The New Wilderness

by Diane Cook

Bea shivered at her cold heart.

This is motherhood? she thought, furious and brokenhearted as she tried to let go of her own self so she could free her arms to hold up Agnes.

Agnes felt angry at her mother’s self-centeredness. But then she remembered her mother wouldn’t know any stories of Agnes and her friends. These were Agnes’s private memories.

The Twins’ fury was sudden and unbounded. It was messy and illogical, and she didn’t know enough words to describe how it made her feel. But she knew it was powerful. And she knew that somewhere she had this power in her as well. She tried to think when she’d ever observed animals with such unexpected ferocity and she wasn’t sure she had. Because while animals became ferocious for obvious reasons, she couldn’t quite figure out what the Twins’ emotion was born from.

Frank was startled by things he himself put into motion. Yes, Agnes thought, Frank would be the first to die.

What a sad thing, to have never been alive in this place.

Agnes blinked. She is not even talking to me.

Her voice lashed Agnes’s ears. Her nudge felt like a blow. Agnes pulled her face back down. She was embarrassed. Scared. Angry. She clamped her mouth shut.

Even with feigned pleasantness, Agnes could hear accusation in her voice.

Agnes opened her mouth to speak, but her mother’s eyes prompted her to shut it. There was no argument to be had. The emotion of the reunion had already flared when their eyes had locked. If her mother felt bad or was sorry, then Agnes had missed the signal. And now it was a memory.

She was offering an approximation of affection, a studied version of it. It felt like what her mother often offered.

If her mother did indeed need her, Agnes still didn’t know what that need felt like.

How could such a terrible place make so many people happy like this?

She hated her mother’s fierce love. Because fierce love never lasted. Fierce love now meant that later, there would be no love, or at least that’s what it would feel like. Agnes wanted a mild mother, one who seemed to love her exactly the same every day. She thought, Mild mothers don’t run away.

Agnes noticed that the animals at that watering hole were very interested in the new sound from their camp. Females, mothers, approached the camp, sniffing the air, excited and alert. They swiveled their ears. Baby Egret sounded like their babies. Plaintive and needful and demanding. Agnes knew they wanted to help. To show Val how to soothe the infant. How to feed him. How to protect him. They assumed Baby Egret was one of them, and Agnes had felt a small pang of jealousy over that.

Agnes didn’t need her mother to tell her that it was both nice and not nice to have a child. It was always there on her face.

being cared for felt nice. She missed it. She knew her mother was still caring for her all the time. But it was behind the scenes. It was secret. It was strategic. It wasn’t the same.

“If decisions are getting made, I want Agnes there,” said Celeste. “I want one of us there.” “What do you mean, one of us?” Celeste said, “A kid.” Carl said, “I thought you weren’t kids.” “We have different values than you, so this is a time I don’t want to be lumped in with adults.”

looked at her and saw all that came before and all that would come after and all its potential awfulness and certain beauty and it was too much for me to bear. I looked away, scared, disgusted, overcome with love, on the verge of crying and laughing, and finally, finally, finally I began to know my mother.