The Moon as Her Mother

by Hira Amir

It all started the day when a team of doctors, wearing masks and lab coats, from the Institute of Animal Health came to their part of the village to announce the development of the new vaccine that fights various cattle diseases. All the village cows were to be injected immediately, the senior doctor said, no emotion behind his eyes; it is a government order. They had prepared in advance for the collective rebellion from the villagers. “We’re not letting these goons inject our cattle with an unknown substance,” her friend Safiya’s father muttered, disapproval dripping from his face. “Do you know what they put in these vaccines? All kinds of poisons and hormones that can change the cow’s gender!”

They proceeded to do it anyway. Lilan watched the team of ivory-clad doctors visit home to home with an air of authority and inject the cows with precision and carelessness. Lilan hurriedly ran to the shed at the back of their house, where her family kept their four beloved cows. What she loved most about them was that they were all a different shade of colour, which defined their personality. The black one, Raja, was like the man of the house; he was the biggest of them all and could intimidate the others with just a nod. Her father liked him the most. They had an understanding. The brown one had dramatically sad, innocent eyes, the kind that she only saw in vintage film actresses. The one with black and white spots was a character. His mercurial, clever ways would make everyone laugh, and if things got too out of hand, could also lead to her father giving him a stick beating. The white one, the mother of the two, was wise. She was calm, collected, and usually kept to herself. She was called Meena. She had been around before Lilan was even born. She would sometimes come out late at night and sit with Meena in the shed, and they would look at the stars from the little gaping space in the straw roof. It always felt safe.

The staccato knocking on the wooden shed door startled her. Two dead-eyed lab coat men entered the shed, their faces covered to hide their evil sneers. Their father stood over them as they inserted a needle into each cow’s jugular. The day carried on. The labcoat men left, tremors of their leaving still shaking the village. 

She ran to Meena and threw her arms around her, stretching them as far as they could go. I’m sorry. I hope it didn’t hurt, she said in her head, hoping the message would somehow get through telepathically. That’s how they always communicated. Meena looked at her with large, blank eyes.

At dinner time, they sat around a chintzy dastarkhan, fey sounds of the news blaring from the microwave-sized TV. She thought about the mundanity with which the news anchors talked about the unimaginable. A bus full of people had fallen into a ditch, the images on the TV were disturbing. She pictured the cows falling dead one by one due to the foreign chemicals that now flowed like syrup through their veins. When she extended her arm, reaching for another piece of bread, her mother pinched her thigh, shooting a spark of needle-like pain through her leg. She winced, and her mother took joy in her wincing. The last pieces of bread were meant to be eaten by her brother, her mother’s piercing eyes told her. She went to bed, partially filled, like the ghosts that rotted in her room, half-full, like the palliative moon that glowed throughout the night.

At night, the sky outside the room she shared with her parents looked like her scattered thoughts. The sounds of chirping crickets and unsettling quietness made her uneasy. She closed her eyes to rest her heavy lids until she heard a rustling outside the window, next to which she lay. Anxious and hazy, she hauled herself up to peek. Silence and nothing. Just a plain stretch of land, luminated by the moonlight. She turned around to lie down again and saw her parents in their bed, like two little logs under a blanket, snoring away.

The rustling came back, followed by a whisper. Alarmed and alert this time, she looked outside and saw two bright eyes, untrammelled and wide open. A dark figure, in the shape of a man, stood right outside the window, looking at her with a scary determination. His hand was inside his loose pants, moving in a motion she had never seen before. “Come outside,” he whispered strainingly, his eyes bloodshot and ravenous. She could sense him inching closer and closer. She stared in confusion and wasn’t able to make out his face in the dark. With each stroke, his face contorted into something even more sinister, his heavy breathing like that of a bubbling volcano. This continued until she saw a dark stain spread like ink in water on his pants. 

There were no bars on the window that could have shielded her from him. She was frozen in place, and the moon, she watched and trembled. She didn’t know how it happened, but before she knew it, he was right next to her face in the open window, and he forced his moist mouth on hers.

“Amma!” she screamed as she pulled away and ran, the stickiness of someone else’s saliva on her mouth making her sick. “Amma, wake up! Wake up!” She cried and shook her sleeping mother awake. Her mother opened her eyes, unable to shake off the sleep.

“There’s someone outside the window!” staggering to explain, in panic, unable to say any more. She grabbed her mother’s arm as a way to soothe herself, but her mother simply wrested it away. “It was a bad dream, Lilan. Go back to bed.” She said sternly.

“He will be standing by the window, right above my bed.” Lilan whimpered.

“Go.”

 Her mother said with finality as she twisted back into a coma to sleep.

She stood there frozen and used her sleeve to wipe off the dampness on her mouth. Slowly, she summoned the courage to go back to bed and quickly got under the covers, praying she really did imagine it all. For the rest of the night, she dreamed of a red-horned man chasing after her.

She ran towards the cow shed first thing in the morning. Will the cows have grown a fifth leg overnight? Will they have rudimentary reindeer-like horns growing out of their skulls? She pictured parturient cow eyes that glowed and bulged out of their sockets. A million absurd images surged through her brain as she budged the shed door open and found nothing but the same ordinariness. She proceeded with caution anyway. Taking a few careful steps towards Meena, she sniffed and looked at the cow’s skin up-close. She inspected their eyes one by one by gently lifting the lids with her pinkie. Their wagging tails, moos, and breathing all seemed as stable as ever. Their skin texture remained unchanged. She smiled, letting herself finally relax.

Lilan.

She heard someone clearly enunciate her name, as if saying it for the first time, lovingly and experimentally. A voice she’s never heard before. It carried tenderness, concern, and familiarity. She scanned the poorly lit shed and found no one. Spooked, she finally said in a voice barely above a whisper, “Who’s there?”

I can finally see the light, the voice said behind her.

She turned her head towards Meena, who sat in her corner of the shed. Their eyes met, and recognition circuited through their gaze like a spark. “Meena?”

Daughter.

It was as if something broke inside of her, like frosted glass cracking on the touch of a fingertip. She ran towards Meena and threw herself around her frame, hot tears pricking at her eye corners. The vaccine had shifted something inside the genetic makeup of the animal, endowing it with sentience. Overnight, she could dream in colours, look askance at the darkness that surrounded her in the shed, and pass on messages without opening her mouth to whomever she willed to communicate with. It was new and made her feel unnerved and disoriented at first, but with Lilan in front of her, she felt at ease. It was like letting yourself be seen for the first time.

When it first happened, she looked towards Raja, hoping to gain some form of clarity; maybe it was a collective experience. When Raja didn’t look back at her with any light in his eyes, she felt alone and alarmed. In the morning, she saw Lilan’s silhouette in the light, opening the shed door, and her heart finally felt like it could relax. The pendulous nature of her thought process in revealing herself to Lilan and keeping this secret forever made her feel on edge. But looking at the scrawny little girl she had seen grow up right in front of her, running from one animal to the other, checking for signs of any abnormalities, gave her comfort and courage.

With the little girl’s arms wrapped around her, she rejoiced. The panic that had settled into her bones due to the overwhelming uncertainty of everything began to dwindle.

“You’re finally here.”  Lilan looked into Meena’s eyes. They were the colour of tree sap that dripped from the pine trees in spring. Glowing red and amber, honey-like and sweet.

I’ve always been here. Meena replied.

They stayed like that for a long time. The safety of knowing one has another feels as precarious as a knife to a lamb’s throat. It can fill a gap that is filled with nothing but violence. But the ephemeral balming effect it carries can undo even years of neglect. Meena calling her daughter changed everything. Whatever was lacking in the word mother for her started to become whole. Lilan never questioned why Meena could communicate with her the way she could because the communication was never missing before. It had only become more concrete. They started taking long walks down to the lake, where the sand was ashy, and the scattered stones were in various shades of green and blue. They shared stories and developed inside jokes. Lilan listened intently. She was always so wise beyond her years, Meena thought, and felt her heart swell with love and protection. Lilan told her about the man she had seen in the window, how his eyes glowed, and about the red-horned man she had dreamed of.

“Why is it that sometimes it feels like the moon is missing from your life?”

What do you mean? Meena asked, watching the same wind that created a current in the water blow through Lilan’s hair.

“The moon, that watches over you when you sleep, that fills your wounds with love when you’re hurt, that nourishes you when you’re hungry for something?”

Maybe it’ll come to you in time, maybe it was just waiting for the right time, waiting for you to be brave.

“Haven’t I been brave enough?”

They held each other for a long time and watched the currents in the water and felt the pain inside them transmute.

The next morning, when her father came back from working in the field, he didn’t notice the flicker of alarm in Lilan’s eyes when he announced to the house that he had sold Meena to another farmer in the neighbouring village.

“He’s paying a huge sum.” He smiled. “We won’t have to worry about rent for a few months.”

Lilan knew her protests or tears would not work in front of her family. She did not get to have a say in these decisions. She ran towards the cow shed and let herself break down in tears and tell the news to Meena, expressing her helplessness.

Meena didn’t seem like this was a surprise to her; she sat there patiently as if she already knew this was going to happen.

The moon always finds its way to nourish what it loves.

“But what if it forgets?” Lilan couldn’t stop crying.

It’s etched into it forever.

They came and took Meena away. It happened on a day when the clouds couldn’t keep their tears in any more, and the sky growled and complained. The water gushing from the sky made the earth glisten, and the air smelled like unripe pine cones. Lilan couldn’t watch, but she still stood by the door with a fire burning in her heart. It held hope.

Later that night, when her father came home, he looked sick with grief and loss. His brother had been trampled on by an animal and killed on the spot. He had to make the funeral arrangements right away. In the neighbouring village, a herd of people was searching for a white cow that had disappeared overnight. Later, they found her body afloat in the lake, swollen and rotting, swaying with the currents. Some say she drowned herself. There were stains of dried blood on her hooves.