Out of the Pit

Next to the prehistoric pools             of noxious oil, still bubbling, 
still smelling of asphalt                       and Ice Age bones, I hold 
my daughter’s dimpled                       hand while the tour guide, with the saber-toothed 
skull, describes some                          of the millions of fossils discovered 
in the La Brea tar pits                          in Los Angeles. 

Giant ground sloths, mastodons,      tapirs, lions, camels, Columbian mammoths—
but never females, the guide says.   He points to rearing fiberglass sculptures, depicting 
a slow, sticky slide into                        eternal tar pit suffocation. 
Thousands of mammoth bones,       only XY chromosomes.  

Mammoths were like elephants       and other matriarchal mammals, he explains. 
Males might wander off, but             females would have warned each other. 
Females would have pulled               each other out of the pit. 
Females take care of                           each other. 

And if only that were true                  for me. 
For my mother.                                    For my mother’s mother. And her mother, too. 
I wouldn’t have                                     wandered off. 
I wouldn’t be excavating                     splintered, tarred relics, even still, from 
my endless, prehistoric                      pit. 

We pass dozens of                              wolf skulls in backlit wall displays, extinct- 
horse skeletons, motherless-            tusks on industrial table lifts, 
motherless-                                          skulls behind glass-paned labs, and my reflection, 
motherless                                           mammals on display. 

My daughter, her ponytail                 swinging like a baby elephant trunk, squeezes 
my hand. I smile                                  because she doesn’t know yet. How historic it is—
we will be the first                               of our bloodline 
to keep each other                              out of the pit.