Elli finally broke her spell of repeating “We are here” to cry, “My dad killed my baby!”
“We’ll call the police.” Cathy reached for her cell phone.
“Wait!” Shreve said. “What’s going to happen if we call the police? They’re going to want to see the body, right? And if they see the body, they’re going to see the wings.”
“But that doesn’t mean anyone’s going to guess about our babies,” Maddy said.
Emily, who had slung the gun bandolier fashion across her chest (using one of Theresa’s flowered scarves), sauntered to the front of the room. “I think probably all of us have had some close calls with our babies flying at inappropriate times, but right now nobody’s exactly looking for babies with wings. If word gets out about the possibility, we might as fuckenwell call up People magazine ourselves, because someone is going to discover us. Sooner or later, someone is going to catch one of our babies flying, and then all hell is going to break loose. We need to take care of this, ourselves. Also, for those of you who’ve been asking, I wrote down the recipe for the chocolate croissants. It’s on the refrigerator.”
Jan Morris stood up and introduced herself as a realtor-poet. “I notice,” she said, “that I am a bit older than most of you. I learned in my first marriage, which was a disaster, that you can tell how things are going to go by looking at how things went. We have two dead babies here. I don’t think we have to look any further to see what chances our babies have in the world. We have all the information we need.”
“It’s like a painting,” Lara said, “you know? That little bit of red in the corner, that little dot of color. You might not necessarily notice, but it’s there and it affects everything. If you cover it up, it changes everything, but it’s still there.”
The mothers were silent, processing this, some more successfully than others.
“If we don’t call the police, what do we do about him?” Cathy Vecker asked.
“Where is he, anyway?” Maddy said.
Sylvia stood up, so suddenly she knocked over her cup of tea. “He’s out there! With our babies!”
Suddenly the mothers were frightened again, thinking of their babies flying over Pete Ratcher, who was untied and essentially free to commit murder again. The mothers ran outside, shouting. Upstairs in Elli’s room, Tamara Singh wrapped a pillow around her head to try to muffle the noise.
Raj Singh stopped digging, but Pete Ratcher, after glancing up to see what all the fuss was about, continued.
Theresa took off her shirt. Emily did the same. Strangely, Elli did too, though of course Timmy was dead.
Matthew Ratcher flew to his mother’s breasts, and Gabriel Carr flew to Emily’s. The mothers, observing this, stopped shouting; took off their shirts, blouses, and bras; and offered their breasts to a darkening sky dotted with bats and babies, who dove to their mothers with delighted gurgles. It wasn’t long at all before the yard and house were filled with mothers in the madonna position. Elli remained in the yard for a long time, bare-breasted and with empty arms. Nobody noticed when she returned to the house.
Raj stepped into the freshly dug holes, and Pete Ratcher handed the crates to him, then helped hoist him up. Pete immediately began refilling the holes with dirt. Raj tried to help, but was incapacitated by grief, so Pete Ratcher did this part alone. When he was finished, he left Raj standing there, beneath the apple tree, weeping.
Pete Ratcher walked back to his house, weaving around the nursing women, guided by the fireflies’ tiny lanterns. Theresa looked up from her adoration of Matthew and said, “Get away from me, you monster.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” Pete Ratcher said, loud enough to get everyone’s attention. “I’m his father. I’m Elli’s father. And I’m your husband.”
Theresa shrugged. “Well, you got two out of three right.”
Pete Ratcher stood there, stunned. The women took advantage of his state to tie him up again, while Emily pointed the gun at his dirty forehead.
“You’re under arrest,” she said.
“Says who? You’re no policeman.”
But it didn’t matter. We were the mothers.
PETE
“We used to have animals on this farm. Cows. Chickens. An old rooster. This was when I was a boy. We even had a horse for a while there. Here’s the thing: you gotta kill the ones born bad. I know, it’s not easy to do. Nobody ever said it was easy. You think I wanted to kill my own grandson? You think I’m happy about that? But somebody had to do something. These aren’t babies that can grow up to be regular men. You mothers are losing sight of that. Sure, they’re cute right now, most of them, but what’s going to happen over time? You can’t carry them around forever. They’re growing, and they’re growing unusually fast. Can’t you see that? Come on, be realistic now. Just try to step back for a while and consider what’s happening. What do you think’s going to happen when they’re grown? We have to take care of this now, before it becomes a real problem. Think of it like Afghanistan or Iraq. I know you ladies voted to fight the wars there, right? Well, Voorhisville is our Iraq. Don’t you see? We have a responsibility. We have to take care of this mess. Here. Now. We can do this. We should do this. Tonight. In the barn. I’ll do it. Just say your goodbyes and I’ll take care of the rest. I’m not saying it’ll be easy—they do sort of look like regular babies, but that’s their trick. They’re counting on us to feel that way until they get strong enough to do God knows what. We have a responsibility to the world. Do you think they’re going to stay all cute and cuddly, flapping around like sparrows? You have to ask yourselves the hard questions. You have to ask yourselves what they will become. You have to ask yourselves, seriously, what you are raising here. You might as well get it into your heads: I’m not going to be the only one who feels like this. You’re the mothers, so it’s only natural you want to protect them, but there are going to be others who feel the same as me. Lots of others. What are you going to do about them? You’re not going to be able to keep ignoring this. You’re not going to be able to tie everyone up. All I’m saying is that the world will not accept them. That’s a given. All you have to decide is, do you make the hard choice now and get on with your lives, or do you just prolong their suffering because you can’t cope with your own?”
THE MOTHERS
Afterwards—before they started playing “Maggie May” 24/7, and before we were down to our meager rations of pickles and jelly, but after the windows had been boarded up with old barn wood—we had a little quiet time to think about what Pete Ratcher had said and came to the conclusion that he was probably right, but that didn’t change anything.
We took him to the barn, and, though he was tied up, he seemed under the impression that we were taking his advice. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You ladies won’t hear a thing. Well, maybe the shots, but no crying or anything. Timmy didn’t cry but for thirty seconds at the most.”
Elli went to her room, where she found Tamara and Raj Singh curled up in her bed, both still fully clothed but sleeping soundly. She eased in beside them, pressing against Raj the way he was pressed against Tamara.
ELLI
I remember being in my bed with Tamara and Raj Singh. All three of us suffering like we were, it didn’t even feel like we were three people, but more like one. The way I felt inside, I was Elli Ratcher, fifteen and on summer break, and I was a mommy with leaking breasts, and I was the monster who thought I wanted my baby to die, and I was a hundred years old like one of those women they show on TV in the black cape and hood, screaming over my dead baby, and I was the girl with the beautiful bones wrapped around the man with skin that smelled like dirt and I was the man who smelled like dirt and I was his wife dreaming the dead.
That saying kept going through my head. We are such stuff as dreams are made on. When I heard screaming, I thought it was a dream, and I thought I was a dream, peeling the girl I was away from the man laying there beside me. I walked my dream feet over to the window and the man got up and stood b
eside the girl and said, “What is that horrible noise?” I turned to that part of me, while the other part continued to sleep, and said, “It sounds like my father.” That’s when we noticed the babies flying out of the barn, swooping through the night sky. We watched the mothers, in a disarray of tangled hair and naked breasts. We heard their screams of blood as they ran into the house. I said, “This is not happening,” and went back to bed. I heard the man saying, “Tamara, wake up, we must leave this place. Tamara, wake up,” but as far as I know she didn’t wake up until the morning.
TAMARA
There are certain mornings in Voorhisville when the butterflies flit about like flower seraphs and the air is bright. Tamara woke up to just such a morning, taking several deep breaths scented with manure and the faintest hint of roses, all the way from town. Sweet, she thought, before she rolled over and saw the empty crib, which brought her back to the nightmare of her son’s death and the other baby murdered by his own grandfather. It did not seem possible that such a reality could exist in this room, papered with tiny yellow flowers.
Tamara sat at the edge of the bed listening to the breathing of the girl who still slept there and the murmur of voices below, raised in argument, then hushed. She had to go to the bathroom. It did not seem possible that such a simple bodily function would take precedence over her sorrow, but it did. She shuffled to the door, the chair she had used to discourage visitors shoved to the side. She remembered Raj, pushing at the door, asking her to let him in. Vaguely, she remembered doing so. But where had he gone? She suddenly missed her husband, as if he had taken part of her with him, as if she suffered the ghost pain of a severed limb. She stepped into the hall, which was dim and hot.
The words “police,” “reporters,” “prison,” “murder,” “self-defense,” “justice,” “love,” “fear,” “danger,” and “coffee” drifted up the stairs. Tamara stood in the hot hallway and listened.
MADDY
I got to the Ratcher farm right at the end of the funeral, which is okay, ’cause I’m not sure—even as solemn of a event as it was—that I could of kept a straight face through “Silent Night.” Stooker dropped me off out by the road ’cause there was so many cars parked in the driveway and on the lawn.
“Looks like some kind of thing going on,” he said. “You sure you wanna get out here, Maddy? We could go to the graveyard.”
The graveyard, case you were confused by Elli Ratcher’s spaced-out words (But what do you expect from a girl who tried to hang herself; I mean, it only makes sense there would be some brain damage, right?)—the graveyard is where kids in Voorhisville hang out, and if that don’t give you the right idea about this shithole town, nothing will. Anyway, I got out of the car, and, like I said, got there right at the end part, where Elli was going, “We are here,” like she was high or something. For all I know, maybe she was.
JoJo and me were there when Mr. Ratcher tried to convince us to let him kill our babies, like that was the reasonable thing to do, and I was one of them that voted to tie him up in the barn. That’s as far as we got, I swear on my own brother’s grave. So we all went out there, or I guess most of us did, and tied him to the center pole. He kept saying we were nuts. Back at the house, a bunch of the mothers called up husbands and kids and shit and said how they were at the Ratchers’ and going to spend the night. I called my mom and told her me and JoJo was staying with Elli Ratcher. My mom goes, “Well, I suppose it would make sense you two girls would become friends.”
We laid down on the floors in the living room and kitchen. I slept in the yard and some other mothers were out there too. We had our babies with us. Nobody slept upstairs ’cause nobody wanted to make Tamara or Raj or Elli have to hear the sound of a living baby. I would say that proves we were not evil, like some people say.
Mr. Ratcher was sort of upset. He kept saying he had to take a piss, so Mrs. Ratcher stayed behind to unzip him and hold him so he wouldn’t wet himself. I was half-asleep when she came back up to the house with Matthew. I didn’t see no blood on her and that’s something I would of remembered if I did, but it was dark. I told the mothers this. I told them the screams came later, after I saw Mrs. Ratcher come back to the house. The screams woke me up. I reached for JoJo, but he ain’t anywhere around, and I think somehow that monster, Mr. Ratcher, got a hold of my baby, so I run out to the barn.
After my brother got killed in Afghanistan, I was amazed to find out that some people—and I am not just talking teenagers here—wanted to know details, like, was he shot or blown up, and what body parts did they send us?
Anyway, my point is, I ain’t going to get into details about what happened in the barn for all you sick fucks that like to say you gotta know out of some sense of clearity, like that reporter said, and not because, let’s face it, you get off on it somehow. But I will say this: I screamed really loud, and I am not someone who screams at scary movies and shit.
All of them were in the barn. Even the ones that had been in carriers. Somehow, they figured out how to unbuckle straps and shit. Just like that, they were no longer babies. We no longer had control over them. Some of the mothers say we probably never did, that they just fooled us for a while.
So the mothers come out and they see blood on the babies and they start undressing and the babies come swooping down and the mothers are screaming and everyone runs into the house and starts washing their babies—wiping the blood off, you know, to see where the actual wound is. I’m trying to tell them; I’m saying, “Mr. Ratcher is dead,” but nobody pays attention. Some of them are screaming that they’re going to kill him.
Then Mrs. Ratcher comes in and she’s crying and screaming, “Who killed my husband?” and that’s when she sees all the mothers wiping blood off their babies. She’s all covered in blood herself, which she says was from trying to get him untied. “Give me a knife,” she says. “I gotta get him untied.”
Someone goes, “Theresa, you are better off. He was a child molester and a murderer and you are better off without him.”
Mrs. Ratcher says, “He’s no child molester—we had a misunderstanding, is all. And he’s no murderer, either. Not usually.”
The whole thing was so horrible I guess none of us could believe it. I mean, even now, after all this time, I still sort of expect to see Billy sitting on the couch, eating pistachios. I know how crazy a person’s mind can get when something so terrible happens that you can’t even believe it.
Mrs. Ratcher said, “Where’s Elli? He didn’t molest her. She can straighten this whole thing out.”
But Elli was upstairs in bed—mourning, we assumed, her life and murdered child.
“My mother did the same thing,” Evelyn Missenhoff said. “When I told her about my dad she said I was lying.”
Mrs. Ratcher stood there, holding Matthew tight. In spite of all that day had brung—her grandson and husband both dead, not to mention the surprise of finding Tamara Singh asleep on her couch just that morning with her own dead baby—Mrs. Ratcher had a pretty face. She made a point of looking at each of us, shaking her head until that dirt colored hair of hers brushed her freckled cheeks. “We have to call the police,” she said.
A mother’s love is a powerful thing. It can direct a person to behave in ways they never would of thought possible. When Billy got sent to Afghanistan, I overheard my mother telling him he didn’t have to go.
“Yeah I do,” he said.
“You could quit. You know Roddy Tyler? He got a honorable discharge from Vietnam. Why don’t you do that?”
“Ma, I wanna go.”
“Well, if you want to.”
I heard it in her voice, but didn’t really understand until I had my own child. Being a mother, I figure, is like going a little bit crazy all the time.
THE MOTHERS
The mothers want you to understand. We are not bad people, we are mothers. When Mrs. Ratcher insisted we call the police, we saw it as a threat, and did the only thing we knew to do: we took Matthew out of her arms and tied he
r up to a pole in the barn—facing away from her husband, ’cause we’re not evil.
“Someone murdered Pete,” she said. “And whoever did it is still among you.”
Did she know? It’s hard to believe she didn’t. But it’s probably just as difficult to understand how it is that we knew and didn’t know at the same time. Who could believe such a thing?
Later, when we heard the screams again, we tried to ignore them. We rolled over. Closed our eyes. We tried to believe it was a dream. We tried to believe we weren’t even awake, but the screams pulled us back, and we fell to the earth. And when we went to the barn, we saw all our babies there, and Mrs. Ratcher, dead.
They flew out of the barn into the sky, up to the bright stars. We weren’t sure if we should call them back or not. We stood there, our mouths hanging open, tears falling on our tongues.
Later, they came back, lunging at our breasts and drinking with selfish, insistent sucks and tiny bites, until they finally fell asleep, and we realized we had a problem.
ELLI
I wake up on my birthday thinking about how I dreamt I had a baby. With wings! And my mom did too! I dreamt almost all the mothers came to our house for a funeral. I dreamt my dad killed my baby and the mothers tied my dad up in the barn. What’s that saying? We are such stuff as dreams are made on.
When I open my eyes, the first thing I see is the empty crib. This nightmare is my life.
“Mom?” I call. “Mom?” She doesn’t come. She’s probably busy with Matthew. When I look at the crib, my breasts drip milk. What does it mean, anyway? “We are such stuff as dreams are made on.” Does he mean the dreams of sleep, or the dreams of hope? And how are they made on us? Are we, like, scaffolding? I can’t figure it out. I can’t figure anything out. “Mom?” My breasts hurt. My arms hurt too. My whole body hurts. Maybe this is what happens to old people. Maybe it starts to take its toll, holding up all those dreams.
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