by Mira T. Lee
“Isn’t that the name of a supermodel?” I said.
“Fashion designer,” said Lucia. “Famous for her wedding dresses.”
When will you ask her, hijo?
I fidgeted, annoyed. I didn’t want Mami in my head just then.
Dr. Vera Wang made me nervous, too, the way she cooed and spoke with exaggerated gestures. She weighed our baby on the scale, measured her length, listened to her heart and lungs, checked her hips, counted ten fingers and ten toes.
“She’s perfect. Congratulations,” she said.
When we returned home that day, Lucia swept and mopped the entire house, top to bottom, while carrying our baby in a sling. She sang while she changed Essy’s diapers:
Toe bone connected to the foot bone
Foot bone connected to the heel bone
Heel bone connected to the ankle bone
Ankle bone connected to the shin bone
All the bones. Then a Chinese lullaby. “So she will have a Chinese brain,” she said. I wasn’t sure what that meant. My Vargas cousins were happy that the house smelled like lemons instead of wet dog.
The next morning I found her on her knees in the kitchen, swatting under the refrigerator with the mop handle. “I found this,” she said. “See?” She placed two small husks in my palm. They were brown, brittle, waxy, semitransparent. Weighed almost nothing. “Roach skins,” she said. “What the hell! That’s disgusting,” I shouted. I threw them to the floor. “They shed,” she said. “They spread disease.” She wet a sponge in the sink, bent down, carefully started to wipe the floor. “I’m going out,” I said. It was Sunday. She didn’t look up.
When I returned, she was in the bathroom, scrubbing the tub with a toothbrush. “Bleach,” she said. “We need more bleach.”
“Looks clean to me,” I said.
She didn’t answer. Continued to scrub like she was on a mission.
“Come on. Let’s go for a walk,” I said. I took the toothbrush from her hand. I dressed Essy in her pink fleece hoodie with ears, snapped her in her stroller. We walked past the laundromat, the barbershop, the Korean grocery, turned the corner by the Dominican bar. Walked down the hill, past the train station, through the empty parking lots usually filled with commuters’ cars, on to the path alongside the rocky pier. It was windy, warm, one of those freak days in January when the air is comfortable but the banks of the Hudson are still frozen. I put my arm around Lucia. My girl. I felt good. Instead of my usual slouch, I stood a little taller. We walked toward the playing fields where I saw my friends Mike and José and Santiago. Everyone was out today. “Hey, Manny,” they called. “How come we never see you anymore?” They ran over, thumping the icy ground with their cleats. I used to play soccer every Sunday after church, some Saturdays, some evenings, too. Suddenly I felt self-conscious. I sucked in my gut. In spite of the labor I did with Maurice, I knew I was getting fat.
“I’ve been busy.” I pointed to Essy. She was sleeping.
“Felicitaciones!” they said. “That’s great, man. Hey, you gotta come back out soon.”
“Sure,” I said.
“You hear about Jimmy Prieto?” said Mike. Jimmy Prieto was a friend of ours. A Mexican, and popular because he always volunteered to play goalkeeper.
“Busted,” said José.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Taken away. Deportado. Back to the beach.”
I felt sick to my stomach. Mrs. Gutierrez was always telling us these stories. Down by the Texas border, they dumped Mexicanos in the desert without food or water. They took away the little scraps of paper scrawled with their relatives’ phone numbers. Left them with nothing.
“What happened?” I said.
“Broken taillight,” said Mike.
“Estúpido,” said José, waving his hands.
“Pay stubs. Double stupid,” said Santiago. “They wanted five grand just to post bond.” I wasn’t sure what that meant.
“He’s got a kid, a boy,” said José.
My throat hurt. “How do you know?”
They shrugged. “Everybody knows,” said Mike.
My spine tingled, like a rope of ice.
Lucia and I continued on the winding path until we reached a playground. We sat on a metal bench. Our bebita napped in her stroller. The sun warmed my face. The waves of the Hudson bounced and sparkled, quietly lapped the shore. I stopped thinking about Jimmy Prieto. I watched the bigger babies in bucket swings and the even bigger babies climbing steps, and then the ones who were not babies anymore, they were boys and girls jumping off slides. Our baby couldn’t sit up, couldn’t bring her hand to her mouth, couldn’t steady the weight of her own head. She could not even focus her eyes yet. But she peed, she drooled, she sucked, she breathed. She was alive, and she was mine.
• • •
I went to work with Maurice when he needed me. Demolition, mostly, in the suburbs. A basement, a small bookstore to be converted into a Taco Bell, an old shed we tore down easily with our hammers and hands. Maurice let me help his nephew with the painting of the bathroom at the Scarsdale house. After two months, he’d finally finished the “update,” installed porcelain sinks with marble tops, a Jacuzzi tub, sconce lights, a white marble floor that warmed your feet. We painted the walls a deep purple. “Shit,” said the nephew. It was his favorite word. “Shit, all that work and it’s like taking a shit in an eggplant.” But I thought it looked pretty good.
Evenings, I watched my baby discover her tiny mouth, her tiny hands, her tiny toes. Lucia dressed her in pink and yellow. Gave her baths every night in the kitchen sink, boiled water in a kettle to make milk from powder. Every three hours she got up to feed her and burp her and sing to her. Bounced on a big green exercise ball until Essy fell back to sleep.
One night, Lucia dropped the kettle and burned herself. Next morning the skin on her fingers turned black. She cried for more than an hour.
“It’s okay. Tranquila,” I said.
“Do you see this?” She held out her hand.
“Put ice on it.”
“It’s dead skin. Dead. It will never grow back.” She cried again. Wrapped her hand in a wet facecloth, wrapped the wet cloth in plastic wrap.
That afternoon Hector suggested a barbecue. Sunday, NFL playoffs, and all our Vargas cousins were home. We threw steak tips and onions and peppers on the charcoal grill. It was freezing out on the back porch, but I warmed my hands on the fire. It felt kind of American.
I took a plate of food up to Lucia. She shook her head.
“You’re not hungry?”
She poked at the meat with a fork. “It’s all burnt,” she said.
I went back to the kitchen. Everyone was already huddled around the TV. A referee threw a yellow flag. “What’s encroachment?” said Serge. “When they don’t throw the ball fast enough,” said Carlos. “That’s delay of game,” said Hector. None of us really knew. A few minutes later Lucia walked in. Her eyes were red. She didn’t look at us. She switched off the television.
“What are you doing?” I said.
“Electromagnetic waves are bad for the baby,” she said. The baby was sleeping upstairs.
I could feel my Vargas cousins staring in disbelief, waiting to see my reaction. My hands shook as I switched the game back on.
“Don’t do that,” she said.
“You’re tired,” I said. I herded her out of the kitchen. Had to drag her up the stairs.
That night she cried herself to sleep. When I woke in the middle of the night, she was still crying. She wore socks over her hands like mittens.
“Are you cold? Why are you crying?” But she wouldn’t answer. She looked pale. I thought she might be sick. I offered to change diapers. To get up at night and make milk from powder.
“There are bugs crawling on my body when I sleep,” she said. She lay on her
back, staring up at her banana plants. “I can’t stand the crying.”
“No one is crying,” I said. Essy was swaddled, asleep in her bassinet.
“They are coming to take my baby away,” she said.
“No one is coming,” I said. But I didn’t like the sound of her words.
One day I came home and our baby had tiny cuts on her face. I rubbed Vaseline on her cheeks, clipped her tiny fingernails. Lucia sat on her knees in the middle of the futon mattress.
“Why aren’t you happy? Why are you crying?” I asked.
“They’re talking,” she said. “Manny, I miss Ecuador.”
“Please, Lucia,” I said. “Come have some breakfast. Hector is making pancakes.”
“I’m not hungry,” she said.
Later, I brought her a plate of pancakes. “Lucia,” I said, “Essy would like to see you.” I set the plate on the floor, held out the baby, whose face was puffy from crying.
“Not now,” said Lucia. She shook her head. Sat cross-legged on top of her hands.
“She needs a diaper,” I said.
“You do it,” she said. “Television is not good for her.”
That weekend, she stayed in her room at the top of the stairs, watching infomercials, volume all the way loud. She came out only to go downstairs to the kitchen, filled a small bowl with pig’s feet soup, took the bowl back up to her room.
I didn’t know what to do.
I brought Essy down to Carlos’s room, the smallest one on the first floor, closest to the kitchen. Before I moved upstairs with Lucia, I’d shared this room with him. It had red-brown shag carpet, flowery paper on the walls above the wainscoting. I had just learned this word, “wainscoting,” from Maurice. Dirty laundry rested in a heap on the mattress. I put a towel on the floor, put Essy on the towel, let her suck on my pinky finger until she fell asleep. I pushed aside Carlos’s clothes, lay back, stared up at the peeling paint. Splotchy brown rings circled the ceiling light, like giant coffee stains. I couldn’t recall if it was like that before.
And then I remembered: the piece of paper. The one Lucia’s sister had placed in my hand. I dug through my wallet. Pulled it out. I studied it a long time, until I’d memorized the numbers. But I couldn’t bring myself to call. Mindy Griffin’s voice floated from the TV in our kitchen: three newborn puppies abandoned in a dumpster; brutality charges against a veteran police officer; a young couple injured in a hit-and-run.
Just the other day Mrs. Gutierrez told us six people on Cedar Street were taken during a raid. “Drogas,” she said. “Colombianos.” My Vargas cousins were on edge. I understood. It worried them when outsiders got involved.
Susi said this happened to women sometimes.
“Postpartum depression,” she said. She was proud to use these words.
“How would you know?” I asked.
“She has a hole inside her. Gigante. Where the baby used to be. Boom, bam.” She clapped loudly. “You think a body can take this, like it’s nothing? How can a woman be fine like this?”
I’d never given it a thought. Like being pregnant, it was what women did.
“I don’t know how to fix such a hole,” I said.
“First, you need to be kind,” she said. I was being scolded by a child.
Her sister, Betty, lived in Pleasantville, had three daughters of her own. Susi asked her to come. Together, they scoured and scrubbed every corner of the bathroom, filled the tub with smelly water, bathed Lucia in herbs. “Calendula, plantain leaf, sea salt,” Betty explained. Patted her with a towel warmed with a hair dryer, tied a wide, stiff band of cloth around her waist. “This is custom for new mothers, to wear the faja.” They combed her dark, wet hair.
Lucia looked fresh. We sat in the kitchen drinking tea.
“Do you feel better now?” I said.
She nodded.
Betty patted her hand. “What is that smell?” she said. She wrinkled her nose, turned to me, like I was automatically the offensive one.
“What?” I said.
“Oh, that,” said Susi. “You mean the wet dog?”
“Why are you looking at me?” I said.
“It’s the soup,” said Susi. “Right, Lucia?” She smiled. Showed dimples I’d never noticed before. Susi, she could be a sweet girl sometimes. She wanted to make things right.
“Esperanza talks to me,” said Lucia.
“Yeah? She only screams at me,” I said. I was trying to make her laugh.
“A mother knows her baby’s cries,” said Betty. “From the womb.”
As if on cue, we heard Essy crying. I stood to go upstairs.
“Oh, Manny,” said Lucia, grabbing my arm. “She’s tricky. She says she’s just fooling around.”
“Tricky?” I said.
Her face, stiff with concentration, made me uncomfortable.
“Yes,” said Lucia. “She communicates telepathically.”
We heard Essy resume her screaming. Betty brought her down. “Her pajama is completely wet,” she said.
I felt sick. Ashamed. My throat was dry, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. The room started to spin. I took my daughter from Betty, grabbed tight on the railing as I brought her upstairs. I wiped her. Changed her. Wedged her floppy limbs into a clean long-sleeved onesie, fumbled with the too-many small snapping buttons. When I returned to the kitchen, Susi and Betty were busy peeling potatoes to make locro de papa, potato soup. I sat, holding my daughter in my lap. Glanced sideways at Lucia, who was still sipping her tea quietly. Chinita scared me now. I couldn’t understand what was happening inside her head.
“Don’t do that,” she said. “Don’t try to control me.”
I felt in control of nothing. I didn’t know what to say. Finally I said, “Babies are not tricky.”
That night, the telephone rang. I picked it up. It was Mami. “Feliz cumpleaños!” she said.
“What?”
“One hundred days old!” she said. “I learned it is Chinese custom to celebrate, no? How is my nieta?”
“Fine.”
“And Lucita?”
“Fine,” I lied.
“You are lucky, hijo,” she said. “Twenty-six years old and a father, a man. Why are you not asking her to be married?”
I didn’t know what to say. I thought of my brothers, Ricky and Juan, that day on the boat in Canoa, before Fredy had even been born. Suddenly, all I wanted was to see them again.
“I have to tell you something, hijo. Hello? Are you there?”
“What, Ma?”
“It’s about Fredy. He is not so well. His heart, his lungs. He is coughing all the time, he cannot get enough air.”
The words, jumbled somewhere between my ears.
“I’m sorry, Mami. I can’t talk right now. I have to go.”
I hung up the phone.
• • •
One week later I came home and our baby was lying on the floor, naked and covered in shit. Lucia sat at the kitchen table, dressed in her bathrobe, socks on her hands. She sipped her pig’s feet soup.
“Jesus Christ,” I whispered. I ran to my daughter, took her up in my arms, sprayed her down in the kitchen sink. I cleaned her with wet napkins. Her face, her hands, her feet, her body. I dried her with a dish towel.
Lucia sat, motionless. “What?” she said.
I felt dizzy. Hot rage shot up my throat. I walked over to the stove.
“What are you doing?” she said.
I didn’t know. But then I was picking up Lucia’s precious clay pot by its curved handle. I smashed it on the floor. Lucia screamed. The baby cried. I felt clammy, hot and cold. My throat tightened. Neck greased with sweat. Lucia stayed sitting, didn’t move. I knelt by her chair, grabbed her shoulders, leaned in so she could feel my breath on her face.
“Basta. Enough of this shit.” M
y voice cracked. “What in hell kind of mother are you?”
I moved back into my old room, the one I used to share with Carlos. Carlos moved in with Celia on the second floor. I brought down Essy’s bassinet, stuck it in the only place it would fit, between the head of the mattress and the wall. I boiled water to make milk from powder. I woke every three hours to feed her and burp her and rock her back to sleep. In the morning, the skin on the inside of my cheek was swollen. My jaw hurt when I spoke. I prayed to God. I asked Him to explain to me what was happening to Lucia.
Susi asked her sister to help. Betty agreed to look after the baby during the days.
“Betty is responsible,” I said. “She is very good with babies.”
“No one takes my baby,” said Lucia. She planted herself on the kitchen floor, next to Essy, who gurgled in her Mozart bouncy chair.
“You don’t take care of her,” I said.
“No one.”
“Please be reasonable.” My throat, hoarse.
“I am her mother.” Lucia folded her arms.
“Óyeme mujer,” I said, loudly. “You can’t even take care of yourself.”
“I gave birth to her. Did you give birth to her? Did you carry her and grow her for nine months?”
“You sit all day with the TV on. You said TV isn’t good for her.”
“I am her mother,” she repeated. “No one will take my baby.”
I punched the wall.
“Manny!” cried Susi.
My knuckles hurt. I bit my cheek. I reached down for Essy. Lucia slapped my arm away. She scowled, lips tight, body stiff like an angry animal. “I will call the police,” she said.
I hated her.
Susi knelt. She held Lucia’s hand. “Until you feel better,” she said. “Only until you feel better. Until you get some rest, Mama. Right now it is too much, you need to rest. You will feel better soon.”
Lucia’s face softened. Finally, she agreed.
• • •
Every morning she dropped off Essy at Betty’s house, picked her up in the late afternoon, kept her clean until I got home from work. It was all I asked.
One Saturday, Lucia disappeared late morning and didn’t come back until nine o’clock at night.