SHORT STORY: THE TWO-HEADED CALF

Author’s Note: This is a weird, queer story based on my personal experiences with mental illness and the psychiatric health system. I tried to find a market for it, but I could not. So now you get it here, for free! Enjoy (I hope). -AH

CW: suicide attempt, animal death

THE TWO-HEADED CALF

Tomorrow when the farm boys find this
freak of nature, they will wrap his body
in newspaper and carry him to the museum. 

But tonight he is alive and in the north
field with his mother. It is a perfect
summer evening: the moon rising over
the orchard, the wind in the grass. And
as he stares into the sky, there are
twice as many stars as usual.

—“Two-Headed Calf,” by Laura Gilpin

It all starts with a 1984 Corvette.

The driver is twenty-one years old. God, it’s hard to picture him like that—as a kid. But that night, driving his Corvette—which he saved up to buy himself—my dad is twenty-one years old, and he’s dead tired. He just dropped my mom at the airport. The two of them started dating a couple months ago, but he already sees a future with her. He’s kind of obsessed with her, actually—this shy, gorgeous woman from Colorado who has no clue she’s perfect.

But now it’s late, and he’s flagging. He’s cruising on the interstate. It’s black as tar outside his windshield. All he sees is the flash, flash, flash of white telephone poles flying by. It’s hypnotizing. Flash, flash. Flash.

Did you catch it?

That flash, like the glint off a crown made of silver and bone and cracked opal? That shining in the dark like a tooth? Can you see it, too?

My father jolts awake. His car is grinding, grinding against the guardrail, throwing sparks with an awful sound. His palms slip over the steering wheel as he corrects his course. He pulls over to the side of the road, heart stuck in his throat. How long had he been asleep? Jesus, he could have died.

The first time Dad told that story, it was offhand, some half-remembered folly of his youth. But I knew, from the very first note of that telling, what truth he was imparting, even if he didn’t. Ellie knew, too. When he finished, we caught each other’s eyes at the corners. Shared one of those twin sister looks.

That's what I’m trying to tell you, I guess. Our dad was meant to die that night.

I’m not supposed to be here.

#

That day, the day we meet, I am trying to get some work done. My laptop screen burns a silver square in the center of my vision. I’m waiting for…something. It’s so hard to think.

Harder, now that my mind has drifted off, now that Nonexistence is bleeding in from the periphery. Dark tendrils of non-being, hollow and stinking of decay. I drown in that muted feeling. The Presence is there, as always: bigger than me, bigger than meaning. A mangled, spindly claw reaches for me, clutching half a rotten pomegranate. The dry black grass rustles around my ankles. That warm, heady breeze hits my face. I want to lean into it.

I want everything to fall away.

My laptop dings, and the vision clears.

I struggle to read my new email. One of my clients is expecting a shipment—ten pallets of molded glass bottles—and it hasn’t arrived. I try to work up the presence of mind to care. I need to care more. My supervisor lectured me last week about too many mistakes on my accounts. Startups are great for a lot of reasons: I can work from home, where no one can see my eyes go glassy; I can make my own schedule. But there’s still the same bullshit. Long hours. Bosses who think they can motivate me with pep talks. You need to take your job more seriously, Amber. You need to pay attention. You need to live in the moment. The worst part is, my boss is right. I’ve already lost one job this year. I need this to stick.

Frowning, I shift my feet under the blanket, stick my toes beneath the puffy maroon arm of the couch. I pull out my cell to call the AWOL driver. But it’s already ringing. It’s my dad.

“Hello?” I answer.

“Hey, sweetie.”

He sounds exhausted. He’s sounded more exhausted each year since Mom died. He’s retired now, and I hoped he might be getting more sleep, but he’s still staying up all night watching crappy Netflix DVDs.

“Have you dealt with that insurance thing?” he says.

I hold in a sigh. “Dad, I’m twenty-three years old.”

“I know that.” His voice gets high-pitched when he’s frustrated. “Amber, don’t wait until you get pulled over and you don’t have your card.” He says it like this is a matter of great urgency. Like nothing has ever been more important. My auto insurance renewal is the stuff of destiny. He has always been overbearing with Ellie and me, but it's gotten worse since Mom's death—like if he could only micromanage our lives to the last detail, he might prevent us from ever coming to harm. “I’m not the one who’s gonna have to pay that ticket—”

“Okay, fine,” I blurt, “I’ll do it right now.” That’s a lie.

“Thank you.” He clears his throat, a little distant, like he’s moved away from the speaker. I wait for him to talk. I think he might have something else to say. “Alright, sweetie. Talk to you later.”

We hang up.

What was I doing? The pallets. Right. I steel myself for another phone call, staring at the shiny screen. It ripples before my eyes. A pool of black tar, thick as night, suffocating as ash. I could make myself small and dive in, if I wanted. I really believe that.

The phone rings again. I startle. I don’t know how long I was gone for. I check the caller ID; Dad again.

I pick up, resigned. “What, Dad?”

His voice sounds different now. “Sorry, Amber. I just got a call.” He sniffs. The bottom drops out of my stomach. I know what he’s going to say before he says it. “Ellie’s in the hospital again.”

#

The drive takes forever. It’s only twenty minutes, but every inch drags, every milepost claws at my temples. I peel into the parking garage, jog to the hospital elevators. Up to the third floor. I know the way already. Down the tile ramp, slick with florescent light, to the locked psych ward. Or the “Behavioral Health Unit,” if you’re being polite.

They buzz me in through a system of swinging doors. On the other side, I sign my name on the visitor sheet, receive my badge. Her room is in the far corner. A friendly nurse guides me. All the walls are white—soft, eggshell white, not real white, not the white of truth and teeth and gleaming promises—and the corners are padded with rubber. A little kitchenette anchors the unit in the center; I spy two patients there, wearing street clothes, piecing together a puzzle on a cafeteria table.

In Ellie’s room, the lights are dimmed. She’s curled up on the bed in a hospital gown, hugging her knees. She’s had an even worse year than me. Dropped out of community college, then got dumped by her boyfriend of two years. I stare at her glossy brown hair, the wild boyish brows that mirror my own. Her face is bone white. A sad, pale pebble buried in tangles of dead moss. There’s a drowned look about her. Bright white strips of gauze encircle her wrists.

“Jesus, Ellie,” I say. She looks up, but barely sees me. “How are you?” I add, kicking myself, sitting on the edge of her bed.

“You didn’t have to come,” she says, quietly.

I place my hand over hers. It’s cold. “Why wouldn’t I come?”

She stares back for the longest time. I start to think she won’t answer. But she says, “I’m tired of treading water, Amber.”

My mind snaps back to what my father told me: where she was found, and how. Bleeding on the shores of Lake Washington, drunk and alone. Afraid, probably. Someone called the police on her. I can picture her so clearly on the border between worlds. Wet rocks like shards of crystal on black sands, groves of juniper trees with fat blood-drop berries. The sky swirled with dark stars that don’t match our own. The Presence standing over her prostrated body.

We named the place Nonexistence. As children, we conferred in hushed voices about the visions that plagued us, sucked us both under, and we agreed it wasn’t death—not quite. It’s death, plus more. The realm of that which once existed, and that which never existed at all. Every fairytale, every unspoken dream. Every desperately wanted child who would never be conceived. Every impossible thing. Together, along with the dead.

Our dad was meant to die that night. Ellie and I belong in Nonexistence.

And since the day we were born, it’s been trying to lure us back.

“This isn’t the answer,” I insist, squeezing Ellie’s hand. I insist it loudly and firmly. I insist it with every shred of bluster in me.

“It was Mom’s answer.”

My blood runs hot. “Do you have stage four liver cancer? Were you supervised by a doctor?” She doesn’t answer. Her eyelashes are sopping wet. “This isn’t the same. Don’t make it about that.”

Still, she says nothing. I shut my mouth and lean back. Maybe it’s not so different, a sliver of me says. Mom was incurable, too. And we all go back to the same place, don’t we? I know we do, because when I kneeled next to Mom on her living room death couch, my eyes puffy and raw, as the barbiturates wormed through her veins and shut off all the lights, I saw and felt it behind her, rearing up on its hindquarters like a wild horse—the Presence—and the air chilled and the lights dimmed, and for a moment everything smelled of pomegranate.  

I shake my head clear. “I’m gonna step outside,” I say, and lay my hand on hers again. She stares off, indifferent. I get up and leave.

For a few minutes, I get lost in the maze of the hospital, weaving through the endless halls of tile and ugly carpet. Eventually, I find a door. It leads to some kind of garden in the center of the building, open to the sky. The air is muggy, promising a storm, but it’s not raining yet. Yew trees and ferns crowd a single bench in the center, painted pine green. There’s someone sitting on it.

It’s you.

You’re wearing a navy hoody, smoking a cigarette. Your eyebrows are thick and black, hooding your eyes, darkening your stare. Twin pools of tar. I stop short; you glance up.

“You’re not supposed to be here,” you say.

I falter. “What?”

“You’re not supposed to be out here,” you repeat, grinning in a conspiratorial way. Your voice is deeper than I expected from the sweetness of your face. “Hospital staff only.”

“Oh,” I say. “You work here?”

“Nah.”

We both laugh. I pull out my cigarettes and sit next to you. We smoke in silence for a minute.

“Visiting someone?” you ask.

I nod. I don’t want to talk about my sister. “You?”

“Yeah, a friend. Manic episode—second one this year. He’s pretty out of it, he was pissed when I brought him here.”

“Oh.” Cautiously, “My sister’s in the BHU, too.”

You wear a sage look as you take a drag from your cigarette. “It’s not so bad in there. Your sister’s gonna be fine.” You offer me your hand. “I’m Elena.”

Elena.

We shake; your palms are warm and rough, like a stone left in the sun. I feel a swoop in my stomach. “Amber. Nice to meet you.”

You smile. We’re still holding hands. “Amber,” you say. “Let me tell you something. It’s going to be all right, yeah? It really will.”

I nod. And as long as your palm remains pressed against mine, I almost believe it.

#

Ellie’s admission will last at least a week, the doctors say. They don’t just let you go home after you try and off yourself. I visit her every day.

And every day, I meet you, Elena, after visiting hours are over. We smoke in the staff-only garden. I think you like my company, but I can’t tell how much, or in what way. I debate brushing my leg against yours, skin to skin, to gauge your reaction. And as I play it out in my head, this shy flirtation, my sister huddles inside on the hospital’s scratchy blankets and wishes she were dead.

We exchange phone numbers. I text you one night, and you call me. We talk for hours. Your laugh makes me smile. It’s rich and deep and multifaceted. Your laugh is a jewel, Elena.

Today, at the hospital, you’re wearing an orange sweater, hanging loose like drapes. I think it could fit the both of us; I want to crawl inside and find out. But instead, I smile a small, hopeful smile and listen to you talk about your family’s cattle ranch in Enumclaw. You’re living there while you study to become a phlebotomist. I barely know what that is, but you make it sound glamorous. When you ask about me, I say very little. I’m not sure why. Maybe because I know I’ll slip away, eventually, whether I want to or not. Nothing sticks for Ellie and me. Nothing lasts. A symptom of our condition. And I don’t want to leave a mark on you, Elena. I want you to come out of this clean and whole and full of that light which draws me to you like the ocean to the moon—over and over, in and out, waxing and waning. Every day, your light draws me in, and every day it lets me go again.

I’m lost in that tide even now. Your words wash over me and I go blank. The world fades. There is only your heartbeat, the faint pounding of drums in the distance. Your warm breath on my cheek. The tang of pomegranates, mingled with decay. Darkness is a heavy weight on my eyelids. It has texture: velvety, like custard. I could soak in it forever.

“Amber.”

You have to raise your voice to draw me out. I blink at you, disoriented. We’re sitting in the hospital garden. The afternoon air has a sudden chill. Goosebumps erupt on my arms.

“You need to take that?” you say, concerned.

I realize my phone’s been going off. I check the number. It’s work. I haven’t been a model employee since Ellie was hospitalized. I stare at the screen, my face burning.

I can’t believe I drifted off in front of you. You must think there’s something wrong with me. Maybe it’s better this way. Sever the cords now, before they draw too tight and dig into our skin and leave red rings around our bodies forever.

“Yeah, I better take it,” I mumble, and rush out of the garden. I dismiss the missed call notifications sullenly and call back as I walk the labyrinthian halls. A choppy voice answers.

“Amber?” my boss says. “Can you hear me? I’m in a tunnel.”

“Yeah, Ben, I can hear you okay. What’s up?”

“Amber.” He pauses. A long, significant pause. My chest tightens. “You must know what I’m gonna say here.”

I draw a deep breath. “No.”

Ben sighs. “Well, shit. I really hate doing this part. But we’re gonna have to terminate your contract.” He pauses again, like I might jump in with an objection, but my lips are sealed in a white line. “This can’t be a surprise, Amber. Your performance was spotty to begin with, and you’ve been basically unreachable for a week. We can’t just ignore that.”

“Yeah,” I manage to say. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Okay. Well, HR will mail you your final paycheck in a week or so. Sorry it had to go this way.” Another awkward pause in a conversation rife with them. “Best of luck to you, Amber.”

We hang up. I feel like I’m coming up from a deep ocean dive. I glance around; I’m standing in the hospital hallway, next to a tank of tropical fish. I don’t have a fucking clue why this hospital keeps fish in the halls. I stare down at my phone screen. I have an unread text. Numbly, I open it. It’s from my dad.

Have u dealt with the insurance thing yet??

I turn the phone off.

#

I almost don’t meet you after visiting hours the next day. Ellie will be released soon. Best that we forget about each other. I had a nice time; I hope you did, too.

In the end, I go to the garden. Because I am the ocean, and you are the moon.

You flash a big smile when I get there. We sit next to each other and smoke and chat. You’re in an effervescent mood, like you have no memory of yesterday. I wish I could forget that easily. Today my mind is swarmed by invasive thoughts—about my job, about Ellie, about the Presence. I keep replaying Ellie’s words in my head: I’m tired of treading water, Amber. I understand. She must be so, so tired. What a relief it would be to sink.

As I try to laugh at something you said, you get a text. You check it, smirking. Then your eyes go wide.

“Holy shit,” you say. I perk up.

Your lips slightly parted, you hold out your phone. An image fills the screen.

A grassy field, mud squishing up into the little spaces between blades. Sprawled out against the green is a small, wet, weak thing with matted brown fur, its tiny legs bent at sharp angles. It is a newborn calf. Atop its narrow, fragile shoulders sits a malformed head that branches in the middle, forming two faces: two noses, two open mouths, four big wet eyes that glint with new life.

“One of the girls gave birth to it,” you say in wonder. It takes me a moment to realize that by “girls” you mean cows, the ones at your ranch. “My mom’s there with it now. Holy fucking shit. A two-headed calf. You know how rare that is?”

My heart leaps with fear, for some reason. “Will it…live very long?”

“I dunno. It might live a while.” Your eyes meet mine, shining bright. I freeze in place like the prey I am.

“You wanna come see it?” you say.

#

You drive us to Enumclaw, doing eighty down Highway 167. It will take us an hour even with your lead foot. The whole way, I’m googling facts about two-headed calves.

“There was one born in Kentucky that lived a hundred and eight days,” I say, reading from my phone.

You whistle. “No shit?”

“Yeah, no one expected it to make it so long. Most of them die within a couple of days.” I’m holding one hand out the open window; the air slides through my fingers like silk. Foothills surround us on both sides, rolling like giant wrinkles in a blanket, fuzzy with evergreens, with a naked patch of deforestation here and there. The sun is obscured by an Escher drawing of overlapping white puffs, but some light shines through the cloud cover to warm my right side. I close my eyes and feel it.

Your family farm is down a dirt road, outside the city proper. We pass a swinging wooden sign reading, “C. Ramirez Farms.” You drive right past the main house, all cedar logs and rustic finishes, and take a road deeper into the flat, sprawling pastures. I thought it would smell bad out here, like cow poop, but it's fresh and crisp. I see cattle in the distance like specks of dust on a lens. Beyond the pastures are more foothills. This whole place is a valley, carved by glaciers during an ice ago so long ago the land itself has forgotten it. The valley bursts with green now.

The truck bumps vigorously down the path in a way would concern me if you didn’t seem so calm. Finally, we pull up to a big wooden barn with a metal enclosure out front. There’s a woman standing there. We go out to meet her. She looks like you, but smaller all around. She wipes her black bangs from her sweaty forehead, smudged with dirt.

“Come look,” she whispers.

You open the gate for me, and I slip into the enclosure. The calf is curled up on the ground. It lifts its heads to sniff the air. It’s wet and messy. It is beautiful.

“Mom,” you say in a hushed voice, like we’re in church, “this is my friend Amber.”

Your mother smiles and nods. She doesn’t ask why I’m there. “I can’t believe it,” she says with a wet laugh. “Go ahead, get closer. If you want.”

Everything is so quiet and solemn, I can’t help but feel I’m in the presence of something divine, or sacred, or whatever you want to call it. I kneel down. The calf raises its heads and mewls with one mouth. I look into its black eyes. They lead somewhere else, I swear, like four tunnels into the abyss. Cautiously, I reach out and pet its flank.

A connection forms.

I know it right away, like when iron meets a magnet. It doesn’t pause to ask if they ought to cling together. We are the same, the calf and me. We're not supposed to be here. Expelled from the same musty pit, thrust naked into a world never meant for us.

But now black tendrils wrap around my arms and down to the calf’s frail body, encircling its heads. The calf lets out a soft bleat. It shuffles its legs, like it’s trying to stand. I glance over my shoulder at you. Can you see it, too? Maybe you can, because your mouth is open, your brows scrunched, like your mind can’t accept the yield of your senses, which have always been honest and true before now. But this is true, Elena, the thing you’re seeing, and it’s honest. Nonexistence doesn’t lie.

“She’s a fighter,” your mother says, brightly but with reverence. She. The calf is female.

I watch her struggle to operate her limbs. She’s breathing weird, wheezing. Straining to keep her heads aloft. I wonder how it all strikes her—the miles of pasture, the ancient mess of foothills, the sunlight breaking through cracks in the clouds.

“She doesn’t look like she’ll live long,” you say. The resignation in your voice eats at me. I don’t want the calf to die. I weave my hands into her wet fur. She closes her eyes; I pretend it’s from contentment, and not because she is slipping away.

But I recognize the signs. I remember them from my mom. The sky overhead swirls with charcoal smoke. I can't escape the scent of mold and pomegranate, even if I plug my nose. A black specter rises before us like ink spilled into water. I brace the calf on both sides, as if I can hold her there. But the Presence has its fingers laced around her neck. A two-headed calf was never meant to exist. A sob escapes me as I cling to her.

“It’s okay,” you whisper. You set your hand on my shoulder and squeeze. You sound guilty, like you regret bringing me here. “This is a part of farm life. Animals die, sometimes.”

“She doesn’t want to,” I say, sniffling. And she’s trying so hard, she really is: she’s bucking her head, struggling to keep her eyes open, lapping up every drop of this strange place where cosmic chance has deposited her, before the universe can right itself again.

But she is only a little thing, and the laws of reality are immutable. She closes her eyes. Under my hand, her ribcage rises and falls, slowly. The sun comes out in earnest and burns the back of my neck. I duck my head, eyes squeezed shut. Her ribcage stops moving.

And then I am weeping, and I can’t stop.

You and your mother usher me into the truck and drive me to the main house. I am so embarrassed, but I’m still crying. With your arm around my shoulder, you guide me to your bedroom and close the door. You sit me down on your bed, atop a woven wool blanket. I blink tears from my eyes and look around. Your walls are bare except for some beaded lizards, the kind I used to make at summer camp, which someone has proudly pinned up above your light switch like trophies. I kind of hope it was you.

For a while, you just let me hiccup and cry. Then you scooch closer. Rest your hand on my forearm.

“I’m sorry,” you say in a low voice. “If I knew it would upset you like this, I never would have made you come.”

I don’t know what to say. You can’t understand what’s upsetting me; I barely comprehend it. I shake my head. There’s nothing else to do about it, so I keep shaking my head, defeated, until you grab my face between your hands, holding me still, and you lean forward to kiss me.

A single, soft kiss, which ends too soon. You draw away and meet my eyes. You don’t look afraid of what I’ll say, how I’ll react. I wonder if there’s anything in the world that scares you.

I find my voice. I say it aloud for the first time in years. “I’m not supposed to be here.” I draw a few shuddery breaths. “I'm not supposed to be alive.”

You don't look confused, like I thought you would. You hesitate only for a moment. Then you take my hands in yours.

“I’m glad you are anyway,” you say.

#

When four o’clock arrives, we detangle ourselves from each other and leave the safety of your bed to drive back to the hospital. Evening visiting hours will begin soon.

I go to Ellie’s room and find my dad already there. I’m so happy to see him. I give him a big bear hug, which he returns, laughing. Ellie shifts on the hospital bed, rustling the blankets.

My dad and I sit beside her. The dressings have been removed, and she’s wearing street clothes again, not the hospital gown. Her face is a limpid pool, untouched by ripples. Beneath her surface, she's fighting, kicking and thrashing to keep her head above the waves. Still treading water.

I smile at her. Tentatively, she smiles back. There is so much I want to convey, but I don't have the words yet. I'm not sure they exist.

I might search for them, one day. Until then, the pale words I know will have to do. So I tell her about the two-headed calf.

#

Afterward, I meet you in the garden. You’re smoking on the bench. I join you, and we hold hands.

You should know, this will be hard for both of us. A part of me is always trying to leave. I've been treading water, too—half absorbed, all the time, with keeping my arms moving, my legs, my lungs. But if you’re willing to take what aspects of me I can give, Elena, then I am yours. I only ask one thing in return.

Will you teach me how to swim?