There were more stories here, of children whose minds are like infants’ but whose bodies grow to two hundred and fifty pounds. Who beat their parents with plates. Whose fists are the size of watermelons. Who have to live in padded rooms and see their mothers only through shatterproof glass.
“So we freeze her, cut out the seeds where breasts come from and take away her womb? Is this all in one day?” Roger asked.
“The hormones are ongoing. The rest takes an hour, plus overnight in the hospital, plus recovery at home.”
When we hung up the phone, I went into your room and shook your hand. I wanted to congratulate you on your optimism. Poppy, your body is going about its business. Blood gets where it needs to. All the pieces are intact, at least for now. Your body seems to see no reason not to go forward. To make ready for new life.
I took the bosses on the tour after the rewrite and the new lights and effects, and they were overcome with joy. They were clinging to each other, at least for fun, when we went down to the old Art Deco first-class swimming pool with its light-green tile dressed up nicely with fake mildew.
“Staff have reported seeing the footprints of a child around the pool,” I told them. “And no matter how many times we mop the thing dry, it’s always wet in the morning.” I raised my eyebrows and waited for the hologram of a white-dressed girl to float by.
After that we descended to the boiler room, huge and black, still full of machine parts and metal tubing, the walkways sailors used. I told them how those men died when something blew. Steamed to death. Pretty soon the lights started to flash and fake steam shot out of a fake engine. The lights went red and then off. “When thousands of soldiers lived on this ship during the war, there was a terrible wreck. Hundreds of men were crushed or drowned in the icy waters. Others were likely burned to death. They say that the ghosts of all those men live right here in the bow of the Queen, waiting for revenge.” After exactly two seconds, the “bolts” suddenly started to loosen and streams of water flooded in.
The bosses talked about the end of the bankruptcy and certainly the end of the historical tour upstairs. They shook my hand. “Whatever we’re paying you isn’t enough,” one suited woman told me.
“Yes,” I answered.
I looked around for the real ghosts, who did not reveal themselves to me. I imagined them watching us from their endlessness, waiting for us to imitate them and their deaths over and over for paying customers who go upstairs afterward and order lunch at the restaurant looking out over the bow, pretending it’s 1930 and they are on their way to England in fancy dresses and smooth black suits. They pour packets of sugar into their glasses and then suck the drink out with a straw. Human things, living things, things no one ever puts on a list of what to be grateful for.
Dear Poppy,
This morning we sat together on the porch. It was warm enough to be without jackets for the first time this spring. You were in your chair, which I want to tell you is made of a stroller meant for twins. We have turned the seats to face each other and they are reclined. There is a full sheepskin for your mattress. It was your father who made it. There are some devices marketed for kids like you. They are covered in buttons and levers and look like they will take you nowhere but white rooms full of more buttons and levers. Your father wanted to make something himself that was just yours, not a bed for severely disabled children, of which you are one, but a bed for his daughter, Poppy, who needs one with wheels. Anyway, you like it and you are in it a lot.
We were out there on the porch and I put some seed in the bird feeder and we waited for something to come and eat it. I told you about the birds we have here: mostly sparrows and crows but sometimes goldfinches and robins. I told you how they do not make babies the way we do but they lay eggs and inside the eggs the babies grow until they peck their way out. I felt stupid saying this out loud. I know that you do not store up the knowledge I give you. I know that I am repeating to myself the most basic facts about this world. It is only one of many humiliations. Another is how I write these letters to you when you are right next to me. No sound makes its way between our ears. I write as if the scratched words will crawl into your brain and make their nests there to stay for the long haul, stay until you understand them.
Eventually a squirrel came and hung itself from the porch roof by its back feet to eat from the feeder. I thought about getting up to scare it off, it not being winged. But for a second you seemed to be watching it, so I let it be. It ate up everything in the tray and left the feeder swinging. I did not refill it. You made some of your cooing sounds and the trees answered you with the rustle of their leaves.
Over lunch I put on an opera recording that always makes you wave your hands around. I am amazed by how little you cry. It does not seem to occur to you. You make sounds and you were fussy about food until we put you on a tube, but you do not seem to feel sadness or do not express it with tears. While you moved your tight fists to the music, I ate a turkey sandwich. I didn’t talk to you at all. I read the newspaper and found out about more of the continued misery. I did not do the breakfast dishes or the lunch dishes. I feel I should apologize to you about this—I am not keeping your house well. I am your servant and I am not serving the way I should. But you do not scold me. You wear the clothes I dress you in and do not complain.
• • •
IN THE MORNING there was a little girl sitting at my desk. She was watching my small television. I asked, “Are you looking for the ghost tour?”
“I have already been on it. I have done everything on this stupid boat,” she said, flipping channels.
“Where are your parents?”
“My dad works the bar upstairs for weddings. Today it’s a pink and white theme for Mr. and Mrs. Gravelthorn.”
“You have nowhere else to go?”
“It’s summer vacation. Don’t you have any kids for me to play with?”
“Not like that.”
“Can I stay here and draw?”
Before I answered, she set to work. She was surrounded by my life. The pictures of my family. Of Laura standing next to a cactus much taller than she was. Of us together in the car driving east, of Poppy as a baby and one of Poppy as a bigger kid. In this picture she is looking at the camera. I know that it just happened to be where her eyes went, that the flash drew her there, but looking at the picture feels like having her see me. Like she knows everything I want her to.
Dear Poppy,
When you were born they gave you to me and I loved you. You looked exactly like a baby. My mother said you had my eyes, but I didn’t care about that. You had eyes. You had your own face. You opened your mouth and I fed you. Your father’s hands were jealous while you nursed. You did not look at our eyes and you still don’t.
It took several weeks before they could tell us with any certainty that you would not grow up right. I hate remembering us then. We believed all day long that we could save you. We called experts all over the country. We drove you around in the car, me sitting next to you in back, singing, and your father steering us along. My mother flew in and stayed. People had answers for us, things to try, whole visions of how your life might turn out, you walking the stairs at the end of the school day with a heavy bag of books. Us a regular family. I can’t remember if there was a day when I changed the story, knowing you would lie where I placed you and stay there, your arms waving around and nothing I could understand going through your mind.
I mentioned to Dr. Keller that I was writing you letters lately, before the surgery, trying to explain your life to you. He told me that he wrote to both of his sons before their circumcisions. How he wanted to explain his reason for cutting them like that, the lineage of Jewish men they would be joining. He paused afterward, realizing, I think, that my letters were not the same thing. You will never read them. There will not be another ceremonial coming-of-age where I find you old enough to take you behind the dark stage of your life and show you the ropes and pulleys, show you the clanking steel and the co
stume room, and then the two of us reenter holding hands and the theater is full and we take a long mother-daughter bow and you go on being a woman after that. In this case, the letters remain in the box. I show them to no one. And you go on.
On the first tour, two kids got scared and had to be taken back by Britney, whose job it is to follow us along and remove anyone who is freaking out. There was only one couple left after that. It is much harder to lead a small tour, because you don’t get the group fear going. It’s just me, this dopey guide, acting afraid for the hundredth time. The husband was not interested at all in ghosts or in effects.
When the lights went out and the fake steam started to howl from the “broken” pipeline, the guy says to me, “So, like how many men would be working down here at a time, say?”
I tried to ignore him but he persisted, so I told him hundreds of thousands. The lights flickered on and off and the recorded sounds of screaming men echoed in the metal cavern. His wife seemed slightly frightened but never said anything during the entire tour.
“Now, were they unionized?”
“Are you kidding me? Do you know what my job is?” I asked him. “My job is to scare you.”
“You don’t know how many men it took to build the ship originally, do you?” he called. “You don’t know shit! You just make stuff up!”
“My daughter is eight years old and she’s growing pubic hair. Does that scare you?”
“You are disgusting. I’m here to see a great ocean liner,” he said. “A historic ocean liner.”
I stopped saying anything. I led them through, room by room, signaled the effects and stood quietly while steam and lights and water did their jobs. At the end of the tour, I opened the doors to a fluorescently lit room with a few exhibits of life during the time the ship sailed. Pictures of the now creepy pool filled with happy swim-capped first-classers; a white lace dress such as a lady might have worn to tea in the afternoon. Normally we enter this room and exit right away. For a few minutes then, I can put my feet over the edge and kick them against the curved wood and breathe some actual air and call my wife, who puts the phone to Poppy’s ear so I can tell her I miss her. But this guy wanted to stay. This was the part he had been waiting for. He wanted the facts, not the story I wrote for him.
“Oh, look, Marjorie, what a pretty little teaspoon!” he said, and they stood there looking, their old noses pressed up against the glass. By the time they were finally done, there were nose-grease patterns, two dots side by side, on every case. I did not go hunt for Windex and I did not wipe down the cases. Their twin prints remained there, thin and foggy, while I invoked the dead for eighteen minutes on the hour and the half hour for the rest of the day.
Dear Poppy,
I wanted to buy something to wear to the surgery tomorrow. I want them to believe me, that I’m doing my best. If I arrive looking how I do most of the time, I think they’ll do less of a job for you. They need to think that we are the kind of family who demands good service. We rolled through the awful mall looking at pantsuits. I held them over you so you could see, but you were no help. When I tried them on, I looked like someone I would not like to be friends with. I bought a boring blue turtleneck sweater, but at least it’s clean. As we left the mall, in the central food court there was a little girl about three years old with gold curls bouncing on her shoulders, running ahead of her parents, who seemed entirely unbothered, yelling, “I’m African! I’m African! I’m African! I’m African!” In her mind, was she riding on the back of a zebra over a stretch of land so vast it would be days before she encountered someone who corrected her story, made her put her seat belt on, bribed her to eat six more bites of potatoes before dessert?
We went to the grocery store in the afternoon. I decided that I wanted to make a nice supper for us all. I chose a cart over a basket and made my way around the store with two sets of wheels, yours and the food’s. I chose lamb chops and the makings for salad. I put four red potatoes into a bag. I still think it’s weird to cook for only two. You do not ever, not ever, eat what I make. I think you are ungrateful sometimes. I think you do not even see what I do. You laugh and smile while I stir and chop. You laugh and smile while I measure your medicines and attach a new bag of food for you. You laugh and smile while I clean you.
An old lady in the cereal aisle stared up at me with my two vehicles. She looked into your bed and waited for me to pull you over so that she could pass.
“You are a saint,” she said to me.
“What am I supposed to do?” I asked back. “Take her outside and shoot her?”
Usually I am practiced at saying, “Thank you for saying so, but it’s no burden. She is always a blessing.” And this is not untrue. I imagine you gone and it seems horribly empty. I imagine the games of healthy children in the living room and the children seem like loud and insulting beasts. “I don’t mean that,” I told the old woman. “She is always a blessing.” She seemed to accept this, eager, too, to pave over my indiscretion. She wants this to be a place where God sends down the questions of twisted bodies and damaged brains but always sends with them the answers of wide hearts and abundant love.
In the parking lot, a bird flew over us with a fish in his claws. They were about the same size. The fish faced forward and flapped its tail. It flew. It swam through the air. What a surprise that must have been, to be swimming along and then suddenly to be plucked out and held between the sharp talons of a hawk, swooping out over the hills. Suffocating in all that air.
The girl was still in my chair when I got back at the end of the day. She was watching TV.
“So,” I said.
“Hello.”
“You’re still here.”
“My name is Madeleine. I’m eight.” She smiled, sharp. “You?”
“OK. Roger. I’m forty-three. Almost forty-four.” I kept talking. I did not find a stopping place. “My birthday is in May. The fifteenth. The ides of May.” I laughed in hollow, uncomfortable rounds. She nodded politely.
“Happy early birthday. I finished my drawing.” She took the paper out. It was Poppy, from the photograph. She looked upsettingly happy in it, the kind of happy where she can tell you exactly how the good things went down—the soccer goal, the A on the math test, the birthday gifts opened and piled.
“You drew my daughter.”
“I know.”
“What’s it called?”
“I don’t know. How about Still Life with Child.” She gave it to me and I folded it up and put it in my pocket.
“Still Life with My Child,” I repeated. “We can’t be friends, me and you.”
“OK. Why?”
“I already have a kid.”
“I know—I drew her. And I already have a dad. I just wanted to use your desk.”
When I got home, my girls were asleep on the couch. Poppy was covered in a hand-knit blanket and Laura was uncovered, open to the world. Her pants were twisted around her waist and her shirt was falling open, a square of breast visible through the buttonhole. On the floor, Laura’s sketchbook was open to a drawing of Poppy’s face. Her curled fists were absent. The uneasy shape of her body. In the drawing, her face looked like it could be talked into being normal. A few changed strokes and she would be a regular kid. Oprah was on TV without sound. She sat on her white couch and laughed with a famous person. They looked serious for a moment and then they rejoiced. Serious, rejoice, serious, rejoice. I could hear the breathing of my wife and daughter above all else. They were not in sync. I sat in the nearby chair and did not change anything.
Dear Poppy,
My mother was the last to admit your differences. She came to stay here from Boston when you were born and knit about a hundred blankets and hats and booties. She cooked us dinner every night and changed diapers and sang to you and me and everyone else. She was making a loud entrance as a grandmother. I saw that she had been waiting. When we first learned that you might not develop normally, she went on a tirade about the incompetence of doctors. “They a
lways want to give you a prognosis,” she told me. “It’s a baby! How do they know anything about what’s going to happen!”
“They aren’t predicting that she’ll be a pro ice skater or that she’ll fail the seventh grade. They are taking note of her functioning, her body’s functioning.”
“Of course they are. And who stands to gain from that? How many tests do they want to conduct now? And what’s the price of those tests?”
“Should I refuse them, then?”
“You tell me that there is something wrong with your daughter. Say it, then, if you think it’s true. Say, ‘My daughter is a retard.’”
I didn’t say anything to her. I did let them do tests, though, and they kept coming back with bad news. Even still, your grandmother was your big fan all along. She was the one who set up most of our appointments with learning specialists and everyone else. These people told us happily in their offices that everyone has a different way of developing and all we’d have to do was embrace yours.
She visits you every three months. She still looks at you like a healthy girl. Your uncle has two now, so Grandma gets to do the regular things, which is good for her. She plays softball and reads Tintin to them. But when she comes here, she sits right down next to you and rubs your arms while she tells you about the world. “There have been some big trades in baseball already this year,” she says, “and I don’t know if you know, but I think the political tide might finally be turning.” You seem to listen. Your eyes are alert and you squeeze her hand back as if to say, “I hear you.”
A Guide to Being Born: Stories Page 3