Don't Lick the Minivan

by Leanne Shirtliffe

  Most days I ate at a street stall. Having lived in Bangkok for years, I knew which portable eateries were safe. Usually I’d inhale chicken fried rice or pad thai. Sometimes, however, eating held the same level of enjoyment as getting a pap smear with a frost-laden metallic torture device.

  Chris often joined me for lunch, anxious to escape the world of books he lived in as the school’s librarian. He’d watch me play with the remainders of my food and shift in my plastic chair. I looked over to the propane-powered barbecue on which the vendor was cooking mystery-meat-on-a-stick. I said to Chris, “If I smell any more charred flesh, I’m going to puke up my pad thai.”

  He picked up his empty bamboo skewer and mimed stabbing himself in the chest. I laughed.

  “Feel better?” he asked.

  “I feel like I’m going to puke with a smile on my face.”

  That day I didn’t, but on other days stray dogs lapped up my second-hand offerings, adding me to the food chain.

  Things didn’t become much more routine when Chris and I went to my ob-gyn guy, also known as a doctor. Given that my first trimester had included some bleeding and bed rest, I panicked at any abnormality. Whenever our doctor did an ultrasound, I just wanted him to say the word “normal.” Or, as he said in his accented English, “nor-maall” (rhymes with “sore gal”).

  Every few weeks, we would come armed with a paranoid couple’s list of concerns and he would answer, “Nor-maall, completely nor-maall.”

  At one appointment, I pulled out my scroll of questions. I looked at the doctor and asked, “Is it normal to have mushrooms growing out of my armpit?”

  His forehead creased. “Mushrooms?”

  I raised my arm. I’d worn a sleeveless blouse, anticipating this moment. Chris shifted, unfazed at my colony of fungi. The doctor wandered over and laughed. “Those aren’t mushrooms,” he said. “They’re polyps.”

  “They’re what?”

  “Polyps. Or skin tags. They come, they go. Nor-maall.”

  “So, they’re not mushrooms?”

  “No.”

  “Then I shouldn’t stir fry them?”

  “Pardon?”

  “Never mind.”

  When we arrived home, Chris imitated me, “Doctor, I’ve grown a third eye and there are radishes sprouting from my ears.”

  “No worries,” Chris continued his impression, “it’s nor-maall.”

  There are a lot of things that were nor-maall in Thailand that wouldn’t have been in North America. The Thais have some great superstitions. One is that it’s bad luck to get your hair cut on Wednesday. Another is that twins are incredibly lucky. Boy/girl twins are even luckier. And if the boy is born first—as William was in our case—you’re going to start crapping gold bricks. Even if we didn’t go all Midas-like, several Thai maintenance staff members asked Chris to buy lottery tickets for them. They gave him money; his job was to select the tickets. Chris would have had an easier job crapping gold bricks than picking a winning lottery ticket from the blind man with the rebar cane who approached the outskirts of the school campus daily.

  At some point during my pregnancy, Chris received an email from a Thai woman in the accounting department at work. He showed it to me when he arrived home.

  It read:

  “I HAVE ASKED MY AUNT TO LOOK FOR THE GOOD DAY FOR YOUR CHILDREN TO BE BORN. I GAVE HER YOUR AND YOUR WIFE BIRTHDAY AND SHE COMES UP WITH THE FOLLOWING DAY AND TIME:

  ° May 22 or 24. TIME: 6:00 AM to 1:00 PM

  ° JUNE 5. TIME: 6:00 AM to 9:00 PM

  ° JUNE 6. TIME: 9:00 AM to 9:00 PM

  ° JUNE 12. TIME: 9:00 AM to 3:00 PM.

  BEST WISHES.”

  I reread the email. I used my fingers to count how many weeks I’d be pregnant by those dates. I also used my toes and every other countable thing nearby.

  I paused to process this epistle.

  “Let me get this straight. So the accountant got her aunt to do some woo-woo on our unborn babies?”

  “Yes.”

  “And we’re supposed to give this to our doctor?”

  Chris nodded. “She said it also has something to do with the moons.”

  “OK. But we’re not giving this to our doctor, are we?”

  “He’s Thai. He’d likely say it’s nor-maall.”

  “We’re still not giving him the list,” I said.

  “You win.”

  “Good. You know, if our babies are born on those dates, it’ll be freaky.” I shifted in my chair. “But if they’re not, we can blame the moon for everything they do wrong for the rest of their lives.”

  Which is precisely what we’ve done.

  WE’RE IN TROUBLE IF OUR DOCTOR DOESN’T KNOW HOW WOMEN DO IT

  Some babes are born in the back of a taxi; some babes are conceived in the back of a taxi. Our daughter was named in the back of a taxi.

  We had just taken the Skytrain, Bangkok’s version of Jetsontransit, to an English-language bookstore and picked up a baby name book. Chris suggested we take a taxi home, which meant we were stuck in one of Bangkok’s infamous 24-7 traffic jams.

  Having been married for four years, we’d had every conversation we ever needed to have twenty-six times. So I made up a game. I’m annoying like that.

  Taking the baby name book out of the bag, I said, “Pick a number between one and three hundred ninety-two.”

  “Seventy,” Chris said.

  I flipped to page seventy. “Now we each have to find a baby name we like.” We scanned the names and critiqued each other’s choices.

  Three turns later, I said, “Three hundred seventy-seven.”

  I thumbed through the pages. We both said, “Vivian.”

  “I think we just found a girl’s name,” I said.

  The next day, the name discussion continued. Miraculously, we were no longer in the taxi, but at home.

  “How about the name ‘Humphrey’?” Chris asked.

  I looked at him in shock and said, “You’re kidding, right?” He said, “No, I like Humphrey.”

  “No way.”

  “But I like it. I really do.”

  “I don’t care if it was your grandfather’s name and he died in the war saving the lives of three children who went on to win the Nobel Prize for something. It’s horrible.”

  “Come on.”

  “Look,” I said, “I’m carrying the babies, so I have veto power. If you name our son Humphrey, I’ll kill you.”

  Parenting Tip: Mothers have the right to exercise veto power on the selection of baby names. The Pregnancy Convention deems this to be true.

  Chris shrugged. I grabbed the baby name book and opened to Humphrey.

  “It means peaceful warrior,” I said.

  “See? That’s nice.”

  “What the hell’s a peaceful warrior? It’s a bloody oxymoron. I think the second meaning is beat-me-up-at-school.”

  “You know, any name can be made fun of.”

  “No, it can’t,” I said. “Some names are above that.”

  “Try me,” Chris said.

  “What?”

  “Give me a name. Any name. I’ll make fun of it.”

  “OK, how about Zack?”

  With a delay of 0.03 seconds, Chris sang, “Zack, Zack, rhymes with butt crack.”

  I tried another one. “Michael.”

  “Mike, Mike, you’re a dyke.”

  “You’ve made your point,” I conceded. “But I still hate Humphrey.” I looked back at the book. “After the meaning, it says ‘see also Onofrio and Onufrey.’”

  “See what?” Chris asked.

  “Onofrio and Onufrey,” I said. “They’re names that are similar to Humphrey. So there we go,” I said, dropping comfortably into sarcasm, “if our babies are boys, we can name them Onofrio and Onufrey. Or Ono and Onu for short.”

  I smirked.

  This time, Chris conceded. “OK, you’ve made your point.”

  Thankfully, we didn’t need to register our babies’ names to attend prenatal cl
asses at Bangkok’s most prestigious hospital. It was the first of three classes that some childless administrator had scheduled over the supper hour, the time of day your blood sugar crashes. When your circulatory system has nearly twice the normal blood volume, that sugar crash can be akin to free falling off a cliff. Chris and I walked into the hospital, foolishly bypassing Starbucks, and took the elevator to the ninth floor. We took a glass of sugary orange drink. Nutritional content was overrated.

  After checking in, we sat on the floor in a conference room that was devoid of chairs. With seven couples against one wall and seven against the other, I wondered if we’d play a game of Red Rover as an icebreaker. A lone projector sat in the middle of the floor, like a cactus popping out of a desert. A young Thai woman—who was so small that she’d make Angelina Jolie look like she ate McFood daily—smiled, bowed, and started the PowerPoint. I squinted, trying to differentiate the white font from its pale yellow background, and I ended up wondering if my bad vision meant I had sudden-onset gestational diabetes.

  When PowerPoint #1 was finished, a woman from public relations took us on a guided tour of the ward. The first things we saw were the high-end maternity suites, complete with a bedroom, a living room, and a full-size fridge.

  “Where are the nor-maall rooms?” I asked.

  “In the other hallway,” she said. “We won’t be seeing them.” Next she took us to a delivery room, showcasing the overhead light dimmer.

  “Turning down the lights,” she explained, “takes away the pain.”

  Who knew it was that easy? “Remind me to give birth in the dark,” I whispered to Chris.

  We returned to the chair-less conference room. After introducing the physiotherapist, the tour guide informed us that we were about to experience her favorite part. This highlight consisted of three minutes of yoga lessons, including the following instructions: “Breathe in, breathe out, shut your eyes.”

  Chris leaned over. “If you shut your eyes,” he whispered, “it’ll be dark, which means no pain.”

  The physiotherapist reminded us that we needed to do fifty Kegel exercises a day, which was forty more than I’d done in my life.

  Two weeks later, we were back for the second prenatal class—or as the hospital called it, antenatal class. Not having spoken Latin in my past couple lifetimes, I became confused and thought this meant they were anti-birth.

  No matter. I was all ears as I sat my expansive butt on the ground because the focus of this class was birthing, which sounded somewhat relevant. I was now five months along and had gained thirty-one pounds, which made sitting on the floor as comfortable as sticking a fondue fork between two vertebrae and twisting.

  We began with a video entitled Birth Is Women’s Work, a film that advocated home births. It was surreal to be sitting in a hospital hearing about natural birth, when the C-section rate at Thai private hospitals was 70 percent and rising, given my impending multiple birth C-section.

  After the film, a knowledgeable, western-trained doctor explained the statistic to us, somewhat critically. Wealthy Thai women, he said, tend to request C-sections. It was a sign of prosperity, and it allowed them to select an propitious date, such as the king or queen’s birthday. “That’s the woo-woo part,” I whispered to Chris. But it was the doctor’s third reason that made me record his words verbatim. “Many women,” he said, “are scared their vagina will be stretched to the extent their husbands will leave them.” I was starting to see why the hospital emphasized doing Kegels and giving birth in the dark. The doctor added, “Most of the time their husbands leave them anyway.” I glared at Chris. Don’t even think about it, buddy.

  The ob-gyn went on to explain that doctors also get more money for performing C-sections. Even in a prestigious private hospital, he said, doctors were only paid $240 for a normal delivery.

  “Do you think we need to tip our obstetrician?” I asked Chris.

  The doctor ended his message with a gentle plea to all who weren’t carrying multiples—he smiled at us, knowing full well that we were stuck with a C-section—to consider natural delivery.

  He ended his plea by saying, “I don’t know how women do it.”

  I looked at Chris. “We’re in trouble if our doctor doesn’t know how women do it.”

  The doctor left, and a nurse started another PowerPoint presentation on what to expect before and during the birth or, in our case, births.

  Her second slide made me pause:

  ROUTINE PREPARATION

  ENEMAS

  SHAVING

  WHAT IS IT FOR?

  FOOD AND DRINKS

  Chris and I started laughing.

  “So,” he said, “are the Food and Drinks related to the shaving or to the enemas?”

  “No idea. Which one is preferable?” I added.

  “And what is it for?”

  We were the naughty kids with numb butts who were not much closer to figuring out how women did it.

  Parenting Tip: Misbehave during prenatal classes. Nothing is going to go according to plan anyway.

  YOU THOUGHT TELLING ME I HAVE GOOD STATS FOR

  A FOOTBALL PLAYER WOULD BE FUNNY?

  In my fifth month of pregnancy, my waist—if you could call it that—measured a whopping forty-three inches, more than a foot bigger than it did in my pre-pregnancy days. This might not seem huge, but situate me in Thailand, home to women whose waists measure in the teens, and I was Mommy Behemoth.

  A friend from Texas visited around this time: a gym teacher who had a waist. As I inhaled my second order of chicken fried rice, I said, “I’m a walking Astrodome.”

  “You are not,” she said.

  “Is there a bigger stadium in Texas then?”

  “Yeah, there are a few.”

  “Don’t tell me about them.”

  I added sugar to my tea.

  “Do you use hula hoops in your PE classes?” I continued.

  She paused. “Not very often.”

  “I don’t think I could fit in a hula hoop. And I still have months to go.”

  I ended my masochistic rant with a sigh.

  “You know,” she said, “there are a lot of people who think the Astrodome is pretty nice.”

  I smiled.

  “Well, it beats the alternative,” I said. “You know, not getting bigger.”

  We spent a few lovely days together, and then she and her waist left. We wouldn’t see her again until our twins were old enough to toddle off the side of a mountain.

  I pored through the emails I’d fallen behind on. There was one from my cousin. My cousin and I had the luxury of being pregnant at the same time. Guilt free, we shared obscure details that would make women-with-waists—and lives—puke.

  In her latest email, my cousin told me about the walk-into-the-wall contest. In our extended family, this was becoming a rite of passage. We females have been cursed/ blessed with breasts like the ones boys gawked at in National Geographic in pre-Internet days. Consequently, when pregnant, it was a substantial milestone when your belly beat your boobs in the walk-into-the-wall contest.

  I was taking the elevator to our ninth floor apartment when I thought I’d try our family litmus test. I backed up, took two Mother-May-I steps forward, and my stomach thumped the wall first. My boobs earned the second place ribbon, my nose third. My butt was dead last; I picked it up off the floor and stepped out of the elevator, which had magically stopped level with our floor. An auspicious day, indeed.

  I unlocked our apartment, dropped my bag, and flopped onto the couch.

  “How was your day?” Chris hollered from the kitchen.

  “Great,” I yelled back. “My belly is now beating my boobs in the walk-into-the-wall contest.”

  “The what?”

  As he emerged from the kitchen with glasses of water, I explained our family contest.

  “Did you do this in front of your twelfth graders?”

  “No, they’d think I’m even crazier. Plus, I’d get chalk on my bump,” I said. “B
ut I’ll reenact the race if you want me to.”

  He hadn’t even answered when I took five big strides into the wall.

  “Yup,” he said. “The belly won.”

  Parenting Tip: Measure the progress of your pregnancy with the walk-into-the-wall contest. (“Progress” being a very loose term.)

  I had trouble remembering pregnancy and birthing terms. Because I was teaching at the same time that I was incubating twins, I told people I was in my third semester, not trimester. I thought meconium, that black tar newborns poop out, was an element on the Periodic Table wedged somewhere between zinc and arsenic. There’s a reason I’m not a chemist.

  Apparently fontanelle was not the next trendy hotel in Vegas, but the soft spot in your newborn’s cranium.

  Fundal height was another term I could never remember. I originally thought it was fundus height, which soon morphed into fungus height, not surprising given the mushroom colony I had growing in my armpits.

  Technically, fundal height is the measurement from the top of a woman’s uterus to the tip of her pubic bone; if you’re knocked up with twins, it’s the length of Hollywood Boulevard.

  In my thirty-sixth week of incubating, I was sitting in our Bangkok-hot apartment under a ceiling fan wearing something more than nothing, but less than clothing. More precisely, I wore a crisp cotton robe that no longer met over my belly. Our apartment was in one of Bangkok’s central districts and was surrounded by other residential high rises. I estimated that 10,000 people saw me scantily clad when I was pregnant. It was as if Ugly Naked Guy from Friends had migrated to Thailand for a sex change operation (a not uncommon reason for medical tourism) and was parading around my apartment. While sweating, I said to Chris, “I’m freaking huge.”

  “You’re pregnant,” he answered.

  “My fungus height measures down to my ankles. Well, it would if I had ankles. Or if I could see them.”