Transcendent Gerbil

Okay, so today was the big day and we got to see our baby in greater detail at his 20 week ultrasound. It was AWESOME! Both mama and papa were in grumpy moods until we hunkered down in that darkened room. We left the doc's office today in agreement: We chose the right obgyn.

I will have to scan the pics and put them up later on. Meanwhile, here's the story I read at our event the other night. Enjoy!

From “I Was A Teenage Mystic” -- a memoir

Transcendent Gerbil

I had a childhood full of prophetic and clairvoyant dreams, vivid ghosts, demonic possession, repressed sexuality, brutality, mystical intimacy and direct experience with something greater than myself. I spent most of my time outside, with my horses, or in the water, tasting every fruit that ever grew on a bush or a tree. That was my true church, the only place I ever felt real and fearless.

So it was on the way home from having spent an action-packed weekend of riding horses, crawfish hunting, and cousin-torturing in Sulphur, Louisiana, at my grandmother’s house, that I learned my puppy had died at the hands of the neighbor boys in Houston. My mother prefaced the bad news with a speech about how she, unlike other Catholics and Christians, believed that surely animals had souls. My brother and I were sufficiently shocked that we actually stopped fighting long enough to cry. For a minute, we thought my mom was going to tell us something terrible about our sister, Shanna. My parents had just placed her in the state school for the profoundly retarded, and all the talk about animal souls and retarded people’s souls and where those souls went when the bodies died had us worried and confused.

I knew that unborn and unbaptized babies went to a placed called Limbo. I always pictured it as a place wallpapered in beige, with white cloudless skies and no furniture, with featureless fetuses and crying, scared babies floating around all the time, waiting for a chance to move on up to Purgatory, a kind of Las Vegas without casinos. And I knew that if you died before you had a chance to confess your last round of sins you’d go to Purgatory instead of Heaven, doing time until you got admitted past the pearly gates later.

I had even vaguer notions of Hell. At eleven years old I was still fairly clean and didn’t really understand how my sins could relegate me to a place of constant pain and suffering. I figured Purgatory is where I would end up, since I couldn’t seem to control my bad behaviors of cursing my parents secretly, saying “fart” and beating on my brother. Not to mention the funny feeling I got when I rubbed my giant stuffed teddy bear on my belly and crotch on Saturday mornings. It felt so good, could it really be a sin? I wasn’t sure, and I would never ask. I just assumed.

My beloved, my darling, my puppy was gone. It was incomprehensible. I had named her Darkie, not knowing the political incorrectness of that, and not being corrected by any adults in my life, who only snickered about it instead. Darkie had long black and brown fur. The loss was unbearable. I realize now that it was probably the loss of Darkie on top of the loss of my sister from my life that made it so painful.

Well. At least I still had my gerbil, Stuart. I would cry and cradle him, knowing that only he understood. He was the last in a long line of gerbils that started many, many years before in Detroit with a couple named Bonnie and Clyde. Stuart was smart, and cute, and he loved to tread his little wire wheel. I relished the smell of the cedar shavings in the bottom of his cage. It was tirelessly entertaining to watch him eat, and chew an entire empty toilet paper roll to shreds right before my eyes. Stuart would perch on his hind legs and greet me every time I walked into the room. I loved him.

When he died I was devastated. It was not long after losing Darkie. I found him cold and lifeless in the bottom of his cage. Presumably, possibly, he’d died of old age. Gerbils don’t live long. We had a burial for him, complete with prayers and poetry and lots of tears.

I put the Polaroid I had of him inside the shoebox with Darkie’s things. Even months later, after her death, her collar still smelled like her. Anything could start a fresh batch of tears. That night, I began a keening call for Stuart. My parents had already gone to bed. As usual, I was the last one awake in the house, a fact that haunted me. I paced up and down the hallway, crying out to God for Stuart’s soul. It must have been my mother’s attempts at explaining the difference between human and animal souls that got me started thinking about it in the first place. I was brokering a deal with God, that if Stuart had either NO soul he could have PART of mine to help him transcend to the next level of existence, whatever that may be. A Purgatory for gerbils? With endless wheelspinning and sunflower seeds? I cried and wailed all night. I sat with my back pressed against my parents’ bedroom door; they never opened it, choosing instead to ignore me. My mom told me years later that, at the time, she was actually afraid for me and how deep my grief seemed to run. I was surprised to hear her say that; I thought they’d always just discounted my feelings. There was the “Oh, you don’t really feel that way.” Or the usual “You’ll get over it.” It turns out they were afraid of their depth.

And it did seem like my grief knew no bounds. I was alone to wander the carpeted halls of our home, late at night. My sister’s bedroom, with the lock on the outside, empty. My brother immersed in his own world. My father home less and less often, supposedly renting an apartment downtown where he could sleep so he’d be closer to work. Knowing that my best friend had parents who beat her with any object they could lay their hands on. Irons, hairbrushes, dog leashes.

And me with my shoebox full of memories. My grief for the loss of an innocent life.