Chase the Rabbit

When the cat catches the rabbit, your mother screams. Loud enough to jolt you to attention, you, your brother, and father streaming into the harsh August light. You find her in the yard, gasping, chasing a rabbit whose head is bent at the wrong angle. Clasped in her hand: a tiny packet of Neosporin. The rabbit runs in spurts, evading her, doing its herky-jerky dance of survival. This might give him a chance, your mother chokes out. Her fingers are sticky with disinfectant. Globs leak onto the grass. The despair in your mother’s eyes seems a sin against nature. She, who believes in anything. Optimism or delusion—who can tell? Your mother is the goddess of lost causes. Years earlier, when you were in college, she discovered you in a bathroom with a razor held aloft. Without a word, she motioned for you to raise your pant leg. Fishing out a packet of disinfectant from the cabinet, she traced the fresh cuts across your thigh as you studied the soft stubs of her eyelashes. I won’t do it again, you said then, watching the crown of her head bob up and down, consenting to what you both knew was a lie. But she fixed you up anyway, and she chases the rabbit, too, chases it into the woods where, she reassures you, it will sleep, as if you are a child again, as if you don’t know how this story ends, as if you can’t understand the quiet creatures seek when they’re waiting to die.