Alas, I cast my nets into their seas and wanted to catch good fish; but I always pulled up the head of some old god.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
By now, in a manner of speaking, all men have lost their mothers. Even if the mothers still live where they have always lived, they are grayer or greener than expected or more mustachioed. They slide down banisters, fall asleep on the Persian rug in front of the fireplace, and, rain or shine, dance around in the back yard (if there is a back yard); otherwise, on the roof. They smile at nothing or at anything or are always almost smiling. Talk about the Mona Lisa! Others do not encounter their mothers except on outings to the zoo. Some mothers have not been seen at all for quite some time, and the worst is feared.
Of course all the members of the Academy are disturbed by the loss of or changes in their own mothers. Many have always treated their mothers with the utmost kindness and consideration, carrying their suitcases, opening doors and jars, and reaching into high places for them. They regret—especially now, and considering their own recent losses or problems with their mothers—they regret that circumstances have forced them to lock away, virtually imprison these other younger mothers, along with a few older, more experienced ones.
A large room at the Academy has been set apart for the use of the members. A moose head hangs on one wall, tiger, wildebeest, and assorted deer and antelope on the others. There is a bear skin on the floor and near it a zebra skin. A cut-off elephant foot stands by the door as a receptacle for canes and umbrellas. It is to this room that the members of the Academy often come to discuss their own mothers and mothers in general. No female is ever allowed in, except once a week a small, blotchy one in a black uniform is let in to clean up.
At the exact moment that Pooch is running out from between her master's legs (this time, in truth, knocking him over)—she is holding the baby in her teeth by the back of its diaper—at that exact moment the little blotchy female enters this room, and in a few minutes out comes a zebra, walking upright with a wildebeest head in its forefeet. Ten minutes later the same thing happens, except that this time out comes a bear with two antelope heads in its paws.
There are no members in the members’ room because today is a big day at the Academy. Not only is there the excitement of all the new mothers-to-be just brought in, but the first babies (twins, actually) to be born under completely scientific observation, from insemination on, are about to be delivered. True, they have not taken nine months to gestate, but who can tell how long is normal now that things have changed so much. And anyway, twins are often a bit premature. Two heartbeats have been clearly heard and two skeletons seen on the x-rays. One member of the Academy is even sure that he heard three heartbeats and that three little skeletons are quite easily seen if one looks properly.
The donor of the sperm of these particular infants is a man high up in government circles. His identity of course is a secret, but it is known that he was handsome in his younger years, he has already fathered several successful males, and he once played football. The members of the Academy have great expectations for these babies. Their future has been mapped out for them already.
Several Academy members are dressed in their operating room greens and the contractions are coming every five minutes. Many of the mothers-to-be who have expressed an interest are allowed to watch the procedure. It is hoped that they will learn something useful. They stand behind the Academy members, up on boxes so that they can see over the members’ shoulders. They are being unusually quiet.
But soon there is as much confusion and consternation at the Academy as there is at the police station. At first no one is quite sure what has happened. What sort of baby is this? ... this naked, shapeless lump, almost all head? Perhaps it is an extra-large rat ... or pig, or pup? Could be anything—don't they all look like this in the beginning? But certainly ... or almost certainly not human, though hairless enough. Pig. Probably pig. And goodness knows how many more to come, yet from a creature obviously on the way up and with only the slightest suggestion of the porcine about her. And wasn't she thought to be “up” from racehorse and by Secretariat? She is still in labor, but now no one is paying any attention to her except Cucumber (Pickle for short), who has been holding her hand all this time and wiping her face with a cool, damp cloth. (The members of the Academy not only allow such behavior, they encourage it. Besides, they are concentrating on the important end.)
It is at this moment of confusion, when the Academy members have just turned to stare at each other in astonishment, that all the mothers-to-be (Chloe and Phillip among them) spring into action and fall—literally fall from the vantage of their higher perches—upon the members of the Academy and, by dint of their numbers and the element of surprise, easily overpower them.
(Cucumber had snatched the new baby out of harm's way in the nick of time.)
First the mothers-to-be take away all the Academy members’ keys and then they hustle them down to the baby paraphernalia shop. Cucumber doesn't mind staying with the mother, who is still in labor. She has never been interested in anything athletic and actually prefers to stay behind. She is hoping that the next baby born will be something quite different from the first—that would be an adventure of its own sort.
Down in the shop, there are unfortunately only three Responsive Early-Life Play Pens. Chloe and Phillip help the others pick out from the group of green-clad and business-suited men the three who seem the most important. They do this partly by an examination of their underwear (whether it was bought at jc Penney's or not) and partly by who the men defer to. After they put the three men in the pens, they load the dispenser with the nutrition cupcakes (also on sale there) and punch in the proper program—they pick one that is for particularly recalcitrant children, good for either the terrible twos or the frustrating fives. They are hoping that with some positive reinforcement, as well as a modicum of negative reinforcement, these most important members of the Academy can be reprogrammed to behave in a way that is more sensitive to the needs of all creatures. Perhaps after a day in the pens, they will have switched sides.
The men will not be badly off. They will be rocked and sung to. Educational stories will be read to them by soft voices. When they need to pee, they will afterward be air-dried and powdered. After some time they may even learn to enjoy it, though now there isn't much else for them to do but enjoy it as best they can. Of course they will also have plenty of time to think about the pig-baby (if such it really is).
The rest of the members of the Academy are confined with various sorts of baby paraphernalia—straps, harnesses, and leashes—and given pills for hyperactive children. Then the mothers-to-be return to the roof, where all the other mothers and former mothers have gathered and where John is practicing his juggling and back flips. They stop on the way up, however, in the rest-and-relaxation room, where they take all the remaining animal heads off the walls, even including the moose head, which is so heavy it takes three of them to carry it. These they bring with them to the roof garden.
Pooch is stopped, of course. Right away. She is no sooner out the door than she is grabbed by a very large policeman. He was standing there as though waiting for her, and he is the largest policeman she has ever seen. And fat, too. He holds her arm so tightly that she can feel all four fingers and thumb, and she knows she'll have five bruises from it. “It's me,” the policeman keeps whispering to her. “It's me, it's me. Me!” And all the while he is dragging her to the back of the building instead of toward the front door where she is struggling to go. She is struggling so hard to escape that she hardly hears what he's saying and doesn't even pay attention to her nose, for there is certainly a strong, musky smell to this policeman ... a hot, damp fur smell. The baby, all this while, is trying to bite the policeman, but can't get a grip on anything but cloth. But then it does get a grip on rubber and the policeman's hand seems to tear away, showing long white glistening fur and the tips of five (abominable) black fingers visible beneath it. As with every human being, it is by now the visual that strikes Pooch the most forcefully, rather than the aural or olfactory.
Clearly Rosemary, hunching down and disguised as her lumpy old self has overpowered a policeman (a large one), traded clothes with him, and left him, perhaps in the very cell where he had been about to lock her up.
So now Pooch lets herself be led to a back room, with the baby still trying to bite Rosemary, though Pooch is struggling to keep it turned away. She's worried that the baby will be biting all the time now just to cause some excitement, since that first bite at the side of the master's lip was so effective and made so much happen. Poor baby. Pooch wonders not only what will become of it, but what it will become. And then that bite that had started off all these misadventures, when the baby was bitten by its own mother. But for that they'd never have left home. Though now ... of course the master is under a lot of tension, but it's clear that home is not what it used to be.
And here he is now, the master, as though a reminder of how it really is and perhaps was all along. He has come up behind them and is beating Pooch with the short whip. It is of braided leather with four short tails, hardly longer than two feet. He is beating at her face and shoulders with all his strength, yelling that she must be retrained and that he paid over six hundred dollars for her. Already there are red welts on the back of her neck and on her cheek, but Pooch is so angry that the lashes don't hurt. She is holding her arms and hands over the baby to protect it rather than over her own head (she still has the back of its diaper in her teeth) and is wondering, how can the master endanger his own baby like this? Why there is even a red mark, now on its cheek. Luckily another policeman, coming down the hall in the opposite direction, misinterprets the situation, pulls the master away, easily takes the whip from him, and leads him off toward the front of the building. Pooch can hear the master yelling all the way: “You're making a mistake. That animal just bit me right here. By the lip. Has killed."
Pooch is so angry at the lie that she hopes the baby does bite everyone it sees—and she may do the same. She wonders if she, too, had a mother who bit. That is certainly possible, though considering her pedigree it's unlikely. I am a dangerous animal, she thinks, and proud of it. But Rosemary's grip on her arm reminds her that her strength is only the strength of an ordinary female human being, that her humanity will force her to use her wits instead, and that she must now try to live by the mind. All right, she thinks, whether some human beings are acting human or not, I will do so, and do so proudly. And he called me animal!
So, led by Rosemary, she marches off to a back room where three policemen are interrogating the doctor. As soon as the baby sees him it begins to shout “Poo poo” and “Go away.” Then it pushes itself out of Pooch's arms (Pooch lets go of the diaper in her teeth) and, actually standing up, the baby wobbles towards the doctor, mouth open, ready to take a bite. Unfortunately, it seems that the baby has somehow, in spite of the lack of opportunities to practice, and here, at the worst possible moment, learned to walk.
"Go away, little boy,” one of the policemen says, though not unkindly. Probably because the baby is still completely bald—only a fine, almost colorless see-through fuzz on the top of its head—the policeman has taken it for a male. Or perhaps it is the vicious look in its eye that makes him think so.
But now Rosemary is holding her furry white hand in front of them all, and Pooch is standing beside her with her own kind of grin, teeth bared, looking rather like the baby had a moment before.
The policemen, all three, whip out their guns and tell Rosemary to take off her stolen police uniform and mask, to turn around, and “up-against-the-wall.” She doesn't turn around, but slowly takes off the uniform and mask, all the while looking at the three policemen in turn. They watch, fascinated, as the whole of Rosemary appears, shimmering in all her abominable brilliance. They are so absorbed that the doctor, the baby, and Pooch aren't noticed. They move as though on signal, though there is no signal. The doctor, handcuffed with his hands behind him, butts his head into the back of the policeman in front of him. Pooch jumps on the one in the middle. The baby has by now reached the doctor and firmly bites his ear so that Rosemary can, with one swipe of her big arm, cause all three of them to drop their guns. But the baby will not let go of the doctor's ear. Pooch thinks again of its mother and quickly resorts to the same solution that she used in that case: a lit match to the chin. The baby lets go in order to bark at her. This time the barking is a relief to Pooch. At least it shows that the baby cannot be becoming all snapping turtle. In fact, Pooch believes that its ability to speak (as now it is saying “Don't” and “No"), and bark, and bite, and growl, and walk, and crawl, all surely confirm that it is remaining human, although no doubt a little perverted by its experiences. One would hope not irreversibly so.
One of these days, if she does not end up in jail for good, Pooch hopes to be able to make a happy home for the baby, now that the other home is completely out of the question (and now that becoming an opera star seems unlikely, though she had once hoped to be able to combine career and marriage and perhaps even to bear children of her own).
By now the policemen, gagged and wearing nothing but their undershorts, are handcuffed to each other and to the heating pipe in the far corner of the room. Rosemary is back in her policeman's suit, and Pooch and the doctor, free of the handcuffs, are also dressed as policemen. Rosemary has put the guns, clubs, and walkie-talkies into a plastic bag that she found in the wastebasket. The doctor had wanted to keep the guns and clubs, and Pooch was tempted too, wanting to have something with which to defend the baby from the doctor, though she is more occupied, right now, with the opposite problem. She still does not quite understand how the doctor came to be on their side and why she should be escaping now with the very person who deprived her of her voice. But Rosemary has easily wrested the gun from her. “Don't be silly. You're not going to kill anyone and I don't believe you ever have."
Rosemary bundles up the third policeman's uniform and tucks it under her arm. “Come on,” she says, “or we'll miss the main action.” She will drop the bag with the guns and clubs into the first sewer they pass, and give the uniform to the first outrageous female it fits.