FOSTER MOTHER

DIRECTIONS FOR THE SMALL:

YOU’LL HAVE TO BOTTLE feed it. Give it plenty of strokes and hugs until it’ll follow no one but you. Don’t let it get too obstreperous. That can happen when no other big ones of its own kind are around. Then hand it over and leave the rest to us.

You may name it if you feel so inclined though a name is not necessary. We’ll give it a name of our own choosing if we need one.

Don’t expect too much. They have small brains, about the size of two lima beans. As far as we know, their smiles might not be smiles. Their tears, not tears. Though they bleed, they don’t feel pain as we do.

Afterward, let it go on with what it has to do. Go live a different story someplace far from here. Don’t come back.

Remember it belongs to us.

And so I’m thinking: Lester? Jester? Or, on the other hand, Baladin? Balladeer? He should have a name the opposite of what he will become. It might stand him in good stead, and there might be a little bit of hope.

Probably nobody will ever get to know the name except for the two of us.

He’ll have to find his own kind of joy by himself. Best to have a joyful name. At least that. And best we laugh a lot (if that is laughing). Tickle and tussle. Dance.

They call him, “it.” The sex is not important to them.

He was absolutely the cutest thing I ever saw. They start out small. Just like us. Little chubby goat-boy. Little chubby donkey-boy. Loves me already. As who else is there but me? I know I mustn’t take it personally.

But now, later, little skinny boy and even more goat-like and still the cutest thing I ever saw. Now he calls me Mush, Mushka, Mash…. I don’t remember how that started. I call him Kookie, Cookie….

I think he should have a musical instrument. Something that makes a deep bass sound. Tuba or some such? Or the biggest viol there is? Except he’s still too small. I think trumpet. That’ll sound out nicely from mountain to mountain, though it is a bit on the military side and reminds me of those others who are in charge of us.

See us — both of us leaping, though I’m not as good at it as he is. See us on cliff edges, naked or almost. Well, he is, the sun browning us. See them, pointing up at us and looking pleased, folding their hands around their important papers, all the paraphernalia of their status and their jobs hanging about them. They wear so much nobody knows what they look like. Are they us or are they some sort of alien?

He depends on me. In the beginning I even chewed his food for him. Better than trying to cut it. They didn’t give me a grinder.

We take long walks holding hands. When he gets tired I carry him piggyback. I made him booties. They don’t supply footwear or clothes. They say he grows too fast for them to bother. They say he doesn’t need shoes. (Actually, they don’t supply much of anything.) We fish. We pick flowers. By now he knows the names of all the ones around here. They say he’s not smart enough for that, but he is.

We brought home a gopher snake. We hope it stays and lives under our shack. We named it Squiggly. We planted an apple tree. Already he says, “See my tree.” We named it Appy.

When he’s happy he wiggles all over. They said that wasn’t happiness. They said he can’t feel much more than rage. I think that’s what I’m here for, to make sure it’s rage. What he says most of all is “Let’s get going.” They think I’m too old to “get going” with him. They think I’ll hold him back and that will make him angry, but even when he’s about to roar at night I’m awake before it happens. I hear his first whimper so I’m by his side before it can turn nasty. I sing to him, long song stories. “That’s a Ballad,” I say. “That’s what I named you, Balladeer.”

We live at the top of a strategic pass. He’s supposed to get to know the whole region so he can patrol it. We climb to the mountain tops on each side, and across to the dangerous drop-off. He’ll be able to leap off that one of these days, but now he’s still too little to leap streams. We take off our booties and wade. (He goes through booties like you wouldn’t believe.)

It’s a paradise up here. If, that is, one likes one’s paradise steep and rocky, with boulders to climb around or over. A paradise if one likes it rugged. If one likes to slip and slide, and suddenly, flop! so, now and then, be on the ground looking straight up into the, usually, blue sky.

He gets into everything. I brought out my suitcases and shoes and hats. They forgot he might have wanted toys, but — well — when did a young one ever need toys when there are pebbles and sticks and flat pieces of slate, pots and pans, packing boxes? And I have paper and crayons. Pieces of cloth. I know he’s male (or he seems so to me) but I made him a rag doll.

What energy! I wonder what his real mother would have done with him? Of course she’d have been much stronger.

Frankly, I think he knows a lot more than even I can guess. I don’t need to tell him not to show his smarts. I think he’s hiding them even from me. On the other hand, we’re supposed to show off his athletic prowess. He’s still awkward. What can you expect from somebody growing so fast?

He has so much spark and sparkle. Sometimes I call him Bright Eyes. Brains like beans! I don’t believe it.

But I worry. His future can’t possibly be good. I think he will die a bad death well before his time. One never wants that for a creature one has raised from birth.

I wonder if we should run away. Pretend we got lost in the hills. But he’s too little for that now.

Could I take him back to where he came from? There must be some sort of a mother somewhere. Unless he was made some odd scientific way.

I’m wondering more and more why I was picked for this job? I volunteered, but so did lots of others. There must be something special about me, but special in a good way or a bad way? Probably something inept. A stupid side. What is it I don’t see? It’s most likely the most important thing of all. By the time I find out, it’ll probably be too late.

But I wonder if my looks had anything to do with it? Is that why we look alike? And what about my own teeth? They stick out, like his do. I always look as if I’m getting ready to bite somebody. Anyway, I don’t care why they picked me. Look at us, how we get along. He’d sacrifice himself for me, and I’d do the same for him. I would have the minute he was put in my arms, squeaking and so tiny and vulnerable.

I had to promise to keep him a secret, and I had to sign that I was aware my own life was in danger, but, I wonder, from him or from them?

What does a weapon need to know? I don’t suppose much. Certainly not the names of flowers. Probably how to obey simple commands. A few words of everyday life might come in handy. How to snarl.

Anyway, somebody has to care for creatures when they’re juveniles, don’t they? — no matter what they are to become.

They never told me what he’d end up being. I see hardly any signs. Perhaps that’s where my stupidity lies. As far as I’m concerned he’s exactly the baby I always wished I’d been able to have. I think we even look alike. I see myself in the way he smiles. The words he knows are my words. But I suppose, when I’ve given him over and he’s all grown up, I won’t recognize him at all.

So far he’s only a little bit scaly, his toenails only a little bit too horny. You hardly notice. I wonder when his teeth will be growing? Now he’s just losing them. We put them under his pillow. (He does have a pillow. He carries it with him all the time. He’d take it outside if I let him.) And he gets a treat in the morning. Not money. What would we do with money way out here?

I see the eyeteeth peeking out. Maybe they’ll all be eyeteeth pretty soon.

They said they question his ability ever to follow more directions than three in a row, but already he remembers more than I do. He counts to a hundred with no trouble. He loves to yell it out, but I tell him to whisper. I have a hard time holding him back. He has a loud, echoing voice and loves to use it. I suppose he won’t need a trumpet, he already sounds like one.

Sometimes I tell him his name should be, “Let’s Go.” And he tells me mine should be, “Wait a Minute.” But I think I’ve been too much: Wait a Minute. I think we should run away now. At first I thought we should wait until he’s larger and stronger, but that might be a mistake. I think we should run away while he’s still easy to handle.

“Come on, Let’s Get Going,” I say. “Get your pillow. We’re going on a trip. You’ll like it.”

He likes it already and we haven’t even started. He’s running round and round the kitchen table, leaping up on it every now and then. He couldn’t do that last year. He’ll be leaping wider streams than I can. I hope he waits for me. I’ll give him the heavy backpack to hold him down.

I don’t say, “Save your energy.” He has plenty for anything.

He’s singing. Dumb things like, “Here we go loop-de-looping-loo.” I say, “Come kiss me before we get going. A big fat wet one. Give me a big fat hug.”

I have a funny feeling. Worried. I’m not exactly a knowledgeable person — about anything, even the wilderness we’re on the edge of right here. They probably picked me for that ignorance.

So we get going, him skipping and trumpeting as usual. Every now and then he shouts and jumps up and down out of sheer joy. He’s as if on springs, backpack and all. I don’t know how he does it.

Pretty soon I’m going to tell him we’re on a secret trip and he should keep quiet.

We go up into the treeless places and over the cliffs. It’s his turn to be helping me. He leaps me over streams. We have to hurry. We have to get down into the trees before they come to check on us.

As soon as we get well into them, I stop to give him a lesson (I need a rest anyway). I say that, if we get found out, he should leave me there to face them alone and go hide by himself. I say, “Those rolls of paper they hold on to all the time could be weapons.” I explain weapons. I explain how he’s tough, but not that tough. Besides, they’re discovering new weapons all the time. No matter how strong and scaly he gets, they’ll have found something to destroy him with. “Leap a lot,” I say. “Side to side. And their weapons might be silent. They might look like pieces of paper. They have all those jewels. Those might be weapons, too.”

I see in his eyes that he understands. (Are his eyes getting smaller or is he getting larger all around them?) How could they say his brain was the size of two beans? He sparkles with intelligence. And love. As I’m telling him all these things (that I’d not thought I’d have to do till later) he holds my hand with his sandpapery one. I raise it to my lips and then he does the same to mine, clunk against his teeth. “Balladeer,” I say, “but don’t sing now.”

“Ho dee ho dee ho dee ho,” he says, but softly. It’s a joke.

We sleep that night curled around each other. We always sleep that way. He doesn’t keep me warm. He never has. I’ve suspected for a long time that he’s cold-blooded. He’s so sluggish in the morning, but of course I was, too, at that age. I just couldn’t wake up. My mother always had to come in and shake me. Yelling and knocking at my door just didn’t do it. All that growing takes energy.

It happened just as I was afraid it would. We got caught. He was getting too big to hide even here in the trees.

Of course they picked morning, and an especially cold one. It’ll take him a while to realize anything. It’ll prove to them all the more his brains are beans.

We ran — started to. He pulled me along with him, but there was no direction to go in. They were all over. Then he let go of me and did as I’d told him, jumped a great leap. Over all of them. I’d no idea he could do that and he wasn’t even warmed up yet. He trumpeted. He was over the cliff, down and going.

One of them stayed to keep me prisoner but the rest went after him. I saw he was all right at the bottom of the cliff, leaping and leaping. Trumpeting and skipping. For him it was still as much fun as the first part of the trip. As if this was what he was born for and maybe he was. Or at least it’s sort of what he was born for. Certainly for leaping about the forest knocking down trees, pulling up bushes and tossing them into the air. I’m wondering if I was born for this, the other side of it, to stand here handcuffed while he cavorts away, down the cliffs? I wish he’d carried me off with him, but I told him to go. I waved him away. “You’re on your own.” I kept yelling it and, “Love you,” until I couldn’t see him anymore.

He knocked down three of those keepers as he leaped away. One got stepped on. None got killed which is more than I can say about what they want to do to him, what with all these weapons. Or what might be weapons. He doesn’t know the difference between them and the enemy —whoever that is. I wish I had thought to tell him about the downtrodden. I know whose side he’d be on if he knew about us, but there’s no rage in him toward anybody and never has been. There’s only joy.

“Dead!” they said, but they’ve never brought any pieces of him back. Not even a claw nor a greenish scale to prove it. You’d think they would have.

I knew, though, whether he was dead or not, they’d say he was. They won’t want anybody but themselves out there looking for him, but I think he may be roaming yet. On a rampage. On a love rampage. Because he loves me.

I’ll never know. I don’t want to. Yes, I do. I’ll go hallooing off myself. They won’t bother stopping me. Maybe I won’t find him, but, if he’s out there, he’ll find me.

They tore him from my arms. (Or, more like it, they tore me from his arms. He was bigger than me by then and stronger. My skin came off on his claws. Metaphorically speaking, that is.) Of course all this might be what was supposed to happen from the start: That he should love me and that he should lose me and that they should say he’s dead. I only just figured it out right now, which shows how slow I am.

But this is not the end. He’s out there. And he has a right to be. Trumpeting. Rearing up. I know exactly what he’s doing. It’s what we always did. Peering at flowers and bugs and such. Watching snakes. Eating berries. Maybe finding a bee tree and getting honey. Sitting quietly until some animal or other comes to see what he is. And still sitting, letting the animal, whatever it be…(once we sat like that for a fox and three kits) letting it be, come close and then letting it walk away, safe.

If you come upon him don’t be frightened. Of course by now he’ll be much bigger, but just sit down calmly and sing something. He likes music. Smile.