Gaylord - When we were animals: a novel

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For my mother,

who, when as a child I woke from nightmares

and asked her how dark it was outside, replied, smiling,

Pitch black.

There was a mean trick played on us somewhere. God put us in the bodies of animals and tried to make us act like people. That was the beginning of trouble.A man cant live, feeling himself from the inside and listening to what the preachers say. He cant do both, but he can do one or the other. He can live like we were made to live, and feel himself on the inside, or he can live like the preachers say, and be dead on the inside.

Erskine Caldwell, Gods Little Acre

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them.

Henry David Thoreau

All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle.

Friedrich Nietzsche

F or a long time, when I was a girl, I was a very good girl.

You should have known me then. You would have liked me. Shy, undergrown, good in school, eager to please. At the dinner table, especially when my father and I went visiting, I didnt eat before others, and I sometimes went without salt because I was too timid to ask anyone to pass it.

They said, Lumen is quite a little lady.

They said, Shes so quiet! I wonder whats going on in that mind of hers.

I did all my homework. I ate celery sticks as a snack. I went to bed early and knew that the shrieking outside my window had nothing to do with me at all.

* * *

Some people said the moonlight shone stronger there. Other people said it was the groundwater, a corrupted spring beneath the houses, or pestilent vapors from the abandoned mine shaft in the woods. (Its impossible to know exactly what you breatheI think about that sometimes.) Once upon a time, Hermit Weaper explained to me and some other girls who had wandered onto his property that there was a creature who lived in the lake, and that this creature crept slyly into town once a month and laid eggs in the open mouths of the youth, and that was why we behaved as we did. Lots of people speculated. I didnt. I dont. I dont for the same reason I dont try to guess why houseflies fly the way they do, capricious and bumbling. Some things just are, and theres nothing to be done but smile the world on its way. Some peoplethough not as many anymore, since faith has become quaint as magiceven thought that the town was evil and being punished by God, like Sodom and Gomorrah, or Nineveh, or Babylonpoor cities! The truth is, nobody knew why it happened this way, but in the town where I grew up, when the boys and girls reached a certain age, the parents locked themselves up in their houses, and the teenagers ran wild.

Its been a long time since I left that place, and now I lead a very different kind of life. My husband is a great admirer of my cookingeven though I never use recipes. There is a playground attendant at the park where I take my son to play. Playgrounds now have rubberized mats on the ground, and the attendant keeps a watchful eye for potential predatorsmy son is safe, he doesnt even know how safe. I have friendly neighbors who are concerned about the epidemic of dandelions on our lawns. The checkers at the grocery store greet me as they greet everyone else, smiling and guileless. Im a different person, mostly.

And it makes me wonder if one day I might be able to rediscover fully the child version of myself, before things fouled themselves up, when I was a little girl with commendable manners, when my father and I were two against the world, when my striving for goodness was so natural it was like leaves falling from trees everywhere around me, when I believed sacredness was to be found in many small things like ladybugs and doll toes, when I didnt have a murderous thought in my head, not even one.

* * *

Heres something I remember.

I am six years old. I awaken in my bed to the pitchy darkness of night. The familiar glow of my mermaid night-light is gone, and there are sounds coming from outside in the streetscreeches like those of predator birds, but human. There are people out there. And also rain. Thunder.

I call for my father. He comes in, carrying a candle in a crystal candlestick. He sets the candle on the table next to me and sits on my bed. His weight dimples the bed, and my small body rolls against him.

Youre dreaming, little Lumen, he says.

No, Im not, I say.

How can you tell? He is testing me, but his eyes tell me he is sure I will pass.

I never dream about the night, I tell him. All my dreams are daytime dreams.

Is that true? He seems pleased.

Yes.

Well, thats the sign of a pure spirit.

A blinding flash startles the room, a moment of clear sight in the blindnessand a moment later a violent crack of thunder. The earth is tearing itself apart outside. I picture the ground rent with gaping fissures. And the voices, howling crazy at the sky, the thunder, the apocalyptic sundering of the world.

Whats happening? I say.

Just a storm, says my father. He is a geologist. He knows about the currents of the earth. Mustve taken down a power line somewhere. The electricity on the whole block is out. Nothing to worry about.

The rain goes clattery against my windowpane. Then the voices again from outside. Feral cries. They sound not afraid, as I am, but rather celebratorywanton, a word I am aware of.

Whos out there? I say.

Just teenagers, my father says.

Why are they like that?

Thats just the way they are.

Will I be like that when I grow up?

You? Perish the thought. It is a pet expression of his. Perish is to outlaw, but parish is also a place for pastors. It is a magical word, and it might protect me. Youll be different. Youre my good girl, arent you?

Yes, and I am his good girl.

Will you always be my good girl?

Yes.

Always is so easy to promise.

Then there we go, he says and brushes my hair away from my forehead with his fingertips.

The pandemonium continues outside my window, and I reach out to touch the fine, shimmering angles of the crystal candlestick. That, too, seems magic, like a wand or a gemstone that holds power in its mineral core.

Where did it come from? I ask.

Its old, my father says. I found it in the credenza. It was a wedding gift to your mother and me.

Outside there are many voices at once, caterwauling in the rain. They must be running past, because I hear them grow gradually loud then quiet again. I look at the window, expecting maybe faces pressed against the glass, a smear of pale skin against the dark. Yet there is nothing to see but the hazy reflection of candle flame.

My father must see my apprehensive gaze.

He says, Do you want me to tell you the story of our wedding?

Yes. Was my mothers name Felicia Ann Steptoe?

It was. Until she married me, and her name became

Felicia Ann Fowler.

Thats right.

And did she wear long orchid gloves on her wedding?