Authors: Rivka Galchen
Little Labors (9 page)
At the passport application teller window, the man in front of me was dismissed because, although he had a photocopy of the front of his driver's license, he did not have a photocopy of the back.
I approached the teller window and passed our paperwork through the opening beneath the bulletproof shield. The puma and I had waited about forty-five minutes to get there. I felt very good about getting this essential task done. Our paperwork was immediately handed back; the teller impassively stated: “No, her hand is obstructing her chin, this photo is unusable.”
She did have her hand near her mouth. Triumphantly, I indicated that there were two sets of photos, that her hand was not on her chin in the other set.
“No, we can see the mother's hand in these photos.”
“But of course my hand is there, I had to hold her up against the background.”
We were dismissed.
The next week there was a shutdown of the government.
I was trying to get the passport done in time for travel I had to do for work.
I then took many photos of the puma with my iPhone, having read online that this could be done: all one needed was to then find a place that could print the photos passport-sized. So I took the modern technology object to a Staples, but they were unable to help, and then to a Kinko's but they were unable to help, and so then I went back to the original FedEx office where the unacceptable passport photos had been taken; their passport photo camera equipment was broken. We then went to a souvenir and electronics and passport-photos-taken-here storefront. Working there was one immigrant from Bangladesh, one from Mexico, and one from Pakistan. They knew all about the issue of not having a parent's hand or arm visible in the passport photo. They hid my hand behind a scarf and had me kneel down on the floor and then hold up the baby like a puppet in front of the white backdrop. I and the puma were both very hungry by this time. But the passport window was only open until 2:30 p.m., so we headed right over to the line.
The woman behind the bulletproof glass said she was going to lunch.
“But the sign says this window is open from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.”
The woman said she had already waited an hour longer than she had intended to go to lunch and now she was going to go to lunch.
We continued on to a second post office. No one was available who had the training to handle passports.
At a third post office, again, no one was available, we were told. Then a woman emerged from a back room with a sandwich in her hand; she said she was available until 3:00 p.m.; it was 2:50 p.m. She forsook her sandwich to help us out. She went through our paperwork piece by piece. She got to the photos. She took out a ruler and began taking measurements of the likeness of the puma's face. “Her head is too small,” she said. “Way too small.” It was, she specified, two millimeters too small. “Listen, since September 11, they are very careful with these passport applications, this will never pass.”
We went, so hungry, to a CVS on 42nd Street and 10th Avenue. A woman in line in front of us was discussing with the teller how she had five sets of visa photos taken, she was trying to get her visa to China, but she had doubts about this newest set of photos, too. I felt I was about to lose it, standing in line, listening to the conversation whose end was not yet imaginable, and I probably would have gotten angry, or wept, had my mood not been preempted by the puma getting angry, and weeping. Finally a screen was pulled down. The puma's photo was taken, a face of resigned despair. We paid double, so as to get two sets of photos, one with the puma's head on the larger side, one on the smaller. We returned to the original post office. The fluorescent lighting seemed to have turned to sound. We handed over the paperwork. The photo was fine! The xerox of my mother's passport was fine. The xerox of the father's passport was fine. The social security card was more than was needed. The notarized form signed by the father was fine. The form was notarized with a driver's license, not with a passport. Did we have that driver's license with us? We were sent away.
Her passport didn't make it through in time for her first meager trip at eight weeks old, across the border to Canada. We just argued her way across the border. Then returning was trickier. Border patrol was unimpressed with our birth certificate and social security card. “There are no photos here,” the woman at the booth said. “How can I know if this baby is the baby you say she is if there's not a photo of her to confirm her identity?” We looked at her. Eventually her supervisor let us through. It had to be acknowledged, that picture or no picture, no one could identify the baby, except for us.
My mother takes the chickenâwhen she began to locomote, she ceased being a puma and became a chickenâout with her one evening. The two of them attend a dinner held at my mother's synagogue, in the basement, one of these organized-by-age dinners, this is the over-forty social group, which means that most of the people who attend are over sixty. The chicken walks around the table, carrying her winter pants here and there, offering them to diners, rescinding her offer, and more. After the dinner, my mother tells me that she should charge $1,000 a day to bring the chicken to a nursing home, because a baby offers so much happiness and healing, being near a baby is good for one's health, it is much better than blue algae or Prozacâit is amazing.
The chicken's dad then said to my mom that Yes, he agrees. In fact, that is his take on babysitting. That you charge people $20 an hour for the privilege of being with the baby. A baby is a goldmine.
Everything they said was true, and yet also, we know, not the case.
A long, long time ago, in late August
A reason to apologize to friends
Literature has more dogs than babies
How the puma affects others, one
How the puma affects others, two
Notes on some twentieth-century writers
A baby is an ideal vector for a revenge plot
Things that one was misleadingly told were a big part of having a baby
Sometimes it can seem like many hours with a baby
How the puma affects others, three
Most of the great women writers of the twentieth century
A friend who is not a close friend
People who get along well with babies
Copyright © 2016 by Rivka Galchen
All rights reserved.
Except for brief passages quoted in a newspaper, magazine, radio, television, or website review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system swithout permission in writing from the Publisher.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE
“Notes on Some Twentieth-Century Writers” originally appeared
in
Harper's Magazine
.
Manufactured in the United States of America
New Directions Books are printed on acid-free paper
First published as a New Directions Book in 2016
Design by Erik Rieselbach
eISBN: 9780811222976
New Directions Books are published for James Laughlin
by New Directions Publishing Corporation
80 Eighth Avenue, New York 10011
