by Paula Bomer
“You know what I think? You really want to know what I think? That, if you decide to keep this baby, I won’t be sure why. That’s what I’m thinking right now, that’s what I was thinking all day, while I dealt with stupid assholes all day long who frankly, I would never like to talk to again. But I have to. Because we have a family to support, and a growing one at that. And I’m wondering, do we think the world needs our third baby? Do we? Because the world does not need our third baby. Do we think Tom and Mike need less attention than they get? Because I think they get a lot of attention, and I’m not sure anything is wrong with that. And if we know the world doesn’t need our third baby and our sons don’t need another sibling, then that means we’re having this baby because we want another baby! Do we? Is that true? I’m just confused about it. Because I thought we always only wanted two kids.”
“Yeah, and then we had an accident. Your fault just as much as mine.”
“I know that. You know I know that.”
“You want me to get an abortion.”
“I just want us to think about it all the way through. I want you to think about what another year of pregnancy means, another year of breastfeeding, another year of a toddler, three more years of diapers. Is that what you want? What about painting? What about that easel in the backyard?”
“You fucking prick.”
“What?”
“My mother is Catholic, and—”
“You don’t give a shit what your mother thinks. You never have.”
“That’s not entirely true.” But it was mostly true. “Listen, I’ll get some babysitting. I will paint. And why do you give a shit if I paint or not? I’ve never heard you say anything about my painting. And what confuses me more, is I really thought you wanted this. Wanted one more. Then you’re going to get that operation, right?”
“Yeah, I’m getting fixed. Don’t worry about that. I’m sorry, I just had a bad day. I just had a day where I fantasized I get to quit my job and we can move to Maine and, I don’t know, open a bed and breakfast.”
“That is a pile of horseshit. You? You can’t even fix a chain on a toilet. You suck around the house. Why do you care if I paint, really?”
“Because I want you to be happy?”
“Wrong. You’re lying.”
And now Dick sighs and lifts his arms over his head stretching his long, monkey-like limbs up toward the high ceiling, and the stale scent that comes from his armpits makes Sonia burp, then gag. “Because I liked you when you painted. I thought you were sexy when you painted. It was something I liked about you.”
“Ahhh. And wiping Mike’s butt after he’s pooped in his diapers is not sexy? Picking a hard green booger out of Tom’s nose before preschool, that’s not sexy? Cleaning the wax out of their ears after I give them a bath? That doesn’t make you hot for me? Playing train, making train noises for my boys, that’s not sexy? How about when I pretend I’m batgirl? Come on, that’s kind of sexy …”
“Maybe if you got that outfit. Black leather. No, wait, that’s Catwoman,” he says. “I just want to have this baby for the right reasons. That’s all. You always wanted it all, you know. I love that about you.”
“I still want it all. But I’m not going to have a baby if you don’t want another one. Or if you’re afraid about the money. And the whole painting thing—here’s the deal. If I paint or not, that’s my fucking business. Not yours. I don’t hold you responsible for my choices.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Yes, I’m sure. And there’s no right reason to have a baby. What would be the right reason to have a kid? The world is overpopulated, children are little torture machines, and the planet is dying. So? You fucked me, I accidentally got pregnant. There’s only throwing caution to the wind. I can have it all. Tell me, Dick, do you want another kid? Do you want me to have an abortion?”
“I don’t want you to have to have an abortion. Especially if you don’t want one. I’m just nervous, that’s all.”
“Well, so am I.”
“I love our kids. I’d love our new kid.”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t do anything out of guilt or obligation, Sonia.”
“You know me better than that. Now I have to go throw up again. And then, I’m going to bed. Oh, and I think Clara tried to stick her tongue down my throat tonight.”
WHY, WHY DOES SONIA decide to keep this baby? Why doesn’t she just get an abortion? Catholic guilt? The pleasure she gets from her children is real, but so is the pain, so is the boredom. Sesame Street? Wiping butts? Sure, it’s a part of life, but is it satisfaction? Is it all she wants? Isn’t it fucking boring? Taking care of small children—and nothing else? She has no gift for playground gossip. She gave that occupation up a long time ago. Where’s her community? What does she want? She knows she doesn’t want to make home decoration her future. She knows she’ll never teach elementary school. Or teach anything, for that matter. Can’t she be Karen Finley, shoving yams up her ass (Karen’s got kids now!) and then smearing it on the canvas? Can’t she find a role model that works?
What about that blossoming she felt, that new freedom, the no-babies feeling? The break she felt was her due? And what about painting? Can’t she paint and take care of babies? Can’t she paint while she’s pregnant? Why this choice and not another? Sonia is convinced there’s no right or wrong choice, just a choice to be made, and hers for the making. And why not one more? Three isn’t five. It isn’t eight. It’s three. And then they’ll fix their parts like the stray animals they are.
In the meantime, there’s life on a daily basis. And a bored woman with half a mind is a dangerous thing.
WHO COULD BE HER role models? It was one thing to rebel against the world as a young childless woman. The tattoo on her ass. The fuck whoever she wants. The safety pins in her ears when she was fifteen. The snarl, the fuck-you middle finger up at the slightest provocation. The anti-cheerleader, anti-good girl.
And yet, of course, there was ambition. But who could be her role models as a mother and a human being in the world, an artist in the world? Georgia O’Keefe? No kids. Frida Kahlo? No kids. Mary Cassatt? Well, not to her taste. The work of women with live-in help, the work of a certain class of women who weren’t expected to take care of their children on a daily basis. They could have kids and hire someone else to take care of them day and night and still be considered a good mother. Maybe Sonia was born too late. But that’s where all Cassatt’s pink comes in. All those mushy brushstrokes, all that pure love. Real love is never pure. Vanessa Bell? Well, maybe if she weren’t less important than her childless sister. But then, not even. Sue Coe? Too straightforward, plus, who knows if she has kids?
She wants to be Egon Schiele. She wants to be a man. She wanted to be her instructor, Philbert Rush, not just fuck him, although she only managed the latter. She wants to be a man in her art, for some reason. She doesn’t want to represent goodness and motherhood in her art, because that is not all she is, and how often do the two even go together?
And the poets? Adrienne Rich? Angry lesbian poet whose children felt God knows what about her? Yeah, that’s right, having a life means torturing your kids. Because even the little punk rock girls with their shocking pink hair who abuse drugs and fuck without condoms still want mommy to give them lots of money, still want mommy to take care of them and, most importantly, still blame their mommies for not loving them enough, or loving them in the wrong way. And, it’s probably true. Mothers fuck up their kids. Tough boys, dark boys, art boys, radical boys, listening to Radiohead and heavy metal, fuck, they’d still let their mothers wipe the very shit from their assholes if they could, bend over and expose their raw bottoms up, defenseless and needy. Everybody wants a warm meal prepared and served with a smile. Everybody wants to get into a warm bed at night, get tucked into fresh sheets in a dark room. Everybody wants and wants, and nobody says, “That’s enough! I’m ready to not be treated warmly, to not get any affection, to not be taken care of!” Fuc
k, if it’s not paying some new age depressive to put cucumbers on your face, it’s the next thing. Our needs are endless.
Role models from the poets? Sylvia Plath. Anne Sexton. Crazy stupid bitches who totally screwed up their children. Hey, they were mentally ill! No one would give a shit about their art if they hadn’t killed themselves. And what if you love life? What if you have no desire to kill yourself? What if you’d rather kill them instead? Or kill no one, ’cause face it, it’s not like Sonia is crazy. She just wants it all.
And who, really, truly, honestly, wants to grow up and become their own mother? Everyone wants a mother, but who wants to be their own mother? No, we’re supposed to be learning from their mistakes. Have kids and no life? Study sewing? No, thanks. Be a corporate lawyer, adopt one kid when you turn forty-five, and by that time, you’re too fucking old to take care of the poor thing? No, thanks.
And then there are the childless women who for some reason Sonia despises as well. The whiney, self-absorbed ones who remain perpetual children. Who still fucking blame it all on their mothers. Who have no idea. Who reads Virginia Woolf without smelling her forever-a-maiden status? Interior dialogue? Sounds great, if you don’t have kids, which thankfully keeps you from such self-absorption. Sonia’d rather read the worst of twice-divorced Jane Smiley with her four kids. At least she has a clue. At least she doesn’t have to pretend that art is separate from life. Musicians? Stevie Nicks, Aimee Mann. Past forty years old, clinging to the girl/woman thing. And why not?
Because women are not girls. Their faces sag. Their tits sag. They can’t blame it all on being female anymore. They know better because they’ve been there. Yes, Sonia wanted to be there. And she is there. She just didn’t know it would be so hard. All her life, all of her thirty-five years, she’s only wanted to experience everything, except maybe heroin addiction. Who are you going to blame now for the mess you’re in?
And what if she maybe doesn’t want to paint? What if being a housewife is easier in some way? Not trying? Not figuring out if she’s as good as they all said she was, so long ago? What if she doesn’t want to know if she still knows how to paint? Grandma Moses? Not her plan. But what is her plan? Is she … afraid? Afraid she’s not all that?
It’s true that when Sonia was a little girl, five, six, seven, she wanted to be a boy. They didn’t get yelled at as ferociously for jumping all over the furniture. They were supposed to do that. They were boys. If they hit someone, well, it wasn’t OK but, hey, what do you expect, they were boys. A five-year-old boy could walk into a room and command more attention, more freedom, absorb more fucking oxygen, than Sonia could at the same age. And she knew it then. But later, well, later, she decided it was fun being female. That being female didn’t mean being passive. Thanks to Katrina Nelson. Thanks to the women’s movement in the sixties and seventies. Thanks to a lot of people and things, but, really, thanks to Katrina, the friend that changed her life, the friend she met while waiting on tables, the nineteen-year-old high-school dropout from Kalamazoo, Michigan, who changed her life when they met in Boston. Maybe there are no role models. Maybe there are just people, and some more influential than others.
Last she heard, Katrina had married and had a baby, was still living in the Boston area. Maybe Sonia should go visit her.
But Sonia’s having this baby.
The decision’s been made.
“Do you have to kill a cow to get meat?” Tom asks Sonia this as they walk slowly down Court Street. Mike is asleep in the stroller, his hair dark with sweat and plastered to his red face. It is hot. It is August in Brooklyn. The air is so thick, so humid, that Sonia can’t see very well what’s in front of her.
“Yes, you have to kill a cow to get meat, sweetheart.”
“Does everyone have meat inside of them? Do bugs have meat inside of them? Do I have meat inside of me?”
“Well, yes, I guess so. But we don’t eat bugs or people. We eat fish, cows, chickens. Pigs.”
“I love meat. Can we get some meat? Can we have hamburgers for dinner tonight?”
Tom starts rubbing his chest. He, too, is red-faced. Sonia’s heart constricts, and for a moment, she fears that her children will die from the heat. That their red little faces mean they are dying.
“Sure, let’s go pick up some groceries and then go home. It’s so hot out here. I think we’d be better off inside, with the air conditioning going. Are you OK, Tom? You look so hot.”
“I am hot! I am hot meat!”
This comment makes Sonia dizzy. “Let’s go get the groceries and get indoors. I can’t take this heat.” They walk by a group of construction men digging up a hole in the street. A jackhammer screams in their ears. Cement dust burns their eyes—Tom starts coughing and Sonia’s eyes tear. They run to get by the mess. Every corner, it seems, is being dug up. For what, thinks Sonia? New pipes? How can every corner in Brooklyn need new pipes every summer? It feels like a lie. Like a conspiracy to torture mothers into moving to the suburbs.
“Mommy, when I’m five years old, I’ll be a big boy, right?”
“Yes, love, but you have quite a ways to go before you turn five. You just turned four a couple months ago.”
“I just keep getting bigger! Someday I’ll be a grownup, right? And a teenager?”
“Oh heavens, let’s not think about it. You’re still my little boy. I like you that way.”
“But, mom, there’s nothing you can do about it.” He’s smiling now, so excited. And Sonia thinks, yes, there is nothing I can do about it. We all get older, and then we die. Tom is jumping with excitement. “I’m just going to keep getting bigger and bigger! And stronger!”
“I know, but I love you just the way you are.”
Is he saying this to torture Sonia? Why this obsession with getting older? And yet, Sonia remembers wanting to get older, too. When does that change? And what’s up with the whole meat inside of him thing? Sonia can’t take it right now. She hauls the stroller, heavy with Mike, up the three stairs to the butcher on Court Street. This nearly makes her cry. Why, why must she be doing this? Why can’t she just do nothing? Why in God’s name is she out in this heat wave, hauling strollers with big sleeping toddlers in them? Inside, although it is air-conditioned and this feels very good, the smell of dead animals overwhelms her. Can’t she just feed her kids noodles for the next three months? Forever? Cold air, cold air. Take a breath. There are five other people there. This seems unbearable to Sonia. How long will she have to wait to order ground beef? Everyone is at the butcher’s. Everyone is eating meat.
Tom says, “Mom, when I’m ten years old, how old will you be?”
“I’ll be forty, I think.”
“Wow! That’s really old. Mom, when I’m eleven years old, how old will Mike be?”
“He’ll be nine. Or eight. I can’t think right now, Tom. I’m trying to get us hamburger.”
“I’ll always be older than Mike, right Mom?”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll always have more meat inside of me, then. Right?”
“Well, I’m not sure about that.” Help! Help me, thinks Sonia, as she tries to make eye contact with someone. Is it her turn? Who’s been helped? Who’s still waiting for help? Sonia has no ability whatsoever to cut a line. Not anywhere, but especially not here, somewhere she goes so often. She looks around, her eyes filled with panic. Who’s next? Is she next? Oh, God, she’ll never get hamburger. Never.
“Have you been helped?”
Is he talking to her?
“Me?” Sonia asks, pointing her own finger—her whole hand, in fact—at her heaving chest. Her shoulders slope downward and in. Her shoulders nearly shiver with the overwhelmitude of it all. “Am I next?” Her voice is a whisper, which prompts a very loud response from the nice Italian man behind the counter.
“Yes, ma’am!”
“Can I get a pound of hamburger meat? No, wait, make it two pounds. Yes, two pounds!” It was working, she’s doing it, she’s getting the meat for her family. Othe
r customers, packages in hand, pass by her for the door. She tries to maneuver the stroller out of the way, and accidentally runs the wheels over an old woman’s foot. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I was just trying to get it out of the way.”
The white haired lady glares at her.
“I’m sorry, really. Are you OK?”
Again, the silent glare, huddling her small body closer to the counter full of steak and pork. Jesus, she could just say, “That’s OK.” She could just say, “It’s nothing, I’m fine.” She could just say something. What does she think, that Sonia purposefully ran the stroller over her fucking foot? God, what is wrong with people? Can’t she see that Sonia is trying to shop with two small children, and doesn’t she know that it’s not an easy thing to do? Can’t she see that she doesn’t feel well? That she’s pregnant? Sonia wants to yell at this old, dried-up bitter bitch. I bet you had kids once, you dumb cow! You just don’t remember how hard it was, do you? You just blanked it all out, because it was that awful! Because you sucked at it, too, just like the rest of us! And now, you walk around smug and mean to others who are no different than what you were. And soon you’ll be wearing diapers again! Soon you’ll be a helpless baby, dependent on some woman in her prime, like my fucking self, to take care of your sorry ass. And then, you’ll be dead. Sonia can’t take it. It’s all too awful. She was just trying to be nice, trying to move her stroller out of the way. What is she supposed to do, leave her kids at home alone while she shops? Tom and Mike, you stay here by yourselves because children shouldn’t be in public places! That’s right, stay home alone because I have to buy hamburger. I’ll just chain you to the radiator so as not to anger the dumb old ladies in the neighborhood.
Sonia is fuming. She is having a moment. She can’t keep it inside any longer. “You know, you could just acknowledge my apology in some way. It wouldn’t kill you to say, that’s OK, or something like that. It was an accident as I said, and I apologized to you and the right thing to do is to say something nice back. Not to just glare at me.”