miCRo: “Animal/Apology” by Jenifer Lawrence

Jenifer Lawrence

Assistant Editor Molly Reid: This piece of flash nonfiction pulls no stops. Despite the apology of the title, Jenifer Lawrence lays the scene for us with raw, unapologetic honesty. Through juxtaposition—a dead decapitated seal found on a beach and a fraught moment between the speaker and her son—Lawrence digs into feelings of regret and culpability, what we hold onto, what connects us to our previous selves, that split-second decision that may just change things forever.

To hear Jenifer read the piece click below:

Animal/Apology

by Jenifer Lawrence

I found you in pieces on a lonely stretch of the Pacific. Someone has chopped your head off, then decided it wasn’t worth the trouble to haul a hundred pounds of dead down the beach. So, you are severed—your body here, your head visible in the distance. There are sand fleas, a few flies. A Steller’s sea lion, as near as I can tell.

Based on your size, you were probably female, probably a mother, on your way north after breeding. Or you weren’t, you were lost, disoriented, abandoned, injured. Perhaps a ship cut you with its propeller, or you were attacked by an orca, not much bigger than you, but faster, with a larger mouth and more teeth and an instinct for blood. Maybe you were one of those rare sea lions who feed their pups for years, nursing a daughter who has a nursling of her own. The only mammal to do this. It seems odd, wrong somehow, yet I can’t think of anything more maternal.

***

At seven a boy still trusts his mother, so when I handed him the plastic shot glass of grape-flavored liquid, he raised it obediently to his lips.

I don’t remember why I decided to cut the Dimetapp with vodka, don’t remember if he was sick or just not sleeping, the way I was not sleeping. Both of us startled awake at the slightest noise, checked under our beds before climbing in and again by leaning deeply over the side to gaze upside down at the always empty space.

Maybe he had a cold. Does that make a difference? He raised the little cup and drank it down fast, the way I’d taught him. The muscles in his neck contorted, a shudder seized his whole body, his smooth face buckled. He looked at me, and I saw the faith drain from his eyes, replaced by separation’s perfect clarity.

***

Your head looks like a mask for a Star Wars movie set—one of those interspecies bar scenes. You are covered in sand, with holes in odd places and a bone sticking out from what might be called your neck. The cut edges of your boot-leather skin are ragged, tendriled, the removal not well executed.

I don’t mean to make light of it. I wanted to put you back together and coax you into the water. I’m sorry about being human, mostly. Your death was probably violent, certainly undeserved, and what happened next, I was not there to witness, but it seemed to me you had lain there for a long time without moving. I want to know when your body became detached from your head. It’s been years, and I think about you all the time. Often, anyway. I want so much to have been brave enough to hold your bleached bones, to have pressed the yielding skin of what was once your face.

Jenifer Lawrence is the author of Grayling (Perugia Press, 2015) and One Hundred Steps from Shore (Blue Begonia Press, 2006). Her work appears in Bracken, The Coachella Review, Los Angeles Review, Narrative, North American Review, and elsewhere. She lives on Puget Sound, and edits the Seattle-based journal, Crab Creek Review.