February 2, 1997  □  Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

Her name, she says, is “O’Cagon, to rhyme with ‘dragon’”. I urge her to change it, because the suggestion that she’s anything like a dragon will limit her chances of being adopted. She replies that she’s willing to drop the ‘O’. 

What, she demands, would I suggest? Answering much too quickly, I say ‘Brownie’, and instantly regret it—another magical name, and too bluntly suggestive of one of her forms, a small Black girl, top-heavy with braids. And that’s the very one I want to feature to potential guardians. She snorts with contempt at my suggestion—a reminder to me that her favored form is a tiny white horse, no bigger than the span of my hand.

She can also be an eagle, and becomes one when she is very hungry.

Here is the story she tells:

She was one of a large number of children born to a man who believed he was a very poor parent. O’Cagon would have been a severe test to any parent, good or bad, so her father gave her away to his brother, supposedly a fine and patient man, who had only two children of his own.

Some time later, for no reason she can remember, O’Cagon and her cousins were taken on an ocean voyage by this same good uncle. She continues dryly, “Being the smallest, newest and least loved of the three children, I soon found myself in the ocean, from whence I made my way here after many months.” She can never be made to explain how she survived in the ocean, or got to the shore, or to my doorstep.

For all her great powers of body and mind, O’Cagon is quite needy, in her miniature horse form most of all. As a white horse she feeds upon nothing but milk, which must be administered drop by drop, from a little spoon. Luckily, many volunteers from among my students—young women, especially—are eager to provide this service.

I considered keeping O’Cagon myself, rather than finding her another home, and might have done so had she any interest in settling into her human form. But her preference for being a horse is more than I can put up with in the house. And the garden is getting too cold. Where can I look for a suitable home?

Among academics, surely. Her incessant questioning, her irreverence, her interruptions and disrespect, her intelligence straining to escape the confines of one body after another, would not recommend her to any but the most tolerant and curious, I think. Perhaps some teacher, somewhere, might develop a taste, even a liking, for such a child.

At an academic convention I locate six humanities professors. I struggle to decide how much to tell them in advance, while being not exactly dishonest. Several times I telephone a certain lawyer for advice. Each time I call, the receptionist answers the phone with the name of a different non-profit organization before connecting me.

I am working hard to find a home for O’Cagon. I do not know whether I will accomplish my task, but I do know that this dream is not now as interesting to me as when she herself was on the scene. Already, still dreaming, I miss her.