boys, her satisfaction bled out.

The oldest was sitting up in his bed, a look of scorn on his face.

And their middle child was huddled in a little ball on his toddler bed, with a soft fleece blanket pulled over his head.

The quiet part of her self seemed to sense the damage in the making, and tried to intervene. But the part of her brain that was dominated by fear could not be refused.

Her panic galloped. She thrust her shambling feet forward. She reached the toddler bed and tore away the covers. She saw the tears on his trembling frown, but she did not register them as deadly.

She would not let anything happen to her baby.

Her voice rose to its heights and she swung her words like a weapon: “You little fucking idiot! How many times do I have to tell you blankets are NOT SAFE!? Do you want to die like your little sister?”

If she had to hurt him to save him so be it.

Then she felt a grip like iron, a spring clamp dug into her shoulder and jerked her body hard around— against her frantic, struggling will.

“GET OUT!”

Her husband’s face was different. Full of rage. A look she had never seen and which she, quite frankly, could not believe.

She stepped back away from him and laughed. “No, why should I leave? Why? Because I’m the only one who’s willing to do what it takes to make sure our baby boy is safe?”

His look softened, there was some redness around his eyes. Streaks on his cheeks. Had he been crying? She hadn’t seen his tears before... His voice was thick and forced and the sound of it would have hurt her heart if there had been any more hurt to give, “Because you’re not being rational. You’re hurting him-”

“Hurting him?! Do you hear yourself? At least he’s alive, at least he’s not–” She gasped, unable to finish the sentence. She swallowed hard and tried to say it a different way. “Blankets increase the risk of Sudden- Sudden Infant-”

In one step he closed the difference between them and scooped her into a hug. “Babe you gotta stop. He’s a toddler not a... What happened to her isn’t going to happen to him.”

Her tears were rolling again, dripping from her cheeks down onto the flannel of his pajamas. She tried to pull away, but even in her desperation– or maybe because of it– she lacked the strength. He held her close and their chests heaved. She forced out the words, “You can’t know that. You can’t....”

He was sobbing too. She could feel his tears on her face. He tried to speak, but words wouldn’t come easy. He grunted against his pain and forced out the little he could, “I have to know it, even if it’s not true. Because our kids need some normalcy. We can’t be putting him to sleep in her crib. He's way too big for it... And we can’t be sleeping on the floor next to him to make sure he’s still breathing, and we can’t be taking away his blankets... or yelling at him.”

The way he kept saying “we,” made her bristle. Obviously he meant “you,” because all these things were her fault. She knew it, knew it with the very depth of her soul and every fiber of her being. It was so obvious, he had to know it too. After all, he wasn’t the one who had put a blanket in her crib three months ago.

She was.

And suddenly it dawned her. Her world, so muddied and confused and fractured, suddenly sprang into clarity: she was a danger to her children... And she had one real responsibility: to protect her angels from all danger.

She had been feeling a failure for a long time. But this flash of truth gave her a push towards action.

Hadn’t she said she’d do whatever it took to keep her kids safe?

He held her tighter, and she felt a sudden sadness– of a different kind than that which had loomed over here these long nights and broken days....

This wasn’t a sadness for her loss or for her guilt. It was a sadness for him. He was hurting. He was trembling, his great shoulders seemed weary to the point of exhaustion– they heaved and shuddered with each breath.

... And he held her so... desperately. He seemed to need her. Or at least to think he needed her.

But how could he need her after what she had done?

He would be better off without her. In time...

It would be hard for him at first, he would miss her. And he really didn’t deserve to struggle through an uncertain future all alone. She wished she could still be the anchor for her husband. She wished she could still be mom for the two boys.

But losing her daughter…. she had lost all claim to that life, so her husband and her sons would have to learn to accept another loss.

Because she could not— she would not— keep going.

She hugged him back, and stroked her finger tips through his hair.

“You’re right.” She said, “We’ve got to do better for the boys. I-”

She looked in his eyes and faltered. She felt her soul pierced by all that she saw. He looked so desperately alone. He looked so scared and uncertain. He looked so tried and tired. He looked so overwhelmed and raw.

Her heart galloped. She didn’t know if she could pull off the lie, didn’t know if he’d believe it. And if he saw through it, he would stop her from doing what had to be done.

She swallowed and forced herself to say what needed to be said. “I... Just need to go for a walk, and I’ll be back. I just gotta get some fresh air and clear my head.”

He nodded, and sniffed. He looked tired, but hopeful. Like they had just had a breakthrough.

In a way they had, just not the breakthrough he was expecting.

Relief.

She thought of his future free from her, she saw her husband and sons, recovered and happy. She cracked a smile, it was a bitter feeling: the sure knowledge that though she loved them, she had to leave them in order to help them.

She blinked away her tears, and gazed at him again, and swallowed. She wanted his face at the forefront of her mind, when she left the world. Now that the lie had been bought, it was time for a truth. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

She turned to her boys.

The oldest no longer looked scornful. He looked cautious, reserved, but no longer hostile.

She went to him, and held his hands. His eyes were sad.

She dug deep to give his truth, “I’m sorry for everything. I know I haven’t been the... the best mom for you and your brother.”

He shook his head, and his eyes welled with tears, but he blinked back the waters and said softly, “yes you are. Of course you’re the best mom for us, you’re our only mom.”

She chuckled, because she knew he meant it as a light hearted joke. Meant to break tension and bring peace, but... he was a child. How could he ever understand that he’d be better off with no mom than he was with her?

“I would do anything for you and your brother. Don’t ever forget that.”

He nodded.

She turned away, and went to their middle child. His eyes were wide and his face betrayed uncertainty. She grimaced to think of the hurt she had laid on him, only minutes prior. She scooped him into a hug, and squeezed him tight. “I’m so, so sorry. For what I said. I miss your sister so much, and I don’t want what happened to her to happen to you. To be a mom is to be afraid all the time, and I know it’s wrong to subject you to that. And what I said was mean. Do you forgive me?”

He nodded, and nuzzled his face against her neck.

And like that she was ready. She had said her goodbyes. And she hated to leave the family she had left. She knew they’d hurt. At first.

But it was better this way. Not only for them, but also for her. Because the fear of losing another one.... it was simply too much to live with.

She’d rather lose herself a thousand times over than have to deal with even the thought of losing them.

The next few steps were the easiest she had ever taken. She left the room, and went downstairs. Her husband’s soft voice followed her down the steps. While she put on her boots, she listened to him soothing their babes and tucking them back in.

He was a good father. Even through his hurt, he was still present for them in ways she knew she could never be ever again.

She put on her fluffy winter coat and started to zip it up... but halfway, she stopped. She put her hand on the front door and looked out the window.

She had never seen so much snow so early in the year. Some years it had snowed as early as Halloween, but never this damn much.

It was still coming down but the wind had died so the flakes were tumbling straight to earth in lazy clumps.

The big oak in the middle of their front yard held drift-fulls of snow in her yawning branches. Their cars were buried, and their yard was a soft white ocean, deep enough to drown in.

And the snow seemed to speak... It whispered in a voice so loud: here is a peaceful exit. This will be right. This will be easy. It won’t even hurt.

Up until now the half-plan that had been toying at the frayed edges of her mind had only been, simply, to hang. To take a rope or a scarf or a belt and walk the woods out back until she found a good tree, a tall pine that could hold her in her arms forever. But looking out on a world hugged by snow.... She felt repulsed by the idea of hanging. There was nothing elegant in that goodbye. She beheld a vivid mental image: herself, dangling on frozen rope like a grotesque icicle and she wondered how she’d ever entertained the idea of such grim violence towards herself.

She unzipped the coat and hung it back up in the closet. She cast aside her gloves, her hat, and her scarf.

The moment she opened the door, true cold seeped into their home. Like reaching fingers, the chill air groped its way across the floor and she felt it caress her legs, biting through the flannel of her pajamas. The chill seemed to tug at her, a soft and sweet beckons.

She slipped through the crack in the door and pulled it shut behind her as she stepped down to the deck. The icy air pulled her into a full body hug, it sucked the breath from her lungs and whisked the heat away from her body.

A shudder ran down her spine, but she wasn’t shivering.

Not yet.

This trembling was a thrill of excitement, a blessed relief. She felt she was walking to an end that was right and good.

Her boots crunched in the crisp, fresh snow and the sound conjured up a memory– a set of images that she knew were hers even though they felt alien and ancient beyond compare:

The boys laughing, her husband tackling them into the snow.... Her watching it all with a smile... lobbing the occasional snowball along with the warning that they’d better not throw any back since pregnant mommies were off limits.

Was it really less than a year ago that they’d all been out here playing in the snow and scooping it up to drizzle with honey? Homemade snowcones and rough housing– that all seemed a world away, like a photo album from someone else’s life.

Utterly alien and utterly absurd. Laughter? Fun?

No. These things were long flown, and her life was now drawing to its close.

A long slumber, like her daughter before her. She would wander to the pine woods, find a place of comfort... lie down, rest her weary head for a while....

At the edge of their land, she looked back at the house she had known.

Light shown from the windows, soft and warm, but she turned her face to the deep dark of the forest.

And with every step she took, the chill of the air seemed to caress and sooth her bruised heart. Her face tingled from the bite of the frosty air. Her fingers pulsed with fading warmth, indeed they began to ache. The snowflakes fell on her lashes, they melted and ran down her skin to moisten the salt streaks of her older tears, like a gentle rain soaking dry channels after a long drought.

She did not wipe her face dry, but let the melted flakes soak into her body and nourish her soul. If the earth saw fit to cry with her and for her, who was she to argue?

And flakes fell all the more softly on the exposed skin of her arms, as she hiked deeper into the ever darker shade of the pines and firs. Under their thick, needled branches the earth was sheltered. The ground was cloaked in a thin sheet of snow, rather than a heavy blanket– and as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw gnarled old roots and fallen branches, now laden with ice and dead moss.

And the air was fresher than could be believed, heavy with the enduring scents of hemlock and spruce.

She felt tugged in two opposing directions, as if the wandering sprites of the natural world were fighting for her senses. The lethargy of bodily cold tried to lull her into sleep with a song of failed purpose, while the vigor of a heavily scented evergreen glade called her to thrill in the unburdened wildness of a frozen night.

She followed the whims of her feet, feeling the harshness of the frozen earth under her winter boots.

And there in the darkest shade, she saw a nook, a crevice between two fallen logs. It looked inviting, like she could just squeeze between those logs and find her end in comfort: a good place to say goodbye to herself, braced and cozy, but also open... and unflinching.

She lay in that space and the intensity of the cold struck her immediately, almost like a physical impact. The air had been cold, but the frozen ground was deadly.

The lingering warmth of her body fled through her scant night clothes to the hard dirt, as though she were bled into the earth itself.

Her body began to shake violently, her teeth chattered. She knew what this was. An autonomous response to a harsh and dangerous environment. Her silly body was trying its best to warm up...

And she wondered what it had been like for her daughter. The sweet little babe, too young to go but gone all the same. Had her body tried to cling to life? Had her body done anything? Or had she simply faded?

She remembered the horror, the unspeakable feeling of despair that had gripped her when she had gone to wake her daughter that terrible morning a lifetime ago. She remembered the instant nausea she’d felt when she’d seen that grey pallor, and the frantic need she’d felt when she had pressed her warm lips against her daughter’s cold little mouth and initiated CPR beyond any hope.

She felt her own body, growing colder... Still shivering in vain. Too bad her poor nerves couldn’t understand it was pointless and accept the facts: to shiver was an exercise in vanity. There would be no preservation and no return, for her or her flesh.

She laughed through her clattering teeth and said, “Can’t you see this is what we want?”

The shivering went on, her body was stubborn too. Her arms spasmed.

The pain came. Her fingers and limbs and the skin of her buttocks were seared by the cold... But what did she care?

She knew the pain would not last long and she was right— it quietly faded to a mild numbness which spread across her skin and sank into her bones.

She closed her eyes, and imagined faces. Her husband, so hurt and scarred. Her kids, whom she adored- the oldest so bitter and wounded, the middle so scared, and the youngest so dead.

She forced that last image away. Rejected thr course of her mind’s eye– she wanted to remember her daughter alive.

She used her waning thought to vie for peace, to claim the good memories and hold them aloft.

And she felt her self drifting... gently... She felt content and-

Then she heard a miserable shriek that split her nerves and flayed her soul. It tore her from her would-be eternity and she sat bolt upright, every muscle aching violently.

She was in hypothermic shock. How long until her organs shut down and blessed death took her? Still, what was that sound?

She strained her frozen ears...

And it came again!

It was the very sound of terror that her own heart had made on that morning where she had found her sweet angel cold– it was a death-scream.

Anguish in the air.

A sound she had made in her own soul, but one she had never heard– indeed a sound she had never yet imagined to be physically possible– until it now thrust itself upon her tormented senses.

Harsh, piercing... like a demon hurtling up from the outer dark or a banshee on the wind...

A demon?

No human could make a sound like that, and she didn’t imagine any of the creatures of the earth could unleash so evil a cry.

It had to be a devil. Some malignant thing, sent to burn her suffering mind. Was this some god’s revenge for the guilt she carried? Could she not be free of that guilt even in death?

She was sorry, so sorry.

She couldn’t... still couldn’t believe that she had killed her own daughter.

The demon could take her, and do what it willed. No torture could surpass the reality she’d already endured, she was long past broken.

Still she was bold. She wanted to see her doom, meet it head on. She struggled to keep her eyes open, and her head up.

She propped herself up, on her elbow... But her arm trembled. Not from cold, it seemed. Because everything felt warm now.

She trembled from exhaustion and collapsed back on her icy grave. She was so tired, and clumsy because of it. It was the fault of her damned shirt, it was too tight, too constricting. She struggled to pull it off, but her fingers were so slow and weak and imprecise.

She cursed, but her own voice sounded foreign to her ears, thick and slow and slurred.

And through the dim, her sight caught movement!

A great sweep of pale, shadowy, silent wings!

The thing shrieked down upon her, then swooped high over her stricken face and she felt the rush of wind as the wings beat the air about her.

And dazed, on death’s door she saw a creature with terrible claws and gleaming eyes as it perched on the bough of a tall hemlock tree directly over her head. Her vision flexed and she poured herself into a great effort: she had to focus.

The creature above her... Swayed into clarity.

Not a demon!

An owl!

It screeched again, and beat its wings.

Its ghostly white face seemed to be peering into a dark hollow in the tree’s upper reaches.

And out of the hollow there came an answering call: a chorus of low hisses, ethereal and strange.

Then she saw the glint of dark, beady eyes as a small fledgling owl clambered out onto the limb.

It flapped its tiny wings, clumsy and ugly. But full of potential. It hopped into the air and flapped. One couldn’t say it had flown but there was a sense of hope, that one day it would.

And the dying woman watched, fascinated by the life playing out before her.

It hopped back and forth on the branch, under the watchful eye of its mother.

Would any more young emerge and try their wings?

Her gaze drifted down the trunk, and rested on a ruffle of icy feathers frozen to the rotten wood beside her head.

A dead bird. A baby barn owl.

How had she not seen that before?

Her heart ached, and she wondered if the mother, in the tree high above had grieved the death of that little one. Had she even noticed yet? Did animals care about these things? Could an owl be spiritually broken and defeated by the crisis of loss?

Then why should she?

Another screech– the woman looked up at the branches, and saw the fledgling was on a different branch than before! It had cleared a gap of about 8 feet!

And she knew, or rather she felt, that the bird had to have known that one of her young had died. And it surely mourned that loss in its own primal way. But she marveled at that simple, wild creature’s strength: the owl didn't think, yet it was enduring. Still caring for her young... While she herself-- a human creature all the more complex and all the more tame-- she was actively giving up! Was she really willing to speed death and flee so permanently from her grief?

… and her responsibility?

If there was a realization here, what did it matter?

She yearned to stand and to walk back to her house. Not for the warmth, but for the love. She had courage then, the courage to remain for the sake and the good of her surviving children.... But...

... She no longer had the ability.

She had stopped shivering too long ago, she was entirely disoriented. There was no way for her to rise or walk or do anything at all.

There was no return for her, death was the only thing left and it was rushing near!

She could feel its looming presence, in a dim and distant way.

She wanted her second chance. But soon she'd be nothing-- only silence and decay, lying heedless and unheeded by the fallen fledgling...

Then she saw a crack of light, through the edge of the woods, a sunrise.

Her blue lips flinched, it was a half-smile. She had made it to dawn.

She supposed that bore little distinction now, here at the end of all things.

And the sun bounced along her horizons. It filled her meager, dwindling world with a bright flame that blossomed into an all encompassing blaze.

And she heard sounds like a voice– urgent, pleading, and frantic. But they were muffled and from a great distance. And she hadn’t the energy or the will to offer them anything beyond a passing, silent acknowledgment.

And then all went dark, and the sounds that landed on her ears imparted no meaning, because the depth of her sleep made all the world hush.

But her heart was still beating, very slowly and very faintly, yes it was.

And the sounds, those that she could not hear, bore a multitude of voices. Not only those of her husband, but also of the paramedics and the sirens.

And she was a stone, but still these sounds surrounded her:

They said it was a miracle that she was still breathing after so long in the storm, and that now she had a really good chance of pulling through, and that it was a miracle that he’d found her at all, considering the dark and the snow....

And he said he never would have found her if he hadn’t heard her scream. Because when he realized she’d left her winter gear behind, realized what she'd meant to do.... he’d gone out in a panic, hoping to find her but fearing the worst. And that just as he lost himself to despair... she shrieked... and that shriek had chilled his very soul but he was glad he had heard it.

And he said it must have meant she didn’t really want to die, and that she had wanted to be found.

And the siren screamed, while she slept on the brink of life.

***