Nightbitch

by Rachel Yoder

  She would always have that moment, and many others, locked inside her, a perfect little glitter globe to shake whenever she needed. It lived there, as if another new, tiny organ pumped into her blood the power of ultimate creator. I made you, and I destroy you as well. I am your entire world, and then, also, I am the person you leave behind. I will always be with you. You will never understand me.

  At times she terrified herself, wondering if she was a god, if being a mother was one way of being a god. Of course, she couldn’t strike anyone down with a lightning bolt, but she could bring a person into being using little more than a handful of clay. Way less, in fact. How were mothers even a thing? How had they not been outlawed? They were divine, beyond horrifying.

  WW—

  I am interested in longing, in longing so deep it threatens to splinter a person apart. I am interested in a profound longing for an unknown existence, or for a better life, without any idea of what the specifics of that life would look like. I’m not getting this right—I’m interested in knowing about the longing that unites all women, all mothers. What is that longing? How could we possibly long for something beyond our offspring?

  It’s almost as if having a child allows a woman to see how much infinite potential there is, allows her to see infinity itself. (Am I making any sense?)

  It’s almost as if having a child does not sate a deep yearning but instead compounds it.

  Look, the mother says, look at what I am capable of. I make life. I am life.

  But how can I become a god?

  Yours,

  MM

  * * *

  —

  IN HER BEDROOM: A beige plastic dog-kennel lined with a fuzzy blanket and a thin cushion dragged by her son to her bedside, a healthy ficus in the corner with a small bit of digging in the dirt, a trail of soil spilled onto the floor, a stainless-steel doggy bowl full of fresh water, a stainless-steel doggy bowl full of bone-shaped cookies, many faux-fur throw rugs—white, off-white, white tipped with gray, black—thrown around the room, on the floor, on a chair, one on the bed, a dreamcatcher dangling by the window, its white feathers fluttering softly in the breeze, piles of clothes here and there tamped down into perfect places on which to rest; an overly expensive linen caftan, the seam up the back torn, tiny holes, frayed edges, stained with something brown; a black satin eye mask, serums, a wooden box full of jerky, an unlabeled spray bottle full of a lavender concoction, a bit of rope, balled-up socks that were once wet but now are dried and almost crusty, two dirty tennis balls in a corner, a dozen large feathers on the chest of drawers, a picture on the wall of a bunny nestled in green grass with dandelions growing all around, a bed pillow with no case, the corners gnawed at and off, a stack of children’s books—Grimm’s fairy tales, a book of French illustrations, bear book, bee book, trains—piled on the floor by the bed, a light catcher suctioned to the window that created rainbows on the walls when the sun caught it just right, many vases of fresh and unfresh wildflowers, a real raccoon pelt slung over the mirror, a pile of sticks good for chewing. Of course, it needed to be picked up by the time her husband returned home. Of course, there would be need for just enough tidying so that an extended explanation was not in order.

  It’s a game, she rehearsed under her breath, as she took the sticks and arranged them in a vase with the feathers, as she collected the stuffing from the pillow, and she heaved piles of clothes into the washing machine. It’s just an experiment, she said, refilling the water bowl. It’s…It’s what I need, she concluded, stripping the bed of its soiled linens. She tossed a dirty shirt to the boy, who followed her on all fours and, as he had been taught, collected the cloth in his mouth and bounded down the stairs—he had been practicing all day—and galumphed around a corner and toward the hamper.

  When he returned, he obediently sat at her feet and turned his perfect face to hers to let out the smallest little ruff, not like a child saying the word ruff but like a child who was actually part dog communicating via his language of choice, a guttural, quiet little animal sound that Nightbitch adored so intensely it made her insides hurt.

  What a good boy, she said, touching his head and then squatting down to nuzzle his neck. She held his bright, soft face in hers and could have cried. What a very good boy.

  * * *

  —

  SENSING THAT SOMETHING WAS changing, transpiring, evolving, though unsure precisely what it was, her husband called each night from a sad hotel room somewhere in South Dakota.

  How’s the work? he asked.

  The work, she repeated. A long pause. The work is the life. There isn’t a distinction.

  Okaaaay, he said.

  I’ve felt for so long alienated from my work, from myself, but I see now that the work and the life are of a piece and it’s simply my job to find the connections.

  You’re speaking in riddles, he said. Or at least like some sort of cult leader.

  I feel I’m being quite clear.

  Did you eat one of those weed gummies? he asked, but then realized he was speaking into the space where his wife used to be. She had hung up. She was gone.

  WW—

  I have been meditating recently on what exactly an artist is and what art itself possibly could be. Consider: an animal who takes colors and smears them on woven fibers just to make an appealing arrangement of said colors, “appealing” defined in any number of ways and enjoyed by a self-selecting group of other animals, then, too, despised by others of the same breed, who do not enjoy looking at it, do not find the arrangement of colors interesting or surprising, sometimes even grow enraged by the colors there on the fibers, at times becoming so enraged they gather together outside the habitats created to house the colors and do not allow other animals to venture in, so troubling or dangerous or morally depraved do they find these colors. Imagine.

  Or: an animal who finds all the best rocks, beautiful for their symmetry and smoothness, and then arranges them within a metal framework she has created through a process that involves fire and a great expression of energy from the animal, a raising of the arm and striking of the hot ore time and time again, until it is formed into a rod.

  One animal howls beautifully while another hits wires with mallets.

  An animal moves across a flat expanse in a darkened space in ways that suggest longing or elation or a vast and an unrelenting desire to transcend her animalness and ascend to another level of being, whatever that is.

  To shape sensory experience and in doing so communicate…what? Does it even matter?

  MM

  Why, it was sort of like talking to God, wasn’t it? These letters closer to prayer than correspondence. You just wrote them and then pressed send and they floated away into the electronic ether, off into the mystery of the Internet, because who really, truly understood how it actually worked anyway? And we might say that Nightbitch, during this time in her life, became quite religious, each morning rising to see if there was a response, and each night sitting down at her cluttered desk—moving the sewing machine to the side for a time—to write another missive to Wanda White, a person whom she believed in yet had no evidence of, save for the tattered book on her nightstand and single contact page on a university website.

  * * *

  —

  CONSIDER THE GUEST ROOM, which she now called her studio. The bed, unmade, with wrinkled covers that contained many books: the Field Guide, of course; a book on herb craft and the poison path; the book her grandmother had used to make her concoctions, but in English, found online at a rare-books site; a history of disruptive performance art; a book about textiles and costuming; an instructional seller’s manual for herbs. Dig deeper and you would find a pair of forgotten underwear, a single forgotten vibrator, a dusty book about taxidermy. In the corners: a dirty orange yoga mat, foam blocks, a strong cloth strap, a pile of nice rocks. On the walls: pictures of dancers contort
ed in the most wondrous of ways; photos of women who dressed as her grandmother had, plain dresses and long braided hair; many pencil sketches that studied animals in motion—horse, dog, cheetah, bear; hex signs she’d made from her childhood memories of such signs hung high on barns; an interior shot of a meat locker; stills from extreme acts of art, including a woman giving birth in a storefront (for, yes, she had found such a happening, a happening she herself had once dreamt), an artist holding his arm with a face in agony because he had just shot himself with a gun for the sake of art, a woman’s face operated on so as to approximate that of the Madonna in a famous Renaissance painting, a naked woman sleeping on a pile of straw with two large hogs. Closet door ajar, and, spilling from it, spools of thread and beads and buttons and skeins of cloth, more books, earth-tone paints, leatherwork tools, a trash bag of wool ready to be brushed and spun, a tub of beeswax. On the desk: a sewing machine, an entire galaxy of pins and needles and snips of thread, a jar nearly full of dead bees. Hanging from the shelf above the desk, a dozen rabbits’ feet, nearly cured, which had now been there for two weeks.

  She showed her son the closed, white door to the guest room and said seriously to him, Never go in here. You understand? This is where Mommy works, and her work is very important and not for little boys or doggies. I’m serious. Do you understand? she demanded.

  The boy, never before having seen his mother in such a state, stern and with a seriousness that bordered on violence, twisted his face to tears.

  No go, Mama. I no go. And she took him in her arms to whisper Shhhh in his ear.

  * * *

  —

  ARE YOU OKAY? HER husband asked later that week, over the phone.

  I am better than okay, Nightbitch said.

  Okay, he said.

  A pause extended between them. Nightbitch heard nothing in that silence, not cable news playing in the background, or the chewing of food or clinking of silverware.

  That all? he said, to which she responded by tipping her head away from the phone and singing one clear note of the prettiest howl she could muster, a howl she had been practicing that week. When she was done, the silence puddle pooled again until her husband offered a Wow and Okay and Whatever you’re up to…sure.

  * * *

  —

  THE WEEK HAD PASSED as weeks did, with The Schedule, the doggy games, and then the mundane chores, groceries and dishes and dinner and bath time. By Friday, she was tired, bone-tired, tired down to her bones and then inside them.

  She had awoken that morning with the urge to go and run through a tall meadow and battle with a groundhog, and so had taken a double dose of Calm Now, but then the boy wanted her to pull him in a wagon, endlessly, through the neighborhood, and, after, to watch him ride his pedal-less bike around and around and around the cul-de-sac. Perhaps it was the circular route his bike ride took, or the ways the leaves fluttered in the breeze and dappled the sidewalk in butterfly shadows, or the double dose of Calm Now, but she felt her life force drain from her as she watched, then sat, then lay down in a bit of grass, then fell asleep.

  MAMA! the boy yelled, inches from her face, and she woke with a start.

  Good god, she said, sitting up. Jesus. She rubbed her eyes, disoriented.

  She took a triple dose of Mombie and tried a little bottle that said Alive, and by lunch her heart was thudding in her chest and she was twirling the boy around the kitchen and they were mixing together cookie dough, which somehow wound up in every corner of the kitchen, at which they both laughed blithely, sliding pans into the oven and out, feasting on cookies, crumbling them all over the floor, pretending to be a monster and num-num-num-ming them to smithereens, then laughing and laughing and laughing hysterically until they were both exhausted and crashing from too much sugar and no lunch. They both sat on the worn wood floor of the kitchen, and the boy said, Doggy?, and Nightbitch said, No doggy, and then they both lay down right where they were and went to sleep, just like that.

  So it had been a day. A weird, long day. And as she waited for her husband to return home that afternoon, and the boy spooned buttons from a casserole dish into a metal bowl on the wooden floor, that old night-night rage ballooned inside her, but instead of erupting into a great show of bluster and heat, instead she grew calm, clear. It was plain she was now owed years of night-nights. And it was also now clear her husband would make it his job to attend to night-nights each night he was home. It was as simple as that.

  They had been switching off on the weekends, her husband Friday and Nightbitch Saturday and so on, but, truly, every night he was home he should do them. She thought about this as she sipped a glass of white wine on the kitchen floor, cross-legged beside her son. Yes, night-nights were significantly easier now, given that the boy slept in his kennel, but still. There were books and stories and sometimes a great waiting before she could sneak from the room.

  She was exhausted by the time her husband arrived home at 6:00 p.m. and she handed the boy to him and said, I’m done. You’re doing night-nights every weekend night from now on. Thank you.

  Her husband tipped his head quizzically and tickled the boy beneath the chin to make him laugh.

  Sure, he said. Seems fair.

  He walked inside with the boy, asking him about his day and tickling him and kissing him all over his face, and Nightbitch remained there in the warm early evening, beneath the wide arms of the trees, in the sweet air.

  Why, she had only ever had to ask! It was so easy. She grew irate, not exactly with her husband but definitely generally with him. If it was this easy to get him to do things, then why had he not been doing them from the start? He should have offered. Moreover, why had she not been demanding more? Why had she not claimed the power and authority that were hers? Where had she learned to push it all down to the pit of her stomach, all her sadness and rage and annoyance, to fill up the space above with white wine, to carry on to the best of her ability and pretend toward contentment when all the while she could have been saying things, saying Fuck this! and Could you please? and I need. She returned to her mother lying in the dark grass in the middle of warm summer nights and wanted to pull her up, take her by the shoulders, shake her with both love and great, great anger. Look at you! she would say. You’re amazing! You’re my mother! Why are you acting like this? Go to Europe. Insist on your joy. Time is short, and you must make great haste, not only for yourself but for me as well. Please. I’m begging you.

  She wanted to save her mother. She saw now she had always wanted this.

  Nightbitch resolved to demand things—all sorts of things. To ask. To not assume that she had to cook the dinner and do the night-nights and clean the house and pay the bills and buy the presents and send the cards and schedule the appointments and keep track of every last thing all by herself. This was, after all, a partnership, wasn’t it? This was, after all, the modern era, empowerment and feminism and all that, and she had not been taking advantage of any of it because, she discovered as she thought further, she did not have a job. Or, rather, she did not have a job that paid any money whatsoever; in fact, it was a drain on money, represented negative money, this mothering job. Because her husband paid for their lives, paid for the privilege she had of staying home each and every day and devoting herself completely to motherhood and nothing else, she had felt, ever since she stepped down from her position at the gallery, that she was in no place to demand anything. He worked all week, and she felt it was too much to ask him to lift a finger on the weekend, because she had automatically devalued her work from the start. She had been, she saw now, inculcated by a culture that told her, Look, it’s cute you’re a mom, and go do your thing, but, honestly, it’s not that hard; you’re probably not all that smart or interesting, but good for you for feeling fulfilled by mothering.

  That night, her husband put their son to bed, and the night after, and the next. There was no debate. Sure, perhaps in the
future he would ask for a night off, but she was filled with such magnanimity, such brotherly love for this man who without objection did as she asked, that she would always take over a night for him, no problem, because he was lovely and she loved him, and Thank you, she said that evening as he came down the steps. She opened her arms and took him in and kissed his neck and then smelled him deeply.

  Thank you so much, she said.

  * * *

  —

  THAT MONTH, SHE BEGAN to sleep in the guest room, her studio, whenever her husband was home. The room devoured her, in fact, as soon as her husband returned from work, and she disappeared until her husband and son ran out of things to do and then puzzled over where Mama could be.

  I need alone time, she explained that first weekend. Time…to myself.

  At night, after her family was fast asleep, she wandered the night-inked streets, through tidy garden beds on the corner lot, through a thicket of lilac bushes where she stripped herself of her clothes and grew her hair long, tested the strength of her elongating muscles, stretched and scratched and then burrowed deeper into the thicket and out into side lawns and back lawns, under a swing set, between two loose boards hanging crooked in a fence. She sniffed at suspicious holes in the ground, stuck her head into the big ones, and came out with grass hanging in her hair and dirt marking her face. She found a leaky faucet dripping at the back of one house and lapped from the puddle beneath it. She spotted a tabby cat in another yard, crouched on a step near the screened-in porch door, and with lightning speed took off in its direction. The tabby paused, hissed, then scampered just as quickly beneath the porch, and Nightbitch stuck what she could of her body beneath and growled low and hard.