Moonface

by Angela Balcita

  “Okay. Is very good,” he says, nodding as he jerks away from me to face the desk. “A good color.” He draws a U shape in his notes to resemble a tongue, and next to it he writes “Red.” He pulls out a small velvet pillow from a drawer and asks me to rest my wrist there so he can take my pulse. He presses with two fingers just below my palm, and I assume that he is counting the beats of my heart. He writes something down; it is not a number but a picture of a wavy line.

  “Okay, other one,” he says, and points to my other wrist. Wouldn’t the pulse be the same? I think, but apparently not, because this time after he listens, the line he draws has waves that are closer to each other.

  He explains that he will work on my spleen, which I assume is, in some mythical way, connected to my ovaries.

  Once I am lying on the table, he pins me with the hairlike needles. They are on my arms, on my legs, and sprinkled over my belly. They feel like tiny gnats sitting on the top of my skin.

  “Is okay?” he asks, before leaving me in the room. For ninety minutes, I lie perfectly still listening to the Chinese Muzak playing overhead. The warm air coming through the vents and the soft lighting cause me to doze off for a while, but I awake with a jolt. It feels like my body twitched as I slept, strong enough to wake me up. When I ask Dr. Cheng about the sudden movement, he explains that, in that moment, my body became balanced. Oh, how I love this, the different systems of the body becoming perfectly aligned.

  “I will give you six more treatments. On the fourth treatment, you will get your period,” he says, with such clear vision of the future that it is difficult to doubt him.

  I treat my appointments with Dr. Cheng like spa treatments. On Thursday afternoons, I walk into his office, flash him my tongue, hold out my wrists, and nap as still as I can so as not to disrupt the tiny needles he has placed. I wait patiently for that balancing jolt.

  On a Friday, the day after my fourth treatment, I wake up in the morning with a familiar cramp in my pelvis, and that afternoon, I see my old friend.

  “Now, I want to get pregnant,” I tell him on the following Thursday.

  He has no questions about whether I should or how it agrees or disagrees with my medical history. Instead he looks at my tongue, checks my pulse, and says, “First thing, you have to think positively. Some women, they think, Oh, I won’t have baby. I’ll never have baby. Not like that. You must think positively!”

  “Now you sound like my husband,” I tell him, rolling my eyes.

  “Your husband is good man?” he asks. “Then he is right. Think good thoughts. And you must eat a wide variety of foods: meat, fruits, vegetables. But not raw vegetables. Lamb is good. You eat lamb?”

  “No, but I will!” I say, hoping that he will not think my enthusiasm is sarcastic.

  “Your husband, too.”

  “Okay, we will!” I say, with the same gusto as before. I gather my keys and my ChapStick from my purse and make plans to go to the store and buy lamb before I go home. “But when will I get pregnant?” I look up, brushing my hair from my face.

  I don’t know if he doesn’t hear me, or if he is choosing deliberately to ignore me, but he leaves the question hanging in the air.

  Charlie doesn’t ask me about my acupuncture appointments. At first, I think he doesn’t want this as badly as I do, that maybe he’s giving our decision a second thought. But sometimes when I wake up in our bed in the mornings, he looks over at me and says, “You think you’re pregnant yet?”

  He doesn’t ask often, but it makes me think that it’s in the back of his mind and he doesn’t want to talk about it simply because he doesn’t want to jinx it.

  “Maybe,” I tell him each time, trying to stay positive.

  When I imagine telling Charlie about the pregnancy, it goes like those television commercials for pregnancy test kits, where the handsome, clean-shaven husband stands next to his glowing wife in their sunlit bathroom, waiting impatiently for the line to turn into a cross. Our experience doesn’t go anything like this.

  Before he comes back from his morning walk with the dog, I breathe slowly, pacing up and down in front of the bathroom preparing my delivery. I can’t think of a way to properly say it, so I decide to use a visual. He is sweaty and worn out, resting on the couch for a second before he gets ready for work. I hold the urine stick in front of him so he can see the lines that make a cross. It takes a long while for him to understand exactly what he is looking at. I realize at that moment that this is probably not the smoothest way to tell my husband that we are pregnant, forgetting of course that he has probably never seen a positive pregnancy test, or any pregnancy test, in his life.

  “We’re going to have a baby?” he asks, trying to piece together the clues I’m giving him.

  “Yup,” I say, biting my lip, waiting for the eruption.

  There is a pause. A pregnant one. Pun intended—because, yes, it is heavy and bloated and hangs out there waiting to give birth . . . to what? Charlie’s forehead beads with sweat, and he looks like he is in a state of shock. He has every right to be. He is about to be a father. We just made a baby together. I stood in the bathroom alone just minutes ago in that same stunned silence.

  “Congratulations,” he says quite properly. “It’s what you’ve always wanted.” He holds out his hand waiting for me to shake it.

  Shakes my hand! Like I have just been given a promotion at work, and he is the surprised, but jilted, co-worker. I cannot remember a time when I heard Charlie tripping over his words. But there he stands, paler than usual. I take his hand to shake it, like the graduate who’s just been handed her diploma by her principal. And in doing so, I cannot help but laugh. Looks like the sharp-tongued bastard can get rattled! I ignore the fact that he has said this is what I’ve always wanted; I know he couldn’t control his reaction. For the rest of the week, I watch as Charlie runs into the banister while walking up the stairs and trips over the dog’s leg in the kitchen.

  Then one night, while we are sitting on the couch reading, I notice him looking over at me. Then he holds his hand over my belly.

  “Feel anything yet?” he asks. “Charlie, it’s only been a week.”

  “There’s someone in there,” he says. “That’s wild, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it’s what I always wanted,” I say, smiling devilishly at him.

  “You caught me off guard!” he protests. He slinks down into the couch cushion, and looks despairingly up at the ceiling fan. “I know. I’m an idiot.” He shrugs his shoulders like a shy little boy. “Just, don’t tell anyone about that.”

  “Yes, Charlie,” I say, assuring him. “I’ll never tell anyone.”

  Dr. Cheng applauds when i tell him the news.

  “It’s happening! It’s happening!” I tell him, looking to him to confirm my disbelief. He says that I shouldn’t stop getting treatments, which I don’t quite understand since I am pregnant already. We did it! I want to say to him.

  “Now we will prepare your body for the baby,” he says, reminding me that the hard part isn’t over. “Your body is still vulnerable. So is this fetus. You must think of your uterus as a house.” He holds the tips of his fingers against each other to make an A-frame roof. “You have to make sure that the walls are strong, that the roof does not leak. Otherwise, you would not want to live in it, right?”

  I could listen to his poetic imagery all day long. I could stand here and visualize my body as a house now. Not a thing that doesn’t work, but a house that protects another being.

  As my belly grows bigger, I dive into pregnancy full force. I have been editing a magazine in Baltimore for about a year now, and since I’ve been pregnant, I sit at my desk rubbing my belly and asking other mothers what I should be doing to prepare.

  “Relax,” one colleague says. “There will be enough to do when the baby is born.”

  I take a yoga class with a new-age instructor who has a tight Afro and tattoos around her neck. “Breathe deep,” the yogi says. “Breathe the good air into your womb.
”

  I start keeping a journal, writing down what foods I am eating, what new sensations I feel. It seems now like I have influence over how this pregnancy will turn out, like if I am determined to make it work out, it will.

  It’s the books I’m reading about pregnancy that aren’t working out so well for me.

  “Bleeding nipples? Misplaced placenta?” I read to Charlie aloud in bed. I grab my breasts and hold my belly. Charlie covers his ears with his hands.

  “Don’t read ahead!” my officemate tells me when I pull out What to Expect When You’re Expecting from my backpack. “My friend read ahead and her husband found her in the nursery crying hysterically with fear! She was only in her second trimester.”

  “So much can go wrong,” I tell my mother on the phone one day, summing up what these books are trying to tell me.

  “Don’t worry so much,” she says, waiting to drop more of her superstition on me. “Your worry will make your baby into a worried person.” This is the last thing I want. Imagine Charlie with a neurotic kid, a kid who is worried about his head splitting open as Charlie tosses him in the air.

  Charlie starts a job at an educational company where the hours are reasonable and the pay is better. He stands at the top of the steps and looks at every room in the house, planning how to begin to make repairs. He escapes to these quiet, thoughtful moments that have little to do with what’s happening inside my body now, and more to do with what will happen after the baby is born.

  But then one night, as we are sitting on the couch eating ice cream from the carton, he says, “It’ll be a boy. I know it. We’ll call him Hawthorne.”

  “Ugh, too nineteeth-century-early-American-novel-ish.”

  “Henry,” he says, scooping out another spoonful of dulce de leche.

  “Kind of the same thing,” I tell him.

  At my month-three sonogram, I am in a waiting room. When the nurse calls me in, she holds open the exam room door and says, “Is there anyone with you?”

  “Sadly, no,” I say. This is one of the moments when I wish Charlie were here—the moment when we find out the sex of our baby. I don’t think Charlie cares too much for milestones, though. He uses the excuse that he needs to save up vacation days for when the baby is born. Still, it is difficult to feel so excited all by myself.

  The ultrasound room is womblike—dimly lit, warm. If I were not lying down, I would probably pass out from the heat. I swaddle myself in the white sheets the nurse gives me. The technician runs a bead of cold gel just below my belly button. She checks a few things on the screen.

  “Would you like to know what you’re going to have?” she says.

  “Yes.”

  “Care to guess?” she asks, looking at the screen, but giving no clues in her smile.

  “Boy!” I say, waiting for her to point out a little penis on the screen. A boy, I think. With curly, dark brown hair. A boy, with Charlie’s charm. He is in there being rambunctious and smart, athletic and fast, swimming around my uterus as if it were a lap pool.

  “How about a girl?”

  I turn my head to look at the screen, and there she is. A blurry kernel of popcorn. A girl. Her heart is a flicker; it’s a strobe light illuminating the entire screen.

  At home, I jump on Charlie as he steps in the door. “A girl!” I say.

  Again in shock, the poor boy makes his way slowly to the couch and sinks into the cushion with all his weight. “Are you excited?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” he says, smiling. “But what am I going to do with a girl?”

  My head snaps back at his remark; it feels like a knock to the nose.

  “What?” he sits up and asks. “What did I say? Why are you crying?”

  I don’t realize I am crying until he says so. I put my hands to my face, and sure enough, they are wet with tears.

  “It’s the hormones,” I say, shaking my head. But then: “No. Wait, why do you have to say it like that?”

  “Uh,” he says, angry with himself, “I’m saying all the wrong things! I meant to say, ”What’s a girl gonna do with me?” How am I going to know what she wants? How am I going to make her stop crying? And how am I going to help you through this? What am I supposed to do? I’m already screwing it up.”

  I listen to him unload, and I grab his hand.

  “You can do this, Charlie,” I tell him. “I really believe you can.”

  As soon as we tell our parents that we’re having a girl, Charlie’s mother begins sneaking in a suggestion here and there every time we see her. “Louise,” she says. “Or Laura.” And once, “Maureen, maybe.” The way she enunciates her syllables makes the names sound particularly melodic. They are storybook names for girls with banana curls and petticoats. I try to picture a Louise coming out of my body, and the image seems alien and surreal. Or maybe I am the alien, giving birth to someone completely unlike me.

  I want a name that might show off her ethnicity, something that will match her (hopefully) brown skin and dark eyes. Nothing too long. Nothing ending with a soft “a” sound or, especially, a long “e” lest the girl eventually change the spelling of her name so it ends with the letter “i” which, during her teenage note-writing years, she will inevitably dot with a puffy heart. We shall prevent this at all costs.

  Charlie sends me emails from work with only a name written in the subject line. All his suggestions emphasize the “u” sound: Beulah, Lula, Maru. When I read them out loud at my desk, I pucker my lips and passersby must think I’m trying to kiss the screen. I write him back: “These make our daughter sound like she’s a featured performer in the circus. And now, ladies and gentlemen, if you’ll please turn your attention to the tightrope to witness the feats of The Amazing Tululah O”Doyle.”

  “What’s wrong with that?” he writes back.

  I shoot his suggestions down like soda cans on a fence.

  One day, while sitting at my desk at work, I hear the familiar voice of a woman on the radio, one who always sounds like she is being mowed down slowly by a tank. “I’ll be your mirror,” Nico moans, “reflect what you are, in case you don’t know.” And when I take away the sound of her voice and the image of the tall, blonde German model on heroin, I see her name in print—two little cute syllables for one cute little girl.

  In early February, when I’m five months pregnant, Maggie, another friend from Iowa, emails me to congratulate me on the pregnancy. I know that she’s been trying to get pregnant for months, and I think that it is selfless of her to be so happy for me. She also tells me that she read an article in the New York Times about a woman who found her kidney donor on the Internet. She writes that she is “seriously considering being a donor.”

  “For whom?” I wonder.

  “For someone who needs a kidney. Anyone,” she writes.

  “We need more people like you in the world,” I write her. And I mean it. Maggie, with her powerhouse body and adventurous attitude, would be a perfect donor. I could see her giving up her kidney to a stranger for the sheer joy of knowing that she could help someone. But in her email, she reminds me that none of the insemination efforts she and her wife have been trying have worked. She’d probably have to donate before her next insemination.

  But I can’t imagine her trying to get pregnant after she’d had an operation to remove her kidney. Then what? Have a baby on one kidney?

  “Yeah,” she writes, “but I wouldn’t have the complications that you do. I would have one kidney, but my overall health would be good.”

  I want to be encouraging, but I don’t want to tell her something that might put her in the same situation that I am in. Not that I’ve been alerted to any problems yet, but the worry of what could happen sits in the back of my mind. This baby may not make it to full term. Neither might I.

  “Just wait for now,” I tell Maggie, wanting her to consider it more carefully. “Just look into it, but don’t do anything yet.”

  “Motherhood is full of choices,” Violet calls from Vegas to tell me. As she talks,
the one-year-old in her arms coos into the phone. “Every day is like: feed her this or that? Give her milk now or later? Hat or no hat? Put her in the crib or keep her in bed?”

  “Sounds exhausting,” I say.

  “I’m just tired of having to think every scenario through, you know? I’m surprised those little dilemmas aren’t bothering you already.”

  “Should they?”

  “Well, what are you going to do after maternity leave? Are you going back to work? Full-time or part-time? Are you getting a nann—”

  “Stop!” I tell her. “No more!”

  “No,” she corrects me before hanging up. “Plenty more.”

  When I hang up the office phone, I turn to Kristi and I say, “Think the boss would let me go part-time after the baby’s born?”

  She answers without looking away from her computer screen, “Eh. Well, no. I don’t know. Then she’ll have to cover all that editing herself. She might as well hire someone new.”

  “But why would I have this baby if I’m not going to spend every waking minute with her?”

  “Uh,” Kristi says, “are you sure that wouldn’t drive you insane? It would make me crazy.”

  I just can’t imagine this little thing driving me crazy if she’s not even here yet.

  At around five months, I ask my mother, “Shouldn’t she be kicking by now?”

  “You’ll know when the baby kicks,” my mother says. “Imagine that you’ve got a little bird in your hand, and it’s moving around on your palm, pecking around your fingers.” She raises up her closed fist and smiles as if she has something inside it. This is the gentlest I’ve ever known my mother to be—she opens her hand slowly, and though nothing is inside, she peeks behind her fingers and smiles coyly into her palm.

  Every week, the Silver Fox measures my belly as I lie back on his exam table. And every week, I have new questions for him. This week I ask him how I will deliver.

  “I want to push,” I tell him. Over the years, all those movies with pregnant women pushing and screaming while yelling at their husbands has become the way I imagine birth to be: loud, raw, and painful.