baby

by paula bomer

Paula Bomer grew up in South Bend Indiana and lives in New York. Her book of short stories, BABY, is forthcoming in the fall of 2008 by Impetus Press. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The Mississippi Review, Open City, Fiction, Word Riot, Storyglossia, Nerve, The New York Tyrant and elsewhere.

        Lara had some ambitions, admittedly vague ones--to publish some poems, to throw great parties--but she had always wanted a baby. There came a time in her late twenties when she quit working long hours at a fashionable magazine so she could teach pre-school. This was a pre-baby maneuver. Then, finally, her longstanding boyfriend Robert proposed --after much prodding, but who cares?--it was over and done with-- and she quit teaching pre-school to plan her wedding. Being married and having a baby was how she had always imagined herself, and suddenly, here it all was! She bought a huge loft downtown. Robert didn't make much money, but she had an enormous trust fund, and so she set up house. A new, eight thousand dollar couch! A Sub Zero refrigerator! A handmade rug from Tibet! And, most importantly, a specially designed room for the baby. Because shortly after the wedding, she announced to Robert that they would no longer be using birth control. A baby! All to herself! At parties, she gravitated toward the babies. She cooed and gurgled at them, and occasionally--she couldn't help herself-- aggressively relieved the mother of her pudgy little charge, and bounced and cuddled the baby. Little, helpless children! Oh, how their mothers often failed them. During her stint as a pre-school teacher, she'd try to repair the damage done. She loved children, she did, she did, she did.

       

        After taking her temperature religiously, counting off the days on her calendar, making sure she got lots of sleep and ate well, as you could never be too careful, and making sure Robert performed his duty during the times that mattered, she became pregnant. Mysteriously, alarmingly really, when she found out she had accomplished this well-planned goal, a knife-like terror shot through her and stayed, keeping her rigid with fear for nine, long months.

        Looking back, she now knew that it was the start of the ultimate contest, her most important competition. This was, of course, the cause of her anxiety. She wanted to do it better than her mother had. Indeed, she was fiercely determined to be a better mother, the best mother ever, in fact. She definitely planned on being better than the mothers in Central Park. She had lived briefly on the Upper-West Side and would often have lunch on a park bench, watching mothers who ignored their children while they chatted away with the other mothers. Or even worse, left them all day with exploited immigrants who could give two hoots about loving or caring for their charges. She envisioned herself thankful, never tired or angry, in a state of bliss resembling all those little babies at all those parties themselves. Mothers and babies, babies and mothers--innocent, happy and carefree. She would be patient, her baby's nose would never be dirty. The despair a dirty child pricked in her! How hard could it be to clean their little faces? And whenever her baby cried, she would comfort the baby with her warmth and kisses.

        Often, she lay in bed at night, very awake, and thought about holding the baby that now grew in her belly. She'd rub her protruding stomach gently, and then, suddenly, the baby would move. For some reason, Lara found this very creepy. What was this thing? She knew it was going to be her baby, but now, moving around inside of her, it felt like a bony gas bubble. It felt like a crab, positively crustacean in its hardness. Occasionally she had nightmares about giving birth to a crab with human, baby features. The doctor would hand her this red-shelled creature, smiling down at her with his white coat on. Panicked, she'd reach out for it, trying to hide her alarm. In the dream, she felt composure was the most important thing. She always woke up before the crab baby touched her hands.

        Robert would try to put his hand on her belly sometimes and ask to feel the baby. Lara would not let him. After dinner, after watching TV, they'd get into bed--she with her New Yorker, he with Artforum--and he'd sidle up to her in a slimy way. His leg over her leg, his face on her neck. "Let me feel,” he'd say softly, and it just disgusted her. In fact, Robert disgusted her in a way she'd never been disgusted with him before. Granted, men's bodies weren't very lovely, and so she'd always preferred to have the lights off. Then, in a dark room, occasionally, she liked the warmth of having sex with her husband. She liked the way she excited him. It made her feel important, or something. But now, now that she was pregnant, she could barely stand to look at him and the thought of him touching her body! Well, she just couldn't think about it. She'd kick his leg off of hers, arch her neck away from him and say, "Please! I'm trying to read." Eventually, he stopped trying to touch her or her belly, and, thank God, left her alone.

        Despite the physically intense fear she carried during those long, nine months, which neither blood tests nor amnio nor countless sonograms seemed to dissipate, a few things seemed certain and reliable and comforted her during gestation. She would sit with her pint of ice cream in front of the TV, watching a sitcom, and think the comforting thought that inside her growing belly was a pretty little girl. A healthy, sweet-tempered girl who would grow up to shop with her, have her big milky, green eyes, talk about other people with her, and be kind and charming like her. So, after a grueling and humiliating labor ended in a Caesarean section, and the obstetrician held up an enormous, purpley and ugly little boy, she was shocked. A boy! Why, she didn't have any boy names picked out! His tiny ears looked like two miniature, crinkled vaginas, his eyes were hooded and dark, and his head was as pointy as a birthday hat. He looked nothing like her. He upset her so much that she cried and asked that he be taken to the nursery. It was like her dream in many ways, but she behaved worse in real life.

        This was the first disappointment, and a big one. The shock of it lasted for weeks. This, coupled with recovering from the abdominal surgery, was no fun. In the beginning, all of her girlfriends came and cooed over the baby boy, but she could tell they thought he was ugly, too. Then, as the weeks went by and her energy returned to her, she began to see her baby in a different light. He had changed rapidly (thankfully), and so she felt some promise for a brighter future. His skin became smooth and cream colored, his pointy head rounded out, and he began to look around and make soft noises. She decided that his nose was the most perfectly shaped nose she had ever seen. Something stirred in her--was it love? Could it be love? Well, yes, that's what it could be! And why not? It was love, and she was thrilled to feel it. This baby needed her! She was the absolute center of his life! She became proud and smitten and often could stare for long stretches at a time at his sleeping face.

        But, to her consternation, as her love for him grew in strength, so did a fresh, gripping panic and sadness. It dawned on her one night, as she paced around the never-ending cavern that was her loft --not Robert's, damn it, it was hers! Hers, hers, hers!-- holding the inconsolable, squalling infant, that he would cause her pain. That he was, in that very moment, causing her pain, and she hated him, deeply, hugely, and darkly so, for the psychic, emotional and physical discomfort he was causing her. First the love, and now the hate. Where did that love go? It was a distant, unbelievable memory. Alone, pacing back and forth in her chic loft, her husband undoubtedly snoring  away in their king size bed with its feather mattress, the baby writhing and screaming and screaming and SCREAMING in her arms, there was no hiding that now all she felt for him was hate. Pure, liquid hate. She knew, at some point in the future, this hatred of hers would be discernable to him--how can you hide hate?--and cause him pain. Rocking him back and forth in her arms, she became conscious of how tightly she gripped him--is that why he cried? Was she holding him so tightly it hurt?-- and like a shot of vodka she imagined smashing his tiny, screaming head against the beautifully exposed brick wall. The thought simultaneously energized and relaxed her. The imagining of it--she saw her face angry, imagined the swinging of her arms, imagined his little face wide with horror and his tiny, helpless head thwacking against the wall--THWACK!--and blood spraying out everywhere--picturing this scene by scene cleared her head. She began breathing more steadily--she hadn't realized that she'd been holding her breath. Her arms went limp, and the baby, still crying (what was wrong with him?) nuzzled his head against her breast. She carried him into his room and put him down into his crib, still fucking crying, but with less energy now.

        Feeling utterly spent, as if she’d run a marathon, she crawled into bed next to Robert. And yet, she couldn’t sleep. She was haunted, frozen with the realization that her idea of blissful motherhood, blissful babyhood, had simply been that--an idea. In the other room, the baby had stopped crying. Lara shut her eyes, breathing deeply to try and make up for all that time she'd been holding her breath. The image of his little skull cracking open like a coconut, the sound of his screaming, crying head going thwack, oh, oh, the sound of it! She listened to the silence coming from his nursery. Should she check on him? Or would that wake him? Should she call the pediatrician tomorrow morning? She looked at the bedside clock and realized his crying jag had only lasted twenty minutes. It seemed so much longer than that! It had seemed like an hour, or more! Her lack of patience shocked her. Tears welled in her eyes; no, no, no--motherhood was not what she thought it would be. In her heart, she was not a good mother. And her baby was not perfect, nor would he ever be. He wasn't already, in that he was a boy, for instance. She kept this new found knowledge to herself, this realization of how flawed she and her baby were, guarding it sacredly from her husband, from her mother--who called Lara all the time now--and from all of her friends. It shamed her.

        What was she going to do? Here she was, with a baby, the thing that she had always wanted, and she felt at loose ends. Hours could go by, and after much cooing and high-pitched baby talk, she had nothing to say to the baby. She'd get lost in thought, staring out a window or at a clothing catalogue, only to be shocked back to reality by his cry. And so she'd put him in the Peg Perego stroller, take him down the elevator, and stroll around. She shopped for groceries and bought herself new clothes. Robert, who worked long hours, told her to join a mothers' group. The idea repelled her for some reason. What if she didn't like the other mothers? And groveling for new friends didn't appeal to her. Her old friends from Smith who had bigger babies or children seemed so smug, saying, "It's hard, isn't it?", with a glint of satisfaction in their eyes, or "You'll never sleep again.”  She hated all the negativity. She loathed their condescension. But when she started cooking fish for dinner four nights a week, just so she could talk to the friendly guy at the fish store, she realized she needed company. That it was unhealthy for her to be spending so much time without adults. She'd begun mumbling and gesticulating to herself in the loft, walking around in circles while the baby napped in his crib. Being alone with her baby was really being alone with her thoughts, and this was no good.

        At her next pediatrician appointment she furtively pulled a tab off of a flyer for a mother's group in the neighborhood. She went home and immediately called Margaret, the name on the little piece of paper. An enthusiastic, young-seeming voice answered --she feared having to socialize with gray-haired, in-vitro fertilized mothers, of which there were plenty--and Lara nervously introduced herself, explaining how she got the number and how old her son was --he was three months old already!. Margaret very cheerfully invited her to "join the group,” which met every Friday morning, and everyone had to take turns buying bagels and hosting the other mothers. As Lara hung up, her heart filled with hope. Maybe, just maybe, this mothers' group would make her experience more pleasant. Even knowing that at the end of the week, she had somewhere to go, somewhere she was expected to be, made things better. Her week went by more quickly than ever and it felt good. Another week done with and she was happy to see it end. This made her question herself momentarily, because wasn't time to be savored, especially with a baby?  But Friday arrived, to Lara's alarming elation.

        It took her a long time to get dressed. She was anxious and excited. Boots with heels or not? All black or not? She really hoped that Margaret didn't live in a dingy walk-up and wear sweatpants. That was the thing about Tribeca and the Village. Some people had money, some didn't. Granted, most did, but one could never be certain. And Margaret's address wasn't a building that Lara knew off hand, so she couldn't be sure. Shortly after college, Lara decided that it was OK that she didn't like people who didn't have money. She found them tacky and depressing. She gave up trying to be liberal in that way of "money doesn't matter." It was an enormous relief. As it turned out, Margaret's building on Charles Street was a lovely doorman building, and Lara was delighted to ring the buzzer and be shown into an airy pre-war apartment with a large, well-furnished living room.

        There were five other mothers there; everyone said hello and introduced themselves and their babies, "I'm Susan, this is Henry," and so forth. Only one of the mothers wore sweatpants, and they were nice ones, if such a thing can be said, and she made up for it by sporting a nice diamond bracelet. Margaret, who had opened the door and waved Lara into her apartment, was an attractive, smart looking woman and immediately Lara hoped that they would be friends. She had long brown hair--Lara didn't like short hair on women--she wore no make-up and she spoke in that nicely clipped manner that Lara knew meant well bred. The conversation was lively and focused mainly on the babies: "She's just starting on rice cereal"; "He loves his bath"; "He doesn't sleep at all!"; and occasionally digressed into complaints about absent, incompetent husbands, "He really is my first child, ha, ha, ha!" At some point during the chaotic small talk, Margaret turned to Lara and asked her, "Where are you from?"

        "Greenwich." Lara replied, "And you?"

        "Darien."

        They smiled at each other, knowingly Lara thought. A new friend! Robert was right. She needed this, needed other mothers in her life, and now, she realized, she had needed a new friend. Margaret's baby was a girl, a perfect little girl with Margaret's lovely dark features. Lara squelched her envy and looked straight into her new friend's fabulous, almond-shaped eyes, saying, "Where does your husband work?" Things went swimmingly from there. They had a lot in common. Lara left when everyone else did, hating to go, but not wanting to appear desperate, not wanting to be the last to leave. Walking home, pushing the Peg Perego with a sleeping baby in front of her, she felt better than she'd felt in months.

        At the beginning of the following week, On Monday in fact, Lara decided to call Margaret and invite her over for lunch, just Margaret of course, not the entire mothers' group. She worried that this was a little on the aggressive side. Normally, she'd wait until the other woman invited her over. But she wanted the company and she felt quite confident that Margaret had liked her, too. They dressed alike, JCrew with a little Prada thrown in, they both had Kate Spade diaper bags, neither of them breastfed, and there was the Darien/Greenwich connection as well as both their husbands being in the design world, although she had the feeling that her husband had more money than Robert, but Lara refused to dwell on that. Lara put the baby in a vibrating plastic chair and propped him in front of the TV before picking up the phone. She was nervous, it was unlike her to be so forward, but she hid it well. Margaret was busy for lunch on Tuesday, but said, "What about Wednesday?", and so it was agreed. Lara was thrilled.

        She didn't sleep very well on Tuesday night, because she was so excited. The next morning, she carefully rubbed gel on the bags under her eyes. She put on the new lipstick she had bought the day before just for the occasion--it was pink, a reddish, slightly bold pink-- and dressed in all black. She put the baby in the stroller and headed out to buy lunch. She planned on getting something at one of the high end grocery stores in her neighborhood—either Balducci's or Dean and Deluca’s-- and it was a nice day, so she'd take her time, stroll around and window shop. Lara ended up sitting on a park bench, sipping a latte' and looking at Vogue. The baby had fallen asleep, and it was so early, still before 9:00, that there was no need for her to rush to get lunch. While she relaxed and looked at the magazine, Margaret and the woman with the diamond bracelet walked by together, both in stretchy, exercise pants and sneakers, with their babies in jogger-strollers. They were walking briskly, clearly on their way to the Hudson River to go running. They didn't stop, but waved and smiled and Margaret said, "See you at 1:00!" Lara waved back stiffly, saying "See you!"  As the two women passed her, Lara's hand remained frozen above in a hello/good-by salute, and she suddenly saw herself from outside of herself; stiff, her jaw clenched, a vibrant fear emanating from her very core, dark creases deepening around her mouth and eyes. She was alone--the baby did not count, no, in fact, it was his fault-- she was bored, her lipstick was too bright, her clothes too expensive, and her empty life glowed from every particle of her perfectly placed face powder. Never before had she felt so naked and so pathetic. She quickly got up and started hurrying toward Dean and Deluca.

        The streets were crowded and her stroller seemed enormous and heavy. It was, in fact, enormous and heavy. It was the best goddamn stroller one could have. A man in a suit glared at her as she barreled down Spring Street. Her black clothes soaked up the April sun and she began to perspire from the exertion of pushing the stroller. The baby woke, startled by a bump on the sidewalk. He cried out and then, shocked by the rapid movement, his eyes wide open, immediately became quiet. She looked down at him in the stroller; his eyes wide, his lips drooly. Thwack, she thought. Thwack, thwack, thwack to you, she thought, as she looked down at him. When she turned her face back to the streets--the sun was so strong! When did it get this way? Where were her sunglasses?--another man in a suit looked at her strangely. Had she said thwack out loud? "Thwack"! She said it out loud purposefully this time, her head held high. "Thwack!", she said again, trying to feel in control. But she wasn't in control, really; she wasn't in control of so much of her life.

        Having a baby, she realized, had been a failure of the imagination. She never could have imagined herself otherwise, other than as a pretty woman with a pretty baby. It never had dawned on her that having a baby wouldn't be fun, that when all those people said, "It's so much work", they meant it. She had never imagined such intense change in her life, such vulnerability. Lara loathed feeling vulnerable. Taking care of a baby had looked like so much fun, it had looked so feminine; so loving, so intimate and sweet. But the reality of changing diapers, of carrying the heavy and getting heavier little thing around, of waking up when he decided to wake up, all of this, every little bit of it, was a complete pain. It was drudgery. His smile was sweet, he did need her, but the novelty, or really, the power, of all those sweet things, wore off so quickly in face of the reality of what she did all day. Feed him, diaper him, dress him, try to comfort him, try to keep him clean, and always, always, lug him around.

        She reached Dean and Deluca. It was crowded. She had never been inside Dean and Deluca with her Peg Perego. Nasty looks came from everywhere. She felt huge and unwieldy and stood there, near the entrance. It was time to hire a nanny. She'd try and get an English or French au pair, from a nice family. A young girl who'd pose no threat, have no authority. The aisles at Dean and Deluca were so narrow, that it seemed clear the stroller wouldn't fit through them. What on earth would she serve for lunch? In which direction should she try and move? A tall, thin model glared at her, saying "excuse me", as she pushed by. Lara felt fat and sweaty. Her hair hung damp and limp, clinging to her cheeks, making them itch a little. She was overcome with a strong feeling of contempt for the model who now stood behind her, in line at a register, buying a bottle of five dollar fruit juice. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you! The thought of cursing the model out comforted her, and reinforced the warm feeling coming over her; the only thing she'd ever been good at, really, really good at--and she'd known this since she was a little girl, really, if she thought about it-- was not liking other women. This was how she defined herself. This was how she made alliances.

        Cheese, Lara thought. Good, French cheese and a loaf of bread. The baby started to cry. Someone had bumped the stroller and it startled him. Lara lifted him from the stroller, cooing gently in his ear, and he quieted immediately. "Come now, sweet thing, come get some cheese with mummy, " Lara said, and a serene feeling of power lifted her spirit; she had quieted her baby. She had a baby. It was like when she got her first Chanel bag. She had something others wanted. Yes, everything made sense now. Holding her little baby's face against her own, walking toward the ripe smelling cheese counter, she left the enormous, empty stroller at the front of the store, where it would wait until she finished her shopping.

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