Paradise Park (53 page)

But then the contraction would pass and I’d open my eyes, and I’d come to. And I’d say, “Mikhail?”

“Yes!”

“Don’t crack your knuckles.”

“Okay, all right.”

“It’s really bad for your fingers, Mikhail!”

“Okay.”

“Owwwwwwww!”

“Another one?” He bent over me.

I put my hand up and pushed him away as hard as I could.

“Sharon!” he said.

“Ohhhh …” I sobbed. And my poor husband was looking at me so upset, and all I could think of was
Good!
All I could think of was hate and bile and spite, until the pain subsided again.

And this went on for I don’t know how long, and then I got wheeled to another room, and I got a so-called bed to writhe on, and I screamed, and I cried, and I tried to walk around and breathe. I tried everything except anesthesia, because I was having a natural birth. That was what Mikhail and I had decided. We would have had a midwife at home if we could have afforded it, but our insurance only covered hospitals. So because of the medical-industrial complex I was there in the ward. Yet I wasn’t giving in to epidurals and drugs and needles.

So this went on hour after hour, but when the new doctor came in, it turned out our baby was stuck inside of me, and the head was jammed in like a cork inside a bottle, and the baby was in distress, so I was getting an epidural whether I liked it or not, since I was about to have a C-section.

“Please don’t feel that you’ve failed,” said the doctor.

“Fuck you!” I screamed. All I could think of was, I’ve gone through all that natural childbirth for nothing! Hour after hour after hour. Now in two seconds this interventionist prick zipped me open, and brought forth a nine-pound baby boy.

I was all spaced out. Somewhere far below me the doctor was stitching me up, and then up around my head Mikhail and the baby were floating, and he was carrying on about how the kid was perfect, and he was beautiful, and I said, “Good!” since I’d just decided he was going to be an only child.

I slept the most delicious sleep. I slept on clean white sheets. My soul was calm. My clenched-up muscles all at peace. My pain stood at a distance like a little cloud, since the nurses gave me codeine. And when I
woke up I had that blurry wondering feeling that something had happened, but I couldn’t quite remember, and then I did remember, the baby was here. What a relief! Then I went back to sleep again.

All the next day I slept and woke and ate anything they put in front of me, and then I slept some more. People came to see me. Aunt Lena came, and Philip and Deb came with one of those balloon bouquets. But mostly it was just me and Mikhail and the kid.

He had tiny red hands and no hair. He knit his brow, and when he looked at you he stared so hard you could not look away. His eyes were dark. They were almost black. He was completely uncompromising.

I said to Mikhail, “He’s one day old and I feel like he’s already criticizing me.”

“He has wisdom,” Mikhail said.

“What do you think he knows about us?” I asked.

“Everything!” said Mikhail. “Only when he was born he forgot much of what he knew.”

“Maybe it’s better not to know everything right away,” I said. “Maybe that’s a good thing. Mikhail?”

“Yes?”

“He sneezed!” I said. “He sneezed at me.” I had never seen such a tiny sneeze in my life.

We stared at the kid in his tiny knit hospital cap and his flannel hospital blanket. He was all wrapped up tight with just his face staring out, solemn and worried when he was awake, and then tiny and shrunken up when he was sleeping. We stared until Mikhail went home for the night, because sleeping in the chair in my room hurt his back. He had to go home, but I got to stay in bed. Something like five days, I got to stay, and have my sheets changed and live in a haze, as if I were lying in a sleeper car on a train. The world was flashing by outside the window.

I didn’t keep track of the days or the visitors or anything. Between my exhaustion and my pain meds, and my great relief, I lay there in a dreamlike state. In the distance I heard Mikhail talking on the phone. He was organizing a bris. He was calling people and inviting them. In the most surreal way he was telling people the directions to the Sharon Community Center. He was actually speaking to my father’s wife on the phone. It was like something out of a dubbed late-night movie.
Mikhail saying, “Cathy, yes, I agree. To him he will be a grandson to his grandfather. Of course, it will be important for him to see.”

Was this my husband, planning and organizing a whole large-scale event? Was this Mikhail speaking to my stepmom whom he’d never met—talking strategy about how to land Dad at the naming ceremony for his own psychic good? Normally I would have been startled, but as it was, my peace of mind was so great that all I did was beam at everyone who came by. I lay against my pillows and beamed at the nurses. I beamed at Philip and Deb. I watched their bouquet of balloons float up toward the ceiling. Mikhail reached for the ribbons to bring those “It’s a Boy” balloons down to earth. “Let them be,” I said. I radiated peace. “Let them be.”

Dreams passed over me like cool cloths on my forehead. I loved convalescence. Everything was wavy and soft. Everything was infantile. It was the world on drugs, but in a good way, because you were in the hospital. Because you deserved them.

I dreamed my mother was at my bedside and she was wearing crinkled cotton lavender robes, and her straight silvery hair hung down around her shoulders, and she was bringing me assorted loose teas, and telling me that she was proud of me.

“But it’s so hard to keep my eyes open,” I said. “Do you know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes,” she said.

“Do you know what you look like right now?” I asked her.

“What?”

“You look like the lilac fairy,” I said. “Am I sleeping?”

“No, I think you’re awake,” she said.

Then I remembered I was awake. At least half awake. I wasn’t dreaming about my mom at all. She was standing right there. “You can still be a fairy if you’re a witch, right?” I said.

“I only practice part time,” she said modestly.

“But you have some powers, right? I wish you’d have some powers.” Then I had an insight. “You knew about the baby, didn’t you?”

“I knew after Mikhail called me,” Mom said.

“Oh,” I said. “I thought you just knew.”

I was holding the baby, and she bent over us. “Oh, he’s beautiful.”

“Are you going to make a wish?”

“All right.”

“It’s just you keep reminding me of those fairies who come to make a wish.”

“He doesn’t have any hair at all,” she murmured. “Is that a wish?”

“Isn’t that something? You had a whole head of hair.”

“I know,” I said. Then I felt confused, because I didn’t know. I’d been told, and I’d seen pictures. So was that knowing?

“When your brother was born, he had a whole head of blond hair. When I saw him … They put me out completely, I think. In those days they put you out, you know, and then you came to, and they had the baby all washed and dried and clean, and like a little angel. Just like you!” she said to the baby. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you? What’s your name?”

“We’re going to name him at the bris,” I said.

“Oh, yes. You’re getting your name at the bris. Poor baby! It’s not easy being born!”

I looked down at him, busy sucking at my breast. “He knew everything about us,” I said. “He knew everything in the whole world, and all the alphabets and all the languages, and the laws of physics, and then when he was born he forgot. An angel stood at the gates. She put her fingers to his lips. Now he has to go back to school. Now he has to go back and learn the hard way. Which, if you think about it, is why he didn’t want to come. Did you ever think about that? How it’s so warm in there, in the womb, and red? Mom, tell me the truth. Am I awake, or am I asleep? I’m feeling a little bit in between, you know?”

“That’s all right. Do you want a little more light? Do you want me to open the curtains? Here, I can open the curtains. It’s so beautiful out. Do you know there was one tree on the way here that was completely red? …”

She was still talking, but I fell silent. I sat in the bed and I saw that the baby had fallen asleep sucking. His eyes were shut. His head was down. His tiny cap had fallen off. I picked him up, and I held him in the crook of my arm. His head filled the palm of my hand. That’s how I was holding his head. Right in my palm. “Mom?”

“What is it?”

“He’s asleep.”

“Oh, is he sweet.”

“Mom?” I said again.

She looked at me.

“Could I close my eyes now?”

“Oh, sure. Is that too much light, now? Do you want to rest?”

“I like the light,” I said.

“Do you want to put the baby back in the nursery?”

“No, I like it like this, holding him,” I said, settling back. Maybe I had been awake before, but I still didn’t think so. But then if you were sure you were asleep and dreaming, could this really be a dream? All my thoughts were loose around me. Only my arms firmly held my baby boy. I said to my mother, “How could you have left me?”

Mom started back.

“I thought you’d left a note. I was looking everywhere. I looked through the whole house. I was sure you’d left a note.”

“A note!”

“You probably weren’t thinking in terms of notes. I thought there’d be a note explaining the whole thing, and when you’d be back—and if I could just find the note …”

“Well,” she said, and then she started to cry.

Then I knew this was no dream, or shouldn’t be. I swallowed. My hands tightened around the baby, as though I’d lost my balance, and he had been about to fall. “Wait. Wait.” I shook myself. I forced my eyes open. “I’m sorry. No. Wait. No, see, I’m not thinking about that now,” I said. “Please don’t think about that now. I just didn’t understand then. I was thirteen—how could I? You were sick, Mom. You couldn’t help it. Alcoholism is a terrible, terrible disease! You were in the grips of a terrible, terrible thing. How can I blame you for what happened when you were so sick? I don’t,” I said. “I really, really don’t.”

“All right,” she said, just to appease me.

“And you believe that, don’t you?”

“Yes,” she said, in a small voice.

But I did blame her. I held the baby and I blamed her with all my heart, and she knew it.

“Good,” I said. “Okay.” I took a deep breath. “Because, I’m just saying, I’m actually at a more enlightened place than I sounded like back there.”

“You are. No question you are. Enlightened, and everything else.
Jewish! Who would have thought?” My mother’s mouth twisted. Her mouth was covered with fine lines. All her face was lined from sun and trouble, but her mouth especially. All around her lips. More than anything I wanted to go back and be asleep again, or at least half dreaming. More than anything I wanted to forget our whole conversation. Where was that angel of amnesia? Too busy attending births and making babies ignorant. Now I was wide awake, and there was my mother, and she was oblivious a lot, but she was not stupid. She was crazy, but she had feelings. I’d hurt her, and I didn’t know how to fix it. I didn’t know what to do.

Dirty sunshine shone all over the room. It must have been clean sunshine outside, but the windows needed to be washed. I thought awful thoughts. I wished my mother would go away, far away down the hall. I wished that having disappeared before, she knew how to disappear again. I wished her dead because it made me so sad to look at her.

“Do you want to hold him?” I said at last.

“Me?” she said. “Could I?”

“Here.” I gave the baby to her. Asleep as he was, curled up in his blanket. She held him for a long time, and she whispered to him. After a while some happiness came back into her voice. “Look! Look!” she was telling me. But I couldn’t. I guess I just wasn’t enlightened enough.

Prodigal Sheep