After Birth (23 page)

What?

I watched a show about it. They found a giant squid. First ever. I mean, they’ve existed in mythology, but no one had ever actually caught one until now.

That’s cool.

Well, yeah, this fishing boat way out in the deepest Atlantic catches this thing in these deep-sea nets by accident and they haul it up and they can’t believe it because no one has ever been able to confirm the existence of these things.

Wow.

But what do they do once they’ve hauled it up in the deep-sea net, first time anyone’s ever laid eyes on its kind?

They kill it.

Of course. Then they put it on ice and try to get it to a lab immediately so it can be cut up and studied and whatever.

Moral of the story?

Don’t get caught?

Don’t be interesting.

Let them mythologize you down there in the depths, let them wonder, but don’t show yourself, for God’s sake.

Maybe it wanted help.

There is no help.

What scares me late at night is that Walker’s a
person;
he hears what I say and looks up at me and wants to love me but doesn’t yet have any clue how fucked up I am. Here he is, we brought him here, he’s one of us now, the living. It’s pretty simple: an infant is to be held and bundled up and carried around. Fed, tended, protected. Helpless creature. You learn to humble yourself to him, pie-faced god. And you want to feel the enormity of that? Want it to hit you square? Imagine him hurt. Imagine him suffering. Imagine him taken. Imagine him dead. Imagine your arms empty. Imagine it, imagine it, imagine it.

These tiny people, they’re not about you. They are not for you. They do not belong to you. They are under your care, is all, and it’s your job to work at being a decent human being, love them well and a lot, don’t put your problems on them, don’t make your problems their problems, don’t use them to occupy empty parts of yourself.

So you’re finally growing up
, my mother says, standing behind me at the sink while I get started on the dishes. I feel aged. My body says no. I think I might see her reflection if I look up at the darkened window, but it’s so fogged up that I can’t even see myself.

Yeah, I guess
, I tell her, so she’ll leave me alone. I’m too tired to fight, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to spare the child my weaknesses and faults. Swear that if he winds up broken, it will not be by me.

Pain-in-the-ass bank snafu error message; I’m supposed to call them and straighten it out.

Mother’s maiden name?

I hesitate, as though saying it might summon her. As though saying it might rouse her from tenuous slumber.

Hello?

Um.

Hello?

Walker
, Paul said.
How about Walker?

Walker?

You know, like Walker Percy, Walker Evans.

I called it up on my device.

It means cloth washer. It’s Old English. In the medieval era, workers trod on wool to cleanse it of impurities.

There’s something kind of nice about that, don’t you think?

Yeah. I mean, maybe. But don’t you think it’s weird to reach into Old English for a name?

Why?

I’m Jewish. You’re whatever you are. What are you again?

Whatever.

No, seriously, remind me?

Way back Scottish. Some Italian.

Right, so you’re whatever, I’m a Jew. And he’ll be a Jew, technically.

Technically.

Yeah, well, technically’s pretty much all that counts with the Jews. A technicality-loving folk.

So you want something Hebrew-y? Old Testament style?

I didn’t say that.

Good. Because that would be weird, too.

I like Walker. I like what it’s about. And walking. Walking’s the best.

How about Biker? Bikes are pretty great.

Be serious.

Oh. Okay. Is there a rule about that?

No.

Okay. Let’s see
. . .
Janice-for-a-boy?

Are you serious?

No. Cal. Clement.

Carl.

Cory.

God, they’re all so bad. Why do all names sound so dumb?

You remember that
Seinfeld
bit about having to hurry up and have kids because by the time you’re forty you’ve met someone you dislike with every name in existence?

Yeah, so it’s down to, like, Calyx.

I never met a Calyx I didn’t love.

Corinthian.

Corrado.

Cantonese.

Catatonic.

Come Hither.

Caaaah-razy.

Two dreams.

One. A faint, steady wail coming from somewhere inside the wall at the back of my closet.

Crap, what now. Did the raccoon have babies? A family of bats?

Will comes over.

I’m convinced it’s a baby
, I say. He stands very still, listening to the steady wail.

It’s a baby. We’ll have to open up the wall.

I nod. But first, can’t resist. He lowers me into a chair and I am pliant, warm. Hang on a minute, baby. Then the wailing stops.

Silence. I’m alone. I begin to tear through the wall, smash through. There’s a small passageway and an opening. The wailing has stopped. The baby is dead. The baby was hungry. The baby starved. The baby gave up. The baby is dead. Paul comforts me.

Two. I’m pregnant. I am terribly upset. Beyond hysterical. I will procure an abortion immediately!

I’m looking up the number and dialing and pressing 4 for more information and waiting on hold while the bullshit music plays and I start to count the months. August, it’ll be. Everything hot and lush, nights in short sleeves. A new girl, fresh and soft and naked on my chest.

How smart she’ll be. How free. Open and kind. Happy, secure. She won’t sneak a peek at herself when passing any reflective surface. Rarely threatened. Know what she deserves. One day she’ll grow gray. Rarely paint her face. Eat slowly, move her body often, all sweat and love. Do as she pleases, disregard the superficial, listen more than she talks, stay calm. Be good to herself. Make things. Fix things. Grow things.

Finally someone picks up.

Hello?

I will be her shining example. I’ll become it, so as to never let her down.

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

And oh yeah. And I’ll give birth to her. Do the work, earn her. No avoiding the pain, but I can’t wait to make its acquaintance, see its face, square with it. Exciting. What is pain if you don’t suffer it? I will make myself worthy.

Harlan, is that you? Listen, I told you I was going to report you if you called more than twice a day. Harlan, are you taking your meds? You know I have to call your caseworker if you harass us, Harlan.

I hang up. Smash the phone down on the receiver. Old-fashioned receiver, beige.

We’ll do it together—me and this baby girl. She’ll be here in the dog days of summer. We’ll claw our way grunting screaming moaning ecstatically toward each other. A girl.

And if I die trying? If we both do??

Fine.

Cold. More snow. It is never going to end, this winter. Ice. Twelve degrees Fahrenheit.

People don’t remember what winter used to be like
, says Didi at the co-op.
You’d have the first snow either before or after Christmas, and then it would snow until March. There would always be snow on the ground. My kids don’t understand why there’s so much snow this year. This is normal. What’s weird is how little snow there’s been in the last few years.

We’re in the deli, packing and pricing millet salad and sweet-potato-bakes half quarts. Walker’s asleep on my back.

A beautiful little family comes walking up to the case, browsing the sandwiches. Pretty mommy, hair shiny, sweet face, baby in a sling on her chest. Maybe seven months old, the perfect age, no longer so terrifyingly easy to kill, but not exerting any of that annoying independence just yet. They look calm and proud, connected, a team. The mom has found her balance. Or maybe she never lost it in the first place. Maybe it’s all been okay for her. But I tend to doubt it.

Kabuki Face from Paul’s department comes in just before the end of my shift. Haven’t seen her since the faculty party in November. I decide not to ignore her. It takes so little in the beginning: a moment of eye contact, an exchange, laying down of arms, and an agreement: women agree to be friends, or to be friend
ly
, until one of them crosses a line, decides she doesn’t so much like the other after all, and then the friendship, or the friendliness, is over. Sometimes it takes minutes, sometimes it takes years.

How’s it going?

Good, good
, she says.
And you?

I shrug.
Okay.

Are you?
She actually seems to want to know.

Yeah
, I say unconvincingly.
You know.
But she sees through me.

It’s hard
, she says.

Yeah.

I had a really bad time of it.

You did?

God. Yeah. Long time ago. They’re twenty-two and nineteen now.

She’s kind of a badass; I never saw it before. Fidelity to that kind of aesthetic requires real toughness. She brushes a piece of hair out of my eyes. Dare I call it maternal? Her hand is cool and dry. Her eyes are not unkind. Damn, she is unafraid. I find nothing to say.

She smiles, pushes her cart onward and around to the next aisle.

See you
, she calls back over her shoulder.

And I don’t hate her. I don’t have a problem with her at all. She’s fine by me. So maybe I’m better.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The line “A person who doesn’t have friends must explain herself to strangers” is from the poem
Midwinter Day
by Bernadette Mayer, copyright © 1982 by Bernadette Miller and published by New Directions.

The line “Pay attention to what they tell you to forget” is from Muriel Rukeyser’s poem “Double Ode,” copyright ©1976 by Muriel Rukeyser. It can be found in
Home/Birth: A Poemic
by Arielle Greenberg and Rachel Zucker, copyright © 2010 and published by 1913 Press.

My parents, Elissa Blaser, Katharine Noel, Nalini Jones, Ike Herschkopf, Amy Griffin, Binnie Kirshenbaum, Miranda Beverly-Whittemore, Allison Oberhand, Jessica Cherry, Amy Webb, Thea Carlson, Heather Samples, Hawa Allan, Rebecca Wolff, Brin Quell, Madhavi Tandon Batliboi, Elanit Weisbaum, Ann Wolf, Bill and Carol Schwarzschild, Heidi Factor, Margaret Wimberger, Emily Andrukaitis, Laura Gianino, Carla Gray, Hannah Harlow, and everyone at HMH, Poppy Hampson and everyone at Chatto and Windus, DTV Germany, Niew Amsterdam, The College of Saint Rose, Columbia University School of the Arts, Djerassi, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study, and more or less everyone I know: thank you for inspiration, sustenance, and support of all kinds while I worked to bring this book into being. Thank you Writers House, thank you Simon Lipskar—you are the man. Thank you Lauren Wein: editor, book doula,
chevruta
. Thank you Ed, my love, and Miller D, our love.

About the Author

E
LISA
A
LBERT
, author of
The Book of Dahlia
and
How This Night is Different
, has written for NPR,
Tin House, Commentary, Salon
, and the
Rumpus.
She grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in upstate New York with her family.