Holy Cow

14 MOM

Banging your head over and over against a wall is not as bad as it sounds. Or rocking back and forth, or pacing like a panther in a zoo. It’s like you’re going over the same ground again and again and again, knowing that you will eventually wear a path so deep that you will break through to the knowledge that you seek, break out of this world that makes you want to bang your head against a wall and into another, better one.

So that’s what happened. One day, as I was banging my head against the stall wall, I stopped and just spoke one word: Mom. I just kept repeating that word over and over, Mom, Mom, Mom. And I realized I’d been heartbroken over her disappearance, always nodding when people told me that’s what happened on a farm, that the moms and dads leave when the babies are ready to be moms and dads, but inside, I always heard a voice asking, Why did you leave me? Why did you leave me, Mom?

I stopped banging my head because I realized Mom didn’t leave me. She was taken away. She was taken away and killed, and then she was eaten. I felt the bile rising again in me from stomachs three and four, and I vomited all over the ground, and maybe I passed out. It was horrible, but it was also freeing. I realized I’d been angry at my mom for leaving and now I wasn’t angry anymore. All my anger was now trained on the humans who had betrayed me, and betrayed her even worse.

You humans drink our milk and eat the eggs of the chickens and the ducks. Isn’t that enough for you? Isn’t it enough that we give you our children and what’s meant for our children? And if not, when is it enough? All you humans do is take, take, take from the earth and its beautiful creatures, and what do you give back? Nothing. I know humans consider it a grave insult to be called an animal. Well, I would never give a human the fine distinction of being called an animal, because an animal may kill to live but an animal never lives to kill. Humans have to earn the right to be called animals again.