7 Months
way of entertaining himself with his hands. The doctor says that all babies do it, but when Rudy watches his hands, it’s like he is watching a meteor shower—amazed by the constellations his fingers make in the sky. It is one of the few times he seems content. Deep in bouts of colic, he strains and stretches his tiny body in a battle onto himself. No amount of rocking, swaddling, or swaying causes him to raise the white flag. We sleep for blackened, two-hour stints only to wake, fists raised for another round of combat.
The sky is dusky, and he looks up from his silent symphony while we are looking out the back window. Rudy giggles and flaps his arms. He looks beyond me into the dawn breaking over the backyard. I attempt to razz his belly. He glances at the space beside me before returning his attention to the window.
“What do you see, little bear?” I ask, following his gaze in bemused exhaustion. It has been weeks since I have seen the wolves, and I had almost forgotten them—almost, but not quite.
The air behind the fence shimmers in an otherworldly way that first seems like a trick of the eye, but then the disorganized air takes shape. It is a man standing at the fence in dark blue coveralls. I raise my hand tentatively to wave, thinking he could be a neighbor, but he doesn’t look familiar. I lean closer, squinting. He is tall, at least six-foot-five, maybe more. The pickets of the fence, which reach my ribs when I lean over it, do not even clear his thighs, which bulge under the coveralls. Resting one hand on the fence, he appears to be clutching a fist full of weeds.
I step closer, nose almost touching the glass.
Focusing my tired eyes on the plants, I realize he is not holding uprooted plants—the plants are part of his hands. The joints are white like upended garlic bulbs and fibrous root hairs cover the knuckles. He pulls his right arm from behind his back and rests it next to his left hand on the fence. The skin on his forearms appears rotten and stretched, breaking through in places to show sinews of muscle underneath. Running through the slabs of muscle are ghost white root systems that disappear under the rolled-up arms of the coveralls.
He looks at me with a curious and intent gaze. I feel suddenly exhausted and my head droops, first gradually, then snapping down and up in the way of the very, very tired. Rudy lies still in my arms, staring back at the man with a smile. Don’t drop the baby, a voice from far inside me warns.
The man raises one arm, slowly, and crooks a soil-covered finger out in front of him, pulling it back fluidly one, two, three times, beckoning us to the fence. Rudy giggles in delight. Feeling hazy and dreamlike, I step forward. The air smells hypnotic around me, like chamomile and cannabis and lavender and freshly baked bread, all rolled into one intoxicating scent. I breathe in deeply and close my eyes.
The man smiles and I can see flecks of green plant matter are matted to his neck and arms. Tiny thorns protrude from his beard and thick arm hair. Under the beard, he pulls back his lips and reveals a yellow-white set of canine teeth, pointed and glistening with saliva.
I step back, alarm flooding my drugged senses and his placid face transforms into menace, as if metabolizing my fear. A low growl escapes through his bared teeth. The air around him shimmers and he is gone.
Rudy is inconsolable for the rest of the day. The screams morph into one horrendous sound, overtaking all other sounds. I feel like I am standing in the tunnel of the scream, and all else had ceased to exist. I had ceased to exist. Now I know why the nurses in Labor and Delivery had been so adamant that we watch the films on Shaken Baby Syndrome before we would be allowed discharge.
My hands turn floaty, and I wonder would they move of their own accord. Time melted and felt both limitless and like every second was an hour. I place Rudy in his crib and turn, walking from the room like I had left my body. Over his screams, I switch the fan on high and jam earplugs in place. When the darkness came, I wish it would dig deep, burying me into a bottomless hole where no light would ever reach me again.
I awake to Riya shaking me. The air smells acrid, and the light looks long and shadowed. I have slept through the day.
“Eloise, you left a candle burning, and the house was filled with smoke when I got home. You’re lucky you didn’t burn the fucking house down!” she yells.
“I-I—” I try to find the words as I wipe the sleep out of my eyes. Did I light a candle? I don’t remember.
I am suddenly enraged, remembering the three times I had been up that night, to try to give her a full night of sleep before she pitched a big project to the department heads this afternoon. All while she is begrudging me a simple nap. I sit up in bed and toss the Afghan aside.
“Three hours Riya. He screamed for three goddamn hours. I needed sleep. I needed…something.”
Riya takes a deep breath and closes her eyes. “How did you not hear the smoke alarm?” she says, measured.
I shake my head and shrug, shoving the earplugs deep into the pocket of my sweatpants. It’s best she doesn’t know that some days the earplugs were all that kept Rudy and I from going the wrong way off the crying bridge.
“What can I do? Do you need help? We can hire a nanny?” she asks, softening. She adds quietly, “I think you should talk to Dr. Kim.”
Her face is worried. I am another problem that needed fixing. A nanny for what, I think. I don’t do anything. I stay in this house all day and don’t do anything. I can’t even comfort my child—my literal only job at the moment.
I am disappearing. Soon I will vanish like the man at the fence. I will go wherever it is that wolves go.