Touching

Bonnie Reeder, Second Place

I don’t like to touch rabbits, even

when they’re alive. Lingering by my visible breath is the spirit of the family pet, as I crouch on my haunches at the corner of the garage.

Angie isn’t wrong to be upset, though her dad does not deserve the adolescent rage she delivers with each plunge of the shovel into the dirt. The time to talk reason will come later.

“She’s not trash!” Angie cries. “He threw her away! She’s! Not! Trash!”

I stretch my legs and stand back up, letting the posture of my lips and eyes remind her that Peterina has been dead for a week.

“She’s not a broken toy!” “You can’t just throw her away!” “Did you think I wouldn’t notice!?”

Angie pauses her digging to measure the large silver gift box she decorated with Peterina’s name. In frustration, she picks up the shovel again, and I don’t tell her that it needs to be wider not deeper.

Instead, I say, “You’re right, hun.” Inhaling then exhaling. “You’re absolutely right.”

“But Dad threw her away!”

Catching my instinct, I don’t respond. It is no use to defend my partner who, at the cringe of my nose, removed the body that everyone else had avoided all week. The most I can offer Angie is my silence.

Angie stabs a rock and breaks to push aside a muddy tear from her cheek. Stepping off the concrete into the dirt, I gesture for a turn with the shovel. “I think you’ve gone deep enough, let’s just take down this edge a little.” After ensuring that the box fits, Angie paces to the black garbage can and precariously teeters on the lip while her tiptoes slide on the ice.

Finally grasping the red drawstring of the kitchen Glad bag, Angie recovers her balance, hoists herself up, and brings her bunny back, thumping it next to the box at my feet.

It’s Angie’s turn to be silent now, and she scowls at winter, and the world, but won’t look at me. She turns away into the garage and I hear the doors slam on the repurposed pantry cupboards.

Around the corner I ask, “What are you looking for, Ang?” curious if there is a plan attached to her intense rummaging.

“I’m looking for gloves,” she retorts.

“Oh,” I say, mentally checking the bins in the cabinets. Estimating that this might take a while, I change to a kneeling position and involuntarily my eyes close as in prayer. Instead of platitudes, however, I scan my memory for gloves. I hear them before I see

them, and they sound familiar, like mourning. ***

I was fifteen and a half, Angie’s age, when my cousin Michelle’s twins were born. I was fifteen and a half and two days when Michelle’s twins passed away.

We visited at the end of the year, and my mom uncomfortably asked, “Will you tell me about the twins?”

I clenched my lips around my braces, questioning my mother’s approach. Michelle, surprised as well, gave a long glance gauging the sincerity. My mom nodded, steady. The first of the story I forget, but the end I cannot.

“Gloves. Gloves!” Michelle sobbed in outrage. “Can you believe that Aunt Nina? The nurse, she asked me if I wanted gloves to hold my babies!”

My mom let Michelle rock as she anchored her in an embrace, and then, without wincing, asked, “Do you have any pictures?”

Michelle transformed her rocking into nods, “Would you look at them?” ***

My eyelids lift, peeking, because the prayer isn’t over. In front of me is the flexible plastic, and inside, the unknowable. I fuss out the drawstring knot and expand the opening of the bag. Relaxing my shoulders, I inaudibly chant, “It’s fine.” I pull the edges until Peterina is completely uncovered, then, I look.

Taking in Peterina’s dimensions, I lift the lid to the box. A smile huffs from my chest as I recognize the padding as the too-big striped knit shirt I gave Angie less than a month ago. I shrug; I’m always forgetting her size and guessing it wrong.

Looking back towards the bunny, goosebumps move from my arms to my throat. Audibly this time, I bend my voice into the garage, “It’s fine.” Inhaling then exhaling. “Hey Ang, it’s fine. Don’t worry about gloves, hun. I can just rest her in her box.”

I watch my fingers cradle Peterina’s head first and then her torso. Echoes of “What have I done? What am I doing?” shake in me until suddenly my skittishness is suppressed by Peterina’s unexpected weight and overwhelming softness. Slowly, I move her.

Angie comes around the corner, and I blink, feeling the shiver of motherhood. She bends toward me, leaning in to pet her bunny. I put my arm around her shoulder on the pretense of warmth, then reverently fold her into a hug. The rest of the family huddle out in procession from the warmth of the window. I rush inside to assemble a bouquet of lettuce. We sing, we take turns with the shovel, we talk about Peterina.

Two hours later, I notice that I haven’t washed my hands. ****