I go to the creek out back behind my home to visit my dad among the hunted fawns and half-consumed rabbits. I see him everywhere. With brisk air and a sky threatened by rain, the wind causes the fur to ripple. Each strand mimics one from an alive animal. Then, the pulsing begins inside my head, and I’m forced to remember, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to remember. The wind begins to pick up, and the leaves blow uncontrollably, even tiny pebbles shift. I stare into my father’s eyes and wait for them to flicker, to show any sign of life, but nothing changes other than the direction of his fur as the wind patterns begin to break and go against itself, again, and again, and again.
#
The moment you died, my mother lost her mind. Right away, she would attempt to recreate it. She would lie down across the carpet in the living room, hair scattered through the paths curated by the carpet’s tufts. She would have my 6-year-old self ride my mini tricycle around the room until I hit her in the gut. She used to call it “traffic lights,” and she would say “green light,” signaling for me to pedal as fast as I could. Then, she would shout “red light,” where she would instruct me to continue at my speed. She would say it wasn’t fast enough until the pain that I felt in my legs would appear on my face. Until I was forced to stop by hitting her, and she would jolt from the impact, and I would sit there staring at my mother, trying to recreate the breathing pattern of a man hit by a truck. She would begin with a breath pattern that gradually decreased until she stopped breathing completely. After minutes of this reenactment, she would get up and pat me on the back.
“Good job, Maya,” she’d say in the same tone that someone would use after their child won a soccer game.
I wasn’t there on the day it happened, but I might as well have been. It felt like I was forced to relive it every day. She told me of the nightmares she would have and how, in her dreams, he would often be dressed as a kind of roadkill. A deer, she would often say, but sometimes it was a squirrel or a raccoon. Anything a car would continue racing by, without giving the roadkill a second thought.
“You know, animal and human roadkill aren’t so different. I mean, why should they be? Just because it’s smaller and doesn’t live the same as you shouldn’t mean that its life isn’t worth something,” she would say, pushing herself against the headrest of her bed, her arms swallowed in her pillows. I would hand her an Advil and a cup of water. She would stare deep into the blank spaces of her wall, and in the reflection in her glossy gaze, I could see the incident playing out, again and again, and again. Those were the same eyes cashiers at grocery stores would always say we shared. Please, please don’t say that.
“I know, Mom. It’s ok, go back to sleep,” I would respond, hoping that it would be enough to get her through the night, to get me through the night. I would tuck myself into bed and read the stories she used to read to me, skipping any words that extended outside of my vocabulary.
I remember once, we were driving home from the store. The street looked narrower than it usually did, and the air was consumed with the thick scent of my mother’s shampoo. I guess my face held a dismayed look, which prompted my mother to question me.
“What’s wrong, Maya? You look like your dad caught in headlights,” she said, readjusting her hand on the steering wheel and resting the other on the stick shift.
I quickly cocked my head in her direction.
“What did you just say?”
“I just said that you look like a deer caught in headlights. What’s going on with you?”
This was the first time I noticed the similarities that we shared. It scared me half to death, and the rest of me survived in denial, pretending that we were nothing alike. I looked at the stuffed fawn that my father had bought me one day when I was upset at him for leaving on a week-long work trip. I couldn’t think of a name for it, so my dad suggested ‘Amanda,’ after my mother.
I had brought it with me on the errand and watched its face change when the sun was blocked by the buildings and billboards. I marveled at how untouched its face would look when the sun cast a bright glaze across its surface, and how much that changed when the sun stopped shining.
I remember responding to my mother more insensitively than I would have liked.
“Why are you acting so cynical toward me now? I haven’t done a thing to prompt such nasty comments from you. It’s unfair,” she said.,
As if the air wasn’t suffocating enough, I covered Amanda’s eyes. It would be unfair for me to put her through this.
“I know, I’m sorry, Mom. It’s just hard. I miss being your little girl.”
“I’m sorry, Maya, that this is inconvenient for you. Jeez, I wish I could be as heartless as you one day,” she responded, as if it were something that she had been wanting to get off her chest for a while.
“That’s not fair. You know I miss Dad as well, and can you please stop doing that with the car? I’m getting motion sick.” I covered my eyes with my hand as my mother ignored my pleas and continued putting the car in drive and then back into reverse repeatedly. Each time, she’d inch forward until she heard a thump and then do the same backward. The bump became softer and softer as the raccoon began to give in and roll with the tire. She would always do this; she would always defend her actions by saying, “If it’s too far gone to be brought back to life, you might as well make sure that it is really dead.” All I thought was that it looked stupid. And thank god the road wasn’t busy.
#
I started indulging in my mother’s habits after a while. Not even on purpose, it happened as if it were natural. It’s the reason I started talking to you.
“Come on, Dad, don’t give me that look. It’s only been a few days since I last came to visit you.” I gave him a stupid look and let out a chuckle because I knew my dad really thought they were funny. I wanted to visit him on my fifteenth birthday. I had brought him a party hat to join in on the fun. It began to rain, and the wind grew stronger, pushing the hair across my face and shifting the leaves along the landscape of the creek; only the ones wedged under the dead fawn and the ones already damp from their proximity to the creek were able to stick. I came here often to see him. This space was a common hunting spot. Dead carcasses swarmed the whole area. People were cruel; they just left behind the animals they used to practice their shooting.
“What are you doing, Maya?” A voice echoed from behind me. I whipped my head around. It was my mom.
“Oh, I’m just looking for rocks for a school project,” I said, promptly removing my birthday hat and scrambling together a response that would sound believable.
“Why are you talking to that fawn, and why did you refer to him as ‘Dad’?” she said, practically smiling, knowing what would come out of my mouth next.
“I, I don’t know. It really feels like him.” By the look on her face, I knew she understood.
“Oh Maya, that’s my girl. We both miss him, don’t we?”
My mother guided me to the deer and motioned me to pick up its front legs, while she grabbed its hind legs. We gathered all the dead animals in the vicinity, tossed them into a pile, and my mother covered them with leaves, then pulled a box of matches from her pocket. She struck the match across the box a couple of times until it lit and blew a quick kiss at the animals before she threw the match onto them.
“Did you know that your father’s wish was to be cremated?”
“No, Mom, I didn’t.”
“I should have listened to his wishes sooner,” she said quietly.
We sat and watched as the bodies burned to dust, emitting a putrid odor. Just like it was supposed to be. My mother watched the trail of ashes scatter across the sky and she inhaled deeply. I looked over at my mother, and she looked back at me. We locked eyes, neither of us willing to break the stare.
#
We returned from the creek as if we were new people. I thought of Amanda, the fawn, the one I used to adore as a child. I thought of her beautiful coat and how soft her fur was. I thought of how vibrant she was when the sun draped across her face. I thought of how she would lie on my side table while I slept, and I would imagine her reading me the stories my mother wouldn’t. I had needed her guidance at that time.
When I got home, I went to my room and ran to the table, but nothing was there. I didn’t know why I even tried; she hadn’t been there for a long time.
#
My mother asked me if I wanted help with my homework, something she hadn’t asked me for a while. I went downstairs with my books and fancy pens with the sparkly ink. When I reached the living room, I saw her sitting at the table awaiting my arrival. And when I rounded the table and came face-to-face with her, she was smiling. Not the kind that alludes to happiness, but the one you make when you don’t know what else to do. Her teeth were gapped, with strands of fur caught between each one. In that moment, I felt something tickle the inner part of my lip. I ran my fingernail between the two neighboring teeth and removed a patch of deer fur wedged between them. The fur rippled with the movement of my hot breath. I swore I could smell the residue of the creek on the fur, and I heard the whispers that the wind sent with it, but as I pulled my hand away from my face for a better look, nothing was there. I looked at my mom, who seemed relieved, almost as if Dad had returned home. She laughed in that giddy voice of hers, the same one she used when my father would bring her flowers home after work, but the fur was no longer there. She just sat there, a smile smeared across her face, as she watched my face contort at these made-up images.
“It didn’t work for you, did it?” she asked.
I turned away without responding and ran to my room as quickly as I could. I slammed the door behind me and jumped onto my bed. The kind of jump you perform when you turn off the lights and are scared that the monsters will grab your feet from under the bed, something that I used to do as a child. I looked out the window and, in its reflection, didn’t see my eyes, but rather my mother’s.
“I HATE WHAT YOU’VE DONE TO ME,” I screamed at the reflection that displayed the faint outline of a child and yet reflected a woman who didn’t want to be this old yet.
After a while, I crept back down the stairs with my head hanging in defeat. I saw my mother, who was imagining herself chewing a mouthful of fur. She glanced at the seat across from her as if asking me to join her. I sat down and began chewing, feeling my jaw open and close to nothing until my mouth became drenched in juices, sloshing side to side, until the fur began to wedge itself in my teeth again. I was now indulging every bite, and my mother actually looked proud of me. I felt like her little girl again. But every bite I took came with more force, more anger, as I stared into my mother’s eyes and was reminded of the reflection I had seen. I stared at her without blinking, watching her chew. And with each bite I took, it became denser, and its texture began to change. The fur slowly turned into something rubbery, as if it were turning into flesh. I could feel the blood of my mother dripping down my throat like a wet cloth lying across a faucet. I didn’t hesitate or run my fingers in between my teeth where the flesh got stuck. I closed my eyes and immersed myself in each bite to the point where my jaw began to ache. I opened my eyes, and my mother smiled at me, and I smiled back. I even let out a chuckle. This, I enjoyed.
Erika Haxton is a hardworking 3rd-year English major at Trent University who has a profound interest in the arts, and in particular, creative writing. Within her work, she portrays different topics through imaginative, elusive imagery that extends off the page and becomes something vivid for the reader. She takes inspiration from the mundane within everyday life, as well as other inspirations like Ocean Vuong, Lana Del Ray, and Clarice Lispector. Erika uses writing as a way to understand life and all the complications that it brings, while presenting it in a way that is more fitting to all.
Featured image by Chris Greenhow on Unsplash.
