The Middle Child
Even though your [sic] not the oldest,
Or the youngest, you’re the middle.
With a sandwich of ham and cheese
It’s good to have a pickle.
And in the middle of your body,
You will find your belly.
The belly is like the engine
that runs a good machine;
your family wouldn’t be the same
without you in between.
There had to be a code, a way to reveal the secret, the mystery behind these words, and although I was unable to grasp it, to know it, I never ceased to marvel at its otherworldliness, how the words were strung together to create nothing. Nothing. The creation of nothing is mind-bogglingly beautiful. Like how infinity is beautiful, and how stars have long before burned out by the time we see them, that where we see a star, there is, in fact, nothing. The poem belonged with those elements of the natural world like the speed of light and quarks and that there is so much shit packed into one nucleus, things I knew to be true, but still, I could not make them real. The poem was there, on paper, in my hands, but I could not grab hold of it any more than I could grab hold of the nothingness before the Big Bang.
It’s good to have a pickle.
*Middle Child Syndrome is sometimes referred to as Middle Child Personality, and it’s not much of a good personality. A quick Google search yields yards of postings of negativity: resentful, attention-seeking, withdrawn, lonely, and often voted most likely to fail.
This Historic Year
It should be noted that this year, 2008, this year when our nation elected the first African-American president and did us proud, Bunny’s sister Dawn did not go to the polls to vote. What with tending to the needs of two children nearing adolescence, it slipped her mind. Nicole, also, did not vote. She was too busy with the harvest. And Bunny? Because she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed that day, because she could not stop crying, Bunny did not vote, either.
When Albie got in that night, he told her that the line at the polls was wrapped around the block. “I was there for over an hour.” Then he asked, “How was it when you went?”
“Not bad,” she lied. She didn’t have to lie to Albie. He wouldn’t have passed judgment on her. But, as a person prone to sanctimony when it comes to civic responsibilities, Bunny had already placed the great weight of judgment on herself. A heavier burden of guilt, even, than when she furtively ripped up the periodic summons for jury duty, flushing it down the toilet; and therein is the difference between her sisters not voting and Bunny not voting: Bunny was sick with the shame of it.
Other People’s Children
Muffled sounds—now familiar—emanate from the adjacent apartment. Rocky is at that age—late twos, early threes—when, like a pint-sized King Lear, he rages and bellows over nothing, which, you could note, puts him on a par with Bunny, except you can assume Rocky will outgrow it. When it first started, his mothers apologized for the disturbance, which was thoughtful of them but unnecessary. “It doesn’t bother us at all,” Albie had said, which wasn’t consistently true. The sounds of the kid going ballistic did, on occasion, set Bunny’s teeth on edge, but she never would’ve complained because Rachel and Kelly never complained about her cigarette smoke, as opposed to the crank who lives one floor below who slid notes under the door: I can smell your smoke!!! It’s disgusting!!! If it doesn’t stop, I am going to report you!!!, which prompted Bunny to slide a note under his door: To whom are you going to report me? The American Cancer Society? The Health Police? Your mother???? Preferring, in the end, to rise above the squabble, Bunny bought one of those expensive air purifiers to absorb the smell of cigarette smoke. He no longer slides notes under the door, although he scowls whenever he sees her. When you consider all the litigious crackpots out there, or even worse, such as the neighbor who wants to be your best friend, Bunny and Albie lucked out with the lesbians next door. Any disruption resulting from their kid throwing a tantrum is piffle.
When Bunny first learned that Rachel and Kelly were pregnant, Albie wanted to know, “Which one?”
Bunny shrugged. “I didn’t ask.” When her sister Nicole had announced that she and the Wiccan princess were pregnant, Bunny did ask, “You? Or the Princess?” and Nicole repeated, “We’re having a baby.”
“You might not know this,” Bunny said, “but only one of you is going to grow fat and lactate.”
“Do you have to ruin everything?” Nicole asked.
And you wonder why no one likes you.
Rachel, it turned out, was the pregnant one. On a stultifying July afternoon, she and Bunny met up at the mail bank in the lobby. As if over a matter of a mere few days, Rachel’s stomach went from relatively flat to freakishly huge, like one of those monster squashes, and Bunny couldn’t help but stare. Rachel placed the palm of her hand on her belly, and said, “He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?”
“What?” Bunny asked.
“Do you want to feel him kick?”
The pause that followed was suffocating, as inescapable as a stench in the air, until Bunny managed to scramble together an excuse; something about bacteria, the kitchen counter and a sponge. “My hands.” She held them up as if they were evidence.
One night, a year or so after Rocky was born, Albie, home from work, burst into the kitchen where Bunny was slicing tomatoes for a salad, and he said, “You’re not going to believe this. Rocky is walking. He’s in the hall with Kelly. Walking!”
“Yeah? So?” Bunny did not look up from the task at hand. “They do that. They learn to walk.”
“But don’t you think it’s exciting?”
“I’d be excited if he were flying. But walking? No.”
“Do you have to be that way about everything?”
“Yes,” Bunny said. “I do have to be that way,” and Albie asked, “Did the paper come?”
The delivery of the daily Times was, as of the last few weeks, erratic; it often came late and sometimes not at all.
“No. I’ll call tomorrow.” Bunny had been promising to call tomorrow for a few weeks already. “But the New York Review came. It’s on the coffee table.”
Bunny dumped the sliced tomatoes from the cutting board into the salad bowl where they landed on top of the packaged, pre-washed mixed baby lettuces. She shook the bottle of salad dressing—Newman’s Own—but paused before pouring it. Bunny was never unaware of her own limitations.
Soon after Albie and Bunny were married, her mother asked, “Should I be looking forward to a grandchild?”
Second on the list of things Bunny feared having was a baby. Third on the list was facial hair. Whatever was first, she never mentioned it.
Bunny shook her head. “Albie has no sperm. None,” she said and, as was Bunny’s intent, that was the end of that conversation.
Except it’s a conversation that never really ends because everyone wants children. A woman who doesn’t want children? Something must be very wrong with her.
In the apartment above, one flight up, lives a family with two children. Twins, a boy and a girl. When they moved in, Bunny claimed to smell sulfur coming through the air ducts in the bathroom. She swore to Albie that those children had cloven hooves like pickled pig’s feet instead of feet with toes. You might then imagine Bunny’s displeasure at finding herself in the laundry room with them and their mother who acted as if their opening and slamming shut the dryer door, as if determined to snap it from its hinges, were the same sort of wholesome activity as drawing stick figures on paper.
“It’s even better than I imagined it,” she said to Bunny who, although she did not look up from sorting her laundry, did ask, “What’s better?”
As if it were objectively obvious, the mother said, “Having children. Don’t wait too long,” she advised. While she was recounting her Herculean efforts with in vitro fertilizat
ion, Bunny cut her off. “I don’t want children,” Bunny said.
“You say that now, but just you wait until you have your own.”
“I don’t want children,” Bunny repeated, but some people can’t let go.
“You’ll change your mind,” their mother said, “and you’ll see. It’ll be the best thing you ever did.”
“Let me ask you something,” Bunny fished around in her bag for her cigarettes. “If I said I didn’t want a dog, would you urge me to get one nonetheless?” To which the mother of those two little shits said, “You can’t smoke in here.”
It has, as of late, crossed Albie’s mind that perhaps he should be the one apologizing to Rachel and Kelly for Bunny’s tantrums.
Rocky kicks at, or throws something at the shared wall. The sound is soft, but clear and it reverberates. “My little echo,” Bunny says.
Is it safe to laugh or not? Albie waits for a clue.
You’ve Got to Start Somewhere
Yet, when she was in her early thirties, it happened, suddenly, seemingly out of nowhere the way a fever sets in, that Bunny was beset with the irrepressible urge to cradle a baby in her arms. “I do not want a baby,” Bunny was adamant, and it wasn’t simply a matter of her being stubborn, in that way that her mother referred to as “cutting off your nose to spite your face.” She liked her life as it was, and she did not like babies and her interest in children had limitations quickly reached. Nonetheless, there she was, staring into the window at Peanut Butter & Jane’s, melting at the sight of teeny-tiny Converse All Stars and pink overalls that would fit a cat.
“The biological imperative is telling you to reproduce,” Albie explained. “Your genes are crying out for expression.”
As far as children were concerned, Albie had no strong feelings either way, which could be read as a contradiction in his personality considering the way he once yearned for a baby sister, for the concept of a family of four or five. And, he would’ve made for a good and loving father, but Bunny, so often delightfully childlike—wide-eyed at the sight of a butterfly; or slayed-dead over the toot of a fart; who needed him, without being clingy—brought him something like paternal joy. And when, distinct from childlike, she behaved like a child, like a fucking little brat, she provided all the rationale necessary to opt out of parenthood. And, like Bunny, he too had an appreciation for fewer responsibilities and no overwhelming desire for change. He liked his life as it was.
“And how do I get my genes to pipe down?” Bunny asked.
Albie suggested they get a pet.
A kitten, a Siamese kitten, with a crick in her tail, the cross-eyed runt of the litter, the kitten that no one wanted, except for Bunny and Albie. They wanted her desperately. They named her Angela, their little angel. “Angela. My baby,” Bunny said. Always, Bunny said, “My furry little baby,” and she cradled the cat in her arms.
At night, Angela slept snuggled up with Bunny, her head resting on Bunny’s shoulder as if it were a pillow, and Bunny would look at her and her world would go soft. That’s how it was, so let’s not argue about it. A kitten might not be the same as a baby, a human baby, but love is what it is. Bunny loved that cat in a way that she’d never loved before, and who is to measure?
Anyone who knows cats, knows how they can be about food: picky, fickle, perverse; cats will go hungry rather than eat what they suddenly and inexplicably deem to be slop not fit for a dog. Angela was no exception. On nothing more than a whim, she’d turn up her precious, pink nose at the Flaked Tuna, which would set Bunny rushing to open the Beef Morsels in Gravy, and sometimes a third can and even a fourth, until hitting upon one the cat would eat. It was a regular habit of Albie’s to bring home a filet of smoked salmon or a rotisserie chicken, which he would cut up into little pieces to feed to her, by hand, bit by bit as if a morsel of salmon were a grape.
And so the years passed, the happiest of families: Albie, Bunny and baby Angela, who was forever their baby.
The same as every morning, Bunny put up a fresh pot of coffee and opened a can of Seafood Stew, a sure-fire favorite. Or, at least it was a sure-fire favorite. “Cats in India would kill for Seafood Stew,” Bunny said, and she opened a can of Mideast Feast. But, little fussbudget Angela was not in the mood for Mideast Feast or Minced Duck, either, and that evening, when Angela refused the bits of rotisserie chicken that Albie picked up at D’Agostino’s, he said, “I’m not sure those D’Agostino’s chickens are always fresh.” He got his coat from the closet and went to get a rotisserie chicken from Gristedes.
Evidently, something was awry with the Gristedes chicken, too. It was also possible, unthinkable, but possible, that Angela picked up one of those stomach things that go around. Not about to take chances where their baby was concerned, they put Angela in the cat carrier, which Bunny carried, not by the strap, but in both arms, pressed against her chest, and Albie hailed a cab.
At Animal Medical Center, in the waiting room, while Angela underwent tests, Bunny flipped through the pages of Cat Fancy magazine, neither reading it nor looking at the pictures, and Albie said, “She’s going to be fine. It’s probably just a parasite. A stomach bug. Maybe something she ate.”
“I know,” Bunny said. “I’m not worried.”
But Albie knew that Bunny was worried, just as she knew he didn’t think it was a stomach bug.
There was nothing to be done. The veterinarian said, “I’m sorry. She’s not in pain now, but it’s only a matter of days before she will be.” He wrote down the name and number of a vet who makes house calls. “At home,” he said, “she’ll be comfortable and not afraid.”
At home, Albie set Angela down on two pillows alongside the radiator because she was one of those cats who basked in heat, tracking patches of sunlight, burrowing in blankets, or curling up under the lamp on Bunny’s desk. All that night Bunny stayed on the floor beside Angela, watching over her. “I’m here,” she whispered. “My sweet furry baby, don’t be afraid. I’m here. I’m here.”
In the morning, the veterinarian who makes house calls put Angela’s body in a box and took her away.
In a frenzy of grief all his own, Albie gathered up Angela’s toys—the crinkle balls, the cat dancer, the pink mouse filled with catnip—her food dish, her water bowl, her litter box, the pillows alongside the radiator, and took them out of the house, while Bunny got into bed and stroked her chest as if she could quiet a howling heart.
There is no way of knowing for sure, but this might well have been the marble that dropped to set the Rube Goldberg contraption in motion.
Is She Getting Any Help?
You might ask: Is she getting professional help? Does she see someone?
Someone? Someone? How about: two psychologists, six psychiatrists and one psychopharmacologist for a grand total of nine mental health professionals for well over half her lifetime, and it’s fair to say, “Fat lot of good it’s done her.”
When Bunny turned sixteen she told her parents that she wanted to go to a psychiatrist, but her parents said no. “Those people,” her mother said, “they blame the mother for everything.” Later this anecdote was to become part of Bunny’s canon of therapy fodder.
Although the incident in her freshman year of college that required her to go to Student Mental Health Services was a regrettable one, she was elated at the prospect of seeing a psychologist. She imagined it to be something like undergoing psychoanalysis in old Vienna, but to be a staff psychologist at Student Mental Health Services is more like being a physician for the prison system, insofar as it doesn’t necessarily attract the top tier of the graduating class. But at the time, how was Bunny to know such a thing? However, halfway through her first session with Dr. Browning, Bunny came to the obvious and accurate conclusion: Dr. Browning was no Otto Rank.
Next was Dr. Itsy, which was not her real name. Bunny can’t remember her real name, but she was the height and weight of an average ten-year-old
girl. Each week, Dr. Itsy went on and on about how Bunny had to embrace her pain, as if Bunny’s pain didn’t already have her in a chokehold. “Embracing your pain is the only way you can move on,” Dr. Itsy said, while Bunny, sitting in the opposite chair, marveled at how Dr. Itsy’s feet did not reach the floor.
Bunny, in her way, took the doctor’s advice and moved on.
Dr. Sellers, a burly man with a beard, who wore Birkenstock sandals, put great store in hugging. A hug when you arrived, a hug when you departed. Dr. Sellers’s hugging was more like tree-hugging than inappropriate hugging. Inappropriate hugging at least would’ve been interesting. Dr. Sellers did blame Bunny’s mother for everything, which, oddly, didn’t please her quite as much as she thought it would, but in the end she quit seeing Dr. Sellers because, as she told Albie, “You know how I feel about facial hair. I can’t get past the beard.”
Bunny would’ve given up on mental health professionals entirely but for the medication. The meds—not those that came with side effects, such as loss of libido and narcolepsy, because, given that choice, who wouldn’t rather be depressed—were effective, which is not the same as being happy. But as she put it, “All my life I had a headache, and now the headache is gone.”
The headache was gone until it came back.
Dr. Stine prescribed a cocktail, adding Effexor to the Zoloft. Dr. Stine wore velvet shawls and wrote papers for professional journals in which she psychoanalyzed artists and writers. They were all dead, the artists and writers, but still, she should’ve changed their names. A year or so in with Dr. Stine, Bunny related an exquisite example of the systematic erosion of her confidence, how when it was time for Bunny to apply to college, her mother left on her bed a brochure and application for dental hygienist training.
Rabbits for Food Page 4
