by Ariella Papa
“Yeah, I think the woman who rents the garden apartment next door had a baby a few weeks ago. It cries constantly. I always wake up. I’m glad these two are sleeping through it.”
“The poor mom. The beginning is tough. What did she get?”
“Pardon,” Claudia asked.
“Boy or girl?”
“Oh, I’m not sure. I haven’t really seen her. I hear her constantly.”
I wasn’t sure if Claudia wanted me to feel bad for her and her lost beauty sleep, but by the sound of the baby’s cry, the mom was overwhelmed.
“Is it the first kid?”
“Um, yes,” Claudia said definitively. “I mean I don’t really know her, but I am more than sure we would have seen an older kid if they lived there.”
“Did they just move in or something,” I asked. I had gone back to snapping shots, but Claudia was finally on my good side, so I could hear her.
“No, they’ve lived there for a while.”
The baby stopped crying and I kept working. Claudia was hovering around us, but at least she had stopped directing the kids. She interrupted for a minute to fix the headband in Emily’s hair.
“Emily ’ave pretty in ’air,” Emily said.
“Yes, Emily, it’s very pretty in your hair,” I said.
“Jac wan retty. Wan reeeeettttttttyyy!” Jacob whined.
“Jacob, you can’t have a pretty,” Claudia said. “He wants everything his sister has.”
“My three-year-old, Sage, is the same way.”
“Your son?”
“Yeah, if it’s sparkly and pink he loves it.”
“It must drive your husband crazy. My husband, Peter, hates it.” I wish I could have disagreed with her, but it did seem to be driving David crazy. Emily was not having the headband back in her hair. She pulled it out, threw it on the ground and shook her head free.
“No,” she said. Emily was going to be a handful when she grew up. I knew from experience.
“Emily!” Claudia scolded. “Do you want a time-out?”
“You know, don’t worry about it,” I said. “I think we are done.”
“Really?” Claudia said, suspiciously. She was looking angrily at Emily.
“Yeah, I got some great shots.”
“Are you sure?”
“Positive.”
We stood there in the backyard for a minute, watching Jacob pull out some grass and Emily attempt more somersaults.
“Emily, watch out for your brother,” Claudia yelled. Then added for my benefit. “Please.”
I started to pack up my stuff. Claudia brought out some iced tea. It was delicious with sprigs of fresh mint. Claudia had grown the mint in her backyard. Yet another reason to have a backyard.
“So where are your kids?” Claudia asked. I felt her consciously trying to make conversation with me. It didn’t come easy.
“Well, the younger two are with their grandma and my five year old is in preschool.”
“Oh, are you local?”
“We live pretty close in Boerum Hill, but she goes to school at Brookese.”
“Really?” Claudia looked more excited than she had all day, but then she did something weird to her face and composed herself.
“Yeah, have you heard of it?”
“Of course, it’s so highly rated.”
“I guess,” I said. Of course I knew that it was, but I tried not to think I was sending my daughter to a school that this yuppie coveted. “It’s a good school. Julissa enjoys it.”
“How do find the curriculum?” she asked.
“Curriculum?”
“You know the course of study at the school,” she said, defining the word for me as if it was beyond my grasp. Something about her expression made me think she realized how annoying that was, but I didn’t give her a chance to apologize.
“I don’t know what the official curriculum is, but Julissa seems to have a lot of fun.”
“How did you get her in?”
“We applied, like everyone else.”
“Was the interview brutal?”
“Um, there’s not an interview.” I thought back. “They have this playgroup that they do before you apply, and I think that helps your chances. I guess they sort of assess them that way.”
“Is your daughter very verbal? Because I don’t think Jacob is and I feel that could hurt Emily’s chances too. Not that I would want to separate them. But I worry -” she stopped herself. “Do they test them on colors? Jacob definitely doesn’t know his. And do you think they’ll check references?”
“References?”
“You know, like, will they call my day care? I mean that seems a bit biased for day care kids. Who can they call for the stay-at-home kids? Their mothers? Well, their mothers or their nannies aren’t going to tell the truth about their character. They would brush things under the rug, don’t you think?”
She had completely me lost me at references. I wasn’t sure what she wanted me to say. I wanted to get paid and get out.
I smiled. Claudia looked at me awkwardly.
“Is there a secret you think to getting in?”
“I don’t know. Julissa can be pretty charming. I don’t know if that helped her. ”
“Hmm,” Claudia nodded and looked at her kids. And I regretted saying anything about Julissa, because I saw on Claudia’s face disappointment in her children and it disturbed me. I wanted out.
“So thanks for the iced tea. I should probably go get the kids.”
“Of course. Do I give you half now? Is that how it works?”
“That would be great,” I said.
“A check is okay,” she said, pulling one already signed out of her pocket.
“Perfect,” I said, taking it from her. “Thanks. I should be able to send you a link to the selects in a couple of days.”
“Great,” Claudia said. She hesitated, looking at her hands. “Could I call you if I have any other questions about Brookese.”
“Of course,” I said. What was I getting myself into?
She glanced behind me towards the house with the crying baby. “I feel guilty now. I guess I should have gone over there with a pie or something.”
I think Claudia wanted me to absolve her and I was about to, but we heard the shrill scream of a woman on the edge of a breakdown through the neighbor’s window. “Will you stop fucking looking at me?”
Chapter 5
Ruth is Completely Misunderstood
They have the wrong idea and they won’t go away.
Two women are standing at my door with two children trying to peer behind me into my apartment. I want to call the cops. I suspect they want to call the cops. Do I look an abuser? Sometimes, I may feel like one, but the idea that these women are here to protect a baby, my baby, makes me want to cry. I don’t need this. Not today.
“We just wanted to make sure everything was okay,” says the younger one, the one with high, full breasts I will never ever have again.
“Everything’s fine,” I say. But it isn’t. I can hear Abe starting to wake up in the nursery. I moved the bouncy seat in there because he was refusing to go down in the bassinet. I bounced that baby until he finally nodded off. Now these bitches woke him up with the doorbell.
“That’s the baby?” the older one asks. I recognize her. She’s my neighbor; I have stared out the window at her on a few occasions. I watched her come and go while I was always stuck in the house. She was always rushing. As usual, there was not a hair out of place in her Anna Wintour bob and she craned her neck to see behind me.
“Yeah, that’s the baby,” I say. I am teetering on the edge. So tired. My eyes are heavy. “He was finally asleep until the bell rang. You woke him.”
“We’re sorry,” Full Breasts says, she actually caresses one of her perfect breasts or maybe I am hallucinating. Maybe this whole thing is a hallucination. “It’s just that we heard someone yelling and we were concerned.”
“We also heard the baby crying a lot,” BobCut Neighb
or says. Her voice is accusing.
“Well.” I am going to deny it, but somehow I know they won’t go for that. I stand before them in one of Steve’s wifebeaters, which is already stained with milk, and the silky short short bottoms from some Victoria Secret’s pajamas set. These are pulled low because they no longer fit and I wanted to cover up my giant ass before I answered the door. I look down and realize my belly is exposed. I pull the shirt over my flab. I feel naked. I should have been wearing more around the house, but lately I’ve been so hot. Motherhood turned my internal thermostat way up. And plus my breasts are always out. I considered going topless, but the occasional glimpses of my saggy stretched out belly were way too much for me. Now these two women are getting the whole gross show. It’s a sad sight. They might as well cart me away somewhere, preferably somewhere with a bed. Oh, it will be good to lie down. I have been sleeping in the chaise lounge a lot, when I sleep, because Abe is doing this thing where he only sleeps upright, in my arms. My limbs and back are stiff. Oh, sweet sleep, how I miss you.
I feel a sob rise in my throat. They know I am going to cry. It will make me seem more suspect.
“With a new baby . . . the beginning is super tough, we only wanted to see if we could help,” Full Breasts says. She has this way of speaking that was quiet and deliberate and when you speak to her, she cocks her head to the left, as if she is really listening. She reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, grazing her other breast. BobCut Neighbor squints at me and shifts.
“It sounded like things might be getting a little . . . hard,” she says.
“Well, it wasn’t the baby I was yelling at. It was Tiny Mouse,” I say. They are never going to believe me. How well can I sleep in the jail cell? Do they at least give you airplane-quality pillows at Rikers? Ugh. Too much Law & Order.
“You have a mouse,” Bob says, pulling her kids a little closer. Full lets my shoulder go and cocks her head again, as if waiting for me to talk so she can listen.
“No, it’s my cat,” I say.
“You named your cat Tiny Mouse?” Bob asks pulling her kids even closer. Now I have to justify my pet’s name to these complete strangers? I look at Full, and she is smiling. She has a sweet, open smile. I am seduced for a minute into thinking I can lay my head right down in her voluptuous bosom and everything will be okay. Then I realize that her sweet open smile is the same kind you might give to a crazy person to talk them off the ledge. That doesn’t feel so far from who I am.
“Yes, because when he was a kitten he looked like a tiny mouse. You know, I’m freezing,” I lie, turning and going back into my apartment. If I had a screen door I would let it slam in their faces, but instead they stand in the doorway. I find one of Steve’s track jackets and throw it on. I turn back to them, at least feeling a little protected.
“Can we come in?” Bob asks at last.
I shrug. Is this really happening? Part of me wants to be left alone, but another part is happy to have some adult-human contact. Seeing actual women, not my mother-in-law and not the ones on TV, makes me feel tethered to reality. I feel as if I’ve been walking through a dream and seeing these two in the live flesh makes things a little more real.
They take my shrug as a yes and barrel in. Tiny Mouse has retreated under a piece of furniture somewhere leaving me holding the bag. Immediately, the boy and girl run in and jump on the ottoman, bouncing onto the couch. They crouch down and inspect the floor mat that we have for Abe. Then they yank his swing back and forth. Their mother is not pleased. She lets out an exasperated sigh. It is the most still I have ever seen her.
“Careful, Jacob,” Bob says. “Emily, be careful.”
I plop onto the love seat and pull my hair out of the elastic, but then I change my mind and pull it all back. I get a whiff of myself in the process. I smell like spit-up and body odor. Fabulous. In his nursery, Abe’s cries are getting louder.
“Do you want to get the baby?” Full asks.
I look at her. The answer is no, I most certainly do not want to get the baby. As usual he will be a completely different baby when I go into his nursery. After almost seven weeks, I still have no idea what to expect. If I go get the baby, he is just going to keep crying. I am going to try everything I can possibly think of to make him stop, but nothing is going to work. It is all futile. A never-ending futile cycle.
I am really going to cry now.
“I’ll get the baby,” Bob says, decisively. She looks at the other one. “Kirsten can you make sure they don’t break anything? Or kill each other?”
“Sure,” Kirsten says.
I hear the stranger go into my son’s room and speak to him in loud happy tones. She can have him. She can have it all.
Kirsten looks around my apartment. The living room is a mess. We quasi cleaned it three days ago for Steve’s mother. And it is already out of control. How does it happen so fast? There is a basket of unfolded laundry on the floor, a bowl of half-eaten pasta on the couch and magazines that have been piling up, because who has any time to do anything but stare at the TV? Normally, I would have cleaned up or at least been embarrassed by the sty, but it was the least of my worries.
Kirsten sat down on the couch and started folding laundry.
“You don’t have to,” I start to say, but Kirsten pretends not to hear me and I don’t know how to continue. Of course she doesn’t have to, but I certainly wasn’t going to. That was pretty obvious.
“Look at this little guy,” the other one says, coming back in with my son who is calmly nestled in her arms. I think I hate him for showing off. Kirsten leaps off the couch, smiling.
“What a beautiful baby,” she says, touching his head and beaming at him as if he is her own. “My daughter is seven months, but you forget they start out this tiny.”
“You have a kid,” I ask, eyeing her perfect breasts.
“I have three, they’re addictive,” she says, laughing. She looks back at the Abe. “This guy is so precious. Claudia, can I hold him?”
I am the one who should be asked permission.
Claudia hands him over but doesn’t exactly let go. She keeps cooing at him and laughing. These two are really having a ball. Maybe I can slip out the back door and climb over the fence in the garden.
“You should have seen the load in his diaper. Whoo-ee!” Claudia drops her distant tone and is apparently totally psyched about wiping my son’s stinky ass.
“You changed him?” I ask. It is embarrassing to have someone else change your kid. I had changed a poopy diaper before I put him down. I want to make sure these two understood that. “I changed him a half hour ago.”
“Some days it’s nothing but shit,” Kirsten says, glancing quickly over at the twins to see if they heard. They are oblivious. They are tearing through the box of books that people gave Abe and I haven’t touched or written thank-you cards for.
“And then some days you wonder why they are so backed up,” Claudia says. It’s her turn to look around the living room. She settles on me. “Would you like me to get you a glass of water or make you some tea?”
“Um, okay,” I say, not picking either. Claudia leaves the living room, not waiting for clarification, but not before taking the dirty pasta bowl with her. She returns with a tall glass of water for me and then goes straight back to cooing at Abe. I drink the whole glass down in almost one gulp. Kirsten looks at me and smiles.
“Breast-feeding totally dehydrates you, huh?”
“Yeah,” I say, finding it hard to believe that anybody had ever gnawed on those beauties.
I watch them fussing over Abe and then the teakettle starts whistling. Claudia races back in the kitchen. When she returns she is balancing three cups of tea and another large glass of water on a tray that had been a wedding present. She sets it down on the ottoman and gives her kids a stern warning to be careful, but they are interested for the time in Abe.
Claudia hands me a cup of tea. I take my tea with milk and sugar, but this has lemon and honey and it is delicious. I w
rap my hands around it and let my face soak up the steam. My skin is glistening with a thin film of sweat and dirt already. This can’t make it any worse.
Somehow, Kirsten expertly manages to cradle Abe in one hand and drink her tea. Claudia reads a few of Abe’s books to her kids between sips. Eventually, her son falls asleep on the floor and her daughter sits Indian style, going through the books and quietly organizing them.
Abe miraculously falls asleep and Kirsten gently sets him down on the couch beside her. I start to tell her that he usually doesn’t sleep flat on his back, but she ignores me. And as if to spite me, he stays asleep.
Kirsten talks about her first daughter and how she would only fall asleep if they bundled her up like a burrito, but her son needed to keep his hands in her hair to go down. It sounds as if she is a co-sleeper.
Claudia is definitely not a co-sleeper. She says that her son slept well at the beginning and her daughter didn’t and then they switched.
They are talking to each other, reminiscing, but I have a feeling that it is all for my benefit. I suspect they are still trying to talk me off a cliff. I can’t really see another situation where two women so seemingly diverse would be sharing such intimate memories.
Occasionally they glance over at me or look down at my sleeping son. I expect that any minute they will scold me for yelling or being such a bad parent, but they don’t. They each say several times that sometimes babies want to be passed off to someone new. I drink my tea, listening to their voices. I don’t feel like adding anything to the conversation. I’m not sure I want to make nice with them—they have, after all, barged into my apartment and taken over. But I have to admit I am enjoying it. The sound of their voices, not the buzz of the TV, is soothing. My head bounces from side to side on my neck, like I am getting ready to doze. But I can’t sleep. I have guests. Though I am so tired. My eyes are heavy; I let them close and lean back against the love seat, my empty still warm teacup against my leg. I am just going to rest, just going to listen. . . .