“No showtime for you, ladies and gentlemen!” Cowboy shouted.
“No showtime for you!” the other three called back.
Apollo got down on his hands and knees and crawled around close to Emma’s face. Her head was down, hair like a shroud and matted flat from perspiration. He brought the sippy cup of water closer and lifted her head. He tilted the cup and let her have two sips.
Apollo set the bottle down. He didn’t know how he could post up behind Emma to receive the baby but also keep giving her sips of water, keep up reassuring contact. He looked over Emma. The mother watched them. When they’d first boarded the train, she and Emma had seemed to share a powerful moment, locking eyes to communicate something Apollo knew he could never understand. He gazed at her, pleading. After a moment the woman patted her daughter and rose from the seat. She pushed the stroller closer to the little girl, who peeked in on her brother.
The mother took the sippy cup and spoke quietly, in Spanish, to Emma. The woman’s tone seemed soothing, and maybe that was all Emma needed. Emma even leaned forward and touched her forehead to the woman’s shoulder, intimacy so acute it appeared mystical.
Now Apollo looked over his shoulder, the boys had their backs to the scene, their arms up and flailing to reject all attempts at a shot. He pulled off Emma’s shoes. He slipped her tights down to her knees. He brought his hands to either side of her hips and pressed gently, something that soothed her in the third trimester. He spoke now not to his wife but to their baby.
“We can’t wait to meet you,” he said.
THERE IN A stalled A train in the bowels of the earth, Emma bled and bore down. Apollo called out the two commands Kim had told him were always appropriate, Slow down. Just breathe. Apollo focused on nothing but his wife and their child. When Emma arched her back and grunted, he pressed his thumbs into the small of her back, just above the tailbone, until her back went straight again. When she bled and pushed harder, he pressed her thigh and said, Slow down. Just breathe. When he saw the baby crowning, he had a moment of confusion. There was the baby’s head, but it looked like it was wrapped in bubble tape. The amniotic sac hadn’t burst yet, and it served now as a thin layer between the baby and Emma’s pelvic bone. For all the agony she might be feeling, this little miracle—that her water didn’t break right away—was what spared her just enough pain to survive this.
Apollo watched his hands stretched out now, ready to catch their child. He felt like a witness and a participant. Their child teetered between his mother and the world; in one place and another; alive and in that ether of the womb. Apollo felt as though he, too, balanced on this threshold. Its head nearly out but body still hidden, his child seemed like an emissary of the divine.
“Can you see his head?” Emma asked.
Apollo tried to answer but only stammered.
Then Emma’s water broke, and she cooed with relief, and their child slipped right out, and Apollo Kagwa caught the baby before it touched the floor of the train.
“It’s a boy,” Apollo said.
“A boy,” Emma whispered.
Emma leaned forward into the woman. The woman kissed Emma on the top of her head. Emma had to stay on her knees for a few minutes more until the placenta passed.
This meant that for a short while Apollo remained alone with his son. Apollo unbuttoned his shirt so he could hold the boy directly against his skin. The baby didn’t cry, didn’t flutter his eyes yet, only opened and closed his tiny mouth. Apollo watched his son take his gasping, first breaths. He watched that little face for what seemed like quite a while, an hour or an eternity.
“Can we call him Brian?” Apollo croaked. He hadn’t meant to ask that right now, at the moment of birth, hadn’t thought he’d ever want to name his son after his missing father. The question, the desire, simply slipped out; it was as if it had been hiding—biding time on his tongue for years.
“I like that name,” Emma finally said, turning now, hands open for her child.
Apollo brought his cheek to the baby’s.
“Hello, Brian,” he whispered. “I’m so happy to meet you.”
THE BABY CAME on Friday night. The EMTs arrived twenty-two minutes after Apollo and Emma met the kid. As Emma predicted, they took her directly to Harlem Hospital, where she and the baby were kept under observation for two days. Though they assured Apollo he could go home without them, he spent both nights upright in a chair in Emma’s room. By Monday morning, they were home in a taxi, and Apollo got them both into bed. He’d already given the boy his first name, and now he suggested a middle name.
“His middle name is not going to be Cowboy,” Emma said as she prepared herself for the climb into their bed. Apollo held Brian as if the boy were made of Baccarat crystal. His eyes were open. He looked at nothing and everything.
“Give him,” Emma said. She’d propped pillows behind her. Apollo handed her their child, and she leaned close to his face and blew gently on his head.
Brian came out totally bald. He had a faint overbite and a small chin. He looked like a turtle. In the full light of the hospital room, they’d both seen it, laughed about it.
“Brer Turtle,” Apollo said. “I’m going to get your mother some food.”
Emma brought her breast to the baby’s face. She stroked his cheek, as she’d been taught to do, but when the baby opened his mouth, she stuffed so much of her breast inside that he coughed and turned away. Emma curled forward and stroked Brian’s cheek and tried again, but it was another failure to latch. Emma had been trying to get this since late Friday night. At the hospital every nurse, and both doctors, had offered differing opinions about what she was doing wrong.
In the kitchen Apollo found the breakfast dishes they’d left before going out for work on Friday morning. He’d been expecting to wash them after dinner with Nichelle. They’d been a family of two just that recently. He already had a hard time remembering that ancient age, Before Brian.
He washed the dishes. Lillian and Kim were both scheduled to arrive this morning. Maybe while they were here, he could make a supermarket run. Lillian and Kim had both come to the hospital, but the visits weren’t long. Even Nichelle made it on Sunday morning, though she had a flight back to Los Angeles in the afternoon. She’d entered the room horrified, as if Emma were still down in that subway car giving birth. She couldn’t stop asking what it smelled like down there. Neither of them remembered. The birth even made the news for a day. The Post, the Daily News, even a mention on NY1. It might’ve become more of a story if someone had been able to capture clean video of the birth, but Cowboy had been as good as his word. Cellphone footage from that night showed four black kids waving and smiling and looking gleeful, and generally speaking news outlets don’t find that sort of thing worth sharing.
Apollo checked the back room. A couch and a television and four filled bookshelves were in here. So was the Moses basket they’d be using with Brian for the next few weeks as they slept him in their bedroom. Before Brian this had been their lounge; after Brian it would be his room. Apollo scanned the space, imagining what they’d need: a crib, plush toys, a dresser for the blankets and clothes, a Diaper Genie, a few crates of diapers, and much more stuff than he could currently guess. They should’ve made all these purchases long ago. In fact, Emma had created a list, but then her job went to half time, with the possibility of losing the work altogether, and with that they had to wait a little longer and plan a little better for exactly what they needed first. The Moses basket, newborn diapers, one-piece sleepers, baby wash and washcloths, those were the only things to make the initial cut. But now Apollo couldn’t help wanting to give his son more. He closed his eyes and kissed the doorframe.
How long had he stood there before the buzzer rang? It’s entirely possible he’d fallen asleep upright. Kim and Lillian appeared in a cluster at the door. Both women carried large bags. Kim made a supermarket run for them, basic ingredients, and Lillian brought meals she’d prepared at home. Four cartons of red bean soup, meat
loaf and mashed potatoes, lasagna and samosas, two quiches, and oxtail soup. He set all their things down in the kitchen, then led both women into the bedroom, where Emma tried to disguise the tears of frustration she’d been shedding as she still tried to get Brian to latch.
Kim slipped Brian from Emma’s hands. A chance for the midwife to check the baby, for an aunt to hug her nephew. As Kim undressed the baby, Lillian moved close to Emma and kissed her head.
“I had the same trouble with Apollo,” Lillian said softly. “I didn’t know what to do, and my mother wasn’t with me.”
Emma nodded. She understood that problem.
“I didn’t think I’d ever get it,” Lillian said. “But it just took time.”
Now Emma leaned into Lillian and breathed deeply. Lillian held her close.
Kim turned a now naked Brian onto his stomach. “I love that little blue butt!” she shouted.
“Let me see what you’re doing,” Lillian said to Emma. “Maybe I can help.”
Kim returned Brian to his mother. Emma brought him close and stroked his cheek. The baby’s eyes waggled and swam, and his mouth opened to pucker.
“Wait,” Lillian said. Now she examined Emma’s breasts like a jeweler. She nodded gently, then sighed. “It’s too bad your breasts are the wrong shape,” she finally said.
“Mom!” Apollo shouted. He yoked his own mother to get her out of the bedroom. Kim stepped in between Emma and Lillian, showing Lillian her back. Emma didn’t even cry out or sob at what Lillian had said. She just returned to lining her nipple up with the baby’s mouth.
Apollo enlisted Lillian in unpacking the food and supplies, and once that was finished, he took her out to get coffee. She didn’t understand what she’d said wrong. Apollo tried to explain three times but gave up. Eventually he thanked her, sincerely, for the food and walked her back to the A train.
On the way to the apartment, his cellphone vibrated with a text message from Patrice: Estate Sale Today. Come with me. You got mouths to feed!
He wrote back: Too soon.
Patrice wrote again: Your family can’t live with us when you get evicted.
Apollo laughed as he slipped his phone away. He missed Patrice. Also, he knew he couldn’t wait more than a week before he had to get back on his grind.
Kim already had on her shoes and jacket when Apollo returned. He let her out and came back to the bedroom. He closed the curtains, and the place went dim. He climbed in beside them.
“ ‘I had a rooster, my rooster pleased me,’ ” Emma sang. “ ‘I held my rooster by the old willow tree.’ ”
Apollo moved closer to his wife, his son.
“ ‘My little rooster sang cock-a-doodle-doo.’ ”
She sang, and each of them fell asleep in turn. First Apollo, then Emma. The baby kept his eyes open the longest but soon enough joined his mother and father.
At one point, well after midnight, Apollo woke and crept out of the bedroom. He found his bag, the one he’d been wearing the night Brian was born. He opened it to find the copy of Fields of Fire inside. In the kitchen he opened his laptop and sent an email to that collector in Virginia. He attached a photo of the cover. The glow of the screen lit his face.
“I am the god, Apollo,” he whispered as the god got to work.
He fell asleep at the table within half an hour.
PATRICE SENT WORD of an estate sale in the Bronx. Close enough to Washington Heights that Apollo had to get on the road, no excuses and no more delays. And he had to bring Brian with him. Six weeks was the most time Emma could take off from work before her salary vanished. In the United States this counted as generous.
Going out the door that morning, she’d cried worse than when she’d been in labor. Apollo promised to be careful with the boy, but that wasn’t what crushed Emma. Of course she trusted Apollo, but leaving her baby so soon after birth felt like stepping out of an airlock without a space suit, no source of oxygen. How would she breathe? Nevertheless, she had to do it. They couldn’t afford for her to lose her job.
Apollo rented a Zipcar for the trip, something sturdy, a Honda Odyssey. The company gave each car a name. This one’s was Suave. He admired that level of self-delusion. He strapped the boy into his rear-facing car seat and arranged the armful of pillows he’d brought along on the floor and around the car seat. The baby lay surrounded by padding, and still Apollo never drove faster than fifteen miles per hour along the Henry Hudson Parkway. Other drivers beeped and cursed as they swerved around him. This bothered Apollo not a bit. The pair crept all the way to the Riverdale section of the Bronx. The twenty-minute trip took almost an hour. At one point, on Dodgewood Road, a street sweeper passed them.
This pocket of the Bronx turned suburban, nearly rural, with uneven single-lane streets and two-story homes sitting on large grassy plots. On Dodgewood Road, Apollo found the place: a large single-family house with a driveway and two-car garage. A familiar car by the curb, a red 2001 Toyota Echo. Its bumper sticker read LIBRARIAN OF ALEXANDRIA.
Patrice Green had beat him here, and that man lived in southeastern Queens.
Apollo turned off the car and arched himself over the front seat so he could see his son. Brian Kagwa watched the bright sky through the passenger window, mouth opening and closing as if he was actually feeding on the sunlight.
“Let’s go hunt some books,” Apollo said.
Apollo came around and unlatched his son. Wind rattled the property, and Brian seemed to focus on the quaking limbs of a tree. Apollo looped on his BabyBjörn baby carrier and strapped his son in. Daddy’s heartbeat would be mood music for the kid.
Apollo went through the baby bag, cross-checking like a pilot about to take flight. Bottle, three diapers, wipes, burp cloth, set of plastic keys for rattling, and finally, a small, fluffy blanket.
“Flight attendants take your seat,” Apollo whispered. “We are prepared for takeoff.”
As he rolled the minivan’s door shut, a man’s voice came from the garage.
“I didn’t have that much gear on when I was fighting in Fallujah.”
Patrice stepped into the daylight, so tall his head nearly clipped the raised door. Patrice had a face like a catfish, with an overhanging upper lip and errant mustache hairs. Eyes a little too small for his head.
“You were never near Fallujah,” Apollo said.
Patrice shrugged. “Closer than you ever got.”
Apollo raised his diaper bag. “Now I’m in my own dirty war.”
Patrice Green had never fought in Fallujah, but he did serve in the army from 2003 to 2004, during Operation Iraqi Freedom, in the 62nd Air Defense Artillery Regiment. He’d spent much of his time doing counter-IED operations along a supply route in Iskandariyah, Iraq, a city twenty-five miles south of Baghdad, not far from the Euphrates River. He’d done that work and then returned to the United States. He’d been the manager of an AMC movie theater on 34th Street. He’d been a graduate student at Queens College, in library studies, for five months. And eventually he became a used and rare bookseller.
The garage behind Patrice looked bigger than Apollo and Emma’s apartment, filled now with fifty cardboard boxes of books. The top flaps of every box lay open, a treasure room already plundered.
“Grandmother,” Patrice said. “She died four months ago. Family finally got all the old lady’s books into boxes and put out the ad. Son-in-law let me into the garage. Other than that, he’s stayed out of my way.”
“He’s cool?” Apollo said, bouncing in place lightly, for Brian’s benefit.
“I asked to use their bathroom, and the dude wouldn’t let me in the house. Motherfucker said they didn’t have a bathroom.” Patrice gestured at the two-story structure. “Four-bedroom home but no bathrooms. Imagine that.”
“You’d think they would’ve checked before buying the place.”
Apollo laughed with Patrice just to keep from crying. Now Apollo looked inside the garage, scanning the open boxes as Brian wriggled against his chest. If
Patrice had already been through all these, then he’d found everything worth anything.
“Grandma liked books,” Apollo said. “She have good taste?”
“I found a few winners,” Patrice said.
No doubt he’d already set those books aside, but look how full the boxes in the garage remained. That meant most of them were nearly worthless, the kind of stuff that would turn a profit only on the shipping. He’d rented the minivan to keep his son safe, but at least it had plenty of storage space.
“There’s a few more in the basement,” Patrice said, pointing to a door, slightly open, near the back of the main house.
“You haven’t been down there yet,” Apollo said.
For the first time since he’d stepped out of the garage Patrice Green shrank. “Nah. Thought I’d leave something for you.”
Patrice Green, big man and expert bookseller, counter-IED specialist and child raised in the roughest part of Roxbury, did not like basements. He’d returned from Iskandariyah uninjured but not unharmed. He had never explained his fear, but Apollo intuited it and, most importantly, never asked about it directly. A fair number of estate sales in New York City took place in the basements of various apartment buildings, and Patrice Green never set foot in one of them.
“You hear that, Brian?” Apollo said as he let the front flap of the BabyBjörn fall loose and pulled his son free, turned him around. “Uncle Patrice is letting us take point.”
“But we split whatever you find,” Patrice said, looking over the baby’s head. “Sixty-forty. That’s the deal.”
Apollo lifted the boy higher. He’d expected Patrice to say something about the baby from the moment he’d shown up, but instead they’d gone on about the books. This was the first time his best friend had met his child—shouldn’t that merit at least one comment? Apollo felt surprised by how much this moment bothered him.
“Look into his eyes,” Apollo said, trying to act playful.
“What am I supposed to say to him?” Patrice asked.
The Changeling Page 7