Brumation

She visits them in their torpor. She kneels on the ice of the frozen pond. She kneels next to their snouts and strokes them. She knows every one of them, whispers their names to them. Only the snouts of the alligators stick up through the ice of this small pond separated from the river now. They stick straight up, largely perpendicular to the ice. On dark nights the shadowy snouts look like little primitive tombstones in an old family plot. Trees surround the pond and hide it. The creatures’ long bodies lie below like stems. Their eyes are closed and underwater. But they can hear her. And they listen.

She knows what it’s like to be this way. She knows to enter this state when he does the things nobody knows about. She closes her eyes and slows her thoughts when he does those things to her. Those things he does while her mother is at work. She wishes she could slow her organs down, turn her blood cold, so cold he would be repulsed. She brumates while he touches her.

She visits them in their frozen pond when the winter moon shines. She knows not to feed them, only to stroke them. To speak to them. And they can drink, so she slakes their thirst. She gives them the fish water from sardine tins. They know the touch now which means to open their mouths. Their long jaws open slightly and they swallow what she pours down. Sometimes they make low guttural growls of gratitude. She strokes their gullets and sings the words to them: “Sweetmeats, my cold ones, my loves, sweetmeats!”

Gators can hear both through the air and underwater. They know her voice and the sweet sensations of sustenance. Their blind bodies are largely lifeless below the ice but they wait for her touch. She sees them as her family. They show her the way to survive. To survive, she must simply bridge the evolutionary divide and remap her brain to this reptilian simplicity. How wonderful their coldness is to touch.

Come spring, her stepfather is surprised when she asks him to take her fishing like the old days. It’s her birthday and she wants to go out in his johnboat. He knows all the best places to take the boat for privacy. The first time it happened was actually on that boat. They’ll start on the open river, but he’ll take them somewhere where the trees hide everything. He’ll cut the engine and stare at her. Then he’ll start to issue the quiet commands that make his Adam’s apple squirm in anticipation. That skinny man whose skin tastes of nicotine and lies. She swears she knows what the vilest of lies taste like just from his sweat. She’s convinced herself she’ll someday be able to choose her true love by tasting his sweat for such impurities.

This time she tells him where to take the johnboat. They pull into the little lagoon the pond has become now with the spring rains. It’s connected to the river again. It’s the place where her other family lives. He’s smiling and telling her how stunning she has become. How womanly. He dares to use these words. He tells her he is so proud of her for wanting to be alone with him. This creature had always hoped for such a reciprocal day. He starts talking about the things he wants to buy for her, all the things her playground of a body deserves. He thinks she thinks about money, that she thinks about presents. She thinks about therapy and guns and plane tickets.

They’re in the private place. She tells him to stand at the end of the johnboat with his back turned while she undresses. He loves this game and complies. She looks down and sees them below the surface. Their eyes are open to the spring. They heard her voice as soon as the flatbottom boat entered their little lagoon.

When she swings and hits him in the back of the head with the extra oar he keeps in the boat bottom, he goes right over. He hits the water face down. It’s not deep water but it doesn’t matter. She sits back down and reaches for the thermos. She pours herself some of her own homemade raspberry tea in the plastic cup top. The ice hasn’t quite melted yet so it’s still nice. It’s such a pleasant day and such a comforting place. She really feels at home back here. She leans over the edge of the johnboat and sings out to her blood-kin.

“Sweetmeats, my cold ones, my loves, sweetmeats!”

Though it isn’t their usual fare, and though human flesh isn’t really anything worth getting excited about in the gator world, the creatures know by now that sweet voice and associate it with good nourishment.

So they all take turns eating him a little, in that half sentimental, half Pavlovian way.

The way most of us do everything, anyway.