They Is Us. Tama Janowitz
if it is a dog, what kind of dog jumps on the table to eat apples and using its claws climbs the curtains to the point that they are completely shredded? The kids say that a Muskwith is a modern canine combined with some genetic material from an aardwolf – who knows, though. She has to admit she is fond of the animal, though she had totally objected to it at first, a fluffy little thing with tufts of white fur and great bald patches, runny black eyes, short-legged and a long pink snout lined with sharp, pointy teeth more feline than canine.
The dog (it is apparently a hermaphrodite; at least that’s what the vet says) feels alone and isolated. Breakfast often disappears for days on end down some hiding hole, or at the neighbors’; it knows everyone in the vicinity and, digging its way under the fence in the back when in a sulky mood, has other homes to visit.
All the neighbors are fond of it, fortunately, and report new words it can speak or how it affectionately likes to rest its sharp, pointed chin on whoever is around. It loves bananas, chopped liver and the glue on the backs of stamps or envelopes. When at home, it has a terrible habit of taking hold of one end of the toilet paper roll and running through the house; or will think of ways to deliberately hurt her, if she doesn’t pay it enough attention – climbs on her lap and smacks her, forcefully, with its paw, or lifts things from her pockets, so stealthily she doesn’t know until hours later that the dog has taken a whole packet of chewing gum, peeled each stick and eaten it.
Breakfast isn’t like any dog she has ever known. It is cute, in its own way, and can even say a few words – “Mama” and “Breakfast” and “I’m hungry”; occasionally says “out” or “cold” – not in a human voice, but painfully, sounds coaxed under duress not dissimilar to that of a child being tortured.
Sometimes it will talk when promised a treat of chicken liver; other times in its sleep, a bad dream, she hears whimpers and “no, no,” or, more astonishingly, “no hurt, no hurt.” But ultimately, in time, it doesn’t seem all that odd – it isn’t like the dog is putting together whole sentences or anything.
Still, it isn’t what a dog is supposed to be. Nothing in Murielle’s life is the way it is supposed to be. Not her marriage, not even her own kids – willful, uncontrollable, sexed-up –! Even being alive wasn’t what she had thought it was going to be. But then she actually had no clue as to what it should have been like, either.
In the morning she has a Health-Nut muffin, the type that heats itself in a little bag if you pull the string, containing ZERO CALORIES and One Hundred Percent of Daily Requirements of Vitamin C, sugar and salt. The kids don’t eat breakfast. When Slawa had still lived here he ate various health foods, yogurt with fresh fruit and nuts, wholewheat cereal with bran or thin slices of heavy dark stuff gritty with sunflower seeds that was supposed to be bread but was a closer relative of paper, hand-made from newsprint or dryer lint.
Her baking. If she had time she would have made regular meals, but why bother? The kids prefer pre-made growth products in different textures and flavors: frozen burritos heated in the microwave, pizza, everything nowadays comes from one of the factories. Slawa is a vegetarian – if you want to call it that, vegetables are expensive but probably also made out of the same stuff – and he usually ate before he came home.
Even when she tried to bake muffins with wholegrain-enriched flour, he said that anything she cooked had hairs in it, or wasn’t sanitary – and it was true, the flour, no matter how recently purchased, was swarming with meal worms, moths flew out of the cabinets, jars of spices swarmed with heaving larvae of one sort or another and even the refrigerator had roaches which thrived on the cold and darkness and the spills of syrup and ketchup or ancient crusts that oozed from the walls. “It’s probably healthy, to eat bugs,” Murielle says. “Protein. I never get sick. Look at you, you have a cold all the time.”
“It’s not a cold, I am having reaction to the shoe repair chemicals,” he says. “And I am telling you – you kids!” he shouts upstairs as the girls scramble, perpetually late, to get dressed. “The best thing you can do for yourself is to eat a healthy breakfast and have a regular bowel movement!”
“Ew, gross!” Their groans of contempt could be heard up the narrow six-step flight of stairs.
“Yeah, you kids with the laughing, to sneer, wait until you are in a place of work wishing you didn’t have to take a big crap in the middle of the day with all your co-workers wanting to kill you for stinking up the toilet, or like me, gotta find a public toilet and getting some filthy on your shoes! You gonna be sorry you didn’t listen to me then.”
“Wow,” yells Tahnee, “you really give me a lot to look forward to, why don’t I just kill myself now?”
It is true everyone but Slawa is constipated, even the dog, Breakfast, who squats, a tortured U-shape in the backyard, slowly stumbling around for hours until finally one hard pellet drops. You might as well throw loaves to the fishes, Slawa thinks, what’s the point, how could they not be constipated when they never eat vegetables nor fiber, and besides, as soon as you poop, those things, whatever they are, no one is ever quite sure, come scrambling up the pipeline to eat the… shit. These nasty primordial-looking little creatures will, with nothing but a mouthful of teeth, leave you with a buttock full of pinholes if you don’t jump off the pot immediately. Whatever they are, you could pour bleach down the drains and it would kill the ones who are there but afterwards their brethren would be back, more furious than ever and could even on occasion hop out onto the floor, surfaced all the way up from the sewers.
A sourness permeated Slawa’s existence that hadn’t been vanquished by Volthrapeâ. Now that he was coming off the stuff he was like a rutting elephant seal swimming back up to the surface. How had he been able to live this long in such a mess? He ran around shouting until finally she had no choice but to throw him out. “It was the Dora mixed with Volthrapeâ that made me… not apathetic, but indifferent. Accepting. It was only thanks to the Dora that I have been able to accept my entire existence. I see that now!”
“Who cares, Slawa! Come home once in a while and help me clean up if you don’t like to live this way! You were the one who wanted a shoe repair place, now you have it!”
“It was something I did for you! You and the children! The dark shoe repair shop, reeking of leather cleaning fluids! What can I care about the kids steeting gluf and pait when basically I have been stoned out of my mind for the past years?”
“So? And you think everyone else isn’t?”
Anyway at least now he is gone. But… every morning – although he is not there stumping around, in his black sulk – it is still always the same thing, one thing substituted by another almost the same. “Kids! Are you up and dressed? You’re gonna miss the bus!”
“Tahnee’s already left, Ma! She went running!”
“Great.” That meant she hadn’t eaten; the child seemed to live on slivers of watermylon, baskets of those strange hairy sprouts. She would jog to school in her tiny shorts and track shoes and get a bagel at the convenience store nearby, from which she would pick out the center dough and consume only the crust. Anorexia, bulimia, Tahnee swore it wasn’t true; anyway, what could Murielle do about it at this minute? “Julie, did you see a stack of bills I left on the table?”
“No. Ma, can you do something about Sue Ellen? She is getting worse and worse, she’s really bothering me.”
Sue Ellen is Julie’s imaginary friend, a sort of unpleasant companion who Julie uses as an excuse for when things go wrong. “No, I have not seen her.” Murielle turns on the HGMTV. Some kind of infectious kidney virus… the anchorwoman is saying it’s an epidemic. There aren’t enough dialysis machines in the country.
Now the weatherman comes on. “Excuse me for interrupting,” he announces gleefully,