* * *
Around midnight, Esme was woken by a callused caress. She rolled halfway. Fed Nicky. He made suckling, animal sounds but her nipples didn’t mind as much and there wasn’t any blood.
Wendy smiled at the baby and she smiled more at Esme, like she mattered. Like she was a person who could be seen. “Cunt’s all cleaned up now, isn’t it, lucky girl?” she whispered. “It’s like you never had them at all.”
* * *
Month Two
The next day Mike slept in because it was Saturday and he was tired. She and the kids padded around the creaky, two-bedroom, brownstone floor-through until nine and then went for a walk in Brower Park and then to the Children’s Museum. She was hoping to see Wendy, whom she wanted to talk to about the whole cunt thing. She didn’t exactly know how to articulate it. She thought she’d say something like, chill out on the language. Or, can we not talk about sex while I’m nursing a four-week-old? But maybe she’d say nothing. Just smile and pretend everything was fine. Just reassure herself that Wendy was a functional person with a day job and a place in the world and friends. But none of this happened, because they were told she didn’t work there anymore. In fact, no one there could remember her ever having worked there.
Back home, she put both Nicky and Spencer down for a nap and played Uno with Lucy, but kind of fell asleep during a discard, at which point Lucy climbed on top of her and started humping her face, which—little known fact—most children do until you say, “Get the hell off! Stop humping my face!” and then they stop.
That night, Marlene the date-night sitter showed up. She was from Trinidad and the kids loved her rice and beans. They greeted her with utter joy, unlike the way they greeted Wendy, whom they viewed as some kind of smelly penny that kept turning up at their door. Wendy would not return until Monday. She had weekends off.
While Nicky cried in his boppy, Esme took a shower and then used the new spray on her hair so that it shone pretty. Her bones felt different now, from regular ointment use. Stronger and reknit somehow, into a slightly different configuration from the woman she’d once been.
She let her hair hang loose, the best it had ever looked. Her dress was this blue tiger print number that she’d gotten online and she looked great. Mike wore jeans and a suit jacket. They took Nicky with them and headed for the restaurant, where they were meeting the rest of Mike’s team along with their spouses.
The restaurant was on Vanderbilt Avenue. Mike walked ahead of her and Nicky that last block because they were late. The table had two spaces left, far away from each other. She was happy for this, which felt a little like betrayal. But only a little.
The food got served family style. She had a glass of wine and fed the baby from milk she’d pumped, so she felt dizzy and cheerful a half-hour in. The man next to her was from Scotland. He told her he liked black people. “I do, too!” she said. He thought she was funny. “Mike, your wife’s funny!” he said.
Mike nodded, kept talking to the guy next to him, the big boss, with whom he wanted to start a new division. She turned to the woman on her left, who was married to the man on her right. The woman on her left was from a town outside Chicago called Berwyn. She said she loved babies and could not wait to have some. She got tears in her eyes when she said this, like babies were something that came from a bank, and there was a run on them. “Have my baby!” Esme said.
Then she heard Mike say a crazy word. A word she’d never have guessed he knew, let alone repeat. It sounded like Wigger.
“What?” she called across the long table. Mike kept talking. The four people around him were laughing hard. “What did you just say?” Esme shouted, loud now and a little angry. They stopped laughing.
“I was just telling them about our hillbilly night nurse,” Mike said. Mike was from Florida. The state where people smoked bath salts, then ate each other’s faces. Esme was a Presbyterian from Westchester who’d gone to boarding school until college, and who’d have inherited a ton if not for some jerk hedge-fund manager’s ponzi scheme. Her people had been professionals for generations, long before the civil war. His people had come over during the potato famine. This is for background. For the establishment of who gets to call whom a low class.
“What about her?”
Mike grinned. It was his phony work grin because sometime between meeting her and the first baby, he’d lost his real grin. “All those potions,” he laughed. “She thinks she’s a witch or something. The two of you smell like potheads.”
“Did you say wigger?” she asked. The word meant white nigger. The men and women around him averted their eyes, sheepish.
He looked at her like she was crazy. “Of course not.”
Nicky and his fucking timing. He started crying.
* * *
“I think Dan’s on board,” Mike said on the ride home. “This is really big.”
She broke pace and walked in front of him on the way back to the apartment. “Did you say wigger? Be honest,” she called behind.
Mike looked at her blankly.
“When you were telling some mean story about Wendy. Did you call her a wigger?”
“Honey, I’m so drunk. I don’t even remember talking about her,” he said.
* * *
Inside the house, she paid Marlene, and then Marlene asked to speak to her privately, outside the apartment.
“Are you using voodoo?” Marlene asked as they shivered on the cold front stoop. She looked upset. Shaking and close to tears.
“Oh! You mean the night nurse?” Esme answered. “She’s into organic. She makes all these great ointments. They’re really helping me.”
“It’s voodoo,” Marlene whispered. “I can smell it on the children. You’re marked.”
This sank inside Esme, sidling across her bones. “I don’t believe in magic.”
Marlene shook her head. “Please.”
“Please, what?” Esme answered.
Marlene started down the steps. From the cramped, dim vestibule, Esme watched her turn around the corner, lost to the sideways horizon.
* * *
She put sleeping Nicky down in his bassinet. He’d sleep until his next scheduled feeding at two in the morning. “Can you feed him? I left a bottle,” she asked Mike.
Mike popped a last beer, and answered like he’d only vaguely heard. “Sure.”
She’d been through this before. Sure meant absolutely not, but she decided to let it play out.
Like clockwork, Nicky’s insistent hunger cries started at exactly two in the morning. She shoved Mike but couldn’t wake him, and she knew that if she let Nicky keep going, he’d wake Spencer and Lucy in the next bedroom, and then everybody would be crying messes all day long. Plus, there’s that whole attachment parenting thing, about how if you don’t hold them when they cry they become psychopaths. Plus, the milk was practically exploding from her nipples. She got up and warmed the bottle and then figured that one glass of wine six hours before wouldn’t kill him, and went ahead and nursed.
He looked up at her with soft, small eyes, and she loved him like you might love the first sight of a new and beautiful planet populated by Muppets. “I’m so unhappy,” she told him.
* * *
She couldn’t sleep after that. Too angry. Her first thought was to open Mike’s whiskey and get soused. But then she saw how Wendy had cleaned up the tiny corner of her kitchen that was her workspace, arranging pencils next to the laptop. When had that happened? Yesterday? A week ago? When was the last time she’d tried to write?
She sat down there, and saw the note Wendy had written, “You go, girl!” It made her smile, and then chuckle (You go, girl?), and then start typing.
The problem with Riker’s Island was that there wasn’t enough room for the inmates, so they floated around on barges. If they refused to plea bargain, they had to wait for at least a year, trapped, before they could stand trial. They’re stuck there, all these women. On fucking barges.
She finished a draft two an
d a half hours later, then made herself an exhaustion snack of torn crust from sliced bread smeared directly into a bar of butter—her favorite, secret late-night snack, which maybe explained the stubbornness of the baby weight. But God, it was good. Especially if you sprinkled a little salt on the top.
* * *
Nicky woke up. She took him out of the bassinet and brought him into the bedroom with the bottle. Held him next to Mike until he opened his eyes. “Your turn,” she said. He stayed like that for a ten count, then took the baby and the bottle and got out of bed. By the time Esme woke again it was after ten in the morning. Lucy had turned on the television and was watching it with Spencer. Nicky was just starting to coo. Mike had stuck a note to the fridge:
Putting in a few extra hours at the office. Have a great day!
Month Three
The next few weeks were uneventful, but also very eventful. Esme kept yelling; Nicky kept eating and sleeping; the weather stayed cold; Spencer kept getting in trouble; and Lucy kept playing with the kid who shouted weird cuss-words at PS11. Esme’s sun damage totally reversed. Her skin could have been mistaken for belonging to a twenty-five-year-old. True to Wendy’s word, so could her cunt.
It happened one Friday, that Esme woke to find Wendy still in the house. She’d made pancakes. These were thicker and more cake-like than normal pancakes, and they smelled like lavender. Everybody except Esme took three bites to be polite. Esme drowned them in syrup and butter and then they were fine.
“Thought I’d stick around, help out,” Wendy explained.
The kids stayed especially quiet because Wendy freaked them out. No panic attacks about mean teachers or bullying friends. No shouting about how she loved one of them more than the others, or that everything was totally unfair. It gave Esme’s nervous system time to breathe.
Wendy waited inside the car with the remaining kids when they stopped at PS11 and then the preschool, too. They were done quickly, and with significantly less physical tax. Nicky wasn’t upset because his nose wasn’t cold, and Esme didn’t pee her panties even a little.
“Turn left,” Wendy commanded, so Esme did. Instead of going home, she directed her to the old armory in East New York, about two miles down Atlantic Avenue. Wendy told her to pull over. She did. Do you work here, now? Esme wanted to ask. I heard you’re not at the Children’s Museum. You gave that up… Why couldn’t they remember you?
Wendy smiled at Esme with real warmth, or what passed for it. Her eyes squinted into a grin and her voice got soft, like she was reminding herself that gentle people whisper. “It happens in a blink,” she whispered. “And there’s so much power in it.”
“I know what you mean,” Esme said. “It’s so nice to have you, Wendy. I can’t tell you how grateful I am, to have someone in our house who cares. These first months are so hard. I’m counting down the seconds, wishing they’d pass faster, but I know it’ll be over in a snap. It all happens so fast and I love them so much… Saints and poets.”
Wendy looked at her with confusion. “Oh. Right.” Then she got out of the car.
Always before this, Esme had seen mammoth Wendy behind a register, or crouched by the side of a bed, or sitting at her kitchen table. But now Wendy stood tall. The outdoor expanse was finally wide enough to showcase her girth. She loped up the walk, her body in graceless disjoint, then pushed through an ornate wooden door and disappeared inside.
Esme watched the closed door, the giant turrets above, the pretty red brick faded to the color of city-soot and rust. She had questions. So many.
“What do you think?” she asked Nicky. Nicky cooed, because he liked Esme’s voice. All her kids were like that: they loved her more than anybody else in the world. It’s a kind of love so momentous that you can’t let yourself think about it or you’ll be like that guy, Narcissus, drowning in his own reflection.
She took Nicky out of his car seat and headed for the armory, which she realized looked a lot like a church. She climbed the steps. A funny feeling ate at the pit of her stomach.
A piece of red poster paper that looked like it had come from her house read:
No Men Allowed!
She opened the heavy door, and then another heavy door. She entered a giant atrium with an altar at the center. The room was empty. Dust motes filled the air. It stank of patchouli. She headed for the altar, where she found a pile of ashes and amidst this, a knot of black, human hair.
She turned and started out. The door squeaked loudly. She pressed her lips to the top of Nicky’s head and, panting, ran out. Up in the window, a top turret, a white-haired face peered down.
* * *
She meant to confront Wendy after that. To say: Uh, what was that place? Who are you? But when she got home there were tasks to accomplish, and she was afraid to tell Mike, because once she did that it would be out of her hands. He’d fire Wendy and she’d be alone in this apartment. So she decided to soothe her nerves with the ointment. It calmed her. Ran through her, placid and healing. After that, she ate the kids’ and Mike’s leftover pancakes, too.
She’d been paranoid. Wendy was a helpful person. She’d taken the morning just to give Esme a hand. She already knew from neighborhood meetings that the armory was a homeless shelter. Wendy surely volunteered. How could Esme possibly respond to her night nurse’s kindness with ungracious questions?
Besides, Wendy’s work was coming to a close. Nicky would be sleeping through the night any day now. A week at the most. Why end the relationship on a sour note?
* * *
On a Monday, Wendy ran Esme a bath full of clay while chanting softly. Tuesday, she caressed Esme’s cheek until she started crying and couldn’t stop. While Nicky fed, Wendy held her. Strong, callused hands. At one point, she wiped away a tear and ate it.
“What do you want?” Wendy asked. “If you imagine it, then the spirits give it to you. They divine it.”
Wendy thought about her Riker’s Island article, and about her friend from the Huffington Post whom she’d sent it to weeks ago, but who still hadn’t read it. She thought about this cramped apartment, and the shitty preschool which she wished they could afford full-time, and she thought about the person she shared her bed with, who made her feel so invisible, and mostly she thought about sleep, and how much she missed it.
“I want my mom,” Esme said.
Wendy climbed into the bed. Spooned her like her mom had never done, but she’d always wished for. It felt awkward, and then weird, and finally bad. Esme got up, pretending to need to use the bathroom, and didn’t come out again until Nicky started crying.
* * *
Wednesday, at exactly twelve weeks, Nicky slept through the night.
Esme’s breasts woke her up. They were too full. It was nine a.m. The kids would be late for school! “Lucy! Spencer!” she called. Nobody answered, and she had this irrational fear that Wendy had stolen them. That was the price. And now the loves of her life were gone forever.
She raced into the kitchen, where the dishes were washed and the counters cleaned and Wendy was standing at sweet attention.
“I dropped them off,” she said.
“You did? How? What about their lunch sacks? It’s such a walk!”
“I took the car. I made their lunches. It was fine.”
“Oh.”
Esme tried to smile, but she was afraid. Something had changed. Something was wrong. Also, not cool to take a car without permission. “I guess we should talk about your fee. I think you should stop coming.”
“See you tonight,” Wendy said.
* * *
Wendy didn’t show up Thursday night. So Esme put the kids to bed, finishing up another Junie B Jones, and snuggling Nicky until his breath got deep. It felt like the end of something momentous, the beginning of another chapter, too.
Around midnight, she jackknifed awake, sneaked out of the bedroom where Mike was sleeping, and found Wendy sitting at her kitchen table. The apartment felt different. Everything rearranged and of different hue. Was
this what happened at night? Did the house switch loyalties, locating a new master?
“Sorry I’m late,” Wendy said.
“Oh, it’s fine,” Esme answered. “But I should pay you. I think we’re not in the market for night nurses anymore.”
Wendy opened her giant old-lady purse and pulled out a deck of Tarot cards—the cheap, Walmart kind. “I made dandelion tea,” she said, sipping from and then passing the full mug in Esme’s direction. “It’ll help dry you out. I’ll leave the bottle.”
“So, the fee?”
Wendy laid down the cards. The light was low. She was too big for the chair. Twice Mike’s size. Probably twice as powerful, Esme suddenly realized.
“Can I read for you?”
“I’m so tired. Can it wait?”
Wendy shook her head. “I’ve already started.” She flipped a bunch of cards. To be polite, to get her on her way, Esme sat and listened. Something about cusps. Something about choices and rebirth and gobble-de-gook that you nod and smile at, because this person had held her defenseless infant all night for three months, and given her love and affection when she’d needed it most, and maybe she was crazy but who else would do such a thing? And then she nodded off, because when she woke up, Wendy was looking at her with this obscene smile on her face; gaudy, wild, and insane.
“Yeah?” Esme asked.
“So you’re about to make a big decision,” she said. “This is the turning point of your entire life.”
Esme stared at the card, which was marked death. She looked back at smiling Wendy. And the cup, she looked inside. Was it really dandelion tea? Because it had curdled to thick, custardy pink.
“You need to think the name. While you sleep, you’ll think the name, and in the morning they’ll be gone,” Wendy said.
“I don’t understand,” Esme answered.
“Of course you do,” Wendy answered. “It’s my fee.”
“Why don’t I just pay you in money from a bank?”
Still with that disquieting, bone-deep psychotic grin, she packed her Tarot cards into her giant canvas purse and left.
* * *
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