Sex and Death (15 page)

1.
 
Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see
the funny side of things.

    
•
  
As much as I ever did.

    
  
Not quite as much now.

    
  
Not so much now.

    
  
Not at all.

2.
 
I have looked forward with enjoyment to things.

    
•
  
As much as I ever did.

    
  
Not quite as much now.

    
  
Not so much now.

    
  
Not at all.

My husband beside me in the waiting room, reading over my shoulder, frowning. That's rather evasive, isn't it? ‘As much as I ever did.'

You think I'm being dishonest?

No, but.

But what?

This should be short answer, not multiple choice. He rocks the car seat with his foot. Short answer or essay. Don't you think?

As much as I ever did.

It becomes our inside joke, the answer to the questions we're afraid to ask.

1. Since my baby was born, I have been able to laugh and see the funny side of things.

We try to find you a nickname in utero but nothing fits so well as the ones we have for your father's scrotum and penis, your brothers Krang and Wangston Hughes.

An app dings weekly developmental progress and fruit analogies. Every week we write our own.

2. I have looked forward with enjoyment to things.

Sushi, beer, pot brownies, daycare, pain-free BMs, getting HBO, my in-laws going home.

Erica visits and asks, Does a person really need a doula? No, I tell her, not if you have an older woman in your life who is helpful, trusted, up to date on the latest evidence-based best practices and shares your birth politics, someone who is nonjudgemental, won't project her insecurities onto you, is respectful of your boundaries and your beliefs and those of your spouse, carries no emotional baggage or unresolved tensions, no submerged resentment, no open wounds, no hovering, no neglect, no library of backhanded compliments, no bequeathed body issues, no treadmill of jealousy and ingratitude, no debt of apology, no I'm sorry you feel that way, I'm sorry you misunderstood me, no beauty must suffer, no don't eat with your eyes, no I cut the ends off the roast because you did, I did it to fit the pan.

Erica says, So it's basically $750 for the mother you wish you had.

3. I have felt scared or panicky for no good reason.

There are little moths drifting twitchy through our apartment, sprinkling their mothdust everywhere. I cannot find what they are eating. I brace myself each time I take a towel or a pillowcase from the linen closet.

Our baby is born runty and jaundiced. We wrap her in a hot, stiff so-called blanket of LEDs, to get her levels right. She's at twelve, they tell us, without saying whether the goal is fifteen or zero or a hundred – not knowing whether we are trying to bring them up or down. I don't know which way to pray, your dad says. Little glowworm baby, spooky blue light-up baby in the bassinet, hugged by this machine instead of us, a gnarly intestine-looking tube coming out the bottom. Jaundiced and skinny skinny though neither of us are.
Failure to thrive
, the diagnosis. In the car we agree that a ridiculously lofty standard. Haven't we every advantage – health insurance and advanced degrees,
study abroad and strong female role models? Aren't we gainfully employed, and doing work we do not hate, no less? Didn't we do everything right and in the right order? And yet, can either of us say we are
thriving
? We remind ourselves it's not so bad, the jaundice, the smallness. Erica says, I was little and look at me! We remind ourselves of the Nick-U and paediatric oncology, which we walk past on the way to our appointments. I remember the apparatus we learned about in breastfeeding class that the lactation consultants can rig up for a man: a tube from a sack at his back taped up over his shoulder and to his pectoral, to deliver imitation milk to the baby as though through his nipple. I comfort myself with the dark, unmentioned scenarios wherein that would be necessary.

A box on the birth-certificate paperwork says
I wish to list another man as the baby's father (See reverse)
. I see reverse, curious what wisdom the hospital has for such a situation, what policies the board has come up with to solve a clusterfuck of such magnitude, but the reverse is blank.

My husband has hymns and spirituals, but when I sing to the baby I can only remember the most desperate lines from pop songs. If you want better things, I want you to have them. My girl, my girl, don't lie to me. Tell me, where did you sleep last night?

Q: Do you think having a baby was a good idea?

A: As much as I ever did.

4. I have been anxious or worried for no good reason.

Erica says, Your phone is ringing.

What's the area code? There are certain area codes I categorically avoid.

In my Percocet dreams our blankets are meringue but quicksand thick, suffocation heavy, and the baby somewhere in them. From the toilet I shout it out.

She's not in the bed, my husband says from the hallway.

How do you know?

Because she's in the bassinet.

But how do you know she's in the bassinet?

Because I'm looking at the bassinet and I see her in there.

But, I want to know, how do you know that you are really seeing?

5. I have blamed myself unnecessarily when things went wrong.

A postcard arrives addressed to both of us but meant only for my husband:
Funny how some people feel like home.

Q: Do you still want to be married?

A: As much as I ever did.

The world slips out from under us approximately every hour and a half.

6. I have been so unhappy that I have had difficulty sleeping.

Over Skype people say things about the baby I don't like – she seems small, she seems quiet, she's a princess, she will be gone before we know it – and I slam the computer closed. After, I send them pictures of the baby and small loops of video, to prove I am not a banshee. I am a banshee, but cannot get comfortable with
being one, am always swinging from bansheeism to play-acting sweetness and back. I cannot play nice and don't want to, but want to want to, some days.

7. I have felt sad or miserable.

I can hear the whispers of my own future outbursts: I wiped your ass, I suctioned boogers from your nose, I caught your vomit in my cupped hand and it was hot! I cut the tiny sleep dreads from your hair and blew stray eyelashes off your cheeks. I can feel the seeds of my resentment as I swallow them. When you couldn't sleep I lay beside you with my nipple in your mouth. For hours I did this!

I can feel lifelong narratives zipping together like DNA, creation myths ossifying. You would smile but only if you thought no one was looking. Your hands were always cold, little icicles, but pink and wrinkly as a man's, little bat claws, little possum hands. Your dad cut the teensiest tip of your finger off trying to cut your nails, and after that we let them grow. That's why you have socks on your hands in all your pictures, to keep you from scratching yourself. When we took the socks off you had little woolly worms of lint in your palms, from clenching and unclenching your fists all day. We had a machine that rocked you and another that vibrated you and another that made the noises from the world you'd never seen – breakers and birds, rain on a tin roof – but they soothed you anyway. Robo-baby, I worried you'd become, since you liked the machines so much more than me.