Tats Too (2 page)

“There’s six of them out there now. It started with one. Then two. Three, four, five. Now there’s six of them and they’re all just sitting on the telephone wire staring at our house,” I explain.

She bites her lower lip and squints one eye at me.

“Scary little feathered fuckers,” I add weakly.

She puts her fists on her hips and asks like she already knows the answer, “What movie were you just watching?”

“That’s beside the point,” I answer. “Viv, you have to admit that birds are scary. The way their knees are screwed on backwards like that.”

She doesn’t say a word.

I look at anything but her and continue, “And those beaks. They have those sharp pointed little beaks that could just peck your eyes out.”

She blinks slowly, but still says nothing.

“And they have white poop. That’s wrong. It’s just plain weird.”

She nods. “Okay, the white poop thing is a little weird. But that doesn’t mean they’re doing a reconnaissance mission on our house. And I don’t think Hitchcock sent his birds over here just to kill us.”

“How do you know that for sure?” I counter.

She spins on her heels and marches off to the kitchen. I hear a drawer open and close and then she’s back, holding a pair of scissors.

“What’re you doing with those?”

She yanks out the plug on the TV and cuts the power cord in half. “Lee Anne, between all the movies you watch and your overactive imagination, one of us is going to end up dead.” For emphasis, she snips the air in my direction like a demented Lorena Bobbitt, adding, “And by one of us, I don’t mean me.”

I sigh deeply and toss my hands in the air. “Now I’m going to have to splice that back together.”

She grabs me by the hand. “Let’s go back to bed. I’ll let you play with my tits until you fall asleep.”

I stay awake just long enough to keep her true to her word.

***

I wake up lying on my back, sweating, even though the air conditioner is running and a fan is pointed right at me. I can’t see my toes over my huge belly. The sheets are damp and I can’t tell if it’s because I’m sweating or…Damn, I hope I haven’t peed the bed again.

According to Vivian’s calculations based on the umpteen billion baby books she’s read, the baby, our baby, is one week overdue. It’ll probably be born with hair and claws and pointy little teeth. It’s going to claw and gnaw its way out
of me.

I never should’ve watched
Rosemary’s Baby.

I hear pots and pans banging around in the kitchen. Vivian is already up and making breakfast. This whole pregnancy thing has turned her from a cheerleader into some kind of Nazi. She monitors everything I put in my mouth.

After our first gyno appointment, Vivian damn near ran to the health food store and bought a whole shopping cart of healthy pills. She came home and spread them out over the kitchen table and stuffed them into a little plastic container.

“What the hell is that?” I asked, joining her at the table.

“A pill organizer.”

I picked it up. “It’s one of those thingies for old ladies.”

“I’m just organizing your vitamins for you. You should be thankful.”

I grabbed her face in both my hands and peered deep into her blue eyes. I said very, very seriously, “Grandma? Is that you in there? Are you trapped inside Vivian’s body?”

She brushed my hands away and smiled in spite of herself.

I grabbed a pill and pinched it between my fingers. “What’s this gross squishy one?”

“Fish oil.”

“What’s that, a lesbian Viagra?”

She scooted a pill across the table to me and said, “Just take it and shut up.”

I put it in my mouth and gave her a big, good-girl smile, hoping she wouldn’t notice I hid it under my tongue. “Thank you, Nurse Ratched.”

Vivian rolled her eyes and kept sorting pills into little compartments.

“Is that the days of the weeks written on my old lady pill organizer?”

“Yep.”

“Like you’re afraid I’ll forget and take too many prenatals? I’ll take like three of these in one day if they’re not organized by the days of the week?”

“Knowing you,” she said, “you’d take them all at once so you wouldn’t have to worry about it all week.”

“And what would happen if I took too many vitamins? The baby’s born with teeth and a high school diploma? Why can’t I just do this the old-fashioned way? You know, get vitamins from food.” I thought that was a simple enough question. Women have given birth since the beginning of time and they didn’t need pills or pill organizers.

“You want old-fashioned, go squat in the backyard and plop the baby out. Just remember to chew through the umbilical cord when you’re done,” she said in a hateful, put-upon tone.

“Now you’re being gross,” I said around the pill I still had in my mouth.

“Shut up and swallow,” she ordered.

“I haven’t heard that since senior prom.”

Vivian laughed. She held her palm under my chin and I dutifully spat the pill out. She walked over to the fridge and got out a slice of American cheese. She tore the plastic off and wrapped the cheese around the pill. She thrust the cheese ball in my direction. “Here,” she said.

“That’s supposed to get me to take the pills?”

“It used to work on my dog.”

I’ve been eating cheese balls for four months now. The only way I know what day it is, is because it’s written on top of my pill organizer.

“Viv!”

Her bare feet pad toward me and then she’s in the doorway, looking at me, smiling. She bounces out of bed that way every morning, happy, smiling and full of sunshine.

It pisses me off.

“Why are you wearing my underwear?” I ask.

“You don’t think it’s a good look for me?” She laughs and turns in a circle, modeling my boxers and wifebeater.

She actually looks really hot with my boxers barely hanging off her hips, her tits testing the limits of my shirt. I haven’t fit into my own underwear for months. The only thing I can squeeze into is big gray sweatpants, a man’s XXL T-shirt and flip-flops.

That pisses me off, too.

“Help me up,” I whine.

She grabs my hands in hers and pulls me into a more-or-less sitting position. “I thought of a new name,” I wheeze.

“I thought we’d already decided.”

“Yeah, well, the baby’s father visited me in a dream and told me I have to name it after him.”

Vivian smiles at me crookedly, waiting for the punchline. “And that would be?”

“Lucifer.”

She snorts through her nose. “If it’s a girl, we can call her Lucy.”

“Exactly.”

“Breakfast is almost ready. You hungry?” she asks, starting toward the kitchen.

I catch her hand and swing her back in front of me. “Yep,” I answer, running my hands up under the wifebeater.

“For food?” she clarifies.

“Nope.”

That’s a bald-faced lie. I’m always hungry. If it were up to me, I’d sit right in front of the fridge and stuff my face. But Vivian has to prepare and measure everything before she doles it out to me with my vitamins. She only lets me have three ounces of fat free ice cream a day. Whoever heard of fat free ice cream? If it’s fat free, what’s the fucking point? Besides, when something says on the box “one-third less fat,” to me that means I get to eat one-third more of it. So, if it’s fat free, can’t I eat the whole carton?

I sigh and nuzzle my face between her whipped cream tits. I think of her tits as whipped cream because her skin is a delicious milky white and right now everything reminds me of food.

“You’re a perfect example of what happens if you don’t breast- feed a baby. They grow up to have an oral fixation,” she says.

“I can breast-feed the baby while you breast-feed me,” I say, nibbling her strawberries. I run my fingers up the inside of her thigh, under the leg of the boxers, my mind hungry with thoughts of pudding when Vivian steps back. Her eyes are wide and scared.

“What…?” I ask.

She looks at the floor then back to me. “Your water broke.”

***

I fork in my breakfast as fast as I can. I stop shoveling to pour more sugar-free syrup on my stack of pancakes, but Vivian snatches Aunt Jemima out of my hands, pops her head back on and sticks her back in the cabinet.

“She’s sugar-free,” I whine. But before I can work myself into a good lather over it, another contraction hits. I white-knuckle the edge of the table with both hands and clench my thighs together like a vise-grip. Vivian squats down beside me with her hands on my belly, breathing deep ragged breaths like she’s the one going into labor not me.

When the pain subsides, I draw in a couple gulps of air and stab some more pancake with my fork.

“Let’s go, Lee, your contractions are four minutes apart,” Vivian orders, clicking her stopwatch that she bought special just for this occasion.

She also bought a pedometer. She says I have to get enough exercise and checks daily to make sure I take at least five thousand steps. I wear it, but just to fuck with her, I walk backwards when she’s not looking.

“Lee? We need to go before I’m delivering this baby myself in the front seat of the El Camino. And that’s not a story I want to be telling her when she’s a teenager,” she says, tapping the toe of her high heel at me.

I ignore the threat of her high heels, her weapon of choice. “But I’m not finished with mein pancakes, Herr Vivian.”

She pulls the plate away from me before I can stab another bite and tosses it all in the sink. “There. Now you’re finished.”

The Führer has spoken.

***

“You’re going too slow,” I mutter between clenched teeth.

I’m not the only one that this baby has changed. Vivian used to drive like Ben Hur with a cigarette dangling out of her mouth and her left elbow poking out the opened window. She couldn’t drive without smoking and a window open even if it was twenty degrees outside and sleeting. It drove me crazy. Now she makes me crazy because she drives like she’s guiding a Buick boat to church on Sunday.

“I’m going the posted speed limit,” she says, tapping the brake pedal.

“Pull over, please,” I say with as much calm as I can muster. A contraction hits and I damn near bite my tongue off from trying not to scream.

“I want to get us all there in one piece,” she says.“Just hold on, okay?”

I straighten up and gulp down some air. “Pull over,” I order, pointing at the side of the road.

“We’re almost there,” she soothes.

“PulloverpulloverpulloverpulloverISAIDPULLOVER!”

Vivian slams on the brakes and the seat belt cuts into my belly, sending me into another contraction.

Goddammit to hell, it hurts like a son-of-a-bitch.

“Whatwhatwhatwhatwhat?” Vivian asks. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I. Can’t. Do. This,” I stutter.

“You really don’t have a choice, Lee.”

“I’m not going to do it. I’m too scared.” I cross my legs just to show her how much I mean what I said.

Vivian frowns at me sympathetically and pats my thigh. “It’s a scary thing. According to Dr. Spock all new moms are scared.”

“You’re not scared.”

Vivian checks over her shoulder at the road behind us, then looks back to me. “I’m scared shitless, are you kidding?”

“I’m serious about this, Viv. I’m really, really scared.”

“Well, I’m scared that I’m not going to get you to the hospital in time and you’re going to give birth right here in the middle of the road.”

I open the door and unbuckle.

“
What’re you doing
?” she yells.