God and Jetfire (19 page)

We were stopped before we passed the threshold. The discharge hadn't been fully processed. We returned to our room, where the nurse told us, reprovingly, that we'd missed dinner. No one seemed to care about my insurance, which wouldn't cover another night in the hospital without medical necessity. I sat back down on the bed, and Jevn took the chair beside me. Dusk fell, and trays of food were brought in. Nurses picked up where they had left off, each one teaching a different trade, touching me as though motherhood was a thing that was everyone's to grab and adjust.

I'd been warned that once the staff knew about the adoption plan, they might not be willing to give me attention, but in my few days in the hospital, I'd experienced only the opposite. They'd given me a full introduction to my body's new functions. Nurses showed me how to pull him onto my nipple when his jaw was relaxed to get a nice, open latch. One stuck her hand into my abdomen, all the way to my spine, to demonstrate that my muscles had split with pregnancy and I'd need exercise to restore them. They taught me how spraying myself with warm water out of a bottle would ease the initial pain of peeing. They showed me how to re-create with a blanket the tightness and comfort of the womb. When I had arrived two days ago, I didn't know how to change a diaper, but everything I had to learn had been mastered already, and the nurses shared their secrets generously. They smiled at my son as though he were the only baby in the postpartum wing, and I the only mother.

A nurse arrived with my discharge just as we'd begun to think we'd have to stay another night in the hospital. She was joined by several other nurses carrying blankets and diapers, which they stuffed into Jevn's blue duffel bag. They brought plastic bags for a few things that wouldn't fit: a spray bottle, some extra nursing pads and diapers, a small manual breast pump. Then there was no more packing to do; they just stood there, lingering. Finally, one of them asked if she could say a prayer for us. They put their hands on my shoulders and asked God to give me the courage to keep my son.

When we pulled out of the hospital parking lot, I watched everything go past—things that had once been familiar. We passed the university and the park. The studio lights in the architecture building glowed brightly. The rich grain of the world I'd been so enmeshed in was smooth and small, like I was high above it, still in the upper levels of the hospital. Like my new world was bound by bigger and smaller things.

*   *   *

And soon I was sitting in a heavy chair nursing my son while Jevn stood, and sat, and paced. He was frustrated. In no version of the plans we'd so carefully made were we ever camped out at a hotel in the suburbs with Jonathan. I ignored him. I was entranced, watching Jonathan at my breast. It surprised me to find it so beautiful; breast-feeding had always seemed somehow vulgar or incestuous to me. But then none of my maternal instincts were speakable; I wanted to swallow him, to squish him, to kiss his mouth. My motherhood was so staggering and strong, it searched every avenue to express something superlative.

I asked Jevn to take a picture. If I could document that special angle, his tiny chin bending toward his sternum, his fingers curled in pause, I thought I would have all I wanted. And then we could move on with our plans. Jevn sighed forcefully but took out his camera.

“Can you hold him like you want him?” he asked as he aimed the lens. “Is it his profile you want? Just, like, the top of his head?”

“Yeah, the head, it doesn't have to be perfect. Are you getting his nose?”

“Just his nose?”

“Sort of like his head, and his chin, and his nose.”

“Do you want his eyes?”

Jevn liked watching Jonathan, but he had closed a door. He did exactly what I asked; he clicked the camera, but he couldn't capture it. It was something you could really only see from where I was sitting.

*   *   *

I don't think he was surprised when, the next morning, seventy-two hours had passed, and I still wasn't ready. My legal protections expired, I had only my own boundaries. I was accountable for every step. I leaned heavily on one excuse: that I wanted to nurse Jonathan through to the end of the colostrum. The colostrum, a fatty substance that precedes the arrival of breast milk and lasts for several days, carries antibodies, their exact balance naturally calibrated to the needs of the child. Nina told me that people who receive the whole colostrum as babies will have stronger immune systems throughout their lives.

I don't know if anyone believed me. All I know is that I ended up in my apartment with my son. No crib, no rattles, no baby clothes, and no car seat.

 

SIXTEEN

My parents and Jevn's mother had arrived. My sister, too, from China. They were all staying at the same hotel nearby. Paula and Erik were making short visits every day from Dayton, an hour's drive away. I was in constant conversation with them, telling them,
I think I will sign tomorrow
. I spent most of my time sitting on my low futon, my son lying on his back on my thighs. I looked at him intently, searching for conviction. During one of these moments, my sister paused to admire me from a distance, leaning on the wall in my bedroom. She had knitted a hat for Jonathan in China. It made us laugh when she put it on his head—it was at least three sizes too big. It was amazing to see how small he was compared with the smallest head she could imagine from the other side of the world. She was still offering to move back to help raise him, but I didn't take her seriously. She called him Lìu, even though his name was now official:
Jonathan
—followed by my last name, and then Jevn's.

Jonathan looked blankly back at me, squirming lazily, squeezing his fists, marching slowly with his legs, and I dropped tears on his chest.

“This is such a good experience for you,” she said.

Jevn's mother and my parents came over; our families filled my apartment, someone sat in my light blue wingback chair, people squatted on the edge of my futon. Nina joined us with photographs of the birth. One in which the three of us—Jevn cradling my head, my mouth fallen open to take a breath and my son bloody at my chest—look like we've fled a brutal battle and collapsed in the first safe place we could find.

Jevn's mother wanted to hold Jonathan. She asked if she could take him away to spend time with him, maybe keep him for a night, just grandma and grandson; Jonathan was her first grandchild. I told her no. Every day I thought I would sign the papers. Every night I thought would be my last.

*   *   *

But for all the activity around us, the question hanging heavily over our heads, it was a period of strange pause. Jevn and I were parents, and our son was watching us. There were moments we forgot everything else.

“What time is it, Jon? What time is it?” Jevn asked Jonathan, who was lying on his back on my bed one afternoon, looking, vaguely curious, back at Jevn. “Is it time … for … kisses?
Mwhamwahmwha!
” Jevn attacked from above, and Jonathan wriggled. Then he turned to me. “Erik told me when Jonathan gets older, they'd feel comfortable enough to let us take him for the summer. That'd be really good. To show him Colorado.”

I didn't want to talk about it. I was looking at Jonathan, worried about how little he cried. I thought babies were supposed to cry; it made you know they were working properly: breathing, and desiring, and responding to disappointment.

“I want to see if we can get him to cry,” I said, taking his bear away from him. He looked at me. “Are we being mean, boy? Aren't you going to cry?” It was fun to tease him, to play as if there could be any reality other than my insatiable drive to protect him.

“I bet if we tickle you, you'll do something!” Jevn said, wriggling a finger at the folds of Jonathan's neck. “It's sneeze time! Sneeze for us!” Jonathan had a series of faces, and gestures, and stretches, and sneezes that we wanted, somehow, to capture. We put a tape recorder on the bed beside him, but most of the things weren't audible, and he wouldn't do any of them on command. He opened his mouth blankly like he might yawn or sneeze. His head fell side to side slowly, as he gained and lost control of his neck muscles.

“He's just looking for something to eat,” I said, recognizing the particular slackness in his jaw. “Is that what you'd do if you were in the wild, boy? Just open your mouth and hope something you can eat goes in it?”

“Are we torturing him?” Jevn asked, but I didn't know.

“Here you go, love, here you go…” I lifted him off his back, cradled him, and positioned him to nurse. Behind me the bamboo was waving in the window. It had grown overcast in that inviting summer way, when weather is a momentary drama and it leaves the whole world steaming and smelling like earth. Jon began to nurse. I felt a stream of water dripping down my arm. “Oh! I thought it was raining,” I said. “He's just drooling on me!”

“What did you think was raining? Inside?” Jevn laughed.

“I thought the fan was somehow bringing rain in.”

“You didn't think you had a drooling baby in your arms?”

*   *   *

We sang the “Tennessee Waltz,” and “Puff, the Magic Dragon,” and “Wild Montana Skies,” and every song we could think of any words to. I sang “Rocky Top,” and Jevn would overlap me with “Rocky Mountain High”—the unending battle of our rival mountain homes.

“Do you like our singing, Jon?” Jevn asked. Jonathan had stopped nursing and was looking at us. “I think he's just tolerating it.”

“He
has
to like it,” I argued. “We're his parents!”

“Let's sing a John Denver song.”

“Good morning, America, how are ya? Don't you know me; I'm your native son! I'm the car they call the Cutlass Ciera Gold—”

“He doesn't want to know a car commercial song!” Jevn exclaimed. “Don't you know songs?”

We returned Jonathan to his back on my futon as we both crouched over him, watching him closely. As we sang, I told myself that he was not the most beautiful child in the world, that I just saw it that way because I was chemically predisposed to. In the afternoon, Jevn fell asleep next to him, both of them resting their arms above their heads, like they were floating aimlessly among the clouds. Or like they'd lifted their feet to let the river carry them.

*   *   *

I welcomed the unnecessary pain in all its forms. Cradling my son, kissing him, putting my finger in his tiny mouth to touch his soft gums—I invited grief in. It did not feel unnecessary at all. In fact, I thought, the pain was invaluable. It was bound to arrive after I signed, and then it would tell me with certainty whether my signature was a mistake. Why not bring the grief closer, faster, fuller, sooner, to make that future sadness a single blow and invite it to strike now, to test my resilience like concrete or steel to see if I would break? Why not invite that augur grief to this side of the signature and give it power to change things?

I wanted to feel it all. I wanted to feel it all at once. I would hold my head underwater to see how I fared. There would be no second-guessing. And if I couldn't bear the pain, I wouldn't sign anything. If only I could get grief to operate in this way.

*   *   *

We decided to let Paula and Erik take Jonathan overnight. If I could spend one night without him, then maybe I could survive two. And then, possibly, three. And then, perhaps our lifetimes. They were hesitant to take him, but that made me remember how much I trusted them. When they arrived in Dayton, Paula called and asked whether I wanted her to bring him back. She was willing to turn around and make the trip again to return him to me; she wasn't sure I could survive, either. But I wanted them to have him; I wanted his life to start.

I went into the world and looked for the place it had left off. I played darts in a bar. I tried to get better at balancing the tiny weight and casting it through the air. I tried to think about architecture, or milkshakes. The little things that comprise real happiness or the bigger things that make our individual lives seem small and light. I prayed for direction.

I tried to bridge back to myself: I knew exactly what it was like to not have a son. But I couldn't make my son's absence at that moment touch his absence for the twenty-three years prior. I couldn't find that familiar old place, so very like this moment, when I didn't have a son, and I wasn't a mother. But then I felt a flush of excitement as I tried to own an amazing prospect, what must have appeared to be the case: I was just a twenty-three-year-old college student, without a care in the world.

When I got home, I pumped breast milk to keep it flowing and put it in the refrigerator to feed him when he returned. We met in the park across the street from my apartment the next day. They handed him to me, along with his things, and my heart raced with fear and excitement. I don't remember that we said anything about the adoption, but maybe I mentioned the colostrum. Their daughter, Sarah, was angry and said Jonathan was
her
baby. My blood curdled; was I allowed to say that?

*   *   *

My son slept in bed with me because I hadn't prepared anything like a nursery, with a ducks-and-rattles border. I had met so many hopeful couples, I knew well what a “forever home” should look like and exactly how ill-equipped I was. I had no crib to lay him in, but as deeply as my body devoured rest, still I slept lightly enough to temper my pressure against him. My body lay in wait for the moment I was needed, my place on earth validated by seven pounds and a beating heart. He fell asleep again as he nursed, and I was the sea, incubating its salty life, regulating the temperature of the world around him as we shared the tiny pocket of air between us.

*   *   *

Early one afternoon, more than a week after his birth, I was sitting on my futon, searching my son's face and wondering what damage I was doing, dropping so many tears on his chest. There was a knock at the door and my mother came in as I'd never seen her, like a sudden summer storm, simultaneous lightning and thunder. She'd been talking to Jevn's mother, and their worry and speculation and fear had worked to unhinge her. The next step was clear to everyone, and that I wasn't taking it made her doubt all the details of the story she thought she knew. She began to question everything. She wanted to know whether Jevn was really the father. She'd heard about our fighting and wanted to know whether it was safe to leave Jonathan alone with me. She tested every possibility. Why would I turn against such a well-made plan—had I never intended to give up my son? When had the lies started? Did she know me at all? She stood stiffly before me, bracing herself, begging for reassurance that I was still the person she knew.