A Fifth Rabbit

Tucked behind a wall of bookcases, there’s an eight-foot mural of four rabbits dancing in front of the full moon. The other walls have been painted over: the little fall gourds growing in patches, the wispy L-shaped bird feet beside the bedside sconce, the falling sun that casts the room in autumn. I would lie there at night among the painted scenes, imprecise because my mother’s training is with oils. Each mural, a blurred pastoral of how she views home: a firelit living room far from Baltimore’s sculpture of Greeks; a rural patch of creaky homes built by her husband’s family; a window into Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s two cats in the yard.

I am not velveteen. I did not have scarlet fever like my Uncle, confined to bed and marred with weakness. I instead lay within my Grandfather’s old wooden bed reading stories late into the night. How the rabbit in the story wanted to become real, how I longed to love a woman over a man. I was not incinerated to rid myself of disease, as the toy rabbit was meant to be. I, too, ran from the garden into the forest with the fairy’s promise to exchange velvet for fur. I cast off the expectations of my family: a wife, a seat at the head of the table, three green Maryland children stuffed with sour cherries below the gnarled locust. I offer alternatives: a man, a poem, and a surrogate.

The rabbits still dance in the spring night behind the shelves when I visit. I can see the moon’s glow behind the spaces between the books, a fifth rabbit looking in. When I dream, I think of the rabbits dancing in the mural moon’s paleness, warding off the oversaturation of my nightmares. I wonder, Why do my nightmares betray themselves with color? I recognize them when they begin: the sky is too bright and soon dull fingers will excavate my skin to see what I keep under there. Until, that is, I picture the mural. The rabbit-light washes out the scene, the night lilies bloom beside their padded feet to remind me of the orange ones in our front yard. A small ritual I cultivated to keep calm in my dark bedroom when I sleep.

Gabriel tells me I’m a rabbit. He says cats have a mean streak in them that I don’t. I tell him, I’m Year of the Water Monkey, so why not that? A monkey that rests in the hot springs, thoughtful and warm. He dismisses me, says I’m too quiet to be a dog, but dog-like. He suggests fox as a cat-dog hybrid but pauses. Thinks, quietly. Rabbit. Because I, to his frustration, hop away when he tries to hold me. I claim nearness is good enough but promise to hug him on my own terms. I assert that I hug him often. He disagrees.

I’m not a runaway bunny who cannot escape his mother, as in the Margaret Wise Brown story. I leave because presence seeps into my headspace. How can I tell which animal I am when everyone decides for me? My mother found me again, like the runaway, but I think I returned to her on my own. I think the runaway bunny did the same. It’s a shift in perspective: like how I make her tea, which she claims to love, but then leaves on the table until chilled. I know it’s there for comfort, even for only a few sips. Worth a single, happy sigh. I made plenty to ward off the winter in Michigan, but I’m still a marsh rabbit of the Chesapeake. Little round ears ill-suited for the cold. I had to leave my mother to know this.

My grandparents kept many rabbits behind their house across the street from ours. Outdoor rabbits in cages by the plots of squash, the few rows of corn, and the climbing grapes along the chain-link fence. Each one a different color. Farmed rabbits. Fur rabbits. Meat rabbits. One for each grandchild. I don’t know why we gave them names. They were practical, like Snowy—a fine color for food or shoes. I don’t remember when he died or what happened to his pelt. My parents bought a domestic pair of rabbits complete with luxury accommodations: a raised rabbit hutch, fine mesh wiring for safety, sturdy wooden planks. Pressure-treated, which they nibbled in their free time. Contaminated. An oversight. Short-lived rabbits.

Always, my cousins and I were rabbit-catchers. We’d place nets in the wild corridors: between Uncle Kenny’s boat and my parents’ garage, in the parallel of Grandmom’s two long flower beds, at the corner between the split cedar and the elevated porch. Two cousins would hold a net while others corralled the rabbit into the netted corridor. If we caught a wild rabbit, we’d cheer and release it. But if one had escaped from the family general store, we’d gift it to my father’s twin brother, the manager.

Titan, a black hound who blurs toward the fence, brings in rabbits from the yard now. Retrieves the ones caught in the wire mesh as they try to escape. Happily discards them on the living room floor. The last one panted heavily, its wild dark eyes wide. Its spoon-like ears twitched. Sharp teeth marked its neck, and a bit of blood dabbed our fluid-averse luxury vinyl. I gave what comfort I could. Hoped to bring it to the forest. Gently lifted its wounded form when its delicate neck lost its remaining tether. With the lift, the spine fully detached, head hanging limp. I tossed the meat rabbit into the underbrush outside, a meal for the fox that taunts Titan from his window perch.

I am not this rabbit. Could’ve been a meat rabbit had I stayed home in Maryland, or a pressure-treated rabbit, or a rabbit tangled in the wire fence in a breakneck escape. Instead, I consider myself a mural rabbit dancing in front of the moon, one of the dream rabbits that washes away nightmares, a prophet like Fiver in Watership Down who poeticizes the collapse of his warren to suburbia: a warding rabbit. A messenger rabbit, returning to the garden much like the velveteen toy, wishing to be real. After nine years away, I want to go home. Gabriel knows this, given the rabbit plateware he purchased for me this year. For salt, a snowy white ceramic rabbit painted with vines. It stands tall, peers forward, ears perked. For pepper, a seated porcelain loaf, vines spread across its chest, ears flat and pointed back.