Young Writers Society

Before you were old enough to resent her, you called her “Mama” instead of “Mother,” and she would lead you down the gravel road to the old red barn on the hill. Mama-not-Mother raised goats in that barn. Before you knew about most other things, you knew about those floppy-eared creatures with dumb, bloated eyes and lips that sagged and lolled like a lazy gum-chewer’s. When the snow melted and the goat-bellies bulged, babies were born.

“They’re called kids,” Mama-not-Mother explained, “just like you.”

You were pretty sure that these newborn goats had a bond with you just as Mama-not-Mother had with her favorite milk-goats Gloria and Sunday. You tottled after the bleating little kids, giggling as they waggled their short, tuffed tails just inches from your reach. Like you , they stumbled about on shaky legs that were still adjusting to the solid world, and they tripped over their feel almost as frequently as you.

One morning, while Mama-not-Mother was still asleep, you crept out the door wearing red rain-boots and an oversized coat. Poking your nose between the gate-rails, you attempted to peek at the little goat-kids inside. Your fingers were small and clumsy and not at all adept for the opening of gates, but with some effort you pushed it open and tiptoed in. The rainy scent of morning dew mixed with the familiar musk of goats’ milk and straw, and the furry napping bodies were slow to stir and meet your gaze. You walked forth towards the huddled mass of goats and plucked the infants one-by-one like flower petals, placing each droopy little goat between the crook of your arm; and once you realized that you couldn’t carry them all this way, you nudged the smallest pair into your sweater pockets. So you walked this way back up to the house, admonishing each goat as it bleated or stuck out its head.

You crept in through the back door and shuffled towards your bedroom. The goats were quickly dressed in doll-bonnets and scarves, and you watched as they skipped and tumbled across the floor, whining and returning with the expectation of their ears being scratched.

You only became nervous when, somewhere in the house, footsteps sounded, and another pair of footsteps responded from the kitchen. Coffee gurgled and bacon snapped. You shushed each goat urgently as it bleated or ran across the wooden floor with a hard clack-clack-clack of hooves. Someone called your name from behind the door.

“Just a moment!” you called with a four-year-old aggravation. Now your eyes flashed about, looking for a place to hide the kids. Your eyes fell upon the dresser, and you furiously began opening drawers and grabbing goats in awkward handfuls. You tossed socks and shirts and underwear, trying to put everything in its own chaotic sort of order. It made sense at the time, since they were being filed away, to be sure to organize them as you organized socks, matching colors with colors and patterns with patterns. So you put them away like laundry. White goats filled the bottom drawer and disappeared as you shut it. In the drawer that followed, black ones were lumped together, and then the spotted ones, and then ones with patches. The color-coordinated goats bleated from their respective positions, the dresser-drawers closed, and you shushed them again.

Mama-not-Mother opened the door. “Tessa,” she said to you, “did you see that all the goats got out?”

You shook your head so furiously that your pigtails swatted your forehead. The dresser wailed. Mama-not-Mother pointed outside to the mama goats in the garden. They nibbled bushes and gazed up with stupid eyes. Mama-not-Mother pulled a single piece of straw from your hair. “How could that have happened, Tessa? The gate was shut, wasn’t it?”

You shrugged, looking at your feet. The dresser kept bleating and pounding. Mama-not-Mother pulled open the bottom drawer, white goats leaping out like freed bunnies from a magician’s hat. She opened the dresser, drawer-by-drawer, until the room was swarmed with little goats again. She held one of Gloria’s pretty black babies in her arms. “Tessa…”

You felt your throat swelling red with tears, palms sticky with guilty sweat. “I’m sorry,” you whispered. “I’m so, so sorry Mama.”

Mama-not-Mother stared at the mess and then at you, and at the mess again. She sighed, and allowed herself to smile. “It’s okay, sweetie,” she said. “We just have to get them all back inside.”

You and Mama-not-Mother collected goats again, shuffling them all back down the road to the old red barn on the hill. The sun prodded past the fluffy white clouds, and the pink buds of trees poked out like curious noses. Mama-not-Mother hugged you in her arms and told you it was okay. “Did we learn something this morning?”

“Yes,” you said severely. “You can’t put kids in dressers.”

But the thing about kids is that they turn into big, stupid goats who have their own bleating, whiny kids, and people hardly differ. You were fourteen when Mama became Mother, and you found yourself most akin with the older kids who were sprouting small horns on the tops of their heads, butting and kicking their mothers who were butting and kicking back. You wondered why the air felt colder every spring as you sat in the pasture with the wind knocking the grasses toward your knees. The kids were more shy around you than in generations past, perhaps because you were so much bigger now. You tossed them bread and watched them nibble it with their lopsided faces. You tried to get your thoughts straight, but the world was no longer black, white, spotted, and patched. Mother stood by the gate, watching as though she expected you to flee the pasture as soon as it was open. You remembered a time when “Mother” was “Mama,” when the world was simple and new, and you wondered what had changed so much.