After Birth (9 page)

The baby’s name, she’s pretty sure, is Zev.

I’m sitting with it
, she says.
It feels right. Doesn’t it?

Naming something is almost impossible. Zev sounds pretty good to me. Sometimes I think: Walker!? What the fuck? But when you’re used to something it stops mattering, by definition.

I like it
, I say.
It’s a good name.

She dabs some ointment on the left. Bryan looks up from his screen to watch.

It’s Wolf
.
Feels right. It jives. I looked at him when he came out, after all my howling, and there he was
. She does a soft, melodious howl.
Right? Right, little wolf? I could call him Wolf, I guess. If Zev is too, like, “oooh look at me I’m so Hebrew-y.” Maybe Wolf is better
.

I don’t think it’s too look at me I’m so Hebrew-y.

What’s wrong with Hebrew-y?
Bryan wants to know, but doesn’t look up from his machine.

She just needs us to sit with her. Process. Not so terrifically much to ask. Not so big a thing.

We’re supposed to have mothers
, I say.
We’re supposed to have sisters. But what if you don’t have a mother? What if you don’t have a sister?

Or a crappy mother
, Mina mutters, massaging a huge, tender tit.
Or a crappy sister
.

All fixed
, Will says, clomping back up the basement stairs with the guy from the superstore behind him.

JIM
, says the embroidered name tag. Jim tells us his wife just had a baby, too.
Our sixth
, he says. Mina looks horrified and Jim says something about blessings of Jesus.

At which point I gather up my own little blessing, ’cause it’s getting late and you should always leave before people want you to.

Call me
, I order her.
I can be over whenever.

She nods solemnly.

The worst part of the Erica wedding fiasco was that she was marrying
Steve
, for the love of antiperspirant!
Steve
was the culmination of her greatest ambition. Not a bad guy but Steve is nothing to get excited about, unless it’s excited you don’t have to hang out with him too often. He talks a lot about the fancy cocktail bars he can get you into, the epic hotel upgrade he got last time in Vegas, a case of the “meat sweats” he got in some very special restaurant in Argentina once.

I was given a swatch of pale violet fabric, instructed to have a dress made. She was insanely giddy. She was out of her freaking mind.

And so we left the three-month-old to a bottle with a stranger, and I put on the hideous dress, still packing an extra thirty pounds. No metaphor required to describe how awful I looked. No, I’m not one of those women who’s figured out how to transcend vanity. Not one of those extraordinarily beautiful women who’ve figured out how to transcend vanity.

I could have opted out. I could have said no.

Have you ever been to a wedding? Then you’ve been to every wedding. The bridesmaids like Stages of a Woman’s Life dolls. The skinny, working-it single girl, trying hard to not despair her singleness. She looks “good.” She sprang for a spray tan. Her lotion has glitter in it. She tries more and more of the magazine tips as she gets older. She’s starting to go a little hard around the jaw, there’s some sun damage on her hands, and her feet crammed into those stilettos look like a couple of veiny shar-peis, but hey, she’s working it. She’ll have a few drinks too many. It will become clear she thinks she’s in a romantic comedy about bridesmaids. She will fuck one of the groomsmen. Which will it be?

Then there’s the pregnant one, smug as hell, all like, looooook, I’m pregnant! I’m so fulfilled and glowy! I’ve really done it! The single girl and the pregnant girl assiduously avoid each other unless it’s to simultaneously, speciously condescend. They feel
so
sorry for each other.

Then the one who’s just recently had a baby or two. [Curtsy.] She has that edgy, shell-shocked look, like she’s been ripped apart and put awkwardly back together, which, well, she has. But she’s still trying, in her sad, half-assed way, despite the fact that the working-it/fabulous phase of her life has ground to a definitive (oh-ho-ho so definitive) halt. She’ll never be the same again, she knows. Never, ever. She can barely look at the working-it single girl, who treats her—again with the condescension—like an
elder
. It’s precisely when the working-it single girl fails to compete with her that she knows for sure: she is gone. She feels invisible because, in fact, she is! Big animal stuffed into the same dumb dress—maybe it’s aqua, maybe it’s lime, maybe it’s mauve. The pregnant one doesn’t want much to do with her but eyes her carefully: she’ll certainly not let
her
self go that way.

And then there’s the one who’s got a couple of bigger kids, school age, pubescents maybe even. She’s folded, and it’s been a while since. To her these others are sort of cute, embroiled in their struggles. She’s done. She could be forty, she could be seventy, makes no difference at all. She is done with her changes. She digs in her heels, ticks off years as they roll on by. She does not sweat the philosophical shit. She does not retread her choices. Worst-case scenario, she is unaware of having made choices. It is what it is. It’s done. Nothing left but to rely on prescription drugs for this and that and the other until it’s all over for good.

There they are, pretty maids in a row, highlighting one another’s failure and ridiculousness, gathered around the lodestar puff-pastry bride. Ushering the bride into
her
next set of shitty options. Grinning plastic grins in the photos uploaded immediately.

We sat at one of those painfully boring couples tables, at which everyone already knew everyone and felt no need to introduce themselves or include us in their conversation, which was inaudible anyhow, given the amplification of the ten-piece band. Fuck you, by the way, couples at couples tables at weddings who don’t go out of your way to engage with that one couple who doesn’t know anyone.

We left early. My tits were on fire. I did not—ALAS!—get fucked up. And by the time we got back to the hotel my tits were like rocks, like explosive hot rocks, like they were about to rocket right off and explode in a tableau of electric blue and orange. I could feel my tits in my elbows. Walker was sleeping in the porta-crib, and I had to wake him to nurse him, which he tolerated, but then he would not go back to sleep. We sat grimly in a chair by a window until dawn.

Mina, warrior queen. She had her baby at Crispin and Jerry’s
house
. She actually
had
her baby.

There are hundreds of clips showing people actually giving birth to babies. You can watch. You’ve never seen anything so incredible. I watch them all the time. Each completely different. Individuals. No one was going to knife Mina Morris—she’s not the type.

The surgery movies are fewer in number and harder to watch. Creepy. Impersonal. I could probably perform one by now.

Why do you keep looking at that stuff?
Paul asks.
It only upsets you
.

Maybe I like being upset
.

Abdomen cleaned and shaved with an antiseptic solution. Catheter inserted. IV put into arm or hand. General or local anesthetic administered. Patient strapped to the table with arms outstretched, surgical drapes blocking view. Incision across the belly about one to two centimeters above the pre-pregnancy upper border of the bladder. Tissues above the uterus cut and separated. Cut made horizontally into the lower section of the uterus. Amniotic fluid suctioned. Baby pulled out.

Ari. I know it’s not what you wanted. But it’s over, and we can’t change it. So maybe it’s time to—

Babies born by C-section often suffer from neonatal respiratory distress often calling for treatment with oxygen therapy in a neonatal intensive care unit. Babies delivered by C-section often have low Apgar scores, usually because of breathing problems, along with lethargy as a result of the anesthesia administered to the mother. These sedatives can also make it hard to breastfeed.

I really wish I understood why you have to keep doing this
.

Postpartum endomyometritis, infection of the uterine tissue, is twenty times more likely. The risk of blood clotting is five times greater. Urinary tract infections are common. These infections, usually a result of the urinary catheter, can be treated with antibiotics. Decreased or absent bowel function is also common, usually as a result of pre- and post-surgery narcotics. Women are four times more likely to die from surgical birth than from vaginal birth. Women who deliver surgically can develop scar tissue around the uterus, which can make it more difficult to achieve normal births in the future.

Ari. You have to try and let it go.

Women who deliver surgically are—

Babe. I know.

—thought to suffer from increased rates of postpartum depression, which can include—

What would you like me to do about it, babe? Can you tell me what you want me to do about it?

—feelings of failure, helplessness, posttraumatic stress—

Ari. This isn’t helping.

—disempowerment, disappointment, anger, loss, and frustration.

You don’t fuckin’ say.

At first when she hands him to me it’s like I’ve never held a newborn.

Zev. Squirmy and clenched, like he can tell I’m nervous. They’re just little mirrors. They’re pure. We don’t learn how to lie until around two. The world is no place for these little fuckers, tiny tuning forks. He’s way too soft and scary and what if I accidentally kill him? It’s totally possible to accidentally kill these things.

But, shit, okay, fine:
Hey baby. Hey Zev.

How weird he wasn’t anything before she made him. Where was he? Somewhere? Nowhere? Now he’s here and he has this name and he’s a person. Weird. Mina goes to take a shower. I spread a blanket on the floor, swaddle him, that’s better.

She comes downstairs steamy, head wrapped in a towel, wearing a fresh T-shirt.

It’s a whole new lease on life
, she says.
I lost, like, a fistful of hair. Is that normal?

Completely. Hormones.

Her T-shirt is pink, with a line drawing of a beautiful woman in an enormous hat, smoking a cigarette. The cigarette smoke forms the word
MONTREAL
.

I can’t get over how normal she seems. Her body. The way she’s moving. I mean, huge tits, soft belly; she gave birth a week ago. But here she is, intact. A week post-surgery I was still incredibly fucked up. Gutted like a fish. Hurt to move, but I tried to lay off the painkillers, ’cause they made shitting impossible, then you were supposed to start with the stool softeners. Five days postpartum my incision opened slightly and I had to go back to the fucking hospital, get the sutures reinforced. A fever dream. In the wrong kind of pain entirely. Everything hurt.

Whoa
, Mina says.
Where’d you go? You just went somewhere.

I shake it off, busy myself with finishing touches on a big pot of soup.

Bryan’s packing, leaving tonight. I assumed he was the father, the boyfriend. Apparently not.

Friend
, Mina says when we’re alone.
Off and on
.
Like a brother. A charming if irritating little brother. I used to tie him up once in a while. Long time ago. He needed a place to stay and I offered. That’s his thing: impoverished artist
.
I hear from him when he needs money
,
pretty much. He thought it’d be cool to “experience a birth.” And because I’m retarded I said okay, sort of half thinking he’d want to, like, “be there for me,” which makes me more or less the biggest idiot asshole of all time
.
Now he’s writing about it, apparently.

Where’s he going?

Austin
. She rolls her eyes.

Paul’s at the library, grading or something. Paul’s always somewhere, doing something. Walker’s at Nasreen’s till five.

This is amazing
, she says about the soup.

You’re the best
, Bryan says, slurping.

Fairy fucking godmother
, Mina says.

I’ll bring banana bread, witch hazel, fenugreek, arnica, oregano. Swaddles, spit-up rags. A messy lasagna, zucchini bread from the good bakery. Epsom salts, cabbage, belladonna, mustard seed oil. Gelato, raspberry leaf tea. A small piece of rose quartz. Everything she needs.

Bryan gets up to say goodbye when I leave, and gives me a strong hug, a real hug, takes my breath away. It’s not until someone really hugs you that you realize how infrequently anyone ever really hugs you.

Pleasure
, he says. He’s quite the puppy dog.

Later, when Paul gets home, I take a cold, dark, ten-minute walk down to the river. Air feels amazing. Then I clean the kitchen.

You’re chipper
, Paul observes.

I look up Bryan.

. . .
[A]n occasionally profound and important writer
, according to some critic.
Trouble is, he publishes quite frequently.

Think I might actually get out a pen and some Jeanette Winterson before bed. Don’t actually do it, but think about it. Which is something.

Today I take Walker to story time at the library and then to the burger place at the mall, because no Nasreen on Thursdays and I get a little panicked without a plan. He has a meltdown in the mall parking lot as I try to load him back into the car seat to go home. Refuses to be put into the seat. You can’t reason with them. He just does not want to go in that car seat. He freaks the fuck out about getting into the seat.

I look around helplessly. Nearby, a stranger: white girl with stale bleach job whose three kids are perfectly installed in a seen-better-days blue minivan. Bag upon bag from the mega-store. She watches me. I think: fuck it.