I was so deep in my book-world I didn’t even notice how dark it had gotten until I was squinting to make out the words. I looked up to find myself alone. No other kids around. My mom often used the playground as daycare, but she usually came back for me by the time the streetlights came on. They buzzed from their own electricity and the swarms of night bugs caught in their tractor beams.
A clatter from a nearby garbage can made my head swivel, and I caught a shadow darting across the woodchips. Thick body. Long tail. Scuttling movement. A rat. One became two, then four, then too many to count, a permutation from a nightmare. I was surrounded.
I ran to the jungle gym and climbed the rope ladder to the highest platform, trying not to think about all the hands, the boogers, or the time I’d seen a kid take a turd out of his diaper and smear it inside the tube slide. I knew no one cleaned the playground equipment, unless you counted rain, which I didn’t. Still, the dirty platform seemed a safe haven compared to the madness down below.
Shadows tumbled out of the trash, rippled over the soccer field, ran the baseball diamond. A rat jumped onto the bench where I’d been sitting and tread over my book, making the pages turn. I curled into a ball, closed my eyes, and rocked back and forth to create an island of calm.
***
Mom always said that was the night she realized something was really wrong with me. Per her, I’d always been a strange child, with my obsessive reading, self-administered haircuts, and selective mutism, but that night on the playground, I had my first major freakout. I didn’t hear her when she called up to me, so she had to climb onto the platform. And when she touched me, I became a wild animal, screaming, clawing, kicking, punching, totally lost to the world. She said it took an hour for her to drag me down.
***
At my first psychiatric appointment, I scribbled my testimony on a piece of paper. It was because of the rats.
“There were no rats,” said Mom.
The reason I struggled to talk back then is because I could never find the right words. The world was too big, too vague, too abstract — kind of like knowing the playground was dirty, but not yet having a clear understanding of germ theory. Writing things down helped, and I was pretty proud of myself when I managed to explain by way of an addendum: Just because you didn’t see the rats doesn’t mean they weren’t there.
Mom seemed satisfied when the doctor scribbled the word: hallucinations on his notepad.
***
It would be a decade before I could prove the rats’ existence, when they all suddenly died, leaving the park carpeted in grey fur. Rat fall: an abundance of rodent carcasses, typically preceding the onset of plague.
I’d gone through a Black Death phase back in middle school, reading every book in the county library on the subject. My suspicions were confirmed when my little sister got sick.
My mom’s nurse friend suggested bringing the fever down with a tepid bath. As mom lowered Sissy’s small body into the water, I noticed an egg-sized mound on her neck. It wept with pus.
“That’s a bubo,” I said. “She needs antibiotics.”
“You’re not just a slut, but a doctor now?” Mom sneered, looking at my ballooned belly.
I ignored her. If there was anything worse than being sixteen and pregnant, it was bubonic plague. The cause? Infected fleas.
To confirm Sissy’s diagnosis, I left to find my cat, aptly named Fleabag. After much searching, I found him in the den, under the couch, dead. That’s when I noticed a smell coming from the walls. More rats.
There is life everywhere. Sometimes you don’t notice it until it’s gone. Sometimes it’s because you’re not looking. And sometimes it’s because life is the size of a sesame seed and so fast and spry it easily could feast on you and spring off into the couch cushions before you’d even know what happened. I had to get out of there, lest I become flea fodder.
I doused myself in bug spray, put on knee-high socks, thick maternity sweatpants, and a long-sleeved turtleneck to cover as much skin as possible. Then I threw some belongings into a backpack and grabbed the sack of camping gear Mom’s ex-boyfriend had left in the downstairs’ closet. I felt like a pregnant Santa Claus as I hauled everything outside into the eighty-degree heat. Christmas in July, but instead of gifts and good cheer, everyone dies.
I paused on the stoop, thinking about Sissy, my mom, the life I was leaving behind. It hadn’t been a loving or stable home, but it was my home, all I’d known.
I found a piece of sidewalk chalk Sissy had left on the stoop and drew a plague cross across the front door. After a customary moment of silence, the being in my belly spurred me into action with a swift kick, reminding me that time was of the essence. I was responsible for someone besides myself now, wanted or not.
***
The first documented bubonic plague (aka The Black Death) occurred in the sixth century, ravaging the Roman Empire, taking approximately fifty million lives before it waned. Then, in the fourteenth century, it gained momentum again, moving westward from China via trade routes.
Scientists don’t fully understand the conditions that allowed the Black Death to spike so quickly, sometimes killing up to ten thousand people a day. What we do know: Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes bubonic plague, is spread by a vector, the rat flea.
When Yersinia pestis infects the gut of a flea, it replicates so rapidly that it causes intestinal blockage. Every time the flea feasts on a new host (rat, cat, person, etc.) it regurgitates the previous blood meal into the bite wound, transmitting Y. pestis.
For thousands of years, people blamed the Jews, burning them at the stake. Come to find out, it was really the barf of a flea.
***
I made it to the library just before it closed. Ms. Denks stood behind the checkout desk, barely looking up from her phone. “Hi, Hillary. I have those books on Deep Time you ordered.”
“Not today,” I said. “On the eve of the apocalypse, I’m thinking poetry. While I use the restroom, would you curate a pile? Definitely Dickinson. And Mary Oliver.”
“What’s gotten into you?” she asked, now giving me her full attention. “Why are you carrying that giant sack? Why are you dressed like that in this heat? Is everything okay?”
There was no time for chitchat. I left the sack by her desk and shut myself inside the bathroom. Then I found the electric razor at the bottom of my backpack and started buzzing. I always kept my hair clipped short to avoid men, but I would need to go even shorter to avoid fleas. Once I had a nice cue ball look, I applied bug spray to my scalp and used the facilities. It would be a while before I had the luxury and convenience of indoor plumbing.
Ms. Denks gasped when I left the bathroom.
Dutifully, she had made me a pile of books. I handed her my library card as a formality.
“What’s going on, Hillary?” she asked, scanning my card. “Is everything okay at home? Do you need help?”
“My sister has the plague,” I told her.
“I know people are concerned about all the dead rats, but there’s no reason to believe— ”
Her phone, sitting on the counter beside her, emitted a shrill alert. She glanced at the screen and her eyes went wide.
“The National Guard will probably quarantine the city soon. Get some bug spray, Ms. Denks. And avoid residential areas. The highest concentration of infected fleas is likely on domestic rats, and they’re looking for new hosts as we speak.”
I went into the Children’s Room and emptied the board books out of the Radio Flyer wagon. My mother regularly called me an ox, but the camping sack was heavy, and I still had to stop at the store for water, nonperishable food, and as much flea repellent as I could get my hands on. I loaded my belongings into the wagon.
“Be well, Ms. Denks,” I said, having a feeling I’d never see her again.
She didn’t even look up from her phone.
***
Fascinations (an abridged list, in no particular order): Metaphysics, ghosts, aquatic mammals, octopi, squids, rainforests, earthquakes, tsunamis, Hinduism, Buddhism, fungi, bats, bees, ants, the migration of birds, spider webs, fractals, astronomy, astrology, geology, geometry, molecular gastronomy, forensics, unsolved mysteries, serial killers, neuroscience, psychology, epidemiology, the Renaissance, the Salem Witch Trials, activist art, origami, haiku, Shakespeare, circus freaks, communes, cults, evolution, language, water, archeology, ancient Greece, ancient Rome. And my favorite subject: mythology.
I’ll admit it’s possible that what happened in the woods with the Goddess was all in my head, but then again, I sort of believe everything is.
***
My part of the planet was quickly rotating away from the sun as I dragged my wagon through the old quarry at the edge of the city. Making it this far had already been an Odyssey. I’d seen images I was desperate to forget, lines of cars clogging the arteries to the hospital, people abandoning their vehicles with listless loved ones in their arms, more than one shirtless man stumbling deliriously through the streets doing the “danse macabre”, bejeweled in erupting sores.
I was famished, hot, sweaty, and exhausted. There was no way I’d have time to clear an area and set up the tent before nightfall. And even though the quarry was fairly remote, with little brush for rodents to dwell, the idea of sleeping on the ground unconcealed felt risky. That’s when I noticed a water tower, encircled by a high platform with a crisscrossed railing to keep me from rolling over the side. Being elevated during a plague felt like a better decision, the climb notwithstanding. I sprayed all my belongings again, hid the wagon, and journeyed up into the sky using a thin, rusty ladder, every step up the rungs reminding me how very pregnant I was.
My legs were leaden by the time I reached the top. I rolled onto the platform, leaned back against the water tower, and rewarded myself with half a granola bar and half a bottle of water, saving the rest for morning. A pink, fluorescent line highlighted the horizon. The distant city flickered with lights. I didn’t want to think of the chaos, the suffering. I didn’t want to think how I’d likely give birth to this baby, due any day now, alone in the woods.
I crawled around the platform on all fours until I discovered the moon on the other side, a luminous scythe. I turned on my side, mimicking the shape. As I sunk into sleep, I chose memories I’d take with me: My little sister in the bathtub with a beard of bubbles. My cat’s purr, vibrating against my chest. A package of Twizzlers, wrapped in newspaper comics, set on the kitchen table by my mother each year on my birthday. Ms. Denks, always ready with my piles of books. Tiny flowers pushing through sidewalk cracks. Gasoline rainbows in puddles of water.
***
My mother used to say I was heartless because I never cried, but I liked to believe what Charles Darwin had to say on the subject: weeping is the habit of insane people and idiots. According to him, the act of crying is for babies to get attention, and serves no purpose in mature, well-adjusted adults. Who was my mother to challenge the father of evolution?
Why should I have cried when my cousin, Geoffrey, was sent to war? He’d enlisted for the Marines. Didn’t he understand that was a distinct possibility?
Why should I have cried when my old Mee-Maw died? She ate pureed beef, used a walker with tennis balls on the feet, and only pooped once a week (if she was lucky), and that was with the help of a Senna laxative. Her quality of life was atrocious. As I saw it, she was lucky to have had eighty years. Before the nineteenth century, people rarely lived half that long.
Should I have cried after my mother’s then-boyfriend came into my room that night, threatening to break my neck if I made a sound? What good would it have done? It wouldn’t have stopped him. It wouldn’t have stopped the seed. It wouldn’t have stopped my mother from blaming me.
When you’ve read as much as I have, you come to learn that the story of humankind is laden with tragedy. It astounds me how much people whine. Don’t they know life tends to suck? Pain, failure, and loss are unavoidable, part of the human condition. Instead of lamenting, I try to take a long view, following the threads as they unfurl to reveal the unintended consequences: my cousin coming back from war with a bionic leg and a new lease on life. My extended family getting together for the first time in years for my grandmother’s funeral. My mother finally kicking her boyfriend to the curb. At the time, I still wasn’t sure what to make of the new life forcing my umbilicus to protrude, but I was sure the experience of motherhood would change me in ways I could not yet imagine. You can’t have sandy beaches without the death of mountains.
***
I went into the forest with no expectations, no long-term plan. Day by day, I whispered to my belly. Day by day.
The flea collars around my ankles flopped against my hiking boots as I followed a path, worn down to dirt by the thick tires of mountain bikes. Behind me, the Red Flyer wagon shifted precariously over roots and rocks, not an easy pull. I looked up, admiring the trees — tall, with a healthy summer canopy. They were so thick that I soon lost track of time, unable to follow the sun’s arc across the sky. Had I been walking fifteen minutes or several hours? I had no idea.
Even the most serious mountain biker had to head back to civilization at some point, and it soon became obvious I’d reached the outer loop of the dense trail system. I took a deep breath and charged into the forest, bushwhacking, stopping frequently to hoist the wagon over branches, up embankments, and around brambles, moving steadily upward into the hills. My intuition told me not to stop. Not yet.
Finally, I came to a clearing. I dropped the wagon handle, let the backpack fall from my shoulders, and propped myself up against the sack. As I snapped into a Slim Jim, I took stock of the area. Flat enough for a tent. Dry, but not too dry for a fire. I looked up, pleased to see a nice break in the awning and blue sky, meaning I had plenty of time to set up camp before I lost light. The only thing missing was water. I could only survive a few more days with my supply, and it was becoming harder to ration my intake.
At the time, I didn’t believe people could manifest things into existence, so I was skeptical when I heard it. I followed the sound to its source and found an outpour from a fissure at the base of a steep, rocky incline. A natural spring. The difference between life and death. I reached out and felt the frigid water move over my hand and slide between my fingers, proving to myself it was real. Then came another sound, high and bubbly, not dissimilar to the water. Laughter.
Using the spring’s meandering stream as my guide, I made my way downhill, stepping gingerly over wet rocks. Soon, my stream was joined by other capillaries, funneled into one vein, gaining girth and speed until it disappeared over a cliff. I could hear the soft rumble of the falls below. Once again, laughter rose over the water, this time a chorus. Supporting myself between two sturdy trees, I leaned over the edge and peered down into the pool.
A group of pre-pubescent girls splashed each other in the shallows while women bathed, their heads bobbing as they treaded water. On the rocky shore slept a pack of dogs. Seven. I scanned the area and found a pile of tunics, sandals, bows, and arrows. The scene was exactly how I imagined the story of Actaeon, when he accidentally happened upon the Goddess, Artemis, bathing with her nymphs. Was it possible? I’d already suspended reason by manifesting water.
I studied the faces of the women in the pool. Not a goddess among them. I’d know, wouldn’t I? Where was she, then?
Realization dawned. If this were the story…then I’d be Actaeon.
I ducked as an arrow grazed the top of my bald head.
The Goddess already had another arrow locked and loaded by the time I turned to face her. I thrust my belly forward.
“You’re a girl,” she said, the golden arrow aimed at my forehead.
“Well…” If there was ever a time to hold my tongue, it was now.
“Well, what?”
The words gathered in my throat, wanting to spill out.
“Well…what?” Her eyes flashed.
“I don’t identify with either gender.”
“Have you not the parts of a woman?”
I nodded. “Assigned at birth.”
“Did you not consort with a man?”
“He…” It took effort not to look away. “Consorted with me.”
She lowered her bow. Her eyes, hazel like the woods, softened. “Sweet child.”
***
According to mythology, immediately after this Goddess was born, she helped her twin brother, Apollo, into the world, and then went off to Mount Olympus to make some requests of her father, Zeus, King of the Gods. Apple of his eye, the precocious young goddess would get everything she asked for and more. First and foremost, she didn’t ever want to experience the appalling horror she’d witnessed as her mother’s midwife. She’d attend to women during childbirth should they call upon her, but she herself would remain chaste. She wanted to be free to run through the woods and climb mountains with her friends. She wanted to wear sensible clothing and possess the finest weaponry for hunting. She wanted to be luminous, like her brother, the Sun God. And she wanted many names. The Greeks called her Artemis. The Romans, Diana. She was known to some as Cynthia, Phoebe, Luna, Selene, Hecate, Bast.
What name would you give me? she would ask.
Any you’d like, I said.
What’s yours?
Hillary, I told her.
Yes, that one, she said. I want that one.
***
On the way back to my campsite, the Goddess offered to have her attendants bathe me.
“No, thank you,” I said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t like being naked. Or touched.”
“You’d do well to get over that,” she said, pointing at my belly. “She’s due any day now, and there’ll be no modesty then.”
“She?” I hadn’t received any prenatal care. No sonograms. Nothing.
“A baby girl swims in your womb.”
I ran my hand over my belly. A girl. It meant nothing, but I was hungry to know whatever I could about my passenger.
“Is this where you plan to stay?” She looked quizzically at the lumpy sack in the wagon.
“I have a tent and a sleeping bag,” I said. “I also have a hatchet and some firestarter. I’ll be fine.”
By the look of the sky, it was time to start setting up for the night. Would she lounge around asking questions, or would she help? I couldn’t imagine it being anything but awkward.
“I sense your desire to be alone,” she said.
I offered a tiny shrug.
“You are queer,” she said with bemusement as she walked away.
***
Girls visited with meat, grains, and greens. Unaccustomed to ugliness, they seemed startled by my appearance, placing the platters at my feet, collecting the dirty ones, and hastening away. I soon realized they held their breath whenever they were within a few feet of me.
On the third day, a girl with braids arrived carrying a basin of sudsy water, a sponge, and a fresh tunic draped over one arm. She stood at the edge of my camp, avoiding my eyes. “The Goddess demands you bathe and change your attire before she’ll see you again.”
“Leave it all there in the grass. I’ll do it.”
Her face relaxed, visibly relieved to be excused from the task.
“The Goddess says not to spray any more of your chemicals. You are safe here. Safe from the pestilence.” The girl turned and ran away.
***
Clean in my white maternity tunic, I waited for the Goddess. I’d been having regular contractions since my bath. When would she come?
I tossed a log onto the fire and began another lap around my camp. Off in the direction of the waterfall came the sounds of merriment, the strumming of lutes and songs in soprano. I stopped to weather another band of pain, huffing and groaning. When would she come?
Hours passed, my tread making an impression in the grass around the fire pit, a misshapen planet orbiting a small sun. Sweat poured down my body in streams. Despite the lavender sachet found tucked in my tunic pocket, wafts of beastly stench rose from my armpits. Each time my uterus tightened I fell writhing to my knees. When? When?
The problem with having too many names — none feel right on the tongue. It would’ve been easier if she had just one. Artemis. Diana. Cynthia. Bast. I called for her again and again. I felt silly speaking my own name, but still I yelled out — Hillary! She did not come.
The sun ascended and found its apex, putting me well beyond the twenty-four-hour mark, and when it descended, I began to panic. I can’t go on…I can’t go on…Too tired to make or tend a fire, I submitted to the darkness.
Then, off by the waterfall, came the sound of drums. For a time, they helped, providing a rhythm to my movements as I circled and writhed, circled and writhed, but again, time elongated and I began to surrender to the agony. I wanted to die.
“Damn you!” I yelled into the night. “You bitch! You cunt! Come with your arrows! Put me down! Put me down!”
A girl stepped into the clearing holding a torch. Behind her came a girl with a basin. The Goddess followed.
“You know it’s time when they start cursing,” she said to her young attendants, laughing. “See how wretched this poor creature has become? This is why you must protect your maidenhead at all costs.”
The girls nodded, wide-eyed.
The Goddess drove a stake into the ground and fastened the torch to it. She took the basin. “You may leave,” she said to the girls.
They skittered into the woods as I released another roar.
I cursed my mother, my faceless father. Every motherfucker. Every fucking mother! My string of expletives evaporated into the shadows.
“You’re the only mother here,” said the Goddess, looking up from between my legs with a smile. When she held up a pink parcel and I saw its angry face, I broke down sobbing. Years of pent-up tears.
It’s ironic that Charles Darwin thought crying was a sign of weakness. I’d just participated in human evolution, and it was the most difficult, courageous thing I’d ever done. You’d have to be an insane person or an idiot not to cry.
***
Later, as we reclined by the fire, the Goddess asked me why I didn’t want to be a woman. I explained how I could not speak for others, but for me, being non-binary was an intellectual protest. Our brains conceptualize the world through a process of reduction, breaking things down into simple terms as a means of understanding — man or woman, black or white, ally or enemy, us or them, but the essence of a person cannot be understood in such simple terms. We are intricate, complex, filigreed, gorgeous. Only when we eschew identity constructs and train ourselves to look beyond the fundamental shortcomings of our own minds to acknowledge a common humanity — only then can we know Truth. As singular beings we are parts of a whole, but I chose to identify with the whole. I didn’t fuss with pronouns, I told her, but if I had to choose one it would be: We.
I could see my outline reflected in her eyes.
“You are getting dangerously close to blasphemy,” said the Goddess with her ready smile. “If not for that babe in your arms, I might kill you on the spot.”
***
One morning, late in the summer, I stepped out of the tent to find a message, written in the ashes of the fire pit: The Plague is Over. I tied my baby around my waist with the long swatch of fabric gifted by the nymphs and went to the waterfall, still expecting to hear the rise and fall of their laughter. The pool was empty.
For a second, I thought I might cry, something I’d been doing a lot lately, but the feeling passed. I reminded myself that history tended to repeat itself, just as the sun’s chariot moved through the sky. It was time to leave the woods, to discover what was left of the old world and be part of the new Renaissance. My baby and I, we would be Gods of our time.
As a nurse, Laura Carnes Williams has seen people come into the world and leave it. As a writer, she tries to make sense of it all. She lives in Central New York between two of her favorite places: The Finger Lakes and The Adirondack Mountains. Visit www.LauraCarnesWilliams.com to read her published work and learn more.
ELEVENTH HOUR LITERARY 