Nine Months

by Paula Bomer

  No, Sonia likes being the only woman. The alpha female. She loves the warm love of her boys, she loves being surrounded by men, she always has—three men or four men or more. In college, she played cards once a week with a group of guys. Russell, Bob, Jason, Stan. She loved being in that place, a smokey, vulgar place where women rarely were. She loved it. She still does. Her husband and her boys. But what if it’s a girl? She hasn’t changed the diaper of a little girl since high school. Since she herself was a babysitter. What to do in the face of a little, naked vagina, an innocent pink baby bird of a pussy? God, the thought of it. No, Sonia doesn’t want a little girl. She was a little girl herself. Why would she want that?

  Her friends, the other mothers in the neighborhood, want girls. Nearly every woman she’s met in the playground wants a girl. A girl, just like me! Maybe she’ll look just like me! A girl to shop with. A girl for whom to buy pink dresses. One woman—an educated, white, middle-class woman—with three kids, the youngest being a girl, a little thing, maybe eighteen months old, explained, “She helps me pick up after the boys. She’s just a baby, but she knows how to pick up. My boys don’t, of course.” Even now, women still want girls to help them around the house! Sonia doesn’t want a girl to help her clean up after her boys. Her boys know how to put away their trains, their dinosaurs, their shoes. What does it mean to think a boy doesn’t know how to pick up after himself? What does it mean to think a little girl should pick up after her brothers?

  And then her friend Lisa, who explained that she wanted a girl to talk to. Someone she could talk to, because, well, her boys weren’t very good communicators. She said this to Sonia, as she clung to her infant daughter. Her sons, listening, playing nearby, looked sadly toward their mother. “You know how men are,” said Lisa. “They have no personal skills. They can’t listen. They can’t talk about their feelings. But Lulu, she’ll be my friend! She’ll understand what it means to be a woman. We’ll have so much in common.” Just then, one of her sons threw a car at her. And Sonia thought, oh, but how men communicate.

  A daughter. The sonogram would tell. A daughter to mock her, to grow young and beautiful while she gets older and less attractive, a daughter who knows just what to say to truly and deeply hurt her. There was a time when women wanted boys. When society worshipped boys. When men wanted sons for the farm. When women wanted boys for their husbands. And now, women want girls. They want more of themselves. They have self-esteem? They love themselves? Or do they just openly get to hate men? No, Sonia would love three boys. Sonia is afraid of women.

  Dick, of course, would like a daughter. The dream daughter, someone pretty, someone who, as his wife dries up and ages, he could look to for beauty, for inspiration. Someone who wouldn’t identify with him, no, but would just love him. Dick loves his boys very much, but face it, the day would come when they would see their father for who he is—a man, not a God, and a tired, overworked, slightly bored man. And they would be disappointed. But a daughter? She would love him. In his dreams, a daughter would never grow disappointed, disillusioned. Not his daughter, no. And Sonia knows this about Dick. Knows he wants a little girl. Is this why she’s going through with this pregnancy? To give her husband what she herself has? The love of the opposite sex? Is she that generous toward him? And what if it’s not a girl?

  The train is empty. No one reads next to her. She heads back home, her arms loose at her sides. Suddenly, Sonia thinks, I’m alone on this train. Something could happen to me! Where are the other people? The ones to protect me from the bad kind of other people? Do muggers still stalk the subway trains, as they did ten years ago, when she first moved here? But it’s the middle of the day. Why is she so frightened? The next stop, and no one gets on. She panics, standing in the cold air. My children! They need me! Swaying as she goes, she heads down the aisle and opens the door to get into the next car, where she hopes there are people. For a moment, she’s outside of either car, back in the heat, a dark, horrible heat in a tunnel underground. And then she opens the next door and the light hits her, the cold air-conditioning licks her face. A scattering of three people look up and see a woman, her eyes bugged out in fear, pale and sickly seeming, moving quietly to take a seat on an unoccupied bench.

  Tom and Mike. She needs them. They make her less afraid. She feels naked and vulnerable without them. Clinging to her purse, she thinks, But once, a long time ago, I was alone in the world. And I wasn’t afraid.

  The sonogram appointment is set. The blood work is done. It all feels so official. A baby, a baby. One more and then no more.

  The first trimester ends one morning. Just like that, Sonia wakes up and the light through the skylight above is less harsh and the room feels fresh. The air in her loft is not moist, is not stuffy. Summer is over. Her sickness is over. It is fall. It is the real new beginning, the real beginning of this pregnancy. It is September, God bless. She stands and stretches, and where is Dick? Already making her coffee, already with the boys. She goes to the bathroom and pulls down her underwear and sits and pees and she just can’t believe it—she is not sick anymore. She is better. It’s over, just like that. Just like the first time and just like the second time, one day she is sick, as she’s been for three solid months, and then the next day she is not. She is no longer nauseated, she is no longer miserable, her head no longer hurts. Her mouth is warm and pasty, like a morning mouth, but not dry and disgusting, with the stink of wet garbage. It’s over! The first trimester is over! She skips downstairs and her husband stands at the counter, glancing fearfully toward her and she smiles at him, and then she grabs her coffee and kisses her boys, one at a time, first little Mike, then Tom, and then she takes her coffee and heads for the living room and and—it’s over! She’s not sick. Lord above, heavens above, she is better. She looks out the window and then bends to open it—this she can do, she can bend to her low window and pull it upward, it’s stiff and old, but she can do it, she’s not sick!—and the air comes in and it’s sweet like fresh hay, this Brooklyn September air. It’s the cleanest, freshest air she’s ever smelled, ever felt against her skin. And goosebumps rise on her arms, and they are bumps of joy, bumps from the crisp air that she herself managed to bring into this room, not from the cold, clammy sickness that just yesterday, made her feel as if she’d rather die than anything else. That she would never make it. That she was not going to make it through another day. No, no these prickly, risen pores on her skin line her arms and the back of her neck because life is a good thing now, a very good thing, and everything is going to be alright and the air is fresh and the birds in the still green trees sing to her and her alone! And Sonia wants to cry for joy but she has no tears. Dick walks up to her now, from behind, and he doesn’t quite touch her because she hasn’t wanted him to touch her for months now, and he says, “How’s the coffee?”

  “It’s great. And I feel great. I feel better now. You know how it is. Just like that.” Sonia says to her husband, the dear man of her house, and she turns to him and gently puts her hand on his arm.

  AND THAT NIGHT, AFTER the kids pass out in their bunk-beds downstairs, goodnight Tom, goodnight Mike, sleep well, who loves you?, who loves you the most?, one more kiss, one more kiss; then after Sonia and Dick finish watching a sitcom on TV, after Sonia drinks a warm chamomile tea, after Dick sips his scotch on ice, after they brush their teeth, relieve their bladders, and slide into the clean white, cotton sateen sheets Sonia put on that very day, Dick leans into Sonia’s face and kisses her. First he kisses her on her cheek, on the part of the cheek that is right next to her mouth. Then he moves in closer to her lips, touching the corner of her mouth with his mouth. She turns toward him now, in the dark, her eyes closed, and he leans his upper body over hers and turns his face so his nose won’t get in the way and he pushes his mouth against hers and, open-mouthed, they kiss. Their tongues reach out and taste, and damn, if it doesn’t taste good. Damn if it doesn’t taste like warmth, like booze and like that familiar flavor that is each other. This is not a
night when Dick will fart obscenely in bed next to her, pretending not to, and Sonia, despising him, will snap her magazine angrily into a perfect tent in front of her face. Nor is it a night, like so many before this one, where Sonia, stinking of sweat from the summer heat, from the sweat of fear and the sharp stink of bile and vomit, is so disgusting, no, not disgusting, so terrifying, terrifying in her foreignness, in her stink, in her pale, ugly, possum-in-a-trap look on her face, that Dick just wouldn’t look at her.

  Those first three months are over. Those three months of hell, where Dick would just pretend she was not there, gone. Done. She’d be there, and he’d pretend, just like he did as a child when his father was yelling, or his mother was yelling, that the person in question was not there. Dick’s imagination is so powerful and has always been so powerful, that he can play this trick in his brain very well and Sonia knows this about him, even if he doesn’t know it about himself.

  No, not tonight. Tonight he had looked at her on the couch, lazing with him in front of the TV, and she could feel his appreciation, his desire. She feels she is the woman he fell in love with. She feels his eyes on her and she’s the same young woman she was fifteen years ago, she’s no different than she was when she was barely twenty. The bones in her face are strong but womanly, her mouth feels wet and inviting, her eyes are smart but slightly troubled, definitely knowing. Often thinking of something dirty. She’s still his dirty-minded college girl. And this, in the dark now, now that she is over that first part of her pregnancy, now that she no longer repulses him, hates him, now that she is resigned to her body and the strange creature inside of it, this bud of a person that he planted in her womb, now that this baby isn’t torturing her anymore, now she wants to get fucked. Her skin is powdered with stardust, it’s fucking moist, damn it, and sparkling, and her eyes are wet like a healthy cat’s, glowing at her husband in the dark, open now, looking at him while their tongues stroke the insides of their mouths like they’ve never tasted each other before.

  How could kissing this man be anything that ever happened again? After years of marriage, years of just fucking, not that anything’s wrong with that, but years really where they would never, ever have kissed. Preferring to get straight to the part that matters, kissing having bored them, kissing having been something of the past. Kissing not being on their minds but they still needed to get off. His balls would fill. She was the nice lady next to him who empties them for him. She often felt his gratitude, but she had stopped feeling his wonder. Excitement. Urgency. Except during these precious months when she was pregnant with their first son. And their second son. And then again, later, when the nursing starts and her breasts fill with milk. These special interludes, when Sonia is not quite Sonia, but something very close. And now, again, this gift. This time, this fleeting moment in their banal lives.

  Here he is, his hands on her breasts which are so swollen, so sensitive she moans and pulls away slightly and she loves her own tits right now so much, she can’t believe they are hers. A few months ago they were dried out, with tired nipples that lay nearly flat against her ribcage. Her breasts, when she’s not pregnant, were never as fleshy as her upper arms. It would be jangly arms and flat breasts. Now she can only see breasts. She has breasts! Serious breasts. He has one in his hand and another in his mouth and she’s shaking now, because all those hormones that are making her breasts grow into these beautiful flowers are making them raw with nerves. He’s being gentle with her, she feels. Well, he’s trying to be gentle, precisely because she’s making it clear, Sonia is, how painful her swollen breasts are. He squeezes and sucks them and she can’t stay still, she’s just squirming, it’s uncomfortable but undeniable, she breathes out the word ouch, and she puts her own hand on them to protect herself, but also to feel them herself. Because these breasts are a gift from God, the God who gave humans the ability to reproduce, and to feed their young. These tits are blessed and she wants to hold them too.

  He arches his entire body over her now, he’s up on his knees, not leaning his body on hers, no, looking right at her, and he locks his mouth on hers again and fuck, she’s kissing her goddamn husband. She wants to lick out the inside of his fucking throat. And then he puts his finger in her pussy, just like that, and she’s wet and warm. She nearly comes right then. But he pulls away from her and takes a deep breath. On his knees now he grabs his dick hard and pushes at it. Oh, man. Her skinny legs are splayed out from the bowl of her small hips, and in the dark she stares at his enormous erection. Jesus. She can’t look at it. She looks away. If he puts his dick in there now, she’ll just come right away and that is not what she wants to do. But what else can they do now? He could eat her pussy, but she doesn’t really want that, strangely, and she’s pretty certain he won’t, for some reason. It’s about his dick tonight, about the effect she’s having on his dick. He turns her over and she can feel him assessing her ass, which he loves, always professing his love for her ass. But it’s calming him a bit, Sonia can feel his body relax, her ass is familiar, not strange and new like her breasts right now and it’s not her fucking wet pussy staring at him either. But she can’t help herself, she lifts it up at him and there’s no hiding from what’s underneath it. He leans over her and he rubs his dick on her like a cat in heat and then she’s rubbing her ass back at him, Sonia feels like begging him, she is begging him with her ass, begging him to stick it in her, which he does—sticks it into her—and he leans over her and takes each one of those breasts in his hands. And then he grabs both breasts in one hand, smashing them together hard, and she lets out a short cry, and with his free hand he grabs her head and twists it around toward him so that he can shove his tongue down her mouth again. Damn. Damn. Oh, if she were only always pregnant!

  Oh, if she were always four months, five months, even six months pregnant! Not one or two or three! And not seven or eight or nine! But that middle time, this middle time, how she loves it, how she can’t believe it’s her, how ripe she is, how womanly, how soft and precious and giving and forgiving she is! Oh, if she could only stay this fleshy, this wet, this ready. If only she were always in a dark room, if only her breasts were always like this in a dark room. Then, then her life would be perfect. Locked away in a dark room, a room which only her husband had the key to, permanently four months pregnant.

  This whole putting things off is not working. She turns herself over again, and her breasts flop around in a good way, move like jello, loose and real, and there are her hip bones, her splayed legs, and he gently thumbs her clit but she pushes his hand off of her pussy and arches up to him, her own hands on her tits, moaning and he grips her hips and thrusts in there deep and she knows he’s about to come. It’s just gonna happen. Her head is twisted to the side and her own hands smash her breasts together—they touch! They’re so big they touch each other! He thrusts again and she can feel he’s so close and he can come inside her if he wants, she’s already pregnant, it’s not going to make her more pregnant, and she loves everything about this, the no condom, the no cervical cap, the no smelly spermicidal jelly, just the thick, salt smell of his dick in her pussy and he can come inside of her if he wants, she thinks. But then he lifts his dick out and holds it over her breasts, his knees up near her armpits now and one hand on his pulsing cock, and the other grasping her round, fleshy breasts together, and he shoots come all over her round, round breasts, banging his cock against her, then—tap, tap, tap—knocking out every last drop of himself onto her. And Sonia is, in no small way, the happiest woman on earth, the womanliest woman on earth, wet with come, pregnant and fucked like only a woman can be, so simple and animal and perfect, God’s perfect creation.

  THE NEXT MORNING, NOT so early, the days getting noticeably shorter, autumn light, pale but clean, shines through the skylight above their spent bodies, a thin cashmere blanket cocooning them from the slight chill in the room. Sonia wakes first and looks at her husband sleeping huddled at the other end of the bed. When she wakes, she’s very awake, suddenly, as sometimes
happens. No slow opening to the world, no desire to stay in bed and shut her eyes and try for more. No, she’s up. Stealthily, she heads downstairs to make the coffee. Standing in the doorway adjoining the kitchen to the boys’ bedroom is Mike, her little one, a soggy diaper hanging from his bottom and a too small T-shirt showing his round belly and outie bellybutton. He’s standing there, having just woken himself and having started off to fetch a grown-up and having not woken his older brother. Sonia scoops him up and Mike leans his soft head on her shoulder and she breathes her warm morning breath into her son’s perfect, sweet neck. The kitchen is dark but comforting. Walking this way, with her young boy in her arms, she sets about to making coffee, balancing Mike on her hip and doing everything else with one hand, so as not have to put down her son. So she can keep this warm, wet-bottomed bundle in her arms as she does what needs to be done. And life is good. Life is very good. And Sonia is thankful for her family, eager for her precious, mediocre life, and she can’t believe that once again, she’s going to be a mother to someone new.

  Mike, her little one, her baby, starts preschool at the same little preschool where Tom goes. Three mornings a week, Sonia packs up the kids, pushes the stroller down the street two blocks, and drops them both off. No having to call Carrie. Nobody comes into her house, which is great, since it tends to be a huge mess. There they go, running with excitement, into a room full of blocks and plastic toys and art projects and other little people, the same size as them. The first day Sonia dropped them both off, it was as if she’d done that weird trick where you press your arms hard against the inside of someone else’s arms, and you both clench your fists and push and push until the other person pulls their arms away and your arms float upward. Without having to do anything, without actually trying to move your arms toward the sky, they just go. Flying high. A freaky, uncontrolled feeling. But fun. She had been afraid, ashamed, worried. What if Mike hates it there? And then she thought, yeah, he really wants to be home with me all day, watching too much TV and staring at the same four walls for sixteen hours. He really wants to go grocery shopping with me instead of sing the itsy bitsy spider with ten other drooling two-year-olds. And then she thought, what if some other little brat hits him? And then the counter thought: Tom’s never, ever hit Mike. So, gee, that would be a new experience. Ha.