White Walls

by Judy Batalion

  • • •

  “I’M GETTING HER,” Jon said above Zelda’s shrieks. “That’s it.”

  “No, leave her,” I pleaded, putting my hand on his shoulder as if to stop him.

  We were standing outside Zelda’s room. It was two a.m. Again.

  Jon clung to the monitor, watching her every movement. I tried to grab it but he clutched it and turned away. “We need to discuss it before we just leave her,” he said.

  “We’ve discussed it a hundred times,” I said. “For five months, sleep training is all we’ve been discussing.”

  “But we never got anywhere.”

  “Because,” I snapped, “you wouldn’t go anywhere.”

  Jon opened the door, ran into the room and picked Zelda up, kissing her.

  The other night I’d asked Jon how he’d feel about keeping a kosher home. He’d stared at me quizzically, especially because at that moment we were eating chicken-and-cheese burritos. “Um, bad.” I got it. Marriage meant growing with each other, but Jon hadn’t envisioned my disturbing his forty-year-old meal habits. My latent lineage was leaking out and making a mess. Having a child meant values I didn’t even know I held festered up like my maelstrom of hormones. But of all our hidden ideas, sleep discipline was the worst.

  “You won’t even try to cry it out,” I hissed. “You won’t even try it.”

  “You tried it,” he scolded quietly, “when I wasn’t here.” He was right. When else could I? “And she puked everywhere. You yourself said you were terrified that she would aspirate on her own vomit.”

  He was right again. That’s why I needed him to help. “That was a few weeks ago. And maybe it would be easier if we did it together.” It was horrific for me to hear Zelda cry, to imagine her feeling abandoned or ignored. But I believed that for the sake of everyone—mainly her—she had to learn to self-soothe. And of course, I needed order too. And sleep.

  My exhaustion was taking over my entire physical existence. I felt semipresent throughout most of my day’s activities, too lethargic to put effort even into yoga classes; I was eating an all-carb-and-caffeine diet to survive. My emotions struck with increased intensity, and I was sure this wasn’t helping my relationship with Jon, who was himself wiped out. Every other night was miserable, with Zelda’s relentless wake-ups and oxen resistance to going to bed. She didn’t want to let go, she didn’t want to miss out—both feelings I entirely understood, both feelings I worried I’d passed on, naturally or nurturally. That’s precisely why I wanted to help her learn how to sleep, to help all of us rest. But I didn’t want to do it alone or seem like the bad cop. I couldn’t.

  I watched Jon cuddling Zelda, shushing her as he paced up and down her room, no concern in the world except her immediate comfort and pleasure. You’re a pushover, I steamed, wanting to make gagging noises. I’d teased him about being a sucker when we’d found out we were having a girl, but he was even worse than I imagined. That’s why you like me, he always countered when I (not) jokingly mentioned it, which I thought was irrelevant. He wasn’t raising me.

  While I hated conflict and my daughter’s screams, I also had trouble managing the anarchy that seemed to have taken over our house. At first, I tolerated it (managed by my extreme cleaning). I knew we were supposed to let newborns reign freely, that you could never spoil a young infant. For a while, the lack of schedule was fine—life felt like an extended flu where you were out of sync with the normal world, felt horrible and watched reruns, but you had a beautiful baby. But with time, and enough Lifetime Channel, I began to crave order and discipline. For myself, and for Zelda.

  You’re a terrible sleeper, Jon often accused me, as if to excuse Zelda’s sleeping.

  Exactly, is what I always said. That’s why I want to stop this now.

  Like religion and culture, this disagreement reflected our childhoods.

  My family had enforced little discipline. There were no meal times, no bedtimes. No one believed in lunch. I grew up eating alone and watching Three’s Company around the clock. As soon as I could, I created deadlines and schedules for myself, and I needed that for my daughter too. I liked it when the pediatrician suggested that children should be in their rooms from seven p.m. to seven a.m. It wasn’t the specific hours that I cared about, but the concrete scheme. But I needed support. I couldn’t create law if it would be undermined, or if Jon thought I was a monster.

  Jon, on the other hand, grew up with an über-regimented, highly involved English colonial mother who had had him in bed at seven p.m. every night until he was a teenager. He’d felt constricted—his schooling, homework, TV time, his every bite controlled. As a parent he wanted to be just the opposite: chill. He wanted to have fun. He adored Zelda, and was dedicated to her—always on, engaged, affectionate. I’d been so grateful for these things—he actually enjoyed the challenge of changing diapers—but I was starting to lose patience. We were both reacting counter to our upbringings, which meant counter to each other.

  In the dark I imagined that it wasn’t just frazzled Jon and me, but all our parents, all four grandparents, perched around the crib. Our child was being raised by generations of ancestors, everyone’s actions and reactions repeating or opposing one another.

  I wondered if my own parents’ discord had been in reaction to their parents. I was dizzy with the complexity of forces that went into creating any one of us.

  “She’s too aware and too physical for cry it out,” Jon whispered. “She’s too stubborn.”

  This was all true. Zelda was a highly active and engaged child. At three months, she slithered over to her playdate neighbor and grabbed for her hand. She was social, had long ago dropped her pacifier, stopped sucking her thumb; she’d started walking early.

  But still. We needed to do something. We were so tired, so lost. How would all these reactions and counterreactions ever intersect?

  “I’ll put her down,” he now said gently. “Go back to bed.”

  “Fine,” I sighed, but I knew his generosity here wasn’t an answer. I kicked my white sofa as I headed back to our room—or rather my room, as Jon was sleeping in the den these days so as not to diminish my already minimal slumber with his snoring. Separate beds, just like my parents. I was exhausted, but didn’t sleep.

  • • •

  EVENTUALLY, THE JEWISH high holidays brought us back to the same synagogue, though with said hyper offspring, we managed only the first few minutes of Kol Nidre. Which had been a fine degree of observance with me, until the next afternoon.

  “I need to end the fast at six,” Jon said as he pushed the stroller along the East Side River promenade. He was wan. His voice was quiet. “We’ll have dinner with Zelda, then put her to bed.”

  Here we go again, I thought, still exhausted. Yom Kippur, the Jewish fast day, the incredible day on which, six years earlier, I’d first found out about Jon’s hoarded past, ended at sundown, which was 7:55, not six o’clock. The thought of eating when it was still light out felt illicit. Wrong.

  Of course, I did not fear God’s wrath, but I fasted diligently every year because I wanted to maintain a link to my community, to my past. I liked ritual. “Six?” I asked. “Are you sure?”

  “My migraine’s kicking in,” Jon said. “I need to. But you should do whatever feels comfortable for you.”

  I cringed. Not that I didn’t appreciate his gesture but it reminded me unpleasantly of my parents’ relationship and how I always felt caught between them: having to choose whether to accompany my father to shul or stay home with Mom to the background of public radio. I could eat kosher like Dad, or nibble on chicken McNuggets with my mother. On Friday nights, we lit the candles and said blessings, but then everyone retired to their own rooms and we each ate dinner when we felt like it, taking turns on the crumb-lined seats, the juice-stained paper towel place mats. Just like every night.

  And then I recalled one particularly p
ainful episode.

  “Who do you want to go with?” my mother had asked, the final “th” sound hissing through the station wagon.

  I was sitting in the back, barred from my parents by the bench seat. On this rainy night, the car smelled of gasoline and damp; drops oozed inside through the rusted openings in the faux-wooden sideboard. Sunday nights always felt the coldest. I could sense the wet atmosphere creep up through the back of my jacket, mingle with my sweatpants, swirling in through the cotton’s pores that you couldn’t even see.

  Both Mom and Dad had had their hands on the door, waiting to get out. Dad was going to get low-fat Edam cheese at the bakery, one of the three my parents visited every single day for provisions. Mom, on the other hand, was headed to Cumberland’s drugstore, the yellow-and-red neon logo running vertically down the front of the building. She was armed with coupons, flyers, attitude. She bought what was on sale, fighting with cashiers who didn’t understand her complex couponing logic. I knew she would come out with boxes of store-brand Q-tips, bottles of shampoo, free magazines from the check-out area, all the stuff she needed to fill her cracked core.

  “Who, Judy?” she pushed. It was always like this. Whenever we walked on the street, Mom, heavyset and fatigued, dawdled while Dad marched ahead, and I spent my time dashing between them, trying to point out things to each, as if I was a tour guide. “Who?”

  We all knew the answer. “Dad,” I mumbled. “I’ll go with Dad.”

  Dad had opened his door, pulling his hat over his ears, preparing for the cold. Mom huffed, hefted herself out of the car and slammed the door behind her. She walked to the drugstore, lugging her heavy purse which pulled down on her right side, taking the collar of her coat with it.

  I knew I’d hurt her feelings.

  Dad stood outside my door, waiting for me. I opened it a crack.

  “I’m going to wait here.”

  “But it’s freezing.”

  “I know.” I shut the door. I waited. The rain beat down on the windows and I used my finger to draw condensation graffiti. Judy, Judy, in cursive, like a sitcom opener, like a package, like pretty.

  • • •

  “MAMA,” ZELDA CALLED from her stroller, waking me from my reverie. “Is windy.”

  “It is windy,” I agreed. “How does she know ‘wind’?” I asked Jon, and together, like most smitten parents, we marveled over our offspring’s extreme specialness. Had my parents co-marveled like that? Or even talked about my weaknesses? It was hard to believe.

  My parents’ lack of unison had made me realize from an early age that there was no one way, no singular correct paradigm for religion or behavior. This lesson had its benefits, had made me more flexible and open-minded, productively critical. And, I thought in my dizzying hunger, perhaps there was a way to give my daughter options, to show her that Daddy and I were different people who—in a respectful and loving way—had certain divergent opinions.

  Zelda would choose her own path; I just didn’t want her to feel that choosing meant accepting one of us and rejecting the other. I understood my parents’ anger at each other, but I did not want to repeat it. I did not want to reiterate their fights about baby names and food, shopping and praying. I wanted Jon and me to forge a united front.

  “Mama, Daddy, holdy hands,” Zelda called from her stroller seat, as if she’d read my mind, reaching her arms out to the side. I knew she wanted each of us to take one and sing “Ring Around the Rosie” as we walked down the New York street.

  Jon and I both sang while pushing the stroller, and Zelda cracked up. All of us did. This was perhaps not the right sentiment for a somber holiday when we are supposed to ruminate on our sins and weaknesses, but it did remind me of how important that circle was. And it reminded me of my Judaism—tradition and religion were not about laws, but community and relationships.

  Really, our differences were minimal compared to our similarities. Sure, I was a yoga nut and only had success schlepping Jon to the gym on pizza night, and we may have had conflicting approaches to shul and slumber, but we were both pragmatists, neither of us too caught up in extreme rules, like many of the no-white-flour-or-TV parents we knew. Besides, it was our differences that made us a stronger couple. I thought of our trip to Poland and how his attitude had supported my personal journey. I thought of how he dealt with his mother’s hoarding, which had taught me to distance myself from what wasn’t mine. His different tone had brought out my brashness and made our love, our life, possible.

  So at six p.m., while the crisp sun cast shadows of water towers along the building across the street, I drank orange juice and ate whole-wheat challah with my husband and daughter, despite the fact that I could have managed two more hours of fasting, despite the fact that it was light outside. It still felt odd and wrong, but also right. I was having dinner with my family.

  • TWENTY-FIVE •

  I DON’T LOVE YOU

  New York City, 2013

  “I don’t love you, Mommy,” Zelda said matter-of-factly, literally pushing my hands off her. “I love Daddy.” She continued to pile plastic spoons into one of the many toddler handbags that she kept on her doll stroller.

  I was silent, my eyes wide.

  For a while now, Zelda had shown strong preferences: for her stuffed cow, Itsy Bitsy Spider videos, string cheese, and now Daddy, who carried her through the city, flipped her upside down, played Legos with her for hours, fed her Popsicles on demand. When the three of us were together, she wanted to hold only Daddy’s hand when we crossed the street, preferred Daddy’s lap and sat only next to me, and refused my help stepping down stairs even if it meant falling on her face. For a while, I’d tried to take solace in the advice of the child psychologist who assured me her reaction to me was normal, that she was defining herself against me, that this meant she felt extremely stable, that it was just a phase.

  For a while, she’d been making me feel like chopped liver (or pâté, as I preferred).

  But she’d never articulated it so explicitly. Extremely. Abruptly. Hurtfully.

  “Here’s another bag for your stickers,” I offered, my voice quaking, not sure what else to say but sure that I could not show that she affected me at all. Sure that I had to keep my cool, could never explode in the ways my mother had.

  “No. Stickers don’t go in bags.” She shook her head, disgusted by my suggestion.

  She’s two. Breathe.

  I habitually reminded myself that I was the one who did bedtime and nighttime, who was literally there for her in the dark, that the “triangle strain” occurred only when Jon was around, that it was fine when it was just the two of us. Until now.

  “I love Daddy,” she chanted. “Not Mommy.”

  I paused, still off guard. “What do you love about Daddy?” I tried to stay positive, unaffected. Her glue. Her rock. Just a phase.

  “Daddy carries me,” she said.

  That was true. “He’ll be back any minute.”

  “Yay.”

  I pulled my hair back, digging into my scalp along the way. It was one thing to renegotiate my post-child relationship with Jon; now I had to do it with my child? I was confused about what role to play in this triangular equation, but I didn’t want to be the short side.

  “Hello?” Jon called as he came in.

  “Daddy!” Zelda dropped everything and went running. I froze in the new stillness around me, the silence a reminder of how alone I was.

  Suddenly, I empathized with Mom. Hadn’t I run out for walks with Dad with the same gusto? It was painful, and confusing, being left on the floor surrounded by Zelda’s unruly bags.

  (As for Zelda’s bags, I reminded myself that she was a toddler, not a hoarder. Sometimes I did worry about having passed on collector genes; I remained vigilant, knowing I’d get help if I ever noticed even the inkling of any real problem.)

  “How are you?” Jon asked, co
ming into Zelda’s room with her on his shoulders.

  “I’m OK,” I lied.

  “Daddy, Madison!” Zelda exclaimed. She meant: put on the British band Madness so they could run around the dining room table to its bopping beats.

  “All right,” I called after them, “but we have to start bedtime in ten minutes.”

  She giggled wildly as Jon lifted her, turned on the music (particularly grating in its hundredth playing this week) and kissed her belly. He pirouetted around the dining room table, the two of them, a waltzing partnership. I began the nightly routine of arranging Zelda’s room, a task I still did meticulously, putting every single toy and plastic utensil away in its place while Jon did bath time, and then I did rocking and Yiddish lullabies.

  “Come, Mommy,” Jon called over Zelda’s hysterical laughter.

  “That’s OK,” I said quietly. It’s OK if she just likes him better, I told myself. At least she has a great father.

  But then I saw myself: cleaning, organizing, instead of having fun. I was actually being like my mom, withdrawing, stuck inside my head, cerebral, working too much. Jon was hands-on, the bather, the chef. A better mom than me.

  Jon and Zelda appeared in the doorway. “Bedtime,” I said, at least looking forward to my Yiddish cuddle time. Jon had happily agreed to try a moderate sleep-training method I’d read about, and we’d been having mild success.

  “I want Daddy to do rocking tonight,” Zelda said.

  “What? But I do rocking.” Rocking was my chance to croon, to connect, to bridge my two Zeldas. Rocking was my thing.

  “No, Daddy tonight,” Zelda demanded.

  “Sure,” Jon said. “I’ll do it. You go relax.” Damn accommodating husband.

  “Please,” Zelda cried.

  Don’t be like Mom. Do. Not. Sulk. Don’t get mad. Don’t force yourself on her.

  Mood Control.

  “OK,” I eked out.

  As Jon bathed her, I adjusted Zelda’s toddler alarm clock, drew the blinds and created the calm room that I’d been creating for over two years, trying to leave my stamp on the space. Then, when the rocking started, I went over to the glider to give Zelda a kiss good night on her cheek. “Too wet, Mommy,” she said, wiping her face where my lips had grazed her.