Nightbitch

When her husband returns home for the weekend, Nightbitch lies to him about their cat’s death. She claims that she accidentally dropped a knife on the cat while cooking. Nightbitch’s husband believes her. However, she feels “genuine remorse” for what she really did.

Nightbitch arrives at Jen’s herb party on Saturday afternoon, where Jen is dressed up like Nightbitch in “boho” fashion. Nightbitch meets other mothers called Jen who are all indistinguishable from one another. The original Jen begins a presentation on her herb-selling business and the “mental wellness market” to the assembled group of mothers (192). Jen talks about how these herbs, which can allegedly be used to promote different positive mental states. She takes $600 from each of the other women, who are now intoxicated from wine and taking the herbs, in exchange for giving them an herb-selling kit. On returning home, Nightbitch tells her husband that she attended the party as part of research for a new art project.

During the following week after the party, Nightbitch reflects on the nature of motherhood and whether becoming a mother, and bringing another human being to life, makes one divine. She writes to Wanda White about her philosophical reflections, and whether there is a sense of longing that unites all mothers and all women.

Nightbitch describes the strange, messy state into which her bedroom has now fallen. A dog bowl full of water and a kennel lie on the floor beside piles of clothes, dirty tennis balls, and copies of Grimm’s fairytales. Nightbitch’s son makes a “ruff” noise and sits at her feet. She considers that her child is not saying a word, but is “part dog communicating via his language of choice” (198).

Nightbitch’s husband rings her, but she hangs up on him after only a few words and does not tell him about how she has been changing. Nightbitch then writes to White asking her about the connection between art and the life of animals, wondering whether animals produce art by transforming the world around them.

Nightbitch describes the objects in her studio, which was formerly the guestroom in her house, and how it reflects her developing art project. It contains photos of dancers contorted in strange ways, a picture of a meat locker, bags of wool, “a jar nearly full of dead bees” (202), and a dozen nearly cured rabbits’ feet.

Later in the week, Nightbitch’s husband asks her over the phone if she is okay. Nightbitch responds that she is better than okay. After a pause, she lets out a howl that she had been practicing all week.

On Friday, when her husband returns, Nightbitch decides that she is going to confront him about taking more responsibility for putting their son to bed when he is home. Nightbitch’s husband acquiesces. Nightbitch reflects on how, in the past, she had mistakenly not emphasized her needs because her husband earns more money. As he puts their son to bed, she thinks about how she loves him.

For the next month, Nightbitch goes out as a dog on weekend nights, feeling powerful and in control of the area. She returns to her husband in the late night or early morning. He washes her, after which they make love. Nightbitch’s husband, without saying anything about it, seems to understand her need for nighttime wanderings.

At the end of the month, Nightbitch goes to a dog park. She sees three other dogs whom she believes might be Jen and two of the other mothers from Book Babies. Nightbitch then notices a strange female figure at the edge of the dog park holding a notebook. Nightbitch thinks this woman might be Wanda White and chases after her, but the figure runs into the woods and vanishes.

Nightbitch messages Jen to see if it was her that she saw at the park. Jen says “no” but that she is going through changes. She asks to meet with Nightbitch. She has wanted to speak with Nightbitch because she noticed Nightbitch’s “bold and trendsetting” transformation (212). Jen admits that she has been roaming around the neighborhood at night.

Nightbitch meets a disheveled Jen at the local university’s natural history museum. However, Nightbitch quickly discovers that Jen’s problem is not that she is becoming a dog, but that she is in debt over the failure of her herb-selling business. Nightbitch reassures Jen that she will help her and the other woman out of the herb business. She asks Jen, who once worked in public relations, to be the publicist for her upcoming art project.

Nightbitch gives Jen White’s book, telling her to read it. Nightbitch explains that the book is about how to discover one’s true animal self, and thereby discover one’s true nature as a woman.

One evening, Nightbitch’s husband catches her being a dog, naked and eating a scrap of a rabbit that she had buried in the garden. Far from being offended, Nightbitch’s husband acknowledges this as part of her project, and they make love together as dogs. Afterward, she recognizes her husband’s love for her, “which had gotten lost in the ho-hum of everyday” after years together (221). However, Nightbitch also recognizes the need to exist “as a creative force” (221), sometimes independent of her husband and son.

Nightbitch invites all the mothers from Book Babies to her house, where she has set up a stage in her backyard. At the center is a raw steak covered in a bell jar. With the mothers waiting on chairs in front of the stage, Nightbitch emerges “as a dog type thing” and starts prowling around among the audience (228). The other women start to mimic Nightbitch, acting like dogs themselves, and Nightbitch proceeds to devour the steak on the stage. However, the spell of this moment is broken by one mother screaming, leading the other mothers to flee from Nightbitch’s backyard.

Nightbitch reflects on how she had not recognized her son as her own when he was first born. Now she fully recognizes him, seeing herself in him. She thinks about how one day she might be required to look after her parents, and how this can be joyful rather than an ordeal.

Nightbitch grasps for the first time that Wanda White is not a real person but an ideal to which one progresses, and that Nightbitch has arrived there with her art project. Nightbitch describes the performance of this project in a theater, which is the culmination of her double life as a dog. In the performance she enacts, as a dog, “an enchanted hunt” (234), where she chases the skeletons of small animals which have been magically animated. She then kills what appear to be live rabbits on stage before stalking and jumping into the audience. She chases the audience into a forest area where they see numerous bizarre creatures, linked to Wanda White’s book.

Finally, Nightbitch talks about how Jen successfully promoted the show, and how the show has been both condemned and lauded by critics. She describes how, in the show’s final act, she gets on stage with her son to whom she offers the limp body of a rabbit.