Mammother

by Zachary Schomburg

  “Inez?” Mano whispered at the back of her calves. “Is that you? I can’t see. I’m sorry, Inez. I’m sorry. Will you ever forgive me?” Mano could hear her replacing a photograph on the wall and straightening it so it would hold there.

  It was eerily quiet outside of the barbershop window. There were no voices, no sounds, not even the hum of the new electric street lights. Pie Time was empty. Mano thought maybe he had been wakened deep in the future.

  Because she had moved into the moonlight, he could see now that she was wearing red Mary Janes. Mano squinted as the white gunnysack dress moved over the top of his face. He saw tiny red strawberries. She wasn’t wearing underwear.

  “We are ants!” Father Felipe was getting a wilder look in his eyes, as he spoke now for an entire day without taking a breath. During his tenure in Pie Time, his temperament had become more and more like Mothers’. “We are ants carrying our crumbs,” shouted Father Felipe above everyone’s antennae. “We are just ants. We know nothing! Can’t you see how small we all are? Can’t you see? We’re being poked by God, not because we’re bad, but because we can’t be seen!”

  The travelers from Pie Time arrived the next day at the base of the pyramid in Nun’s Hat. The Vuillemeyers led everyone past very little of the town itself—not the nets in The Cause where the people of Nun’s Hat caught the bodies, nor the theater where they tallied the bodies—only the pyramid.

  It stood tall in the center of town. It stunk and it shined. No one from Pie Time could have imagined its shininess. But it shined like a diamond—hairy and decomposing, yet still a diamond. Its mathematics were flawless, clean lines and structurally sound, clearly built more by artists than by grievers of the dead. The pyramid was a beautiful and thoughtful monument—not just a pile of bodies. The moonlight glinted off of each corpse, off of each eyeball and tooth.

  “Its beauty is blinding,” said the new Postman.

  Everyone in line from Pie Time was paralyzed by the pyramid’s strange beauty.

  “We should never look so directly at anything so beautiful. It’s a sin to even look upon it,” shouted Father Felipe over everyone’s heads.

  The men rested the weight of The Humanitarians’ bodies on the tops of their cages and wept. Everyone was crying.

  The pyramid’s size, which was double or triple the size of anyone in Pie Time’s wildest imaginations, was what was most overwhelming. Everyone was looking directly at their sadness, their own loss, their dead loved ones. Their grief appeared to them in the form of beauty. This is what made them all cry as they looked upon the pyramid, paralyzed. That and its smell, which was beyond unbearable. The pyramid was a pungent punch of death into their stinging eyeballs.

  Enid Pine bent down to lift Mano’s mammoth body from beneath his armpits, until they both collapsed. Mano’s back felt broken. His forehead felt as though it had been split into two halves. He felt blinded and disoriented in the silence and the darkness. Some of his things fell off of him and rattled around on the floor next to Enid, who was now on her knees beside him. She tried to catch her breath, her mouth open, her top front teeth resting against Mano’s shins. It had taken all of her strength to attempt to lift him. Mano felt heavy enough to sink into the earth, but when Enid’s arms were beneath him, they felt strong there. He wanted to sink into them instead. And he wanted to sink into her voice, too.

  “I want you,” Enid said to Mano from her knees. She untied his shoes, and took them off.

  His feet felt free, like light opening up in the darkness.

  “I want you,” she repeated. “But this is not yours.” Enid slid her hand up Mano’s leg and lifted the black umbrella he held there.

  “That’s mine,” said Mano.

  “No, it’s not yours,” she said. She threw the black umbrella onto the floor. “Let go of it.”

  “Please, don’t...”

  Enid interrupted by pushing her hands further up Mano’s legs and spreading them apart. She put her hands on the complete set of encyclopedias he held there. “I want you, but this is not you.” She lifted each encyclopedia, starting with A and ending with XYZ. She threw them each onto the floor, one at a time. “These are not your body.”

  Mano silently protested.

  Enid pressed her own weight into what was slowly becoming Mano’s lap. Her nipples carved two trails along the top of his thighs as she climbed upward.

  Mano was getting harder and emptier as he became lighter and lighter.

  “I want you...” Enid lifted Mano’s shirt and unclasped the metal pin that held the gauze that held the hot water bottle onto his back. “But this is not yours.” She unplugged the top of the rubber water bottle and poured the hot water onto her own body, all over the front of her own gunnysack dress. She poured some of the hot water onto the front of his body, too, until it pooled at the bottom of the crook of parts that they had made between their bodies. She threw the empty bottle on the floor. “This grief is not yours to hold, Mano.”

  “But these are my...”

  “Shh...” Enid slid her hand down beneath the strap of his underwear. “I want you, but this is not you.” She wrapped her hand around the bicycle pump he held there. She pressed it against his hardness and pumped it, up and down very slowly. “This is not you,” she said. She threw the bicycle pump onto the floor.

  “But...” Mano could feel more of his back as he leaned backward on the floor.

  Enid’s mouth was open above his mouth and now, instead of talking to him, she just slowly let her hot breath fall out of her body and into his mouth, down his throat. She slid her body downward letting her weight fall against the things that still remained there. As she slid, her body pushed more of the things off of him. They rattled loudly on the floor.

  The bottom of Enid’s wet dress caught on the receiver of the black telephone he still held on his body. It lifted up slightly as she slid down. She moved her bare hips on his things, back and forth in the dark light. “This is yours,” she said. “Put your hands here.”

  Mano’s hands were full when Enid shook them free. More things rattled on the floor. Something made of glass broke.

  The black telephone born from the death of Enid’s mother rang. Mano had never heard the telephone ring before.

  “Don’t answer it,” said Enid.

  “Why not? It’s ringing.”

  “It’s just going to tell you it’s sorry for your loss, but it’s not.” The black telephone rang a second time and a third time.

  Enid picked the receiver up and threw it hard through the back room door and against the front window of Mano’s barbershop. The window exploded into a thousand pieces of glass. All the glass on the floor was glinting in the moonlight.

  The receiver fell upright on top of a sea of glass outside on the sidewalk. It was so quiet on Last Street that both Enid and Mano could hear it say, “I’m sorry about your loss.”

  Mano picked up a glass jar from his body and threw it hard at the pane of glass in the front door. That glass exploded loudly into a bright flash. The jar broke into pieces into the street.

  Enid pulled her dress over her head. She put Mano’s actual body inside of her. She made herself naked again. There was nothing to confess.

  There was nothing to say at the bottom of the pyramid, so the travelers of Pie Time said nothing. The Vuillemeyers hoisted ropes around the pyramid’s stiffest and strongest corpses, the ones that had settled in to reinforce the pyramid’s structure. Up these ropes the people pulled themselves. Hundreds of the grieving stepped on hundreds of their own dead like an organic staircase. Some of the bodies nearest the base of the pyramid had become half soil and mossy, red and yellow ranunculus, dandelions, and white carnations growing out of them. The XO Florist, upon his first few steps up the pyramid, picked a few carnations from an eye socket.

  The XO Life Cages made climbing very difficult, but when their arms and legs became unbearably tired from the stepping, lifting, and holding, their cages could also hold their weight. So their
cages made them tired, but also allowed them to rest.

  Many of those who climbed the pyramid of death recognized the corpses that they stepped on. They cried and climbed, cried and climbed, stopping occasionally to say a few words and bless the dead that they had missed for so long.

  Rona Rile introduced Fran Rile to the corpse of her biological father. The Lumberjack sat on the corpse of his dead wife and kissed what was left of her forehead. Even The Banker, who hadn’t cried once since his mother had died, found his mother’s dress and coin purse, even though he didn’t recognize what was left of his mother’s body. He slipped a dollar bill inside the purse.

  “This one is mine,” said one.

  “I found my mother,” said another.

  “Here is mine, mine, and mine.”

  “This is not a pyramid of mines,” said Father Felipe to the climbers. “These are not yours. These dead belong to the pyramid now. Let go of them.”

  Some people protested, but an orderly line slowly formed again. The pace to the top of the pyramid quickened with a new determination.

  “We are not here for ourselves,” continued Father Felipe. “Let us go to the top, and once and for all complete this pyramid with what it needs. Two bodies! Two Vuillemeyers! And may our own plague of death likewise be complete!”

  “Here, here!” prompted The Lumberjack. “To the Vuillemeyers!”

  “To the Vuillemeyers!” yelled everyone in unison.

  But when they reached the pinnacle of the pyramid, as the men unloaded the exhumed corpses of The Humanitarians from the burlap sacks and began arranging them like stack-work on the pyramid, it became clear that three bodies, not two, were needed to complete the design of the pyramid.

  “One, two, three...” counted The Businessman very slowly and carefully. They were pointing to the open spots left on the pyramid where bodies could be placed. This time they tried counting by pointing with their fingers. “One, two, and three.”

  “One, two...hmm...three, yes.” The Banker checked The Businessman’s work.

  Mitzi Let, who had claimed only two more bodies were needed for the pyramid to be complete, and therefore, perhaps even for the plague itself to be satisfied, was only partially right. Two more bodies were needed when her own body was upon it. But when she had awoken from her three-day coma and walked down the pyramid, stepping on her dead husband and son along the way, she crawled her way back to Pie Time to tell everyone two more bodies were needed, failing to count the space left behind there by her own body.

  Everyone looked down upon Mitzi from the pyramid’s pinnacle as she was just now approaching. Mitzi looked up at Father Felipe with a smile.

  “See, I told you. It is complete now? It is over?” she asked.

  Father Felipe looked at The Vuillemeyers, and also into the face of every member of his congregation who had lost a loved one. He looked into the face of everyone who had been standing upon their dead, as if to ask them for some sort of silent approval. Father Felipe knew they’d need one more.

  “Yes, it’s over, Mitzi. It’s all over,” he said. “Come up here, and have a look.”

  Mitzi’s face softened with relief. It was lit by the moon.

  “Closer,” he said. He guided her firmly by the elbow. “That’s right, closer now.”

  “One, two, three...”

  Mano lost his mind inside of Enid. When he opened his eyes, he saw the shapes of three black birds in what was left of the black square on the wall.

  “Four, five, six, seven, eight...”

  Enid blew a shushing sound lightly onto his lips as she moved on top of him. It was the first time she had ever had anyone else’s body inside her.

  “Nine, ten...”

  “What are you counting?” Enid whispered.

  Mano didn’t hear her question at first. He counted black birds in the black square until his body turned itself inside out inside of Enid. He let go of everything he had ever held, and he let her hold everything in those seconds. The image of her blurry body on top of him in that moment was singed into his memory.

  Mano let his head fall back again on the floor. “One, two, three...”

  Moving so slowly that only she could tell that she was moving at all, Enid took Mano’s empty hands and put them back on her hips. “What are you counting?”

  “I’m counting black birds.”

  Enid looked up at what was left at the black square and could see them, too. “Oh yes, I’ve always loved birds.”

  “You know about birds, too?”

  “My mother used to tell me that my father used to tell her about birds. He didn’t like hunting them, but I can’t remember why.” Enid stopped moving her body on Mano. She held his hands on her hips while she sat still in his lap.

  “Yeah, mine, too,” said Mano.

  “Hey, I’m sorry for that night your mother was torn apart,” Enid said.

  “It’s ok,” he said. “You didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “I wish I could put her back together for you.” Enid laid her head now on Mano’s chest.

  “Me, too. But it’s too late.”

  “I’d even put you back in her arms if I could.”

  “That wasn’t even her, Enid. She was already dead. She’d been dead for a long time.” Mano thought about all those years his mother soaked in the bathtub. He wanted to change the subject. “Your mom’s dead, too, isn’t she?”

  “Yeah,” Enid answered. “She died standing up.”

  “The black telephone, right? That’s where the telephone came from?”

  “Yeah.”

  Mano and Enid both looked through the back room door at the broken windows. The telephone was on the sidewalk saying I’m sorry for your loss. They both laughed. I’m sorry for your loss was filling the silence outside.

  “Now I have no one left,” Enid said.

  “Your father?” asked Mano.

  “Nah. I never met him,” said Enid. “How about you?”

  “Nah. Same.”

  “You know, you have the same illness that my father had though,” Enid said.

  Mano was offended, but wasn’t quite sure why yet. “I do? What illness did he have?”

  “My mother always said my father only hunted things that didn’t exist. You do that, too. Like with Pepe. Or with whatever’s in there.” Enid pointed to what was left in the black square on the wall.

  Mano froze. “What was he?”

  Enid thought for a second about the name for what her father was. “A mammother.”

  Mano felt the sudden need to vomit. “Please stop talking,” pleaded Mano. He pulled his body up very quickly which sent Enid tumbling onto some of the broken glass on the floor of the main room. New blood flowed in the bright moonlight.

  “What’s the matter, Mano?” Enid was panicked on the floor. “Is everything ok? What did I say?”

  “Nothing, nothing. I’m sorry.” Mano was trying to calm himself.

  “I tell you my stupid father hunted for animals that don’t even exist and you...”

  “He wasn’t stupid!” shouted Mano. “He was the greatest hunter. Only the greatest hunter hunts for what doesn’t exist.”

  “What do you know about my father?” asked Enid sitting in the glass.

  ...sorry...loss.

  The voice inside of the telephone had been on a loop for so long, it was becoming a loud flap of noise. It flapped into the night, onto Last Street, and through the broken windows of the barbershop. A thousand black birds flooded in, wild, pecking, squawking, breaking what was left to be broken, the mirrors, the chairs, the magazine rack, and burying everything that Mano had ever held, burying everything Mano had ever loved, with their shit.

  END OF PART TWO

  PART THREE

  36.

  Zuzu Roar walked into the woods. She walked in even though her mother, Inez, had always forbidden it. As soon as Zuzu began walking, she was told she could walk anywhere, except she could not walk into the woods. Perhaps it was her rebellious
streak, and her fierce independence, that had brought her into the woods initially, but it was the loud moans of a woman in pain that brought her upon a gigantic cabin with a gigantic front door and gigantic windows, so deep inside the center of the woods that the woods had folded over upon it. It was the kind of cabin that could only have been stumbled upon by someone who didn’t know it was there. It was buried in shade, half-covered by fallen branches, and on the backside of a hill.

  Despite the fact that Zuzu had never been in these woods before, the cabin looked familiar to her. It was as if when she was looking at the cabin, she was looking inside herself, at the parts of her that belonged to her, but that she had never seen with her own eyes. The cabin’s roof looked like it was made entirely of birds’ nests, and the door hung on one of its hinges.

  Zuzu kept a safe distance. She left enough of a head start between herself and whatever it was that was making the woman writhe. Zuzu had no plans to help—only to look. And then to run. Her feet were already pointed away from the cabin, even as her eyes were squarely pointed at it.

  What she saw through the cabin window first was its face. It wasn’t like any face she had ever seen before. Its face was a cake of blood. The hair around its face was wild, and stiffened with more blood. It sat in a chair at the end of its dinner table which had upon it a very large meal. The large meal was the woman who had been making the horrible sounds Zuzu heard from the edge of the woods. The woman was naked, blood on one leg and on her mangled hip. One of her arms was already gone, and her ribs curved around her torso in a strange way. Zuzu watched the woman’s one breast shudder as she made those sounds. It seemed as though the woman was surprised by the new pain made by each of the monster’s bites. Her good leg was in the air. Her remaining arm reached outward like it was looking for something to grab.

  Zuzu had never seen anyone in a kind of pain quite like this. It was a pain that she didn’t understand. It wasn’t a kind of pain she knew. It was softer. For the first time, as she watched the naked woman in the window writhe in this new soft pain, Zuzu felt her own rush up her thighs and spill inward into the center of her body like a heat, up her spine, and into her breasts. The same curiosity that brought Zuzu into the woods, and that led her to the woman’s moans, made Zuzu want to know this kind of pain. Zuzu unbuttoned her corduroys, and held the heat hard there.