by Sam Lipsyte
Mrs. Gottwald lies in bed with her newborn, the blanket bunched at her feet. She shivers with fever. Clogged milk ducts, would be my guess. She’s also having bowel trouble, and I may have to administer an enema. I’m beginning to believe the mister could use a good flush, too.
The baby cries, sleeps, cries, sleeps, cries, then doesn’t cry or sleep, curls up against Mrs. Gottwald. Here on the leather sofa, where I’m drinking Gatorade, catching the American League highlights, I can just make out his pinched mug. I’m wondering if I can sneak out for another smoke before he goes off again.
“Mitch,” says Mr. Gottwald, steps in front of the TV, blocks a particularly insightful slugging percentage graphic.
“Yes, sir.”
“The baby is crying.”
“Good call.”
Mrs. Gottwald’s trying to tuck the baby under her breast the way they teach in birth classes, the so-called football grip.
“Fumble!” I say, and stride over, remote in hand, but I guess nobody’s in the mood for sports jokes. Baby Gottwald wails louder, lunges for his mother’s breast, gums the cracked flesh. His lips slide on a film of milk and spit.
“Oh, sheesh,” says Mrs. Gottwald. “It hurts.”
“It’s like a beer keg he can’t quite tap,” I say.
“Oh, is that what it’s like?” Mr. Gottwald says.
“It really hurts,” says Mrs. Gottwald. “It wasn’t like this with Zekey.”
“Work the hurt,” I say.
“What the hell does that mean?” Mr. Gottwald says.
“It means whatever helps it mean something.”
“You’re an idiot,” says Mrs. Gottwald.
“It’s okay,” I say.
“No, it’s not.”
* * *
Nobody’s born a doula. Or maybe the early doulas, those slaves, maybe they were born doulas. I’m no historian. It’s the future I care about. The future of the families I assist in these first fragile and hugely awesome hours. The future of my bank account, too.
It’s true I just sort of fell into this work while stalking my ex-girlfriend, but once I came under the tutelage of Fanny Hitchens, former doula to the stars, I knew I’d found my calling, even when the calls never came. It was tough going, but Fanny encouraged me from that very first day I crashed her lactation and newborn-care class at the church. My ex-girlfriend’s new goon of a boyfriend, Kennesaw, a Special Forces interrogator and one of the few troops I have truly in my heart never supported, had shown up at my AA meeting across the hall, and I needed someplace to hide. Fanny just nodded when I slipped into the room, invited me to join the others, the swollen ladies and their sullen men, on the rubber wrestling mats. Soon enough the tricks of the miracle-of-life trade had me hooked.
Fanny hoped I’d become a birth doulo, and I tried to oblige. Childbirth is a beautiful thing. Even all the poop and gunk that slides out of a woman during childbirth is beautiful. The plastic bag under the woman’s butt to catch the poop and gunk is beautiful, too. But I was a birth doulo bust. I couldn’t fend for women and their families in the hospitals or stand up to the godlike doctors. They all reminded me of my older sister, Tina. Tina’s not a doctor, but she’s godlike, at least to me, and godlike in that cruel, capricious Greek way, too, even when we were growing up. Once, I remember, she bought me peanut brittle. Then, a few minutes later, when I asked her to buy me more peanut brittle, she said no, she’d just bought me some. What the hell was that? Mixed messages can damage a child.
Anyway, I eventually decided my talents were best served in what I like to call the postpartum arena. I just felt better without the white coats breathing down my neck. Still, things could get tough. Nobody wants to hear this, but bringing home a newborn is not all cuddles and fluff. It’s more like a boat crashing into a dock. And I’m the skipper, yanking on the wheel, trying to steer this heap to safety. But the boat’s already crashed.
So now I’m guiding Baby Gottwald’s little fish mouth back toward his mother’s thick burgundy nipple. It’s true the words “thick burgundy nipple” excite me, but it’s also a fact that latching on can be a monumental bitch.
“Ow!” says Mrs. Gottwald. “It hurts! It hurts worse than before!”
“I know, but we’ve got to do this. We’ve got to get this latch-on on.”
The baby is doing beaver gnaws. Mrs. Gottwald clutches her chest.
“I can’t,” she says now. “It hurts too much!”
“Come on!” I say. “Don’t quit!”
“No!”
“Come on, honey!”
“No, no. It hurts. I can’t. Stop!”
“No stopping!” I shout at Mrs. Gottwald. “No stopping!”
“Get some!” I shout at the baby.
Tears stream down Mrs. Gottwald’s cheeks. A thread of milky blood runs down her chest. The baby is screaming. Little Ezekiel is screaming, waving his Manchego. Mrs. Gottwald is screaming. Mr. Gottwald is speaking in low, lawyerly tones, something about something being actionable, but I ignore him.
“Get some!” I shout again, and then, I’ll be damned, Baby Gottwald latches on. Soon he’s slurping away in peace. Mrs. Gottwald sinks back against the headboard. I stroke her damp hair with the cool, curved edge of the remote control.
“That’s it, sweetie, you did good. Look at Baby Gottwald.”
“He has a name.”
“Don’t worry about it, honey. Just be proud. You’re doing a really good thing.”
And I start to tell her why this is such a good thing, how the antibodies in the breast milk are crucial for the development of a top-tier baby, and besides, I continue, think of the alternative, think of somebody like me, kept days after birth in a cold, antiseptic hospital designed for maximum alienation of mother from child. There were no doulas then, no midwives, no lactation consultants, at least not in our neck of the woods, which weren’t woods, but so what? My mother, I tell Mrs. Gottwald, she did the best she could, which consisted of being a drugged-up cow and nodding listlessly at anything her cruel and capricious godlike doctor told her, including the completely unfounded notion that she couldn’t produce milk, not to mention the sage advice that she not visit with me, a light-shocked babe desperate to bond, until she’d fully recuperated from the so-called ordeal of labor, which I don’t think she ever truly accomplished, or else maybe she wouldn’t have left my father for an insurance executive slash cowboy poet named Vance and moved to Montana. I don’t blame my mother, I tell Mrs. Gottwald. I blame the patriarchy that indoctrinated women into the idea that they were second-class citizens, foolish, feckless whore slash Madonna complexes, only good for being barefoot and so forth. But we know better now, I tell her, the steady progress of Progress is truly fucking stupendous, whereupon I feel Mr. Gottwald’s hand on the collar of my shirt as he tugs me away from his wife and into the kitchen. Ezekiel follows with a wheel of Camembert, some kind of polymer.
“Listen,” says Mr. Gottwald, plucks his earpiece out of his ear, “I just want to say—”
“Don’t thank me,” I tell him. “Your wife is the brave one here.”
“No, listen,” he says, a little sterner, and I can now see how he commands so many minions with such a dinky device. “I think maybe I misjudged. It would be good if you left now. We can handle the rest on our own. How much do we owe you?”
“You owe me the dignity of doing my job,” I say. “This may take weeks, and I’m not going anywhere. I admit I have failed to establish the nurturing environment this family needs to thrive during the oh-so-delicate newborn phase. But I’m going to turn shit around.”
I take out my cell phone. The oligarchs cut service a few weeks ago, but I start dialing anyway.
“What’s your basic take on anchovies?” I say.
“Excuse me?”
“What about filberts?” says Ezekiel.
“You can’t put filberts on a pizza,” I say.
“Filberts are nuts,” says Mr. Gottwald. “You can’t have nuts, period, young man. Oka
y, I need to make a phone call.”
“Crazy, all this, right?” I say to Ezekiel after his father goes.
“I hate pizza.”
“You hate pizza? Wow, they really must have done a number on you.”
“Which number?”
“Listen, Z-Man,” I tell him. “You need to be strong for your baby brother. No more whining. Look alive. When you were a child, you acted as a child. You played with toy cheese. But now is the time to put the toy cheese in the box marked totally fucking childish. Capisce?”
Ezekial regards his Camembert, lays it on the kitchen floor, which is made of hard, bright material similar to the cheese.
“Good boy,” I say. “Now go get some pizza money from your dad.”
I still need to order the pie. There’s a phone here on the wall next to the Sub-Zero refrigerator. I’m not paranoid, but I do prefer a landline when ordering pizza. Choice of topping is too much of a tell. When I’m done, I check my messages at home.
There’s one from Tina. She’s flown to Montana. Something is wrong with our mother. Tina leaves some numbers, which I dutifully erase. There’s one from somebody in what sounds like a very large room full of people calling other people. “Hello? Hello?” he says, hangs up. These people call often. They seem confused about me. They say I’m a valued customer but also threaten to add more late fees.
“Make up your minds,” I tell them. “Stand up for yourselves.”
The newest message is from Monica Bolonik at the Doula Foundation. She says it’s urgent. She’s not my boss, but she’s got power over my continuing certification. It’s no secret I’ve been jousting a bit with the regional leadership. Seems there have been complaints. Seems without Fanny Hitchens in your corner, being a pioneer in the doula community isn’t so appreciated. Monica is what, in a more primitive stage of my emotional development, I would have called a ballbuster. But I’m not like that now. I’m not perfect, but I’m not the guy who once wrote “Vice Principal Avery Has Cunt Bunions—Tell a Friend” on the senior lockers, either.
I call Monica back.
“Mitchell,” says Monica.
“I’m on the job,” I say.
“I know. A certain Mr. Gottwald informed me.”
“It’s going really well here.”
“That’s not how he put it, Mitchell.”
“It’s Mitch,” I say. “My mother calls me Mitchell.”
“You don’t like your mother, do you, Mitchell.”
“Was there anything else?”
“We’re reviewing your certification. You are tainting the good name of our organization.”
“I’m a damn good doulo,” I say.
“It’s hard enough to gain acceptance in society without your insanity. And there’s no such thing as a doulo.”
“Yet strangely,” I say, “you are talking to one right now.”
Ezekiel wanders back into the kitchen, nibbles on a neon-green brioche.
“Tell her how well things are going,” I say to him.
Ezekiel leans into the mouthpiece.
“They did a number on me,” he says.
* * *
I’ve had a lot of jobs. Substitute gym teacher, line cook at a rib joint, mail boy at my late father’s accounting firm. I was even in the movie business for a while, spent a few years as the guy with the walkie-talkie who lurks around the trailers, tells you to cross to the other side of the street.
But I’m long past reinvention. I’m practically middle-aged, deep into cell degeneration or, worse, relocation. I remember my uncle Don had these weird patches of hair right under his shoulder blades. They made me want to puke. Guess who’s got them now? Guess who pops his lats in the mirror and wants to puke?
Point is, it’s going to take a hell of a lot more than Monica Bolonik to de-doulo me. We’re talking acres of paperwork.
* * *
I’m teaching Mr. Gottwald how to change his baby’s diapers.
“Wipe front to back,” I say.
“Thanks for that,” he says. “This is my second kid. And I happen to be potty trained myself. I can’t believe you talked me into letting you stay.”
He did let me talk him into letting me stay. Maybe it was the promise of another shoulder rub. Maybe it’s the fact that Mrs. Gottwald is still running a fever and Ezekiel’s nanny, due back today, called in sick. The guy is feeling overwhelmed.
“You’re feeling overwhelmed,” I say.
Mr. Gottwald lifts the baby and crosses the loft to some high windows that look out on a cobblestone lane, starts humming a lullaby, or not really a lullaby, but an ancient and soaring power ballad I recognize from high school days. Soon the baby’s wails turn to burpy moans. He’s nearing sleep. Good going, G.
We’re about the same age, I realize, maybe not that different after all, probably got drunk at the same kinds of Saturday night deck parties, pumped our fists at the same dumb arena shows, parked behind the Burger King and watched some version of unattainable beauty hand sacks of french fries into cars. So he went to college, business school, and I stayed parked behind the Burger King. So he got rich, got married, sired a child he sings to about steel horses, and I bounced around, took a chance at city life, fell into some jams. We’re still the same ordinary Joes, at least now, here, both of us just trying to cope.
“That song!” I shout. “I know that song!”
The baby jerks awake, bawls.
“Sonofabitch!” says Mr. Gottwald. His lower lip twitches up little droplets of drool.
I’ve seen worse. I’m seeing worse right now, namely Baby Gottwald.
Picture a red onion with a mouth that isn’t even a mouth, but more some kind of incredibly loud air horn used by Satan to signal his peons to mop up all the infernal poop and gunk that spills forth from his fiery pan-gendered holes as he gives birth to every evil in the world. It’s a lot to picture, I know, and some of it isn’t a picture at all, but you get the idea.
“We’re all going to die here,” says Mr. Gottwald.
“You’ve got to relax,” I say. “It’s a process.”
“You’ve got to be the worst fucking doula in the world.”
“O,” I say.
* * *
I’m washing dishes, folding up the pizza box, when Mr. Gottwald comes in and hands me his phone. It’s Monica Bolonik. I’m decertified. I guess it doesn’t require that much paperwork. If I remain on the Gottwald premises, Monica warns me, she will call the police. On the other hand, she adds, she may call the police.
“You have no jurisdiction,” I say, but Monica’s gone.
“So, that’s goodbye,” says Mr. Gottwald.
“Goodbye? Because of a lousy piece of paper? Did a piece of paper educate you on newborn care? Did a piece of paper keep all the balls of nurturing in the air?”
“Balls of nurturing?”
“Gentle now, guy.”
“What say we call it even,” says Mr. Gottwald. “What say you just leave and I don’t press charges.”
It’s hard to hear him because of Baby Gottwald, who hasn’t really stopped wailing since I woke him, but I think I get the gist. I get a better sense of it when Mr. Gottwald leaves the kitchen, comes back with a few throwing stars jutting from his fist.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” I say.
“You came highly recommended. That woman Fanny Hitchens sent us a fabulous letter.”
Thing is, I’m touched by this, because I wrote the letter, and I guess I really nailed it, even got Fanny’s signature right, which is famous and appears on the jacket of her book.
“Why don’t you put that ninja crap away,” I say. “Press what charges?”
“Endangering the life of a child, for starters.”
“A child who, by his very definition, is endangered,” I say.
“I’m sorry,” says Mr. Gottwald. “Excuse me?”
“This life,” I say, and my arm does this kind of grand sweepy thing I’m not quite able to control. “This thing we so
blithely and with a detestable dearth of gravitas call life, it’s not all cuddles and fluff, you know. It’s also, methinks, a boat. And so we must ask ourselves, who’s got the helm? Where’s the skipper? Doth a proper pilot dwell upon this heap?”
“What the fuck are you—”
“Here comes the dock! Look out, man!”
I Frisbee the pizza box at Mr. Gottwald, bolt. Mr. Gottwald and a squealing Ezekiel scramble after me, but I’m already there at the corner rack, the nunchucks up in full, fearsome bolo over my head. I slide-step over to Mrs. Gottwald, who shrieks, shields the baby. Mr. Gottwald assumes a fighting stance, cocks a throwing star behind his ear.
“Barry, don’t!” cries Mrs. Gottwald. “You’ll hit Prague!”
“Prague?” I say.
“That’s the baby’s name.”
“Prague?”
“We love the city. Now step away from my wife.”
I lift Mrs. Gottwald’s swollen breast from her nightgown.
“This is going to hurt,” I say, “but we’ve got to clear those ducts.”
I lean down, suck hard. Mrs. Gottwald stiffens. My arm is going dead, and I begin to sense the nunchucks, our invincible cocoon of buzzing wood, slowing down, but in a moment it doesn’t matter, nothing matters, the milk is sweet, drips thick in my mouth as Mrs. Gottwald’s hind ducts open and all that deep cream starts to flow and I am suddenly every tiny helpless thing that ever wanted nothing but to survive another hour in this foolish, feckless universe. I am one particular tiny, helpless thing, too, namely Mitch, mewling newbie Mitchell Malley, latched onto his lovely and exhausted mother, the mother of his alternate reality dreams, the mother who will welcome wounded dugs, exult in throb and split, the mother who will spurn the antiseptic credos of the medical-Madonna complex, who will love her little Mitchell no matter what fate forces him to become, who will cherish his butter-colored teeth and ratty (vintage) buckskin jacket.