by Paula Bomer
After five houses, the broker drives her back to the train station. With the red, pointy nails of a chubby hand, she indicates the church she attends, but—perhaps realizing her passenger is not a churchgoer—adds, “Oprah says your house is where your soul needs to find comfort.”
It is at this moment that Sonia has a panic attack. It starts with her heart pounding with fear. She is hyperventilating too, but not aware of it. She just thinks, get me away from here. I need to get away from here. Her face flushes a dark crimson. Her mind swirls. The broker looks like she’s in a plastic bubble and her voice sounds as if it’s coming from miles away.
“Are you OK?” she asks.
Sonia nods, she can’t speak. She’s suffered from panic attacks on and off in her life. She knows it will soon be over. This trip to New Jersey, this car ride with the broker.
“You looked awfully flushed,” says the Oprah-loving, churchgoing broker.
“I need to get back on the train. A train back to the City.”
“Do you want to see one more house?”
“No. I need to get back on a train, please.” Her voice comes out so calmly, but inside, she’s screaming.
Sonia nods again and starts doing the deep breathing exercises she learned long ago, when she saw Dr. Silver for the attacks. She also used to carry around a paper bag, to breathe into, so as to help her overoxygenated brain return to normal.
What if she has to start carrying a paper bag around all the time again? That was such a sad time in her life, having to go into bathrooms at parties or at work and inhale deeply into a paper bag. It worked, but it made her feel like a loser.
ON THE TRAIN RIDE back to the city, the baby inside her moves around, doing somersaults, no doubt. Sonia feels like her body is someone’s indoor swimming pool, not her own body anymore. How is Sonia going to find comfort in a house? Her body is somebody’s house and there is nothing comforting about that. The whole thing fills her with rage. The thought of a house! A big, needy thing that everyone knows you live in. The social presence of it! If Sonia bought a house, even in Kensington, she decides that it would eat her alive. No house! No comfort for her soul! No suburbs. No nothing. Just her nice two-bedroom apartment. Just some sameness during this time of more change. Another person arriving forever! And a daughter at that. The change of it fills Sonia with dread. It makes her miss her boys already. It will be even worse than when Mike was born. The anger she felt toward little needy Tom, as she tried to breastfeed. And Tom’s little disappointed face, as once again, his mother pushed him aside. “Not now! Tom. Can’t you see I’m busy with the baby?” And the minute the words came out of her mouth, the deep regret and shame. The complete lack of control. As Sonia remembers it, she barely made it through that time. Barely. She’d been so tired, she had no energy for her little, needy toddler. Babies had a way of sucking out her energy. The constant holding, the constant waking up at night. Waah! Waah! Oh, if only she had a wet nurse! But even then, even with tons of help, the real problems were emotional, like always. Because it was not like your heart immediately opened up and grew larger for the new child. No, it was a much more grueling process than that. It was a new, strong annoyance at the older child. It was stabbing, hateful guilt at those feelings. It was a falling in love with the new baby and becoming ever so slightly disappointed in the older child. With a baby, you see the faults of the older child more vividly. The baby is perfect! The child already has imperfections—the child is human. The baby is beyond human. It had been so hard! But she’d survived it, somehow made it so she loved and cared for two. But three? And a girl? Now she’ll have to be the role model, not just the mother. Now she’ll have to set an example. This horrifies her, to no end. Keeps her up at night. Keeps her dreaming of escape. She doesn’t want to try to make more room in her heart for another child. She feels full enough. She has two hands for her two boys. She has a lap big enough to hold both of them at the same time. And now, and now where would the stray one go? And who would that stray one be? Would it be Mike, the middle one, lost in the shuffle? Or Tom, the oldest, always being forced to be independent and behave well?
Dread starts to give Sonia weird rashes on her neck at night that go away by the morning. The fear of her future plants itself in her, spreading deep roots. She is in the grip of a huge change, the ushering of a new life into the world, and she’s not up to it. No, not at all.
SONIA BUYS A SMALL crib from Ikea and puts it next to their bed up in the loft. She’ll deal with moving later. Later, maybe, she’ll look for an apartment in Red Hook. Or in Tucson. Or in Madison, Wisconsin. Portland, Oregon. Now, when she has a moment during preschool hours, when she’s not at the midwife’s, when she’s not busy with some other chore, she goes to the bookstore and buys books on various places to live. Bayfield, Wisconsin! On the edge of Lake Superior, near Canada, surrounded by national parks. Gay men and artists abound! Or Birmingham, Alabama. A small rock music scene there, the band Verbena, for instance. Weird, southern hippies and beautiful old houses. South Bend? No, not South Bend. But, northern Michigan, on Lake Charlevoix! Where Hemingway once summered. Dick would listen politely to her tales of all these various places.
“What about Cuba? We could learn Spanish. The schools are great.”
“There is no food there. It’s poor. What a horrible idea.”
“The architecture is great. Prostitution is rampant. I would feel at home there. Secretaries are prostitutes.”
“You could make more money selling yourself here.”
And then, another night, Sonia says, “What about Jamaica? We could become potheads. And grow leathery skin from the sun.”
Dick sighs at his wife and puts his hand on one of her breasts. He strokes her, downward, his dry hand caressing her round stomach. “Let’s fuck,” he says his fingers heading south.
Sonia says, “I’m nearing the end of this time. The end of the having sex all the time time.” Dick’s fingers lay delicately inside her. He thumbs her clit.
“Ow! That was too rough. I’m just getting to be at the supersensitive stage. Or something.”
“I’ll be gentle,” he whispers in her face.
Sonia puts her hands over her face and the smell of her skin disturbs her. She smells yeasty, like sourdough bread. She sniffs her palms, the sides of her fingers. Did she touch something weird before she got in bed? No, she remembers washing her hands right before bed. This fermented smell is coming from her skin. She pulls her hands away and looks at them in the dark. They seem thick with veins and fluid. They will only get more so. They seem pulsing and generating some energy, and Sonia sits up, panicky, looking at the growing mound of her body.
“I smell weird.”
“No, you don’t, honey. Lie back. What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know if my body can do this again. Give birth. God, I feel like something is wrong.”
“You’re pregnant. You’re doing a great job. I know it’s hard.”
“You don’t know how hard it is. And I’m not doing a ‘great job.’ I haven’t done anything, except fuck you. This is happening to me, don’t you understand? I have nothing to do with it. It’s taking over me. It’s taking over my body and my soul, for God’s sake, like some parasite, like some alien virus.” Tears come to her eyes.
Dick becomes preternaturally calm. “I know I don’t know what it’s like to be pregnant. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to belittle your experience. What I meant is that you’re being brave in the face of it, and I know, from your two other pregnancies, that it’s a hard time for you.”
“I don’t want to have sex.” Her voice is little, defeated.
“OK. Of course. If you don’t want to.”
ON THE WEEKENDS, DICK takes the car out of the garage and drives the family upstate. They stay in family resorts and watch the leaves turn every variation of orange. They drive to the Poconos without making any reservations and find a rambling place with a pond called O’Brien’s.
Sonia says, as the child
ren run around, throwing sticks into the muddy water, “People live out here. They work and they live out here.”
“You would die of boredom here,” Dick says. “You’d have nothing in common with the other mothers out here.”
“I’m not so sure I have anything in common with the mothers in Brooklyn. Or with anybody anywhere.”
“Sonia, don’t say things like that.”
“Why not? Because you don’t want to know that I’m feeling alienated and afraid?”
“I do want to know how you are feeling, but making blanket statements like ‘I have nothing in common with anybody’ isn’t very helpful. Nor is it realistic. What can I do with that kind of information?”
“Listen. Just listen to me. I don’t need any answers or advice.”
“You don’t want to move to the Poconos. Neither do I, for that matter.”
“I’m mostly resigned to staying in our apartment for now. I think it’s the best thing for now. But eventually, and maybe sooner rather than later, we’ll need to make some change. And I think a big change would be a good one.”
“Well let’s deal with that when the time comes. Can’t we just be in the Poconos and enjoy visiting the country? Can’t we not pretend that we’re moving everywhere we visit? I mean, are these weekend trips a bad idea or something?”
“No, I enjoy these trips. They just get me thinking about the possibilities in life. And that’s good. And sometimes, in Brooklyn, I feel like I have no possibilities.”
“Well, that’s all in your mind. Possibilities are everywhere. Don’t blame the place you live. If you need to make a change, you will. And things are changing all on their own, too. This baby will change our lives, undoubtedly.” Dick sighs, inscrutably. The boys are running around, stopping to look at things as mundane as clumps of dirt and sticks. It’s all foreign and exciting to them. The narrowness of city life is so evident to Sonia right now. And yet, she knows it goes both ways. She knows because she’s from Indiana.
“You know, Dick, not so long ago you said to me that you can’t quit your job now and make some big life change because we have another child coming. So understand that I feel stuck, too. That having another kid is making us both feel stuck.”
“OK. I’ll grant you that. But I don’t want to leave New York. Or Brooklyn. And neither do you, right? You’re just fantasizing about it, aren’t you? I don’t know, Sonia, but I find it weird that everywhere we go, you talk about moving there. And all those books about the Midwest and shit. It bothers me. I’m happy where we are.”
“I don’t know if I’m happy where we are. I guess I feel trapped. In Brooklyn. Maybe I should go away for the weekend. Alone.”
“Great idea.”
“Or for a week.”
“That would be a little harder to swing, but we could try and make it work.”
“Oh yeah?” And Sonia thinks, this is what this is all about. I don’t want to move my whole family to the Poconos. I don’t want to move my whole family to New Jersey. I want to go away. I want to flee. And I can’t admit it. I’m afraid I’ll actually do it. And so, I pretend I want to move to Bayfield, Wisconsin. Sonia looks at Dick. His kind, droopy face surrounded by thinning brown hair. His stern expression that hides the fact that he’s a pervert and a freak, like everyone else. He’s like Clara that way, really. Looks one way, is another. And Sonia thinks, I love him but I feel, if I have to look at this face every day for the rest of my life, that I may jump off a building. And then she looks out to where her children play by the water, sticks in hands. And she thinks, Tom and Mike, if someone else served them breakfast, lunch and dinner, they’d be fine. I could jump off that building. I could go. They’d continue on without me. And then the panic comes and her head begins to shake. She runs to the boys and they look toward her, their mother, and they notice the fear in her face and they stop what they are playing. They stand frozen, as she comes to them and falls to her knees, her arms outstretched.
It’s deep November and Sonia goes maternity clothes shopping with Clara. They both hire babysitters for the event. They take the train into the city together and have lunch at the South Street Seaport before heading over to Mimi Maternity in the World Trade Center Mall. There’s a slight distance between the two women and Sonia remembers that Clara thinks pregnant women are disgusting. When Clara was pregnant, she referred to her belly as the “costume”. As soon as she gave birth, she joked about it. “Finally got rid of the costume,” she’d say, laughing.
Sonia is feeling doughy and uninspired. Shopping isn’t her thing. It’s just a chore, something that has to be done. There is no pleasure in it. Her blond hair is dry and the dye isn’t holding well. Her somewhat trashy look is exaggerated by her weight and slovenly hair. Whereas once Sonia was chic trashy, now she seems ready to move into a trailer, back to the Midwest, from whence she came. At lunch, Sonia devours a greasy cheeseburger. Ketchup smears on her chin, her finger wet and drippy.
“You know, you could use your napkin,” Clara says, unable to hide her disgust as she takes a bite of her salad.
“God, I’m so starved all the time,” Sonia says. “It’s great not to feel sick anymore. But I’m insatiable.”
“I can see that.”
“All I want to do is eat and fuck, eat and fuck. Did that happen to you when you were pregnant?” Clara shakes her head at Sonia, who continues, “But I don’t want Dick to fuck me. It’s strange. This happened with my last two pregnancies, too. I was desperate for sex, but I wouldn’t let Dick touch me after a while.”
Clara puts a small forkful of green leaves into her mouth. “So who do you want to fuck?”
“I don’t know. The bathtub spout? My vibrator?”
“You mean you want to masturbate.”
“I don’t know what I want. Every time I’m pregnant, I feel like I’m on the edge of a cliff. You know? Or that I want to be on the edge of a cliff. Maybe I should call my shrink.”
“Well, to be honest with you, Sonia, I have totally blacked out my pregnancies. It’s like I never was pregnant, really. It’s like it happened to someone else. They say we biologically forget the pain of childbirth so that we’ll do it again. You know, the propagation of the species. But I’ve also managed, thankfully, to forget my pregnancies. I know that I was pregnant—twice, in fact—but that’s all I can tell you.”
“I’m having panic attacks.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, big bad ones.”
“What’s that like?”
“It’s sort of like an acid flashback.”
“You’ll have to explain that one to me.”
“Well, everything around me becomes unreal and I just want to flee. A fear and flight response occurs in the body. It’s supposed to happen, for instance, if a bear approaches you. It’s a normal response if the body is under attack. It becomes a disorder if you get one, say, while you are grocery shopping. Which is happening to me.”
“Wow, that sucks, Sonia. Maybe you should see your shrink.” Sonia knows that Clara thinks seeing a therapist is pathetic. They’ve discussed this before. Personally, Sonia thinks—suspects and thinks and almost hopes, because Clara has been getting on her nerves lately, and wouldn’t it be a trip—that it’s because Clara is gay and doesn’t want to deal with the fact of her gayness, as it would royally fuck up the whole lifestyle she’s got going. “Maybe I will see him. But I know what you think of shrinks, Clara. Funny you should mention it.”
“Well, I mean, yeah. I think if you have problems, you’re better off joining the Marines or something. But you can’t do that pregnant. I don’t know. I mean I would never see a shrink, but you’re not me.”
Sonia looks at her friend and does all she can to not say just be GAY. It’s the twenty-first century, just be GAY. “Yeah, he’s been helpful in the past. And I’m suffering.”
“Let’s get a bunch of pretty pink baby clothes and some clothes that fit you and maybe that will cheer you up.”
“Thanks for co
ming with me, Clara. You know I’m not much of a shopper.”
“Of course! I love shopping. I could be a professional shopper.”
“Good. I’ll just follow you around and say yes to stuff.”
“Sounds perfect.” Clara grins at her and Sonia feels OK, almost OK, even if behind that OKness lurks the panic, waiting for its moment to pounce.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER SONIA cooks a chicken for her family and Dick helps her clean up, after the kids are tucked in their beds and Dick is in front of the TV, Sonia unpacks her carefully wrapped maternity clothes up in their loft. There is the pair of khaki pants with a huge elastic stomach that Clara convinced her she had to buy. There is a pair of pants that resembles the black sweats Sonia wore every day until they stopped fitting her. There’s two black T-shirts, a blue T-shirt and a white one, all cut for a burgeoning belly. And there is the most dreadful thing of all, maternity underpants. As Sonia unpacks these items and holds them up in front of her face, the TV making a slight noise from down below, her hands begin to shake. She’s holding the blue shirt, the one Clara told her she had to have, and it seems enormous, it seems like it’s mocking her, and her hands go cold as if her blood just froze. The shirt jitters in her hands in front of her and Sonia puts it down. How did she survive this before? And then again? Those two children were wanted, they were, despite her nagging doubts and fears. This time, it’s totally different. She never wanted three children. With three children, you can’t fit in the booth. With three children, you can’t fit in a station wagon, you need a minivan. With three children, you are outnumbered. You have to learn how to play zone defense. With three children—and it hits her, it’s a sharp stab straight in her brain, it’s a revelation, it’s like finding Christ—there won’t be anything left of herself. She’ll be eaten alive. She’ll disappear. Now her head starts swarming and her hands, as she holds them up to her face, look red. They are red. They start to ooze sweat, her palms glisten as she turns her hands around in front of her face. They burn with heat, this, just after rattling with ice. It’s the start of an anxiety attack and Sonia knows it, but it doesn’t make it OK. She feels as if she’s going to faint and she throws herself down on the bed, shaking, breathing rapidly, and she buries her face in pile of enormous underwear and cries without a sound. She can’t do this. She’s made a mistake. She needs to call her shrink.