Swamp Foetus

  Slowly the dead began to turn toward me. Their faces lifted and the rotting cavities of their nostrils caught my scent. Their eyes shone iridescent. Faint starry light shimmered in the empty spaces of their bodies. They were like cutouts in the fabric of reality, like conduits to a blank universe. The void where Kali ruled and the only comfort was in death.

  They did not approach me. They stood holding their precious offerings and they looked at me - those of them that still had eyes - or they looked through me. At that moment I felt more than invisible. I felt empty enough to belong among these human shells.

  A ripple seemed to pass through them. Then - in the uncertain candlelight, in the light that shimmered from the bodies of the dead - Kali did move.

  The twitch of a finger, the deft turn of a wrist - at first it was so slight as to be nearly imperceptible. But then her lips split into an impossibly wide, toothy grin and the tip of her long tongue curled. She rotated her hips and swung her left leg high into the air. The foot that had trod on millions of corpses made a pointe as delicate as a prima ballerina’s. The movement spread her sex wide open.

  But it was not the petalled mandala-like cleft I had imagined kissing earlier. The pussy of the goddess was an enormous deep red hole that seemed to lead down to the center of the world. It was a gash in the universe, it was rimmed in blood and ash. Two of her four hands beckoned toward it, inviting me in. I could have thrust my head into it, then my shoulders. I could have crawled all the way into that wet crimson eternity, and kept crawling forever.

  Then I did run. Before I had even decided to flee I found myself falling down the stone staircase, cracking my head and my knee on the risers. At the bottom I was up and running before I could register the pain. I told myself that I thought the dead would come after me. I do not know what I truly feared was at my back. At times I thought I was running not away from something, but toward it.

  I ran all night. When my legs grew too tired to carry me I would board a bus. Once I crossed the bridge and found myself in Howrah, the even poorer suburb on the other side of the Hooghly. I stumbled through desolate streets for an hour or more before doubling back and crossing over into Calcutta again. Once I stopped to ask for a drink of water from a man who carried two cans of it slung on a long stick across his shoulders. He would not let me drink from his tin cup, but poured a little water into my cupped hands. In his face I saw the mingled pity and disgust with which one might look upon a drunk or a beggar. I was a well-dressed beggar, to be sure, but he saw the fear in my eyes.

  In the last hour of the night I found myself wandering through a wasteland of factories and warehouses, of smokestacks and rusty corrugated tin gates, of broken windows. There seemed to be thousands of broken windows. After a while I realized I was on the Upper Chitpur Road. I walked for a while in the watery light that fills the sky before dawn. Eventually I left the road and staggered through the wasteland. Not until I saw its girders rising around me like the charred bones of a prehistoric animal did I realize I was in the ruins of the hospital where I had been born.

  The hole of the basement had filled up with broken glass and crumbling metal, twenty years’ worth of cinders and weeds, all washed innocent in the light of the breaking dawn. Where the building had stood there was only a vast depression in the ground, five or six feet deep. I slid down the shallow embankment, rolled, and came to rest in the ashes. They were infinitely soft; they cradled me. I felt as safe as an embryo. I let the sunrise bathe me. Perhaps I had climbed into the gory chasm between Kali’s legs after all, and found my way out again.

  Calcutta is cleansed each morning by the dawn. If only the sun rose a thousand times a day, the city would always be clean.

  Ashes drifted over me, smudged my hands gray, flecked my lips. I lay safe in the womb of my city, called by its poets Lord of Nerves, city of joy, the pussy of the world. I felt as if I lay among the dead. I was that safe from them: I knew their goddess, I shared their many homes. As the sun came up over the mud and glory of Calcutta, the sky was so full of smoky clouds and pale pink light that it seemed, to my eyes, to burn.

  (1991)

  The Elder

  Everyone told Paul and Jen that they looked alike, too much alike to be married. While he was small and skinny, with contrary-minded wings of long dark hair, and she was tall and fair, they knew that they did have the same irritating pointed nose, the same long lips that couldn’t keep from smirking when they wanted to laugh at each other or themselves—which was most of the time. Afterward, they also knew that Bobby had looked nothing like either of them.

  The clearest memory Paul had of Bobby was from the night they brought the Christmas tree home. The first record he had made with the other four members of his band, under the name Suncolor Graph, had plummeted flaming darkly into what one critic had called “the angst-ridden, well-deserved depths of obscurity.” The second—brighter, sharper, and not nearly as interesting to Paul—had been snapped up by pale black-clothed deathrockers and teenyboppers alike, tasted and found sugar-coated satisfying and gobbled down and comfortably digested. So this was the first Christmas that Paul, Jen, and Bobby had spent in their big old-but-new house. The lofty raftered ceiling of the living room, the softly gleaming hardwood floors that Paul and Bobby, in their stocking feet, could skate on, the picture window that looked out on what Paul thought of as his own private patch of medieval forest—his forest and Bobby’s, where they were always on the lookout for wolves—all of these demanded a huge, spreading, magnificent Christmas tree full of green light and shadow.

  They put it up while Bobby was taking his afternoon nap, and festooned it with the shiny hollow balls and faded filigree traditions they had each brought from their separate childhoods. “Strand by strand,” Jen told Paul, “you are to hang the tinsel strand by strand this year.” He threw clumps of it at the high branches when she wasn’t looking. Last, they wrapped the tree with tiny fairy lights. The electric cord, red and green plastic strands entwined, made Paul think of a licorice whip.

  Jen brought Bobby in, and any traces of naptime crabbiness vanished when he saw the tree. He whispered “Pretty—pretty "with the uncritical amazement of a two-year- old, and the sweetness of his smile twisted Paul’s stomach a litde with the fear of someday losing it. Babies’ smiles are all the sweeter because they will never be so sweet again. Bobby’s mouth fell open in wonder, a smear of wet pink on his pale skin, and his dark, dark eyebrows shot up in arcs as though they would fly away, and he stretched his tiny star hands toward the tree soaring above him in its electric glory. Paul caught one of the hands in both of his own and kissed the wriggling fingers. All the colors of the tree’s spiderweb lights speckled Bobby’s eyes.

  “I don’t know if I want him,” Jen had said in the strange days after Bobby was born.

  Those were gray, anticlimactic days for her. The birth had been tearingly difficult, and she lay flat under antiseptic hospital sheets, borne on an ocean of dull pain. The doctor told Paul that maternal ambivalence was common after bad births; Jen might go through a time of hating Bobby before she could love him. But after she said that—“I don’t know if I want him”—Paul didn’t want Jen to hold Bobby or nurse him. He dreamed that she had poisoned Bobby with her milk. When they brought the baby home, even after Jen had begun to show interest and, later, love, Paul was fiercely protective of his son. He watched the baby sleeping in the fussy ruffled cradle that had once held Jen, making sure the tiny chest was rising and falling in the healthy rhythm of baby sleep. He traced the graceful sweeping arcs of the eyebrows, black even then, with his lips, making Bobby frown and murmur. When the delicately etched lips parted in a sucking motion, Paul would slide the tip of his finger into Bobby’s mouth, feeling the soft wetness close around him and draw him in.

  At last he let his best friends, the other band members, come to see the baby. Lally stood with his hands in the pockets of his long black jacket; he and Bobby regarded each other solemnly. Alix put out a tentative hand and touched
Bobby’s soft black hair with some degree of wonder, stroked it as delicately as he stroked the little golden bells on his drum set. And Zared, their insane singer, pushed his own masses of hair behind his ears and snatched Bobby out of the cradle and rolled gleefully with him on the floor, babbling in a tongue that both of them seemed to understand.

  When Paul started forward in a mixture of concern and jealousy, Mark Garou put a hand on his arm. “Let them have fun. That baby isn’t going to break. You might’ve let Jen carry him for nine months, but you’re his real mother, aren’t you?” Mark began to laugh. Paul turned to answer him, but looked back again, unable to take his eyes off Bobby.

  When Jen cut her hair short and spiked it out like a yellow dandelion, Bobby didn’t recognize her. He burrowed away from her outstretched hands into the folds of Paul’s jacket, screaming with a shrillness that made Paul’s heartbeat quicken and his breathing become jagged—if Bobby ever had true reason to scream like that, if he were terrified or in pain, Paul’s own life would be threatened. Their beings had become inextricably entwined, like Siamese-twin serpents, like the red and green strands of the string of Christmas tree lights.

  Butjen was no threat. Paul stroked Bobby’s fine hair, felt the front of his jacket growing damp with tears. Something dark flitted across the plane of Jen’s eyes, but was gone before it had fully shown itself.

  Later, as a peace offering, she baked a tray of cupcakes. Bobby forgot that his mother had become a stranger, squawked in delight, dug his fingers into his cake and smeared the pink icing across his round but- ter-cookie face. The doorbell rang—the rest of the band, probably, with their amazing cupcake radar—andjen left the kitchen. Paul ran warm water onto a paper towel and wiped Bobby’s face, kissed his nose, took a secret taste of frosting and baby spit from his chin. The thin pinkish stickiness was far sweeter than frosting alone.

  Paul awoke shuddering, with tears on his cheeks, staring suddenly wide-eyed into the electric patterns that shimmered and disintegrated against the blackness of the room. It had been the worst dream he’d ever had, the only dream that had ever made him want to die. Something had hurt Bobby, had mauled him, torn him, ruined his tiny perfect body. He remembered only the final, horrible image of the dream: a stream of blood trickling from the corner of Bobby’s soft mouth, Bobby’s dark blue eyes looking past Paul, past pain, looking into whatever emptiness awaited him.

  Jen was a deeply breathing hump, oblivious. Paul tripped over his slippers, kicked them out of the way. Down the hall, in Bobby’s room, baby animals cavorted in a pastel saturnalia on the walls. A nightlight shaped like Bugs Bunny filled the room with a safe glow, illuminated the crib.

  The empty crib.

  Every dreadful possibility—crazed Suncolor Graph fans turned kidnappers, Paul’s own childhood closet monsters, the idea that Bobby had never existed at all, had only been a figment of Paul’s son-wanting imagination—went through his mind in the ten seconds it took him to realize that Bobby knew how to climb out of his crib and must be somewhere in the house (drowned in the toilet, suffocated in the living room draperies, poisoned by a household cleanser we forgot to store out of reach, recited the morbid litany of his mind).

  He found Bobby curled up under the darkened Christmas tree, wrapped in his pink-and-blue blanket, his thumb in his mouth and his lips working sleepily around it. His other arm encircled a red package tied with a silver ribbon which contained a soft ragdoll boy. Paul knew he should take Bobby back to bed, but instead he found himself wanting to share the coziness, the dream of sleeping under a Christmas tree. He got a checkered blanket from the closet in the hall and lay down, angling himself in among the packages, molding himself to the curve of Bobby’s back. Bobby made a soft sleeping sound and nudged backward into the warmth until they were as close as a pair of spoons.

  Something made a hard uncomfortable line under Paul’s cheek. The electric cord of the Christmas tree lights, now lifeless, robbed of its thrumming blood. He pushed it away and nestled his face into Bobby’s hair. He smelled the exotic sharpness of balsam fir, the powdery sweet scent of his son. Safe.

  They slept.

  “I’m going to heat up your dinner. Okay, punkin? Chicken and peas?”

  “Chick-an-peeze! ”

  “You play here. I’ll be back in a minute.” Jen set Bobby down on the shiny wooden floor that reflected back the lights of the Christmas tree, gave him his basket of alphabet blocks, and left the room.

  Paul was upstairs in the bathroom, taking a piss and making faces at himself in the mirror that covered the rear wall. Priceless knowledge for self-torture, later.

  In the kitchen, Jen broke the seal on the jar of baby food, scooped the savory mush into Bobby’s clown-faced bowl, and set it to heat in the microwave.

  Paul flushed the toilet upstairs.

  Bobby played with the big plastic blocks for a few minutes, building colored spires and toppling them ruthlessly. Bored, he left the blocks scattered across the floor and crawled under the tree, among the shiny presents. He hugged the package containing the ragdoll boy, not knowing what was inside but sharply aware that it was something for him, something good. He wished he could open it now. Instead, he searched among the packages. Once he had found a candy cane there. His fingers felt something thin and pliable. He tugged at it, pulled it out from under the silver-sprinkled white bed- sheet draped around the base of the tree.

  Licorice whip!

  Bobby laughed and pulled harder. More and more of the licorice appeared. He had never seen such wondrous candy, red and green and as long as forever. His daddy must have hidden it here for him, the way he had hidden the candy cane.

  Jen set Bobby’s plastic spoon and milk tumbler on the tray of his high chair.

  Paul started down the stairs.

  Bobby put the licorice whip in his mouth and sucked on it, then bit. It wasn’t as soft as other licorice he’d had, or as sweet. He bit harder.

  Just before his teeth met, he saw the Christmas tree towering above him like a huge rainbow traffic light, red and green and marvelous. Then everything turned to jagged black-and-white streaks and jittering, ripping pain, and through the hard electric haze he saw the tree falling toward him in a rush of sparkling color, but he could not open his mouth to scream.

  “It’s a wonder the tree was still standing,” Jen said, and gave a shrill, strange laugh. Her hands went to her strand of pearls, glowing like the ghosts of babies against her black dress, and twisted. Paul stood awkwardly in his too-large suit, the same suit he had been married in. The ends of his tie hung limp against his rumpled jacket, and his hair straggled damply across his cheeks. He had been sleeping in the darkened bedroom since they had returned from the funeral two hours ago. He did not know how much longer he could bear the rancid taste in his mouth, but brushing his teeth didn’t help, and getting drunk would be unbearable.

  “He didn’t hurt the tree,” Jen said again, wondering- ly. “All the balls are still on. The branches aren’t even scorched.” It was true. The tree stood as tall and proud as ever; the ornaments reflected the room and its two dark, soggy inhabitants in miniature like colored fishbowls; the tinsel glistened and stirred. The tree was dark; that was the only difference.

  “And the way his mouth was burned, the way his tongue was...burned, I thought—” She hitched in a great, dry sob and was silent.

  “Jennifer, Jen,” said Paul. He couldn’t think of anything more to say. He knew he should go to her, hold her, give her strength and draw strength from her. But neither of them had any strength to share. Maybe she was hysterical. Maybe he should slap her. “I don’t know if I want him,” she had said when Bobby was born.

  “You got your wish,” he said softly, and took a step toward her. Perhaps sensing his sudden, helpless fury, Jen stepped aside, giving Paul a clear view of the tree.

  At the base of the tree was a frozen tableau of life. Jen had unwrapped Bobby’s presents and arranged them under the tree, among the other packages. Three plush
animals—pink, blue, yellow patches, desperately bright. A tiny red rocking horse, a spidery tower of Tinkertoys. In the center of the tableau, sprawled in a heap of broken ribbons and shredded wrapping paper, was the soft ragdoll boy. He lay as if his arms and legs and his cloth back were broken, weighed down by the empty years ahead, never to be tangled in the private warmth of Bobby’s blanket, never to be anointed by the sweet wetness of Bobby’s sleeping mouth.

  “If he was here—” said Jen. “If he could see, he’d want them there. Put another string of lights on, Paul, I can’t stand to see it dark—” Then it was as if all the air had suddenly been squeezed out of her. She gave a huge gagging heave and doubled over. Choking, with her arms wrapped around her stomach, she backed out of the room.

  Paul picked up the ragdoll boy and tucked the limp little body under his jacket. They had stored the extra strings of lights in the hall closet. The box was on top of the checkered blanket that he and Bobby had shared, the night they had slept together under the Christmas tree. The blanket hadn’t been washed. He took it too.

  He looped two strings of lights carelessly around the tree, shaking branches, knocking fragile glass ornaments away. Some of them shattered on the wooden floor. Paul crunched the eggshell-thin pieces under his feet. Finally he plugged the lights in and sat on the floor, squinting his eyes to make the colors of the lights run together, trying to see the last thing Bobby had seen. The tree, far above, towering and shimmering.

  Bobby’s face had been marred. Streaks of dried blood were baked onto his chin, and the skin at the corners of his mouth had been charred black, and even the hairs of his eyelashes and his elegantly arching eyebrows had been burnt. But the look on his face, before the morticians with their sickly gardenia stench and their jars of orange puttylike makeup had turned it into the deathmask of a baby clown, had not been one of pain. It had been a look of wonder.