Paris RosemontThree little kits appeared one morning in the back corner of Hop’s hutch, writhing sightless as moles in the straw, pink as the little piggies on my baby brother’s smooth, un-walked-on feet, hairless as a Brazilian sauntering barefoot along the breezy Copacabana.
I didn’t realise till well into adulthood that those plump
little piggies weren’t on their way to shop at the markets, armed with plaid-lined picnic baskets swinging in the crooks of their chubby Michelin arms. The ol’ cad Hip had gone in for the snip a week prior; evidently not before shooting a bullseye. These mewling miracles were a surprise to us all.
Hop was unprepared for motherhood; rejected the wriggling worms as though she’d had an unwanted teen pregnancy like those you hear about on the telly, where the ditzy girl hadn’t even known she’d been pregnant—thought she’d simply been bloated and crampy the night a baby plops into the toilet bowl out the back of Chick-fil-A.
I’d tried to save the orphaned souls. They didn’t make it through the night. I found their bodies huddled together, frozen stiff under the heat lamp. Gave them a shoebox burial in our backyard under the blood
orange tree that was still just a sapling. Cried for a week over their lost souls and my survivor’s guilt. My then-husband told me I was being silly. That it was simply the nature of nature and I was foolish for wasting my salt on such expendable creatures. I guess that should have prepared me for when I lost our child in the womb a couple of years later. Chastising my tears on Mother’s Day, he said but you weren’t even a mother yet.
