lucyoncolorado

In which I mustn't interfere with the horrors of nature...


There's a discarded porcelain basin sitting among tall grass in an abandoned lot, frequently used for dumping, near my house. From afar, I can see that it's heavy with a deep sink and a large ribbed area for drying dishes. I move closer to inspect if it's cracked. And I see a bundle wrapped in a blanket.

I pull on the edge of a blanket and reveal an infant inside, dead, with a dog leash wrapped around its neck. I untie the leash, toss it aside and pick up the body.

Back in my own house, I show it to my mother. She already knows about it, she explained, and if I don't want to get wrapped up in this, I best return the body to where I found it and replace the leash in exactly the same way.

I return to the empty lot, walk over to the basin again, only this time the leash is now wrapped around the neck of a second swaddled infant. This time the baby is still alive, but struggling, gasping for air.

I know that I'm not supposed to intervene. I'm like a nature photographer, filming a hyena eating a struggling gazelle. This is just how things are. I shouldn't have come here in the first place. I shouldn't have interfered. I need to put things back exactly as they were.

I set the struggling baby aside in the grass. I replace the dead one in the basin where I found it. Only I realize that the leash is now on the struggling baby's neck. I reach into my pocket and pull out one of Lucy's leashes and I wrap it around the dead baby's neck.

I walk away, leaving both of them in the field.

When I get home, I tell my mother what I've done. She says I'm a fool for using Lucy's leash- now it can be traced back to me. The authorities will think that I strangled the dead baby. I realize she is correct.

I return to the field a third time. I remove Lucy's leash from the neck of the dead baby in the basin neck. I remove the first leash from the neck of the struggling baby in the grass. Now relieved, the baby starts to cry. I replace the first leash around the neck of the dead baby, wrapping it tight. Then I wrap the body back up in the blanket and place its in the basin.

Then I turn to look at the struggling baby, crying and gasping in the grass. I turn around and start to walk back home, leaving the baby there. The baby will die, probably in the night, and that will be it.

All I can think of is what each moment must feel like. The baby is cold. The baby is suffering, second by second, gasping for air, hungry. I think of the gazelle, feeling the hyena rip its flesh.

I go back to the field a fourth time. The infant is now a few months old. I see it's a little girl. I pick her up, and she stops crying. I can see the marks on her neck from the leash that strangled her, but she appears fine. She has curly strawberry hair. I take her home.

I wonder if she'll be brain damaged. I give her a glass of milk and string cheese. She smiles. I feel immensely guilty, horrified with myself. How could I have left her there in the first place?

I'm suddenly incredibly stressed by this question. How did I leave a struggling infant alone in a field? I try to think of the logic behind it. There was some reason. I can't think of what it is. I'm suddenly terrified. How will I explain this to anyone? What will I do with this child? Could I really be such a terrible person as to go home and leave her there alone to die?

The anxiety wakes me up.

In which R is an animated Wolverine action figure...

I'm standing in front of a plantation house in what appears to be a dry forest of Indochina. A boy in saffron robes sleeps in a hammock hanging from the heavy columns of the shaded front porch. A student monk? Why is he here? I'm about to wake him when I'm called inside to lunch.

I sit at a long table with R's family as a servant places plates in front in front of us, dishes in the center. R is there, also his parents and his brother who has brought a visibly pregnant white woman with him, who he introduces as his girlfriend. My father is there as well. Conversation is strained and awkward.

The girlfriend is nervous. If she is to be either my sister-in-law or the mother of my niece or nephew then I should attempt to build some affection or ease between us. I smile at her. I tell her I'm sure we'll become good friends.

She leans forward to take a bite then spills a spoonful of dal in her lap. To show solidarity, I tilt my glass of wine and spill a few drops on my chest. We laugh and laugh.

She announces that she's carrying twins. A hush around the table. I break the silence.

"Wow V, that means you'll have four children soon."

"Six," he clarifies. "K and S are also pregnant, one more from each."

I turn up my wine glass, drink it all in one gulp dramatically. No one says anything. Six children from four different moms. Four of the children will be infants at the same time, the other two are already teenagers.

There's a pounding on the front door. I know who it is. A monster, come to get us. I know how to defeat it too. But it means exposing our secret in front of my father, in front of V's girlfriend.

A few more pounds, then wood smashing. The monster has broken through. He runs into the dining room, so fast he's just a streak of purple. He's tiny but stocky, maybe a foot high, and he leaps up into the air to attack us.

R jumps from his chair, into the air as well. On his way up, he transform himself, pulsating and shrinking until he is also a stocky foot high action figure. He is Wolverine. Blades extend from his knuckles.

Wolverine/R and the monster crash into each other, chests bumping together, midair. Then they fight. The tumult upsets the table, smashes into the chandelier, breaks through window, continues along the front porch. We all run outside and watch them as they tumble together down the hill of the front lawn, towards the forest.

My father is shocked. "Yes," I tell him. "R is also a Wolverine action figure. I didn't know how to tell you."

The boy monk wakes up from his nap. He steps out of the hammock and waves me over. He spreads the nylon netting open wide between his hands, then pops it out in front of him as if it were a bedsheet. It transforms into a vending cart. The boy steps behind it, ducks down, then reappears as a mustachioed paan wallah. He arranges tins and betel leaves on his cart. I notice the red spit stains dotting the porch.