November 1   

Rabbit, rabbit, rabbit.

Isn’t that what we’re supposed to say on the first day of the month? For luck? As though a rabbit (or even three) could ever protect us.

Lately all I can think about is rabbits. Or, rather, lately I’ve been obsessively researching rabbits, because it’s easier than thinking about the other thing.

Some part of me wants to document what happened last year. The rest of me knows that silence is the only protection I have left.

So: for now, rabbit facts. Someday, perhaps, the rest of the story.

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November 2

Most sources will say that rabbits are crepuscular, rising to nose through the grasses at dusk and dawn. Studies of the animals’ circadian rhythms suggest otherwise. They are night animals, like me.

Years ago I was walking home from a friend’s house around midnight. The moon was fat, gold, ripe against the starless sky. I tore my eyes away for a moment and came to a stumbling sudden stop. There were rabbits in the road, a pair of them. Two shadowy shapes and four round, shining eyes.

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November 3

I drew the Nine of Swords again tonight. The best card in the deck. Certainly in this deck. The art just feels so true: the white rabbit pressing herself to the earth—long ears flattened to her head, eyes glazed and empty—as nine airborne swords plunge toward her. The sky, all black. Her eyes, all black. The swords glinting. She sees the violence coming, and still she cannot move.

Often I am agitated, tensed to run. Other times I am too numb to move. Flight and freeze, the only options. Never safety. Never fight.

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November 4

My early rounds of casual rabbit research turned up zero factual information on rabbit intelligence. To find anything I had to go digging, and digging deep. Many of the pro-pet-rabbit websites and books claim that rabbits are “as smart as cats,” but they rarely offer any citations to support this assertion. I eventually traced the statement back to a single flimsy study from 1966 of 10 pet rabbits, 8 rats, and 8 cats. The author of that paper actually concluded that “cats performed significantly more efficiently than rats or rabbits” at navigating a maze. To his credit, the researcher also warned that “caution should be exercised in using [the test] as a measure of animal intelligence.”

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November 5

Better studied than rabbit intelligence is our perception of it. The adorably named “All Ears” study surveyed 1,516 rabbit owners to measure whether a human’s assessment of their pet’s intelligence affected how well they cared for it. Unsurprisingly, humans who believed rabbits were smart and could feel emotions were more likely to give their pets a clean, safe environment; opportunities for socialization; and ample food and water. 

The survey included a free-text field where respondents could add their own commentary. A table in the journal article listed the top responses. One of the most common phrases: ruled by instinct.

Another: She shows fear.

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November 7

This weekend I attended a science talk on eyes in the animal kingdom. So many astonishing configurations and abilities. Owls in the dark, the stargazing jumping spider, the mantis shrimp’s lavish spectrum. And then the rabbit: a diagram projected on the wall, the near-perfect circle of her field of vision. A rabbit, the researcher explained, has been hunted for so long, by so many different kinds of predators, that her fearful eyes have evolved to scan her surroundings in almost three hundred and sixty degrees.

There are tradeoffs. Of course there are. The rabbit has two blind spots: directly behind her head, and directly in front of her nose. And while she may be able to see in all directions, her vision is not acute. To hedge her bets, the rabbit assumes that almost any movement represents a threat. To her, every leaf nodding in the wind and every harmless shadow look like death.

Her hearing works the same way.

I watch movies with the subtitles on not because I can’t hear anything, but because I can hear everything, onscreen and off, every small sigh, every scrabble of claws, the refrigerator’s buzz and groan, the downstairs neighbor watching a murder segment on the ten o’clock news, and the cacophony all runs together, one thrumming, rasping muddle, and I can’t discern a whisper from the unsheathing of a knife—

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November 9

There’s a painting I love by Yoichi Nishino, an animal scene, churning green water crammed with crocodiles, a black sky above them, a sliver of crescent moon, and somehow, improbably, leaping over all of it, a rabbit. The crocodiles with their ravening jaws look so comfortable there in the water. Studying the rabbit’s trajectory tonight, I can’t figure out how she’s going to make it over all of those open mouths to the other side, to safety.

She’s not, I think, is the answer. She’s not. There is no other side. There’s only the boiling ocean, and the jaws.

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November 10

Rabbits are popular fertility symbols all over the world. We joke about their lustfulness and the exponential growth of their populations. Rarely do we ask ourselves why a mammal might have evolved to be constantly making babies. Pause to think about it for more than thirty seconds and the grim answer appears: almost none of them are going to survive.

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November 11

Earlier this year, a government official in Chile made headlines by claiming that rabbits spread wildfires. The rabbits, he explained, catch fire in one place, then hop off to a second location, their fur burning, carrying the conflagration with them. To prevent future wildfires, he advised, residents should consider shooting rabbits on sight.

Scientists hastened to set the record straight. There were, they conceded, a few anecdotal reports from that region of rabbits catching fire and fleeing the blaze. But flaming rabbits weren’t exactly the grave threat the official made them out to be. These animals aren’t going to burn for miles, one ecologist said in an interview. Sparks from a wildfire fly farther and present more of a risk. Another scientist suggested focusing instead on what it’s like to be a burning rabbit running for its life. We must become aware of how dramatic it is for the fauna.

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November 12

A rabbit picked up and laid upon its back will go limp. For a long time, people believed that this immobility was a sign that the rabbit was comfortable and relaxed. Veterinarians and pet owners trumpeted the benefits of what they called “trancing”: that marvelous biological quirk that made rabbit handling a breeze.

We know now that a tranced rabbit is the opposite of relaxed. In scientific terms, their stillness is called tonic immobility. They are playing dead in order to avoid being killed.

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November 14

Rabbits were hunted by 1.3 million participants for 20 million days.

(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 2016 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation)

Too tired, too depressed. Can’t write. Can’t think.

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November 15

The word לְהִשְׁתַּפֵן (lehishtafen) in modern Hebrew means “to turn oneself into a rabbit”—that is, to act like a coward. To allow yourself to be ruled by fear.

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November 16

I first learned about tonic immobility in the weeks after. After. At the time I was reading everything I could find about what was happening to me. Dissociation, the articles said. Sympathetic nervous system arousal. The so-called “defense cascade” of unconscious acts of self-protection. If we can’t fight or flee, we freeze. Our minds stop encoding memories. We exit our bodies. We go completely quiet and get very, very still.

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November 17

Susan Orlean, in On Animals:

Most rabbits have, in their skill set, the ability to pretend that they’re healthy even when they’re quite sick. It’s sort of the inverse of playing possum, but done for the same purpose, namely, to deflect attention from predators, who would consider a sick rabbit easy pickings.

 

This research was supposed to be a distraction. Maybe I should have chosen a different animal.

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November 18

I think a rabbit might be a bit like Chekhov’s gun. The moment a rabbit appears in a story, you know things are going to go awfully, horribly wrong. There will be violence and gore and animal screams and then the rabbit will be dead.

The narrative function of the rabbit is to show us that someone is terrible and cruel. The rabbit is a stage upon which the character reveals their true nature.

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November 19

Ecologists have observed the signs of post-traumatic stress in wild animals. PTSD may not be an unnatural, ‘maladaptive’ dysfunction, the authors of one paper write, but rather a naturally occurring phenomenon serving an evolutionarily adaptive purpose. Retaining a powerful enduring memory of a life-threatening predator encounter is thus clearly evolutionarily beneficial if it helps the individual avoid such events in the future.

Still, the researchers note, surviving and living are two different things.

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November 20

In science, an animal model is when researchers reproduce human ailments or biological processes in some other creature. The idiosyncrasies of each animal’s physiology and anatomy make it a useful model for some conditions and useless for others. Lab mice get a lot of cancer. Zebrafish get genetic diseases. 

Rabbits, with their natural inclination to fear, are optimal hosts for PTSD. In one study, scientists traumatized 43 New Zealand white rabbits, then gave them medicine to slow their pounding hearts.

The rabbits did indeed calm down immediately after being drugged. Then the drugs wore off, and the terror rushed back in. 

The researchers counted this as a win. Findings suggest that propranolol may provide the most therapeutic benefit in situations of high arousal early in treatment, they wrote, which may be more important for future patient compliance rather than long-term treatment outcomes.

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November 21

From the Rabbit Haven website for bunny owners:

Never leave your rabbit outside after dark. Predators are raccoons, stray dogs, cats, possums, owls and coyotes. Even in the city, these predators exist. Even in a secure hutch, a rabbit can be frightened to death by a predator attempting to get in.

My mind is going somewhere I don’t want it to go. I can’t stop hearing the rabbit screaming at last year’s Thanksgiving dinner. I don’t want to be here anymore, vulnerable out in the open. I want to burrow into the earth, down deep, deep into the darkness.

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November 22

Rabbit Haven again:

You never want to hear a bunny scream. A scream indicates severe pain or fear, and is a sign that your bunny needs help, and needs it fast.

All the house-bunny guides concurred: a rabbit will only scream when it is injured, or being killed.

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November 23

My grandfather loves killing animals. Taking down a twelve-point stag or a six-foot marlin fills him with a sense of accomplishment and pride. His big house is filled with trophies: the taxidermied corpses of great animals he’s destroyed. Absent are the hundreds of dead squirrels, rabbits, and birds, whose small bodies are not worth displaying. There is no glory in these kills. He kills them anyway.

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November 24

It’s Thanksgiving again, the worst day of the year. I open my laptop for some distraction. Google has changed its logo to a cutesy illustration of forest animals gathering for a meal. There’s the blue mouse saying grace. The mouthless rabbit. The hungry fox, sitting close beside her.

Last Thanksgiving before we arrived my grandfather brought all of his hunting weapons up from the basement and propped them against walls and furniture around the house. He was cleaning them, maybe, or polishing them, or putting them up for sale, or simply reminding us, for the millionth time, how many guns he has. The memory is absurd enough to seem improbable. I go back into my texts and photos to check, and there they are: gleaming rifles by the record player, well-oiled shotguns resting on the dusty-rose carpet. The pistols were still in the basement (and under the seat of my grandfather’s car, and at his hip).

Another few photos document his personal library, the sticky notes dividing shelves of paperbacks into three categories: WAR. SPIES. NOT WAR OR SPIES.

My grandfather left to run an errand. I sat catching up with my aunts and uncles and cousins and mother on the sun porch overlooking the muddy river, the dead tree where the eagles nest every year, the swampy island just offshore that my grandfather bought on a whim. Someone mentioned the ceremony that had taken place the week prior: my grandfather was being celebrated for yet another huge donation to some school or charity. With the eyes of the entire audience upon him, my grandfather groped the woman who was handing him an award.

Someone else mentioned the local domestic violence shelter; apparently my grandfather had been spending time there. My blood ran cold. My grandfather, who beat his wife, wandering the halls of what was supposed to be a refuge for survivors of abuse. I wondered how big that donation had been.

My grandfather returned from his errand and summoned us to dinner. We carried the heaping dishes to the table.

Near the end of the meal my grandfather brought out his new toy: a transmitter the rough size and shape of a walkie-talkie, paired with an electronic megaphone to amplify the sounds. The way to attract predators, he explained, is to broadcast the distress calls of their prey.

I don’t remember every scream he played. The only one I’m sure of is the rabbit. The lone rabbit, screaming and screaming and screaming while we stared at our empty plates and my grandfather sat there, smirking. It was a show of force, designed to inspire awe and respect, but the entire scene was so ridiculous, and his evil so caricatured, that I was overcome with laughter. I pushed back my chair and hurried to the bathroom, one hand over my mouth, hoping he hadn’t noticed, already mentally composing the texts to my friends and sister. The cries of pain followed me into the little room and echoed off the porcelain sink.

I returned to the dining room when the screaming was done.

I can’t write the rest of this down.

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November 25

My nerves are sparking, splintering, raw. I need a break from rabbits and trauma. Tonight I’ve been reading about the martial arts, how students are trained to grunt, shout, or scream when they strike. In taekwondo, it’s called the kihap (also kiyap, kiyup, kiai), from the Korean words ki, or life force, and hup, to gather. One taekwondo school website lists four benefits of the kihap: Increase Power. Intimidate Opponents. Increase Confidence. Protect Our Bodies.  

Scientific studies have confirmed the kihap’s power. One 2014 experiment  found that vocalizing—grunting, yelling, or screaming—increased athletes’ strength by 10%. In an interview, the researchers admitted that they didn’t know why or how it worked. Their best guess: the autonomic nervous system. The fight-or-flight response.

I think about how it would feel to let a scream out of my body. I can’t open that door, can’t meet who—or what—I’d become on the other side.

Also: if I start screaming now, I may never stop.

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November 27

The sounds in my grandfather’s game call were all recordings, which means that not only were we listening to real animals suffering, but that someone somewhere had witnessed this suffering and in that moment chose to record the screams, and sell them. This seems too horrible to be true. I visit the manufacturer’s website to investigate, and there it is: All sounds listed on this page are 100% REAL!

On sale this week is a package of sixty different rabbit sounds. Different species, different ages, different kinds of terror. Snow Shoe 1 and 2. Mountain Hare. Crying Jack. Baby Cottontail Distress. Baby Cottontail Frenzy. Baby Cottontail and Raccoon.

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November 30

I can only sleep now with my head under a heavy mound of blankets. Each night before closing my eyes I bury myself in the dark.

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December 4

Back to Thanksgiving.

The meal ended and everyone drifted away. Grateful for the quiet, I started scrubbing the tower of plates stacked beside the kitchen sink. Through the window I saw my family walking down to the river. I thought the rest of the house was empty. It wasn’t.

He came into the kitchen whistling, hands in his pockets, jingling coins, like he does. Told me that he knew I was ill, that the medical bills must be high, that if there was ever anything I needed from him, I shouldn’t hesitate to ask. He said this several times, I think, in several different ways, all while moving closer. Soon he was standing right behind me, still offering me money, and then his hands were on me, and he was touching me in a way that you should never touch someone you are not in a consensual sexual relationship with. I froze in place, soap suds and hot water running over my wrists. I exited my body. I may never remember all the exact details. I do know that it was sexual and forceful and not something anyone should ever do to anyone, let alone a grandparent to their grandchild.

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December 7

My grandfather had seen me laughing. He’d watched me get up and leave the room, wiping my eyes, while he was trying to intimidate us. He’d noticed me waiting until his demonstration had ended before I came back. And then later, not an hour later, he assaulted me.

Once he told us the story of the grade-school teacher who mocked him for his stutter. He described how he, as a child, had devised a detailed plan to murder her. How he watched her house, waiting for the opportunity. I can’t remember the ending of the story—maybe someone intervened, or perhaps he simply lost interest, as children do. But I do remember that when he told it he was the only one who was laughing.

I was still dissociating when my grandfather put my body and the Thanksgiving leftovers in his new car and drove to the women’s shelter. He took the food and the car keys and left me sitting dazed in the passenger seat.  

I don’t know how long he was gone. I stared at the faded brick exterior for what felt like a very long time.

Back at the house, everyone returned to the kitchen for a family photo. My mother has the photo in her living room, all of us standing beside the sink, my grandfather’s arm tight around my waist, me mouthless and vacant, him grinning.

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December 10

Tonight my therapist suggests we try a new exercise. He asks me to close my eyes and imagine being somewhere safe. After a few breaths, my mind’s eye fills with soothing darkness. I am underground, unfindable, tucked in. When my pulse has slowed and my eyelids stop flickering, he suggests that I travel back in time to my grandfather’s kitchen a year ago. My therapist asks me to stand again at the sink, to hear my grandfather arriving behind me. You are safe, my therapist says. You are not in danger. I feel the dinner plate in my hand, see its hardened streaks of mashed potato. My aunts and uncles are dim shapes down by the water.

My therapist asks me to remember what came next. My breath grows shallow and quick. His voice is steady. You are safe. Then he tells me to try imagining a new ending, one in which I say no. One in which I fight back. One in which I get away.

The thought of refusing my grandfather floods me with electric terror. I think of my mother and grandmother, the broken bones, the hospitals. You don’t fight back against a man like my grandfather if you want to survive. Dizziness sets in. I exit my body all over again, leaving it there among the jingling coins, the scalding water streaming over my skin and down the drain.

My therapist sees that I’m hyperventilating and tells me to open my eyes. It’s ok. You’re in a safe place. Your grandfather’s not here. He asks me to find all the corners in the room, to tell him what I can see, touch, hear, smell, taste. Everything feels underwater, blurry and distant. My body is a house and I am a balloon tied to the weathervane. I can’t do it, I say. My voice sounds simultaneously too loud and muffled somehow. It’s ok, my therapist says. You don’t have to.

Someday, if I want to, if I’m ready, he says, we can try again but with lower stakes, something less immediate, less still-happening. The new ending doesn’t even have to be realistic, he says. The goal is just for you to write your own story—one in which you have power.

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December 13

A Christmas card arrives in the mail from my grandfather, the image custom-printed, dense with satiny ink. Forest-green background, plump pheasant, twelve-point stag. Looming above them, the seal of the United States Air Force, altered to include my grandfather’s name and military rank.

Inside the card is a check for a hundred dollars and a scribbled message.

Kate,
Best wishes. I remember you in my prayers every night.
Pop-pop xox

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December 15

For marginalized people, screaming is “a reclamation of the right to express emotions in the face of long-standing judgments from society,” psychologist Rebecca Semmens-Wheeler told the BBC. “I’m not saying screaming is a solution to everything, but to be able to reclaim that narrative is really important.”

The article went on to list other benefits of screaming, including pain relief, decreased muscle tension, and the release of endorphins. Still, Semmens-Wheeler was circumspect in her recommendations. “Screaming … probably needs to be done with caution,” she said. “It might feel good and have a cathartic effect, but it is not necessarily a healthy emotional regulation strategy. It can be likened to using dynamite to blow something open.”

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December 18

Tonight my therapist said I think you might be getting angry. I hope you are. That would be good.

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December 20

An insane thought I just had: I have no reason to be afraid of him. Once the sun goes down, I have the upper hand. I can see in the dark.

I have needed these all-black eyes to scan in every direction, these long ears to hear the predator approaching. I have needed this tonic immobility: If I don’t move, he can’t see me. I have needed to pretend to be healthy. I have needed this fear to survive.

For the last year, I realize now, rabbit has meant protection.

But I feel myself changing.

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December 22

My therapist recommends a self-defense class. Not, he clarifies, because it’s your fault if you get assaulted, but because I want you to be able to feel less afraid.

The workshop includes some practice with striking, stomping, and breaking away, but more time is spent vocalizing. The first exercise is designed to get us comfortable saying no. The instructor pairs us off and has us ask each other inane favors. Can I have that pen? No. Can I shake your hand? No. Will you tell me where the bus stop is? No. Then we rejoin the group. No. Louder: No. Louder! NO. Then we’re striking while shouting. NO. NO. NO. NO. I think of the taekwondo school’s website. Increase Power. Protect Our Bodies.

The instructor spends some time with each of us. When it’s my turn, she tries to meet my downcast eyes. My clothes are damp with sweat, my palms marked with fingernail crescents. Look at me, she says. You can do this.

Take a deep breath. Now go.

No.

Louder.

NO.

LOUDER!

A cold fire rears up inside of me. I feel the fury flashing in my eyes, the uncoiling of something monstrous under my skin. The sound that leaves my body then is not one I recognize.

NO.

The instructor backs away from me, tripping over her own feet. Whoa!

She swallows, then regains her composure and smiles. Yes. Like that.

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December 31

I got home late last night; all the houses were already dark. A little snow had fallen, quieting the empty streets even further. The sky was that weird orange-purple-gray-white it gets in winter. The night felt both soft and charged, like it was waiting for something.

I parked outside my house but didn’t move to go inside. Everything was so still. I leaned over the steering wheel to look up at the strange sky, but the view was blocked by my own reflection in the windshield. My round white cheeks and twitching nose and dark, watchful eyes.

A strong wind whipped up seemingly out of nowhere as I got out of the car. Houses groaned. Time slowed. From far above me came the sound of breaking glass. I looked up, as if in a dream, to find nine heavy icicles detaching from the roof directly over my head. I realized I had seen this vision before: the glittering volley of swords rushing down to destroy me. The onslaught inevitable. My body frozen in fear.

This time, I knew what had to happen.

I screamed.

I screamed with more force and more power than I ever thought possible. The voice that issued from my throat was guttural and wild and belonged to something immense and ancient. The scream reverberated along my bones and tore like lightning through my skin. My white rabbit coat split between my long ears and fell around my shoulders, then to the snowy ground. The icicles halted in midair and shattered into a shower of glittering dust.

All around me, car alarms wailed. Dogs barked desperately in their houses.

Still I did not stop screaming. The rage was cold as the blackness of space and hot as the stars. I was a redwood, volcano, supernova. My roar was wordless but the words inside it were You will never touch me, or anyone else, again.

My scream lifted the white lines from the asphalt. The lines disintegrated into powder and rose into the air like mist. Streetlamps exploded.

My scream was as vast as the universe.

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU

I AM NOT AFRAID OF YOU

I AM NOT AFRAID

Five hundred miles away, an evil man’s heart combusted in his evil chest.

The scream subsided. I looked around and saw the rabbit fur pooled at my feet like a discarded robe, the tiny snowflakes melting on my bare new skin. I gathered up the fur and sat down in the driver’s seat of my car to rest.

Stillness resumed, and all the little noises in it—sirens in the distance, ducks out on the water laughing in their sleep. My breath came deep and easy. My heartbeat slowed.

I checked my reflection again. The creature there looked like a teenage girl, or a small woman. Petite frame, round eyes. An easy target. Not so very different from the rabbit I’d been before. Then I met my own gaze, and saw the cold flash. The power. The vastness. The truth.