After Birth (12 page)

Why so jittery, so jumpy, so on edge, so upset?

Paul tried. He couldn’t figure out what was wrong. We had a beautiful, healthy baby, did we not?

He got up with the baby every single morning at dawn.
That
kind of man. Dawn after dawn. Every single morning, when it was still dark out and I couldn’t move, could not leave the warm enclosure of bed, the safety of that metaphore, uterus.

But inevitably he’d have to go teach or go to the gym or something, and there was this way the sound of the door closing behind him would thud in my chest, leaving me alone with the baby, a dark dread panic rising. How
could
he?

Okay, monkey. Mommy’s going to open the fridge now, everything’s okay. Mommy’s getting an apple. Yes, an apple’s what we need. Then Mommy’s going to sit down on the couch, okay, yes yes, nice and easy, sure, sure, no problem, hey little bug, no problem at all, all is well it’s a Tuesday! I don’t know what happens next. Precious baby. Okay. We’ll figure out our next move. That’s right. Okay, let’s have some boobie, settle down there little fella, all will be revealed to us soon, oh yes, yes indeed, that’s it, nice and easy, okay, okay, okay.

I’d be downright frantic by the time Paul came home. Panicked and relieved and guilty and downright frantic.

Thank God
, I would say, my voice taut. He’d take the baby and soothe and coo and smile and nuzzle as I watched from across the room, feeling very strange, very outside, apart from them. On a loop: you’d be better off without me. I should disappear. You don’t need me. I don’t deserve you. You deserve a well-adjusted little woman who undergoes major unnecessary surgery without complaint. Gets on with things. Knows how to nap when her baby is napping. One of those itty-bitty compact little uncomplaining bitches who never even have to buy maternity clothes. Whose periods get lighter and easier as she ages. No body hair, no mood swings. A happy wife. A baby-food maker, a clothes mender.

You hate me. Admit it. You think I’m a terrible mother. You do. Admit it. Admit that you hate me.

I hate what you’re going through.

Fuck you, Paul! I’m not stupid! I’m not dumb! Be real with me!

Baby, I don’t think you’re dumb.

Admit you think I’m a fucked-up headache.

Which is what my friend Subeena used to call “Being a Bad Girlfriend.” As in: I really like this guy. I’m going to try and not be a bad girlfriend and see if it works out this time. We both got dumped a lot.

Paul encouraged me to get out of the house. We took a family field trip to the local bagel place, a terrible franchise. Walked there slowly and sat in silence eating bad bagels while the baby snoozed in the sling. I couldn’t take my eyes off this ugly cherub calendar on the wall, looking at dates—December 8, 10, 12, 19—wondering when I’d finally have the guts to end my life, exit the only possible way, leave Paul to raise the beautiful boy in peace. I was dead weight, poison, disease.

Sounds about right
, my mother said.

The bagel place was grim and cold, air-conditioned in the middle of December.

Chicken spaetzle
, the girl at the counter kept telling people was the soup of the day. Her name tag read
SISTER KATE
. Her boss was Brother David. I imagined them a cult, the bad kind. But isn’t any mildly cohesive, somewhat happy family a kind of cult? The good kind?

I found myself pleading with my mother one icy night.

Could you please, please be a little bit maternal for a few minutes?

I didn’t know how I would make it through the next few hours. I feared I might not make it through the next few hours. Her face went momentarily soft.

Yes, darling
, she said, and cocked her perfectly coiffed head.

There was still a small openness in my heart for her, it was true. A pinprick from which blood or love or whatever still flowed. She was part of me, after all. I was part of her. No matter what, it was true. She was in me. You can’t disown what’s yours, no matter how hard you try. What’s yours is yours is yours.

Thank you
, I mewed, dropped a tear, two.

She came closer, spoke softly.

Could you maybe just explain to me what that means?

I bring cupcakes from the co-op.

He’s had, like, seven wet diapers and there’s no pink. And he slept for seven hours last night. It’s a miracle. Is this weird for you?

No. It’s great. Is
that
weird?

I was lying awake last night thinking is this weird?

But it’s not weird.

It’s not weird at all.

The thing is women have always done this, just not since formula and advertising were invented.

Which came first, formula or advertising?

Advertising. I don’t know.

I nurse while she pumps to encourage supply. She says something about it being difficult to get out when the weather’s so shitty and I say something like yeah, winter’s a shitty time to have a baby and she says something like it’s always kind of a shitty time to have a baby though isn’t it?

I hated the pump. Vile machine, real torture device, with its awful rat-a-tat wheeze. Mina absently rocks the empty vibrating bouncy chair with her foot, sips from a clay mug, stares out the window at the icy dark.

The
rat-a-tat-rat-a-tat
starts to sound like
not-alone-not-alone-not-alone
, and then it becomes
I-don’t-know-I-don’t-know-I-don’t know
, and soon it’s
right-at-home-right-at-home-right-at-home.
Then
you-don’t-know-you-don’t-know-you-don’t-know.

Oh
, I say.
By the way
.
I love Muriel Rukeyser. I forgot.

Look what my sister sent
, she says, almost three ounces bagged in the fridge, a really good sign, means she’s producing nicely. She holds up a swath of fabric. Floral pink. She reads from the tag.
“Hooter Hider. To meet the needs of modern, active nursing moms.” It’s a burqa. This perfectly sums up my sister. And this
.

Another contraption, designed to fit over the seat of a supermarket cart. So your baby never has to touch a supermarket cart. To protect your baby from the evils of supermarket carts. She balls them both up and stuffs them behind the couch.

I’m fond of this baby, her baby, the swirls of his fine black hair, the weight of him against me, newborn smell. Our baby.

I had no idea how fucked up this was going to be
, she says.

Tell me about it
, I say.

Why doesn’t anybody talk about this? I mean, how stupid do you have to be to worry about strangers seeing your tits in the wake of this?

Here’s the problem: we are taught nothing.

How to sew, grow food, preserve food, build things, fix things, make fires, birth babies, care for babies, feed babies, move through time, grow old, die, grieve, change, sit still, be quiet. Still and quiet, endless Interneters, quiet, quiet, quiet.

How to be alone, how to shut up and be with ourselves for five minutes, how to listen, how to be still, how to mark and process passage, how to ritualize, bare feet in the earth. Basic knowledge in shocking disuse while we tap away at our devices. To call us monkeys is to insult monkeys. Birthing and care of newborn humans a specialty now, an area of expertise, hired out. Basic biological functions, ceded a generation or two or three ago and by now vanished as if the knowledge never existed in the first place. Like if breathing became specialized, or, no—like if shitting became specialized. Like if some corporation struck gold convincing us all that shitting is not necessary.

You need not labor over the toilet, ladies and gentlemen! It can be difficult, it can be painful, it can be slow, so much can go wrong. We’ll free you of the whole business. Your body isn’t doing as good a job removing its own waste as you might think. Let us do it right, let us do it for you! And oh, that opening is so small, while your waste matter can be quite sizable. Why put your body
through
that? Scores of people suffer from constipation and bowel diseases, both of which can now be eradicated! Try our simple shit removal, a must for modern folk on the go who need not be bothered by traditional, filthy human elimination! Let us make a tiny incision near your bowel to remove the contents on a daily basis. Sterile. State-of-the-art. Simple.

Leave the stinking excrement to the apes and savages. You’re better than that, and besides, who needs the embarrassment? Now you can know exactly when and where your elimination will take place.

And very quickly, within a few generations, no one remembers how to take a simple dump anymore. No one knows that a silly magazine can help, that straining is ill advised, that herbs or Epsom salts or castor oil as a last resort can be a fine thing.

But, ah, well, the years are rolling by and it seems as though, er, perhaps, heh heh, there’s some, ah, human error and shortsightedness involved in these “advances” after all. Also turns out—who knew?—there’s actually considerable benefit to the normal contraction of the bowels, the body its own best caretaker, judge, healer.

Take it easy, now, they’re gonna get around to doing a study eventually. Maybe someone’s grandmother remembers taking a shit, the idea that your own body might actually be well equipped to dispose of its own waste. It’s like a freak folk tale: foreign and fascinating.

Meanwhile, pay no mind to your scar, sucker.

Everyone’s so “worried” about me all the time. I haven’t really “bounced back,” as Sheryl says.

Sometimes I’m with the baby and I think: you’re my heart and my soul, and I would die for you.

Other times I think: tiny moron, leave me the fuck alone so I can slit my wrists in the bath and die in peace.

In the café where I never work on my dissertation is the woman I’ve seen at the co-op with her brand-new baby. We smile.

Do you ever feel like you’re completely losing your mind?

Her smile fades.

It’s okay if you do
.
It’s perfectly normal.

Her roots are brown and gray, the rest is dyed red. She’s probably doing that thing where you refuse to part with the first look you ever liked on yourself. When she was like twenty-three, she dyed it for the first time and never got over being that girl with the red hair, loved making those salon appointments, felt very on top of herself. Oh, but sweetheart, time has passed you by.

We’re getting along fine
, she says. Bitch, please: sell it someplace else.

How old is she?
(Head-to-toe pink, so safe assumption.)

Five weeks
. Glass bead. Bud in bud vase.

Did you have an okay time with the birth?

She actually flinches.

Here
, I say, tearing a page from my mostly empty notebook.
Here’s my number
.
If you ever need to talk or anything, call me. Women aren’t supposed to do this alone.

I’ll make her a casserole, sure thing. Hold the baby so she can take a shower or a nap. Nurse her, if she wants.

She takes the folded paper.

Thanks.

What’s her name?

Luka.

My name is Luka
, I sing. Suzanne Vega.

We weren’t really thinking of that.

After she’s gone, I do some research. Ancient Roman lore about a heroic woman who saves her imprisoned father from starvation and death by nursing him in secret. Roman Charity, it’s called. See also: Rubens, Caravaggio, Steinbeck. Precedent! Ask your grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother’s grandmother. The Arabic term for people who were nursed by the same woman, some approximation of “milk-brother,” implies a stronger relationship than that of two people actually born to the same woman.

I write to Marianne.
Guess what? I’m the neighborhood wet nurse now! How fourth wave is that!?

With her wedding over, Erica’s shifted her focus to sheer terror of pregnancy. (As well she should! Cackle, cackle!) We visit on the device while I fold laundry. On her screen she watches herself talk to me, plays with her hair.

They’re “trying,” but four months have gone by and nothing is happening.

It’s been a while
, she says.
I’m getting kind of worried.

A tiny green sock in need of a mate.

Come on. You have to know better than that. Don’t you? You do know better than that, right?

So, what? You think I should just not have a kid?

I think you should relax and go about your life and be grateful for whatever you get, and hope you get a kid sooner or later one way or another and be fine if that’s not what you get, too.

Oh, right, Ari, because you had a baby and now you’re a Zen master.

Uh-huh.

Fuck you
, she said.

Whatever.

I’m really not that excited about how fat I’m going to get, though.
No offense. Can I ask you a question?

That was a question.

How did you know you were ready?
We got one of those predictors? Where it tells you literally to, like, the minute when you’re ovulating? But we totally chickened out. Watched TV and got take-out instead.
She turns around to make sure she’s alone, lowers her voice.
Okay, honestly? Steve couldn’t get hard. Too much pressure, he said.

It’s weird when people talk about readiness. I so don’t work that way. My brain has absolutely no sway over my heart. I’m never ready. There is no such thing as ready. There is only doing, despite.

Sooooo maybe you’re not ready.

A pair of Paul’s boxers are tangled up with my pajama pants.