White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  He grabbed her up, hoisted her into his large forearms, and walked to the other side of the kitchen.

  I stayed outwardly calm, smiled even, and poured myself a droplet of champagne, but I kept my eyes on my daughter. Zelda’s body was slinked in those giant arms, her chin resting on a broad shoulder. She looked at me and I nodded. It’s OK, I ESPed, I am here, watching you, noting you, registering your desires and feelings so one day you can see them yourself. I sipped my bubbly, trying to use my eyes to create a haven, thinking that I would teach her to find calm in herself by being calm for her. I was her first home, the background against which her identity would be formed, the grounding that would enable her to launch into the world and let herself go. I could help make this girl—who’d grown in my interior—comfortable in her own skin.

  She dug her nose into the man’s neck, listening to his stream of grandfatherly affections, seemingly content. I chitchatted with another guest about babysitter Web sites—a caregiver still seemed foreign, a distant desire—until I noted Zelda begin to squirm. Then she looked at me. I looked right back. I know, I see you, I’m aware of your needs, and you are safe. I said it to her. I said it to me.

  Then I went to fetch her. “Let’s go, dude,” I said, and hugged her to my heart.

  • • •

  “THAT’S SUNSHINE. THE whoosh is wind. And there’s the Hudson River,” I explained to Zelda a week later as I pushed the stroller all the way to the end of the Chelsea pier to give her the best view. “Water.” I pointed. “Like the womb!” I stood in the soft air, drinking my obscenely priced coffee as the spring wind blew through my hair, the sun shining brightly on shoulders, summer tapping me from behind, reminding me that soon, soon, I’d be able to leave the house without having to bundle either of us up; in other words, in less than two hours.

  Zelda’s blue-gray eyes were open wide, and she drank in the view, literally flicking her tongue to taste the wind. Every second with Zelda felt alive, filled with wonder, learning, impressions, memories, emotions.

  Today was an exclusive Z-and-me day. That morning, I’d gotten her dressed, packed the diaper bag, and taken her to a baby music group, couching her in my lap while the other children—all older, seemingly adult at their six months—sucked wooden drumsticks. I’d held her while lacing up my shoes and schlepping supplies; I’d sung her to sleep. I smiled at her while I stopped at Chelsea Market to peruse eco-knit stuffed endangered animal toys on sale at the organic store that also carried seventeen varieties of imported shortbread. I even considered shopping—I’d been maintaining my ease with stuff with large owl-print storage bags and the awareness that objects could be wonderful, as long as they were useful and respected, and didn’t serve as blockades or substitutes. And were machine washable.

  After that, I’d made my way here to the edge of town, staring into the maritime distance, not lonely like in South Africa but feeling heroic in the breeze, accomplished. I was doing it. I was managing motherhood. Zelda’s calm was, of course, limited—hunger, gas, hysterical crying, hysterical gas could start at any second—but for that moment I was in my element, showing my daughter water and sky, air and land, trees and loud homeless drunks.

  Having a child, I’d found, did not mean that I’d lost myself but that there was more of me, new pockets and layers I’d never even known existed. A tendency to teach, an ability to browse. I was at the center of my own experience, fitting into my stretched skin. The fact that I’d had no preconceived image of myself as a mother, nor a strong role model to imitate, turned out to be helpful—I had no standard to live up to! I could develop into a parent in my own way. What better thing could a person do on a Monday morning?

  Then, on cue, Zelda began to wail. My breath stopped. This blemishless blond baby had instantly transformed into a howling mammal and looked . . . exactly like my mother. I grabbed the stroller and bolted down the pier, across the West Side Highway, sweating all the way to my sofa without even taking off my jacket. One breast exposed; Zelda having her snack. I tried to put my legs up on our one coffee table (vintage; provenance: Carlton basement) but it was slightly out of foot’s reach. Annoyed, I gently moved Zelda and crossed my legs under me, but I felt an ache in my lower back. I turned on the TV and quickly noted that I’d already watched this same episode of Extreme RV—more than once.

  I sighed, then reached for my iPad and opened my e-mail, bracing myself for the overly cluttered in-box I knew I’d encounter. Instead, I saw a surprising message from a magazine editor. She wanted to buy a story I’d sent in about Mom’s hoarding. I’d never published anything about Mom before; I’d wanted to break into this magazine, but could I really do it? Yes. I grinned, pleased with the opportunity, with my growing career that had been on pause. It’s still in me, I thought, my mind, intellect, interior.

  But as I looked down at Zelda, tasting and sucking, ensconced in her own soothing world, I wondered what I’d be giving up. I’d been nursed for only a few weeks. How tired Mom had always been, working full-time, falling asleep on sofas, distracted, removed. I remembered how I left her notes taped to her door, how she left the house in the mornings before I even woke up, her only trace the awkward sandwiches she’d packed for me in used paper bags.

  Mom had been calling to check up on us daily, and the other day, clearly trying to empathize, asked if I didn’t just want to run away from it all. No! I’d said. I did not want to fall into work, whose stresses were familiar, rather than face the motherhood challenges that I did not know. But. I also really wanted to write this article.

  “Hello? Anyone there?” Jon was knocking on my head.

  “Oh!” I jumped. “I didn’t realize you were back.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I was just thinking about, you know, retreating into the life of the mind.”

  Jon shook his head, let out an exaggerated sigh. “Zelda’s completely asleep.” He gestured to her. She’d come off the latch, turned away, spittle dripping from her lip. I hadn’t even noticed.

  I didn’t want to be absent. But what counted for presence was not so clear-cut.

  Creating comfortable boundaries was a complicated little project.

  • • •

  FROM THE CORNER of my eye, I saw Denise showing Zelda the few photographs—all of architectural structures—displayed on our walls. I was at my desk, but her hushed voice pressing into Zelda’s fruit-soft head sounded like it ran at a thousand decibels. I found it harder to work, to do anything, when I could see them: Denise caring for my baby, whispering in her ear, Denise and Zelda BFFs. I reminded myself that I’d hired her to help develop my baby so I could also develop as a person, for a few hours a week. Besides, as the literature said, time off would leave me refreshed for the repetitive play. And: it’s not just about the baby’s needs, it’s about the family’s needs.

  I’d chosen Denise after twenty babysitter interviews and trials—I’d neurotically assessed each one, unsure what the perfect caregiver looked like, testing each with the deal-breaking “front to back” wipe. But Denise had stuck—not only had she rubbed the right way, but she was funny and not too earnest. (Her first words to us were “Eight p.m. is a late meeting. I was worried you guys were gonna kill me.”) Plus, Zelda loved her, spilling over with giggles whenever she walked in. Maybe that’s what I found most troubling.

  I couldn’t resist butting in. I got up and headed to where Denise was gesturing to a photograph we’d received as a wedding present. “Who is that man?” she asked, pointing at a collage of pictures of Sigmund Freud.

  Zelda’s face was nestled in her breast, which was bigger than mine, despite my current stint as a cow.

  “Who is that man?” Denise goaded again in a childlike voice.

  The photographer, whom I’d worked for during college, created bright representations of abandoned homes, broken walls, peeling wallpaper, doors on their last hinges, making pictorial order out
of actual chaos. When I became her assistant, her project was photographing psychoanalysts’ offices, exploring how the space of therapy affected the therapy. Did the architecture and design of the consulting room influence the insights and self-knowledge that were produced? I wrote papers about her photos, even interviewing analytic-couch designers about what made for a good shrinkage bed (comfortable, but not too soft). We schlepped around Boston as she shot Jungian and Adlerian consulting rooms, the therapists excited and anxious about how she was analyzing their offices. Metasessions.

  Now with Denise pointing to the work, cooing in goo-goo speak, I saw how all those years of displacing my emotional anxieties about control and comfort onto intellectual endeavors and romantic possibilities had, well, paid off. I looked around me at Italian modernist couches and not much else. Just days away from turning thirty-five, an indisputable adult, I loved my home.

  “I don’t know who the man is,” Denise said, “but I do like the sofa.”

  “That’s Freud,” I explained. “At different times of his life.” I caressed my daughter’s rosy cheek, wanting to take her into my arms instead.

  “Who?” Denise asked.

  “Freud.” I enunciated it, louder than Zelda’s gurgling.

  “Huh?”

  “Freud,” I repeated slowly. “The psychoanalyst.”

  “Nope. Don’t know who that is.”

  I was putting my child’s upbringing, ten hours a week of her life, in the hands of someone who didn’t even know who Freud was?

  “Freud,” Denise repeated as if it was a funny sound. Zelda giggled.

  She was snug in Denise’s strong biceps. I flashed to Bubbie—her chicken flesh arms, her firm fingers—the caregiver who saved me. How awesome, I suddenly thought. Imagine having a daughter who does not know who Freud is! Who might not need a therapist or spend her life searching to make sense out of mess. Who might not blame me!

  “Freud. Freud. Freed,” I sang, giggling along, knowing my daughter was in good hands. Which, of course, had nicer nails than mine.

  • • •

  DAYS LATER, I found myself in an actual gallery, a white-walled space I happened to walk into, drawn in by a photo I saw from the street, which transformed as I walked by it. The image was of a crowded road where each cyclist, pedestrian, and driver was using mobile devices. They were together yet alone, connected, but not to their immediate surroundings. As I passed, the photo morphed, so that eventually someone riding a scooter fell down. Bystanders turned to look, but none moved to help.

  It had been years since I’d been to an art gallery by myself; months since I’d done much by myself at all. Such a luxury, the afternoon quiet, my liberty. I walked farther into the exhibition, enjoying the next piece: a family sitting on a couch, watching a fake fire on a TV, each on their own electronic devices. Then, an image of a woman on the toilet using her cell, which she drops into the bowl; a couple on a date while the man checks his BlackBerry; a couple having sex, after which the woman sends a text; a girl on a doctor’s examining table, talking on her phone. The disconnectedness of connected modern life. People were together but apart, bonded and blocked by stuff. I loved them.

  As art. As an experience that I recognized but no longer lived.

  I’d spent years researching precious objects, but only now could I appreciate them for their beauty, not as treatises about home or myself. I was enjoying the art because I felt like doing so on a sunny afternoon, indulging while Jon watched the baby, experiencing pleasure and sensation without theorization. How I’ve changed! I marveled, giddy with confidence and freedom.

  The perfect time for my mother to interrupt.

  I got the first call from Mark, the son-in-law of my mother’s late friend. “What’s your mother’s exact address?” he asked right away.

  “Why?”

  “She sounds unstable. She called me to say good-bye.”

  Not again. My stomach churned. I gave him the address, relieved he was going over to check up on her. Then I realized I had two missed calls from her. Uncharacteristically, she hadn’t left a voice mail.

  I dialed her number. No answer.

  I called Eli. No answer.

  Dad’s work number. Eli again. Mom again. Texted Eli. Mom—not picking up.

  Nothing.

  Please don’t kill yourself.

  Oh God. Why this, again, now? What could I do to help her? To stop her?

  I took deep breaths and walked outside. I knew, I had to go.

  • • •

  I WAS NEARLY running when my brother phoned. “I’m here with her.”

  He put her on the line. “What’s going on? Please, just calm down,” I pleaded.

  “It’s nothing, Judy. I’m just being dramatic. Oh, wait—the doorbell.”

  “It’s Mark,” I said between breaths. It was actually the police.

  “Shit, this again,” Eli now said. “I’ll call you back from the ambulance.”

  I galloped through the Chelsea streets, panting. I had to go. I had to go.

  Cell reception was waving in and out. Eli and I finally reconnected.

  “She let me into the house,” he explained. “She seemed upset. I saw a belt hanging from the light fixture in the kitchen. Out of the junk, I noticed a stool under it. She admitted she was acting out. She said it was a dramatization.”

  My head was spinning. I’d been used to the suicide threats, but a physical plan to hang herself? Right in the kitchen? The tuna kitchen.

  “She said she was too fat. The belt would have given way. She would have fallen.”

  I imagined her body bringing down the light, the whole ceiling, turning the room inside out. The hoard that made her heavy would have blocked her fall. Hoarding—its layers, its comfort, the small sense of power and control it enabled—had in so many ways saved her.

  “Thank you so much for being there, Eli,” I said. And I meant it. “I have to go,” I said. And I did, I had to go.

  • • •

  FINALLY, AFTER MANY more trotting blocks, I made it to my destination. Sweating, panting, I opened the door, ran in and found them. Jon and Zelda playing on the floor of her room. I lay down on the white carpet beside them, as if we were all three making adjacent snow angels, imprints of our beings on the space. Even Mones the cat came over to sniff our toes.

  “You won’t believe this,” I said. I was about to relay the latest when I caught sight of the light fixture hanging over our heads. It was pink and embroidered mesh, yet modern—exactly the kind of lamp I would have wanted as a child. Zelda might hate it, but we’d deal with that later. I had picked it, created a space, stamped my design on it, airy and light. I finally had a place to which to run from the harshness of the world and from which I could launch into its wonderful possibilities. A safe center to dip in and out of, for me and I hoped for Zelda too. One she could return to with funny anecdotes as well as tales of disappointment, one that would take her in, recharge her, always heed her.

  My mom cared for her mom, shoveling affection and attention in that direction, at the expense of so much. And though half my heart was already on the Voyageur bus, tuna wrap in hand, rushing to Montreal, I knew I needed to break that cycle. I had my own family to protect. And, they, in turn, protected me too.

  Then Zelda let out a mighty burp. “Oy mate, you belch like a truck driver,” Jon said, matching it with one of his own.

  I understood: I was, finally, home.

  • TWENTY-THREE •

  THE WALLS HAVE LAYERS

  Montreal, 2012

  “Here’s Zaidy! Where’s Zaidy? Here’s Zaidy!” my mother cooed while lifting and dropping a pillowcase over my father’s outrageously grinning face. She was propped with Zelda—my Zelda—on my childhood bed, which she had cleared for our visit, Zelda’s first to Montreal. Mom had also cleaned part of the kitchen, and when we arrive
d for lunch, she’d ordered us sushi, remembering it was something Jon and I liked.

  Even Eli was in the kitchen—plugged into his laptop, his savior—but still. Zelda brought everyone together, I thought amid the wailing giggles. Just look at my parents next to each other on the bed. My daughter united them in the way I’d always wished I could.

  I put my hand on my waist and was surprised to graze a hard hip bone. I was thin, I thought, finally. Why hadn’t my mother remarked on my hard-won post-pregnancy weight loss? “Mom,” I said, as I pulled my shirt tightly around me.

  “Where’s Zaidy?” she shrieked and smiled. “Here’s Zaidy!”

  My skinniness was silly compared to her happiness, to Zelda’s chuckles. I knew that. I sighed and took a photo of them with my iPhone.

  Six-month-old Zelda was overwhelmed at first by the mad attentions of her grandparents and uncle. But by the second day, she loved it, smiling, her eyes darting to make eye contact with each one, her head naturally posing coyly for all their cameras (as if modeling was genetically coded—that would be her father’s confidence genes). Today was the third day and she was unabashedly enjoying playing with her Bubbie, natural best friends.

  I stood in the doorframe, on the threshold of this room that loomed large and loud in my mind, but was small and standard in reality. A few years earlier my mother had had my one pink wall—the single quirky element of the room that felt like me—painted white. I was livid. You are erasing me! I’d yelled on the phone. You haven’t lived here for a decade, my mother had answered coolly, as if accusing me of erasing myself. Staring at it now, I noted that fuchsia was still visible underneath the cream.

  The walls had layers.

  My parents looked old. My father’s hair sprouted all over his face, between the cracks of his wrinkles. My mother’s hair was tied in a white spongy poof on top of her head, her black sweat suit draped over her beanbag body.

  “Where’s Zaidy? Here’s Zaidy!” The three of them exploded in fits of even more delighted giggles as they played this game of seeing and being seen. “Your grandparents used to play on the floor with you,” my mother called to me. “I can see why!”