The Jungle by Carrie Fountain

The Jungle

In motherhood I begin

to celebrate my own

smallest accomplishments,

as when I wake to find

I’ve slept through the night

and I feel a little healed

because sleeping is something

I didn’t learn how to do until

I was an adult and had to read

a book about it because, I’ve

always liked to joke, I was

raised by wolves. I was raised

by wolves was, in fact, the very

joke I made in explaining

to a fellow mom as the children’s

theater went dark that, like my own

young son, I was seeing The Jungle

Book for the first time. I don’t

even know what it’s about, I said.

I was sort of raised by wolves,

I said and laughed, and then

the curtain went up and I was

shocked, of course, to find

The Jungle Book is about a boy

who was raised by wolves,

and I am shocked again now,

having just googled it, to find

the number one query

associated with Rudyard

Kipling is: Is the Jungle Book

a real story? People are dumb

is what I was thinking, I admit,

when I read that, but then

I clicked and clicked and found

that—oh my god—The Jungle

Book is based on the story

of a feral boy found running

on all fours alongside a wolf

in the Indian jungle, which is

funny to me because feral

is the word that has always come

to mind when I think of the boys

I grew up with: those feral boys

who moved through the world

with the ease afforded to those

who didn’t give two shits

about anything, who’d empty

beer cans in seconds, wrap cars

around poles, all the while joking

about fucking each other’s

mothers. They were feral

in the desert shooting guns out

by the airport. They were feral

on their skateboards in the Whata-

burger parking lot. They were feral

because they were allowed

to be, and eventually we’d all

get in trouble for what they’d been

doing, even us girls who—what did

we do all that time while the boys

were fighting and spitting

and calling us whores? I don’t

know. We were talking to each

other, I guess, which is how we

became human. But no—no.

Those boys weren’t feral. Those boys

were typical. They’d been born

knowing the world would be theirs

long after they’d grown bored

of nihilism and turned their attention

to capital, became men, became man-

kind, the kind of men who’d ruin

something if it meant they got to

keep it, who’d kill something

if it meant they could see it up close,

maintain the illusion of having

owned it, having earned it, even,

who’d track a boy and a wolf

through the jungle for days until

finally they had them trapped

inside their own den. When those

men found they couldn’t lure

the boy out with words, they forced

him out with smoke. And when

the boy finally stepped out into

the sunlight those men captured

him, bound him, and when the wolf

who was the boy’s mother came

following close behind, the way,

at intermission, I followed my own

son, who is by now too old

to come with me into the women’s

room, to the very threshold

of the men’s room door—when she

came out behind him, they shot her.