Thrust: A Novel

Liza must have the heart of a scientist herself, I thought, for as the boys pushed our boat through the water, she continued her monologue on the traits of this amphibian wonder. Amniotes, I learned, deposit their fertilized eggs on land — or inside the mother — whereas anamniotes, such as fish and amphibians, lay their eggs in water. “Amphibians are anamniotes. They are able to exchange oxygen, carbon dioxide, and waste with the water that surrounds them — so that their embryos can complete their own growth without being poisoned. And axolotls are unique among amphibians, because they don’t develop lungs.” Instead, she explained, they had four different ways of breathing — a fact that I’ll admit did fascinate me.

Now my imagination was in thrall to two creatures before me — the resourceful little being squirming in my hand, and the black-haired girl regaling me with knowledge. How had she managed to seize my attention so thoroughly?

I looked again at the squirming being in my hand. It had a pinkish tint, little black lidless eyes, and a fan of feathery external gills on either side of its head. It did not look appetizing. But this girl had saved the only family I had ever known from a Raid. I owed her everything. So I picked the creature up by its tail, closed my eyes, said a tiny internal prayer that I would not throw up, whispered, “My apologies and my gratitude, tiny beast.” Then I improvised a toast—“To the Mother of Oceans!”—and swallowed it whole.

Liza must have seen the look of misgiving on my face as I swallowed. “It will be okay,” she told me. “I asked her first. The animals are coming back from everything we’ve done to them — but we have to be in our bodies differently. Swallow and breathe through your nose, so you can gain hold of the rest of your body and cross time. You can go get your leg, Lilly — and your son.”

I thought about legs. I pictured lilies. Your son, she’d said again. Maybe I’d misunderstood; maybe she was talking about the sun. If she could help me get these children to safety, I would be happy ending up anywhere under the sun.

I thought as hard as I could not to think about the taste of the axolotl, but instead about the taste of eggs. As if the word itself had gotten inside me.

Ethnography 4

Like so many others — maybe more than seventy-five thousand — my father was promised citizenship after the war. For years and years after he returned, he built and worked a ranch. Then, one day, his neighbors had a secret meeting and held a secret vote. In a group, they came to his door and knocked. My mother asked them in, and they came, though they looked uneasy. Eventually, it became clear why: the neighbors wanted my father out.

Before he had this land, my father had been a vaquero for a wealthy rancher in the next county. He had a good working relationship with a wealthy white rancher nearby, and he enlisted his advice and help. My father took the matter to court; the judge permitted the legal case to proceed — but the case dragged on for years. It was said that the Office of Surveyor of General Claims would sometimes take up to fifty years to process claims or finish the permissions for trials. My father lost all his money, and the ranch itself, in his effort to argue for his own rights. Rights that had been given to him by so-called law. Government promises. After that, my mother had a stroke — or she just stopped wanting to live, I’ve never been sure. She had to get a job as a maid; maybe she just worked herself to death. After he lost everything, my father started doing dangerous mining work. He lasted two small hungry exhausted years.

In our last days on my father’s ranch, there is one day I will never forget. My father was on horseback, tracking down a stray calf. My mother was drying dishes at the kitchen window, smiling, humming some little tune. My brothers were in the barn, probably shoveling hay or shit. I was at the kitchen table, eating a hard-boiled egg. I was a kid, so what did I know, but for a moment, it felt like we were real. Do you know what I mean? Like we could be a father, a mother, a son, my brothers laughing and cutting up in the barn, all of us making a life, near animals and land. It seemed so simple. Like a dream anyone could walk into and just… rest.

For the rest of my life, I dreamed about that egg.

Portal

Cruces 5

We rode the waters to and from her like tides.