A Guide to Being Born: Stories (3 page)

Her feet slide to the next knot and hands follow.

Alice reaches the water. When she touches down, the water stings. “It’s cold,” she relays to the dry air. But she wants to let go of the rope. She wants to be free of the climb, so she lets herself fall in, her entire weight let loose in the water. It catches her easily and she dunks her head under. She laughs the laugh of a cold, floating person. She waves her arms and lets the yips come out of her mouth. She peers below, trying to see, but the only things are her own feet haloed by green phosphorescence, kicking and kicking and kicking.

“Will both of my husbands be mine again?” she calls to the birds or the fish or the sky. “Can I love them again now?” She does not get her answer. Her slip rises up around her like a tutu. She looks now like a ballerina on a music box, legs bared under the high-flying skirt. The material is soft and brushes Alice’s arms. She does not try to hold the slip down. Her breasts float up. All around her the green light of stirred water.

The boat groans and leans away, then begins to slip across the smooth sea. Alice does not feel herself moving and the ship leaves no wake, yet there is much morning-bright water between them. Her rope slaps at the hull, quieter as it goes, until all she hears is the echo of a sound no longer taking place, just her ear’s memory of that song. The ocean is full and the sky is full—how plentiful the elements are! Alice floats on her back at the exact point of their meeting, held like a prayer between two hands pressed together.

She dives under and spins, making a lopsided flip, and emerges with her hair stuck to her face. Drops fall from her chin in a glowing chain. They fall from her hair and from her ears and from the tip of her nose. They fall from eyelashes and from the lobes of her ears. The drops join back up with the whole ocean and disappear inside that enormous body. Alice throws her arms up in ta-da position, water flying off in a great celebration of sparks.

LAURA
AND
I
CELEBRATED
my new job for the sake of having something to celebrate. I picked up a mushroom pizza and a six-pack of Diet Cokes, and Laura and I sat on a picnic blanket in the middle of our suburban front yard. Poppy sat there too, only she was in her stroller bed as always. The grass was craning out of the dirt and the birds were going for all our scraps. We lay on our backs like Poppy does, flat down, and looked at the graying blue of the sky. It came at us. Storming us with its color, with its light.

That afternoon, when I accepted the job as the head guide of the ghost tour on the retired ocean liner, the boss told me I could write my own content for the tour. Mr. Peterson said, “We love that you are creative. We think that’s so cool!”

I shook his hand and then I sat in the car and let go of a few tears. I had to. It was the first time anyone was paying me to write something and it was the worst kind of writing. Shameful, jokey, forgettable.

“Thank you for taking this job,” Laura said, without turning to look at me. “I know you don’t want it.”

“I don’t not want it. I want to do whatever I need to do.”

“Do you want to ever try again?” she asked, looking at her middle.

“We can’t afford it.”

“My mother would keep helping with money.”

“That’s not what I mean.”

When the sun dropped behind the trees, their shadows got long and greedy. We went inside and threw away the rest of our dinner, kissed our mute and immobile kin good-night. Our stunted eight-year-old. She didn’t meet our eyes, but she did make some noises; she did hold our fingers in each of her fists, Laura’s in her right and mine in her left.

We stood there in a chain like that until she let go and released us.

Dear Poppy,

I had to tell your father about the pubic hairs. I tried to call him at work, but I didn’t get him—I couldn’t put the news on his voice mail. I waited until he was home and we had eaten our dinner and I asked him, “How was work, honey?”

He said, “I got there on time and I left on time. I found a guy to install something that will make the ladders shake all at once in the boiler room. It’s very loud.”

“That’s good, right?”

“They say that’s good. Noise and light—my job.”

We ate ice cream and held hands over you on the couch.

I said, “She’s really growing up.” He squinted at me.

“Are you joking?” he asked. “She’s the same as always. She might look like a second grader, but really, she is exactly, exactly the same as always.”

“She’s longer,” I said. “But also . . .” I pulled your pants down where, beyond the pink elastic-squeezed line, a few terrible hairs were pressed flat to your skin. He covered you quickly and closed his eyes. He isn’t mad at you, Poppy. You are the size and shape of a regular eight-year-old, with a baby’s brain. How could it be that your body is getting ahead? As we sat there looking over you, covered now, Roger kept saying your age, eight, to himself. Eight, eight.

“Her body doesn’t have a plan,” Dr. Keller told us on the phone. “Next she’s going to get a period, you know.” He sounded as if he was scolding us for eating too much sugar. Your father was on the phone in the kitchen and I was on the other line, sitting on our bed. I could hear him breathing through the wires.

“It sounds to me like her body
does
have a plan. It’s a bad plan, but it’s a plan,” I said. “I guess you must have a better one?”

“We could do a hysterectomy. This is actually a no-big-deal procedure. Hundreds are done every day. She has no use for a uterus.”

I imagined your organs, each slick and pumping shape tucked inside you, with a hole in the middle. I wondered if the rest would ooze over into the new space, if they would grow bigger or else rattle around.

“And there is the possibility that breasts would cause further discomfort.”

“You seem to have this all figured out,” Roger said. I heard him in the phone and also in the house. I heard the chair squeaking under him.

The doctor told us a story of you later, at a time when you have grown too big to lift and we have hired a large caretaker to help out, and this person happens to be a man and he brushes up against you one day and your nipples harden. And he takes this to mean something.

“Are you suggesting we cut her breasts off, when she gets them?” I asked.

“No, no. Much simpler. We remove the buds.”

“There are buds?”

“They look like little almonds,” he said, “and without them, she remains flat and safe. Nothing grows without a seed.” Dr. Keller rolled on, his voice raised up in a smile. “We can solve another problem too. If we put her on enough hormones, her bones will fuse. We can freeze her at her current size. She’ll always fit in your arms.”

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.