Nightbitch

by Rachel Yoder

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  THE NEXT MORNING, SHE did what any reasonable person would do and went to the library. Never mind that she had not showered since the weekend, and it was now midweek, her hair an inexplicable blend of oily roots too thick even to run her fingers through and ragged, wavy ends curled like dry grass and rustling about her face in a frizz of autumnal foliage. Add to that the dark circles beneath her eyes, which resisted every form of concealer, and which she now explained as genetic, though neither her father nor her mother had this same feature; it had the unfortunate effect of making the mother look as though she had been punched hard in both eyes, or else had leukemia.

  She had (unsurprisingly) not slept well the night before, kept awake by her worry—A tail!? Really???—and so simply had to go to the library and get some books to quell her incessant theorizing and diagnoses. The Internet was truly a horrid place, wasn’t it, what with its endless information, infinite search terms, images and videos and articles, databases, discussion boards, quizzes to see whether or not you did in fact have leukemia. The mother had not known prior to the night before that the search phrase looks like I was punched hard in both eyes would produce not only a list of seven common eye injuries but also endless scholarship on traumatic brain injury, concussions, and chronic headaches. Deeper still into the search, she scrolled through allergies, to pollen and food, to solvents, to everyday air pollution, sensitivities and inflammations, and then there she was, at autoimmune diseases, sick women with no discernible diagnosis, pains and bruises and aches and anxieties without cause, women who hurt in any number of ways, who were consumed by their bodies and, at a loss for someone to turn to, turned to each other, each one staring into her own white square of light.

  Oh god, the mother thought, in bed. Oh, dear god, she did not want to be one of the sick, scared mothers on the Internet in the middle of the night, discussing the hairs springing from their cysts, threads unspooling from their pores, microplastics uncurling from a pimple, photographic evidence!, and so forth. She did not want to be one of the women with an indefinable something, a woman at whom sidelong glances and dubious stares were directed. How much easier it would be to have two black eyes, or an easily defined disease, a wound, a broken bone, anything that could be seen and understood, an explanation inscribed in her flesh that could be shown to any person who might inquire, What’s wrong? Anything to point to and say, Aha! This must be the cause of everything!

  And so, in light of her completely reasonable and nonemergency condition, it seemed the right thing to do to calm herself at the library, such an unfraught nexus of all things researched and thought through, of stuff that had been written and rewritten, fact-checked, considered by any number of smart and unsmart folks before an investment had been put into such thoughts and words, into spreading them out into the populace. The library was a balm. She could almost feel her heart slowing as she and the boy neared it. She breathed deeply of the completely unscented air once they were inside.

  At the library, she retrieved one medical text about cysts, in particular those called dermoid cysts, which contained within them on rare occasions hair, teeth, eyes. She wanted to see every abhorrent thing a body could grow, and imagined teeth popping from the cyst on her back as if produced by assembly line, one by one in steady succession. The other book was one she had found in the library database and then searched for in the stacks in haste, for the boy was, as they say, melting down, there on the second floor of the library, right at the place in the Dewey decimal system where one finds Folklore and such, in the 350-to-412 aisle. The boy lay on the floor and stomped his feet, for he was bored and irritable in the nonfiction stacks.

  GooooooooOOOO! the boy wailed as she searched for it, for 398.3 WHI, then grabbed the tattered spine from the row. Her back ached as she peeled the boy off the floor and toted him down the stairs to the toy trains in one corner of the children’s room. From her seat, as her son tooted and chugged, now happy, she saw the dreaded Book Babies happening in the little activity room.

  The problem was, she did not enjoy the company of moms. Certainly, if she happened to meet an interesting, hilarious, beautiful, sharp woman with whom she hit it off and then discovered this woman was a mother, that was fine—more than fine, even. It was wonderful. A wonderful woman she could bitch with about kids. A woman who didn’t mind getting a little tipsy on rosé on a Tuesday afternoon. While she would not actively avoid a friendship with a woman because she, too, was a mother, she felt that to begin one merely because of this shared motherhood was repugnant. She found being in a room full of mothers and their wards most dispiriting, each woman clutching her crumpled plastic baggies of snacks, on the way to sniff a diaper to check if the child needed a change, or wielding a tissue like a weapon as she stalked a child to wipe its nose. Those mothers, taking turns staring blankly into the middle distance as their children ran and screamed, peed their pants, knocked into each other, screamed more, cried and laughed and ran…You could always tell a mother by that look, she had come to find, one that encompassed not only exhaustion and boredom, but something more. It was as though the mothers were staring toward something they had lost, something they couldn’t even remember. What was it…?

  She knew the look so well because she was the very mother staring absently so often. She caught herself doing it at story time, at playtime, during trains, during cartoons. A blankness overtook her, and she realized it only once she came to, there beside her son, as he honked like a dump truck.

  So she actively resisted making friends in a mom context and objected to the sort of clapping and cooing that went on in the library room, the floor play that would be mandatory, the group peekaboos and collective itsy-bitsy-spidering, the happiness and positivity that would also be mandatory. It was a veritable embrace of All Things Mommy, and the mother certainly did not want to embrace anything of the sort: she was indeed a mother, but she wasn’t that kind of mother, the sort that built her entire life and being around her child, who filled her days with baby groups and baby activities and fully submerged herself in the mommy current, moving through her days and weeks according to library schedules and civic events, texting about splash pads and jungle gyms, sharing warnings about ticks, about pesticides on fruits and vegetables. But there they were. She saw them through the windows framing the door. Those mommies. Those happy mommies.

  Chief among them was the blonde mommy—the Big Blonde, she always thought to herself whenever she saw her at the library or glimpsed her at the edge of a playground or texting furiously in the play space at the mall—with her blonde, blabbering twins in coordinated jumpers embroidered adorably with deer and owls set against the enchanting woodland scene printed on each skirt, their silky tresses collected in pigtails tied with pink velvet bows. As they crawled around, one might glance at their yellow ruffled diaper covers peeking from beneath each skirt, the name of each child embroidered on the butt, Celeste and Aubergine. She was the Ur-mommy, perfected and monumental, despite the fact she had named one of her children eggplant, but French. She didn’t even care! Not even a moment of shame for the embarrassingly vegetal name as she smiled and laughed and chatted and exchanged and hugged and fed and generally joined in wherever joining in was possible. Now, as the mother watched from a safe distance, one of the Big Blonde’s girls baby-sign-languaged at the Big Blonde, who, in turn, signed to her other daughter, who then responded in kind, after which the Big Blonde collected them both in a big squeeze as they all succumbed to a fit of giggles, after which she pulled from her diaper bag two red apples, which she handed to the little girls, who looked on in absolute wonder and gummed the succulent fruits.

  It was then that the Big Blonde looked up and caught in her line of sight the bedraggled mother—that tired-looking mother over by the trains in the rumpled shirt, poor thing, always alone with her son (what a doll), and an odd look in her eyes, why doesn’t she just come join the group?—then off
ered a tiny wave and, with a quick and cheerful word to the mother beside her, dug something from the depths of her diaper bag and rose to walk with intention toward the mother, who pasted on her face the best approximation she could of a friendly little smile while, on the inside, chanting, Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

  Oh, hiiiiii! the Big Blonde crooned as she approached. The mother thought for a moment this might be a true apparition, for the Big Blonde was so perfect, her lines so cleanly drawn. She brought with her, as some women are magically able to, a symphonic olfactory experience, even while still half a room away, which delighted the mother so intensely she felt a slight stirring at the base of her back—A wag!? she wondered in horror—and, meanwhile, forgot momentarily how much she deplored this woman, this Big Blonde, now a mobile sniff party: a touch of dryer-sheet freshessence from her no doubt newly laundered white shorts and cashmere-soft tank, something earthy yet also extraordinarily refined, as though patchouli had been manufactured in a French parfumerie and then dabbed lightly on the Big Blonde’s wrists and behind the ears, and then, beneath each smell, a sweet pink candy scent of strawberry, like a memory from the mother’s own childhood, a big chunk of bubble gum too big for her mouth, the syrup dripping down her chin. A charm bracelet on the Big Blonde’s wrist jingled, and then the mother was back from her sensorial reverie, there at the train table, to offer an inadvertent grimace and her own tiny little wave.

  The boy who had been so diligent with his trains looked up to offer his own wave with a dirty, dirty hand, and it was then the mother apprehended the profound filth of her child, his hair unbrushed and shirt stained with juice from breakfast, pants stretched and saggy at the butt from days of repeated wear, diaper as saggy and wet as a mop head. And what of her own appearance, which she considered with a silent and consuming terror. Had she put on undereye concealer? Deodorant? When was the last time she had washed her face?

  Hey! the Big Blonde offered with an air of ease and familiarity the mother secretly wished for herself. How’s it going? We’ve seen each other around, right!? she asked as she pointed one finger at herself and one at the mother, and then toggled them back and forth amiably.

  You guys should come over to Book Babies, she added.

  Oh, he’s obsessed with trains though, the mother said, gesturing at the boy, who was already back at it, honking loudly.

  Sure, sure. Well, next time you’re around…Here she paused for dramatic effect, and then offered conspiratorially: Me and the girls are starting a new business. We’re selling herbs! It’s really exciting. And, I mean, you look like the sort of woman who would really be into herbs, right? Like, all-natural and stuff.

  Ummmm, maybe! the mother offered as brightly as was humanly possible, as though selling herbs were the most ordinary thing ever, as though she knew exactly what this mother was talking about, as though she, too, were excited at the prospect. She was just about to inquire further, because it would be polite and normal to do such a thing, and she was very much trying to be both these things, when the caterwauling of the Big Blonde’s twins wafted to the train table. At the sound, the Big Blonde backed away from the mother, rolled her eyes in a gesture of Kids, amirite? and said, I gotta go, but I’ll see you around, yeah?

  Okay! the mother said, with gusto that she hoped communicated a believable enthusiasm and good-sported-ness.

  The Big Blonde laughed and waved before jogging back into Book Babies and collecting her sobbing wards in her arms to boop their snotty noses with delight.

  Hooooo­ooooo­onk! the boy yelled. Hoooooonk!

  Honey, she said to her dirty little son, suddenly tired, so tired, so very, very wanting just to get back into bed. Honey, let’s go.

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  THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE boy had fought his way into sleep for more than an hour, the mother flung herself on the couch, rubbed her eyes, then dug through the tote bag of books she’d collected from the library.

  A stack for the boy, fire trucks and buses and front loaders galore, but then two for her, a pair of books she hoped in some way might shed light on her current condition, though she greatly doubted they could. At least, perhaps, something to take her mind off her constant worries—off her teeth, which might or might not be sharpening, a tail that might or might not now be in a constant state of near-sprout, the carpet of fur creeping, creeping down her neck.

  The medical text was too cerebral, too long, too-small font, so she opted instead for the second one, A Field Guide to Magical Women (publication date 1978), which featured on its cover all sorts of fantastical creatures done in a style she associated with the 1970s and Nancy Drew and B-movies, lots of shadows and inky renderings, the edges of everything a bit blurred. She looked at the spine to confirm that it was, yes, nonfiction, which seemed curious, then opened to the first pages.

  Though the mother had assumed A Field Guide to Magical Women to be a compendium of cheesy middle-grade stories about feminine monsters of yore, once she began to peruse the book she saw it was, yes, more a field guide than anything. As the author, Wanda White, wrote, “I went in search of mythical women, a research expedition that took me to all seven continents and spanned my entire professional career. This book is the culmination of that work. While colleagues have claimed that the field within which I’m working—namely, mythical ethnography—isn’t a viable field of study, I present in these pages irrevocable data that counter their claims.”

  “By understanding these creatures’ habits, diets, and patterns,” she continued a bit later in the text, “you too will be able to encounter them in the wild and experience their magic firsthand.”

  In the foreword, Wanda White explained she was “interested in the ways in which womanhood manifests on a mythical level” and was particularly drawn to “the experience of motherhood and how this complicates, deepens, or denies womanhood,” then went on to ask:

  To what identities do women turn when those available to them fail? How do women expand their identities to encompass all parts of their beings? How might women turn to the natural world to express their deepest longings and most primal fantasies?

  There was no author photo of White, just a short biography at the back of the book, which read: “Wanda White holds a Ph.D. in biology and teaches at the University of Sacramento. She has worked her whole life in the field of mythical ethnography.”

  The mother considered all this with the demeanor of one observing a faith healing or a time-share sales presentation—that is, with mild, bemused interest and good-natured skepticism. Yet, still, she kept reading.

  In the first chapter, White explained that the Bird Women of Peru lived in the tall, leafy boughs of the rain forest, where they constructed intricate and artful nests from sticks and reeds. The pages showed a number of habitats, one of them a round orb with a small hole in the side perched nearly seventy feet up, another an artful multilayered structure on par with the work of Andy Goldsworthy. The Bird Women fed on fruits and insects and regularly ate communally, sharing their food and squawking back and forth for hours. The Bird Women were not born as such but, rather, sprouted feathers and beaks in their sixties, but only if they had never married or had children. It was unclear what precipitated such a transformation; people in small Peruvian villages often explained the disappearances of older single women by saying they gave in to “the calling of the birds.” The villagers would gesture toward the forest and point at the sky, flapping their arms as they tried to explain. The Bird Women spent the latter parts of their lives flitting from tree to tree, producing the loveliest calls, and learning how to fly. White claimed to have once witnessed a Bird Woman take what White referred to as the “twilight flight,” both the first and last flight a Bird Woman would take, for once she learned to fly, her maiden trip into the sky would lead her away from the nest she had constructed and toward the horizon, to an unknown destination. All White knew was that Bird Women who
learned to fly, once they departed, never returned, and the other Bird Women would sing for days after with a sound that she described as “mellifluous, virtuosic weeping on par with the likes of Beethoven or Mozart, had they been birds.”

  This was as far as the mother could read before she fell into sleep, there on the couch, to dream of a tree that surged with leaves and birdsong, a pyrotechnic sunset, and then, an inhale. A plunge. No weight, no body, just movement and sky. An endless fall.

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  ON THURSDAY, SHE WOKE with dirty hair, in the same sports bra she had been wearing for far too long (through night and day and night and day), at the same moment the small body in bed beside her woke, whatever the hour, and there was no doing otherwise. Had he already woken her in the night? Twice? Even thrice? Had there been a bad dream? A need for 3:00 a.m. water? A lost binky? Never mind, the child rose with the sun, and she lay in bed with her eyes closed. Maybe if I don’t move, he won’t notice me. That was always the hope that ran through her head, but he climbed on her chest, put his face in hers.

  Mama, he said. Up. Up up up up up.

  Okay, she said, not moving.

  Mama up, he repeated. Play trains.

  She put on the crumpled pants from the floor, the only slightly worn top from a drawer, still in a state of half-sleep. The boy was already downstairs in his saggy nighttime diaper, at the train tracks covering the living-room floor. He laid his soft little cheek on the cool wood planks to watch the wheels of the trains move.

  Uhhhhh uhhhhhhh, he honked. Uhhhhh­hhhhh­hh.

  Every morning, it was the same: six o’clock, the train tracks on the living-room floor, a heavy skillet on the kitchen stove, a pat of butter, frozen hash browns retrieved from a wrinkled bag in the freezer, a dusting of salt, a carton of yogurt in the fridge, wash his plastic bowl left in the sink from the night before, wash his tractor plate because it was the only plate on which the little prince accepted his food, flip the hash browns, fill the bowl, wash his fork and spoon, hashies on the plate, plate on the little plastic table in the corner of the kitchen. Milkie or juice, honey? Milkie or juice?