Rabbits

By Olivia Murphy-Major

For a long time I dreaded fetching the rabbits from the cellar. My ears grew hot as the words escaped my mother’s lips. Go down and get a rabbit. I was the older sister, so I ought to have had the courage to descend the creaky stairs into darkness, into the smell of damp wood and old linens. Starting when I was seven years old, my mother presumed I could stomach the sight of the rabbits; their bodies sleek and pink and gleaming, their feet tied together with twine.

The rabbits looked nothing like themselves when stripped of fur and ears. They were long and naked, the muscles like ribbons meeting and tapering across their limbs. There were holes where the ears used to be, black and bottomless as pupils, which often tricked me into believing they were another pair of eyes.

In the winter Mother sent me down to get them from the freezer chest, and after a few years, it felt perfectly ordinary—except for every now and again, when the dark at the bottom of the stairs looked as though it would swallow me, or I’d get as far as opening the freezer chest and be struck with terror at the sight of the bodies. I’d feel as though I was seven again, shivering and sinking inside myself, terrified to reach in and close my fingers around the icy back legs, let alone eat them.

On the first day of frost, I woke to the sound of the hammer. I turned over in the bed to look at Miriam; her sleeping face still, the curve of her shoulder rising with each breath. Her eyelashes were dark crescents against her pale skin. I twisted from the warmth of the blankets, sitting upright to look outside. Frost. It glittered on the faded grass and the hydrangea blooms, it settled like fine sugar on the beech leaves. Miriam stirred, and the next sound that came from downstairs was the dragging of the credenza. I imagined Mother gripping the corners, shuffling backwards and pushing it against the front door. Soon, she’d be up the stairs to nail our windows shut. This winter will be long, I thought to myself. I pictured the rabbit traps out in the brush, and hoped Mother cleared them all that morning.

Mother kept us inside every winter I can remember. She told us it was because the men came to hunt in the winter. They docked their fishing boats and returned their feet to land. They were eager to run, Mother told us, and hungry from all that time eating octopus and portions of canned beans. Once their boats drew into port they’d scatter through the forests looking for game. The coyotes ate what they left behind. Sometimes I’d wake at night in the winter and look out past the window glass. Twilight coated the lawn in a glaze of eerie blue colour reflecting off the snow. I’d hear footsteps, unsure whether it was coming from the woods or from the thumping of my chest. I’d have to press my fingers to the cool glass for vibrations, and when none came, I settled back to sleep.

A hungry man is dangerous, Mother told us, and even if we thought we could stop them, outrun or outsmart them, there would only be others. She trusted us not to go out against her wishes. Mother did not used to nail the windows closed, not until two years ago when Miriam got curious.

That day, from our bedroom window, Miriam and I saw a herd of deer standing in the yard. Breath poured from their dark noses in plumes of smoke as dusk settled around them. Miriam was the one who opened the window. Mother told me afterwards I should have stopped her. Even if I had thought to, I would not have stopped Miriam. She stuck her head out and from beside her I watched the shape of her breath, how it bloomed and disappeared into the air beyond her. The deer turned and twitched their tails. They lifted their heads to watch her, their eyes glossy black. She leaned forward, two stories of space between her and the swells of snowy ground.

Mother must have felt the cold somehow. Perhaps it snaked its way down the hall and beneath her door. Suddenly she was behind us, screaming. Her arm hooked around Miriam’s ribs and pulled her backward. After that, Mother stopped tucking us in. She used to sing to us, then pat the bedsheets around our legs and lean over us, her woodsmoke and sweet pine smell close and warm. She used to kiss each of our ears before leaving, then pad lightly across the floor like a dancer. After Miriam opened the window, she only ever peeked in to say goodnight. A kind of punishment which, surely, would only last the week. But the next week she did not tuck us in, nor the week after that.

Once, laying with the covers pulled up about my face, I listened to Miriam breathing beside me, mumbling as she dreamt. Mother’s face appeared in the door. Her black hair vanished into the dark of the hallway behind her. Goodnight, she whispered, resting her gaze on my face a little longer. I thought she might come in, but she turned her eyes down and closed the door, stepping backward into the dark. A sloping stream of moonlight lay on the floor beside our bed. I could imagine the moon. I saw it clearly without looking at it. I was sure it was high and full, clouds moving swiftly past as if it were a boat slipping through water, the fog changing its shape and threatening to pull it away. Tears came, silent and fever-hot. Their warmth stroked my temples and settled where my hair began. Miriam lifted her head, then bent over my face so I could see hers, which was bathed in a distant reflection of white moonlight. She lowered her face beside mine and kissed me on each ear.