I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself

by Marisa Crane

What I mean is, it never once occurred to me that you, too, were mortal.

I focus on my own recent discoveries: broken egg yolks now make me cry, the kid’s crying makes me cry, the mail makes me cry—who gave businesses permission to print your name?

In middle school, my only queer friend taught me to use the word family when identifying a queer stranger in public. As I got older and gayer, I heard a lot of talk about chosen family, but I didn’t understand why something so beautiful had to be compared to family. Why couldn’t it just be its own good thing?

It’s true: if given the chance, I would trade her for you.

Whenever I feel out of control, I recite all the creatures I can think of that have exoskeletons. “Grasshoppers, cockroaches, crabs, lobsters, snails, clams, chitons, spiders, ants, scorpions, shrimp, dragonfly nymphs, cicadas, butterflies, moths,” I say to the kid while putting her diaper on backward. I have one eye on the Department cameras, our third, fourth, and fifth family members. “It appears we’re outnumbered,” I whisper into the kid’s ear.

As long as people have had bodies, people have had shadows. I think this should mean something, but I’m not sure what. A quick internet search reveals the folklore surrounding shadows. Ancient peoples from one of those violence-obsessed empires once believed that shadows protected them and that evil forces feared the untouchable power of shadows. Of course, shadows cannot exist without a light source. And the presence of two shadows implies two light sources. Who, then, is my main enemy: the sun or the state?

If I had to choose, I would say the moment between when you decided to kiss me and when we actually kissed, that is where I wish to live forever. Inside my anticipation, dying to receive you.

I don’t want to be one of the humans, I said in a sing-song voice from under my shade. I could see my parents’ muted figures shaking their heads through the thin pink of my blankie. I only want to be the light for the humans.

Tomorrow, I decide, will be better. Tomorrow, I will recover from today.

I never feel like I know how to live in the world. Only on top of it, hanging on as it spins madly.

Tell me, he had begun, flashing a calculated smile. Would you be so careless with one another if the shadows of those you’ve hurt followed you around for the rest of your life? Pause for dramatic effect. I think not, he said, raising his eyebrows.

Things didn’t work out with her for the same reason things never do: she felt like a distraction from my life, instead of a part of it.

But you never blamed me, did you, Beau? It actually made me feel worse, as if I had to double the blame to make up for your understanding. If I was the only one blaming me, the guilt had no outlet, nothing to do but grow its own vascular system and circulate through my body.

We held each other’s hands tightly. The same hands we sometimes dropped in public when we felt unsafe—we had that privilege unlike so many others; whiteness meant we could remove our otherness like a sweater if we wanted. We could walk five feet apart and temporarily become gal pals.

That first time, I couldn’t stop talking about wanting you while I was in the middle of having you, as if the act itself wasn’t enough—I had to make the universe know, too.

And here I was thinking my tears might move her enough to forgive me for not turning my body into a home.

My head feels the way watercolor looks when it bleeds. I wish someone would come dip their brush in me.

“The human brain is nature’s biggest mistake.

As for me, I fall in love with the kid. I finally understand what all the fuss is about: a tiny someone is predisposed to trust you and you have the chance to prove them right.

We are putting on an incredible performance of survival. Where is our prize?

How did you manage to grow a living thing inside of you? Not just any living thing, this living thing. At our second ultrasound, you said, People make other people inside their bodies. The doctor smiled and said, That’s you. You’re the one doing it, but all you did was shake your head like there must be a better explanation.

Pop Quiz: Q: What is the difference between nice and kind? A: Only one is a result of fear.

I feel stoned almost immediately, regrettably philosophical.

Later on, I learn that Julian is trans and Dune is nonbinary, but Dune isn’t out. “Use they/them when we’re alone, she/her in public,” they say. “What’s nombinary?” asks the kid, examining our faces. Julian and Dune laugh, and Julian pretends to take a bite out of Dune’s arm. “A very delicious person,” says Julian, smirking at Dune. “Okay!” says the kid, a little annoyed. “But really.” “It means I’m not a man or a woman,” says Dune. “I’m just me.” The kid seems satisfied by this answer. She slides off Julian’s lap and begins to chase the dog around the courtyard again. Dune rolls another blunt and we smoke in silence for a while. Everyone seems to be in their own world. Then Julian stands up, closes his eyes, and does this slow side-to-side sway, stretching his arm out to Dune. “Dance with me,” he says. “You know I’m a terrible dancer,” they say. “But not with me you aren’t.” Dune smirks then stands up and takes his hand. They slow dance like high schoolers for either three hours or three minutes, I can’t tell. I think about how nice it might feel to do that again with someone sometime. The thought alone dizzies me with remorse.

“You don’t get it,” I say. “You could kill me, and they’d take you for a steak dinner.” “You’re right, maybe I don’t get it.” He twirls his mustache. There is an adorable bald spot from decades of self-soothing. When I think of moving across the country, I think of his adorable bald spot, how I cannot bear to leave it.

“Why do I get two hands?” I ask. She pauses and furrows her brow, pressing her hand against her cheek. “Hmm, so that it has a friend.” “But your hand is my hand’s friend,” I say. “Yeah, but soon I’ll be gone,” she says so matter-of-factly I swear she is you, reincarnated. The kid isn’t even five and she is already planning her departure.

Had Siegfried known the price of our friendship, I’m afraid he would have grabbed his paint brush and climbed inside our lives all the same. What do you do with a love like that?

Q: Where do you draw the line for someone you love? A: I want to remember him as I always have. Q: The line, where do you draw it? A: I am not the Department.

I’ve heard it said that love is choosing to listen to how someone’s day went at least thirty thousand times. Love is saying, I am here, I am paying attention, and I care about that fight you had with your coworker. Beau, sometimes listening to you scream Fuck today, let’s go on a date was the only thing keeping me alive. From now on, I will show the kid that I love her by listening to her explain how carpet squares work.

“Well. How come everything that’s important isn’t good? And everything that’s good isn’t important?” she asks, eyes wide like tunnels.

I decide that looking into a human mirror is not very fun. It’s a wonder my mouth isn’t constantly full of blood.

If I were a social worker assigned to myself, I might say, “Beau is sick of explaining to all the other dead people at weekly poker why her wife finds a certain nobility in moping.”

Like catharsis in reverse, I feel like I am finally gathering all the emotions I’ve dropped since your death. And it feels nice.

Once the post-sex haze has lifted, I begin to feel sad about the possibility of losing her—a possibility that exists between all humans at all times, which makes it so painfully ordinary that I can’t imagine acknowledging its presence out loud. I’m a stupid, stupid woman with stupid, stupid nerves. And I’ve fallen in love. For a long time, I thought love was merely something that lasted a long time before it got sad, but lying in bed next to Michelle, watching her eyes watch me, it occurs to me that the more in love with someone you are, the sooner the sadness settles in.

We three sit on the couch together and watch cartoons, we color pictures, we listen to the kid play songs on her guitar, we play board games and video games, we bicker and make up. I worry I will lose it all at any moment, but I keep my exoskeletons to myself.

“Remember this,” I whisper. “They named us Shadesters forgetting that shade protects people, too.” “Funny—it’s shade when you need to escape the sun, like under a tree. But a shadow when they hate us,” she says.

“No, no, no,” whispers the kid, shaking her head hard. I look at her, waiting for more. “The wrong people have all the power,” she says.

What I’m trying to say is—I’ve never been afraid of anything more than I’ve been afraid of my own happiness. But I want it, oh I want it. Something tells me it isn’t happiness without fear. This small fact keeps me breathing and sleeping.

We wanted to give our child freedom, but we’d also wanted the word parent to mean more than just biology. Maybe it was selfish, but we wanted two mothers to be enough.

Here’s the thing: when an insect grows too big for its exoskeleton, it sheds it, a process known as molting. This may sound benign, but insects cannot breathe while molting. They must stop eating and lie very still. Completely incapacitated, they are vulnerable to a predator attack.

“I should have done this a long fucking time ago,” says the kid. “Bleeping,” I say, correcting her language. The kid stops for a second and stares at the urn in her arms and then I realize what she is about to do but I’m powerless to stop it. She looks at me to check that I’m watching then she winds up like a baseball pitcher and throws your urn against the wall, smashing it to pieces. “I’m sick of being raised by a fucking dead person,” screams the kid, gesturing wildly. “You’re a monster,” I say. “An absolute fucking monster.” “So maybe I am.” Your ashes fly everywhere, like a dust storm, and when the dust finally settles, the kid is gone.

. . . Sometimes, parents & children become the most common strangers. Eventually, a street appears where they can meet again. CHEN CHEN

When I look at your ashes in that baggy, I feel an everlasting appreciation for having had the privilege of loving you and being loved by you. But I feel no grief—my grief is gone; it’s a horrible, beautiful realization. I’m now grieving the loss of my grief. And, more importantly, the distance I’ve put between me and the kid, who every day feels less and less like a kid.

There is a reason devotion sounds like motion. I belong to you, kid. You, Bear.