(Not That You Asked) (36 page)

I stand by the foot of the bed with my Supportive Dad smile while Erin and Baby weep inconsolably.

“Good news for Dad!” Micki says. “Dad gets to do some finger feeding!”

Contrary to my initial understanding, this does not mean that I will be serving Baby hors d’oeuvres. It means she will be fed through a tiny tube taped to my finger and attached to a syringe full of formula.

“What about, you know, a bottle?” I say.

“Oh, no,” Micki says. “That would cause nipple confusion!”

I want to tell Micki that the child is likely to inherit nipple confusion from me anyway, but the baby has gone Pavarotti on our asses now. My finger is quickly taped and syringed and Baby affixed thereto. Micki’s beeper beeps and she rushes off. Erin, bone-tired, bloodied, falls into a deep sleep. Once again I am alone with Baby, who is sucking formula from my finger. Every few sucks she pauses to breathe and lets out a pleased sigh. The first syringe is gone in half a minute. Baby devours a second syringe, then a third. Midway through the fourth syringe, Baby’s eyes droop shut. Formula rills down her chin. I am bursting with pride. I have fed Baby! Baby sleeps.

When I wake three hours later, Erin is hissing at me. “What did you do to her? She’s all bloated! She’s not breathing right!”

I stumble over to the bassinet.

Baby’s tiny belly does appear distended. Her face is the shade of a winter plum. A memory comes to me, unbidden, of a film my parents forced me to watch when I was young. It was about Swedish immigrants, all of whom were—as is the habit of Swedish immigrants in depressing films—starving to death. Then this one little girl finds a giant cache of cereal and eats so much her stomach bloats up and eventually
explodes.

“How much did you feed her?” Erin demands.

“A couple of syringes.” I set my hand on her hand, in the cautious manner of a father who has yet again killed his infant. “She was
hungry.
”

“Didn’t you hear Micki? Her stomach is the size of a walnut!”

“It could be the hiccups,” I say, and hit the Help button.

“She doesn’t have fucking hiccups,” Erin says.

Nurse Tina appears. “What’s the problem?”

Baby closes her eyes and releases a bowel movement of volcanic magnitude, a shuddering liquid outburst of the sort that will soon come to be known in our household as the Hot Mustard Explosion.

Death #7: Asphyxiation

Age of Deceased: 43 hours

 

As a rule, the nurses have no patience for us dads. We are clumsy, luggish, good for nothing. We have purchased our proximity to the miracle of birth with a thimbleful of sperm, and the bargain strikes them, perhaps appropriately, as outrageous.

Mostly we stay out of the way. We gather in the common room and stuff our mouths with muffins and murmur things like “Scary shit, man” and “Way to go” and “Yeah, we did it.” We do the stiff-armed man hug. We promenade our babies up and down the halls when they’re cranky and nod to each other wearily, like we’ve just been through hell and back and boy aren’t
our
vaginal canals sore!

The fact that I am finger feeding grants me a certain measure of maternity cred,
⁴
and I make it a point to flaunt my role. “Do you have any spare syringes?” I say loudly, whenever I pass by the nurses’ station. “Yeah, I’ve got another
feeding
just now. I’m going with the index finger this time around. The pinkie made her a little gassy.”

Following the Hot Mustard debacle, Micki has explained to me that I must keep the syringe lower than my finger, so as to force Baby to suck against gravity and prevent her from gorging. But I am already conducting my fourth feeding, which naturally means I know more about the process than anyone else on earth. And thus it should be taken as no problem at all when I lift the syringe quickly, in an effort to scratch my neck, and it comes to rest a foot or so above Baby’s mouth, meaning that she is—with no actual warning—shotgunning formula.

Alas, Baby is not used to shotgunning. Baby has not even pledged a sorority. She signifies this by promptly sputtering, gagging, and reverting to her fallback asphyxiation shade (winter plum). Baby then vomits, which seems encouraging, except that I have failed to turn Baby on her side, so the vomit funnels back down her throat.

I have Jimi Hendrixed my daughter to death.

Death #8: Poison

Age of Deceased: 51 hours

 

The nurses have begun openly to hate me. This has to do not just with my regular and tiresome fears of having killed my daughter, but the fact that I have begun stealing unreasonable quantities of hospital property: diapers, formula, syringes, blankets, waterproof bed pads, petroleum jelly, hospital gowns, socks, bagels.
⁵
The nurses watch from their station, flabbergasted, as I ferry the goods down to the parking lot in bulging plastic sacks. They are too embarrassed to stop me.

Why am I doing this? For one thing, the other dads have encouraged me. They have indicated that absconding with items is standard protocol. I have simply taken the practice to a new level, a level perhaps best described as grand larceny.

The truth is, having been relieved of finger feeding duty (see Death #7) I am bored. Thus I am trying to prove myself useful. I am—by a rather loose definition—hunting and gathering. It might also be conjectured that I am somewhat nervous about leaving the hospital with Baby and am therefore attempting to take a significant portion of the hospital home with me.

Nonetheless, after two days, a frightfully young pediatrician appears, examines Baby, and hands us our walking papers. Chief Nurse Kelly does not say, “We’re sorry to see you go!” She does not say, “Do you need anything else?” She does not say, “What a cute baby!” She says, “I assume you’ll have room in the cah for your daughtah.”

We arrive home and place Baby in the fancy frilled bassinet Erin managed to secure from friends.
⁶
We stare at Baby for several minutes and wait—as do all parents in such circumstances—for a detailed instruction manual to float down from heaven and land in our hands.

Instead, we are left to fend for ourselves. Baby continues to latch improperly. I am placed back on finger feeding duty. The single item I failed to steal from the hospital now becomes apparent: the tape used to bind feeding tube to finger.

Is it wise for me to use duct tape instead? I suppose it is not. But when you are face-to-face with a hysterical newborn at three in the morning, your judgment clouds. And the duct tape works like a charm. Baby chows down, making her endearing Viking slurps and, toward the end of the feeding, producing a Mustard Explosion so prodigious it blows out the edges of her diaper.
⁷
Only later do I realize that Baby’s power suckling has stripped away a portion of the duct tape from my finger and that Baby has thus ingested a good deal of the adhesive.

Baby appears to be sleeping peacefully, but I cannot shake the fear that this adhesive is toxic and that Baby will soon begin foaming at the mouth. I tiptoe over and stare down at her in the dim light. Her breathing seems shallow and hurried. I scurry to my computer and Google “duct tape” and “toxic adhesive.” There is a wealth of information about sealants and thermal insulation, but nothing on whether I’ve killed my daughter. I return to the bedroom and hover over Baby for the next twenty minutes.

“What’s the matter?” Erin murmurs. “What did you do?”

“Nothing,” I say. “How much do you know about duct tape?”

She rushes over to the bassinet and reaches for Baby, who jolts awake at her touch and throws a drowsy left jab.

Death #9: Heat Stroke

Age of Deceased: 59 hours

 

Issues have arisen as to heating. Erin would like the house at 70 degrees, so as to avoid freezing the child to death. I would prefer the low sixties, arguing that we can dress Baby in layers. After a brief discussion involving the possibility of separate dwellings, the thermostat is set at 70 degrees.

Owing to the general decrepitude of our home heating system—which appears to operate by means of a small British orphan shoveling coal into a burning sock—it is determined that 70 degrees is not warm enough. I drag my ancient portable heater into the bedroom. A few hours later I awaken, bathed in sweat. We are on the brink of dawn, the pink hour at which the room should be chilliest. It is a sauna. I have forgotten this crucial fact about the heater: It is an extremely badass piece of equipment. And now I realize, with sinking dread, that I have placed this monstrosity right next to Baby’s crib and that (therefore) its supercharged heat quasars have been blasting Baby for the last four hours straight, a fact that explains her uncharacteristic silence.

I have boiled Baby’s blood.

Unlike the many other forms of distress I’ve inflicted on my daughter thus far, heat is a silent killer. No coughing. No crying. Just a moist descent into coma, followed by the noiseless simmering of internal organs. I throw the blankets off, rip the heater’s cord from the wall, and stagger to the foot of the bed. I burrow my thumb under Baby’s onesie, searching for her tiny poached heart. When I feel the flicker, I drop to my knees.

Baby stares at me with her fuzzy gray eyes and yawns.

Death #10: Grief

Age of Deceased: 77 hours

 

Baby is crying. Baby will not stop crying. We have tried everything in our limited repertoire: food, a new diaper, rocking. We have run through all five of the measures recommended by the creepy doctor in our
Happiest Baby on the Block
video. We have even blasted the eerie amniotic horror music at the end of the DVD, a very bad decision for all involved.

Erin is becoming panicky, so I send her downstairs to do laundry.

Now it is just me and Baby. I walk her from room to room and whisper my secret vows of love, and Baby yells and weeps and chokes on her tears. Her face appears frozen in a gummy frown. Her ears are tiny red seashells. There is a hot momentum to her misery; she is speaking in tongues, an ecstatic.

It is her right as a citizen of earth, this aria of sorrow, this abject declaration. She puts everything she is, every ounce of her, into each shriek. Her breath is so sweet I want to climb inside her mouth. I kiss her cheek and she cries harder.

And as I watch her, as I listen to her crescendo, as I feel her muscles tense against my chest, I begin to recognize the source of my own terror. The world
will
kill this child, day by day, wish by wish. I can do little to protect her, almost nothing. The very love I inflict on her will only sharpen her disappointment in the end. She is a part of the great cosmic joke now, the daily lamentation of a species born into pain. Baby is only telling me the truth:
It hurts so much right now I could die.

This is when it happens a final time. Baby seizes up. Her throat catches. Her body, with a culminating exhalation, falls limp against me.

Erin appears with a load of warm blankets. The house has gone still. It smells of garlic and burned sugar. A half moon hangs over us. The silence sounds now like the warm echo of the creature I am holding. Erin sets her hand on the small of my back. She rests her forehead against my chest. She stares at our baby with a love so dumb and fierce as to forgive everything.

“You got her to sleep,” she says softly. “Nice work, Papa.”

HAM FOR CHANUKAH

E
very year, when Chanukah season rolled around, my brothers and I would make the suburban pilgrimage to the home of our grandparents, where we would ring in the holiday with a big, juicy Chanukah ham. We would then gather around the festively decorated Chanukah tree and tear open the brightly wrapped Chanukah gifts beneath, often while swilling syrupy Chanukah eggnog and munching Chanukah gingerbread cookies.
¹

It will be difficult to explain why, as full-blooded Jews, the spawn of actual rabbis, we took part in this deeply fucked-up ritual. But I am going to try to explain. Because that is what Jews do: We
try to explain.
I’ll need to start with my great-grandfathers Morris Rosenthal and David Almond. Both were scholars of the old-school variety, both, according to the available evidence, completely out of their minds.

David was renowned in his family for his fanatic theories concerning diet, the most pronounced of which ascribed to fresh milk certain miraculous health benefits. Every Saturday, he took his children on a long constitutional through the farmland surrounding Chicago, the despised culmination of which was a visit to a local dairy farmer for a ration of the freshest milk available. (I do not mean to imply that David forced his children to suck milk directly from the cow’s teat, though I rather like the image.) In his later years, by now a veteran rabbi, David managed to invent a scientific discipline;
ontomology
was devoted to establishing God’s existence using logical proofs. I have read his book on the subject, or tried to, and will offer no further comment at this time, as I do not believe in God or logic.