Jacob's Folly by Rebecca Miller

with longing, I turned toward the mirror, pivoting on the slick pump of the soap dispenser clumsily, still unused to all my legs, and surveyed my ugliness. My enormous convex eyes were the color of persimmons; their surface looked like the fine mesh on a fencing mask. My cranium was translucent, shiny. Yet I was prevented, mercifully, from looking into my own brains. There was perhaps some sort of skeleton holding up the structure of my head—there must be. My mouth was permanently agape. I could not bring my lips together. In my open gob, a hairy tongue lurked. I stretched it out, and a thing, like a furry cock with a flat pad at the end of it, emerged and reached all the way to the counter. It tasted something bitter and retracted, as if it had a mind of its own. My gray-and-black-striped trunk was covered by long, sparse hairs, as were my fragile, threadlike legs. Only my delicate wings held a shred of beauty. Other than that, I looked like one of the devil’s minions. And yet I was a part of creation. The Old Bastard had fashioned this monstrosity and decided,
It is good
. What an egomaniac. At least I was never a maggot, but emerged fully formed like Athena, breached from the head of Zeus armed and ready for battle.
    It was not astonishing to me that I had been cosmically revamped, though I found my form insulting; my cousin Gimpel, a Hasid, had told me all about
gilgul neshamot
, the transmigration of errant Jewish souls in order to atone for their sins. Some came back as Jews, or animals; but the spirits of the wicked returned as demons. Was I a demon? That at least would be interesting, because demons can conversewith humans. In fact, their main purpose, aside from stealing the breath of infants and the seed of sleeping men, was to derail the righteous and lead them into various temptations. That seemed like a perfect job for me. I decided to test myself. I took off and flew across the bathroom, landing on the rounded edge of the porcelain tub, inches from Masha’s face. She was leaning back in the water now, watching a narrow column of hot water flow, amazingly to me, from the tap. Tiny beads of sweat had appeared on her upper lip. She licked them off with her tongue. I could taste the salt! Her eyes shifted. I saw what she saw: the soap. She needed it. She sat up to get it. Too fast. The pain, again. Each heartbeat rang with pain that echoed into the base of her throat.
    Dong … Dong … Dong … Dong … she waited for the tolling to grow faint. She sat perfectly still, taking little sips of breath and staring at the shiny lozenge of soap. She glanced at the door. Pearl was gone to tend to the other children. Masha had to do this on her own. Once the pain had subsided, she began to move very slowly through the water, millimeter by millimeter. It was hard to tell she was moving at all. She reached the soap, clutched it, then sat back again, keeping her mouth shut tight, breathing through her nose. I waited for the pain to recede until I tried speaking in her head.
    Scratch your head
, I commanded. Masha’s head inched to one side, as if she were listening.
Scratch!
I said. Then I heard her thought, a feathery voice in my ear:
I wish I could just sleep in here
…
    Scratch!
I implored. At last, miraculous to me as the parting of the Red Sea, a plague of frogs, a burning bush: Masha’s strong, slender arm rose slowly from the water. Her tapered fingers reached into her hair, and … she scratched!
    I perched at the edge of the tub, stunned by my capabilities. I simply couldn’t believe it. Chills were going down my spine—if I had a spine. I felt flushed with power. It might take a long time, I vowed, but I would raise this girl up and out of her sanctified sleep of self-abnegation, raise her to fame. I would put her in that luminous story box she wasn’t allowed to watch; I would destroy her obedience to theold Tyrant, Humorist, Soul Recycler, Spy. And, somehow, I