Reproduction
Page 33
245. OFFICIAL NICKNAME OF THE CHILD FORMERLY KNOWN AS IT
Army
Within a week of the child’s birth, Army would shorten the name from Chariot to Riot.
246.
Army
Two years later, when Army took a vocal jazz course to get three easy GPA-boosting credits, the choir sang, I’m gonna ride in the chariot in the morning, Lord for the spring concert. Bunch of white voices shrilling a Negro spiritual.
247. BABIES GROW ON YOU
Heather
She didn’t want one then but she wanted this one now.
She didn’t want anything sucking on her breasts ever again but she imagined Chariot’s mouth would be as neutral as her own hand.
248. THE VIDEO WITH THE BLACK MAN AND THE BURNING CROSSES
Heather
Papa don’t preach
I’ve been losing sleep.
But I made up my mind
I’m keeping my baby.
249. PAPA DON’T PREACH
Army
In one of their several forgettable teenage conversations, Heather argued that Madonna was singing, I’ve been losing sleep, while Army took the position that she was singing, I’m on losing street.
Heather’s three supporting points were 1) the rhyme with trouble deep, 2) the fact that Madonna was losing sleep over worry about her pregnancy, and 3) Madonna’s inability to roll over because of her distension.
Army argued that the song had nothing to do with a pregnant Madonna but about keeping her black boyfriend, her baby in the song. Her papa was a racist, hence the burning crosses in the background of the video. The papa had put Madonna out on losing street.
250. BUT I MADE UP MY MIND
Heather
I’m gonna keep my baby.
If he [survives, Oliver was going to say]—
Chariot.
We’ll cross that bridge later. We’ll see.
Heather was discharged after two days but the baby—Chariot—Chariot stayed in the neonatal intensive care unit. After a few days of the running joke that was their homeschooling effort, Heather and Oliver surrendered to the pull of the hospital and spent hours of their day monitoring his yawns. On most evenings Army and Felicia joined them, and on the weekends Oliver grimly ferried all four of them across the Styx while Felicia recounted horror stories (a woman strangled her children and set them adrift in a fishing boat and when they returned birds had eaten parts of their faces and extremities) and Heather and Army sat in the back combatting the mythic amounts of doom from the adults with a bag of Cocoa Puffs.
I don’t see what there is to see. If I say I’m keeping—
Yeah, Mr. O, you don’t want the kid to grow up
You jumping ahead of God.
in an orphanage and be all confused. You don’t want him clanging his tin cup against the bars of his crib.
We’ll see, Oliver said.
251. ENTERTAINING THE POSSIBILITY OF ANOTHER BABY, BRIEFLY
Felicia
What if God were indeed telling her that she needed to have another child, that this other child whom she could barely imagine, was floating in outer space with Felicia’s mother and Mutter, waiting for Felicia to wash his hair without getting shampoo in his eyes?
252. REGRETS, EDGAR SENDS HIS
Felicia
Why the child? Why the child now? Why the child without the ring? Why the child without her?
She didn’t love him—either—but she would marry him for the same reason she put ribbons on presents and polished her shoes. She was thorough.
Did she misremember the moment when he gave her a watch and one of Mutter’s rings? Wasn’t that the promise of a civil marriage before he rushed ahead of himself and got them married in the eyes of heaven?
She never became his wife or his ex-wife. She was not his surrogate or his mistress. Mistresses, at least, were kept in some state of material decency to compensate for their moral indecency. She was never either.
All the same, Felicia would like to walk through the first floor of the Bay and buy a light blue dress with pleats and shoulder pads for church.
In return, she would get him a uterus for his birthday.
253. MAY THE LORD HAVE MERCY ON JUDGMENT DAY, CONSIDERING
Felicia
At least she never enjoyed it, the actual act, the it of it.
254. STAB ME WITH A FORK
Felicia
She might, might, have had another child with Edgar if she didn’t have to have, have to have, sex with him.
255. THE IT OF IT
Felicia
All right, all right, she enjoyed the two recent times when she should have been at her night class. Okay, three.
256. POP-POP
Oliver
All four of them looking through the glass. He stroked the baby’s stomach with two fingers. His fingernail was larger than the child’s whole hand. The child, Chariot, opened his eyes.
Oliver no longer said adoption. He no longer thought of the baby dying. But he was afraid to hope so openly among the others. When they were looking for fuel to stoke their optimism, their faith, he found himself cautiously pulling them back from their own heartruin.
We’ll see, he said.
The plan as set down by the ex was for Heather to stay with him for the spring semester and through the summer then she would return with Chariot to Leominster. The baby fixed his eyes on Oliver and would not let go.
He said, We’ll see what happens.
For the next eight weeks, he said that a lot. Even when the baby was home, in a crib in Hendrix’s room and Heather was packing her suitcase and sorting out a lie about rehab, Oliver kept saying, We’ll see.
THE SEX TALK
Look.
What’s this?
A picture.
I got eyes, little man. Of what?
Of us.
* * *
+
Guess, guess, guess who.
Is that you?
No, that’s Pop-Pop.
Is that you?
No, that’s Hendrix. I drew him with hair.
Okay. So this one must be you.
That’s you. Don’t you recognize yourself?
Hold up. Is that one you near the garage?
No, that’s a girl. That’s Heather.
Hm. Then this one must be you.
No, that’s a girl too. I’m not a girl. That’s Mutter.
* * *
+
Give it back.
Wait, I haven’t found you yet.
I’m the only one left.
This?
That’s a tree.
* * *
+
Give it back. I’ll fix it.
Last guess. Are you this one?
That’s an airplane.
Obviously. I mean are you on it?
No. I mean yes. I mean no. Give it.
* * *
+
All right. Done. Look again.
You wrote your name.
Now everybody will know which one is me.
The R is backwards.
I wear it backwards.
* * *
+
Mutter’s my mom, I know, but is Pop-Pop my dad?
Pop-Pop is your Pop-Pop.
My real dad or my biological dad?
Real.
But Logan said Pop-Pop is too old to be my dad. So he must be my grandpa.
Probably.
How probably? How can he be Grandpa and my real dad?
Because he’s Pop-Pop.
* * *
+
I’m not crying.
I was just kidding. Nobody dropped you from the sky.
Then where did you find me?
In a box in the garage. I’m kidding, I’m kidding, Riot. We didn’t find you anywhere. You were born just like a normal person.
How’s that?
You know what, go to Pop-Pop upstairs and ask him that.
* * *
+
What happened to Mutter’s skin?
Nothing.
She’s darker than everybody else. Why did she change it?
She didn’t change it. Maybe you changed yours.
Did I? I don’t know. Can I change it back to like Mutter?
Try this summer.
* * *
+
Logan was—
You got to stop talking to this Logan.
Logan was saying that Mutter wasn’t my real mom.
He’s an idiot. You can’t listen to anything he says.
He knows stuff though.
He eats his hair. You told me that.
Only because it makes it grow back. But, listen, Army. Logan said Mutter can’t be my real mom because she’s black and I told him, she wasn’t black she was brown and then he said he was white and I was white and I said no he was pink but then he said his mom said that Mutter was black and that you were half black, like grey, but I don’t even know when was the last time his mother saw Mutter.
* * *
+
Let’s everybody go around the table and say who their biological mother is.
How about where instead?
Okay, where. I’ll go first because I’m easy. Mine is in the movies.
* * *
+
Let’s everybody go around the table and say what their biological mother is doing right now.
You’re obsessed, little Riot.
You go first.
She’s staring at Pop-Pop. She’s putting her fork down. She’s getting up. She’s walking to the kitchen. She’s trying to get me to stop. She’s saying stop. She’s flapping.
What else?
She’s coming back. She’s sitting down. She’s giving you some cherry tomatoes.
No! I already ate mine.
Eat two more. We can play but you gotta eat at the same time.
Okay, my turn, my turn. My biological mother is making a movie with a lot of guns and blood and she’s doing her own stunts.
* * *
+
Mutter, you have to say.
Her parents are dead, Riot.
All four of them?
Yeah.
Are they dead in heaven or on earth?
Heaven.
Still, what are they doing right now?
* * *
+
No, no, everybody has a biological mother and a real mother.
Not everybody, Riot. I just gots the one mom and dad.
No, you got two moms and two dads. Everybody’s got two. Aren’t you supposed to know this? You’re like a hundred years older than me.
Don’t believe me if you don’t want to.
I have two moms and two dads. I don’t know about you. You must have been poor.
* * *
+
Tell me about her again.
She’s an actress. Very beautiful.
How beautiful?
Like smoking. All the men in Hollywood wanted to get with her. It got so bad that she had to move to New York.
* * *
+
Tell me again.
She used to act in soap operas and action movies and sometimes do voice-overs on the radio. I think she might have read the news at one point.
Did you know her?
Yeah, before she got famous. I was the one—
Yeah?
I was the one who told her to lend you to us.
Until she finished making movies.
Right.
* * *
+
Because she has to be thin in the movies.
You got it, you got it. And they couldn’t have a baby on set crying all the time. They don’t like babies in Hollywood.
What do they do with them?
You know.
Tell me again.
They put them in wicker baskets and float them into the ocean.
Like Moses.
That’s where they got the idea from.
So you and Mutter and Pop-Pop and Heather and Hendrix all saved me.
* * *
+
And Dad? My biological dad, not my real dad.
I told you a million times.
Just tell me again.
He’s in the army.
The Turkish militia.
See, you know all this already.
And.
And if he finds you, he’s going to hold you up by the leg and take his scimitar and cut you in half down the middle.
He’s a bad man.
The worst. So we can never
Never, never
let him know where you are.
* * *
+
When do you have to give me back?
Come again?
To my biological mom.
Yeah, no, we don’t have to give you back anymore.
She doesn’t want me?
I never told you that part of the story?
No.
Your biological mom came back for you.
And you didn’t give me back?
She was making a movie in Toronto and when it was done, she came back. She was wearing a fox around her shoulders. Real Hollywood. She said, in this deep smoky voice, I’m here for my baby. And Mutter put you in her arms, but then you started screaming. I never saw you scream that much.
And she didn’t want me.
No, she wanted you very much. But you didn’t want her, see. That’s why you were screaming. And she knew that you were happier here so she gave you back to Mutter and Pop-Pop and got on an airplane and went back to New York.
I wouldn’t scream if I saw her now.
She also gave them a whole bunch of money to take care of you.
* * *
+
What was her name?
You know better than to ask that.
Tell me this time.
I forget.
No! You don’t forget.
She had to change her name when she went to Hollywood.
To what?
She has many names. She has her Hollywood name and her New York name.
And her real name?
Her old name, yeah.
Tell me that one.
* * *
+
How beautiful?
The most beautiful woman in the movies. If you watch enough, you’ll recognize her. She looks just like you.
* * *
+
I think you do it just to piss Pop-Pop off.
Do what? What am I doing?
They tried to make me go to rehab.
I said, No, no, no.
It’s not funny.
Yes, I been black.
You get to drive away in your car.
But when I come back.
But I have to sit here and listen to him go on and on about Hendrix.
You’ll know, know, know.
* * *
+
I researched it, Army. When I turn eighteen, I can find out about my biological mother.
You don’t care about your birth father?
Fathers are harder to track down. Sometimes they don’t even know. It says right here.
Not every biological mother wants to be found.
You don’t think she wants to see me?
Don’t take this the wrong way, but if she wanted to keep seeing you after she spat you out her body she would have kept you.
Ew.
I’m just telling you how it is.
So I shouldn’t bother.
* * *
+
I should just forget her?
Not everyone should reproduce.
Forget her then?
Forget her.
I don’t know.
Trust me. You’re dead to her.
I’m not dead.
To her. And she’s dead to you.
Even if she was dead to me, I’m not dead to her.
* * *
+
She’s gotta think about me s
ometime.
She doesn’t.
How do you know everything all of a sudden?
I’m just tryna save you from getting invested in a woman who could be dead.
I hate you sometimes, you know that?
Truth hurts, bud. I’m only saying this ’cause I love you.
* * *
+
No, I’m done. I’m never going to talk about it again.
You don’t still believe you’re a celebrity kid?
No, but I mean I could be. You don’t know.
Because—
Because you found me in a box in the garage.
* * *
+
They were having sex. Logan and Miranda.
Wait, wait, they’re eleven.
That’s what they were doing, I’m telling you.
They were just playing. They didn’t even know they were having sex.
I don’t know if they knew, but I knew they were having sex.
* * *
+
Army, I’m serious. You can’t be taking dumps when I’m in here.
This was my bathroom before it was yours.
You’re gonna stink up the place.
Well, hurry up and get out of the shower. Oh, it’s a big one. How did all that fit up there?
So disgusting.
It’s like two feet. You wanna see?
* * *
+
Open the window, man.
That done ripped me up. Open the window.
The door’s open.
The window, Army.
Breathe through your mouth.
* * *
+
When are you going to get married, Army?
You’re not getting the basement.
How long are you going to live here?
As long as I want. If you want the basement, then you get married.