Lingerie For Felons

by Ros Baxter

  ‘Great Aunty Vera told me about you,’ Eve continued.

  Wayne looked astonished. ‘She actually lets you call her Great Aunty?’ he asked. ‘Wow, she must really like you.’ He was smiling, so he must be recovering.

  ‘She does,’ Eve confirmed. ‘Apparently, I’m her favorite.’

  ‘Favorite what?’ I was kind of peeved. ‘She says that to everyone, darling.’

  Eve rolled her eyes at Wayne. ‘She told me you’d say that, Mommy. Apparently —’ ‘Apparently’ was Eve’s new favorite word. When she said it, she seemed about 25, and it made my heart hurt. ‘— I’m much nicer than you were when you were little. But don’t be sad. You’re very good at math, so that makes up for it.’

  ‘So,’ Wayne went on. ‘What does Vera say about me?’

  ‘Aunty Vera,’ Eve corrected. ‘It’s rude to call gown-ups by their first names.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Wayne agreed, holding his palms up in contrition. ‘Sorry, sweetie. Aunty Vera. What did she say?’

  ‘I don’t think we need to go into that, do you?’ Clark’s tone was sharp. ‘I don’t think we’ve met. But I’m guessing you’re the famous Wayne.’

  ‘Hey! Aunty Vera says that too, Daddy,’ Eve said. ‘Sort of. She says “The Infamous Wayne”. In-famous, Mommy. Is that really a word?’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ I confirmed, a bit shell-shocked. ‘Er, Clark, Wayne. Wayne, Clark.’

  Wayne looked at me, sadness and confusion in his eyes. ‘I’m sorry, Rocket,’ he said. ‘I didn’t realize. When Raelene said…’

  Heidi leaned forward, shaking her head, but I grabbed her hand under the table.

  ‘No problem,’ I said tightly. ‘It was good to see you. I’m really glad it’s going well.’

  Then Eve piped up again. ‘Wayne,’ she started, enquiringly. ‘Do you have a penis or a vagina?’

  Oh God, the latest thing. Ever since finding out about the critical difference between boys and girls, Eve had been obsessed. My favorite time of all had been when my mother had come to visit and the minute she’d walked in the door, Eve had hit her with, ‘So, Grandma, do you have a small vagina or a great big vagina?’

  ‘We-ell,’ Mom had responded like she was really giving some thought to it. ‘I think you’d say I have a medium sized vagina.’

  ‘Huh,’ Eve had been quite satisfied with that response. She liked a person to know their vagina size with such certainty.

  Wayne didn’t miss a beat. ‘I’ve got something much more interesting than either of those things, Eve,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a boat. Would you like to see a picture?’

  Eve looked dubious. ‘Your boat?’ she checked. ‘Your very own boat?’

  ‘Yep,’ he agreed, pulling a brochure from his bag, and showing her a photograph of a gorgeous white cruiser. ‘You like it?’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ Eve breathed. ‘It’s lovely. May I have a ride on it some time?’

  Okay, this was officially my cue to intervene. ‘Ah, sorry, Eve darling. Wayne’s about to go away again. Maybe one day.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right,’ Wayne confirmed. ‘Well, I had better be off. Very nice to meet you, Clark. And you, Miss Eve.’

  ‘Ms Eve,’ Eve corrected him.

  Wayne laughed out loud and Eve looked at him with way too much interest. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry. Ms Eve,’ he corrected himself. ‘It was lovely to meet you. Ask your Mommy and Daddy and maybe next time you can have a ride on my boat. If you’re very good.’

  ‘Bye Wayne,’ said Heidi, her eyes looking suspiciously watery. I poked her in the ribs and she pushed out a small smile. She was holding Eve and buried her face where mine had been. We all watched him lope off. I felt giddy and weak when Eve announced:

  ‘Mommy, I liked him. He’s got a funny voice, but he’s very big. I wonder if he lives at the top of a beanstalk. Are you going to marry him?’

  ***

  I think I managed to mollify Clark a bit, because he was a bit more cheerful by the time he left. I even promised to come down to his office and help out with some campaign stuff, trying to buy some goodwill.

  Still, I was relieved when he left. For some reason, tense encounters always make me need to pee really badly. Anyway, when I got back from the Ladies, Heidi was doing a beautiful job explaining to Eve about the ‘Big House’.

  ‘So, there you go, poppet,’ she was saying. ‘It’s all fine. Mommy saved the day.’

  ‘Like Wonder Woman?’

  Oh, I do love you, Eve.

  ‘Yep,’ Heidi agreed, laughing. ‘Just like Wonder Woman. Even better actually. But without the whole gross bra and panty outfit thingy.’

  ‘Or the invisible plane,’ Eve agreed, frowning like an invisible plane might have made up for the gross bra and panties. She was silent for a minute as I heaved her back onto my lap. She drummed her fingers on the table. ‘Why were the police so angry with Wonder Mommy then?’

  ‘Well,’ Heidi looked over at me, eyebrows raised. She’d been doing a pretty good job so far, so I nodded at her. ‘Well,’ she repeated. ‘Sometimes doing the right thing, standing up for other people, means people get cross with you. And it means you get into trouble. But you have to do it anyway. Because, otherwise, the bad guys win.’

  ‘Huh,’ Eve was quiet again. She turned around to me. She cupped my face in her pudgy little hands, very seriously. ‘Are you going to go to jail, Mommy?’

  Oh, God. I hope not.

  ‘Well, sweetie, Mommy has to go to court. You know, like on Sesame Street when the Cookie Monster got in trouble for eating Zoe’s cookies? And the judge will decide what happens. But I think everything’s going to be fine.’

  Eve rolled her eyes. ‘Well, if you go to jail, promise me I can live with Grandma and Grandpa, or Aunty Vera. Not Daddy.’

  I felt the breath suck from my body. What? Eve loved her time with her father. They had every second weekend together and a fair amount of time in between. ‘I’m not going to go to jail, honey. But hey… I thought you loved going to the Bat Cave?’

  ‘Yeah, I do. But Daddy’s got a new girlfriend. I met her last night.’

  I clenched my teeth. Bastard. We’d talked about this. Not that it had ever happened until now. No introducing significant others until we’ve briefed the other parent.

  ‘Well, that’s okay, honey. Daddy still loves you best. And the woman… What’s her name?’

  ‘Martha.’ Eve had an inscrutable look on her face. I tried to keep mine open and friendly, like Martha was just the best name in the whole world. Actually, I suspected I looked kind of maniacal, smiling through my clenched teeth. ‘Martha won’t be living with Daddy. She’s just his special friend.’

  She better not live with him.

  Not yet.

  ‘So, did you like Martha?’ I asked, but I didn’t need to.

  Judging by the whole ‘I don’t want to live with Daddy’ routine, Martha must be a complete bitch. Eve liked everyone. Especially women. And she’d long harassed Clark and me about meeting someone we could each marry. She was dying to be a bridesmaid.

  ‘No,’ Eve sniffed. ‘She was nice to me, so I think she’s basically a nice person. But she’s really old Mommy. And apparently…’

  Oh God, that word again.

  ‘…apparently, she gets her clothes at Saks. But I can’t believe it, because they are really very ugly.’

  Oh dear, too much Aunty Vera.

  Heidi was trying to hide her bubbling laughter behind her hand.

  ‘Oh dear, Evie,’ I scolded, patting my faded t-shirt self-consciously and poking my glasses for comfort. ‘That’s not a very nice thing to say, is it?’

  ‘I suppose not,’ she conceded. ‘But, Mommy,’ she goes on, very seriously, ‘it’s really not that hard to make an effort, is it?’

  ‘Umm…’

  Heidi took over again. ‘Look, Eve darling. Of course it’s terribly tragic when people aren’t as glamorous as we are.’ She looked down at the dungarees she was wearing from her latest shift at the shelter. �
�Well…as you are anyway. But it’s just like that kid at pre-school you were telling me about. Remember, the one in the wheelchair? Remember you told me how important it is to be nice to everyone, even if they’re a bit different?’

  I wasn’t really sure about the ethics of comparing Clark’s new girlfriend to someone with a disability. But hey, at least Heidi was trying.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ she agreed. ‘You’re right. Poor Martha. It’s probably not her fault. I think I’ll try harder with her next time. Hmm… I wonder if Martha gets a special sticker on her car so she can park in all the good spots.’

  Okay, time to change the subject.

  ‘Hey, Evie, do you want to go ask Joe if you can help him make you a babycino?’

  ‘Yes please!’ Squeaking with joy, Eve ran inside to see Joe. He’d taken quite the shine to Eve since she told him he had really good taste in clothes for an old man, and that he made an excellent coffee. He was teaching her how to make cappuccino, and apparently — oh, God, it’s catching — she was a star pupil. Surprise, surprise.

  I sometimes worried about Eve’s grown-up-ness. Far from making me all ‘oh my God someone call Baby Mensa, my child’s a genius’, it made me kind of sad. Because of her special situation, she’d spent way too much time around adults — adoring, overly-indulgent adults — and not enough with her own kind, just being a kid. She was doing nursery school now, but she had some ground to make up.

  Heidi was serious again now that Eve was gainfully employed. ‘So, how was it when your Mom and Dad came down to get you out? Did she hurt anyone?’

  ‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ I reply.

  I gave Heidi the abbreviated version of the arrest events. It hurt to talk about the precinct, and even more about having to appear in court the next day. I rushed the story because saying the words made me frightened. And because I wasn’t sure how long Joe would be entertaining Eve.

  ‘Hey, look at her.’ Heidi pointed in through the glass, at Eve mixing up lattes and serving customers. ‘Do you reckon he’ll let her share the tips?’

  I watched my girl, her head thrown back laughing. ‘She’ll take him to the union if he doesn’t.’

  Looking at her in there, I again felt this frozen fear grip my heart, and I cursed my own foolish impulses. How the hell could I save the world if I ended up going to jail and not being around to help and protect my own little Eve?

  Meeting the love of my life — August, 2002

  When I’d found out I was pregnant with Eve, I could not believe I’d been so stupid. I’d known about the condom thing, but in all the craziness of the long night from hell with Clark, the phone call with Wayne, then feigning betrothed-ness — is that a word? — it had simply slipped my mind. And, unusually, I didn’t think about it at all in between either.

  It was a busy time, what with moving out, looking for a new place, and keeping desperately busy trying not to think about any of it. Slipped my mind until four weeks later, that is, when my regular-as-clockwork period had declined to make an appearance.

  I always thought I knew what I would do if I found myself in that situation. I had no moral or ethical objections. In fact, I was a champion of a woman’s right to choose. But when I knew there was a life growing inside me, none of that mattered.

  It was mine, and it was staying.

  I had never felt so certain about anything. And it wasn’t some girly fantasy of playing Mommy. I was under no delusions. I was absolutely terrified every time I thought about raising another person, sure I would screw it up. But from that first moment, I would lie in bed stroking my tummy and whispering into the night ‘I’ll take care of you’.

  Until I was about six weeks pregnant, and the morning sickness started in earnest. What a total misnomer. Morning sickness, my ass. More like morning, noon and all night sickness. I cursed, lamented and gnashed my way through the days under a vile black cloud. I snarled at the paper man. I made faces at children on the street. I took to answering the phone by saying ‘what the hell do you want?’ Everything was hard. Breathing took up too much energy. I am sorry to say I am so deeply, pathetically not-stoic that I actually wondered if I would have to kill myself if the nausea continued beyond the magical twelve week end point everyone kept promising.

  Everything made me sick. Fuel. Onions frying. Perfume. Dogs. Bread.

  Bread, for Pete’s sake. Who on earth does not like the smell of bread?

  And not just food things, either. Certain people. Like there was this guy at the faculty, Brent Smith. Inoffensive, nice guy. Every time I would see him standing at the photocopier I’d gag. I was sure I could smell his body. And don’t get me wrong, he wasn’t a stinky person. I’m not talking underarm odor. I could just smell his warm, body smell. And it made me want to puke. Actually, quite often, it did make me puke. Once, in the bin next to him while he was minding his own business, photocopying. I even got some on his shoes. I started going green just walking past his door and seeing his name plate. And, in return, the poor guy became pathologically horrified by me. The mere sight of my green face lurching toward him, and he would start muttering excuses and running away swiftly. It must be kind of hard on your ego to think you make another human being vomit on sight. Oh well, too bad. It was nothing to the hell I was enduring.

  And worst of all is that you get absolutely no sympathy. Can you imagine any other ailment where you are nauseous every single day and vomit all the time for two or three months and can’t take any drugs to help and no one as much as bats an eyelid? Even Mom got annoyed with me one day when I was comparing my situation to people undergoing chemotherapy and saying how unfair it was that they get so much sympathy and I get none.

  Emmy even said one day that it was lucky we had a large family to take turns at listening to my endless complaining, because she simply could not have done it alone. Which I just used as an opening to complain more, by saying: ‘you actually think you’ve got it bad listening to me? Well, let me tell you about real misery’… You get the picture.

  In fact, the only good thing about my pregnancy was Dean Shirley Wells.

  ***

  Dean Shirley replaced The Shrimp at the faculty after he was found in the stationery cupboard with a freshman, and she was my hero. She was a proper mathematician but she thought teaching mattered too. Dean Shirley sat in on everyone’s classes during her first month in the job, and then gave us each a detailed appraisal.

  ‘Inspired.’ She smiled at me like Maria Brady and I felt myself glow under her gaze.

  ‘Really?’ I knew it wasn’t cool to act so surprised.

  ‘Really,’ she smiled again. ‘You are a wonderful teacher, Lola. And I’m going to do everything I can to keep you.’

  ‘I’m pregnant.’ I hadn’t meant to just blurt it out.

  ‘Well,’ she said, patting my hand. ‘The good news is it only lasts nine months.’

  ‘But I’m only on contract.’

  She winked. ‘We’ll have to do something about that then. Don’t worry, Lola.’ She patted my hand again as tears scratched the back of my eyes. ‘We’ll work something out. I’m nothing if not creative.’ I broke all the rules of meeting your new boss by starting to sob.

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she said, her lovely soft face scrunching a little. ‘Are you okay? Maybe you don’t want to keep working?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I wailed. ‘I do. I do.’ I retrieved a hanky from my purse and blew my nose noisily. ‘I’m just so happy.’ I blew it again. ‘And so sick.’

  ‘Ah. That. Oh dear, Lola, I know all about that. I’ve got four boys.’ She wriggled her chair closer to mine. ‘Lola, I know it’s hard. I wish I could tell you something to make it better. But nothing does. All I can say is that it ends. I promise.’

  I wanted to kiss her.

  ***

  Anyway, apart from Dean Shirley, I honestly thought I’d hit the lowest point of my life while pregnant. By the end, I was lumbering around like a drunken whale, certain that life could not get any worse.

>   Until the labor.

  It seems almost impossible that nineteen hours of agony can make months of illness pale into insignificance. But they can.

  Having a child gave me another thing to add to my list of things I really hate. People — usually men — that say ‘it hurt more than childbirth’. You know what I’m talking about. Men always say it when they get their gonads crunched. When they say it, I just want to castrate them and tell them that maybe that hurts as much as childbirth.

  Childbirth is sent to give us a foretaste of hell.

  For some reason I couldn’t recall as I was screaming in agony in the birthing suite, I had opted for a natural delivery. Although, as I told anyone who would listen afterwards — friends, relatives, ward orderlies — it felt pretty unnatural to me. When it started, I was doing this really cool humming and panting routine, thinking oh yeah, I can handle this. I was so wrong. By hour twelve I was wailing like a banshee, begging the mid-wife to cut my head off and becoming rapidly convinced that it would never, ever come out.

  I can’t believe all the women who say they can’t really remember the pain of childbirth afterwards. You know, I’m sure you’ve heard it. ‘You just sort of forget.’ What a load of crap. Tell me you’d forget if you were walking down the street and someone cut your left arm off with a great big machete. I think not.

  Well, childbirth is just as traumatic. And takes a lot longer.

  And it’s not just the pain.

  I remember thinking before I had the baby that my biggest fear was losing control of my bowels during the whole thing. I had read somewhere it’s reasonably common. But when it actually happened, I couldn’t care less. I could have pooped so much that the City Of New York had to dig a whole new sewer especially for me and I would not have blinked. I was completely wrapped up in my own suffering. I wanted to poop on everyone.

  I knew things were getting grim when I reached over, grabbed Clark by the lapels and demanded he find a way to get rid of the ridiculous entourage that had gathered in the suite to witness the happy event. I think my exact words were ‘If you don’t get rid of every one of these assholes, you’ll never see this baby. I have friends in the feminist underground. You’d have better luck finding someone in witness protection.’