The Seven Year Bitch

by Jennifer Belle

  “Well, it’s the safest thing since I had one before,” I told her. “And besides, my stomach’s already ruined but my vagina’s still great.”

  She’d had the worst labor story I’d ever heard of. She did it with no drugs with a midwife and had forty hours of back labor before they figured out that the baby was breach.

  “Ja, but you will not experience the joys of childbirth,” she actually said. “For instance,” she said, “Rolph and I still talk about when Minerva was born.”

  I looked at her in disbelief.

  “Don’t you think Russell and I still talk about when Duncan was born?” I asked, shocked at her insensitivity, that she actually thought that because we’d had a mere emergency C-section, we’d forgotten all about it. It was just another day not worth remembering.

  When we got to ABC, since I had no real reason for being there, I agreed to go to the toy department so the kids could run around for a few minutes. They spotted a huge plush rocking horse and ran to it, but Minerva beat Duncan there and climbed onto its high back.

  “Oh, no!” Gerde whispered when Minerva climbed down again quite a while later. “What should I do?” She pointed at the horse, whose brown fur was matted with shit.

  “You don’t have her in a Pull-Up?”

  “She likes to wear her new princess panties,” Gerde said. She nonchalantly looked at the price tag dangling from the rocking horse’s silky ear, terrified they might have a you-shit-on-it-youbuy-it policy.

  “Five hundred dollars,” she gasped. “Do I have to buy this big ugly equine? It’s out of the question.” There was a big brown wet spot on the back of Minerva’s white sweater dress. She was about to climb on an even more expensive camel. “I don’t really want to buy it.”

  “Especially now that it’s covered with shit,” I said.

  “What would you do if you were me?” she asked.

  “I’d get outta here,” I said. And I’d put that princess in a Pull-Up, I added silently to myself.

  “Quick, you get the children, and I will buy this,” she said, grabbing a blue velvet dress from a rack.

  I herded the children to a basket of animal pillows while Gerde bought the dress. Then she grabbed Minerva and headed to the ladies room for a guilty quick-change operation, leaving the besmirched horse and any unsuspecting child who sat on it to his own demise.

  “It was nice meeting you,” Gerde said when we were in front of my building.

  “Nice meeting you,” I said and hurried into my lobby.

  36

  I sat next to Russell in the cab on the way to the hospital while he talked about how he hadn’t seen some neighbor or other and he wondered if she had moved out.

  I started to get angry.

  “Who cares?” I said. “We’re going into the hospital to have our baby! Our baby! It’s not normal to talk about some neighbor, some neighbor I don’t give a shit about!” If he were the one having surgery in less than an hour he’d be gripping my hand and boo-hooing all about it.

  “Sorry,” he said nastily. The driver eyed us through the rearview mirror.

  Guiltily, I thought about Gabe.

  Gerde’s voice was marching around like a Nazi in my head. It was like any other day. We weren’t even excited.

  “I just think you would be a little more excited.”

  “I’m excited,” Russell said miserably. “This is great,” he said, taking my hand, his mouth formed into a frown.

  “And let’s try not to fight when we bring the baby home,” I said.

  We’d had a huge fight when we’d brought Duncan home because Russell’s only job was to buy Tylenol for me at the drugstore and when he’d come to pick us up he’d proudly handed me the box of regular-strength Tylenol. “Regular strength!” I’d shouted through my tears. “Regular strength. Do I look like I’m in regular-strength pain to you? Who would even buy this? If you’re in regular pain why take anything at all? I’ve been in regular pain for nine months, now I’m in extra pain.” I’d ranted like that for a while and then slam-dunked the unopened box into the garbage can.

  “We won’t have a fight,” Russell said, unconvincingly.

  “I hope our son never asks what it was like when we went to the hospital to have him,” I said.

  “ I have a difficult back,” I told the anesthesiologist.

  “Yes, you do,” he said.

  “Where’s Dr. Sitbon? I need the doctor here to help me.” I missed Dr. Lichter more than I had ever missed anyone in my entire life. “I can’t do this without Dr. Sitbon,” I warned, but the needle slid right in with no pain.

  Then Russell was let in wearing his scrubs and Dr. Sitbon joined us. “Madame,” he said.

  “Please, call me Izzy,” I said.

  And before I knew it he was holding my baby up over the partition but this time all I saw was legs.

  At New York Presbyterian–Cornell Weill Medical Center, a private room in the maternity ward is $950 a night. I was given the bed by the window. I didn’t have a roommate yet. My parents came and Russell’s aunt and uncle. Russell’s parents called on the hospital phone.

  “So, do we have a name?” his mother asked, even though we had already told her we had chosen Rhys.

  “It’s Rhys,” I said. “Rhys Samuel.”

  “Rhys?” his mother sneered. “What kind of name is Rhys? I never thought I’d have a grandson named Reeses Pieces. Oh weh-ell. I assume you’re done.”

  “Done?” I asked.

  “Yes, done. Through having children.”

  “For today,” I said.

  “Don’t tell me you want more.”

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “Well, I’m surprised they didn’t just tie your tubes while you were there on the table.”

  I handed the phone back to Russell.

  When visiting hours were over and my parents and Russell went home to be with Duncan, she was wheeled in, a fat blond woman wearing a pink baseball hat with the word Bitch on it, written in rhinestoned script. She was accompanied by her minutes-old baby and her seven other children, the eldest of whom, I figured out, was retarded. The youngest was a beautiful little boy Duncan’s age whose name was James.

  The nurse yanked the curtain closed and I listened to her struggle out of her wheelchair and into the bed.

  “James,” she screamed, when he and his retarded brother came over to my side of the room for the third time and gaped at my catheter and my naked breasts, “if you don’t get over here right now I’ll kick your ass all over this room! Stupid!”

  “It’s okay,” I said through the curtain. “He’s adorable.”

  “He’s a little shit,” she said. “If he bothers you I’ll smack him.”

  The little boy’s chin was shaking and all I could think was how carefully we had handled this transition for Duncan, how hard we had worked to make the new big-boy bed special and the closetful of big-brother presents we had waiting for him. I had brought a framed photo of him to put by my bed when he came to visit the new baby in the hospital and packed my suitcase with more presents. I wanted to give one of them to James but there were all his siblings who might be jealous. We had even thought of Humbert’s feelings and bought him seven-dollar carrot bones and Russell had already brought a receiving blanket home to him so he could get used to the baby’s scent. When we brought the baby home, we would all meet first on the street as we had with Duncan, and then we’d go up to the apartment, so Hum could lead the way home and invite the baby into his den.

  I laughed nervously. “What’s your baby’s name?” I asked.

  “I haven’t decided so we just calling her Stinky Mama,” she said through the curtain.

  “Stinky Mama,” I said.

  “Don’t touch Stinky Mama!” she yelled at someone on her side of the room.

  At nine p.m. a woman came and took my roommate’s children home, and she got on the phone with someone she called Mimoo, who I thought might be her grandmother.

  “I don’
t care if you give me a drawer full of con-domes,” she said, “it ain’t gonna do nothing to help me. I gotta get me a man, Mimoo. I gotta get me a man.” Then two visitors came for her and she got off the phone. The visitors, who I noted with indignation had arrived at nine thirty, were a man and a woman who brought a big bag of McDonald’s, and for the next two hours she flirted tirelessly with the man.

  “Look at you, if you eat all that you gonna be big as a house. And you already big,” the man said to her.

  She giggled and flirted. “Well I know you like all of this,” she said.

  “He’s ready to make another baby witchu right now if you’re not careful,” her friend said.

  “I’m ready anyplace anytime,” the mother of Stinky Mama said.

  I was shocked. Scandalized. My baby, who was rooming in with me in a plastic bassinet, was listening to this.

  This was New York Presbyterian–Cornell Weill Medical Center—the best labor-and-delivery hospital in the world—not a rent-by-the-hour hooker hotel. What kind of woman would try to pick up men hours after having a baby?

  Finally at midnight they left, and I thought I could get some sleep, but yet another man came to visit her.

  I’d had a baby. I’d had surgery. My painkillers weren’t doing the trick. I was starving and nauseated, and I had a headache from the spinal.

  “Hey, sweet baby,” the man’s voice slurred from the door.

  “Hey, bab-e-eee,” my roommate said back. “How’d you get in here?”

  “I told them I was the daddy.”

  “Maybe you is.”

  “That baby don’t look nothin’ like me. I ain’t had no Chinese baby.”

  “She ain’t Chinese!”

  “She looks fucking Chinese.”

  I lay stiffly in my bed listening to the sounds of kissing and soft moaning.

  Just then I heard yet another man’s voice say, “Knock knock.”

  “Come in,” the mother of Stinky Mama said.

  This was too much! Jesus, I thought, who now? How many men were going to show up here? It was like giving birth in a brothel. It was like giving birth in the parking lot at Coney Island. It was like having a baby on a stoop at Forty-second Street and Tenth Avenue. It was after midnight. “Um, visiting hours are really supposed to be over,” I said sharply. “I’m going to have to call the nurse.”

  “Don’t be hating,” she said.

  “Look, I’m sorry but you’ve had men here all night,” I said.

  “The visitor ain’t fo’ me,” she said. “So you should be minding yo’ own damn business.”

  And Gabe Weinrib was suddenly standing by my bedside. He looked gorgeous in a black knit hat and pea coat, which he took off and put on a chair. He went to the bassinet. “Look at him!” he said, gazing down at my beautiful baby. “Oh God. Oh God, look at him.”

  I had no idea what to say. I had no idea what I must look like, stuck to an IV pole, wrapped in a totally unflattering white hospital gown with a black geometric print.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling. I pulled the skimpy white cotton blanket up over me. “How did you get past the guards at this hour?” I asked.

  “I actually used to date a doctor from here, and she gave me this.” He held up an ID hanging from a cord around his neck with a picture of a doctor who looked nothing like him. “I just had to flash it and they let me right in. Is it okay that I’m here? I didn’t want to come if, uh, everyone was here and I figured you’d be up. I wanted to see you and Rhys. I’m leaving for Paris in the morning.”

  “Bitch!” the man said from Stinky Mama’s side of the curtain.

  “Whoa,” Gabe said, standing stiffly as if he were getting ready for a fight.

  “Tell yo’ husband to be minding his own damn bidness,” the man said.

  “That ain’t her husband,” Stinky Mama’s mother said. “Her husband was here before.”

  “So what she talkin’ about you have all these men and she got mo’ men than you?”

  “Actually she had more men,” I said. “I just had one, she had two.”

  “You had yo’ husband and now him. That’s two. We tied, two fo’ two,” my roommate said.

  She had a point, I thought. I was no different from her. We were up to exactly the same thing.

  “Whatchu mean you had two men? You had another man here, bitch?”

  “Okay, take it easy,” Gabe said.

  “You take it easy,” the man said.

  Luckily, the nurse came in and handed me two white pills in a paper cup. “Time for your Percocet,” she said. “I’ll give you all a few more minutes, and then you really should be leaving. Husbands aren’t allowed to stay overnight in a semi-private room.”

  “That’s not/ain’t her husband,” Stinky Mama’s mother and I both said at the same time.

  The nurse frowned. “Well gentlemen, two minutes and everyone out.”

  “I’ll let you get some sleep,” Gabe said. “I think it’s an incredible thing you’ve done and I respect you for it. Bringing two children into the world. Mother of two.”

  “You gonna give that baby yo’ tittie and let me watch?” the man said on the other side of the curtain.

  “Gentlemen,” the nurse said.

  “I brought you something to eat,” Gabe said.

  “She’s only allowed clear liquids until she passes gas,” the nurse said.

  “Whoo, I don’t want to be here when that shit happens,” Stinky’s visitor said.

  My cheeks burned with embarrassment.

  “It’s clear chicken consommé. Jean-Georges made it for you himself. But keep me posted about the gas.”

  He took my hand and kissed it.

  “You have a beautiful son,” he said, grabbing his coat. And then he left.

  A few minutes later the nurse came back in. “You’re changing rooms,” she said to me.

  “Why!” I said, not wanting to. I hated my roommate but I had grown to love her too. We had already been through so much together and now I would never know what happened tomorrow, who would show up, who would be Stinky Mama’s daddy. Tomorrow they were going to make me stand up and walk, and I would be able to drag my IV past her bed and see through the gaps in the curtains. Now I wouldn’t even get to see Stinky.

  “Why does she get to change rooms?” Stinky’s mama said.

  “Don’t be hating,” I said. “Ask them to move you to the window side.”

  Two more nurses came and shifted me onto a gurney and transported me, clutching my soup and my baby, to a private corner room with its own bathroom and refrigerator and windows looking out at the river.

  “Why do I get this room?” I asked.

  “Because your boyfriend just handed over a ton of cash. Now I’ve really seen everything,” she said.

  If I were to write an essay in one hundred words or less giving my best tip if you’re about to have a baby, it would be: Spring for a private room.

  The next morning was blissful despite the pain. I was alone with the baby until Russell showed up. I held him and nursed him, and I thought, This isn’t so bad. I could get used to feeling this much love. My mother came with Duncan, and Duncan ran all around the private room and then settled in a big chair to hold his baby brother for the first time. “I’ve decided to call him Pubba,” he said. The nurse got me up out of bed and it wasn’t as painful as the last C-section. Walking hunched over, I wheeled my IV all around. I visited the snack cart several times and carried my own pink plastic pitcher over to the crushed-ice dispenser and Poland Spring water cooler.

  Russell and I decided it would be better, despite the chair in the private room that opened into a bed, for him to be home with Duncan, and I was enjoying being alone with Rhys.

  I breathed in his faint smell of burning sugar. I had read somewhere that Buddhists believe that our cremation began at birth and that we spend our life slowly burning.

  Dr. Sitbon came to visit me. “Madame?” he said. “How are you feeling?”

  I wished
more than anything it could be Dr. Lichter there instead, in his suit and tie that he wore for rounds, with his interns trailing him like an ermine cape. I missed the way he held my hand, looked at my scar and called it art. I missed his advice about parenthood.

  I told Dr. Sitbon I was feeling fine.

  “You looked disappointed to see me. Perhaps you were expecting someone else? The nurses told me you had a visitor late into the night,” he said, which sounded even more clandestine in his French accent.

  “Would it be safe, Doctor,” I said, “to travel with the baby right away?”

  “You have a trip planned?”

  “No. I was just wondering if a trip to a place like India would be safe.”

  “Well, I certainly would not advise it,” he said. “Can it wait a while?”

  I smiled and shrugged, and he examined me in the politest of ways. “This doctor you married,” I said. “What’s her name?”

  “His name is Steven,” he said. “He’s a man actually.”

  Then I laughed, thinking about how I had lusted after him for nine months. I laughed so hard I hurt my incision and had to be given more Percocet.

  With my baby in the crook of my elbow, I lay back and closed my eyes.

  “Izzy,” a man’s voice said.

  I opened my eyes and, to my complete astonishment, found Dr. Lichter standing over my bed, looking right down at me.

  “Dr. Lichter,” I said, practically jumping up, forgetting my baby and my incision.

  “I couldn’t let you have a baby without coming to say hello. I looked at your chart. Everything seems perfect.”

  He took the baby from me and held him up, the way he had once held Duncan. “You make beautiful babies,” he said.

  I was overjoyed. He had come.

  “Are you working here again?” I asked. He wasn’t wearing a lab coat or a suit and tie for that matter. He was dressed the way I had seen him in Kripplebush, in jeans and a Red Sox hat.

  “No, I’m practicing upstate in New Paltz now. Let’s just say I came to clean out my locker.”

  I thought of my locker with its beautiful earrings and vasectomy gift certificate in it.