by Ruth Ozeki
“What happened to your face?”
He ducked his head again. “I fell.” Then he looked up quickly. “Hey, don’t tell her that, all right? Tell her everything’s cool. Tell her I love her and I didn’t hit back.”
Cass delivered the message, but as the days wore on, the girl was starting to fret. She drew her lips together in a little pout of worry. “Ce n’est pas possible, do you think? That the baby will arrive before they are liberated?”
Given the severity of her preterm labor symptoms and the stubbornness of the judge, Cass thought it quite possible. She tried to encourage Charmey to prepare herself for a hospital birth, but Charmey just shook her head—Frankie and Lilith would be liberated, and they would give birth in the Spudnik as planned. So Cass contacted the hospital behind the girl’s back and made arrangements for a delivery room. She packed a suitcase, but she assembled a collection of clean towels, antiseptics, shower curtains, and a dishpan, just in case Charmey was right.
“He will be here,” the girl said.
Groans in the night. Yelps of pain. Unquiet repose. Common sounds in the Quinn household, which was why, one night in early August when Cass woke to the sound of whimpers coming out of the dark, she rolled over to rouse her husband from his dream only to find him wide awake and staring at her. They both sat up in bed. The noises were coming from the spare room.
They worked quickly, snapping back into orbit with an efficiency you learn on a farm. Will called the hospital and the sheriff’s office while Cass sat with Charmey timing her contractions, which were coming fast and strong. Charmey was moaning and calling out Frankie’s name as Will carried her out to the Suburban. He placed her in the backseat, and Cass climbed in after, with the pillows and blankets and the suitcase she’d packed in advance. Will gunned the engine.
“Ready?”
Cass nodded, and they took off. The potato fields were lush and gleaming on either side of the dirt road. A streak of moonlight rippled along the massy surface of the leaves, moving along with the car. Charmey let out a long howl that ended in a sob. “Frankie . . . please! ”
Cass glanced up at the back of Will’s neck as she drew the girl toward her, cradling her head and wiping the damp hair from her brow.
“Oh . . . je crève! ” Charmey moaned, arching her back and twisting as the contraction wracked her. “I’m dying!”
Cass held her down, pressing her shoulders. “Charmey, listen to me! You’re not dying. You’re having the baby.”
“Please . . .” Charmey’s eyes were dark, and tears glistened on her lashes.
“Just breathe. Come on. You know how to do it.” Cass started panting the short rhythmic breaths. Ahead she could see the red and blue lights from the sheriff’s SUV, waiting for them at the entrance to the highway. Will honked and flashed his headlights, and the SUV pulled out in front of them. Charmey started to moan again as the two vehicles spiraled up the tight ramp.
The sheriff’s siren wailed as they merged onto the highway.
“Frankie!” Charmey howled, and Will floored it.
Cass knew hospitals, and her associations had nothing to do with the joyful emergence of a new life. Sweat and antiseptics. Anesthetized fears. Exactly what the girl wanted to avoid. The obstetrician arrived. He palpated Charmey’s hard belly and checked her dilation. “Prep her,” he barked to the nurse. “Don’t let her push.” He looked at Charmey’s white face. “Did you hear that”—he glanced down at her chart—“Charlene? Hang in there, but no pushing.” Then he turned to Cass. “Follow me.”
“Charmey,” Cass said. “Her name is Charmey.”
The doctor led her to a prep room, where a nurse handed her a surgical gown and mask and pointed her toward the sink. “The baby’s a breech,” he said, slipping on his gown. “We’re going to stand by to do a cesarean if we can’t get it out.” He scrubbed his hands. “You say there were preterm complications?”
Cass explained.
“She should have been monitored constantly,” the doctor said, holding his hands in the air while he backed through the swinging doors that led into the delivery room. “In this day and age! With all the technology of modern medicine . . .”
“She wanted to deliver at home,” Cass said.
The doctor snorted. “Medieval. There’s no excuse.”
Later on, after hearing the details of his daughter’s birth, Frankie would proudly announce, “Ass backward! That’s how my daughter came into the world.”
But at the time, on the delivery table, it seemed like a long shot that the baby would voluntarily enter the world at all. She was a frank breech, folded in the uterus, her legs pressed flat up against her face and her buttocks presenting. A perfect pike position. For a gymnast.
“Paschimottanasana,” Y would say. “Forward bend.”
“Can you believe they call it a frank breech!” Frankie would muse. “Isn’t that wild? She musta been thinking of me.”
“A posture of surrender,” Y said. “A pose of release.”
“Fuck that,” said Frank. “She wasn’t surrendering to nobody.” He slammed the heel of his hand against the frame of the bunk. “Shit, dude, I shoulda been there!”
But he wasn’t.
In the waiting room Will paced like an expectant father, stopping in his tracks every time a nurse or a doctor or member of the hospital staff passed by. There was one other man in the room, a farmer by the looks of him, watching an infomercial on the television.
A nurse poked her head in the door. Will paused and waited, but the nurse left.
“Must be your first,” the farmer said to Will. “First one’s always tough.”
Will was about to explain, but instead he found himself nodding.
“They say it’s easier if you get in there and watch,” the farmer said. “Give ’em a hand, you know? But my wife says she’d be embarrassed to have me there, and frankly, I get queasy looking at all that blood. I’ve done my share of calving, so I know what I’m talking about, but it’s different when it’s your wife, you know? I figure I done my part, and this part of the business is up to her. I’ll just sit out here and watch TV, thank you.”
Will sat down in an adjacent chair. He wanted to explain that the baby wasn’t his, that he wasn’t the father, that the father would have been right there pitching in and helping out, only he couldn’t because he was in jail. And that was Will’s fault. He sighed. “You farm?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Dairy,” the guy said. “Just a small operation. Used to grow potatoes, but we got out of it. Margins just got too tight.”
Will nodded. “I know what you mean.”
“Thought you was a spudman,” the guy said. “You look beat.”
A nurse poked her head around the corner. “Mr. Lauterbach?”
The farmer sat bolt upright, like he’d been poked in the chest with a prod. He opened his mouth, but no words came out. The nurse smiled.
“Mrs. Lauterbach is fine. She did a great job. And the baby’s fine, too. Come on, see for yourself.”
Lauterbach gripped the arms of the chair and got to his feet. Will did likewise. He held out his hand to the farmer, who took it and clasped it hard.
“It’s a boy!” Lauterbach said. “We knew that part beforehand.” He pumped Will’s hand up and down. “Whoa, Nellie! I got myself a son!”
“Congratulations,” Will said.
“Hey,” Lauterbach called over his shoulder. “Good luck!”
Will sat back down and aligned his arms along the armrests. He looked back up at the television. The infomercial host was leaning forward in his chair, holding up a box containing a digestive aid, labeled SPIRULENA PLATENSIS, THE HAWAIIAN SUPERFOOD.
“Grown organically at the Aloha Aina Algae Farm,” the host was saying. “Aloha aina means ‘love of the land.’ Isn’t that just what it’s all about, folks?” The studio audience broke into ragged applause.
The door opened. It was Cass.
Will jumped to his feet and went to
her and wrapped his arms around her. Her body swayed as though her knees were about to give out. “Do you want to sit down?”
She shook her head. “She’s fine,” she said, but her words were so muffled he could barely hear. He took her by the arms and held her away from his chest. “Charmey’s fine,” she repeated. He led her to the chair and sat her down, then squatted in front of her, holding on to her hands.
“The baby?”
“She’s fine, too.”
Will exhaled. He stood and walked across the room, then came back again.
Cass looked up. “It was hell,” she said. “It was amazing.” There were tears in her eyes, and her face was pale.
“You okay?”
She nodded, and then her face lit up. “You want to see her?”
He followed her down the hallway to the nursery. There, behind a plate-glass window, was a double row of cribs filled with babies. Cass clutched Will’s arm and pointed to one of them. She was lying on her back, bright red and naked except for a diaper. Will could tell she was a girl by the pink bow on the crib. A nurse came by to collect her and caught sight of Cass. She pointed toward the baby and made a cradling motion with her arms. Cass gripped Will’s arm harder and nodded. The nurse met them at the nursery door, carrying the baby wrapped in a blanket.
“I was just taking her back to see her mommy,” the nurse said. “But I guess it’s okay if you hold her for a bit. You certainly did your share of the work in there.”
She placed the baby in Cass’s arms. Will watched the way his wife held the infant, as though she could absorb it into her body. He heard the humming sound she made. The baby moved her wrinkled hands weakly, batting the blanket like a blind worm. He reached out his fingertip and touched the tiny palm. The baby grasped it. Innate. Reflexive. Fingers gripping. Cass looked up at him and smiled with such infatuated delight he couldn’t bear to look anymore. He withdrew his fingertip.
“Cass, I’m sorry—”
“Don’t,” she said. Warning him. Don’t say something you don’t mean.
He paused, wanting to apologize some more, but not knowing for what.
“The boy should have been here,” he said finally, choosing the simplest of his regrets. “He shouldn’t have missed this.”
terminated
The call came in during the middle of Shavasana, the Corpse pose. Duncan had hired an instructor to teach a yoga class during lunch hours in the conference room, and Elliot had quickly signed up. He was trying to be a team player, and it really wasn’t bad. He liked the way the yoga made his body feel, but more than that he liked the way his colleagues looked dressed in leggings and tank tops. He had positioned his mat behind a young woman from Personnel and had spent the class contemplating the illusory nature of perception—how it was that you could see a person every day for months, or even years, and not really perceive her virtues until they were clad in spandex.
He had his cell phone set on the vibrate mode, which was part of the yogic code of conduct. Turning phones off entirely was preferable, but the instructor was willing to make allowances. When his waistband started to pulse, he sat up and slipped out the door. An Idaho number. Rodney. Calling from the courthouse. Elliot listened, then wheeled across the corridor and hammered his fist against the wall.
“What do you mean, dropped out?” he yelled. The door to the conference room was closed, but he could see the yoga instructor frowning at him through the glass. He lowered his voice. “He can’t just drop out.”
“Well, he did,” Rodney said. “Told the DA he didn’t want to be a part of it and refused to testify. DA’s dropping the whole thing.”
Elliot ground his teeth.
“Judge is letting them out of jail,” Rodney continued. “Big mistake. There’s some folks who are pretty hopping mad.”
Oh, yes, Elliot thought. Here, too.
“Of course, the courts is just one way to go. . . .”
“Huh?” He was trying to think of his next move, but the yoga had emptied his mind.
“Don’t you worry, Mr. Rhodes.”
Dimly, Elliot registered what he was hearing. “Wait a minute. What did you say? Listen, I don’t want you harassing them, you hear? That would look bad. I want you to leave them alone. Call off those family values people and pack up the sideshow.”
The connection was breaking up. Then the phone went dead. Elliot tried punching in the callback code to retrieve the number, but it came up listed as unknown. The class had chanted its final om, and his colleagues were switching on their cell phones and pushing past him through the door. Elliot grabbed his gear and hurried back to his office. He dialed Rodney’s office number, but got a message saying that the number was no longer in service. He slammed down the receiver. This was bad. Extremely bad. The man was a loose cannon. Elliot had never trusted him. He never liked using outside operatives in the first place. If you wanted to do something right, you had to do it yourself.
His mind flipped back to the bigger problem. It was time for damage control. He could feel the wheel of his fortunes at Duncan & Wiley grinding in a most inauspicious direction, but he was still hoping to avert the inevitable. He stared at the Kali statue on his desk, meeting her inscrutable, sloe-eyed gaze. The cruel, curved blade of her scimitar was painted with a wisdom eye. The blade dripped blood, as did the severed head she held up by the hair. Then the phone rang. It was Duncan’s assistant, summoning him.
Duncan got right to the point.
“I had a long consultation with Cynaco, Rhodes. They’re very upset about the dropped lawsuit, especially coming so soon after the Post fiasco. Something like this really erodes consumer confidence. It’s the worst kind of publicity.”
Elliot shook off the last of his yoga trance. “Not necessarily,” he said. “The way I see it is—”
But Duncan held up his hand. “I haven’t finished. Several of Cynaco’s top french-fry and snack-food processors both here and in Canada are buckling under the pressure from the anti-GMO forces and are insisting on nonmodified, identity-protected products. My point is this—and it is highly confidential—Cynaco is planning to terminate its NuLife potato line.”
Elliot felt a wave of relief wash over him. This was good news after all! Duncan wouldn’t be telling him this if he were getting ready to fire him, would he? Duncan picked up his elephant statue, and Elliot racked his brain for the significance of the little diapered deity.
Duncan continued. “Frankly, they’re mystified at the resistance to their product and see the fault lying in an unduly aggressive sell, especially overseas, where they are perceived as being excessively American and arrogant. They want to take a step back and retool their entire presentation, targeting it to Asia and the Third World.”
Elliot’s heart sank. Delhi.
“I’ve suggested ‘Enlightened Compassion’ as the motivating theme to drive the new campaign, which will focus exclusively on the human health benefits of GE crops, like Golden Rice and the other pharmaceutically enhanced lines. Of course, knowing your fondness for things Asian, I immediately thought of you.”
Still, Delhi was better than Alaska. Better than no job at all. Elliot did his best to look compassionate and enlightened.
“But unfortunately, after this most recent Potato Party debacle, our partners at Cynaco have expressed concern about working with you. In fact, they think of you as something of an impediment to their future with D&W.”
It was a blow to his ego, but according to Duncan, even that could be a good thing. He took it in stride. Maybe Duncan would move him back to tobacco. He lowered his eyes, striving to appear humble, and watched his boss’s long, slender fingers fondle the elephant. Then he remembered. Ganesh. Remover of obstacles. His heart started to thump.
“Think of it as an opportunity for change,” Duncan was saying. “Life is change. Death is rebirth. Destruction is redemption. This is a marvelous opportunity for a new beginning, Elliot. You know, in a way, I almost envy you.”
“Duncan, I’m n
ot quite following. Does this mean . . . ?”
“I’m afraid you’ve been terminated, Elliot.”
tibet
Charmey sat up in bed in the pale violet room, holding the baby to her breast. Frankie lay next to her, watching the efficient way she pinched her nipple, tilting it upward and brushing it against the infant’s cheek. His brand-new daughter knew exactly what to do. She opened and closed her miniature lips, then fastened her pink gums around the nipple, tugging at the darkened skin of the areola, dimpled now and swollen. The tiny fingertips clutched at the heavy, low-slung flesh with a perfect sense of entitlement.
The shape of the breast was still fine, Frankie noticed, more awesome than ever, but now blue veins filigreed the alabaster skin, turning it into something . . . well, more like an organ. Like a stomach sac, for example. With a function and a purpose other than his pleasure. In fact, Frank realized with a flicker of panic, his pleasure was just a by-product—entirely beside the point. The breast, now devoted exclusively to feeding his daughter, had nothing to do with him. He struggled to stay focused on the beauty here—his woman, his suckling child, his contribution to the future—but his appreciation was undermined by a niggling sense of being gypped. He’d been to jail. He’d been persecuted for his beliefs. Throughout his incarceration he’d been looking forward to curling up with Charmey, stroking her soft body, making love. He was only just learning the joys of the breast himself, and now to have it all snatched away by a blind, pouting dwarf who’d snuck onto the scene behind his back. Granted, it was his blind, pouting dwarf, but it was not something he’d ever thought to want, necessarily. All in all, he was not ready to find this situation entirely beautiful. Not by a long shot.
But still, it was complicated. When Charmey tucked her chin and gazed at the infant, her whole face took on a dewy glow, as soft as a flower opening at dawn. Watching her, Frankie experienced a funny rush of understanding—So this is what a family feels like—which was at once detached, amused, and, fuck yes, profound. He was happy that Charmey was so happy. He felt proud of himself. He smiled, and some of the tension left his body.
