Baking and Babies

by Tara Sivec

  I find Rosa carefully ladling sauce from a giant pot into mason jars spread all over the island in the middle of the room.

  “Canning sauce for the winter?” I ask, walking up to the opposite side of the counter from my sister and dipping my finger into one of the mason jars, bringing it up to my mouth for a taste test.

  “Don’t put your dirty fingers into the sauce,” Rosa scolds, smacking the top of my hand. “God only knows where you’ve put those fingers lately.”

  I know where I’d like to put my fingers, but after Molly had to watch me throw up in her parent’s bushes the other night after proving it was possible to eat an entire bag of dicks, I’m not sure these digits will be going anywhere near the Promised Land any time soon.

  “Hump-hump-hump, I’m gonna pee on you!” Valerie shouts happily into the kitchen as she races by to head to one of the spare bedrooms my mother converted into a toy room for her only grandchild.

  Rosa gives me a dirty look and I put my hands up. “Hey, don’t look at me like that. I did NOT teach her those words. Where is Tessa anyway? Shouldn’t she be keeping an eye on her spawn?”

  “She asked us to watch Valerie for a few hours so she could get some work done while Danny is out of town at a conference,” Rosa explains distractedly as she starts putting lids on the already-filled mason jars.

  I’ve been friends with Tessa’s husband Danny since high school, and I don’t hold it against him that he broke the cardinal rule of Guy Code by dating my sister. Mostly because when he’s in town, he breaks up all the estrogen in this house so I don’t feel like I’m starting to grow a pussy being surrounded by women all the time.

  “Where’s Ma?”

  “Grabbing more supplies from the basement,” she replies, finishing with the last jar and letting out tired breath.

  “Good. Since we’re alone, I can kick your ass in peace for the shit you pulled on Facebook,” I tell her.

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she says, unable to hide the smirk on her face as she crosses her arms in front of her and stares at me.

  “You made me sound like a giant pussy. A smiley face? Really?”

  Rosa laughs. “Hey, I did you a favor with that Molly chick. I’m trying to make you look like less of a dick so when she finds out you’re Alfanso D., she won’t hate you so much. Wait until you see what I posted today.”

  My jaw drops and I quickly pull my phone out of my back pocket, immediately going to Facebook. The Alfanso D. page has over two-hundred notifications and I hold my breath as I click on the post pinned at the top.

  “What did you do?! Oh, sweet Jesus on a jelly bean…you asked her on a date?!” I screech.

  I read the post out loud because clearly reading it in my head wasn’t torture enough.

  “Dear Molly Gilmore,” I pause and give my sister a little growl of annoyance. “Gee, thanks so much for tagging her in this post.”

  She takes a bow and I remind myself that hitting a girl, even if she’s your annoying older sister is frowned upon, and turn my attention back to the post that is sure to ruin my life. “In case you didn’t see my previous apology, I’d like to take this opportunity to publicly apologize to you in front of all my readers. I would also like to officially ask you to have dinner with me so I can prove to you that the D. in my name does not stand for dick, douchebag, dummy or dipshit.”

  Rosa quietly mouths the words along with me, smiling happily when I get to the end.

  “Poetry. Pure poetry,” she murmurs. “Now you can profess your love to her and tell her you want to make babies with her.”

  A hysterical laugh flies out of my mouth, but it’s quickly cut off and exchanged for screams of pain when something hard starts smacking repeatedly against the back of my shoulder. I’d know that stinging pain anywhere, and when I whirl around with my hands up to block my face, sure enough, my mother is standing there with a wooden spoon in her hand, hitting every part of me she can reach.

  “HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME, ALFANSO? I HAD TO HEAR ABOUT IT FROM THE WOMEN AT THE BEAUTY PARLOR!” she screams, the wooden spoon slapping against the side of my arm.

  “Ma! Cut it out!” I yell back, dodging her flailing arm wielding the spoon of torture, the same spoon she’s been using on my sisters and I since we were mouthy little asshole kids.

  “I could have had a heart attack!” she screeches, chasing me around the island with the spoon above her head. “I could have died and you don’t even CARE!”

  Luckily, Rosa snatches the spoon from mom’s hand when she races by her, so at least I can stop running away from my mother and her wooden spoon like a wuss. Unfortunately, when I stop and stand next to my sister, my mother doesn’t even notice the spoon is missing and her hands start wind-milling against my arm like she’s in a catfight with a chick.

  “It’s like you don’t even love me!” she wails, her little hands reigning hellfire against my forearms while I shield my face. “I went through thirty-seven hours of labor with you, and I had to find out from a stranger!”

  Not knowing what else to do, I start whipping my own hands against hers until we’re having the world’s most pathetic slap fight in the middle of her kitchen.

  “It was two hours of labor and you got an epidural after the first contraction!” I remind her, our hands still smacking rapidly together.

  “Well, it FELT like thirty-seven hours!” she argues. “How could you not tell your own mother that you’re going to be a father?!”

  “WHAT THE FUCK?!” Rosa and I yell at the same time.

  My mother manages to end our slap fight and whack both of us upside the back of our heads at the same time.

  “YOU GOT SOMEONE PREGNANT?”

  “WHO TOLD YOU THIS?”

  Once again, Rosa and I shout at the same time, her at me and me at our mother. We turn to face each other and both point a finger in each other’s faces.

  “WHO THE HELL DID YOU KNOCK UP?!”

  “STAY THE HELL OUT OF THIS!”

  I groan in frustration when we do it again, and before I can try once more to speak on my own, our mother grabs both of our earlobes and yanks our heads close to her face.

  “Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!” Rosa and I whine, neither one of us caring when our words overlap this time because it fucking hurts!

  “Ho intenzione di spingere il cucchiaio finora nel culo verrà fuori dalla tua bocca!” Our mother shouts in rapid-fire Italian.

  Rosa and I immediately clamp out mouths shut. We only truly fear our mother when she does two things: Screams our full names or speaks in Italian. I can’t speak fluently, but I know enough to get by and I’m pretty sure she just said something about shoving her spoon up our asses until it comes out of our mouths.

  When Rosa and I remain silent for a few seconds, mom finally releases our ears and we back away from her, rubbing our earlobes while shooting each other accusatory looks.

  “How could you do this to me, Alfanso?” Mom starts in again, stomping away from me and out of the kitchen before I have a chance to explain.

  I have no choice but to race after her as she storms across the hall into living room, muttering in Italian under her breath while she begins grabbing giant plastic shopping bags from the couch and starts placing them at my feet.

  “Mom, I didn’t do anything. Will you just let me explain?” I ask as she makes five trips back and forth between the couch and me until there are at least ten bags lying at my feet.

  “I distinctly remember your father showing you how a prophylactic works when you were thirteen and I started finding crusty socks under your bed,” she starts.

  “Jesus, mom!” I yell.

  “Eeeeeeew, you did it into socks?” Rosa says in disgust as she comes up next to me.

  “I was thirteen!” I shout, wishing Molly was here to see that my family could give hers a run for their money in the crazy department. Then I realize I’m talking to my mom and my sister about my masturbation habits when I was a teenager, and I immediately
erase that thought.

  “You should have done it in the shower like a normal teenager!” Rosa argues.

  “Yes, because I got so much bathroom time living with three women!” I fire back. “It’s not like the sock thing happened all the time, only when it was more convenient.”

  “I bought you a twenty-pack of tube socks every other week when you were in eighth grade,” Mom adds. “I thought you had a foot fungus problem until I found sixty-two pairs stuck to the floor under your bed.”

  Just a few minutes ago, I thought my mom finding out about this thing with Molly would be the worst thing that could possibly happen to me. Clearly, I was wrong.

  “Uuugghhh, I will never be able to look at another pair of tube socks without throwing up in my mouth,” Rosa complains.

  “Can we please get back on track here?” I ask with an annoyed shake of my head.

  Mom reaches into the front pocket of her apron and pulls out a banana and a condom, holding them out to me.

  “Fine. You’re going to demonstrate the proper way to use protection, and you’re going to keep doing it until you get it right,” she informs me. “Take the banana and the prophylactic. I had to ask the pharmacist to show me where to locate these things, and then he had to explain all the different kinds. It’s no wonder you screwed this up. Ribbed and magnum and tingling sensation…I do not understand today’s youth and why they make things so difficult. Your father and I managed just fine with the ‘pull-out-and-pray’ method.”

  Rosa starts laughing and I start wondering what the possibilities are that I’m adopted.

  “I’m not going to demonstrate anything and stop saying prophylactic; it’s freaking me out!” I complain, crossing my arms like a child and refusing to take the things in her hand.

  Picturing my mother going to the pharmacy and asking where the condoms are is bad enough. Having to hear her continue to say that word over and over will make me never want to have sex again.

  “We’re not leaving this room until you put this on the banana!” she argues. “I got glow-in-the-dark so we can be here all night!”

  Grabbing the items from her hands so she stops shaking them in my face, I toss them over my shoulder and the banana thumps on the floor out in the hallway.

  “I know how to use a condom, we are never speaking of my childhood masturbatory habits ever again, and I did NOT get anyone pregnant!” I yell at the top of my voice.

  “I’m confused,” Rosa states.

  I sigh, realizing I’ve reached a new low when I’d rather go back to talking about jerking off into gym socks than trying and explain this to them.

  “It’s a long story,” I mutter.

  Both of us stare at our mother as she bends down and starts pulling things out of the bags by my feet.

  “There’s no sense in lying about it now, Alfanso. I had a nice long chat with that Molly girl’s aunt at the beauty parlor, and then we went shopping together,” she tells me happily, her mood doing a complete one-eighty as she digs through one of the bags and the sound of crinkling plastic fills the room.

  Rosa’s head whips up from watching Mom dig through the bags and she stares at me in shock. “Wait, Molly as in ‘Cut the cord from mommy’ Facebook Molly? The Molly you just publicly asked out on a date on social media? That’s who you knocked up?”

  “YOU asked her out on a date, not me! And yes, that Molly,” I reply, quickly backpedalling when Rosa opens her mouth to most likely call me a bunch of names. “But I did NOT get her pregnant!”

  Mom stands up and begins shoving things at me, one after another until my arms are full of….

  “Are these bibs? And bottles and baby socks and…what the hell is THIS?” I ask, staring at the box she just put on top of the pile I’m trying not to drop.

  “It’s a breast pump,” Mom says with a huff, like I’m a moron for not knowing. “I also got ten packs of diapers, three receiving blankets, four different styles of pacifiers because you never know what the baby will like, diaper rash cream, and a baby monitor.”

  Her face scrunches up in concentration for a minute and while she thinks, I try to force my brain to process what is happening.

  “Oh!” she announces excitedly, clapping her hands together. “I knew I forgot something. Rosa, go out to my trunk and get the Diaper Genie.”

  “What the hell is a Diaper Genie? Is that like, a guy who changes all the diapers? Why didn’t Tessa have one of those?” I ask, my brain clearly not catching up as fast as I’d like.

  “I think now would be a good time for that long story you mentioned before Mom starts building an addition on the house for a nursery,” Rosa whispers, as my mom hands her a tiny little baby shirt.

  “Awwww, look,” Rosa says, holding it up in front of her. “It says World’s Greatest Aunt!”

  I finally get my head out of my ass, opening my arms and letting everything my mom shoved at me fall to the floor, snatching the shirt from Rosa’s hands that she’s cooing over.

  “Heeeey! Give me my aunt shirt back!” she complains.

  “You don’t need a damn aunt shirt because you aren’t going to be an aunt again!” I argue, holding it out of her reach as she tries to grab it back. “And I don’t need a magic genie to change diapers, or any of this other stuff, because I’m not going to be a father! I didn’t get anyone pregnant.”

  Bending down to avoid the evil-eye both of the women in the room are now giving me, I start shoveling all the items I dropped back into the bags.

  “Molly is doing a favor for her sister, and I’m not kidding when I say it’s a long story,” I explain, wondering if I could have Molly give all this stuff to Charlotte and earn me a few more brownie points so she’ll forget about the whole puking in the bushes thing the other night. “She’s pretending to be pregnant and I’m pretending to be the father because her sister wants to wait until after her wedding in a few weeks to break the news to everyone. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I honestly never thought you’d run into one of Molly’s relatives and find out. It’s not that big of a deal, but you guys absolutely CANNOT tell anyone about this.”

  Rosa pats me on the back when I stand back up. “Damn, I guess you don’t need my help clearing Alfanso D.’s name. You could tell her you’re Satan at this point and she’d probably shrug it off since you’re going through so much trouble for her family. You actually do have a brain.”

  I ignore the brain comment instead of saying something sarcastic because I don’t like how quiet our mother is, and if Rosa and I start firing insults at each other, she might make good on that threat of shoving a spoon up our asses.

  “Look, Auntie Rosa! I put a dress on the ’nanana!”

  Rosa and I turn around and find Valerie sitting in the middle of the hallway behind us, proudly holding up the banana I threw, now covered in a florescent green condom.

  Our mother pushes her way between us, walking over to Valerie, squatting down in front of her and taking the condom-covered banana from her hand.

  “What a pretty dress for the banana!” Mom exclaims. “I have thirty-nine other dresses, in all the colors of the rainbow. Why don’t you teach Uncle how to put a dress on the banana, since he doesn’t seem to care about me at all?”

  I roll my eyes at her dramatics as she stands back up and helps Valerie up from the floor as well.

  “How could you do this to me?” she whispers as my niece starts making airplane noises and flying the condom banana around the hallway. “Is it too much to ask that my son give me another grandchild? What am I supposed to tell the women at the beauty parlor now?”

  One minute she’s beating me with a spoon when she thinks I got someone pregnant, and now she’s bitching at me for NOT getting someone pregnant. I need a drink.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” she says with a haughty lift of her chin. “I’m going to rearrange my bookshelf to make room for your next porn cookbook, now that I know I won’t need the space for pictures of my new grandchild.”

  I think
I’d prefer having the spoon shoved up my ass right about now…

  “I believe this would be a good time to get drunk and tell me the rest of the story,” Rosa informs me as Valerie races up to us and starts smacking me in the leg with the banana.

  “Hump-hump-hump! Banana’s gonna pee on you!”

  Rosa laughs, walking away from me as I try to get the phallic-shaped fruit away from our niece.

  “Hey! A little help here!” I shout to her as she keeps going.

  “Hump-hump-hump!” Valerie shouts. “Uncle, why is the green dress all slippery? It’s making my hands yucky!”

  Rosa’s laugh echoes down the hallway as she gives me a wave over her shoulder.

  “I’ll have the wine ready when the four-year-old finishes teaching you how to dress a banana!” she shouts, disappearing into the kitchen.

  I finally manage to wrangle the banana out of Valerie’s hand, hearing the front door open and shut while I try to keep it out of her reach.

  “GIVE ME BACK MY HUMPY!” she screams.

  Tessa walks up behind her daughter, staring at the banana I’m now holding above my head.

  “I think Uncle needs Humpy more than you, Val,” Tessa tells her daughter, running her hand over the top of her head. “Grandma sent mommy a text and said Uncle doesn’t know how to properly dress a banana so he needs to practice.”

  Yep, I’d definitely prefer being locked in a trunk and covered in pee.

  Two hours and four bottles of wine later, I find myself lying on my mother’s kitchen floor next to Rosa, while my mom and Tessa sit at the kitchen table talking about me like I’m not even here.

  “It’s like he doesn’t even care, Tessa,” my mother says with a sigh.

  “Hey, give me your phone, I’ve got the best idea EVER!” Rosa tells me, holding her hand out above my face.