Rabbit

(all the objects in Rapunzel)

The rabbit was a feeling Emily planned to grow out of, the way she would stop needing Blankie, learn to swallow pills, and stop being afraid all the time. But the feeling turned to a certainty when she turned 10 and got her first period: Emily knew she would always have a rabbit in her chest. At night, she apologized to the rabbit named Guinevere for being such a miserable vessel. She was sorry for her bashful life, her embarrassing habits, and the stupid name she had given her. Guinevere was a soft, heathered brown, lean the way wild animals are lean, but cozy the way bunnies are round.

When she needed courage, Emily stroked the middle of her chest two inches below her collarbone with the tips of her fingers. This was where Guinevere’s head was, and she rubbed bottom to top so as not to rub her fur the wrong way. The stroking began one night when Emily woke from a nightmare and needed to comfort Guinevere who had no choice but to be subjected to a human child’s dream. It felt so right, that Emily continued.

Rabbits are not silent. When they feel threatened, rabbits make a long grunting sound, halfway between a growl and a hiss. These vocalizations are rarely heard, because a rabbit’s natural inclination is to turn and hop away. Only when cornered will they grunt at you.

Emily noticed that her little sister Grace rubbed the soft skin between her nose and upper lip in little circles with the top joint of her index finger. She wondered what kind of animal Grace had in her head, and how there could be room for it. It was probably a bee hummingbird, but it didn’t seem to Emily that circular stroking could feel good on its feathers.

Grace was quiet in voice but not in action. There was no getting up for Grace, no waking up, and very little considering. Only sitting and standing, only sleeping and being awake, and mostly doing. Though she could imagine no other way of being, Emily knew that she was shy and so was Grace. When Grace was just learning to talk, Emily had asked her mother how Grace was learning with no one teaching her, and how could you learn when you didn’t have a language. Her mother said that Grace learned by listening to Emily and her parents. “She learned to smile because we smiled at her,” her mother said. “She will learn to eat watching us eat, and to dance watching you dance. We’re teaching her to be a human and grow up.” Emily was afraid – she was afraid that the grocery store would make a mistake and accidentally sell poison mushrooms and her whole family would die except for her because she refused to eat them – and she was afraid that she had taught Grace to be shy, and had doomed her.

So Emily felt responsible when she heard Grace sobbing in her bedroom on a red Sunday evening. Grace had a small voice but a huge cry.

“I don’t have any friends,” Grace said.

“What about Ona?” asked Emily. “And Beatrice?”

“They don’t go to my school,” said Grace. “And they aren’t friends with each other.” She sat rubbing her hummingbird lip with one hand and holding her braid like a teddy bear in the other. Both girls had long straight hair that their mother braided down their backs everyone morning. Emily now hated the braids. She loved the feeling of her hair on her bare back. Emily loved the tightness of her braid pulling on her scalp all day, like her mother pulling her home, away from long division and the obligatory school play, back to blue kitchen, out-loud reading at bedtime, and their backyard creek. But their prairie hair was also interwoven with not getting references to TV-shows, never knowing what to say, and wearing the wrong thing no matter how hard you tried.

“We could cut your hair,” said Emily. “Everyone at school has short haircuts with layers...