When I went limp and he had to drag me, my father stopped him. But I’d already stopped him with the tactic. When I grew big and tall, muscle suited to me, Shot liked to joke that Father must’ve “done it with a cow, Bullethead.” That was his level. Slapping, hitting, and mental abuse. Shot’s idea of a good time.
By the time Shot dragged my brother to the water trough and our father had to stand in his way and physically restrain him, we all realized this sickness was transferable. Because Dad had begun to cross the line. Threaten to slap us. Punished us by overturning our cereal bowls in our laps if angry about something. To allow Shot’s energy to break him down. And by then Mother just wasn’t really there. And we had no defense for this new source of abuse, had spent our energy erecting barricades in the other direction.
Shot took his cues from an idea of nasty men, things he read in the old noir magazines he’d once collected or bad shows on TV. Where he was reading or seeing things from the villain’s point of view. If he’d been a generation younger, we would’ve at least been spared the theatrical nature of his dysfunction. Maybe gotten something more original.
Then a kind of freneticness, or fit, would come upon him, and he’d be the one half in, half out of the water trough. Find it hard to move properly. Scream out for Father to help him. The convalescence meant we heard him more but saw him less. But if we didn’t attend to him, in his bed, he would let us know about it when well again. Nor did he want to go to a doctor.
Shot made my brother read to him when an invalid. The racy, uncomfortable stories in those magazines. The ones with the ripped-bodice women on the cover and some steely-eyed private eye in the backdrop. Lots of leg and no sense. I meant to burn those magazines if I could, but I never summoned the nerve. What would it have mattered anyway? They already lived in his head.
I was beginning to feel my grandfather surging up inside me. All of that rage, that energy, and it had to have someplace to go. Just the parts I could use. If you could harness such a thing.
From a mythical place long ago and far away.
[50]
Back inside, I was still fighting the anger. How far had Hellbender infiltrated my life, without me knowing? I put the gun and ammo down on the kitchen table, and I took Shovel Pig and dumped her contents. I was shaking. I didn’t realize the violence of the act until it was over. How much had been inside the purse. How upending it had been like pouring an ocean of “stuff” onto the table. How some of it fell off, so I spent the next few minutes picking it up.
All the flotsam and jetsam that accretes when you don’t clean out a purse over time. Old receipts, worn and yellowing, from years ago. Coupons for canned food you never used. Extra school photos of your daughter you meant to send to your husband’s relatives. Expired car insurance cards. Lots of gum. So many sticks of gum, I was just thankful little of it had come unwrapped and stuck to the inside of Shovel Pig. Perfunctory office prep: lipstick and some makeup I only used if we had a client meeting in-house.
All my various phones, burner and regular, and, of course, Bog. Some I had to pry out of their separate compartments to check underneath.
Paint swatches, cut-out articles of gardening advice I’d never used. A few folded-up documents from work, from long-ago projects. Two lanyards from conventions and three of those annoying pin-on types. The name tag from my first job, in fast food, that I’d kept for luck or out of nostalgia. Tampons. So many tampons, lost in crevices and various pockets. A couple exhausted AA batteries and my magnifying glass.
A worn paperback copy of a mystery novel I was slowly working my way through six months later. Stuff that had fallen apart and was hard to identify. A bottle of expired painkillers from when I’d hurt my knee. Keys to old houses and apartments, all on the same key chain, like I needed a museum of keys.
Condoms I immediately shoved back in their little zippered pocket.
Like all huge purses, Shovel Pig had also eaten many smaller, worn-out-looking purses. A couple hadn’t even been used, and I couldn’t understand why I’d ever bought them.
Why hadn’t I gotten rid of them? Why had I kept any of it?
No wallet—I kept that in my front pants pocket at all times—but plenty of weaponry. In fact, the weaponry, once laid out in a row, was extensive in a way that made me laugh. Taser, pepper spray, a gutting knife from the farm I’d rescued because of the smooth bone handle. Brass knuckles in plastic wrap. Several more pocket- and penknives. Small flashlight that wasn’t a weapon, but seemed weapons-adjacent. It was like a mini go-bag.
But although I searched every nook and cranny, every crevice, I couldn’t find anything unusual. I stared suspicious at a puzzle piece, paranoid that someone had put it there, until I remembered it was a memento of a really fun family night.
No sign of surveillance. No bug. Nothing that bulged in the lining. Nothing restitched.
I shoved most of it back in, both relieved and upset. Something about all of that detritus of my life, so ordinary, but also all the garbage I’d been carrying around. Overwhelmed by it.
The smell of Band-Aids hung over everything. More than anything else, I’d had Band-Aids in there.
“Mom! What are you doing with that?”
Startled, pulled out of my own thoughts. I’d forgotten my daughter was already home.
* * *
Even with all that has happened since, I return to that moment so many times. In my dreams. In daylight. Now that I have no idea whether she is safe or not safe. No control over that. But, then, Silvina was in my head. Hummingbirds and Silvina.
My daughter stood there in the doorway of our house, a look of horror on her face. For a moment, I thought it was just me. That there was something terrible about me. Then I realized I was holding the gun.
I shoved the gun back in Shovel Pig, tried to be casual, even though that was ridiculous. Half the contents of my purse lay strewn across the kitchen table.
“Just cleaning my gun,” I said. Trying to sound casual just made it weirder.
“Mom! Since when have you had a gun?”
“Awhile,” I said. “Sorry—I should have told you. I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s just a precaution.” Pathetic.
She was looking at me like I was an intruder. I felt small. I felt terrible.
“Does this have something to do with the man watching the house from the woods the other day?”
My heart. Oh, my heart stopped a moment, hiccupped, or something in my brain did.
“What man?”
“Don’t lie to me!” The anger in my daughter just then brought Shot’s ghost into her features. Made me angry at her, irrationally.
“We’re dealing with it. Your father and I.”
Her cue to drop it, but she ignored me.
“And what about what you hid in the trunk of your car? I saw you. I saw that. What is going on?”
My center of gravity shifted. I put a hand out to the chair next to me. Unbearably tired. Like I could sleep for a thousand years.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” In a sense, it was true.
“Don’t bullshit me,” she said.
“Language.”
She sat down at the table opposite and glared at me. I said nothing.
“Fine, don’t tell me. I know already anyway,” she said.
Relief in her saying that, in a sense. This daughter who had always been, if I were honest, a distant and difficult beast. Never really knew what was in her eyes, even when she was very young. This baby with the furry head that went bald so quickly, only to sprout hair again, and then, magically, was old enough to be looking at me as if she were the adult. That almost teenager who scorned us and needed us. Who felt breakable and yet broke things so easily.
But she couldn’t really know. So I gave in. Partway. Chose something not quite a lie.
“Something to do with work,” I said. Not entirely untrue.
“Bullshit,” she said.
I couldn’t look at her as I said, “Lan
guage.”
“Ever since you hid that thing in the trunk,” she said, leaning over the table to fix me with her glare, “you have been in your own world. You have not been my mom.”
There it was.
“Work just got really bad,” I protested. “It’s tough being a—”
“No. That’s not it,” she said. “Don’t feed me that bullshit again.”
“Well, it’s none of your business. I’m not going to discuss it with you.” Blurted without thinking. My last defense. The only way to try to keep containment, to stop the drones from destroying us all.
“If you split up, I’m going to live with Dad.”
My mouth opened and closed again.
What she was telling me. That she knew about my one-night stands. Thought I was having an affair, divorce on the horizon. That brief surge of elation that she knew nothing about Silvina crashed into such a wrenching sadness.
“Oh, baby,” I said, and reached across the table for her hand. But she pulled back, out of reach. “We’re not getting a divorce. We’re just fine.”
“No, you’re not. You don’t talk to him anymore. It’s like the last time. Except this time you have a gun.”
I leaned back, exhausted. Just wiped out by everything coming at me from all sides. Scared for my daughter, for a different reason, and ashamed. Such a grown-up look on her face. I didn’t want her to have to be an adult yet. Even if part of me was impressed.
“It’s not that way…” I mumbled, braced for the next accusation.
But a tiredness had crept into the anger on her face. A tiredness and, I realize now, a resignation. A retreat that made it clear how much it had taken out of her to say these things to me.
“Promise me the gun doesn’t mean anything. Promise you really have had the gun for a while,” she said.
I nodded. “I promise. It’s true. I just didn’t know how you’d feel about it.”
“And will it go away? Will whatever it is be done with soon?”
No break in her voice, I’ll give her that. No looking away. I withered under that full and damning regard.
“Yes,” I said, grateful for the lifeline. “Yes, it’s almost done. A couple more days.”
But would it end soon? Was there a point where I could tie a knot and be done?
A text came in and I gave it a glance.
>>Hello, Jane. Things going well? Or a little … sideways? Hope you keep the gun. You might find you need it … Let me know when you’re ready to talk.
My daughter frowned, gave me a long, appraising look, got up, and left without another word.
Relief at the avoidance. Relief that she’d left so I could study the journal. The regret came much later. The regret that I hadn’t explained more, hadn’t found some way to prolong the moment. To live in a moment more stable and more certain than any of what followed.
It struck me that she looked “off” for another reason. My daughter’s hair was different. Shorter. She’d gotten a haircut since the hummingbird, the storage unit. I hadn’t noticed, even though according to my calendar I was supposed to be the one to drive her to the hairdresser’s.
I pulled the gun out again. Spent some time taking it apart. Just as I’d thought: a tracer, tiny, hidden inside the magazine. Something microscopic written on it. So I got the magnifying glass. The words read “Just checking.”
I smiled. But I didn’t laugh. The psychological profile of “Wig Man” wasn’t good. Unpredictable. Or bored. Or full of himself. All of those were more dangerous than someone competent and balanced.
I put the gun back together, carefully placed the clips in secure compartments. Not much of a leap to accept Hellbender’s gift. Shovel Pig had held a gun once, until the first time my daughter, age six, had showed curiosity about my purse and I’d found her looking inside. I’d gotten rid of the gun soon after.
But it wasn’t like I’d never used a gun before.
[51]
Silvina’s note to me lay deep within Shovel Pig, too. In a zippered compartment within a compartment, next to her journal. Somehow, I hadn’t wanted to pull the note out. But now I did. Like a talisman. Like a balm. That direct communication. I sat there at the table feeling all alone except for Silvina.
Could this be as far as I was meant to go? From Silvina’s perspective? What if the salamander was metaphorical or symbolic in some way? Then the journal was the last thing—the endpoint. Salamander was my business. But had become her business, because she’d done her homework on me. Something in that thought trembled on the edge of comprehension, of clicking into place, then faded.
The only “nature” expeditions I recalled as a child were those I took with my brother. He would tell me tales of mythic salamanders—that under the earth were long-lost cave systems, and giant phosphorescent salamanders the size of alligators lived there, coming up to the surface to hunt for food and to mate with salamanders from other cave systems before returning to the darkness. When we tired of overturning rocks to find some tiny specimen, he would lead me into the foothills above the farm and we would pretend to be searching for the giant salamanders.
Over time, there was mythology around them. Over time, we came to believe in their existence because of how it pushed every other thought out of our minds. There were maps for future expeditions. Folded paper picture books. Fake accounts of sightings. We kept it all in a secret compartment in a shed near the barn. Not because we thought Dad or Grandpa would destroy them, but because it was our secret. Our secret thing.
Imagine there comes a day when all of that, everything you’ve created, is gone. It’s not because it’s been discovered or thrown away. It’s because the person you imagined it with doesn’t exist anymore.
Imagine being frozen, and when you thaw, in another place, you can’t be sure you made the right choice. How ever after the past calls to you and sometimes you want to join it in the black water, in the mud, among the snails and crawdads and salamanders.
How it’s calling you now: to transform, to make a decision, to become one thing or the other.
Neither will make you happy.
[52]
I recall getting through dinner like a spy in deep cover who knows the other party suspects the deception. Being extra-nice to my daughter—and to my husband. Peppering him with questions about his day so there can be no questions thrown my way. My daughter mercifully mum about the gun and my husband putting her silence down to teen angst.
The texts keep coming in, but I ignore them until later. I can’t think about them. I have to compartmentalize. I’m living in the moment but denying the moment, too. I can’t think I can’t think I can’t think.
>>You should respond, just so I know you’re reading this. So you understand.
>>But, then, I have all the time in the world. Even if the world doesn’t.
What I can’t see can’t disturb me. Do I get rid of my phone or use the phone to contain this demon? How far has the contagion spread? Are there cameras inside the house, watching us eat?
I “make” dinner by ordering out. Roast chicken with golden potatoes and broccolini. The chicken a little dry, but the potatoes are delicious, and he didn’t have to cook. I am a very good wife. I am a very good mother. In these roles rejoice, for in these roles I can forget and forget again, for a little while. Keep the stress at bay. Take a couple Motrin and open a bottle of white wine. Drink just enough to keep the edge off. Drink less than I want to.
I go off to the bathroom to peek at the journal, with the one-page accident report shoved inside, but my daughter’s knocking on the door soon enough, saying to hurry up. She needs to use the bathroom, but I think mostly she doesn’t trust me in there for too long and I don’t want to think of the reasons for that. So I come out, put on a smile.
What are we celebrating? my husband asks when I return, nodding at the bottle of wine. We never drink midweek.
I reply, with a look at my daughter, that we are celebrating the near end of a difficult project.
He seems relieved, so he noticed, too, that I have been AWOL, gone, not here. But what is “here”? Why is “here”? In the comfortable heat of the kitchen, as I clean up and my daughter beats my husband at checkers … as I scour the dishes and toss out a lot of single-use plastic.
>>Looks like you had a nice dinner. You’ll need your strength for the next part, no matter how it goes.
As I let the water run a little too hot so my thumb pulses and burns under the flow. The smell of the roast chicken wholesome and enveloping, and me eating scraps because eating, too, is a way to forget. I don’t want the clenched hands. I don’t want the mystery. But I have it anyway, and no matter how I disguise it, I’m manic, I’m on fire.
I can’t help but think of Larry in the company parking garage. I can’t help but hope there will be some clue in Silvina’s journal that will explain the plan. Why her ghost has reached out to me. Along with an emotion I can’t identify that coalesces around this thought: if Silvina hadn’t been killed, I would never have known she existed. Would never have received the rapture of the hummingbird. Would never have begun to wake up about the world. This terrible catalyst that has to mean something.
Right there, under my husband’s nose, I am conducting a covert investigation. All he has to do is open the file folder and he’ll see something’s not right. Several somethings.
>>Don’t worry—they’re safe. No one cares about them. Only about Silvina.
I know he means my family. I know I don’t trust him.
I am not a spy. Not a detective. Not caught and lost in some tangle or maze. Not lying against the mud and leaves watching over my brother’s body. I am not I am not I am not …
But I don’t know what I am.
[53]
“We’re ghosts trapped in the wreckage of our systems. So why shouldn’t we haunt them? Why should we not avenge ourselves upon them? Why be merciful?”
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