Motherest

by Kristen Iskandrian

  “Hello, may I please speak to Agnes?”

  “This is she,” I say, and then, because it doesn’t sound right, “her. This is Agnes.”

  “Agnes, hi. It’s Alicia. We met last week? At the meeting? At the center.”

  “Oh right, of course. Hi.”

  “I hope you don’t mind my calling you. My mom—um, Mary—had the list, and since you weren’t there last night, I just figured I’d check in…to make sure, you know…just to say hi and see if you were okay.”

  It didn’t occur to me at the time what Mary might use our phone numbers for. For her daughter? For a friend list for her daughter? The idea creates a small swell of emotion in me.

  “I’m okay, yeah. I just…I don’t know why I didn’t come back. I’m sorry.” I don’t know why I’m apologizing, except that I often feel the need to apologize when confronted with an observation, however innocuous, about myself.

  “Oh…please. You don’t need to be sorry! I wouldn’t come if I didn’t kind of have to.”

  We both laugh. We are being, I think to myself, exceedingly polite, as though each of us believes she is a child who believes the other is an adult.

  “The thing is,” Alicia says, clearing her throat slightly, “I was wondering if you maybe wanted to hang out sometime. Just like, I don’t know. Go to lunch or coffee, something like that.”

  “Yes,” I hear myself saying immediately. “Sure.”

  Alicia laughs, sounding relieved. “Okay. When? Do you work? Are some days better than others?”

  I feel sudden shame for not working, for not doing much of anything besides occupying my body and this house. I want a friend. I miss everyone I’ve ever known. I miss Tea Rose and Surprise and Joan. I miss that part of my life that happened not so long ago but that already feels ancient, older than my childhood, and I do miss my childhood also, or at least the childhood co-created by my memory. I want someone who will always stay and never die and never leave and never turn into a ghost. Maybe Alicia is that person. Maybe this baby is that person.

  “Any day is fine. Are you free tomorrow?”

  “Tomorrow I have to work but how about Thursday?”

  “Thursday, sure.”

  “Do you know that café, La Place? They have this chocolate pudding thing there that I’m obsessed with.”

  I know the place, the place called The Place. We used to go there in the first couple years of high school, when it had a smoking section, to drink coffee and smoke. Junior year they cleaned everything up, made the whole place nonsmoking, but it still bore the scent of decades of coffee grounds and ashes and damp newsprint and also alienation and angst.

  We agree to meet at La Place on Thursday at 3 o’clock. I hang up the phone and feel something new, or something old that has been buried. When I’d made plans with Sadie and Jenny, I had felt trepidation, but here, now, it’s a mild, hesitant gladness.

  I eat toast with two glasses of ice water. The water cannot be cold enough. I lie on the couch afterward with a book, a bestseller I bought at the grocery store the other day. The house is still, perfectly still, save for the click and whirr of the air-conditioning as it kicks on and off. I haven’t been swimming yet. I haven’t finished a book. I haven’t bought a single thing for the baby. I haven’t even made a list of everything the baby will need.

  A rare, galvanizing disgust comes over me and I heave my body from the couch. I go to the laundry room and get a bunch of rags and some cleaners and a bucket and a mop and a broom and a sponge. I start sweeping the kitchen floor, first delicately, with small strokes, and then aggressively, jabbing at corners with the stiff bristles. I am disturbed by how much grit has been covering the floor without us noticing it. How could we not notice? How many things have we not noticed?

  I fill the bucket halfway with warm water and dump in some cleanser that smells like ammonia and something worse than ammonia that is meant, I’m pretty sure, to mask the ammonia by smelling better than it. Can cleansers expire? I wonder how often my dad cleans, if he cleans. I dunk the mop in the bucket, wring it out, and start swirling it around the floor. I feel a little out of breath but mostly invigorated. After a few minutes I get the hang of how to navigate the mop and my belly. Despite the air-conditioning, I am sweating, can smell myself. I stop to pull off my robe and drink some more water. Then I lug everything up to the Pink Bathroom and keep going. When I finish in there, I move to my parents’ bathroom.

  It is while I am on my hands and knees in the shower stall, scrubbing at the gunk stuck around the drain, that I start to feel woozy and short of breath. Immediately I try to assess how much the baby has been moving and I panic when I realize that I haven’t been feeling much of anything. My nose is filled with chemicals and my hands suddenly itch and burn and I drop the sponge like it’s scorching hot and lunge-crawl out of the shower. As I brush some hair from my face, I accidentally get cleanser in my eye and with that, I feel finished. I crouch on the floor of my parents’ bathroom, on the grayish, not-too-clean-looking bath mat still damp from my father’s shower. I admonish myself in silent strings of insults at lightning speed: you worthless idiot, you stupid bitch, you have probably poisoned your baby, you have been breathing in toxins for over an hour now, you have let them seep into your skin, into your blood probably, into your baby’s blood, you are trying to kill your baby and make it look like an accident, losing your eyesight is the first of many punishments that will befall you, you stupid, selfish, horrible, murderous girl. I’m crying now, sputtering. With some difficulty I stand up, dizzy and sweaty and weirdly cold, grabbing the sink to steady myself. I rinse out my eye. I take a few deep breaths and wrap my arms around my belly. I am pleading with it to do something, to forgive me.

  I leave the bathroom and only hesitate for a moment before lying down on my mother’s side of the bed, taut and cold like beds in museums, for exhibit only. Dad’s side shows signs of use, the sheets beneath the comforter bunching here and there, the pillows slightly askew. I imagine he has trained his body, even in sleep, to stay on his side, negotiating Mom’s absence as if it were a phantom limb, so much there without being there at all.

  When I wake, I am facing the other direction, the lumpy vacancy of my dad’s side. I look at the clock and see that one hour has passed almost to the minute. There is an urgent sensation in my bladder, as though pee is going to come screaming out of me, and I wonder how I’ll even make it to the bathroom, and as I am trying to quickly get off the bed to get there, a deep punch in my gut sits me back down. Another thump knocks me in my side. The baby. The baby is moving. I didn’t kill it. We are alive.

  * * *

  At La Place, I watch Alicia eat her chocolate pudding.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to try this?” She holds out a spoonful tentatively.

  “No, thank you, though. I’m probably the only pregnant person who’s not into chocolate.”

  “I eat chocolate in the middle of the night,” Alicia says. “I keep a bag of semisweet chocolate chips in my bedside drawer. I’m not even kidding you right now. In the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, I pound a handful,” she laughs. “Works every time.”

  I laugh too. It feels good. “I thought chocolate was a stimulant.”

  “Not for me, I guess,” she says. “It stimulates me right to sleep.”

  I’m eating a croissant that I wish would turn into a pile of pepperoni. “I have this weird thing for meat. Like, cured meats. Which I know you’re not supposed to eat.”

  “Yeah. Listeria. That shit will kill you.”

  “I was looking at this pregnancy magazine at the grocery store and there was an article called ‘Listeria Hysteria’ and I couldn’t tell if it was supposed to calm me down—like, the writer was making fun of people who freak out—or if it was supposed to freak me out. I only read the first paragraph.”

  Alicia eats a large spoon of pudding. “Oh, I read that one. It was more of a ‘myth debunking’ article but it still freaked me out. I read too much.
I read every single pregnancy and parenting magazine. My mom subscribes to all of them so they’re always around. I’ve read four or five books so far, on pregnancy and birth and postpartum depression and babies’ sleep habits—you name it. I can’t stop.”

  “Wow. That’s…great…right?”

  “I don’t know. It’s one way to cope. I figure if I shovel in as much as possible, a tiny bit might actually stick and, like, come in handy when I need it to.”

  I think about this. “I don’t know why, but I haven’t been able to read a thing. I’ve tried. It’s like my brain shuts down. Nothing sticks—all the information just bounces right off of me.”

  “Um, I think that’s called denial,” she says, laughing. Her front teeth are brown.

  I laugh, too, instead of disagreeing, but inwardly, I argue: no. It’s not denial. Denial is something different. What we’re talking about is the myth of preparedness, the belief that knowledge can save a person. I don’t want to have a philosophical discussion about it, not now, when things are going mostly well. It’s good for me to remember not to ruin things.

  Alicia takes a sip of water. “You know what, though. Seriously, I feel like until the baby actually gets born, like actually happens, everybody’s probably in denial. I mean, physically”—she gestures toward her crotch—“I still don’t even understand how it’s supposed to come out. I mean, I know—biologically, I know—but it’s just, it just seems impossible.”

  I nod. I don’t tell her how utterly terrified I am of the pain, of any pain. I don’t tell her how I ran from doctors’ offices as a child, blind with fear over shots or how I wept openly before getting my ears pierced, despite wanting them pierced. “Bring on the epidurals, right?” I say, trying to sound breezy.

  Eventually we stop talking about pregnancy long enough to make plans to go swimming, both of us suddenly and simultaneously identifying that the other major reason this summer has felt so strange is because neither of us have been near a beach or pool.

  “It hasn’t even occurred to me, until just now, to miss swimming. It’s as though it went off-limits, along with alcohol and, like, the soft cheese or whatever,” I say, trying to remember what else I’m not allowed to eat. I should actually read more, I think. “Swimming counts as exercise, right? It’d probably be good for me.”

  “Swimming is supposed to be so good for pregnant women. It makes sense. I mean, the baby’s swimming around all day. So it’s like, a fishbowl in a fishbowl.” (Fishy Fishy Glub Glub! Again!) “I read somewhere that people like the water because it’s like a return to the womb.”

  “Yeah. And to the…I don’t know, ooze? A return to whatever we were, as an entire species, before we were born.”

  Alicia is scraping her bowl. “Do you believe in evolution? Don’t laugh! I haven’t been to college.”

  “I didn’t learn about evolution in college. But, yes, of course I believe in it. What’s the alternative?”

  “I mean, like, do you believe we descended from apes or whatever?”

  “Well, more or less, I guess. I don’t believe I’m made out of some guy’s rib, that’s for sure.”

  Alicia gets quiet. She wraps her arms around herself and looks down.

  “I really want to believe in God, but I don’t know how,” she says finally.

  “I know what you mean,” I say.

  “I envy people who look to God, like, for everything. Like they believe every word in the Bible. They believe God will cure them if they’re sick. They believe they know exactly what’s good and exactly what’s bad, because God tells them.”

  “Do you really know anyone like that?”

  Alicia shrugs and smiles a little. “My mom’s like that.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. I mean she does a pretty good job hiding it—she’s not super judgmental in public or anything. But with me—”

  I feel weirdly protective of Mary. “She probably just wants to protect you. Or maybe she’s scared, and God gives her courage. I don’t know. Obviously she’s not doing it to harm you.”

  Alicia gives me an odd look, one I probably deserve. I have no idea of the dynamics between her and her mother, and I’m fully aware that I’m projecting my own desires onto their relationship, onto Mary, because she is a mother who is, however peripherally, in my life.

  “You don’t really know my mother at all,” she says quietly.

  “You’re right,” I say. “I don’t. She just seems…nice.”

  Alicia nods, clears her throat. “Do you have a car?”

  “Yes. Do you need a ride or something?”

  “No. Not today. I can walk to my house from here. But can you pick me up to go swimming?”

  “Sure.”

  Pearl Jam’s “Daughter” comes on. Simultaneously we register those first few bars of acoustic guitar, before Eddie Vedder’s pained, ridiculous voice begins. We seem to feel exactly the same way about the song—sheepish for liking it—and we grin and bob, listening, instead of forcing more conversation. Of course I feel that it’s a song about me, and I’m guessing Alicia feels that it’s a song about her, and there’s a sudden gratitude and understanding between us, two strangers attempting friendship in the midst of a maelstrom.

  That evening, unbelievably, my dad presents me with a small chalkboard and a box half full of chalk, as well as a crate of stuffed animals and picture books.

  “I was cleaning out the back corner of the garage and found some of your old stuff. Figured it might come in handy. Or I can get rid of it, if you don’t want it.”

  “I want it,” I say, reaching for the chalk. The long, cool cylinders.

  I bring the stuff to my room and prop the chalkboard up on my dresser. I write TO DO at the top. I put the crate, slightly musty, in the back of my closet. Impossible, I think, that this baby will play with these toys as I once did. I can remember playing with them not that long ago. I wait until the house is quiet and Dad is in his room for the night, before taking out a stick of chalk and biting into it. For a minute I feel the urge to spit it out, but I chomp down instead. I put the box in my underwear drawer and then, realizing my absurdity—it’s not a sex toy, Agnes. It’s just chalk; nobody has to know you’re eating it—set it on my dresser and get ready for bed.

  * * *

  At the public pool, where we each paid two dollars to get in, Alicia spreads her towel across a chaise lounge and unbuttons her cover-up, which looks like a men’s dress shirt. I am watching two teenagers check the chlorine and pH levels. One of them opens a tall drum of chlorine and uses a little shovel to remove some white chalky discs. I feel a little flushed, thinking about my chalk. Do other people crave it, too?

  “Agnes?”

  My head is still turned so that I hardly notice the shadow of Alicia’s body. She stands in front of me, her back to me, holding a tube of sunscreen over her shoulder. “Would you mind?”

  I spread the thick white cream on Alicia’s freckled back and shoulders. Her skin is warm and smooth, her back narrow, offering no indication that she is pregnant. Relieved that she is also wearing a two-piece, I take off my gym shorts and T-shirt and face being scantily clad in public, in the sunlight, for the first time since last summer, when I was a completely different person who was just a person.

  It’s late morning and the sun is intense. Earlier, I hemmed and hawed about what to wear and had all but decided on shorts and a T-shirt and just dangling my feet in the water. But something overtook me, and I tried on last year’s suit. I don’t know what. It entered me like a puff of frustration but left me with some weird kind of confidence. I stood in front of the full-length mirror of my parents’ bathroom and said fuck it. My breasts stood out quite a bit, spilling slightly over the sides of the nylon top, but the size and shape of my belly probably did a good job distracting whomever’s eye was tempted to linger there. The bikini bottom sat low on my hips. Fuck it, I thought again, toward the unseen audience behind my reflection.

  In general I am partial to
wearing lots of clothes. I have always preferred the winter and fall. Even as a child, family trips to the beach filled me with a kind of boredom and dread—the insistence of the sand, the hazard of so much exposed skin, not just mine but a whole beach’s worth, all patched together in various sizes and hues like an unseemly quilt. The beach—its expansiveness, its flatness—seems like the antithesis of nudity or near-nudity. It seems like a place where one should want to cover oneself. A small dark room I could get naked in. A cave I could get naked in. On a beach I just want to hide. And pools—pools were only moderately better. But here now with Alicia, I can’t deny how good the sun feels on my stretched out body.

  I didn’t bring anything but my towel and a few crumpled up dollar bills in my purse. Alicia has a beach bag with the works: towel, water bottle, snacks, sunglasses, sunscreen, magazines, and several books. I feel doomed. Alicia finishes lathering herself with sunscreen and insists I do the same. She brought the provisions. She is clearly in charge, I think to myself, so I obey. She rubs cream on my back with the strong, decisive strokes of a mother.

  “I feel like you’re going to be a great mom,” I say, settling back in the chaise lounge and squinting out at the pool. Kids splash around while their mothers chat in clusters against the wall. A fat boy, predictably, yells, “Cannonball!” before jumping in and spraying the small crowd.

  Alicia lowers her sunglasses and looks at me with genuine gladness. “Aww. Thanks. That’s really nice to hear.” She starts to turn back to her book and then says, a bit awkwardly, “And so will you!”

  I laugh. “You definitely don’t need to say it because I did.”

  “No, you will!”

  I should drop it, I know—I’ve already put her on the spot—but I’m too curious. “What makes you say that?”

  Alicia puts her book facedown against her chest and looks out at the pool. The fat boy is now sitting on the side, being lectured by his mom, his swim trunks bunched up around his ample waist.

  “You just seem…mature. Like you know stuff.”