The Solace of Monsters Read online

  “Maybe we need to practice,” my father replied.

  I stood there crying, my arms hanging at my sides. The other tiny mouse had disappeared in our house. “How do I know I’m real?” I blubbered.

  “You killed something, didn’t you?” Father was bent down, cleaning. “We kill the things we care for. And it’s always a mistake.”

  I cried harder.

  I lay on the operating table. “Fix me.”

  “I can’t,” he said, looking forlorn.

  “I read on the computer that cerebral cortex neurons replace themselves every seven to ten years, as do most of the other cells in our bodies. We become totally new people every decade or so.” This was a story I liked to tell myself. It made me hopeful. I moved my wet face towards his. “It’s immoral to kill any living creature, even if you don’t mean to.”

  He patted my shoulder. “I know, Mara.” His eyes grew wet too.

  I had been trying to understand the complexities of the mirror in my bathroom since I was a Childcloud. Was that me in there? Did I do everything my image did? I searched for anomalies in my skin and other features but the mirror was disturbing. I stopped gazing at it for a while. I was pleasantly surprised some time later when I looked again.

  I had been a shattered woman who was patched together again. I cut my dark shaggy hair into both long and short strands that reached to my chin. Brown clumps were trying to grow from my scalp in small bursts. Later I noticed my short nose, brown eyes sunken into my face. Sometimes a round, pale moon face wanted to emerge from my own thin oval one. I had long eyelashes and my eyebrows seemed unfinished. The first time I peered at myself I had been passing the mirror. I crawled back to determine what was there. I watched myself breathe. I watched myself turn around and scratch my cheek.

  “Reflection,” I whispered to myself, understanding.

  I had raised red scars then. Some turned white and itched but they didn’t hurt anymore. I was the fifth Mara, developed from the failures of the others before me. I opened my mouth and inspected it the same way my father had. I understood that I was his greatest and worst creation. But then I was also my own. The scars faded rapidly and were replaced by thin lines that resembled wrinkles. Then the wrinkles faded. I was stitched together and didn’t see another like me in my limited books or computer time.

  I had tried moving more delicately, practicing lifting small objects with grace in front of the mirror. My joints were angular and full of errors. My arms and legs seemed awkward. I discovered that everything that came out of the body had a purpose. And the beginnings of actions arrived from my thoughts. I tried to listen.

  Inside my skin did the other Maras wait and stir? Could I separate into distinct selves? Once I had seen and understood the mirror and the Photographs, I knew what Dr. F. had made me for. But was my purpose the same as his?

  I was breakable.

  After the mice Father brought home a mangy gray cat. Father locked me into my living quarters, my bedroom and bathroom, every day when he went out to work or shop and then again at night. My bookshelf with my ninety seven books, were all chosen by Father for a reason. “Classics whose titles I recognize so they must describe the complexities of life,” he theorized. I had read several of them at least twice, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Metamorphosis, Lolita, and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. But because Father hadn’t read them we couldn’t discuss them. He kept the computer in his room. I couldn’t wander around his bedroom or the rest of the house. He left me food in a small refrigerator. He was afraid. I feared the dying gray cat whose fur looked pasted with sweat. Father tossed her out of a cardboard box into our living room. There was a screech inside of her, then she gingerly sniffed my ankles and calves. She rubbed her whiskers on my knees after I sat down.

  I didn’t understand what she wanted or what her purpose was. I tried not to seize her and rub her fur under my nose. I tried to ignore her, hoping she’d tell me where she’d been, what she’d accomplished, what the world was like. What had she done to end up in our house?

  “She likes you,” Father guffawed. “Now you have to name her.”

  “We’ll see if she lives.”

  “It doesn’t really matter,” he said. But I wasn’t sure whether he meant it or not.

  “I’ll call her Gloves. She pushes into her body in a certain way.” I didn’t want to disturb or frighten her. “Gloves, what’s it like to have a tail?” I inhaled her delightful animal odor.

  Father swiveled around, smiled. “If you really, really want one, I can give you a tail for a day.”

  “No thanks.” I was uncertain whether he was joking or not. Poor Gloves. What else could she lose living here?

  I shut Gloves out of my room, fearful of flinging her in my sleep or accidentally stepping on her when I was barely awake. We were locked apart most of the day anyway and I wondered what she did. Sometimes I heard her scratching or meowing. I brooded over her and what it was like to be unhuman. I found her sleeping on a rug yesterday while Father was making dinner. I carefully neared her, tiptoeing, then scooting on my hands and knees. When her yellow eyes flew open, my brown ones were focused on hers. She didn’t scream or run away. She closed her eyes again, dropped her head onto her paws and fell back asleep. I liked her and had much to learn. I was glad she was with us. I was determined not to ruin her.

  “She’s a test you know. That’s all,” Father said cruelly.

  “Irreparable.”

  “You couldn’t think of a more intelligent name for her after reading all those books I’ve brought you?” His keys jangled in his hands. I could see the ghost of myself reflected in the lens of his eyeglasses.

  “I’ll work on it.” My mind was churning. “I could call her God.”

  Father smirked. “Don’t be ridiculous, Mara. There’s no such thing as God.”

  “Couldn’t you create God?”

  Father didn’t answer. He went downstairs to the laboratory saying, “Don’t forget your hand exercises.”

  But my new hand had adapted to my body already. I didn’t need the exercises. My cell regeneration was accelerating. I didn’t know why. It could have been Father’s new adhesive. I wasn’t going to tell my father.

  I followed Gloves around our house for a few hours to gain some insight into her mind. I would make sure I didn’t harm her. She rubbed against furniture, made a low murmuring sound that wasn’t unpleasant, smelled the cushions of our sofa, stalked a button and rolled around the floor with it. Her ears twitched at any little sound. I discovered that I could hear the noises she could if I concentrated hard enough. She seemed content until she suddenly swerved and dashed at shadows. I stayed out of her way, observing her the same way my father had first watched me, as though he was uncertain what could happen, a form of curiosity and anxiety.

  I had been contemplating how haphazard her running about appeared as I sat on the maroon sofa. I must have fallen asleep because when I woke up, Gloves was curled up on my knees. I was terrified and wanted to scream. Instead I tried to gently push her off with the back of my hand. She didn’t budge. She shifted and became a tighter ball of gray fur. Was she sick? Unhappy? Distracted? Accelerating or falling apart? I knew nothing about her, only that Father had decided she wasn’t a good test subject for an experiment at his job. My mouth tasted like dust and a purple light hurled itself around my head. My fingertips grew numb from pressing them deeply into the cushions. My teeth and jaws clenched and unclenched. Muscles I’d forgotten along my arms and shoulders rose and grew tense. I began to settle down. I tried to relax the knotted, noticeable deltoids, the trapezius, and the levator anguli scapulae. I was unable to reach a calming pill Father left for me in the kitchen. I hadn’t destroyed her yet, and she looked comfortable. I touched her back lightly, feeling each tiny vertebra.

  “You are going through a period of diapause,” I told the animal, understanding her need for r
est.

  A memory arrived of rain dripping from enormous primitive leaves in a thick tangled forest. The odor of wetness and sour breath permeated everything. It was hot and humid. A black man was yelling at me, and I held a metal stick in my hands. A car with large tires was nearby, waiting. I glimpsed yellow eyes curtained by all those leaves. The eyes were suddenly running toward me. A creature with spots and bigger than Gloves was almost on top of me, her claws extended, her icicle teeth visible.

  I had managed not to move. I wanted to return the memories that weren’t mine but I learned from them. I stared at Gloves’ needle-thin claws. I tried to very gently pry her mouth open with my little finger but she’d have none of that. I determined that I could hurt her more than she could hurt me. So I waited another two hours or so until she decided to leave my legs and go eat some food Father had left out for her. I was stiff and unbending when I stood. But by then I’d grown very fond of her.

  The next morning I watched Gloves hiding pieces of paper, the twist tops from bread, as well as bottle lids, and pens. Then she would rediscover them. They were like someone else’s memories. I wanted to join in, throw crumpled paper balls or conceal test objects like bookmarks, old equipment knobs or cogs or shoe laces to see if she could find them. But I didn’t want to become Father or become distracted and forgetful of Gloves’ whereabouts or actions.

  “Amicable,” I gave my father.

  “Psychological disaster,” he gave me back. We both laughed. There were layers of understanding and misunderstanding between us. He, of course, was a part of the world and I wasn’t. I could never be sure what he was thinking or how much more he knew.

  Father laid out my lessening medicines and pills every morning on the yellow kitchen table at breakfast before he left for work. I had asked him, “Is it because I’m getting better?”

  “Mara, you get better and better each day. Maybe it’s because of my latest concoction.” He smiled with his dazzling white teeth.

  I thought about asking him about his beautiful teeth but I already knew his answer. “If you want some new teeth I’ll get you some.”

  He always left me my special pill to soothe me in case I became upset while he wasn’t home. I usually tucked it into my pocket before I was locked in my bedroom upstairs. But Gloves leaped up on our kitchen table and began playing with my special pill Father had just placed there. Before I could stop her she sniffed it, tentatively licked it, then swallowed it and ran into another room. We chased her as she darted under chairs and tables from room to room.

  “I’m going to be late for work,” Father lamented.

  “But this is Gloves,” I argued.

  When father and I found her in his bedroom, she was walking in circles in front of his bed and then she fell to the floor on her side. I was very alarmed. I descended onto my hands and knees and entreated Father to fix the motionless Gloves. I begged and begged. “I have these holes in my face and they’re all crying in your direction,” I told him. “Please,” I was whimpering.

  “I’ll have to call in sick,” he stated with a thread of annoyance in his voice.

  Father looked at me askew a moment and then whisked Gloves into his arms and disappeared downstairs into the laboratory for a long time, locking the door behind him. I sat and waited outside the door. I think two nights passed. I couldn’t tell because so much darkness surrounded me and I didn’t move to eat or sleep as it didn’t seem necessary and I might miss Father emerging with Gloves.

  When he finally came back upstairs I crawled up to him with my stiff legs, wrapped my arms around his knees and looked up at him.

  He nodded at me. “Give me a few more days.”

  One night I awoke to animal howling. I had been dreaming about anatomical sketches. First the bones, then organs, arterial system, muscles, lastly skin. The creatures were layered, one necessary part of them following another, until they were complete. They resembled a man, a woman, then a dog, a cat, a rat. They became all mixed up, becoming mythical beings with human and animal sections. Beasts I had never discovered before in books. Had I actually seen them? Maybe one of the Maras had. Or they had been someone else’s dream. The howling stopped after a short time. I felt Gloves’ absence keenly. I still looked for her everywhere she had been, but she was never there.

  As I was sitting up in my bed, the mouse that had escaped before hurled itself across my bed and ran into a corner and disappeared. I turned on a light and sniffed at the wall to find it, but I couldn’t figure out where it had gone.

  Finally one morning Father carried the cat upstairs and placed her, standing, on our floor. But she appeared shattered. Her gray fur was more matted and whitening on the tips. She had scars crisscrossing her body. A bulge protruded from her stomach. One eye looked lower than the other one. When I tried to touch her back, she snapped at me.

  “This isn’t Gloves,” I told Father.

  He scoffed. “You’re too involved in details. You’ve lost sight of the bigger picture.”

  I tried following her around the house as usual. But she never played or rested on my legs or explored anything except the front door, which she scratched at incessantly. We ignored each other and I grew lonesome watching her. Some days I couldn’t look at her at all. I retreated to my room; shut the door as Father required. I lay on my bed.

  Father had commented, “One of you might have grown allergic to the other during her recovery.”

  I missed her old self. Gloves One.

  “A souvenir,” I told Father. “A memory.” I had pains in my body that were new when I thought about her and medicine didn’t help me.

  One night Father came home carrying a pizza for dinner and Gloves ran between his legs while the door was open. She was very fast. Father gasped, handed me the hot pizza. I smelled the outside, felt the food warm against my hands. He hurried outside, where I wasn’t allowed, shut the door behind him, searched for her for a few minutes but he returned empty-handed.

  “She’s long gone,” he explained, shaking his head.

  The Story of Touching God

  I lived with strangers. People and creatures came in and out of my house at night. I didn’t know any of them. Sometimes in the evening, when I was lonely I closed my eyes, listened to their unfamiliar noise. Their proximity calmed me. I wasn’t alone anymore. I didn’t know why they visited. I had locked them out before but they always found a way inside. I didn’t interact with them. Sometimes I tried to recognize them in daylight.

  At night they whispered about me. “Did you see what she just did?”

  “She’s so strange.”

  I would open my eyelids; see blue, brown, yellow, or green eyes watching me. I studied them. I listened. I wanted to know them. They studied me. They listened. I didn’t know what they wanted. One day a gray cat visited and stayed. I found her splayed on my living room rug. I didn’t know what to do with her. I had never taken care of anything before. She needed food and water and she ignored the dangers of my body. She brushed my legs, rubbed my elbows, nibbled food from my ignorant fingers. We circled one another, smelling, nudging. I called her God. One day she allowed me to smooth her bristling fur and pry a claw. I was ecstatic until she broke into little, gray pieces, a puzzle I couldn’t fit together again.

  The strangers returned that night and swept God’s pieces up with a broom into a small, gray pile. They put her in a bag. As they were turning to leave they whispered to one another, “I told you she couldn’t be trusted.”

  “But I cared for her more than myself,” I yelled.

  “That’s not enough,” they answered. They shook the bag of God onto the floor in front of the door to my house. I wanted to cry. They shaped what was left of her into a cat. God suddenly stood, all in one piece, and walked out with the strangers on her wobbly legs.

  I hid my first story deep inside one of my books so Father couldn’t find it.

&nbs
p; Chapter Two

  While I was thinking about Gloves I heard Father’s car, an old white Ford, arrive. Father presented me with black heeled shoes and a blue silk dress that shimmered with available light and flowed softly over everything. I tried it on immediately in the bathroom near the kitchen. I flung my blue jeans and old plaid shirt on the floor. In the mirror the dress shrugged along my elbows, thighs, scars, and bumps. It felt lovely against my skin.

  “All these beginnings are deceptive,” I told him when I emerged.

  “Those books seem to be helping you. Your vocabulary is improving immensely. Do you need more books?”

  I shook my head, turned around and around in the kitchen, feeling the watery dress splashing around me. “Are we going somewhere?”

  Father studied me expectantly. One eyebrow raised itself. “Where do you want to go, Mara?”

  “Anywhere, as long as I can wear this dress.” I was twirling in circles, the hem of the dress blew wide, floated in the air.

  “You know the world is a very difficult place.” He began his usual explanation. “So many disasters happen: wars, famine, shootings, rapes, killings, bombs. People lie, Mara. They tell you one thing when they really mean another. It’s complicated. They steal. They laugh at you and hurt you in ways you can’t even imagine.” Sometimes he outlined details from “current events,” a child set on fire, a mother buried alive, a city nearby whose young protestors were shot.

  “Nearby?” I had asked.

  “No,” he shook his head, “not close at all.” He must have heard the excitement in my voice.

  But I could remember some things and imagine some others. Father already admitted that. “What about the good events in the world? I have read stories about people’s generosity, caring, and hope, people trying to understand other people, people trying to help one another.” There were all those experiences waiting to be experienced. What about the lovely dress?