I am not consoled. Why can’t things just happen and everything be healthy and well for once? I want to say this out loud, but I know that he doesn’t want to hear it.
“Think about it this way,” he says. “What is the best thing that ever happened to us?”
“Birdie.” I say it quickly. Then I think back on every little thing that has happened to us. Every trip, every dance, every kiss. The answer is the same. “Birdie.”
“I’d say the same thing: Birdie,” he agrees, looking into her bassinet just in case she hears us talking about her. “And if it weren’t for my kidney in your body, then she wouldn’t be here. If you didn’t have that kidney from the moment she was conceived to the moment she was born, there would be no Birdie. The little German did exactly what he needed to do. Unfortunately, he wasn’t interested in overtime.”
“I guess, Charlie. And she’s brilliant and perfect. Even growing in my weird-ass, messed-up body. But with the dialysis and all, I guess I’m just surprised about how it all turned out.”
“Surprised? Really, Moonface?” he says, seeming surprised himself by my answer. “Our life has been nothing but an endless stream of things going differently than we imagined. Don’t you think?” he says.
“For real,” I say.
“You know what it’s like?” he says. He gets up on his knees in the bed. “It’s like a circus that goes horribly wrong. Or a variety show full of bombs. It’s one spectacle after another. Thank god you’re always here so I can follow your cues.”
“My cues?” I say, a little confused. “I thought I was the straight man.”
“What?” he says, looking confused. “I thought I was the straight man.” He points at his chest. “No, I am.”
“No, me,” he says, digging his nose into my neck.
I pull his body closer. “I’ll give you a cue to follow,” I say, grabbing his face and kissing his lips. I scream when he tries to bite my face and we almost wake the baby.
The entire family is helping us. My mother-in-law comes and stays with Birdie every other afternoon while I’m at my treatments. Sometimes, my parents drive four hours to be with her. And Charlie sometimes leaves his job early, and his bosses understand.
It’s a complicated and taxing situation. But maybe my dialysis schedule will become more convenient. Maybe the little German will eventually pull through. There are reasons to think it might. A nurse at the dialysis center tells me to hold on—she’s seen one guy’s kidney bounce back after six months on dialysis. “He was there one day, and then we never saw him again,” she tells me.
Most days after the treatments, I’m tired and I just want to come home and sleep beside Birdie. Thankfully, she sleeps as much as I do in a day. On the days I have off, though, I have more energy and a clearer mind. I stare at her all day, feed her bottles, change her diapers, sing her songs. I do the things that a mother should do. I like to take off her Onesie sometimes and just look at her bare body. I hold my hand against her chest and feel her heart beating, her chest rising and falling, her fingers wrapping around my thumb, and all her parts moving and working. I like to think that maybe I am sick so she doesn’t have to be, that maybe somewhere in the pregnancy, I took it all for her. That something magical transcended the umbilical cord, the uterus, all of it. And for that reason, I would do it over and over and over again for her. I hold my breath so she can breathe.
One day, I come home from dialysis and Charlie is on the couch with her. Birdie is dressed in an outfit that Charlie has picked out, and I take one look at it and know that I have to change her immediately, because no baby of mine will be seen in a bright orange Onesie and purple pants.
“She’s a trendsetter,” Charlie protests.
Her delicate bones resist ever so slightly when I slide them into sleeves and through leg holes of tiny pants. She pushes my hand away when I try to fasten a snap on her Onesie. These days, Charlie and I wait for her to open her eyes because she keeps them open only for short periods of time. The minute she looks up at us, we call out, “Open!”
I tell Charlie she looks like me: “Everyone is saying so. Same hair, same eyes, same nose.” Birdie lies between us on the bed. She is sleeping with her tiny hand against her cheek.
“Ah, but those eyebrows,” Charlie says. “They are all me.”
She opens her mouth a sliver and lets out a squeak.
“Oh, here’s our five-pound lawyer now,” Charlie says. As she cries, he says, “You know what she’s saying?”
“What?”
“She’s saying, ”Your Honor, I object! . . . Strenuously!” ” He uses a child’s pouty voice. He pulls her near by her tiny torso, and she squirms into his chest.
“You should set your goals higher for her,” I tell him. “Maybe she’ll be a judge.”
“A sixteen-inch judge ... I like it.”
“Yeah, or the world’s smallest acrobat.”
“Or the pint-sized math prodigy.”
“Or the knee-high ninja.”
She continues to squirm, so I take her from Charlie and hold her in my arms. Her eyes open now. “Open!” we say. We show her who her mama is and who her dada is. We point to the dog, and the lamp, and the pictures of her on the nightstand, and the pillows, and the bassinet. Her eyes do not seem frightened or worried. They are wide and bright, and they are filled with the wonder of it all.
Epilogue
In the bedroom of our second-story home, Charlie and I lie in bed and watch old black-and-white footage of vaudeville shows from the early 1900s. It’s an extensive variety of the strangest performances. A giant and a dwarf do a synchronized tap dance with rifles before the dwarf clocks the giant in the knee. An Asian elephant jumps rope with a Border collie. A man and woman play dueling ukuleles and then kiss. We don’t watch old vaudeville footage often, but when we do, I don’t know whether they are funny or sad, whether I’m supposed to be amused by these performances or shocked by them. One thing’s for certain: I can’t look away.
“You don’t want to look away,” Charlie says. “You might miss the punch line.”
“And it just doesn’t stop,” I tell him. “One after the other. The acts just keep coming to the stage, one more obscure than the one before.”
“This one.” Charlie points to the screen. A dog is setting a table for dinner. Charlie starts to cackle, pumping his arms up and down as he breathes.
“Shh!” I say. “You’ll wake the bird.” Birdie lies between us in bed, her face mashed into the sheets. She is almost two now, her body still thin and resembling an older version of that two-pound baby in the NICU. But now, her face has filled out, and there are bulges on her cheeks on which one can squeeze her. I am one of those bad mothers who still co-sleeps, putting my nose against her face on the mattress as we drift to sleep. I just can’t bear to have her far from me.
The only other time after her birth that we were separated was almost a year ago. And I didn’t mind leaving her in the capable arms of her father; I was busy getting healthy.
Maggie, my friend from grad school who was willing to give her kidney to a stranger, called me three months after Birdie was born. She had ignored all advice about donating before getting inseminated, and started the donation process in Iowa. Thank god for her stubbornness because the hospital in Iowa did not yet know what to do with altruistic donations, and they did not know what to do with her information. They ran the tests and held her records. Meanwhile, she heard that I was having a hard time on dialysis and getting back in shape.
She called and said, “If I’m going to give up my kidney, I’m not going to give it to a stranger when I can give it to you.”
So, a little under a year to the day that Birdie was born, Maggie flew from Iowa to Baltimore, and we checked ourselves into the university hospital. We were a sight, in our O.R. caps, our paper gowns, our hospital footsies, and our loud support team surrounding us in the surgical prep area: Charlie, my parents, Beth, Maggie’s wife, her mom. Maggie’s mom held her hand and
mine in a particularly touching but silent moment. My dad tried to take a picture, standing way back in the corner of the room, and shouted, “I can’t make us all fit!” We laughed, hurdling over each other, over my gurney and Maggie’s, trying to fit in the frame. It was so loud and silly and we were all laughing so hard, we almost cried.
Maggie and I checked in on a Tuesday, and by Monday, she and her wife were back on a plane to Iowa. My kidney function was perfect by the time she left, but because of another pesky fever and discomfort around the wound site, I almost didn’t make it home in time for Birdie’s first birthday.
“She won’t even notice,” Charlie assured me. “She kind of goes by her own schedule anyhow. I’ll tell her you’re just waiting for your guts to move my kidney out of the way to make room for Maggie’s.”
Still, I begged the surgeons to send me home, crying into my hands unapologetically. Charlie got me home at 3:30 p.m. on the first anniversary of her birth, and together, we helped our baby blow out her first birthday candle.
Charlie keeps saying that measurements don’t really count anymore, but to me they still do. I wanted to be there for her first birthday, I count the pounds she gains between office visits, and I write down how many minutes her naps last. Sometimes I calculate how long this new kidney might last. Maggie and I keep hoping that this one will last forever. Maggie is not a blood relative, and we are not each other’s one true love. But, unlike my other donors, she is a girl this time, and maybe that will be the magical element between us. I make up these possibilities despite knowing that this little kidney has as much chance as the others did, that we can expect it to hold out for ten or so years, provided no problems get in the way. I calculate what Birdie will be doing in ten years, and I wonder if she’ll be taking care of me or if I’ll still be able to take care of her.
“What difference does it make in ten years?” Charlie always says when my mind wanders. “She needs you now.”
Back in bed, Birdie stirs in her sleep.
“You’re too loud,” I tell Charlie. He clicks off the TV right when an attractive woman starts to undress. “Oh, too bad,” I say, laughing at his unfortunate timing.
“I don’t need no stinkin” TV to see burlesque,” he says. He grabs at my shirt, and I squeal as I try to push him away. The dog hears the commotion and jumps on the bed with a yelp, waking the sleeping baby, who now opens the deep dark cavern of her mouth widely and lets out a bloodcurdling yell.
“No stinkin” TV,” I yell to Charlie. “All the entertainment you need is right here.”
Acknowledgments
Thanks to Rakesh Satyal for your unending patience and your faith in this book. Thanks to my agent, Dan Lazar, for fighting for me, especially when I was too sick to do so myself. I realize it is difficult to be astute businessmen while still having warm, generous hearts, and yet both of you seem to do this without compromise.
Thanks to my parents, Angel B. Balcita Jr. and Dolores P. Balcita, for innumerable sacrifices. Thank you for your big, enormous, and smothering love. I can’t imagine the person I would be without it.
Thanks to Joel and Karla Balcita, for always being there ready to help. You made many days so much easier.
Thanks to Kim, Jean, Wes, Claire, Genevieve, and Alexandra and the rest of the Doyle family, for your support and enthusiastic encouragement.
Thanks to the good people at the 25th Street DaVita Dialysis Center in Baltimore, the Johns Hopkins Hospital, and the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics.
My deepest gratitude to the readers and advisors who read drafts, offered direction, and cheered me on during the writing process: Suzanne Guillette, Heal McKnight, Maggie McKnight, Lynne Nugent, Amber Withycombe, Kembrew McLeod, Megan Knight, Kerry Reilly, Sarah Courteau, Bonnie J. Rough, Jynelle Gracia, Danielle O”Hare, Melissa Hartman, Karen Henoch-Ryugo, Michelle Muratori, Kristi Birch, Iryna Pustovoyt, and Amy Thompson.
Thanks to the Haven Foundation, PEN American Center, the American Society of Journalists and Authors Charitable Trust, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, and the University of Iowa for your invaluable and generous support.
Thanks to the New York Times and the Iowa Review.
Thanks to everyone at HarperCollins for the care you took with this book.
Thanks to my incredible teachers: David Hamilton, Robin Hemley, Susan Lohafer, Patricia Foster, Gerry Albarelli, and Ron Tanner.
Thank you, Nico Carmen Birdie Cutie-Pie Baby-Baby Boochie Doyle, for being more than we could have ever imagined. When I look at you, I see only the many reasons there are to create and to dream.
And lastly, thank you, Christopher K. Doyle, for making the otherwise tragic seem magnificent and extraordinary. Down into the easy chair we go ...
About the Author
Angela Balcita received her MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Iowa Review, and Utne Reader, among other publications. She lives in Baltimore with her husband and daughter.
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Author’s Note
This is a work of nonfiction. It recalls events in my memory, which is not always the flawless machine I wish it to be. But what I do remember, I’ve reproduced for you here as accurately as I could. The names and identifying characteristics of some of the individuals in these pages have been changed to protect their privacy, though they should know who they are.
Copyright
MOONFACE. Copyright © 2011 by Angela Balcita. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
FIRST EDITION
* * *
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Balcita, Angela.
Moonface: a memoir/Angela Balcita.—1st ed.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-06-153731-8
1. Balcita, Angela—Health. 2. Kidneys—Diseases—Patients— Maryland—Baltimore—Biography. 3. Kidneys—Transplantation. I. Title.
RC902.B28 2010
617.4'610592092—dc22
2010008606
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EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062041586
11 12 13 14 15 OY/BYG 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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