The Folded World

by Amity Gaige

  “Teamwork.” The girl rolled her eyes.

  Charlie stood and went to the door.

  “The only thing I don’t want,” she said to his back, “is to live in a group home with a bunch of crazy people. I had to live with crazy people all my life. It was called my family.”

  When she looked up, she was smiling. Relieved, Charlie laughed.

  “I hear that,” he said. He pawed cigarette smoke out of his eyes. “Hey,” he said cheerfully. “We could go find a box spring for your mattress some time. We could raise it up off the floor. What do you think about that?”

  “OK,” said Opal. “Maybe.”

  “OK? For sure?”

  “Maybe.” The girl returned to staring at the hammer.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” said Charlie.

  “Take it as a maybe.”

  “Bye, Opal,” said Charlie, smiling now. “I’ll see you soon.”

  As the weeks passed, the twins’ cheeks became rounder, as if their identities were filling them up, pustulating in their cheeks. Their cheeks got so fat, they often fell asleep from the sheer effort of having to keep their heads up, snoozing like old monks over the crooks of her arms.

  She had tried to breast-feed. At the hospital, the nurse with the Irish accent had demonstrated how she was supposed to clamp the baby’s mouth to the nipple, somewhat forcibly, like so! The baby clamped onto the nipple, rolling the nipple around in her mouth, considering it. Alice remembered looking up at the nurse, hoping almost irrationally to impress her—Was she fond of William Trevor’s stories? Then the nipple slipped from the infant’s mouth. Oh! cried Alice, cringing, while the nurse who had never heard of William Trevor grabbed her baby’s head once more, put her finger in a cup of baby formula and doused Alice’s nipple with it, a touch Alice felt right down the rod of her being. Did women get used to this? She might as well have been endowed with a hammer and wrench. The nurse grabbed the baby’s head once more, rubbed the infant’s lips against the nipple, so that Alice had to suppress laughter, and once again the baby’s face was shoved upon the breast.

  You have to teach ’im, said the nurse. Ya cahnt assume ’ee knows.

  But the teacher had to be taught too. The whole idea of clamping the child to her … perhaps she was being too gentle. Hour after hour, she had sat in a chair in the converted nursery, drawn up to the window, an ache in her neck from looking down so long, while each baby slid off the target, unfocused, unambitious, starving, shriveling up. Charlie, on one week’s paternity leave, cheered her on, squatting by the chair, holding the other baby on stand-by. The point was to work up to nursing both babies at once. And yet neither would attach. For days, they labored like that, the four of them, exchanging one baby for another, until finally through her tears Alice saw Charlie emerge from the kitchen with a bottle of formula. And she was so grateful. He knew that just because she had produced two babies at once she did not necessarily have two times the patience or two times the wisdom. With surprising greed, the infant swallowed the whole length of the bottle’s nib and began to suck noisily.

  “Later,” Charlie said. “Try again later.”

  “Yes,” said Alice, “of course.”

  Later, with the fidgety one across her still-swollen lap, and Charlie asleep on the bed with the other, she did try again. She knew that she was still producing the watery colostrum that was not yet milk. The babies, only six pounds each at birth, were steadily dropping weight. She was—technically—starving them. It was terrifying actually. And she did not want to feel terror but love, that famous love she had felt when they were first placed in her arms like two giant silkworms, their magical, secret-keeping faces wet with life. She eyed the bottle of formula in the warmer jealously. She had not slept. If she was going to breast-feed two babies, instead of let Charlie bottle-feed too, she actually calculated—on a tea-stained notepad in the kitchen—that she would sleep negative three hours a day, noticing that even if the day grew to twenty-seven hours she’d be left with a mere draw. If miracles were possible, both infants would adjust to a joint schedule, but what about all the other things? The dressing, the bathing, the burping, the comforting, all times two? The very fact that she had given birth to twins still astonished her. It hinted at some exceptional largesse within her for which there had been no previous evidence.

  Then, in her arms, as if on a dare, the baby Frances stiffened with want and found her mother’s nipple and began to suck. Alice gasped, reaching out to wake Charlie. Then she withdrew her hand. She watched the baby suckle. After several minutes, the baby stopped and rolled her blue eyes drunkenly. There, Alice thought. All right. Thank you. She burped the baby and put her in her crib. When her sister began to cry an hour later, Charlie got up half asleep from the bed and went automatically to the kitchen, and came back with a bottle.

  The days after Charlie went back to work were different for Alice. They were longer and more intense. She and the twins seemed to fall into a state of deep reminiscence, their ears to the ground. The time that Alice had previously spent reading was now spent waiting, observing, doing, beyond thought or calculation. During the day, she watched them. She watched them across the small spaces—thresholds, doorways. She found that when she looked outside at the evening sky, her eyes could not understand distance. When they slept, they cast their thick dreams backward across the apartment. Their temperatures rose, the fat poultices of their cheeks flushed. They were like two human embers, and their sweet-scented sleep was a little witchy. There, with a dishrag limp in her hand, Alice was overwhelmed with a feeling of understanding that was bittersweet only in that it was so late. She remembered staring through the bars of her own crib at her mother, who was sobbing. Later, a big smile and a cupcake. Back then, it was wretchedly confusing; now, she understood. Motherhood was looking down and seeing that your ribs were blown open because your heart had exploded through your chest.

  But in a reasonable mood, after a lucky couple hours’ sleep, Alice could see it was a normal, everyday thing to have a baby. You didn’t have to be preapproved and you didn’t even have to understand it. Everyone involved would survive. And if you weren’t brave enough to love them and take care of them, and if no one was ever brave enough, there wouldn’t be anymore babies or mothers or humankind. Besides, there were babies all over the place. They were practically giving them away. When she first ventured outside, she saw mobs of them in the nursery schoolyard, fascinated by leaves.

  Small excursions were trying, and a rich territory for failure. A visit to a café had ended poorly with crying, and the very persecuted air of a businessman who seemed to feel that the twins had leached the pleasure out of his cappuccino. Later, at the post office, the lady standing in line in front of her had been similarly offended when Frances announced herself with a whole-note fart, as if this fart were somehow toxic, composed of the stupid-making gas that caused people to have two babies at once. The lady turned around with a puckered face. Alice was almost concerned for her, before realizing that the lady’s mean green eyes were resting upon the heads of her children, those hatted heads with matching pompoms, looking very much as sweet and white as two pansy blossoms.

  Alice had stiffened with shame. She could feel the lady’s mean greenness glowing in front of her, mean like the shaggy puppet monsters on the television shows that she had begun watching in the afternoons. At first she had watched the shows casually, almost academically, but over time she had become absorbed in the bright colors of the puppets and their queer, chummy voices. She watched the TV, in a fug of sleep deprivation, while the twins played with their fingers. She saw herself as the nice little purple puppet who explained things nicely and lived in a tiny castle, and everybody who didn’t understand how hard it was to have twins was the mean green rabble below. Then, standing in the post office, she was twice ashamed—ashamed for not defending her child, and ashamed that she was likening life to a puppet show. Where was this world? And who, did they say, was Alice?

  But there w
as ecstasy, equally as strange, the quality of which had no precedent. There was nothing at all quite so peaceful as bathing them in the sink, their soft shoulders rubbery in the water. It smoothed the angles out of you. And perhaps your sharpness and ambition were only in abeyance but you knew you had invented something genius where before there was nothing. There was nothing like their eyes. Only once you saw such eyes did you remember what love was before it was a word and an idea, and how open you were before you were warned, and it was lovelier than anything to sit on her empty pretzel tin in the evenings, drinking tea, while Charlie, still in his work clothes, bounced the laughing infants on his knees.

  Once, by chance, she had caught sight of him out the window, running homeward in his collared shirt and tie and Dockers. Thereafter, she often lingered by the window at the same hour just for the chance to see such a thing again. How she loved him and missed him. How she wanted to watch him run, run straight down the middle of the street so seriously and unaware of being watched, the rapid sound of his footsteps on the stairs her favorite sound, the promise of him in the dark doorway of the nursery, listening, listening to them breathe. She loved having him for her husband, but she would have given her life for the love of a father like that.

  “Dammit,” he whispered.

  Alice looked up from the edge of the bed, tying her red silk robe. Her hair was wet from the shower. “What did you say?”

  “Nothing.”

  Alice looked past him. “Oh, it’s snowing. How wonderful. About time.”

  He stood there at the window, looking out. The large flakes fell straight through the glittering naked branches. An infant lay prone over each shoulder. He turned away from the window.

  “Uh oh,” said Charlie, sniffing the air. “I think we need to be changed.”

  He spun around in a circle. The babies lifted their heads, gurgled.

  “Where’d I put that diaper?” he said, knowing full well the diaper was tucked into the back of his shirtwaist.

  Alice covered her mouth and laughed until her gut hurt. The babies, spinning in the air, seemed to be laughing along with her.

  “Behind you! Look behind you!”

  Charlie spun around, looking behind him.

  “No! In your pants. In your pants!”

  Charlie looked down at his crotch.

  “Down my pants?”

  “In the back of your pants,” howled Alice.

  Charlie stuck out his backside and looked back at it.

  “Oh,” he said, rolling his eyes.

  He drew the infants gently down into his arms.

  “You hold ’em down and strip ’em,” he said to Alice, “and I’ll wrap ’em up.”

  Alice stood, still laughing softly. Her hair was heavy with water. Charlie stopped to watch her rise up slowly and come to him with her arms open. He almost forgot that he had babies in his arms. So transfixed was he by her that he forgot he had babies in his arms, and when she received them and backed away, sucking that strange garden smell away with her, he almost grieved. He almost regretted that they had ever taken their eyes off one another. He was almost disappointed that they had not entombed themselves in a marble sarcophagus the day they met.

  Alice lay the twins on the bed. She lifted Franny’s legs as if she were a trussed chicken, and wiped her bottom. She turned and looked over her shoulder. “We’re a little exposed here. Are you coming with that diaper or what?”

  Charlie was looking at Alice. He was staring at her nose and the shadowed side of her cheek. Her profile was fine as the edge of a piece of paper. Maybe they should have entombed themselves.

  “Your face,” he said.

  He was looking at her. Her cheeks, fuller now since her pregnancy, were flushed like a girl’s from a fairytale.

  Alice paused where she knelt.

  “I love you,” she whispered.

  “I love you too,” he said. “Whoever you are.”

  He stood there. He felt tall and alive. The electricity surged, temporarily filling the small apartment with lamplight.

  Just then, the naked infant grabbed her feet and screamed. She was urinating, screaming with pride and happiness. The narrow stream shot out as if through a mixer straw. Alice lunged at her with a blanket.

  “Charlie!” she shrieked. “Where’s that goddamned diaper?”

  He fell to his knees, holding out the diaper, shield-like. “Jesus, she’s like—a little geyser—”

  “She pissed herself.”

  “Adults piss. Babies pee-pee.”

  Alice removed the blanket and peered over carefully. “I refuse to use those words. Ca-ca. Pooh-pooh. Lee-lee.”

  “What’s a lee-lee?”

  “I don’t know,” said Alice. “You tell me.”

  The dark-eyed baby who had not pissed herself looked up at her laughing parents. She looked over at her sister on the bed, jealous of the ministrations. Her face puckered.

  “Oh no,” said Charlie. “Oh no, Evelyn, sweetheart. Don’t cry.”

  He smoothed her hair. Her eyes widened, watching him, and she agreed not to cry. Charlie knelt beside Evelyn now and peeled back the adhesive tabs on her diaper. The diaper was dry, but he folded it away just special for her. He lifted the baby by her legs, wiped the fat labial folds, and wrapped the diaper around her ammonia-shiny haunches. Both babies were quiet now, puffing out their chests. Alice climbed atop of the bed. She rested, stroking the fine black hair of the baby.

  “This one’s clever,” she said, sighing.

  “You’re just saying that because she looks like you.”

  “She’ll be the boss. Franny, she’ll be the brawn. Look at that grip.”

  “I’m the boss,” said Charlie, pointing a balled-up diaper at her. “I’m the boss.”

  “Are you kidding me? You’re the rodeo clown. You’re the Dad.” Alice rolled onto her back and sighed. “Meanwhile, I’ll be drifting above it all like the gulf wind. Glowing. Beautiful. The Mother.”

  Charlie smiled. Both babies’ eyelids were drooping. He looked at his watch.

  “Alice,” he said. “I have to go somewhere.”

  Alice didn’t move. She was looking at the ceiling.

  “I have to go buy some rock salt.”

  “Rock salt? What for?”

  “There’s a client of mine who needs it for her walkway. She’s afraid of the snow. She’s afraid she’ll slip.”

  Alice rolled over and looked at him, but he was looking down at his hands with a stiffened smile. He shrugged. He reached for his shoes.

  “People slip on the snow,” she said. “So what? That’s an emergency?”

  “She won’t leave her house. You don’t understand. She’s really afraid of the snow.”

  “Call Emergency Services, then.”

  “They won’t listen to me. They won’t do anything. You have to be bleeding out your eyes—”

  “All right,” said Alice. “All right, Charlie. I understand.”

  She watched him put on his shoes. He flopped down on the bed next to her and put his hand on her head. “I can fit your whole head in my hand like a melon.”

  “It’s Friday,” Alice said, looking up. “It’s eight o’clock at night. You just got home. We were laughing.”

  “I know. I guess I … didn’t expect it to snow. Stay up and wait for me.”

  Alice rolled onto her back again.

  “Smile for me,” he said. “It’d make me happy if you would smile.”

  “I’m not stupid,” she said. “I’ll smile when you’re back.”

  Charlie stood.

  “Look,” he said, pointing. “They’re asleep.”

  They were. The shadows of snow fell down their loosened infant faces and the cartoon sheep on the blanket. Alice lay there watching the shadows, feeling the completeness of their surrender, and listened to the door go

  click

  The grandmother stuck a thumb in the soil and looked up at the sky. An easterly wind was picking up, the barometer dropping. By mo
rning, the frost would finally come, and it would be time to move the dahlias inside under the sink. The weather had been cold for a while but not quite cold enough. She understood that only old ladies like herself spent time thinking about such things as when to move the dahlias inside. But everything else to do was done. She had killed all the slugs and vermin in the garden and she missed them. She had great affection for everything she had killed: slugs, gophers, and once, a deer, with her son-in-law’s rifle. She had made an example of the deer and she did not regret it, but still remembered how it had stood frozen inside her sights, knowing. But once deer got a taste for a garden, they became too fancy for the roots and berries of the woods. Next thing, they’d be tapping at the kitchen window for a bottle of Chardonnay.

  The old woman rooted deeper in the soil. The wind, colder by the minute, blew down her blouse and into her dead husband’s wool skivvies, which she wore both for warmth and also to tell the world that she wasn’t going to let grief make her impractical. She shored up the last of the asters. Then she crawled about looking for anything she’d left in the soil to freeze. Again the wind blew up. A shutter on the house swung open and she watched it. The big ash turned silver in the wind. She had a hold of something large now—a root? Elbow deep in the soil, she tugged backward. The topsoil heaved. The object was entrenched. She wiped her hands on her front, and with a rag, began to clear the dirt off it. She was still beating the thing clean with the rag when she saw the rubber sole, the shoelaces limp with rot, the dirty sock, and the leg itself, white and pale as horror. The grandmother leaned back on her heels. She did not scream. She stayed very still. The screen door opened.

  Ma?

  She bent down, stroking the fine reddish hairs of the leg that was buried in the garden. A small cut, a nick, could be felt on the calf. When he was a boy, he had played here while she worked, she half-watching him, not worried. She could hear Luduina marching across the yard now. The grandmother swallowed back tears.

  Well just pull it on up, her daughter scolded her.

  Her daughter was bending down beside her, digging in the soil. The grandmother looked off at the big ash tree. Her daughter stood, the beetroot in her hand.