THIS TIME, ROSE WAS PREGNANT longer than before. She had more time to think about it, wonder about it, reflect upon it. For a time, she hadn’t dared to think about the thing inside her as an actual baby that might one day leave her body and inhabit the world. But he began to grow in her imagination. She didn’t have any say in it. The little boy in her mind had a life of his own. She gave up fighting and joined the child in her imagination.
She pictured them sailing together on a boat on the Saint Lawrence River. He was dressed in a little sailor’s suit and hat. They leaned out the side of the boat and they saw that the water was absolutely swarming with belugas. The belugas were like slabs of marble that had not yet been carved into angels.
She imagined the two of them in safari hats in a jungle in Africa, with binoculars around their necks, waiting to spot wildlife. She imagined them at the Eiffel Tower, wearing berets and eating baguettes. She imagined them in London with pigeons on their heads, sipping tea.
As Rose walked home she noticed a little girl putting a mirror up to her doll’s mouth to see if it was alive. She smiled.
Pierrot began to imagine the baby also. He imagined a tiny little girl with black hair. She would always be asking him questions about the natural world and the universe. He quite liked that. Little Rose asked him whether it was possible to travel into outer space and shake hands with aliens. Little Rose asked him whether it was possible to travel back in time to see dinosaurs. Little Rose asked him if it was possible to have a zebra as a pet. Little Rose asked him whether it was possible to find a genie in a bottle. Little Rose asked him whether it was possible to find a flying carpet in Chinatown.
And to all these questions, he answered yes.
There was a statue of an Iroquois warrior that he always passed on the way home. Today there was a crow on its right shoulder, its beak a piece of charcoal. He hoped it was a good omen.
46
THE HEARTBEAT OF A RABBIT
Rose couldn’t really be a performer now that she was pregnant. To be a performer, you had to be reckless. You risked your life and security and the safety of your body to make the audience laugh or feel sublime. Therein lay so much of the beauty. The sacrifice was beautiful. But now she didn’t feel that way. Now the baby came first. She didn’t care to do a cartwheel or anything like that. Even the idea was horrific to her.
Rose was so sick in the morning it was difficult for her to get out of bed. She was exhausted all the time. She felt as though she would die if she weren’t able to take an emergency nap. And her lower back felt like someone had come up behind and stabbed her.
She had trouble looking for work. She lined up at a factory but fainted on the street.
? ? ?
THERE WAS A KNOCK ON the door one afternoon during that time. When Rose opened it, she found a girl who looked no more than thirteen standing there and holding up a dead rabbit by its ear, as though it were Exhibit A.
She informed Rose that the rabbit was for sale. The little girl had a rabbit-skin jacket that she had probably sewn all by herself out of the furs of rabbits she had eaten. Rose asked her for a live rabbit. The girl said she’d have to follow her back to her apartment.
They only had to go around the corner, to the skinny triplex that the Rabbit Girl lived in, on the top floor. There was another bedroom at the very back of the apartment, where the big rabbit cage was. There were patterns of poppies in the molding along the top of the walls. And the wallpaper was a very pretty blue. She had made a cage out of an old armoire. She had replaced the glass on the doors with chicken wire. A rabbit lived on each shelf as if the cage were an apartment building. It was really rather ingenious.
Rose wondered what would happen to this extraordinary child after the Great Depression. She hoped she wouldn’t just become someone’s wife.
“Would you like me to wring the rabbit’s neck? It’s messy to cut off its head. I hit it on the head with a mallet. It’s pretty quick. I cried about the first fifty times, but I don’t anymore.”
Rose was carrying a suitcase—she put the live rabbit inside. She walked down the street with the suitcase, with the live rabbit inside it. Perhaps she wanted to save the life of just one living thing. It thumped around in there as though it were someone’s heart she had stolen.
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“WHAT IN THE WORLD have you done, Rose, my darling?” Pierrot asked when he got home.
Rose was sitting next to the rabbit on the couch.
“I thought we could use the rabbit in our show. But I need a bit of meat. I’m feeling dizzy all the time. It’s only a matter of time before I say something and all the teeth fall out of my head.”
“This just won’t do. Next you’ll be bringing me home peacocks from the zoo to put in the stew pot to eat.”
“Very funny.”
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ROSE FELT BAD for the rabbit. But she needed to eat some meat, otherwise she would faint dead away. And the baby was inside her, demanding sustenance. Her appetite was ferocious. In her heart she felt like a wolf. As if she would do absolutely anything to get what her heart desired. There was nothing she could do for the creature sitting pert and attentive and eager to please on the couch next to her. It was an object of prey.