Maggie Smith

my daughter says. Unless the car could float. Unless by car you mean boat. Unless the ocean turned to ice and promised not to crack. Unless Greenland floated over here, having lifted its anchor. Unless we could row our country there. Our whole continent would have to come along, wouldn't it? Unless we cut ourselves free. What kind of saw could we use for that? What kind of oars could deliver one country to another? She asks, Why is Greenland called Greenland if it’s not green? Why is Iceland called Iceland if it’s greener than Greenland? Unless it’s a trick, a lie: the name Greenland is an ad for Greenland. Who would go promised nothing but ice? Who would cut her home to pieces and row away for that?

I carried my fear of the world to my children, but they refused it. I carried my fear of the world on my chest, where I once carried my children, where some nights it slept as newborns sleep, where it purred but mostly growled, where it licked sweat from my clavicles. I carried my fear of the world and apprenticed myself to the fear. I carried my fear of the world and it became my teacher. I carried it, and it repaid me by teaching me how to carry it. I carried my fear of the world the way an animal carries a kill in its jaws but in reverse: I was the kill, the gift. Whose feet would I be left at? I carried my fear of the world as if it could protect me from the world. I carried my fear of the world and for my children modeled marveling at its beauty but keeping my hands still— keeping my eyes on its mouth, its teeth. I carried my fear of the world. I stroked it or I did not dare to stroke it. I carried my fear of the world and it became my teacher. It taught me how to keep quiet and still I carried my fear of the world and my love for the world. I carried my terrible awe. I carried my fear of the world without knowing how to set it down. I carried my fear of the world and let it nuzzle close to me, and when it nipped, when it bit down hard to taste me, part of me shined: I had been right. I carried my fear of the world and it taught me I had been right. I carried it and loved it for making me right. I carried my fear of the world and it taught me how to carry it. I carried my fear of the world to my children and laid it down at their feet, a kill, a gift. Or I was laid at their feet.

Because a lie is not a lie if the teller believes it, the way beautiful things reassure us of the world’s wholeness, of our wholeness, is not quite a lie. Beautiful things believe their own narrative, the narrative that makes them beautiful. I almost believed it until the new mother strapped her infant to her chest, opened the eighth-floor window, and jumped. My daughter tells me, after her preschool field trip to the Firefighter Museum, about the elephant mask, its hose like a trunk, and the video of a man on fire being smothered in blankets. She asks me if she knows anyone who got dead in a fire, anyone who got fired. When will I die? she asks. When I was a child, I churched my hands, I steepled my hands, and all the people were inside, each finger a man, a woman, a child.When I die, will you still love me? she asks. The mother cracked on the pavement— how did the baby live? Look, he smiles and totters around the apartment eight stories up. Beautiful things reassure us of the world’s wholeness: each child sliding down the pole into the fire captain’s arms. But what’s whole doesn’t sell itself as such: buy this whole apple, this whole car. Live this whole life. A lie is not a lie if the teller believes it? Next time the man in the video will not ignite. The baby will open like a parachute.

Life is short, though I keep this from my children. Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways, a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative estimate, though I keep this from my children. For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird. For every loved child, a child broken, bagged, sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world is at least half terrible, and for every kind stranger, there is one who would break you, though I keep this from my children. I am trying to sell them the world. Any decent realtor, walking you through a real shithole, chirps on about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful.

I’m your guide here. In the evening-dark morning streets, I point and name. Look, the sycamores, their mottled, paint-by-number bark. Look, the leaves rusting and crisping at the edges. I walk through Schiller Park with you on my chest. Stars smolder well into daylight. Look, the pond, the ducks, the dogs paddling after their prized sticks. Fall is when the only things you know because I’ve named them begin to end. Soon I’ll have another season to offer you: frost soft on the window and a porthole sighed there, ice sleeving the bare gray branches. The first time you see something die, you won’t know it might come back. I’m desperate for you to love the world because I brought you here.