RuPaul's Drag Race

I knew I was pregnant when the rabbit died.

I don’t remember my mother. She didn’t die in childbirth, she just left as soon as I was weaned. I used to imagine it was because it was like birthing puppies. I’d scan the faces of my grademates, wondering if they’d been part of the litter.

Truth is, my father was an asshole and she’d left him for it. I admired her for that. I loved the idea of her, the fantasy that somewhere out there my mother was a strong woman. She was in Alaska, drilling for oil with her arms glistening and muscled. She was on the plains in Texas, roping steers and breaking skinny chested men’s hearts.

Then my father died, falling down the stairs of our old antebellum house. He’d been drunk, he was always drunk.

Now it was just me. Or maybe someone else if I was pregnant.

I wasn’t sure but I felt different. There were the obvious signs. Nausea. Missing periods. Frequent feelings of existential dread.

The dreams were a part of it. Every night I dreamed I was in a vast empty space. Voices called to me but I never remembered what they said.

I thought about getting a pregnancy test. I could drive to the next town over but I worried the government was tracking those so they could prosecute anyone who had an abortion. I’d read about it online and I couldn’t shake the paranoia.

My grandmother had taught me a method that worked, a method they’d used in the old country. If you trapped a rabbit on a full moon and peed on it, it would tell you if you were pregnant or not. She swore by it.

I trusted my grandmother. She’d taught me more than anyone I’d ever met.

Before she died, I used to visit her and her friend, Aggie, who’d lived out in a cabin deep in the swamp. My grandmother had moved out there in her 40s. She’d told my grandfather she was done with him one night and had never come back. She’d left him the house and the kids.

Women in my family have a habit of leaving I guess.

Makes me wonder why I stay. Whenever I try to leave my feet feel so heavy. The house is crumbling around me, the walls creak and the plumbing only works on odd days. I’ve learned to fix some things but there is always another.

We had a few rabbit families who’d lived in the swamp behind the house for as long as I could remember. My father used to curse them whenever he tried to grow anything. They ate his crops, no matter what he planted. Event onions and potatoes which rabbits usually hated.

He’d set out traps but never caught anything. I remember going with him to check on them, how he’d scream at the broken traps, slapping his floppy hat on his jeans.

I’d used one of my grandmother’s traps and set it out where I knew they went for water. After checking several of them I found that one had worked. I’d caught a rabbit. It was almost silver in the moonlight and sat calmly in the cage, wiggling its nose.

I picked the cage up and stared at it.

“Hello,” I said.

It did not speak back but I kept talking as I carried it in my arms, walking back to the house. It seemed impolite not to at least have a conversation before I peed on it. Him? I looked down at the cage. Definitely a him.

“I’m sorry about all of this Mr. Rabbit. I appreciate you being calm. I promise this will all just be a weird story you can tell your family after I bring you back. You’ll even get a carrot at the end.”

I opened my back door and set the rabbit onto the kitchen counter. The rabbit didn’t move, just quietly stared at me. I wondered if he was too afraid but he didn’t tremble or startle. It was as though he was staring at a clear lake, placid and serene.

I paced back and forth. I wasn’t going to squat over the cage like an animal. I sighed and brought a plastic cup into the bathroom. I sure hoped Grandmother Delphine was right about all this.

I picked up the cage and brought it into the bathroom, opening the hatch and nudging the rabbit into the tub. He looked up at me.

“Sorry,” I said, tipping the plastic cup over his ears.
So gross.

At first nothing happened. I leaned over, looking closely.

Grandmother Delphine had said I’d know but not how.

I closed my eyes and thought of that stupid night. I’d known better than to go to that bonfire party. A couple of drinks and I’d been heels up with Noé Porter in the bushes. The man was as dumb as rocks but hot in that “would probably steal your social security number” way.

I hadn’t spoken to him since. I’d hoped we could both forget about it.

I heard a scream and opened my eyes.

“What the hell?”

The rabbit began to smoke, an odd purple green colored smoke. His flesh swelled enormously, pus oozing out from the stretched skin. It burst with a popping sound, expelling green and yellow liquid. One eye swam in the ruined body.

“He is coming.”

It sounded like a child’s voice.

I fell back on my ass, scrambling away from the tub. My skin crawled, my eyes rolled back in my head. I saw stars and then black.

When I woke I was still on the bathroom floor and it was light. I slowly got up, feeling ancient. I did not look at the bathtub. I shut the bathroom door firmly. I would use the upstairs bathroom from now on.

I went into the kitchen and drank a glass of water. Then another. Then another.

I stared at the faded calendar of watercolors we’d had on the wall since my mother left. 1995. You could barely see the months anymore.

Aggie. Aggie would know. She was still out there in that cabin, as old as any tree in the swamp. I visited her every couple of months though it had been a while. She was a pain in the ass to get to. I’d have to take my father’s old pirogue and some preserves. Aggie always enjoyed beautyberry jam or jelly.

I did not think as I loaded up the boat. My mind was blank as I tried to forget everything I’d seen. Everything I’d done.

That voice. I couldn’t forget that voice.

The cabin was old but in good repair, made from bald cypress and built on stumpy stilts. Aggie was sitting on the front porch, her gnarled hands knitting a row of flowers in her lap.

“Aggie,” I said.

“Girl,” she said. She knew my name, she just pretended she didn’t.

I hauled myself onto the porch and set a basket at her feet.

“I need your help Aggie.”

She put down her knitting and looked me up and down. One of her eyes was milky white and unseeing. The other was a bright blue, blindingly blue in her white face.

“You sure do,” she said.

She got up slowly and I followed her into the kitchen where she set a pot to boil. She opened her cabinet and put two chipped blue cups and saucers on the scarred wooden table.

“We had a name for him once,” she said. “The thing inside you. Government took our language. Our words.”

I rubbed my hand over my face. “What are you talking about?”

“Great evil,” Aggie said. “Before people, there was darkness on the land. A darkness all native peoples knew. We spoke of it, whispered of it. We’ve erased our history. Deliberately I suppose.”

“You think governments have conspired to destroy native languages… so an evil god could what.. Take over the world?” I scoffed.

Aggie shrugged. “Not a god that I know of. Spirit? It finds a home in misery. Like you, staying in that dead house falling down all around you. Punishing yourself for living. Misery well, it opens your soul. It’s how he gets in.”

“Noé Porter got me pregnant Aggie, not some mysterious spirit. I just want to get rid of it,” I said. “You know the old ways. Give me something, anything.”

Aggie hummed under her breath. I smelled a sharp bitter smell like wormwood and dust. The teapot screamed and I jumped.

Aggie smiled and gathered loose tea, sprinkling some in both of our cups. She poured the hot water inside. Smoke curled at the lips of my cup and I saw dried flowers floating in the liquid.
I drank all of it, let the withered taste down my throat until I thought I might choke on it.

“He will eat your sins, girl, if you let him,” she said. “He is coming.” Her voice was smoky, sibilant. It made me quake inside.

I left her without another word.

Remi Boudreaux could get things for you if you had the cash. Drugs, exotic animals, car parts. He could get what I needed. I just needed to find him.

He usually hung out at a little bar on the river, T-Bones, getting drunk and cheating on his wife. She’d caught him there a few times and rang his bell but always took him back.

A few dogs were leashed near the entrance. Leopard dogs mostly. We had a local breeder in town that was pretty famous for his hunting dogs. They had been lazily dozing until I walked up. All of them began hysterically barking until I got closer. Then they started to pull on those leashes, trying desperately to get away from me.

An old man with a paunch lumbered out of the front doors.

“Aye yie yie! Such ruckus! You calm down, les chiens,” he said.

One of them broke the wooden railing he was tied to and ran off. The man cursed and started after him.

I went into the bar which was dark and smoky inside. No one looked up as I strode through, too deep in their cups to care.

I found Remi nuzzling up to Leslie Flores, my old math teacher. Her lips were lined in blurred red and her chest was.. Impressive in that low cut peasant blouse.

She smiled at me. “Well if it isn’t little Eleonise Tate. You still struggling with them imaginary numbers?”

“Those are and always will be a lie,” I muttered. “Nice to see you, Miss Flores. Remi, can I have a moment of your time?”

Remi grinned at me, red-eyed and bright. He had a beard that he’d shaved into a single wicked point and two gold teeth. “Sure darlin’, anything for Charlie’s girl.”

Leslie glared as he got up and walked with me. I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. Remi smelled like beer and regret. I’d already had one of those encounters. I wasn’t about to do anything with a man older than my father. She could have him after I was done.

“I need pills,” I said, once we were outside. We’d had to move away from the dogs, deeper into the swamp.

I couldn’t hear the frogs or crickets. I couldn’t hear any sound at all.

Remi’s mouth tipped up. “I didn’t peg you for no pill head.”

I grunted. “Abortion pills.”

His eyebrow raised. “Ahhh. I can get those, sure. Pretty pricey due to the risk though. Got cops all through the state trying to lock you up over them things.”

“I’ll give you my father’s truck,” I said.

My father’s old Chevy was still in good condition. I didn’t like driving it, it still smelled like him. I kept meaning to sell it but had never taken any steps to do so. The truck and his clothes and his projects had been left the same as when he’d been alive.

“Deal,” Remi said. “Meet me near the drugstore tomorrow afternoon. Bring the truck.”

I nodded and went home although I didn’t want to. The bathroom door taunted me, singing to me.

I heard that voice again. I dreamed it was my child, devouring me. Devouring the world.

I’d only slept an hour and spent the rest of the night pacing the house. I threw all of my father’s coats and pants on his bed, arranging and then rearranging. I tried to eat some potato soup and threw up in the sink. My skin felt tight. My body felt alien.

Something inside me was wrong, I could feel it in my muscles and my bones. I needed to purge it. I needed to be clean again.

I wore one of my father’s coats to meet Remi. I drove his truck. I could walk home after, it wasn’t more than a few miles. My thoughts were in a big nest in my head. I imagined birds there, pecking pecking pecking. If only I could eat something. Something raw and bloody.

Remi whistled when he saw my father’s truck pull up.

“You weren’t joking eh?”

My eyes crossed. I held out my hand.

“No time for small talk then?” He frowned. “You be careful with these. Got them from a doctor up north but you never know with some people.”
“I’ll be fine,” I said.

Remi handed over a baggie with two pills. I heard the sound of heavy shoes on gravel. Two policemen appeared behind Remi, who shrugged at me in apology.

“You don’t understand,” I said, frantically. “He is coming.”

They took my arms and dragged me to their cruiser.

Remi watched as we drove away. I saw a glint of metal in his eyes.

I heard the voice again.

“He is coming.”

The ground shook beneath the car tires as it started to drive.