I looked down at its swollen face, its unseeing eyes. It waved an arm stiffly.

Smells of mud and manure were coming through the open windows—the first whiffs of spring. When I went outside, the wind began to blow. It was coming from a long way off with nothing to stop it. It turned me around. It opened my mouth. It undid my hair and lifted my skirt. It scattered me just like I liked.

THE CANDIDATE

The father was a professional manipulator of spinal bones and the mother was a skilled scraper, dauber, and suctionist. They enjoyed playing together: tennis and golf, as well as games of chance. They were slim and tan and drove sporty European cars. One didn’t mind his lack of hair, because he had physical vigor and a nicely shaped head—or maybe it was his money. She kept her hair chemically kinky—a nonchalant frizz.

In the morning they liquefied fruits and in the evening they steamed leaves and heads in a large metal pot. The breast of a bird—split, skinned—turned slowly in the dim yellow theater of the microwave oven.

There was a dog, of course. It was big and blond with an expensive heritage. The dog’s name—it eludes me, but it was something to do with victory, royalty, luxury.

And there were two children—an adolescent boy and a prepubescent girl.

I was blond, too, but of a different sort. My pedigree was mixed. For a brief period, they tried me. They took me on a trip with them—all of us together in a large van with a small television in the back. A second adolescent boy was auditioning as well.

We drove for a day, then arrived at the stucco condo that was to be the site of our happiness and relaxation.

I understood my role as companion to the girl, but my exuberances could not excite her. She watched me with the disinterest of the statistician she would become.

To the mother and father I went then, but because they had recently cleaned themselves and put on fresh, light-colored clothing, my approach caused a great deal of alarm.

The boys, then, I could not avoid. At the pool, they bared their hideous bodies to swim or just because it was hot and they were proud. They strutted—huge and spindly, jackal-faced, inflamed, malformed. They called to me.

I dropped straight in. When I tried to come up, they held me down as long as was funny. I understood this as their birthright. On they would go—a lifetime of dunking, of the pleasures of the dunker.

I suppose I was asking for it—the way I would hide beneath a piece of furniture and cry out when frightened. I was easily riled. It didn’t take much to spook me. I was a soft thing, very grabbable, with large, wet eyes and a tender nose. At mealtime, I ate at top speed, jealously eyeing the bowls and plates and the rates at which they emptied into mouths other than my own. Here was a group of individuals who took their time with food and did not appear to derive any particular enjoyment from consuming it. In a corner, the dog daintily took its kibble, coin by coin, and never approached the table to beg.