Emily Hancock
Antigone canadensis
1.
She is born with her eyes open—this startles him. Babies are meant to be pink and wrinkled and angry; wailing, eyes shut tight. But her eyes are open. Deep brown, like his. He had been hoping for a son, secretly. They are easier, he thinks. Trainable, like dogs. Girls are difficult, complicated. Requiring so much.
2.
He gets the final say in naming her. He chooses Anna, after his (late) mother. Died in surgery; heart failure during hip replacement. The body is so fragile. He remembers his mother’s body: chronically thin, bony. The soft skin over the backs of her hands, the raised, puffy veins. She would let him hold her hands in church if it kept him from crying or throwing a fit; he would press her veins down with a finger. Her body (she told him) was partially his. I grew you in my belly. We are like parts of each other. Pushing down the thick vein of her forearm. The blood pulsing beneath their skin.
3.
His daughter’s first word is an imitation. He has been taking her out on walks, her small body strapped to his chest. He points out birds, describing them: common name, scientific name, migration patterns, conservation status. These ones you can shoot, these ones you cannot. Her favorite (he imagines) is the sandhill crane—the largest bird in this stretch of prairie. They watch a mated pair descending from the sky, gliding to a stop in the shallow water. They call out to each other, and she replies: kar-r-r-r-ooo, kar-r-r-r-ooo!
Otherwise, she has trouble speaking. The pediatrician suggests a speech therapist. He is not receptive to this suggestion, Anna’s mother even less. She had not wanted to keep the baby. She had not wanted to get married. She had not wanted to live in Nebraska. She is having a tough time, he tells those who ask at the grocery shop, the hardware store. But she’s getting through it.
4.
Anna’s mother leaves slowly. First, she gets a separate apartment in downtown Omaha. The plan (originally) is a brief separation, some time to decompress. She moves some of her wardrobe, her toothbrush, most of her shoes. Then everything. There is a second bedroom in her new place with a pack-and-play where Anna sleeps every other week, then only on weekends, then hardly at all. When the lease expires, Anna’s mother stops answering his calls. He decides not to miss her.
For all the disappointments he had brought her, he had a few grievances of his own. He felt increasingly with age that they had very little in common. She didn’t care for the hunting rifles he kept in the garage and was disgusted by the smell of fresh duck frying on the stove. He found her shallow, squeamish, snobbish. Her interests in art and history, which had once made him feel intelligent by proxy, began to accentuate what she called ‘a certain hickishness’. She was no longer impressed by his knowledge of flora and fauna, his competency in an emergency. And after Anna, her body became closed off to him; she was exhausted, or in pain, which he respected, but privately disliked. Not much to miss, he thinks. And anyway, she has left him with something far more fascinating.
5.
He doesn’t take Anna to see the speech therapist. Instead he watches as she learns to convince him of her thoughts by hand. Birds are indicated by making wings of her arms. She taps her knuckles on her sternum to demonstrate she loves him. When she’s hungry, she puts her fingers in her mouth and bites.
6.
He is not nurturing by nature but fatherhood (he thinks) comes easily. He does not speak to her in a baby voice but in full, stern sentences. There are no bunnies, only rabbits; no duckies, only ducks. She eats solid food ahead of schedule. Walks without stumbling. Sleeps (for the most part) through the night.
He is not sentimental. He does not buy toddler books. At night he reads to her from field guides. She likes (he imagines) the pictures. She points to what she recognizes and he says Yes. Sandhill cranes. My favorite too.
7.
Sandhill crane. Antigone canadensis. Native to North America. Migration ranges from northern Canada to Mississippi, Florida, Cuba. High nest site fidelity. Both parents feed the offspring at first, though they quickly learn to feed themselves. Most populations are stable or increasing, though susceptible to habitat loss through urbanization. Legal to hunt in eleven states. Nebraska not included.
8.
When she is six years old he teaches her to shoot. They start at the shooting range with stationary, inanimate targets. Then they move, then they breathe.
The first animal she shoots is a deer. She aims for the heart but hits the stomach instead. It wails, crumples to the ground. Her symbol for help is a fist at her throat, fingers wrapped around an invisible knife, twisting. A daughter (he thinks) is not so different from a son.
9.
She is prone to nightmares that wake him too. When she gets up in the middle of the night he walks her back to bed, covers her in blankets. Puts his mouth to her hairline. Quiet. Sleep.
10.
Her teachers tell him she is surprisingly brilliant. Though initially it was suspected she was illiterate, an aide at the school discovered quite the opposite. Precocious—that is the word they use. A word he recognizes but cannot quite define. She is a strong reader (the aide tells him), the best in the class. An excellent writer, too, with great command of the English grammar. Beautiful penmanship. Interested in science. She is quiet, though—has he noticed?
Yes (he says). Anna does not speak. But we are getting through it.
11.
Most of what he knows about her is imagined. Her favorite color (blue, his also). Her favorite food (fried duck, his best dish). Her favorite place on earth (the trail by the Platte River, where they watch the migration of waterfowl through the scope of a rifle). It crosses his mind (briefly, infrequently) that she cannot distinguish between love and recognition.
12.
At eleven she starts to wear makeup. A girl in her class teaches her to braid her hair. She reads often from books he has never heard of, by authors whose names he cannot pronounce. The aide teaches her a standardized sign language. And when she wants to, she can speak.
Her voice startles him—low, smooth, resonant. He likes the sound of his name in her voice, but prefers the way she calls him by hand. A forefinger raised for the letter D. Then knocking hard on her sternum, reverberation in the chest cavity. Daddy love you.
13.
The first boy to kiss her is called Tommy but she signs a T then rubs a palm over the back of her hand. Gentle—for the way he puts his fingers lightly to the back of her neck, for the way his mouth covers hers, for the way his eyelashes flutter on her cheek.
She dreams that night of the deer, the way it screamed and crumpled. In the morning there is blood drying on her legs. When her crying wakes her father, she puts her fist to her throat, twists her knife.
14.
You are not dying (he promises). You are not going to die. He cannot remember quite how to explain this—hair, blood, how babies are made. His mother had said—
You are part of me (he tells her). Then: You belong to me.
15.
Precocial—born with eyes open.
16.
He dreams of lying on his stomach in the reeds down by the river. He dreams of the rifle pressed against his shoulder, of his cheek against the stock. He dreams of cranes overhead. He dreams of the trigger pull, the kickback, the shot ringing out over the water. He dreams of the crane dying as it falls. When it lands, it looks closer to human.
17.
She graduates high school, top of her class, gets a scholarship to the University of Nebraska. This is announced as she crosses the stage, along with her major (biology, pre-medicine). She waves to him in the audience, but the first person she touches is Tommy. Tommy, who has graduated with no mentionable honors, who has received no scholarships, who will attend the University of Nebraska (liberal arts, undeclared).
18.
Tommy, so gentle, drives Anna in his pickup truck to the gravel parking lot by the river trail. So gentle, he touches her hair, the shell of her ear. Kisses her mouth, her neck. So gentle. She feels the words against her skin more than she hears them. She doesn’t speak, but she nods, and he lies her down, so gentle.
It’s June—most of the cranes that gather on the river between February and April each year have left already, but the ones that remain call out, loud and rattling. Did you know (she wants to ask him, will ask him soon, later, eventually) over half a million sandhill cranes come to the river before migrating south? Did you know they fly from as far as Siberia? Did you know the prairie (right outside, can you see it?) is the rarest, most endangered biome on Earth? Will you tell me I am precious too?
19.
When her father learns she is pregnant his back aches more than usual. She is weeping to him on the phone. I didn’t mean to (she says). It was an accident. What do I do?
20.
He has a surgery scheduled in a week to remove the bone spurs on his lower vertebrae. Come home (he tells her) and we’ll figure it out.
21.
Once, a biologist observing a family of cranes saw the male of the mated pair die. She watched the female cover its dead body in sedge grass. Watched her build her nest beside its corpse.
22.
The human body (the surgeon says) is exceedingly fragile.
23.
He leaves behind one daughter (Anna). There is little else (she realizes) to include. The language fails.
24.
She lies on her belly in the reeds down by the river. His rifle presses into her shoulder, she presses her cheek against its stock. Overhead, the cranes are coming home again. She watches them through the rifle scope, draws the crosshairs over its eyes. Dark brown, nearly black. Like his, like hers. The shot rings out over the water. The baby bleeds out in the mud.
Emily Hancock is a rising senior from Geneva, Illinois, majoring in creative writing with a focus in fiction and a minor in religious studies. Her work has been previously published in Sixfold Magazine.
