by Rica Keenum
***
At the library, I find the book Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: The Classic Guide to Understanding the Opposite Sex. I can be understanding. I need to be more understanding.
J and I have become inseparable. We do everything and nothing at all. Some nights we just drive with the windows down and the tingle of night on our skin. I watch his face light up behind the beams of oncoming cars as we streak by at high speeds. Our laughter spills into the dark. If it were just the two of us in the world, that would be enough.
“I can see us married,” he says. And when I close my eyes, I see it too.
I am 18, he’s 19 and we don’t know much but we think we know love, so we make it official at Chapel of the Bells just three months later. It’s a charming little sanctuary in the heart of the south side, reminiscent of a Wordsworth poem: a violet by a mossy stone, half-hidden from the eye. I wear a simple white dress I found on sale for $40. J wears a rented suit, black with a pair of Nikes. I laugh when I see the shoes. He is sleek, sophisticated, hands crossed in front of his buttoned-up tux. And then the shoes — are they an expression of style or a symbolic statement: I won’t grow up. Not now, not ever.
Chapter 3
A Son
At 20, I should have been procrastinating college homework, sipping something cheap and fizzy or trying on jeans at the mall. Instead, I am at home coiled on the bed and bulging at my middle, stroking the globe of my belly, the new world beneath my fingers. There isn’t anywhere else I want to be. I hadn’t tried for a baby, but when I realize why I’ve been so exhausted, why my body suddenly feels like a balloon filled with sand, why I can’t stop peeing — I am intrigued. When I share my news with J, we are standing outside watching the road in front of the house. Without warning, the words fly out of my mouth and into the cool autumn air.
“I’m pregnant.”
I’m not so much telling him as I am telling myself, tasting the phrase on my tongue — hearing my prelude to motherhood, which in turn will mean midnight feedings, emotional chaos, sleep deprivation, temporary insanity and throwing small parties for first-time toilet poopers. Before the ease of Google, I arm myself with a library card. My penchant to understand all the specifics in detail leaves me bug-eyed and hunched over textbooks, absorbed in the anatomy and physiology of childbirth. I examine the glossy photos of somersaulting fetuses swimming like shrimp in murky seas of amniotic fluid. I learn about burping, bathing, weaning, training and when the first teeth should cut through the gums. I join a Dr. Seuss book club, quit caffeine and sip herbal tea while quietly contemplating our future. At night I dream of my child, of the silk of his skin and the tiny pearls of his fingers and toes. When I can only lie comfortably on my side, his spastic kicks and jabs jolt me into groggy fits of sleep. One night he kicks so ferociously, I imagine his gangly, brown foot burrowing through my lower belly. Before I even know he is a he, and that his skin will be a chestnut shade of brown like his dad’s, I envision the foot, bearing a fuzzy, blue bootie.
In my third trimester, a nurse hands me a black-and-white photo of his ghostly form. It is not like looking at a perfect stranger, a distant cousin or someone I will meet soon enough. It is like seeing the one I already know, if only in flutters and thumps — the spirited little man who marches inside my abdomen, and who will march into my life with the same vigor. Throughout my pregnancy, I keep a journal of poetry and musings, mostly crappy poems that seem eloquent at the time. They’ve long since been lost in various moves to apartments, duplexes and houses. And while I don’t recall the lines, I do remember the title of the very first poem I wrote for my son, “I Don’t Know You, But I Love You.”
***
The pain is dull, a low kick at the base of my spine that started in the early morning while I was still in bed watching daylight creep in. It’s Sunday, so we lounge around a while in our pajamas and I wait for the cramping to either lessen or worsen. I’m okay with either because at this point I am tired of lumbering around like a beanbag chair with limbs. After some hours of assessing the pain, I realize these are more than Braxton Hicks contractions, the sporadic “false” labor cramps all the books say are practice. We should probably head to the hospital.
“It’s gonna be a while,” a nurse tells us after we arrive. “First babies like to take their time.” The hospital is packed because for some reason, every baby in the city has decided to make its entrance today. “There won’t be a room ready for hours and you’ll be more comfortable at home,” the nurse explains. I waddle back to the car with my stupefied husband, meticulously packed bag and swollen everything.
I spend the next few hours in the bathtub. My belly is a tugboat in a bath of warm bubbles. Then pink-cheeked and shriveled, I walk around the nursery, picking up all the baby items in the whimsical, wallpapered room: a plush Winnie the Pooh bear, sealed bottles of lotion and oil, diapers as small as a deck of playing cards stacked in the animal-faced diaper rack. I sit in the thrift-store chair I’d scrubbed with upholstery cleaner, run my fingers on its gray, velvet fabric and let my hand wander to the wicker side table where a radio sits with a tape locked and loaded: Baby’s First Bible Songs. Motherhood is making me oddly religious, more so than I ever imagined. I’m desperate to give this child everything good in the world and terrified to know that I can’t. I’ve begun, in the smallest ways, to reach out for help. I crank up “Jesus Loves Me” and hope that he does. Love me, but more importantly, my baby.
When we finally return to the hospital, it’s a few hours later and the pain has reached epic proportions. As we hurry inside, I decide that if they don’t have a room, I’ll take a goddamn desk, table or mattress on the floor in the hallway. But they have a room. I fling myself on the bed, dizzy and in a state of quiet shock. I try to recall what I read during the months I crammed for this — the labor and delivery exam. The baby books said there’d be uterine muscle spasms. The cervix would dilate to ten centimeters. In the second stage of labor, kneeling on all fours might help to relieve the backaches. It sounded reasonable when I read it, but right now it seems utterly ridiculous. I am panting, sweating, clawing at the bedsheets. Everything I read over the past nine months is a fairytale now. The medical terms, the pregnancy guides, colorful charts and diagrams. And the anatomical images — those were other women’s bodies. They belonged to science. But this was happening to me, and it was not colorful like the books.
Shortly after 4 a.m., baby KJ comes — 6 pounds, 10 ounces, 20 inches long. He feels shockingly small and I can’t do the math. All that belly for this? It’s like I’ve unwrapped a giant box to find a coin inside. But he is beautiful, and not just because mothers are supposed to say that. I marvel at his tiny bones, wrapped in the wrinkled satin of fresh skin, his hair is slick black and sprouting everywhere. When he opens his mouth to squeal, his lips quiver like guitar picks, strumming the chords of my heart.
***
I don’t have friends anymore. My life is not mine alone, and it’s both wonderful and wearisome. I have a baby and a husband and I watch Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. I take the stroller out for a spin on warm days. We walk eight blocks to my grandma’s house, through the old neighborhood where two-bedroom ranches squat on tiny green lots. These are the streets I walked to school, with familiar trees and sidewalk cracks, windows I peered through in passing. I gawked at the occupants inside, attempting to assemble their families as if mentally playing house. It seemed I never stopped wondering about other families. Were they happy? Did they have secrets too? In school, I daydreamed about living in a sitcom family: The Seavers, The Cunninghams, The Bradys. I tried on other parents, imagining they were mine: fathers who scurried into the school office with bagged lunches for kids who forgot, mothers who helped chaperone field trips, enduring sweltering bus rides with riotous preteen mobs.
My aunt never had her own children, so on weekends I was hers, if only from Friday to Sunday. She’d hand me a plastic cup at Grant Park and I’d run free, on the hunt for chipmunks, baby
bunnies or anything cute and cuddly. I never caught any critters, but the thrill of the chase was enough. On the damp banks of a pond, my aunt held my hand and we watched in wonder as an otter bobbed and splashed in the water.
“There he is again,” she shouted as I cheered. We’d named the otter “Emmet,” like the one in the story she read me, Emmet Otter’s Jug Band Christmas.
Picnics in the park, puzzles in front of the fireplace — this was the stuff of families. With my aunt and my grandparents, I collected enough good memories to equalize the bad.
At the corner, I stop to adjust the stroller and a feeling overwhelms me. It is the excitement I always feel when nearing Grandma’s house. I’m a mama with a baby, but my heart feels five years old. I want ice cream and cartoons, storybooks and songs, grandma petting my knee.
When I arrive at the yellow door, I maneuver the stroller inside. I make my way through the front room, past the end tables with marble tops and brassy handles. Past the porcelain baby lamb that bears her favorite Bible verse, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.” I see her on the sofa, leaning forward, her face cocked toward the sound of us. When she sees me with my brand-new son, her eyes flutter with emotion. I know she’s been waiting for us.
I collapse beside her. Motherhood is kicking my ass. She coos at my son then takes him onto her lap with the ease of a seven-time mother, which she is. Within moments, her fragrance has engulfed his blanket and his cheeks are scalloped with her lipstick. We glance at reruns of Murder She Wrote, and I tell her how hard it has been with the sleepless nights and projectile vomit. My husband doesn’t seem to comprehend my stress. She reaches over and gently pinches a plump sweet infant leg. She is a woman at the market, marveling at the freshest batch of produce.
“A man can work from sun to sun, but a woman’s work is never done,” she says.
It’s the loveliest phrase I’ve ever heard, simply because I am desperate for validation. I watch my grandma as she admires KJ. I see shelter in the familiar folds of her face and in her smile. I want to crawl inside those folds, where the weight of everything can’t crush me. But I settle for this spot next to her, as close as I can get on the floral sofa where we used to watch Scooby Doo. She reaches out and squeezes KJ’s leg again. Her spotty hand. His new skin. She can’t get enough. I close my eyes and inhale deeply. It feels like my first breath since his birth.
***
A cartoon theme song has been stuck in my head for a week, so I pop a Jewel CD in the stereo and serenade KJ. “You were meant for me, and I was meant for you…” I belt it out so hard his face goes flat, then I bounce him on my hip and swirl him around the room. These are my kind of dance parties. When I’m too dizzy to stand, we flop on the bed in front of the open window. I watch the cars go by and wait for J to pull up in our Plymouth — the next big event in my lonely life. Only, it’s not. I hear his feet on the stairs and then he appears in his grimy work clothes. He sits in front of the television, sweat beads glistening at his temples. When I ask if he’s hungry, he mumbles not now and turns up the volume on Sports Center.
When the weekend comes, I pack sandwiches in a cooler. A bag of chips and bottles of juice and water. We have a blanket and a diaper bag. We’re headed for the lake. I sit in the backseat where I can be close to KJ, who is strapped in his car seat, sandaled feet thrashing in the breeze. I still haven’t learned how to step away from my child. I spend my days observing him like a scientist and making lists of everything: hours slept, ounces eaten, diapers dirtied in a day. I read up on developmental milestones, collect endless parenting books. It’s a good thing the internet is not yet mainstream.
J turns down the radio and finds me in his rearview. “Everything okay back there?” he asks. His face is serene and bright, his smile an upturned rainbow. We are happy today, ready for an adventure. I give him a thumbs up and we drive east until the blue sky meets the ripple of the lake. We turn onto the main drag where the whole city spins and throbs. Cyclists cruise by in neon shorts and rollerbladers glide through the crowds. Dogs pull their leashes taut and drag their wet tongues in the heat. Kids climb the jagged rocks along the shore. It takes a while to find a spot to park, but we have a while. We have all day and we plan to use it — I hope.
Today is a rare day in which J is neither at work nor dormant in front of the television, hypnotized by a speeding ball. He wriggles KJ from his seat and we take to the sidewalk, blanket and cooler in hand. With each step, we get further from our routines and I feel myself lifting, no longer weighted by the lists and books, the pursuit of parental perfection. With the incandescent sun on our skin, everything sparkles.
J bounces KJ as we walk, then stops, slides him up his torso and nibbles his belly. I watch KJ’s little arms windmilling with excitement in the sky that’s blue as a dream. When we find the perfect spot, a grassy plot beneath an outstretched tree, we fling our blanket open and smooth the corners down.
We lie on our backs and watch the clouds puff past like the seedy heads of dandelions. KJ’s foot pokes up and J grabs it in his fist, rolls onto his side and examines it then holds it against his lips for a long, slow kiss.
Chapter 4
Round Two
When KJ is a toddler, I discover I’m pregnant again. My first inkling comes not with a test strip but with an insatiable craving. We are grocery shopping on a Sunday when I place a plastic bowl of chopped fruit in the shopping cart. I am eyeing it as we maneuver through the store and J takes his sweet time choosing cereal, cuts of beef, cartons of juice. My hands nearly shake as I fight the urge, aisle after aisle, to rip off the lid and drill into the bowl. I lick my lips, fix my gaze on my little package of fresh fruit: plump red watermelon, jewels of grapes, golden cuts of cantaloupe. As we check out, the cashier is slow and chatty. She engages KJ and this is the one time in which I don’t care to hear how handsome my son is. How stunning his curls are. Let’s get this show on the road.
In the parking lot, it’s all too much to bear. The sun melts onto my shoulders and I am parched. I hunch over the shopping cart as J loads bags into the trunk. When he turns to grab the last of them, his face registers shock at the sight of me, cheeks fat with cold fruit, forearms dripping with watermelon juice. Nothing has ever tasted so good. I chew, chew, chew, then swallow. Breathe hard then say, “I think I might be pregnant.”
***
The ultrasound said it’s a boy and we’re glad KJ will have a brother. I take a job at a Super America gas station across the street from our apartment, which is a nice enough place in a good neighborhood. We need the extra cash and I like getting out of the house. I work evenings after J comes home from his day shift, which means we spend only minutes together most days. Some nights I look up from the lottery machine and see J under the shine of streetlights with KJ on his hip and a foil-wrapped plate in his hand. He stands in line while I slide cartons of cigarettes and Quick Picks across the counter and joke with the neighborhood customers.
“If you hit it big with these numbers, remember the nice girl who sold you the ticket.”
“Scouts honor,” the man replies, straightening his stance for a three-finger salute.
When J approaches, he plunks down a plate of hot buttered noodles and green beans or Tuna Helper he whipped up from the box. Later, I scarf it down in the back room while watching the cameras for customers. Then I head outside to empty the trash bins. By 9 p.m., each of the six garbage cans will be an Eiffel Tower of Styrofoam cups, candy wrappers and greasy fast food bags. Chasing trash across the lot is especially fun on windy nights or when ice spreads out like tentacles. On the night before I give birth again, I make my rounds with aching feet and heave the bulging bags onto my belly before taking a deep breath and tossing them into the stinky dumpster behind the building. I go home and soak my swollen legs in a hot bath.
On Friday morning, I watch the snow outside my window and think about how long it will take J to leave work, slosh through this mess and get me to the hospital. I don’t want to ca
ll him too early and get sent home like we did the first time. When another pain shoots through me, I know it’s time to act.
I pick up the phone and dial J’s work number, fingers mashing with a force that surprises me. My body has become irate. Before he picks up, there is a pause in which I sit with the phone cradled on my shoulder, waiting. My breath comes out hard, a husky fog in my ear. When J fumbles on the line, I tell him to get home now.
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, holding the “S” on my tongue so that it slides out, sharp. A hiss.
I get to the hospital too late — no time for an epidural. The staff whisks me off in a wheelchair, tosses a cotton gown in my lap and draws the curtain. The pain is so great I want to stop, drop and roll out the fire that is blazing at the base of my spine. Have I entered a sci-fi movie? Is this an alien or a baby boy? I imagine a one-eyed bundle of teeth and talons slashing through my flesh.
“I need something for the pain,” I tell the nurse, who is helping me into the adjustable bed. I squeeze her hand a bit too hard just to drive home the point. She nods, walks away and a few more hospital employees come in, bustle about, poke my arm and thread me with tubes and bags. The pain lingers but it’s strangely diffused, a vapor in my belly. The nurse explains as she reaches for my arm, “I could only give you something mild. You’re just so close.”
This is a whole new experience. During KJ’s marathon birth, an anesthesiologist came in and ushered me to the edge of the bed where I bent over and showed him my spine. He jabbed a needle in, and voila! My lower half went numb. A semi could have parked on my lap and I’d have smiled and said, “No problem.” But now I have something mild, and mild it is.