Milk

by Darcey Steinke

  The baby fell asleep, his body warm as a patch of sunlight against her sweater, his tiny mouth open and his eyelids as fragile as flower petals. Maybe he dreamt of the time before his conception when he’d inhabited every blade of grass. She figured he could read the consciousness of objects; that’s why the pot of ivy fascinated him, as if each shiny leaf transmuted an idea. He got as much from watching the aura around a lightbulb as the expression on her face. He slept, drooling into the material of the baby carrier, until the thud of the elevator doors jolted him awake.

  As she unlocked the front door of her apartment, he arched his back, wrinkled his face up and screamed. Mary pulled off her coat, unbuttoned her blouse and yanked down the flap of her nursing bra. At the scent of her body, the baby agitated his face against her nipple like a baby bird. His tiny features relaxed as he latched on and sucked. The glands high in her breast tingled as her milk came down. Usually her milk was exclusively for the baby, but occasionally the sweet liquid came for flood victims on television and when the homeless man asked her for a quarter. Sometimes she leaked milk when the neighbor’s dog barked or at the memory of how excited her mother got during her favorite TV show. The baby emptied her breast, and so she shifted him, hand cupped around his black hair, and forced his mouth onto her left.

  At first she’d read magazines while nursing: articles about endangered albino owls, and how a deaf doctor was the best surgeon in Soviet Russia. But now any word longer than two syllables exhausted her and made her feel nervous. So she stared out the window at the snow coming down, until the baby’s mouth released her nipple and she burped him against her shoulder, changed his wet diaper and lay him in his bassinet.

  She tiptoed out of the room and flung herself down on her bed, listening to the sound of the occasional car tires muted and lovely in the new snow. No matter how tired her muscles felt or how much her head ached, blood raced in her veins. She tried again to pray. Come, Lord Jesus, have mercy on me. But the mole above her left eyebrow started to throb. Was it cancerous? She jumped up to check it in the bathroom mirror. Settling down again, she imagined sweeping all her petty thoughts off the end of a dock with a long bristly janitor’s broom, but just when her head felt clear, she thought about the steak and mashed potatoes she wanted to make for dinner, that she needed dental floss and more liquid Tylenol.

  The sensation of the baby’s lips on her nipple lingered. Walter would understand; he himself believed in the necessity of physical pleasure. So she dragged her pointer finger over her tongue and slid her hand beneath the waistband of her underpants. She felt her clit begin to rotate. Only God could infuse something so rudimentary with life. She was made out of cosmic refuse—stardust, smoky vapor—and so occasionally if she concentrated, she could tease down the life force for her own selfish use.

  She sank her finger inside herself, and really, though she didn’t mean to brag, she was ridiculously wet and decided therefore to split the universe. Fuck me, she said, and then again, but more politely, Fuck me, please. There was so much vulgarness inside her; it was beautiful really. But she could be tender too. She planned to ask the Man at the coffee shop about the scar over his right eyebrow and he would tell her that as a little boy he’d fallen onto the ice. And that worked for a while: the little boy falling onto the cold, hard ice, wet blood pooling above his blue eye, a drop or two saturating the snow.

  The phone sounded like the twill of a metal bird. Her husband calling from the office to tell her HE wanted to come home but that THEY wanted him to go out to another Christmas party. The baby shifted in the bassinet, and Mary closed her eyes and went directly to the babysitter’s thin teenage body entwined with her boyfriend’s thin teenage body, as they fucked crazily on the couch. And for a while that was okay, the scent of Coca-Cola and sweat as their flat stomachs and sharp hips collided. But then it wasn’t enough and it was time for the father to walk over to the couch, lower his pants and offer the babysitter his cock.

  This worked immediately; a sweet sting infused her flesh. But just as quickly the water began to leak out of the drain. And she tried frantically to inhabit each of them, father, babysitter, boyfriend. Each had characteristics as mysterious as the holy trinity. She decided to kick the babysitter out. But it was too late. She was the babysitter, the unbabysitter, the ur-babysitter, the ghost in the babysitter. She tensed her pelvis and a swarm of butterflies careened up her spine. The vibrations entered her like radio waves, her bones felt molten and she was a twig pitched out into the universe. And that WAS IT: Her sex twitched and she felt the lobes of her brain open like a flower and she was inside of a wave, made from torn-up flower petals. Broken petals filling her mouth as she swung open the car door and staggered away from the crash. Flames jumping from the engine, her head banged up and spacey, her pelvis tipped and aching as if she actually had gotten fucked. Blood beat inside her ear and as the impact dissipated, her sadness swelled. Nothing had changed. Sure, the snow under the car tires had degenerated into slush, but that had more to do with decay than divinity and it was infuriating, really, having to wait so long for him to come.

  THREE

  WHEN MARY WOKE at two A.M. her husband was still not home. The baby slept pressed against her breast like a puppy in a litter, and she was afraid if she slept again she’d smother him with her hair. She heard this had happened in Utah, a baby choked by sucking a clump of his mother’s hair; she heard too that a father had forgotten his baby in a car seat and that the baby, in the heat of the sealed car, had died. She heard that a helicopter blade had decapitated a baby, and that a grandmother on a ferryboat had lost her grip and her tiny granddaughter had disappeared into the boat’s churning water.

  The baby whimpered and agitated his mouth. She carried him to the front room, sat on the blue chair and helped him latch on to her nipple. Objects in the dark glinted, as if mica chips ran through everything. Her lucidity was terrifying; she wanted her consciousness to break down into softer parts. So she ran through all the car games she’d played as a kid. Telling the baby how first she would ask a silly question and then her mother would ask an even sillier one: Can I eat my hat for lunch? Are your underpants made of ice cream? Did you like your butterfly sandwich? And then the other game where her mother would give her a choice between two things: Would you rather be a dog or a cat? Would you rather be a cheese sandwich or a toasted cheese sandwich?

  The phone started its electronic purr and for some reason she thought of an image from her childhood: President Kennedy’s wounded head, not scary now, just soft and sad. After the beep her husband said, These jokers are keeping me out all night. Muffled shouts, a girl said something in French and then her husband again: If I can get a cab, I’ll be home soon, if not, I’ll have to take the subway. And it was in the silence after the tape rolled back as she set the baby in his bassinet that a flash of light came from a source behind her. She turned and saw the sparks hovering again but this time in the corner of the bedroom.

  She walked closer; each diorama showed a different scene. A porcelain lamp, a fluorescent panel, each smaller than a pea but so particular, as if her eyes were as powerful as microscopes. A chrome lamp showed a woman cutting the fingernails of a small child, and an oak tree was silhouetted by a streetlight. She stepped closer and saw the expression on the face of an old man reading a newspaper.

  Outside half-hearted flurries swirled down over the sidewalk. She’d decided to put the baby into the carrier and walk down to the Brooklyn Bridge.

  Flakes collected on the shoulders of her coat, and the cold bit into her bare hands. Since the very first week of her pregnancy all her senses had been elevated. She was like a wolf, able to smell cigarette smoke from half a block away and warm Chinese food from the restaurant on Court Street. Her vision was sharper too; she could make out every nuance of the rotting leaves between the grates of the gutter. Static snow flew around, and it was so quiet she could hear her own footfalls and so looked down at her boots making patterns in the fine layer of sidewal
k snow.

  She looked up to the lower Manhattan skyline. Office windows lit up like links in a gold chain. Flakes whirled around as she stood on the cobblestones between Bargemusic and the River Café. Bee lights covered the maples. Above them, the stone base of the bridge, steel girders fanning out. Through the restaurant’s sliding doors she saw a bartender in a white jacket move into view, pick up a glass and step toward the liquor bottles, which were tiny and radiant as jewels.

  When she got home her husband was sleeping fully clothed on the bed, his hair reeking of cigarette smoke. She watched him for a while, his chest moving up and down, his eyelids jerking in REM sleep. He was very beautiful with his long face and narrow shoulders, like a stone prince on top of a crypt. When she first met him her own father had just gotten married again and she’d been new to New York City and lonely. He was a bike messenger with a long ponytail, he smoked joints in the back of churches on his rounds and on the weekends took her to raves where they took ecstasy and danced in crowds of sweaty people. Stellar sex always followed and she wanted him past all of her experience of wanting. Wanting him was like wanting the moon, an aloof and glamorous disk of shifting light.

  The baby began to whine. She changed his diaper, then sat with him in the blue chair, but each time she offered her nipple, he pursed his lips and turned his face away. To calm him she walked around the apartment. It was as ritualistic as the Stations of the Cross, beginning with her polka-dot shirt; she held up the shirt on its hanger and he grew pensive. Before the pattern ceased to interest him, she moved on to the ivy plant, that one particular leaf that fascinated him, and she felt him relax his weight against her shoulder; his head fell into the crook of her neck and he slept.

  FOUR

  MARY ORDERED MINT tea and a cranberry muffin and sat in a chair in back listening to Christmas jazz and watching snow blow horizontally past the front window. The wood tables were mostly empty, just a young woman in a ponytail writing out Christmas cards and the Man at his usual table in back. She glanced at him as he wrote in his notebook. Sometimes he used a felt-tip marker and other times she saw him use a pencil to trace a blueprint, a long sprawling single-story house. He always wore the same outfit: khaki pants creased down the front and a white button-down shirt, each cuff folded back neatly to the elbow. His shoulders were heavy and wider than her husband’s, and he had wrinkles around his eyes.

  She sat down. The baby’s face was smushed against the side of the carrier, and he was elfin in his little green cap and matching mittens. He grimaced in his sleep. She shouldn’t have had that slice of onion on her tuna fish at lunch. Onions did odd things to her milk. She rocked forward to comfort him. Snowflakes outside zigzagged across the window, and inside, the wood grain of her table glimmered. She watched the counter girl use silver tongs to lay glazed donuts out in the display case.

  Her husband’s story about last night was rickety, particularly his account of the hours between two and when he reached home at five. Instead of being contrite, he was angry about her questions. She’d ruined everything by being jealous; now he didn’t want to stay home Christmas Eve. They’d planned to make dinner and watch a video, open the presents she had bought for the baby. Now he was going to the Orphan’s Party his friend Roger threw every year.

  Mary yelped and sprang up; something had bitten her leg. A hand laid down a wedge of napkins over the spilled tea, and when she turned she saw the Man leaning forward, so close she could have touched his face.

  “Sorry,” Mary said, motioning to the tipped paper teacup. “I’m clumsy.”

  “Not to worry,” he said. “Are you wet?”

  Mary examined the baby and then her coat for spots, but the tea had only stained her pant leg. “I’m fine,” she said.

  The Man hesitated; he didn’t seem to want to go back to his own table. “You look tired.”

  Mary blushed. “I guess I am,” she said. “You know, not a lot, just a little.” She pressed her fingernails into the palm of her hand and thought of herself in her ratty coat moving around the neighborhood.

  “My name is John.” He held out his hand.

  “Mary,” she said, touching his thick fingers.

  “Can I sit here?” he said, pulling out a chair.

  Mary looked at the empty chair and nodded.

  “What are you reading?” She pointed to the book splayed in half on the table.

  “Poincaré this evening. I’m rather taken with his claim that he could move material objects from one closed container to another.”

  “Could he?” Mary asked.

  “Probably not. He also insisted that once when he rotated a cup”—he swirled his coffee—“a little sparrow flew out of the bottom.”

  Mary saw in his blue eyes a few specks of white which shifted slowly like plastic chips in a snow dome.

  “Did he have any theories about air having the same properties as paper?”

  John’s expression didn’t change but his eyebrows shifted up. “How do you mean?”

  “It’s going to sound crazy,” Mary said, “but reality can get these little pinprick holes.”

  John leaned forward conspiratorially; the tea bag in his paper cup looked like a blouted trout. “What you describe sounds like an aleph, a point in space that contains all points. The most famous one on record was in 1938. A boy living with his mother in an apartment in Barcelona claimed he saw the night sky swarming with tiny lights whenever he rolled up his mother’s bread bin.”

  “Just the one scene?”

  “My guess is that the poor boy confused what he was seeing—the entire world from every angle simultaneously—with a meteor shower. You can understand his mistake, all those light sources swirling at once.”

  “So other people have seen it?”

  John nodded and blushed from the rim of his hairline all the way out to his earlobes, and Mary saw that the scar over his eyebrow was shaped more like a raisin than a sunflower seed. She looked over to his notebook where he had drawn a star configuration. “Canis Major” was written out at the top and there were little arrows pointing to Sirius and Aludra.

  The baby slept sprawled out on John’s futon as he carried the bottle of brandy over to the table. He was not as handsome as her husband. John’s face was plain, but there was something behind it, not light exactly, though light’s focused beam was part of her understanding of his appeal. As she laid out the details of her life—baby, husband, how she wanted to write poetry but had become a schoolteacher instead—she took in the décor of his apartment, the futon, chest of drawers, marble fireplace. No television or radio, just a dozen books on the window ledge. Hanging over the mantel was a crucifix; a wasted wooden Jesus on a metal cross.

  “That’s the only thing I brought from my cell.”

  Mary felt her jaw drop and her mouth fall open. His thick upper arms, his crew cut; she glanced at his hands for jailbird tattoos.

  John laughed. “No. No. No. It’s not what you think. I use to live in a monastery.”

  “With the monks?”

  He set two teacups on the table and tipped the brandy bottle into each. “I was a monk.”

  Mary saw him in a long robe walking along a stone corridor. “What happened?”

  He sat back in his chair. “It’s a good question. I think if my dissatisfaction had been parceled out, things might have been different. But one day during the long silence in the middle of diurnum, I just realized that after fifteen years I was no closer to God than the day I entered.” He looked out onto the dark street.

  The baby began to cry, and Mary picked him up and pressed him against her shoulder. “I’m afraid he’s hungry,” she said. “I need to get back.”

  “You can nurse him. I don’t mind,” John said.

  Mary looked at him tentatively, but the baby was animated, agitating his head like a baby bird and crying so hard his face was red and his whole body trembled. She took the cloth diaper out of her pocket and laid it over her shoulder, unbuttoned her shirt and reache
d under to unlatch the flap of her nursing bra. Her face got hot as he slurped, and she stared down at the baby’s tiny elbows, his hands under the cloth cupping her breast.

  John held his body at an awkward angle, as if she wasn’t nursing but amputating somebody’s leg.

  “I can stop,” she said.

  “No!” he said fiercely, his expression drawn, his eyes flooding with water.

  FIVE

  THE ORPHANS’ CHRISTMAS Party was in the East Village. Chili-pepper lights encircled the windows and the refrigerator was filled with beer. All the furniture was pushed back to the wall and there were sagging bodega roses around in coffee cups. About a dozen people had already arrived, all younger than her, and mostly women who worked at the production company with her husband. Her husband got her a glass of seltzer, and they leaned on the window casement and talked about the baby.

  He liked the goofy expression the baby made when he was angry and how much he loved that one leaf on the ivy plant in the living room. How he’d suck on anything, a dirty T-shirt, the side of a cereal box. As he talked, his eyes followed a young woman in leather pants around the party. You’ve been so freaked out lately. I wish you could be mellower. She could tell by the way he moved his hand around that he was getting drunk. The God stuff, you know that’s a bunch of bullshit.

  A guy that her husband used to know came up and he talked about how happy he was not to be at his mother’s condo in Florida. He wore a porkpie hat and a Kraftwerk T-shirt. It was so depressing down there with all the old people. A tall girl joined them, introducing herself as China. Thank the Lord, I don’t have to go to Memphis. My father is so Republican and my mother is a Zoloft zombie. Mary’s husband smiled widely. Mary looked around at people gathering on the couches and chairs. Most had dressed up; a girl wore silver eyelashes, and one of the guys had on a tuxedo jacket. The Christmas tree was decorated with matchbooks, and below the tree the ceramic crèche was painted with garish colors. The Wise Men were kitsch of the highest order, situated between a lawn flamingo and a ceramic bust of Elvis.