New Animals

by Sarah McEachern

Billy smears the sweat off his forehead and suggests we go swimming. We go to the cliffs. We can swim around the entire island, so we do. Strip everything off, walk to the ledge, hold hands, and jump. The north point is a fifteen-foot drop. Our hands separate in the water from the impact. 

 We climb back up with purpose, and when we get there, we lie together, naked. The island is nestled in the middle of a large lake. Most days, we can’t see the land on the other side. I’m hot, feeling myself burn in the sun, immobile under Billy’s limbs. I untangle myself and stand at the ledge. I look down at my belly, imagining it round as I jump off. 

Knowing Billy will be sleeping when I get back to the top, I take a longer way around, climbing over the dangerous rocks. I am climbing with certainty, without regard for the possibility of mishaps, without worry, when the rock my hand is on comes loose, falling below me and smashing. Billy’s head is over the ledge, screaming my name. He’s telling me he’ll climb down himself, be there in just a minute, asking me if I’m okay.

 Billy is afraid, but there is no need. I’m able to climb down myself, away from the dangerous rocks. We were both born on this island, but the rugged landscape doesn’t scare me the way it does Billy. I sit in the water below and call to him to come down, which he does. Together we look up at the opening, visible from the rocks that have fallen away. This is how we find the tunnel. 

Our families have always been on this island, but we’re still discovering the lay of the land. By the cliffs near the north point where we give our bodies to the island: Billy’s two aunts, my grandmother, my sister who died this spring. She was three months early and came out blue. It scared Billy to see her, but I couldn’t look away. My mother gave birth to her in the hallway in the middle of the night. It would have taken us at least an hour to take her across the lake to the mainland, to the hospital.

My mother has a history of miscarriages. Even I was complicated, coming out backward. My birthday is in the winter, when the lake ices over. Like a bridge, you can walk from the island to the mainland as if it’s one big piece of land. I prefer the summer, when we can be separated from everyone else. 

 Today Billy and I are the only ones on the island. Our parents have gone to the mainland on their boats, our mothers in search of groceries, and our fathers in search of hardware to patch our houses. Billy and I put our shoes on and leave our clothes off. We go inside the newly discovered tunnel, past the opening, and admire the wooden trusses that hold up the ground to form the tunnel. 

“It’s old,” Billy tells me as we walk through. 

I nod. “When do you think they put this here?” 

Billy shrugs. We climb farther inside. The tunnel goes about twenty feet and stops. With our hands we can feel a smaller hole that continues to lead deeper into the island, but without light, we cannot see what it is or where it goes. 

Billy asks me if I want to keep going, or leave and come back with a flashlight. I’m distracted. Billy’s body in the light and the dark and the secret of the tunnel is irresistible to me, and I reach for him. He smiles at me because he recognizes my longing, and he responds exactly how I want him to.

Since we were children, Billy and I have swum naked and slept together on each other’s porches when it’s hot like this on the island, braving the bugs for the breeze. As we grew older, we touched one another to feel the places that vanished with childhood, what rounded, got larger, turned purple. I do not remember the first time we decided to see if our bodies would fit together.

It’s cool underground, and our bodies goosebump over our sunburns. When we’ve finished, we’re slick with perspiration, and the dirt clings to us, disguising us from each other as if we are new animals. We leave the tunnel and climb back up the cliffs again, jumping into the water to wash ourselves.

The weather grows colder, and the leaves fall off the trees. In a dark room, we put our flashlights on one side of me and try to see the outline of the baby on the other, like a chick inside of an egg. We can’t make anything out. We guess about boy or girl, twins, triplets. We talk about names. We come together often, slowly, awkwardly as I grow rounder. 

The ice on the lake starts at the shores and comes over slowly until the island and the mainland connect. This time of year settles my mother’s anxiety. She thinks that as long as there is ice, we can go across to the mainland, like she did when she was ready for me. 

She tells me what I should expect, things that are normal, things that are not. She gives me the clothes she saved for my sister. Tiny sweaters, cotton summer dresses, the smallest socks I’ve ever seen. The baby clothes are all girl clothes. She tells me that she just knew, knew with me, knew with my sister, knows now. I tell her our girl names. 

 The winter lasts forever. My stomach looks as if I’ve swallowed the moon, and all I want to do is sleep. Billy moves into my family’s house and sleeps beside me at night. The baby churns, swimming furiously in circles. I am a double figure, containing two, and I am above and beyond the rest of the island, set asunder and worshipped in my own way. 

Billy traces my stomach, the dark line from my opening to my navel, my darkened nipples. “You’re an alien,” Billy tells me, and I don’t understand. “I feel separate from you,” he tells me. 

Spring heat comes early, and my mother is terrified because the ice is gone, the flowers blooming. She tells me the hospital is a necessity, that I can’t give birth in the house where my sister died. I don’t want to be off the island, so Billy and I move into his family’s house.

When the baby comes in the early morning, Billy isn’t there. The blanket under my legs is wet and sticky. I leave quietly in search of Billy, first our room and then the house. I know he’s gone, and I know that I should stay in the house, but I can’t.

I walk to the cliffs slowly, feeling the pain start and spread. I need my own shelter to have the baby. I want to be in the tunnel, so I go inside. But also, maybe I couldn’t make it back to the house if I tried. 

It starts at the center. In a minute it is gone, in five minutes it returns, in a minute it’s gone, in three minutes it returns. I scream when it’s too much. I try to tell myself that I know what I’m doing. When I grow brave enough, desperate enough, I reach under my nightgown and feel the baby’s head, her slimy hair. 

I make myself stand up, even though my legs are on fire. I hold on to the truss of the tunnel and squat when I push. She falls a foot and bounces, just slightly, our baby. She’s longer than I ever expected, but tiny. I brush off the blood and the dirt. I can only see her face in the semidarkness, can make out the round of her chin, her cupid’s bow. 

 I sit for a long time with the baby, the cord connected to her and spiraling inside me. Eventually, what it’s connected to falls out. I hold on to that too, scared to discard anything that held us together. I smear the sweat off my face. She cries and calms and finds my breast. I fall asleep. 

When I wake, I am full of energy. The baby coos and moves, but mostly she returns to the form she held inside me, her legs wrapped tight under her stomach. I’m strong enough, so I stand up and walk to the end of the tunnel, to the cliffs. It’s hard with one arm holding the baby. The blood drips behind me in a line as I walk, but I manage to get myself out of the tunnel and into the daylight. I crouch on the rocks at the start of the lake. 

I wet my hand and pour water over her, trying to clear the blood. She opens her eyes, annoyed with me already, not knowing I am helping her. I thought she would look like Billy, but she looks like me. Her littlest toe has a toenail so small it makes me laugh out loud, and she opens her eyes to look at me. When she starts to cry, I tell her everything is all right. 

The lake is huge: almost eighty miles of shoreline, seventy feet at its deepest. Its shape generates waves strong enough to capsize boats. The island is close to its center and not too big, not even five miles in circumference. I tell her that when she is stronger, we will swim around the entire island together. We will strip everything off, walk past the graves, and stand at the ledge holding hands. We will jump off the cliffs at the north point, a fifteen-foot drop into the water. Our hands will always find each other, even if we are separated by the impact.

Published January 10th, 2021