Secret Dreams (39 page)

Did Herr Wolfpants have less fur than she remembered? He would seem almost half human if he didn't slouch so, He had been coming into the room every day of her pregnancy to read from a book,
Anatomy
, What was he saying now? Describing the birth canal, the very route her newborn self would take. Between growls and clicks she heard him speak human words:

“What remains of the food mass are various indigestible compounds, which finally pass into the large intestine, up the ascending colon —

The thirteenth day. Ready to split open like a ripe melon in a field. She clutched a bit of blanket over her head and gave birth to herself. Her whole body pressed into the open mouth of the Brass, squeezing out the royal sacred body of the new Queen Bee.

“— across the arch of the transverse colon and down the descending colon to the rectum — and at last to the anal canal.”

Her breath came in ragged gasps as she pressed into the Brass. Herr Doktor Wolfpants's reflection in the window stared at her, his nostrils red and chapped, his nose running wetly. He held the
Anatomy
book tightly to his chest. The veins in his hands stood out as he gripped the cover. His face had broken out in a sweat. She felt a deep, rumbling shakiness in her guts. She opened and closed her eyes under the blanket, making sure they weren't fused together like the Gurgler's. She moved her arms and legs ever so gently She wriggled her fingers and toes, counting them quickly. Yes, she had them all. Good. No flappers.

The Gurgler had saved her. To be reborn. A whole person.

Her memory floated in pieces. Slashed with daggers of color that showed things brutally naked, then plunged them into blackness again. She even knew the name of the Brass now. Not Old Sewer Mouth. No, they called it a chamber pot. A chamber pot, for all the stuff that came out of her chamber and went into the pot. She recalled many pots coming and going; and the Bosch Bee, who was sometimes a fat pink sow and sometimes a fat pink nurse, and even Nek-Nek, who wasn't quite human. She saw meal plates full and meal plates empty. The books she read and the books she cast aside. She saw Herr Doktor Wolfpants when he wore fur and Herr Smarty Pants when he wore none. And a cheerful copper bathtub that came to stay one day and always left her spanking clean whenever she used it. And most of that was good. But not everything. What with the lingering terror of the black snout snuffing around the crack in her bottom, so eager to suck out her newborn reborn self. And then the pain of giving birth, which she sometimes still felt throbbing through her when she used the chamber pot. A clear memory of that hot expanding: an endless groan, the squeezing and pressing as the clenched fist of her insides pushed itself into the world, making her writhe in a mind-wrenching gasp —!

And so each day she gave birth to herself anew.

Yet on that very first day of her birth, before she crawled back to bed, Herr Wolfpants fled the cell, then leaped back with a piece of paper clutched in his paw, stammering:

“I forgot this.”

He showed her a folded slip of paper, a letter you were supposed to call it. Which she examined carefully through her wrappings. A letter. A letter with words.

Now, wasn't that strange?

Shouldn't it really be the other way around?

Weren't words supposed to be made up of letters, not letters made of words? Because if letters could be made of words, and words made of letters — how was anyone supposed to straighten them out?

She never discovered. For Herr Wolfpants growled, “This came from your father. I'm sorry, but I wanted you to birth yourself.” And he did seem sorry, sorrier even than if he'd gobbled her up. “Do you want me to read this letter to you or just leave it?” he prodded her. Read it or leave it? Leave it or read it? Her brain went clean and blank — because all she heard, all that struck her, was that F word. The word Flatter. “This came from your flatter,” he seemed to say, That ugly, evil word: f-f-f…

She felt another birth coming on. She had given birth to her newborn reborn self — but now she verged on the birth of a twin. A twin lying just inside, waiting to come out. Sucking the life from the firstborn all the time, all through her swollen pregnancy. An evil twin leeching to the side of the good one's neck, sucking and sucking until it bled her paper-white,

‘Are you upset about this letter from your flatter and matter?” Herr Pants badgered her again. The bad twin in her belly squirmed sharply in her stomach. Crawling up her throat, right out her mouth. Talking as it came. But it couldn't escape because her wrapped rags still trapped it to her face. Squirming behind the folds and swathings, biting and scratching her lips and nose and eyes. She had to let it out. Let it out! She clawed a small opening in her burnoose, and it leaped into the room;

“Tell him I'm the Queen of Sparta with a hot rear end!”

Then this bad twin vanished into thin air. For it was only a sentence, with letters and words, and words made of letters…. She gave birth to more and more word babies after that; and each time one clawed its way up her throat and out her mouth, she made room for it to break free, unwinding a layer of swathings so each new group of words might show itself. But the words were always getting trapped and snagged on the layers of her covered head. And when they crawled over her face, they couldn't tell Herr Wolfpants what to do about that terrible F word, f-f-f…

“Make him understand. Make him. That the Queen rules the earth and the sky at night!” And as more words needed to come out, more layers of wrappings had to come away. And the face of her newborn reborn self stayed exposed for longer and longer periods: the face that bore itself out of her bottom but that now expelled word babies for everyone to see.

They came almost daily as the cloth fell from her head: some evil and some good. Nice ones, like “May I come in?” and “How are you?” But bad ones too, especially each time she played the word game, when the flatter and matter words came around again. And only the flatter and matter words made her want to scream The Queen.

Yet the Burghive stayed a human building for days at a time, with few if any bees buzzing down the marble corridors. When she let Nurse Bosch into her room, the nurse came not as a pink sow or a bee but as a large, broad-faced woman in a crisp white cap and dress. And though she might on occasion see a worker drone flit quickly past her door, that didn't bother her so much anymore. She even began to call herself Fräulein, as everyone else did when they came into her room wearing their human bodies with their people clothes on.

And she began reading secretly at night, sitting up against the cell door so the shaft of light from the viewing slit fell onto the pages. She read
Anatomy
. And another book Herr Pants brought her:
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
by a lady named Beatrix Potter. About two mice, Tom Thumb and his mausfrau, Hunca Munca, who tried to eat all the painted doll food in the dolly haus but wrecked the place when all the delicious-looking food turned out to be made of plaster. He also brought her other books. One by a man named Conrad which made her chest ache and her eyes cry at the end when the seaman hears Mr. Kurtz's last words whispered out of the filth of his dirty jungle hut, “The horror! The horror!” It made her wonder; was Herr Pants her darkest heart?

Or really the Nekken?

As she read one night, the shaft of light suddenly ceased. Then swept back and forth like a sword blade in the dark, while the Nekken peered about, trying to catch a glimpse of her. She froze, pressing her back to the wooden door. She felt the Gurgler in the next room working himself up to a scream, his first in weeks. But somehow the Gurgler held his breath, his flappers quivering….

Then the sword blades of light vanished and the steady beam beat harmlessly down. She crept toward the bed.

And damn him!

His deadskin face stared dimly back from the waxy glass. He had only pretended to go. Oh, she'd know next time, yes, she would. And the Gurgler, he'd know too. She cursed the Nekken as she wrapped the swaddling around her firstborn newborn reborn self. No, he wouldn't fool Frau Lies again. Never.

A new book lay in her lap. Neurology. Fräulein had found the paragraphs accidentally on purpose.

She read these last lines many times. Especially the word ‘Incurable/' spelling it to herself, forward and backward, Incurable. The I meant herself, and the letter
e
at the end the sound of the Gurgler's shriek. Forward or backward —- from the
I
to the e — no known cure. So the book said she'd never leave her Burghive cell….

But she could always disappear when the Nekken's face stared in the glass. Then she closed her firstborn's eyes and traveled where she wanted. Passing through the door and the Nekken's body, to drift about the cool corridors of the hive like a thread of smoke. And whenever she came back from her travels, the Nekken was always gone. On the return from one of her trips Fräulein paused at her door. She quietly stared at her trunk, the steamer trunk with all her clothes from … the Bad Time.

What a huge old thing, with brass latches and sweet-smelling leather straps with brass buckles — and it seemed to her she had missed it very much. All her insides were packed there, all the things she had brought with her on the (don't say it) on her way to (can't say it) before the trouble happened and she came to the Burghive. How good to think it had been outside the room all this time, even when the room turned into a bee cell and the hospital a hive.

“You're mine,” she whispered to the trunk as she slid under the crack of her door.

That night she did not read the paragraphs in her book but fondled its cover front and back. She had a new name for it, not
Neurology
— but
Newrongedly
, She found herself squatting over it, lifting up the swaddling of her firstborn and panting heavily in the shaft of light from the hall. Fräulein would show them how totally wrong
Newrongedly
was. All wrong.

“I do not believe, Fräulein,” the Nekken said through the glass viewing slit, “you will ever be cured. I have diagnosed your case as dementia praecox —- which, as you have read, is incurable. And degenerative. You are suffering from ancient brain damage, damage done to you before you were ever born. I want to inform you that no case of dementia praecox has ever been cured. And that yours will not be the first….”

She felt the Gurgler ready to scream, starting to thump his head against the wall. The Nekken's sneering face vanished from the slit. She leaped to the door, peering sideways, straining to see if he lurked nearby. She heard the Gurgler in the next room, gasping for air —-

And suddenly she knew that if he
did
scream this time, the whole hive would be down on her — every drone, every soldier, every worker bee. Now was the time — now — to strangle the little turd mouth. Go into his room and throttle him, push his face into the mattress until his skin turned purple and his tongue stuck out like a bloated turkey neck. Do it! Do it now!

She flew into the hall. The Gurgler gasped lungfuls, ready for a shriek. She flung open the door —

An empty room stared at her.

No chamber pot. No wooden dresser. No sheets on the bed. The stripped mattress had been rolled up, exposing the bedsprings. Because no one had lived in that room for the longest time … She felt her scalp throb and cautiously touched the tender spot with her fingers. A terrible thought came to her.

The Gurgler did not exist. Never had. The soreness; her own head where she had banged it against the wall. The shrieking. The abominable noise. All her. From the very beginning, from the very first day. And in a sickening flash, in utter glaring blindness, she saw the absolute truth of her very existence, and whispered:

‘I
am
mad.”

The Nekken chuckled. At the end of the hall, his long white hand kept orderly Zeik pinned to the chair. Zeik's face had turned gray, his mouth shocked open. While the Nekken's face — a green sneer, calmly pleased to be hurting her. And yet not really caring whether he did or not … She wanted to repay him. Then abruptly he withdrew. His laughter trickled down the stairs. A pale silence.

“I'm glad you're up and about, Fräulein,” the Zeik orderly said at last. “Can I get you anything? I'm sorry Herr Nekken looked at you. You can be sure I'll tell —”