The Rabbit Hutch

by Tess Gunty

As a child, Blandine planted several coffee beans in the Valley, hoping one might sprout into the sky. She followed every rabbit she saw, determined to find the warren and plunge into it. Tornado sirens thrilled her, and she was often punished for wandering off from the group at school. She was a fool for portals, willing to sign the thorniest contract—giants, poison, isolation, tricksters, hunters, con-artist wolves, cannibalistic witches, anything—if it promised to transport her. There was no place like home because there was no home. Now an adult in the eyes of the state, she walks over grass and roots and trash, her feet browning with dirt, and dreams of a little housebroken goat, an east-facing bedroom window, an edible garden, a ladder on a book wall, no electricity, a fireplace. She dreams of total self-sufficiency and freedom from the market. She starts to dream of an American political revolution, but trips over the logistics and tables the matter. She is disappointed by the domesticity of her adult fantasies but also cheered by it. Domesticity, at least, is achievable.