Man Gone Down (29 page)

So Claire in all her horror was pregnant with our first. And even though I couldn't show it, I was horrified, as well—another in the line of Ham, the line of Brown. For some obnoxious reason I wished that, and then was convinced that, C was a girl. I joked, or pretended to be joking when I said,
“I don't know what to do with a boy.”
Claire went along with that pretense, but of course we weren't ready for him or her. We were still in the netherworld of postadolescence. I was just happy to be alive, and she was still dreaming like a child. She had plans for herself, plans for me: some amorphous blend of art and love and sex and race where money needn't be discussed or considered; where the limitations of her inexperience would finally be realized, considered, felt; where the limitations of my experience . . . I'd already considered my experience and already understood on some basic level that things weren't going to work out, that I was, in every sense of the phrase,
born to lose,
that the day when people like me, whatever and whomever they may be, win wouldn't be a good day
for others.
“The Times They Are a-Changin'.”
Dinner parties, cocktails.
“What's he singing about mommy?”
I think it was the brownlike-poop kid who'd asked. His mother explained, quite well, I thought, what the song meant. But she couldn't explain that when the revolution did come, it was coming for her and hers and everything she thought she knew and loved.

And Claire. We watched her belly grow—snapshots, narrated videos, sonograms, heartbeats, little feet kicking. I watched her change into a woman. I would spy on her talking to her baby. She'd wake me up every morning before dawn to put my hand on her tummy to feel him kick and stretch. And even in the dark I knew that on her long mouth was that crooked smile.
“She's perfect,”
she'd whisper.

In another time or place C and Claire would've died. Her blood pressure began to creep up in the last three weeks of her pregnancy—140 over 85, 150 over 90. Then it jumped: 160 over 95, 165 over 100. Her womb began to calcify. C was slowly suffocating, slowly starving. Perfect to good to satisfactory to poor to the hospital—an emergency. Pitocin, blood pressure cuff, fetal heart monitor. The newly grave face of our midwife. The unfamiliar doctor. Every fifteen minutes the cuff would fill. There was the clicking, buzzing, the hiss of air and the velcro peel. Then the readout, always worsening. C's heart rate dropping, leveling, rising, dropping. And since there had been no explanation for this condition, there needn't be any explanation for anything else happening. She'd wanted to have him “naturally,” but there wasn't anything natural about this: beeping, hissing machines; wires; strange technicians; institutional paint colors, the cold gurney rail; trying to hold her hand among the tubes and wires; trying to block her view of the monitors, which, had she been able to see would have read,
“You are dying.”
Our child was killing her; and my selfish indulgence—knowing what it meant to be born to lose.

They had to cut him out. I had to keep a straight face—a happy one, even—for her. I was all she had to look at. So at the same time, I saw her eyes and her ovaries, her restless, questioning lips, and her blood. Then my boy—his perfect, unsqueezed head. They handed him
to me—balls first. I must have waited an instant too long to take the bloody, mucousy thing.
“It's okay. Hold him. He's yours.”
But I wasn't afraid of that. In fact, I felt that I should be the only one, in that room full of white people, to hold that dusky purple boy. And that made me of two minds: one was waiting for something to go horribly wrong; the other scanned time, scrolling forward to the future when everything would go wrong. I was premourning him and premourning his loss of me. And then, as best I could, I banished those thoughts from those minds and then banished those minds. They gave him to Claire. She got it. It was simple. That was her boy. She loved him. He was beautiful. The only significance—the umbilical cord, which the doctor, scissors in hand, asked if I wanted to cut.

They tried to take him to the nursery to allegedly weigh and test and measure him all over again. I tried to insist that I go with them. Claire had muttered something like “. . .
no bottle. Nipple confusion . . . ,”
but I waited with her until they got her into a room and had the morphine pumping. Then I went up. The nurse was changing his diaper, handling him like a frying chicken. I pressed up to the glass. She put him down, almost naked, in the warming bin. His eyes were closed. I watched him startle, grabbing at imaginary things, spasming in fear. The nurse came in with a bottle and roughly jammed it into his mouth. I knocked on the glass. She came outside.

“Yes, daddy?” she said sharply with a lispy accent. I think she was Korean. She stood in front of me as though we were about to each take our roles in the bizarre deli wars between her people and mine.

“My wife doesn't want him to have a bottle, nipple confusion, you know.”

“He's startling.” She slowed her speech as though she was considering something. “Sometimes a baby startles when the mother takes drugs.”

I walked past her, entered the nursery, and took my son. She protested and tried to block the exit, but when she saw that I wasn't going to stop, she moved. I walked briskly down the hall. I didn't know where I was going. They caught me waiting for the elevator.

“Daddy, you can't do that.” She'd recruited three black women to do her dirty work. This nurse, thick bodied and smiling, cooed calmly. The other two nodded and smiled along with her. One of them had a cart. She gestured for me to put the boy inside.

“Hospital rules. Babies have to ride. You can take him, but he has to ride. Okay, daddy?”

Claire was whacked-out on morphine when I found the room. Nurses from other departments peeked their heads in to get a glimpse of the renegade father, and that kind of got me through the day. They made fun, but they were kind. But when night fell, they stopped coming. I was exhausted, but I couldn't sleep. I was fixed on his breathing. New-borns, ugh, it seems to be such a struggle for them—sometimes panting shallowly, sometimes taking one short breath and then waiting, then one brief exhalation, then waiting. I couldn't stand it, so I spent the evening wheeling him around the hospital, skating under the fluorescents, atop the buffed bright floor. Skating the glowing, waxed hallways, the light so bright that it threatened to flash us into oblivion.

I got us out of there as soon as I could, got Gavin's harsh jalopy and loaded them in. Me, my bride, and our boy, going home in a borrowed car—bad shocks—over and into potholes.
Bang!
Claire screaming again and again like she was being torn apart repeatedly. The three of us, some lost little tribe, descending, like it was the first time, into Brooklyn.

When the revolution comes, they might be coming for me, too. If they cut me open, they'd find that undigested prime steak in my stomach. I find a deli tucked in the middle of the block, Broome between Hudson and West Broadway. I go in and start grabbing things in a rush, then I remember the list, which of course I can't find. I replay each interaction: one black tea, four regular coffees, four buttered rolls, one toasted bagel. It all goes rather smoothly. I even get extra sugar and milk and such and get out without a hitch—back down Broome to Greene—when I realize I don't have a key or a phone number or a
phone to call with. There's no buzzer, either. But of course, she's there, this time with a yoga mat and water bottle. She's also found her sunglasses.

“We meet again.” I don't know why, but I expect more from her. I know, for some reason, that she has more to say. Then I think that maybe she does—just not to me. I don't seem to make her nervous, and she probably figures she hasn't any reason to fear or respect me. Basic politeness is enough.
Any
acknowledgment should be enough.

When I don't answer, she wrinkles her brow and bends toward me slightly as though she's peering into my consciousness.

“Bad day?”

I shrug my shoulders.

“Break time?”

“Yes.”

My neutral accent betrays me—makes her straighten—reexamine me from a new point of view.

“How many breaks do you guys get?”

I pretend not to understand. She sees through this. I've equaled the stupidity of her opening line. We're even.

“Who's the general contractor?”

“John Leary.”

“Is he a smallish man who drives a fancy truck?”

“Yes.”

She feels better about my speech now, comfortable. The gopher bags and the voice—doesn't seem to bother her, as though the disconnect hadn't occurred to her at all.

“How is he? Is he good to work for?”

“I just started. I don't really know.”

I'm only able to spot the worst dye jobs, so I can't tell if her hair is natural. It's streaked—red and blonde in a majority of long, auburn curls—but some of it is wavy and it makes her appear to have an elegant mess of carefully coiffed snarls. There's a hint of sun on her head now, just one side. It makes the color of the darkened side rich, gives
her hair a depth and volume that makes me want to touch it. Fortunately, she speaks.

“I don't care much for him.” She pauses. “I'm sorry. I don't want to bias you.”

She changes her tone, brightening.

“Are you a carpenter?”

“I was.”

“Oh,” she nods—now she understands. Her eyes are dark brown, and, juxtaposed to her lighter hair, pale skin, and orange freckles, seem incredibly deep. There's the first hint of the pull of wrinkles at their corners. Knowing her age would dramatically alter her face, aging it or making it younger.

“Would it be insulting to ask if you'd like to do extra work—for me?”

I have no choice but pretend to be puzzled.

“I phrased that poorly. Were you a good carpenter?”

“Yes.”

“Would you be willing to help me with some things in my place? I was going to ask your boss, but . . . It isn't much and like I said—well, they've been working there for a long time and haven't gotten much done. I know Beth isn't very happy with the work—or lack thereof.”

She stops, as if she needs to check in.

“Have you met Beth?”

“No.”

“She's the owner. She's very sweet.”

There's a silence between us now. A bad one, as though neither of us can make sense of what she's just said. She points at the tray.

“You'd better get that stuff up. You don't want to mess up—being it's your first day and all.”

She opens the door for me.

“Thank you.”

I go in.

“So will you think about it?”

“Yes.”

“When can you come by—after work? Maybe six?”

“That's fine.”

She starts to go, then stops. “But tomorrow—not tonight . . . I can't do it tonight.”

She's not quite so cool anymore. Perhaps her hair, her clothes are, in fact, accidents.

“You probably don't want to come straight over. You might want to make it seem to them that you're going home. I mean, I don't want to make it difficult for you.”

“Six is fine.”

She smiles sweetly, a bit girlish.

“By the way—Helena.”

“Good to meet you.”

She waits for a response.

“Ishmael.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“Great.”

She lets the door close, looking at me, then turns away before it bangs shut.

When I get back upstairs, the lads are grumpy. I've been gone awhile. They do their best to hide it, the guys I don't know, because they figure that I'm stupid. The Dubliner holds up a hand of forgiveness for his forgotten banana. Chris shakes his head when he sips his tepid drink.

I sit on the other side of the loft from the rest, wondering when this steak will leave me, contemplating hunger as the flip side. KC wanders over.

“Get lost, man?”

“Long line.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“You go to the one down the street?”

“Yeah.”

“Which one?”

“Down the street.”

He thumbs eastward. I point west.

“Broome, just before Canal.”

“Yes,” he says, too excited, as though he's a game show host. “That's the one. They busy?”

“Incredibly.”

“Man, I'd like a spot like that.”

“I suppose they do okay.”

“Phhfft!” he blows spit. “More than okay. More than okay. And you know the owner there?”

“No.”

“The big one, behind the counter, just watching. Sometimes he'll bag things when it's busy. Was he bagging today?”

“I didn't notice.”

“Yeah, sometimes he'll bag, but most times he's just watching. He's always watching, making sure nobody steals from him. If it was my place—pssst—I'd be gone.”

“You'd let people steal?”

“Mon, de wouldn't need to steal ‘cause I'd be fair with ‘em. The motherfucking Mexicans he got back there—they got to steal. He don't pay ‘em notin'.”

“You'd pay them?”

“Pssst!” He turns away as though I've insulted him. “You know I do other jobs, mon?”

“I suppose.”

“You know what I pay him?” He points to Bing Bing, who has already fallen asleep on a windowsill. “A whole lot more than he make here. You got to. You got to pay for it, man. Not be cheap like this guy.” He thumbs into the air at the unseen accused. No one else seems to be paying attention to his little rant. I don't know how it happened,
but we're friends again, better friends than we ever were before. Perhaps the rest had already heard it all and I was merely a new ear. KC shakes his head and almost as abruptly as he started, ends his sermon. He feints a move away, then, as if to catch me off guard, stays.