The Corn Maiden and Other Nightmares (18 page)

And that was how Mommy found Jessica—leaning over the bassinet, shaking the dead infant like a rag doll. Her father’s binoculars, both lenses shattered, lay on the veranda floor at her feet.

FOSSIL-FIGURES

1.

Inside the great belly where the
beat beat beat
of the great heart pumped life blindly. Where there should have been one, there were two: the demon brother, the larger, ravenous with hunger, and the other, the smaller brother, and in the liquidy darkness a pulse between them, a beat that quivered and shuddered, now strong, now lapsing, now strong again, as the demon brother grew ever larger, took the nourishment as it pulsed into the womb, the heat, the blood, the mineral strength, kicked and shuddered with life so the mother, whose face was not known, whose existence could only be surmised, winced in pain, tried to laugh but went deathly pale, trying to smile gripping a railing
Ah! My baby. Must be a boy
. For in her ignorance the mother did not yet know that inside her belly there was not one but two. Flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood and yet not one but two. And yet not two equally, for the demon brother was the larger of the two, with but a single wish to
suck suck suck into his being the life of the other, the smaller brother, all of the nourishment of the liquidy-dark womb, to suck into himself the smaller brother about whom he was hunched as if embracing him, belly to curving spine and the forehead of the demon brother pressed against the soft bone of the back of the head of the smaller brother. The demon brother had no speech but was purely appetite
Why there be this other here—this thing! Why this, when there is me! There is me, me, me there is only me
. The demon brother did not yet feed by mouth, had not yet sharp teeth to tear, chew, devour and so could not swallow up the smaller brother into his gut, and so the smaller brother survived inside the swollen belly where the
beat beat beat
of the great heart pumped life blindly and in ignorance until the very hour of the birth, when the demon brother forced his way out of the womb headfirst, a diver, a plunger, eager for oxygen, thrusting, squawling, struggling to declare himself, drew his first breath in a shudder of astonishment and began to bawl loudly, hungrily, kicking his small legs, flailing his small arms, a furious purple-flushed face, half-shut glaring eyes, strands of startlingly dark and coarse hair on the flushed infant-scalp
A Boy! Nine-pound boy! A beautiful—perfect—boy!
Swathed in the mother’s oily blood, glistening like pent-up fire, a sharp scream and frenzied kicking as the umbilical cord attached to his navel was deftly severed. And what shock then—was it possible?—there was yet another baby inside the mother, but this not a perfect baby, a runt,
cloaked in oily blood, a tiny aged man with a wizened face expelled from the mother after fourteen grunting minutes in a final spasm of waning contractions
Another! There is another boy
yet so tiny, malnourished, five pounds nine ounces, most of this weight in the head, bulbous blue-veined head, purple-flushed skin, the skull forceps-dented at the left temple, eyelids stuck together with bloody pus, tiny fists weakly flailing, tiny legs weakly kicking, tiny lungs weakly drawing breath inside the tiny rib cage
Oh but the poor thing won’t live—will he?
Tiny caved-in chest, something twisted about the tiny spine and only faintly, as if at a distance, came the choked bleating cries. In contempt the demon brother laughed. From his place at the mother’s breast suck suck sucking the mother’s rich milk yet the demon brother laughed in contempt and anger for
Why there be this other here, why this, why “brother,” why “twin,” when there is me. Only be one of me.

Yet not one: two.

At a fever pitch childhood passed for the demon brother who was first in all things. At a glacial pace childhood passed for the smaller brother who trailed behind his twin in all things. The demon brother was joyous to behold, pure infant fire, radiant thrumming energy, every molecule of his being quivering with life, appetite,
me me me
. The smaller brother was often sick, lungs filled with fluids, a tiny valve in his heart fluttered, soft bones of his curving spine, soft bones of his bowed legs, anemia,
weak appetite, and the skull subtly misshapen from the forceps delivery, his cries were breathy, bleating, nearly inaudible
me? me?
For the demon brother was first in all things. In the twins’ crib the first to roll onto his stomach, and the first to roll onto his back. The first to crawl. The first to rise on shaky baby-legs. The first to toddle about wide-eyed in triumph at being vertical. The first to speak: Ma
ma
. The first to drink in, to swallow up, to suck nourishment from all that he encountered, eyes widened in wonder, in greed, his first word Ma
ma
not an appeal or a plea but a command: Ma
ma
! Belatedly the smaller brother followed the demon brother, uncertain in his movements, poorly coordinated his legs, his arms, the very tilt of his head questionable, and his head quivering on frail shoulders, the eyes rapidly blinking, watery, seemingly weak as the facial features were less defined than those of the demon brother of whom it was claimed proudly
He’s all boy!
while of the smaller brother it was murmured
Poor thing! But he is growing
. Or it was murmured
Poor thing! But what a sweet sad smile
. In these early years the smaller brother was often sickly and several times had to be hospitalized (anemia, asthma, lung congestion, heart-valve flutter, sprained bones) and in these interims the demon brother did not seem to miss the smaller brother but basked in the full attention of their parents and grew yet taller and stronger and soon it could scarcely be claimed that the brothers were twins—even “fraternal” twins—for observers would react with baffled smiles
Twins? How can that be possible!
For by the age of four, the demon brother was several inches taller than the smaller brother whose spine curved, and whose chest
caved in upon itself, and whose eyes blinked teary and vaguely focused, and it came to seem that the brothers were not twins but, simply, brothers: the one older than the other by two or three years, and much healthier.
We love the boys equally. Of course
. At bedtime the demon brother sank into sleep with the abruptness of a rock sinking into dark water, come to rest in the soft dark mud below. At bedtime the smaller brother lay with opened eyes and stem-thin limbs twitching for he feared sleep as one might fear sinking into infinity
Even as a young child I understood that infinity is a vast fathomless chasm inside the brain into which we fall and fall through our lives, fall and fall unnamed, faceless and unknown where even, in time, the love of our parents is lost. Even the love of our mothers is lost. And all memory
waking from a thin tormented sleep like frothy water spilled across his face and he’s struggling to breathe, choking and coughing, for the demon brother has sucked up most of the oxygen in the room, how can the demon brother help it, his lungs are so strong, his breath so deep and his metabolism so heated, naturally the demon brother will suck up the oxygen in the brothers’ room where each night at bedtime their parents tuck the boys in, in twin beds, kissing each, declaring their love for each, and in the night the smaller brother is wakened from a nightmare of suffocation, his weak lungs unable to breathe panicked and whimpering in a plea for help managing to crawl from his bed and out of the room and into the hall, collapsed partway between the brothers’ room and their parents’ room where in the early morning the parents will discover him.

Such meager life, yet such life struggles to save itself!—so the demon brother would recall, in contempt.

Of course we love Edgar and Edward equally. They are both our sons
.

This declaration the demon brother knew to be a lie. Yet was angered by the thought that, when the parents uttered the lie, as they did frequently, those who heard it might believe. And the smaller brother, the sickly brother, with his caved-in chest, crooked spine, wheezy asthmatic breath, yearning teary eyes and sweet smile wished to believe. To rebuke him, the demon brother had a way of turning on him when they were alone, for no (evident) reason pushing him, shoving him, wrestling him to the floor, as the smaller brother drew breath to protest straddling him with his knees, gripping the breakable rib cage like a vise, thump-thump-thumping the little freak’s head against the floor, the moist hard palm of a hand camped over the little freak’s mouth to prevent him from crying for help
Mama mama mama
faint as a dying lamb’s bleating and so unheard by the mother in another part of the house downstairs in her bliss of ignorance not hearing the thump-thump-thump of the smaller brother’s head against the carpeted floor of the boys’ room until at last the smaller brother goes limp, ceases to struggle, ceases to struggle for breath, his pinched little face has turned blue, and the demon brother relents, releases him panting and triumphant.

Could’ve killed you, freak. And I will, if you tell
.

For why were there two, and not one? As in the womb, the demon brother felt the injustice, and the illogic.

School! So many years. Here the demon brother, who was called Eddie, was first in all things. As the smaller brother, who was called Edward, lagged behind. Immediately in elementary school the brothers were not perceived to be twins but only just brothers, or relatives sharing a last name.

Edgar Waldman. Edward Waldman. But you never saw them together
.

At school, Eddie was one of the popular boys. Adored by girls, emulated and admired by boys. He was a big boy. A husky boy. He was a natural leader, an athlete. Waved his hand, and teachers called upon him. His grades were never less than B. His smile was a dimpled smile, sly-sincere. He had a way of looking you frankly in the eye. By the age of ten Eddie had learned to shake hands with adults and to introduce himself
Hi! I’m Eddie
provoking smiles of admiration
What a bright precocious child!
and, to the demon brother’s parents
How proud you must be of your son
as if in fact there were but one son, and not two. In sixth grade, Eddie ran for president of his class and was elected by a wide margin.

I am your brother, remember me!

You are nothing of mine. Go away!

But I am in you. Where can I go?

Already in elementary school the smaller brother Edward had dropped behind his twin. The problem wasn’t his schoolwork—for Edward was a bright, intelligent, inquisitive boy—his grades were often As, when he was able to complete his work—but his health. So frequently absent from his fifth grade classes, he’d
had to repeat the year. His lungs were weak, he caught respiratory infections easily. His heart was weak, in eighth grade he was hospitalized for weeks following surgery to repair the faulty heart valve. In tenth grade he suffered a “freak accident”—observed only by his brother Eddie, in their home—falling down a flight of stairs, breaking his right leg and kneecap and his right arm and several ribs and injuring his spine and thereafter he had to hobble about stricken with shyness, wincing in pain, on crutches. His teachers were aware of him, the “younger” Waldman boy. His teachers regarded him with sympathy, pity. In high school, his grades became ever more erratic: sometimes As but more often Cs, Ds, Incompletes. The smaller brother seemed to have difficulty concentrating in his classes, he fidgeted with pain, or stared open-eyed in a haze of painkillers, scarcely aware of his surroundings. When he was fully awake, he had a habit of hunching over his notebooks, that were unusually large, spiral notebooks with unlined pages, like sketchbooks, and in these notebooks he appeared to be constantly drawing, or writing; he frowned and bit his lower lip, lost in concentration, ignoring the teacher and the rest of the class
Slipping into infinity, a pleat in time and a twist of the pen and there’s freedom!
The pen had to be black felt-tip with a fine point. The notebooks had to have marbled black-and-white covers. The teacher had to call upon “Edward” several times to get the boy’s full attention and in his eyes then, a quick flaring-up, like a match lighted, shyness supplanted by something like resentment, fury.
Leave me alone can’t you, I am not one of you.

By the time the brothers were eighteen, Eddie was a senior bound for college, president of his class and captain of the football team and in the school yearbook “most likely to succeed” and Edward was trailing behind by a year, with poor grades. He’d begun to arrive at school with a wheelchair, brought by his mother, now in the throes of spinal pain from a slipped disk, and in this wheelchair he was positioned at the front, right-hand corner of his classes, near the teacher’s desk, a broken, freaky figure with a small pinched boy’s face, waxy skin and slack lips, drowsy from painkillers, or absorbed in his spiral notebooks in which he only pretended to take notes while in fact drawing bizarre figures—geometrical, humanoid—that seemed to spring from the end of his black felt-tip pen.

In the spring of his junior year, stricken with bronchitis, Edward didn’t complete his courses and never returned to school: his formal education had ended. In that year, Eddie Waldman was recruited by a dozen universities offering sports scholarships and, shrewdly, he chose the most academically prestigious of the universities, for his goal beyond the university was law school.

Resembling each other as a shadow can be said to resemble its object
. Edward was the shadow.

By this time the brothers no longer shared a room. The brothers no longer shared—even!—the old, cruel, childish custom of the demon brother’s wish to harm his smaller twin; the demon brother’s wish to suck all the oxygen out of the air, to swallow up his smaller twin entirely.
Why be this other here—this thing! Why this, when there is me!

Here was the strange thing: the smaller brother was the one to miss the bond between them. For he had no other so deeply imprinted in his soul as his brother, no bond so fierce and intimate.
I am in you, I am your brother, you must love me