Momfriends (8 page)

I feel a sob rise in my throat. They know I am going to cry. It will make me seem more suspect.

“With a new baby . . . the beginning is super tough, we only wanted to see if we could help,” Full Breasts says. She has this way of speaking that was quiet and deliberate and when you speak to her, she cocks her head to the left, as if she is really listening. She reaches out and squeezes my shoulder, grazing her other breast. BobCut Neighbor squints at me and shifts.

“It sounded like things might be getting a little . . . hard,” she says.

“Well, it wasn’t the baby I was yelling at. It was Tiny Mouse,” I say. They are never going to believe me. How well can I sleep in the jail cell? Do they at least give you airplane-quality pillows at Rikers? Ugh. Too much Law & Order.

“You have a mouse,” Bob says, pulling her kids a little closer. Full lets my shoulder go and cocks her head again, as if waiting for me to talk so she can listen.

“No, it’s my cat,” I say.

“You named your cat Tiny Mouse?” Bob asks pulling her kids even closer. Now I have to justify my pet’s name to these complete strangers? I look at Full, and she is smiling. She has a sweet, open smile. I am seduced for a minute into thinking I can lay my head right down in her voluptuous bosom and everything will be okay. Then I realize that her sweet open smile is the same kind you might give to a crazy person to talk them off the ledge. That doesn’t feel so far from who I am.

“Yes, because when he was a kitten he looked like a tiny mouse. You know, I’m freezing,” I lie, turning and going back into my apartment. If I had a screen door I would let it slam in their faces, but instead they stand in the doorway. I find one of Steve’s track jackets and throw it on. I turn back to them, at least feeling a little protected.

“Can we come in?” Bob asks at last.

I shrug. Is this really happening? Part of me wants to be left alone, but another part is happy to have some adult-human contact. Seeing actual women, not my mother-in-law and not the ones on TV, makes me feel tethered to reality. I feel as if I’ve been walking through a dream and seeing these two in the live flesh makes things a little more real.

They take my shrug as a yes and barrel in. Tiny Mouse has retreated under a piece of furniture somewhere leaving me holding the bag. Immediately, the boy and girl run in and jump on the ottoman, bouncing onto the couch. They crouch down and inspect the floor mat that we have for Abe. Then they yank his swing back and forth. Their mother is not pleased. She lets out an exasperated sigh. It is the most still I have ever seen her.

“Careful, Jacob,” Bob says. “Emily, be careful.”

I plop onto the love seat and pull my hair out of the elastic, but then I change my mind and pull it all back. I get a whiff of myself in the process. I smell like spit-up and body odor. Fabulous. In his nursery, Abe’s cries are getting louder.

“Do you want to get the baby?” Full asks.

I look at her. The answer is no, I most certainly do not want to get the baby. As usual he will be a completely different baby when I go into his nursery. After almost seven weeks, I still have no idea what to expect. If I go get the baby, he is just going to keep crying. I am going to try everything I can possibly think of to make him stop, but nothing is going to work. It is all futile. A never-ending futile cycle.

I am really going to cry now.

“I’ll get the baby,” Bob says, decisively. She looks at the other one. “Kirsten can you make sure they don’t break anything? Or kill each other?”

“Sure,” Kirsten says.

I hear the stranger go into my son’s room and speak to him in loud happy tones. She can have him. She can have it all.

Kirsten looks around my apartment. The living room is a mess. We quasi cleaned it three days ago for Steve’s mother. And it is already out of control. How does it happen so fast? There is a basket of unfolded laundry on the floor, a bowl of half-eaten pasta on the couch and magazines that have been piling up, because who has any time to do anything but stare at the TV? Normally, I would have cleaned up or at least been embarrassed by the sty, but it was the least of my worries.

Kirsten sat down on the couch and started folding laundry.

“You don’t have to,” I start to say, but Kirsten pretends not to hear me and I don’t know how to continue. Of course she doesn’t have to, but I certainly wasn’t going to. That was pretty obvious.

“Look at this little guy,” the other one says, coming back in with my son who is calmly nestled in her arms. I think I hate him for showing off. Kirsten leaps off the couch, smiling.

“What a beautiful baby,” she says, touching his head and beaming at him as if he is her own. “My daughter is seven months, but you forget they start out this tiny.”

“You have a kid,” I ask, eyeing her perfect breasts.

“I have three, they’re addictive,” she says, laughing. She looks back at the Abe. “This guy is so precious. Claudia, can I hold him?”

I am the one who should be asked permission.

Claudia hands him over but doesn’t exactly let go. She keeps cooing at him and laughing. These two are really having a ball. Maybe I can slip out the back door and climb over the fence in the garden.

“You should have seen the load in his diaper. Whoo-ee!” Claudia drops her distant tone and is apparently totally psyched about wiping my son’s stinky ass.

“You changed him?” I ask. It is embarrassing to have someone else change your kid. I had changed a poopy diaper before I put him down. I want to make sure these two understood that. “I changed him a half hour ago.”

“Some days it’s nothing but shit,” Kirsten says, glancing quickly over at the twins to see if they heard. They are oblivious. They are tearing through the box of books that people gave Abe and I haven’t touched or written thank-you cards for.

“And then some days you wonder why they are so backed up,” Claudia says. It’s her turn to look around the living room. She settles on me. “Would you like me to get you a glass of water or make you some tea?”

“Um, okay,” I say, not picking either. Claudia leaves the living room, not waiting for clarification, but not before taking the dirty pasta bowl with her. She returns with a tall glass of water for me and then goes straight back to cooing at Abe. I drink the whole glass down in almost one gulp. Kirsten looks at me and smiles.

“Breast-feeding totally dehydrates you, huh?”

“Yeah,” I say, finding it hard to believe that anybody had ever gnawed on those beauties.

I watch them fussing over Abe and then the teakettle starts whistling. Claudia races back in the kitchen. When she returns she is balancing three cups of tea and another large glass of water on a tray that had been a wedding present. She sets it down on the ottoman and gives her kids a stern warning to be careful, but they are interested for the time in Abe.

Claudia hands me a cup of tea. I take my tea with milk and sugar, but this has lemon and honey and it is delicious. I wrap my hands around it and let my face soak up the steam. My skin is glistening with a thin film of sweat and dirt already. This can’t make it any worse.

Somehow, Kirsten expertly manages to cradle Abe in one hand and drink her tea. Claudia reads a few of Abe’s books to her kids between sips. Eventually, her son falls asleep on the floor and her daughter sits Indian style, going through the books and quietly organizing them.

Abe miraculously falls asleep and Kirsten gently sets him down on the couch beside her. I start to tell her that he usually doesn’t sleep flat on his back, but she ignores me. And as if to spite me, he stays asleep.

Kirsten talks about her first daughter and how she would only fall asleep if they bundled her up like a burrito, but her son needed to keep his hands in her hair to go down. It sounds as if she is a co-sleeper.

Claudia is definitely not a co-sleeper. She says that her son slept well at the beginning and her daughter didn’t and then they switched.

They are talking to each other, reminiscing, but I have a feeling that it is all for my benefit. I suspect they are still trying to talk me off a cliff. I can’t really see another situation where two women so seemingly diverse would be sharing such intimate memories.

Occasionally they glance over at me or look down at my sleeping son. I expect that any minute they will scold me for yelling or being such a bad parent, but they don’t. They each say several times that sometimes babies want to be passed off to someone new. I drink my tea, listening to their voices. I don’t feel like adding anything to the conversation. I’m not sure I want to make nice with them—they have, after all, barged into my apartment and taken over. But I have to admit I am enjoying it. The sound of their voices, not the buzz of the TV, is soothing. My head bounces from side to side on my neck, like I am getting ready to doze. But I can’t sleep. I have guests. Though I am so tired. My eyes are heavy; I let them close and lean back against the love seat, my empty still warm teacup against my leg. I am just going to rest, just going to listen. . . .

“Mama, mama,” a voice says. No adult has called me that since I was in the hospital in labor. The nurses called me that throughout the process because they weren’t sure of my name. Am I still in labor? Do I have to do it all again? Where is Abe?

“Abe!” I wake with a start, look into my arms, thinking Abe will be there, afraid as usual that I have hurt or crushed him.

“It’s okay,” Kirsten says, her green eyes blinking, her curly hair falling down her face, towards me. I want to grab it. I understand why it helped her son fall asleep. But where is my son?

“Abe is fine,” she says. “He’s still asleep. I transferred him to his basinet. Looks like he’s finally given his mama a break.”

I sit up. It is incredible. Not only is Abe sleeping flat, he has been transferred. These women worked miracles. I am a total failure.

“I have to get back and see my daughter.”

“How long was I out?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe a little over two hours.”

“Abe’s been asleep that long?” I am about to stand and check on him. “It’s been three hours since I fed him.”

Kirsten smiles and rests her hand on my shoulder, gently easing me back against the love seat. “He must need his sleep more than milk. You both seem to need the rest”

“Shouldn’t I wake him? He’s never gone this long. Ever. Doesn’t he need to eat?”

“Hackerman’s rule,” Kirsten says. She laughs. “It’s the only rule we live by in our family, never wake a sleeping baby.”

“Who is Hackerman?” Nobody had given me his book yet.

“Janice Hackerman, my first midwife. She moved to Vermont after my daughter, Julissa was born and started her own brewery and alpaca farm, but that advice was priceless. Now I pass it on to you.”

“Thank you.” I look around. “Where’s Claudia?”

“She left about twenty minutes ago. Her kids have had a long day, and she didn’t want them to wake up Abe.” She looks a little embarrassed. “I’m really sorry, we’ve been here for a while and I never got your name.”

“I’m Ruth,” I say.

“Ruth, I left my contact info on your fridge under the Red Sox magnet. Feel free to call me anytime, for anything. Sometimes, it’s good to know you can call someone. And honestly the beginning is tough and you shouldn’t be afraid to ask for support. Claudia is right next door, too.”

I nod. I wish she could stay forever. Is it too soon to ask for support?

“Thank you,” I say.

“No problem,” Kirsten says. At the door, she turns to wave before leaving. “Hang in there. It gets much easier.”

I nod. That’s what everyone says. But it doesn’t seem as if I am ever going to come out of it. I close my eyes and press my head back onto the chair. There are a million things I need to do, though. I have to mobilize while he is out. And I’m not really sure I believe Hackerman’s rule, but I am going to pretend I do and try to enjoy it.

I open my eyes and start to pull off Steve’s track jacket. Something is wrong. The living room is straightened up. All the clothes are folded neatly in the baskets, the magazines are stacked up in piles, and there isn’t a trace of dirty dishes anywhere, except my teacup beside me.

I get up. I feel compelled to check on Abe. I know I could potentially wake him. But I am scared to not see him for so long. Sometimes I want to separate myself from him, but then when I do have a moment alone, it feels wrong. I don’t miss him exactly; I just feel that something is missing.

Our apartment is in an old prewar brownstone, and the floors creak and so do the doors. I walk on tiptoes, skipping over the parts of the floor that creak the most. I open the door as quietly as possible and look in at him. He is asleep and he is adorable. His arm is thrown back over his head and his little chicken legs look so cute coming out of his onesie. If only he could always be so peaceful. I have the fear I always do when he sleeps, when he isn’t crying or eating, is he dead? I creep closer, still on tiptoes with the hopes that he is simply asleep and not the eternal kind. I rest my hand on his belly. I hold my breath. It takes a second, but then I feel the soft rise and fall of his stomach. He is so tiny but so alive. I want to kiss him, but I have risked too much already. I have to enjoy this. I have to remember Hacker-whoever’s rule and not wake a sleeping baby.

I leave the room and go into the kitchen. While the living room had been merely straightened, the kitchen is spotless. The dishes that were in the dishwasher have been unloaded and a new load is running. The pans that were coated with two weeks of meals made in haste are scrubbed out and drying in the drying rack. And one of them actually mopped the floor so well that it shines. My eyes and chest are full. I don’t know if I should laugh or cry. I don’t really feel in control of anything. So I sit on the clean floor and wait in limbo to see what emotion will overtake me next.

Chapter 6

Claudia Asks Questions and Doesn’t Get Answers

The problem with my job was that soap operas were perennially on in the office. There are giant screens everywhere with our “product” being displayed. At any given time, I could look up from my desk and see the supposed fantasies of a majority of American women (we know what they are—we paid for the market research). What American women fantasized about (or at least the ones that watched our soaps) were shirtless men, exciting locales, and children who were rarely around but always cared for.