Hilda and Pearl (27 page)

“I don't care about my figure,” said Pearl. She took the breast in her hand and stuck the nipple into the baby's mouth. The mouth was damp and flaccid around her nipple, and then it slipped off and Simon's eyes closed. Pearl poked him with her nipple some more. The third time, suddenly his mouth was muscular and busy, and Simon was sucking.

“Of course you don't have any milk yet,” said the nurse.

“Well, he's found
something
,” said Pearl with some excitement. She stroked Simon's head with her free hand and traced the outline of his body with her finger. He kept his knees drawn up and his eyes closed, like a small swimmer bobbing and floating, trusting her.

Home from the hospital, Pearl sometimes heard Mike's voice in the bedroom, talking to Simon as if he were an adult. The first time, Pearl thought that somehow someone had come along and gone into the bedroom when she wasn't looking. Mostly Mike's words were inaudible, but she heard, “how the hell anybody could think that would work,” and she put down her knitting needles to listen, uneasy. Her mother had taught her to knit and she was making a sweater for Simon, but she found it tedious, and she couldn't remember to decrease for the armholes.

Mike had made love to her once during her pregnancy—wordlessly, almost brutally. He looked at her, red-faced, afterward, and Pearl wondered whether he had been trying to dislodge the baby from her womb with his penis. She didn't know if that was possible. She hadn't asked the doctor if it was all right to have sex when you were pregnant.

Hilda and Nathan came to see Simon the day after she and Mike brought him home from the hospital. They gave him a diaper bag fitted with baby bottles. Pearl wasn't using bottles because she was nursing, but she didn't say so. She was pleased. They stayed only a little while. At first Pearl couldn't look at Nathan, then she allowed herself—or forced upon herself—one long look when he wasn't looking at her. She noticed wrinkles on his face: he was beginning to look middle-aged. He seemed balder than he had been. He looked sad.

But she didn't think about Nathan as much. She was busy taking care of Simon. When Mike was at work, she put Simon into his carriage and took him down in the elevator and out into the street. In the hot weather, she walked with him in Prospect Park. Sometimes she passed a small, unpaved playground where, she decided, Simon would play when he was bigger. It was rather far from where they lived, but it had deep shade and a wading pool with a sprinkler in the middle. As she walked, Pearl talked to Simon, who was awake, lying on his back and looking up at her, about the playground and what fun he'd have there.

Twice when she looked into that playground she saw Hilda there. Once Hilda was reading on a bench, shaking Racket's carriage with one hand. The other time, she was crouching over the wading pool, and Pearl could see the baby, her arms flung wide. Simon was different from Racket, quieter and rounder. He liked being wrapped up, and lay with his arms and legs drawn up to his body even when he was unwrapped. He had radiant smiles. He fed eagerly at her breast.

One Sunday afternoon when she was nursing him, sitting up on their bed because the bedroom window caught a breeze and it was cooler in there, Mike came in and sat down on the bed. He watched silently for a long time. “I like that sound he makes,” Mike said at last. It was true. When Simon nursed, he made a grunting noise. “Do they all do that?”

“I don't know,” said Pearl hesitantly. He sounded friendlier than he had for a while.

“He's getting ready to be a musician,” said Mike. “Maybe we'll start him on the clarinet.”

Simon finished nursing and Pearl burped him and laid him on the bed between them. She looked at the baby and at Mike to see if they looked alike, but Simon just looked like a baby to her, not like Mike or Nathan, though he was dark like Nathan. Of course he was Nathan's, she thought, but maybe in some way he was Mike's as well.

“He's too nice,” said Mike now.

“Too nice? What do you mean?”

“A baby should yell,” said Mike. “This kid's going to be a pushover. You can't be like that. This world, you have to be tougher than that.”

“He'll be tough,” said Pearl, but she didn't want her boy to be tough. She didn't want him to fight with other children.

“You have to warn him,” said Mike urgently, as if he were really criticizing Pearl.

“He's only a baby!” she said sharply.

“Right. Only a baby,” said Mike, and now he sounded sarcastic. She was frightened, and it reminded her of the months when she'd been afraid of Mike.

“What do you mean?” she said in a low voice.

“I'm glad it's so simple for you,” he said sarcastically. “I'm glad you think he's only a baby!” He had been happy, and now he was angry, and nothing had happened. Pearl was in her nightgown, though it was afternoon, and it was twisted around her hips, sweaty, smelly with breast milk. She pulled it down as she stood up and took Simon to his crib, but Mike wasn't watching her; he'd left the room.

Racket was a year old in August, and Pearl went to a toy store for a birthday present. The man in the store said that for a one-year-old, who would be learning to walk, she should buy a push toy. He showed her a rolling spool with a wooden handle. “Once she can walk, you buy a pull toy,” he said. There was a yellow wooden duck on red wheels, which was pulled by a red-and-white string with a big blue bead at the end, and Pearl liked that much better. “But is she walking?” said the man. She didn't know, but she paid for the duck and put it into Simon's carriage.

Sure enough, she spotted Hilda crocheting on a bench under a tree. Racket was standing at her knees. Pearl pushed the carriage into the playground.

“How's Simon?” said Hilda, looking up.

“Fine,” said Pearl. “I came to wish Racket a happy birthday.”

“Thanks. I suppose we should go back to calling her Rachel, but I still like Racket.”

“Does she still make a racket?” said Pearl.

Hilda nodded. Pearl took the toy from the carriage. “Look, Racket, I bought you a birthday present,” she said.

“Nice of you,” said Hilda a little huskily.

“I wanted to,” said Pearl. “Can she walk?”

“She's starting. It's hard here because the ground is uneven. At home she can take three steps.”

“The man in the store didn't want me to buy a pull toy unless she could walk,” Pearl explained.

They looked at each other and laughed together. Racket fastened her mouth on the duck's yellow wooden beak. Hilda showed her how the toy could be pulled along, and Racket sank to her knees and pushed the duck back and forth on the ground. Then she began to crawl rapidly toward the fountain, leaving the duck.

“Not with shoes on,” called Hilda. Racket was wearing new-looking white leather shoes—real shoes—and socks, and Hilda carried her back to the bench and took them off her. “I let her get her clothes wet,” she said. “I bring extras.”

Pearl took Simon out of the carriage and crouched on the edge of the wading pool with him in her lap. She dangled his feet in the water. He hung limply, then kicked and smiled.

“He likes it,” said Hilda. Racket had seated herself in the water and was slapping it hard with her palms.

“Can she talk?” said Pearl.

“She has a couple of words.”

“She's easier now?”

“Not really,” Hilda said. But she smiled at Pearl, who had thought Hilda would never smile at her again. Pearl looked down at her easy baby.

“I've been wanting to ask you,” said Hilda. “What happened to that boy? Billy.”

“He's in Spain.”

“He really did go? Oh, I hope he's all right! Things aren't going well for the Loyalists.”

“I know,” said Pearl. “I don't see Ruby so much, now that I'm not working.” Ruby had come to see Simon and had brought him a rattle. She promised to come again, but she didn't.

Now Racket rolled over in the water. She was drenched and she began to cry. Hilda carried her back to the bench and took off her clothes. She pinned a fresh diaper on Racket, but when she set her down a moment to reach for her sunsuit, Racket began walking toward the pool, where Pearl was still sitting with Simon. She took one step, two, three, four. “Did you see that?” Hilda called, as Racket sat down hard in the sand and patted it, then rolled over to crawl once more. “Four steps!” Pearl nodded and smiled. Yes, she had seen the four steps.

She met Hilda in the playground twice more during the summer. Sometimes she looked for her but couldn't find her. She was afraid to suggest that they plan to meet, and Hilda didn't bring up the idea. Pearl didn't know whether it was painful for Hilda to see her. Probably it was. Once when they met, Hilda was reading while Racket played, and she seemed to mind putting down her book. Another time they talked. Fall was coming, and Mike had a new job as a stenographer for the city department that heard workmen's compensation claims. Pearl wanted to talk about Mike's moodiness, about the hard things—and sometimes the friendly things—he said about Simon, but she didn't.

“You could come over and visit some day,” Pearl said softly as they were preparing to leave the playground. She was lonely. Simon was no trouble but there wasn't much to do for him, either. Pearl had never been one for cooking and cleaning. She didn't have any friends, and her mother irritated her. It would be nice if Hilda and Racket would come over some afternoon. Racket could walk now, and she hurtled down the path toward the playground gate. Hilda got up to chase her. “I will,” Pearl heard her say over her shoulder as she ran.

Hilda didn't come until the middle of November. Pearl had heard that she was sick. She met a neighbor of Hilda's in the street and the woman said, “Your sister-in-law's been sick with bronchitis.” Pearl called Hilda to see how she was.

“I've been sick and Racket's been sick,” Hilda said. “Now we're both really all right. I need to get out. Should I come see you?”

“You don't want me to come there?” said Pearl.

“I'm sick of the four walls.”

“You're sure?”

“Of course.” It was cloudy out. It looked like rain. Pearl was just as pleased that she didn't have to bundle Simon up and go outside yet—though she'd have to go later, because she needed milk and salt. She had forgotten to buy salt and had used it all up, even dumping the salt from the salt shaker into the water in which she was boiling potatoes last night. Even so, the potatoes had tasted flat, and Mike had asked for the salt shaker at supper.

She nursed Simon while lying on the couch looking over a magazine. She didn't think nursing was ruining her figure. Maybe it would make her breasts hang down too much. She experimented, holding Simon a little higher in her arms so as to push her breasts upward. But it was tiring. It was Friday. Friday seemed like a gray day of the week to Pearl, and she played with that idea to find out whether she really held it. She laid Simon on the living room rug and began gathering ashtrays and old newspapers. Mike always left his saxophone out with the case open on the floor and sheet music spread out near it, but she didn't move any of that.

At last the doorbell rang. Hilda was at the door with Racket in the stroller. “It didn't fit in the elevator,” she said. “I had to pull it up the steps.” She was out of breath.

“The carriage fits,” said Pearl. “I'm sorry.”

“The carriage is narrower,” said Hilda, still gasping. She pulled the wicker stroller into the living room and sat down immediately. Racket climbed out. Pearl didn't know why Hilda hadn't left the stroller downstairs in the lobby. Maybe she was afraid someone would mind.

“Won't she fall?” she said, watching Racket.

Hilda shook her head. “She just learned to do that last week. She climbs out all the time now.”

Racket walked over to Simon, who was lying on his stomach on the rug. She pushed at his face to turn it over. “Gently, honey, gently,” said Hilda.

“You're still sick,” Pearl said.

Hilda was still out of breath. “I guess it was stupid to come,” she said.

“I'm glad you came,” said Pearl.

“Well, I wanted to.” Pearl helped Hilda take her coat off, and she put it in the bedroom. Simon was crying and she put him into his bassinet. Maybe he'd sleep. Racket's nose was running. “She's really still sick, too,” said Hilda. “I hope Simon doesn't catch it.”

“He's nice and tough,” said Pearl.

“He's a pretty baby.”

“Thank you.”

Pearl made coffee. Racket got into Mike's sheet music and cried when it was taken away from her. Pearl gave her a magazine to play with, but she wouldn't be appeased. When Pearl brought the coffee into the living room, Hilda was trying to soothe her by showing her things out the window—a car, a man. Racket rubbed at her face and cried. “She needs to nap,” said Hilda.

Pearl set the coffee cups on the telephone table. They'd make rings on the wood, and she saw Hilda looking, probably thinking that Pearl should use coasters. Pearl had coasters—her mother had bought them—but she didn't know where they were. She was squatting to put milk and sugar into her coffee, and she sat back on her heels, so her skirt touched the floor. She suddenly felt like a brave, interesting person. “I'm afraid of you,” she said recklessly, happily—over the noise of Racket's whimpers. But although she didn't know how it could be, she knew that even though she was afraid—oh, my, how afraid she was—she was also not afraid. She was taller than Hilda and had an easier baby, and that made a difference even if it shouldn't—and she could do things Hilda couldn't do. Hilda couldn't say what Pearl had just said. And Pearl loved Nathan—even now. It was brave to keep loving him.