Are You a Fox or a Wolf?
**TW: Domestic Violence
Illustration by Jenna Barton
“Scared I’ll be torn apart by a wolf in mask of a familiar name on a birthday card” (Daughter).
My uncle told me once that red foxes are lucky—he made a point of this when all of us kids ran up to him, giddy, saying we had seen a fox walk by, just on the lip of the woods. A flash behind nose-smudged glass. He stopped us, asked what its color was. I don’t remember what my cousins’ responses were, or even if the fox was actually a deep red, something that would stand out against the Vermont snow. I just understand that I saw brown and I kept it to myself.
My bus stop growing up looked out across my neighbor’s yard. It was all grass apart from one skinny looking tree and one day two fox pups curled themselves around it, the way babies hang from their mother’s finger. If my uncle had been there, he would have asked for the foxes’ color like he was asking for a birth sign. The pups were a light beige, maybe a slight orange tint in the sun, a color that hinted it could grow into red but wasn’t, now—sometimes the ‘now’ matters, more than it should. The point is they weren’t on fire yet. They were too vulnerable to be lucky.
The neighbor man said he needed to shoot them later, a shotgun hanging over his mantle, waiting. There is a mom, somewhere. When the babies are dead, she won’t have a reason to come back. And the words came through a hole in my stomach, a hole they burned there. After the school bus dropped me off, I went straight to the tree. The pups were already gone, though. Alive-gone, I didn’t see any blood in the grass. I silently thanked them for knowing when to run.
Though, I wish they hadn’t had to. That there weren’t so many edged things here and people willing to use them.
In a book I just read, the reader first learns a narrator’s name in a section called “The Lamb.” Her name is Viv, Viviene; she shares this with the suspicious girl in her passenger seat, the suspicious girl who just saved her from a lurker hiding behind the last car (Viv’s car) in the grocery store parking lot, she’s giving a ride home. Anyway, Viv says her mother gave her the name because “it sounded sharp” and I can’t stop thinking about that: about a mother seeing the world, and then seeing her daughter, and knowing she needed something with a point.
Wolf [woolf]
v. to devour voraciously
I can’t stop thinking about someone giving the lamb a knife, and the lamb needing it.
There is a little scar on my right arm, the shape of an almond cut in half. I don’t like to lie, so when my mother asked me how it got there I told her it was from a cigarette, because it was. I went walking around with a man I worked with at a restaurant one day. I don’t smoke, but he did, and on a drag away from his mouth, the nicotine stick caught my arm. It was honestly an accident, I told my mom this. What I didn’t tell her was how little he cared about the burn, so long as I knew he didn’t mean to hurt me. He favored his reputation over my skin—and that scared me. Scares me, still.
Later in the book, The Bass Rock, two teens talk as they stare into a fire, Sarah, a “witch” just brutally attacked by some townspeople, and Joseph, one of the people who saved her. The first thing Sarah says to Joe is, “Are you a fox or a wolf?” He doesn’t answer. He just loves her. Dreams of running away to a seaside town, safe from all the violence, their children running in between them in loops. They never make it there, though—Joe kills Sarah on their way. The unsettling thing is he seemed like a fox right up until the end.
Looking at the news, looking through closed doors to what happens inside the home, into the eyes of a friend, the reflection off the shower tile and faucet—there are just so many examples of intimacy met with violence and/or intimate acts used as acts of violence. According to the CDC’s National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey of 2015, about 6.6 million women experienced sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner. In the United States, over ⅓ women and about ⅓ men experience sexual violence, physical violence, and/or stalking by an intimate partner at some point during their lifetime. The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey of 2010 found that 1 out of 8 lesbian women and 4 out of 10 gay men report being raped in their lifetime. Moreover, the 2015 US Transgender Survey found that 47% of transgender people are sexually assaulted at least once within their lifetime.
So how do you know which arms will hold you?
How do you tell a fox from a wolf?
So far, in my twenty-three years, the closest I’ve come to finding an answer is in the word carefully.
I’ve also found that, sometimes, you really don’t know when to run until you do, until you’re running away from something, from someone, with a limp. In other words, you might meet some wolves within your lifetime, and you might fall for foxes that show you they’re really wolves, later on. When that happens, run. Rebuild, because you can; a fox is defined as “a crafty person” and “a scavenger.” Just don’t blame yourself for needing to run in the first place.
Helpful Resources
The Rape, Abuse, & Incest National Network: https://www.rainn.org/
America’s National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1.800.799.SAFE (7233)
Sources
-The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld
-Lyrics from “Candles” by Daughter
-Definition from Dictionary.com
-facts from the CDC
-facts from https://www.transequality.org/sites/default/files/docs/USTS-Full-Report-FINAL.PDF