Rescuing Julia Twice (16 page)

I've got to talk to Ricky's mother, who's agreed to cater the party. I need to make some calls to follow up with people who have yet to RSVP. Ricky's put together a CD track, and he bought
Fiddler on the Roof
to give the party a hint of Russian-ness.

I blow my lips in frustration and mumble, “I just can't rely on anyone.” Julia is crawling around the apartment, dragging books from her room to the living room, not to read but to rearrange.

“Now what?”

I lift Julia onto the changing table and put on a fresh diaper. “We can dress later,” I say. “Let's see what I can wear to your party,” I say, guiding her to the bedroom by holding her outstretched arms while she toddles wobbily. She'll be walking in a few weeks. I lift her up and plop her on my bed. She throws herself on top of the cat, who instinctively seems to know not to harm her. But I pull Julia back and show her how to pet the cat more gently.

I hesitate for a moment, then walk three feet across the room to a bureau of drawers. Just as I bend down to pull open a dresser drawer, I hear a thud that paralyzes my body. Before I whip around, I know the bed is going to be empty, but I cannot believe it when I see her on the hardwood floor. She's lying next to the leg of the wrought-iron bed, and she's silent. I scream and lunge to get her. By the time I do, she is wailing. There are no cuts or bleeding, but she's more inconsolable than I've ever seen her. A hideous purple blot is spreading along her left temple, like wet ink. I hold her tighter than I ever have.
Oh my God, oh my God, what have I done? What is the matter with me? How could I have turned my back for a second while she was sitting on our tall queen bed? Oh my God, what have I done?
I hug and hug her. Her crying subsides. My leaden legs slog toward the kitchen. I bend sideways into the freezer and extract ice cubes, which I wrap in a dishtowel. She fusses when I press cold compresses against her temple.
Oh my God, what have I done? I could have killed her.
I'm dizzy. I feel like I'm going to throw up. Time has stopped.

Deep breaths. Deep breaths. You're the adult. You're the mother. She needs you to remain levelheaded.
I reach for the phone and hit speed dial for the pediatrician.

Hysterically I tell the receptionist I have an emergency. She puts a nurse on the phone. I start rambling, but she stops me. She's asking the questions. Yes, the baby cried. No, she didn't pass out. Yes, she seems alert. No, she didn't vomit. The nurse makes order of chaos. An angel at a dark moment. Julia's vital signs seem okay. The nurse doesn't recommend a visit to the emergency room, though she tells me to watch for a series of signs that might indicate a concussion.

I've got Julia on my lap, but now she's done crying and appears ready to resume her busyness. She eats a rice cracker. The eggplant-shaded bruise is an abomination. It broadcasts to the world I'm not bonded enough to my baby to know that leaving her on a tall, queen-size bed is a stupid, careless idea.

I have no choice but to soothe myself. The nurse said it sounded like it wasn't a critical fall. All the vital signs are there.
Breathe. Breathe.
I can hardly breathe.

Then it hits me.

Oh my God. What am I going to tell Ricky?

I have never lied to my husband. I have an unnatural need to keep everything in sunlight. That's not his nature, but over time, that's the way we've become together. But for the first time I know I'm going to lie by omission. I'm going to tell him she's taken a fall, but I'm going to say she ran into the bed leg. I can't bring myself to say I turned my back on her while she was on the bed. It's not that he'll chastise me; in fact, it's the opposite. He'll be patient and understanding and tell me every new mother makes a mistake or two and that I'm being too harsh with myself.

I run down the conversation with the nurse, point by point. He listens calmly. He believes I have the situation under control. Maybe I do. He says he'll call in a couple of hours to check in. I put down the phone and stare at the baby, who is piling stuffed animals into a toy stroller. It's amazing. She's fallen, got hurt, been soothed, moved on. But that purple blotch taunts me. It's a warning.
You got a pass this time. Count yourself lucky.

I look skyward and thank whoever it is who watches over.

But as I glance back at Julia, my stomach clenches.

Oh my God. What are we going to do about your party? How can I introduce you to the world with a neon sign that says, “Bad mommy”?

I call Ricky back.

“What's the matter?” he says, alarmed.

“No, nothing, but what are we going to do about Saturday?”

“What do you mean?”

“Julia looks terrible. How can we … ?”

“Don't worry. Babies heal quickly. We've got five days before the party.”

“Are you sure? Should we cancel?”

“I don't think so. All the arrangements are made. Everyone is coming. Try to calm down. Maybe go for a walk with Julia, if she's okay. If you're okay.”

“You're right. I've got to get out of here. I've also got to get a more reliable babysitter. I have to get rid of Lurnie.”

“Look. You're upset. Try not to focus on a million things. Take a walk. Keep an eye on Julia. I'm sure she's fine.”

I dress Julia and negotiate her into the stroller. What was I thinking? I should know she has no sense of boundaries. As we start down the street, I recall a telephone conversation I'd had a few weeks ago with our adoption counselor. She called because we hadn't filed a written postadoption report, which we are supposed to do every six months. I wasn't particularly apologetic because I resent the agency's continued involvement in our life. Still, I agreed to give an oral report. The questions were basic. Yes, Julia was eating, gaining weight, meeting milestones. I told them I could see she'd be walking soon. Yes, she was a good sleeper. Of course, I'd said we're all very happy. Then, an odd question. “Does she recognize danger?” Of course, I'd whipped out, not thinking twice about the question. After I hung up with the counselor, I wondered what she meant.
Does she recognize danger?
The more I thought about it, the more I realized I wasn't sure I'd given an honest answer. Julia crawls away from me without any concern as to my whereabouts. She thrusts toward any cat or dog she encounters. She hesitates at nothing. In Julia's mind, it didn't occur to her that the edge of the bed was a cliff.

It's a long afternoon before Ricky comes home. When Julia naps, I'm scared she won't wake up. I check obsessively to make sure she's breathing. I feel her skin for fever, but she's cool. Her eyes aren't glazed. After I feed her lunch I'm afraid she'll vomit, but she doesn't. If she had died it would have been my fault. I'm racked with guilt. My confidence is shattered.

I have seen babies left on parents' beds before, surrounded by a barricade of pillows. Those babies don't roll off. Why? Something occurs to me. Other babies sleep in bed with their parents. The bed is a place where they've been breast-fed, lulled to sleep, coddled. Julia has never spent a night in our bed. She's a good sleeper, and Ricky and I agree we want to keep our bed a marital bed and not make it a family bed.

The sound of Ricky's key jiggling the lock is music.

I run into his arms and convulse.

“It's all right,” he says, stroking my hair. “Where is she?”

He walks to the playpen and brushes his hand gently along her purple forehead.

“Wow. That's a shiner.”

I avoid his eye.

“We could call her Gorbachev,” he says.

It's Saturday. We are preparing for the party. Julia has been fine. The bruise is a lighter shade of gray and not as pervasive as it was at first. Ricky comes into Julia's nursery while I'm slipping a floral sundress carefully over her head.

He looks at me intently.

“She's fine. It'll be fine. Every baby has taken a spill at one time or another.”

I know he's right, but still.

Ricky just got off the phone with his mother. She and my mother are in the party room in my parents' building, setting up the food and drinks. He is going to head over with balloons, and I'll catch up in forty minutes.

“Take Julia. I'll meet you there.”

888

Everything is festively arranged when I arrive. My mother says hello, but we don't kiss or embrace. “I've got something for Julia,” she says, pointing to some shopping bags in the corner of the room.

“Thanks,” I say, sweeping past her to say hello to Ricky's mother and then to the guests who are streaming into the room. I'm on guard, holding my breath, waiting for someone to ask what happened to Julia. No one does. Seems conspiratorial.

“Ricky, look, it's Robert and his wife,” I say.

We have not seen Robert, Laura, or Noa since the day we left Moscow on the Orphan Express with our babies. Noa is fourteen months and walking. She's a beautiful child, with a shock of long, silky black hair. Although Laura is white and Jewish, she too has a long, exotic mane that somehow makes her look like Noa, even though the child is of Muslim descent. Robert and I hug in a long embrace. Laura brushes past my cheek with an air kiss. Noa paws at Robert's pants; she wants to see Julia. I bend down and put the babies side by side, though Noa looks more like a toddler. Ricky says hello, too. He takes Julia from me, and he and Laura break into a side conversation.

“So, how are you doing?” Robert asks with deep chocolate eyes and a crinkled brow.

“I'm okay. I'm, uh, good. How are you?”

He rolls his eyes.

“What a life-changing experience,” he says. “I remember the day we were in the visa office together. God, that seems like a lifetime ago.”

“It was,” I say.

“Are you and Rick happy? Have things been going well?”

“As you say, the whole thing is life-changing. I'd say overwhelming.”

“I know what you mean. It's hard when you're an older parent. You've got a whole lifetime behind you, and then suddenly you have to be, you know, that life isn't yours anymore.”

“I know exactly what you mean,” I say, feeling lighter, for a change. “I wasn't totally prepared for this.”

“Yeah, but hey, what's the choice? You gotta go with it? No?”

“You are right,” I say. “Come, have something to eat.”

A conversation with a squeak of honesty. Refreshing.

I move through a sea of people. Everyone is having fun.
Fiddler
has gone around a couple of times. The food table is pilfered. The wine bottles are empty. The babies are groggy. We are saying good-bye. So many promises to do this or that. So many “Congratulations.”

Light is falling as we stroll with Julia north along Broadway to our apartment.

“It went well,” Ricky says. “Good job.”

“I think everyone enjoyed themselves. Julia was a big hit,” I say.

“Many people remarked on how beautiful she is,” he says. I look at Ricky with a
C'mon
look.

“What?”

“No one said anything? Not one person asked about the bruise on her head? You must have sent a communiqué telling people to stay mum, no?”

“Yes, that's what I did.”

“I thought so.”

We laugh, and he plants a kiss on my lips.

I am sitting on a plush couch in a communal lounge on the top floor of my mother's condo waiting to meet two Upper West Side mothers and their children. Julia, dressed in lightweight, geometrically patterned pants and a matching T-shirt, barrels between the bookshelves and the television before heading to the floor-to-ceiling windows. After finding these women on an Internet chat site, I've been communicating with Jen and Nancy by e-mail for the past couple of weeks. I'm especially excited to meet Nancy, who has recently returned from Kazakhstan with her adopted daughter.

Jen arrives first. She is all freckles and a wild mane of auburn hair. Her little boy, Jason, is slumped over in his stroller, napping. Jen sweeps into the room and extends a hand to introduce herself. I invite her to take a seat and say, “That's Julia,” pointing to the far corner of the room. Julia doesn't look up or acknowledge us. We are chatting for less than ten minutes when Jason begins stirring. He rubs his eyes and seeks Jen's attention. “Hello, Angel,” she hums, lowering her face two inches from his. “Hungry?” she asks. She lifts the fleshy baby out of the stroller, opens her blouse, and brings him to her breast. He suckles contentedly.