Genus Antigone

S.K. Brownell

 

Your parents talk about sandhill cranes and blue herons and ducks and geese like relatives that come to visit. Did you see the goose the other day? Yeah, how was he? Did you hear about the muskrat? Any news about his cousin? The conversation drifts from Walmart sales to the neighborhood association, back to wildlife. Dan’s borrowing our tent this weekend. Lucia said deck chairs were fifty percent off. Turtle’s petitioning for new mailboxes again, but the Robins feel at home in the old ones, and so does Mr. Pulaski.

You are sitting outside in a circle chatting, and you find yourself shifting this way and that to look your parents in the face without blinding yourself. In a circle, someone always has to face the sun. The patio is all orange wood and grey stone, and you are disoriented, afloat in unfamiliar colors and species and friendships. It’s the second summer in this new house, where bright warmth meets muted chill and somehow comes together, where your parents saved their marriage and there is a room they call yours even though you’ve never lived in it. You are drinking the local lager that’s made two towns west of here. It was local before local was cool, the packaging makes clear, but it has only recently made an appearance at your parents’ house. There wasn’t any in the fridge, so you took one from the damp chill of the garage. The first few sips were fine, but now it’s warm from the heat of your hand and the summer day. It’s starting to taste like piss.

There is a long shadow in the neighbors’ yard next to a tree. Your mother promises it’s an animal even though it hasn’t moved as long as you’ve been looking at it. She tells you it’s a sandhill crane. I wonder where the other two are, she says. They seem to travel in threes.

Really? says your father.

There are three this summer, says mom, and there were three last year too.

Your father grunts. He didn’t remember that.

Mom says, I wonder if one is the baby, and you swing your head towards her, then back to the willowy shadow two doors down. This never would have occurred to you.

Maybe they’re a family, she says. At Bev’s they have a mated pair and a baby, but the baby’s still downy.

There are male and female cranes, of course, but your mother can’t tell the difference, not like with ducks. This bothers her. You know she would really like to be able to use proper pronouns for the cranes—as long as those pronouns are familiar to her.

Yeah, this one is not downy, dad says, and not small.

You are still thinking about the symmetry of three, the family you imagine like carbon copies, triplicate from a lost age. Three birds standing in a circle trying to talk without getting the sun in their eyes, none any different from the others.

You realized as soon as your mother spoke that it was an odd thing to imagine. You know there is no such thing as a family of equals. A family in triplicate would not stand, like the little three-legged table that used to sit in the corner of the hall, propped against the wall: your parents got rid of it after your brother’s thundering footsteps, chasing you, had knocked it over one too many times. You know there is an order to everything. Families only come in twos and fours. Mother, father, sister, brother: each of your parents with a small replica of themselves whose hand they can hold on roller coasters or at sports games or the mall. No room for single uncles or godmothers, step-parents or accident babies, gay best friends or sperm donors. This world is built for pairs.

You have thrown off the balance and your parents never let you forget it. Not since your brother came home casting two shadows instead of one. Now you stick out like a fifth wheel, a spare tire, the kind they strap gaudily to the back of a jeep.

Careful, we’re outnumbered, your dad will always joke to your brother when the five of you are together. You wince. Your brother’s girlfriend laughs. Your father wants you to balance things out. He does not know there is more than one way to balance.

Seems too big to be a baby, your father says of the sandhill crane.

Well those downy ones grow up to be just as big as the others, says mom. And they still stick around for a while. You know your mother is wishing you did too.

Today it’s your brother who’s out of town, but most days it’s you they lack. You live in a city just far enough away to make weekend trips a hassle, a city-city, not the town-masquerading-as-metropolis upon the edge of which your parents live, a real city where you find jobs and friends and lovers, where spare tire singles share apartments like boardinghouses, and where you forget about the sounds of lawn mowers and the small wonders of sandhill cranes, blue herons, and geese.

From the city, you imagine them here in pairs and quartets, solid as the orange railing your parents built and painted together, four by fours sunk in cement. You think about the incongruity: something organic stuck tight in something manmade. It’s a pozzolanic reaction strong enough to hold up the Roman Empire. Ancient trees held fast in ancient tech.

The railing wasn’t built to keep you in. Still, your parents make it known that you are missed.

You all pick up your phones and google sandhill cranes. Once, a website tells you, sandhill cranes were placed in the genus Grus, but when scientists studied their DNA they found the genus was polyphyletic.

Polyphyletic, your dad repeats. Another word that’s too big for me.

You read him the definition: A set of organisms that have been grouped together but do not share an immediate common ancestor. Taxonomy as found family. Taxonomy as boarding house. But which house are you only passing through?

I mean, it’s not like I’m a scientist either, you say, and put down your phone. Your mother is already gazing back at the crane.

Now, the website tells you, sandhill cranes are in the genus Antigone. You find yourself wondering whether they were named that for rebellion, whether they obscure their genders on purpose, live in another world, somewhere beyond the world of pairs, and whether sandhill cranes might be good role models for you after all.

For a while there is silence, and by silence you mean a cacophony of life. You listen close to what you barely remember: buzzing, twitters, chirrups. Your city is louder than this quiet, and silent, silent, silent to this sound.

Then a call comes shrill and clear over the rest.

What do you think that is? says dad.

Your parents squint and listen closely. You lean in to listen too. The sound is brash and insistent, as alien as your family’s ability to identify birds by their song.

Then mom laughs and says, that’s the neighbor’s kid, Eddy, playing a flute or something. Or a whistle.

You and dad laugh too. Blue herons and kids with flutes. If the test of belonging is birdsong, Eddy fits right in.

All around you are things that are natural. The robins in the mailboxes. Mr. Pulaski in his yard. Sometimes a turtle. Sometimes a muskrat. Mongoose? Your mother can’t remember what it’s called. There are many things that are natural: your long, twisting arms; your brother’s extended adolescence; the sun making bright colors behind you as you watch the sandhill crane. But not loving who you want, traveling alone, or changing topics when your mother asks you if you’re dating.

Some minutes later, your father finally sets down his phone and shrugs his shoulders in a way that calls attention to himself.

No luck? says your mother.

Well, we found out they were polyphyletic, he tells her, but nothing about them traveling in threes.

It’s probably a family, your mother says. I just wish I could tell which one was which.

 

S.K. Brownell is a writer, artist, and educator from Wisconsin. Their work has appeared in Speculative North, Solstice Literary Magazine, Great Lakes Review, Decoded Pride, and elsewhere. Stephanie teaches writing at GrubStreet and Carroll University, and can be found online at skbrownell.com or @skbrownell.