Happy Baby

by Stephen Elliott

  “No. I’m not interested.”

  “Fine. People don’t think that’s love. But listen, this is important. If you pop these you have to cover them with Bacitracin and a Band-Aid. You have to watch out for infection. But you shouldn’t pop them. They’ll heal better if you don’t.”

  I nod my head. “Promise me.”

  “Sure.”

  “Liar.” Maria continues to look at the blisters. “OK. Joe is standing up and he has his hands around this guy’s throat. And the guy is turning blue. And people are pulling on Joe’s arms, trying to get him to let go. But Joe worked out six days a week;. He only ate red meat. One guy was literally hanging from Joe’s arm with his full weight. But nobody could get him to let go. He still had the guy’s neck when the police came. There were three cars surrounding Joe. I thought they were going to bulldoze him into the bar. Those police, with their guns, you could tell they were scared.”

  “A badge doesn’t change that.”

  “I wouldn’t testify and they threatened to lock me up for contempt of court. They came around here. They said they had a warrant but I didn’t ask to see it and the only place they searched was the refrigerator. They didn’t need me—there were dozens of witnesses. Finally they left me alone.”

  I wonder how she pays rent here. Maria took our savings with her when she left me, a couple of hundred dollars, but she left her clothes, and the apartment continued to smell like her for a long time. This is a small apartment to have a child in—a little front room, the kitchen part of the living room, a television set with a towel over the front of it. A cable sticking out of the wall not connected to anything. Hundreds of paperback books, the kind you get in a grocery store. A bedroom I can see from here, just big enough for a pine bed and a dresser. But there’s no crib. She must sleep with Kyle, so if he wakes up crying she’s there right behind him, her breasts and her stomach. I bet he goes right back to sleep. I bet he has no idea how small the apartment is that he’s living in because she doesn’t let him know.

  “He’s not Joe’s child, is he?”

  “No. He’s not. He’s only my child.”

  “Can I hold him?”

  “In a little while. Not just yet.”

  I stay for the day with Maria and Kyle. We take a walk down a side street to the park. The weather is perfect for it. The park is empty. There’s only one basketball rim there now. There used to be two, and a light. Probably the neighbors complained about the children playing basketball at night. The sun is almost down and we’re sitting on a brown bench in front of a sprinkler-fountain when Maria hands me Kyle. He feels like a doll filled with jelly and he weighs more than I thought he would. My wife almost had a baby twice. After that there wasn’t any chance of anything working out.

  I hold Kyle so he’s standing on my leg. I squeeze his belly with my thumbs. He smiles at me, his face cocked to the side. He looks curious. I won’t try to spend the night with Maria. I wouldn’t want to interrupt the two of them. Two older boys come running past us, one of them boys carrying a crowbar and the other laughing. They’re together. They’re running after someone else we can’t see.

  “You ever go to visit Joe?” I ask.

  “He’s in Marion,” she says and I nod. “But that’s not why I don’t want to visit him. He wouldn’t like Kyle. So maybe I’m wrong to say I love him the most. A mother doesn’t love anybody more than her baby.”

  “A good mother.”

  “Most mothers.”

  “Some mothers.”

  Maria laughs. “God, you can be cynical. I write Joe letters. I edit Kyle out. Actually, I make up the letters. I write him fictional stories where I’m at the gym and I’m working out all the time with his old friends. I tell him he has a fan club back here and everybody misses him. I tell him about a friend I made up. Joannie. I say Joannie and I went to the movies today and a man offered to buy her popcorn. It doesn’t matter. There’s no chance of parole in this state. It’s not like I’m going to see him again.”

  Across from the park on one side is a row of identical houses. The houses are new. On the other side of the park each house is different and in front of one a woman in a long dress has come outside barefoot to water her lawn. Two doors down from her there is a house that looks abandoned, the slats untreated and rotting, the yard overgrown with weeds. There’s trash in the plants, cups sitting on branches. The mailbox hangs upside down, its lid gaping open. In place of a buzzer two wires protrude from a hole next to the door. I look a little harder and see a face behind a curtain. The house isn’t abandoned at all.

  I hand Kyle back to Maria and she stands him on her leg. “Who’s the baby,” she says to him again. “You’re still the baby aren’t you? The baby needs attention.”

  It’s after dark, but the weather hasn’t changed. I don’t remember the weather being this nice in Chicago when I was here. The weather is so flawless right now you can’t even feel it. I remember Chicago as always too hot or too cold.

  I leave Kyle and Maria at the door to her apartment. She stands in the doorframe and I stand back at the rail with my bag over my shoulders. I could fly back or I could spend a day visiting my old schools and places. Maybe go to the top of the Sears Tower and look out over Chicago, check out the lake and the condominiums at the end of Lake Shore Drive where my wife’s boyfriend lived. But if I get home early maybe I can see Ambellina tomorrow. I think she’s actually worried that I won’t come back.

  “I could put you in a cage,” Ambellina said. I was lying with my head in her lap and she was stroking my hair. She had hiked her skirt up and her bare legs were warm. I was naked and wet, fresh from the shower. “I could take you back to my house and lock you in the basement. Then where would you go?” Her finger brushed against my ear and she gently squeezed my nose shut. Then she started crying because she knew. She knew before I did. I’m not going back.

  “It was nice to see you again,” Maria says. I almost tell her I have another day, then catch myself. I have as many more days as I want, but that’s not the point. Maria’s safe, she didn’t need me after all. Kyle has his back turned to me, resting, sleeping I think, in Maria’s collar. He could be rising from her skin, he blends in so perfectly. I look from his back to her face. The view from that apartment we shared in Jonquil twenty years ago, how different that was, across from a playground where the smaller kids kept watch from monkeybars for the dope dealers waiting between cars. People who came to see you never came inside your building but waited for you down on the street instead. How quiet it is, only three miles away. I can feel the burns below my thumbs when I rub my thumbs and forefingers together. They hurt now but soon they’ll start to itch.

  “It’s not so late,” I say. “Maybe we could go to Campbell and have Chinese food or something.”

  “No. It’s getting near this guy’s bedtime. Anyway, we have food here.”

  Maria slides her arm up to Kyle’s waist. I take in as deep a breath as I can and reach out to Maria. She inches forward just a small step and I touch her elbow through her shirt. “All right then,” I say.

  “So you’re going back to San Francisco? Is that your home now?”

  Maria still wears the same lotion, peach. It’s not so different from Ambellina’s but Ambellina has a thicker scent. Ambellina’s larger than me. When she lies on top of me I disappear.

  “No,” I say. “I’m going to run away one more time. I’ve got one left in me.”

  “You’re not actually a runaway. Or you weren’t before, anyway,” Maria says.

  “It’s just a word. The only times I ever regretted it was when I went back.” I rub my thumb along her forearm. I lift my hand to her chin, my burn touching her face. Kyle doesn’t move at all. He’ll outgrow this place and then what will they do? In a flash I wish I was violent and capable of the things people are capable of when they don’t care whether or not they get caught. There would be blood everywhere. The baby is sound asleep. It’s not fair, I think. No, of course it is.

&nbs
p; CHAPTER TWO

  LISTEN

  JUST PROMISE ME your devotion.

  Sometimes when my phone rings I try to hide in my own apartment. I close the blinds. The phone rings in the front of the studio near the window and I crawl toward the end of my mattress, where the walls meet. When the phone stops ringing I go to check who it is. It’s always her.

  Early in the morning before I leave for work, I press the play button on the answering machine. Ambellina’s thick, steady voice wakes me.

  Understand that this decision was hastened by the feeling I get that you need someone to offer protection, love, and discipline. I know that you’re afraid. But I will keep you safe. Honesty is so important in this relationship. I don’t do things in halves. You can call me when you feel jealous, uncertain, or insecure. Please arrange to meet me on Saturday. You can lay your head in my lap then.

  ***

  “Any letters from your girlfriend?” Valerie asks. It’s 6:45 in the morning. I have a headache. I hate myself. We’re on the two Internet kiosks in the front of the store. The small round tables have all been wiped down and the blue rags thrown in the sink. The newspapers are stacked beneath the advertisements taped to the wall next to the coffee lids. The bagels are sitting in baskets on three slanted shelves behind the glass.

  “Shut up,” I say. “Put on the coffee.” Valerie has pink hair and she likes to get high. We’ve worked together in this bagel shop for three years now. This is the question she always asks and this the answer I always give her, to get up, to change the cauldrons, to unbolt the front door and invite in another working day.

  Valerie bounces to Sly and the Family Stone as our first customers arrive, spinning around the large square cutting block. “Do you think it’s better to play bass or drums?” she asks. “Because if you play bass then you’re in front and everybody sees you. But if you play drums you stay in shape and let out all that anger.”

  “Bass,” I tell her.

  The first orders are to-go, toasted rolls, egg bagels with dill cream cheese, tall coffees and lattes for people scrambling to trains. Later, people start to sit down. We put the tubs back in the refrigerator. Valerie switches the music to ’80s New Wave. “Such a wonderful problem,” she sings, raising her fists over her head, swinging them forward from her elbows. “Oh please let me help you.”

  There are two rooms in the shop and a thin hallway between them. The workers, students, and professionals sit in front near the windows. The junkies and the criminals sit in the back and we let them. They hang out by the fire exit and the restroom with the hookers from Folsom Street who break into the bins in front of the chocolate factory at night. The prison bus stops only two blocks away. The dealers hang out on 16th Street and two doors down in the shooting gallery. I stare at them while pouring the beans into the grinder. The click of the phone. The cauldrons lean forward. The whir of the machine crushing the beans. The tap of the espresso filter. The junkies nod toward the Formica. Valerie’s boyfriend, Philc, hangs back there with them, juggling ketchup packets, mini-hypodermics hanging from his ears, wearing a thick spiked collar around his neck. He’s always dirty. He likes to brag about his skills with a knife. He says he was a knife thrower with the circus. He sleeps in the shopping cart encampment under the overpass. He steals from the junkies when they sleep.

  Ambellina comes to my apartment at 8 p.m. She makes me nervous and shy. I’ve washed the smell of coffee and lox from my hair, cleaned beneath my nails. I’ve changed clothes. There’s a bowl of caramel popcorn on the table because that’s what she likes.

  “My husband knows,” she says. She walks deliberately, one boot in front of the other. “Yeah, I told him.”

  She sits on the couch, leans forward first with her fists on her knees and then leans back as I assume my position. She’s eating the popcorn. She’s drinking white wine from my only glass. Between the small couch and the table I am on the floor on my knees with my head in her lap. “You don’t mind, do you? That he knows?”

  I shake my head, rub my cheek on the fabric of her skirt, feel her fingers moving on my head. She wants me to be jealous and yanks my head by my hair. I breathe heavily when her grip tightens and she twists her knuckles, sending small pins of pain along my skull. My mouth opens. “What?” she asks. She slaps me. “What do you want to say?” she asks, letting go of my hair and reclining. I stare into her chest, the lines on the country of her body. “My husband doesn’t want you to see these.” She pushes her breasts together with her forearms. “That’s what he asked. These are his favorite.” She puckers her lips. She’s wearing a thin black negligee. When she’s not holding them her breasts slide toward her elbows. They are big, but not firm. More importantly, I don’t care about her husband. “Look at me,” she says. “Look at me.” Ambellina has a broad face and a wide, flat nose, clipped curly hair dyed maroon. “You’re pouting.” I nod. “Didn’t I tell you I would protect you? What are you so worried about?” Her hands are large. Everything about her is large. I close my eyes then the slaps come, back and forth, until I cry, and still more. “Shut up,” she hisses. “Shut up. Don’t cry. Don’t cry. You’re mine. Don’t cry.” And when she stops and her hand slides away from my face I lower my head. I duck carefully toward her. I try to burrow into her, under her skirt, to be inside of her. It’s still early. There will be hours more of this. And I will pretend to be jealous of her husband, who may or may not exist. Because it’s important to her that I be jealous, so I am, because she likes it.

  I met Ambellina two weeks ago on an online personals board for people with Other Desires. A website filled with leather-clad professionals who charge more for an hour than I make in a week, and lonely housewives who say they want to try something new. The boards use black backgrounds and are suggestive of something wild. A whip hangs in the left corner of the screen. They give you a form to fill out when you join. They ask you what you’re into: eurologia (piss play), collar and lead, smothering, vibrators, pain, asphyxiaphilia (breath play), amputees, electrotorture, fisting, tongues, ears, feet, crossdressing, humiliation, 24/7, cling film, erotic email exchange, cock and ball torture. The list goes on and on. They ask your role: dominant, submissive, switch. They ask how often you think about the lifestyle. Twice a week they send you Love Dog Reports. It’s all angles, women next to punching bags, free pornographic sites that aren’t free. Everybody wants to know your real email so they can put you on their list. It’s mostly men using the site. There are discussion boards and the men’s names are blue and the women’s pink and couples are green, but even the women are most likely men. And then Ambellina, who posted no picture and whose ad read East Bay Woman looking for a toy to abuse. Must be full time. No equivocating. And I responded by saying I would be her toy, full time. I sent her a picture. I said that she would be my only commitment and I didn’t think she would respond but she did.

  And the bookstores with all of their trade paperbacks and Eric Stanton artwork saying that it’s OK to be weird, to accept who we are. It’s fun, they say, to play during sex. To tie each other up and take control. It’s just sex. It’s just a game. Trade places, let off some steam. I was raped the first time by a middle-aged caseworker in a small green room in the Chicago juvenile detention facility. The windows were closed and the room was dusty and hot and filled with stacks of yellowing, creased paper forced into wide brown envelopes. Mr. Gracie didn’t ask me if it was OK and he didn’t apologize afterward. When I masturbate at night I think of him and his malty smell. And that’s what I think about when Ambellina buckles into her strap-on and pushes me over the table, her thick hand around my neck closing my windpipe, the weight of her wide hips pressing against me. It hurts. “Poor Theo,” she says, her nails tearing across my back. “My little Tolstoy. You just want to hide here.” And I nod because when I don’t nod the beatings will start again.

  ***

  The fog is pouring over Twin Peaks into the Mission. It tumbles down the hillside, blanketing the small white houses. It was so w
arm the other day. When the fog pushes in, the valley gets cold. In Chicago the buildings are mountains but here the hills are real. The wind cuts down the streets. In a few hours the city will be grey. They’re running elections for supervisor, and the streets are peppered with slogans. Ammiano for Tenants’ Rights. Cheng for Change. Men are selling paperbacks next to Macondo and the Kilowatt. The cardboard placards fly down the street. I’m standing at a payphone next to the movie theater, across from the Copy King where I pick up my mail. It’s five o’clock. People are stepping off and onto trains, getting home from work.

  I hold my collar tight around my neck. “I can’t meet you,” Ambellina says. She does this. She cancels on me a lot. She wants to know what I’m wearing. She wants to talk sexy. “Get me off,” she says. “Imagine me hitting you. Imagine the phone between my legs. I’m sitting on your face. I’m smothering you. You can’t breathe.”

  “I’m on a payphone,” I say. “People can see me.”

  “Are you ashamed?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I respond.

  “That’s your problem. Have Friday open for me.”

  “Bell, I can’t.”

  “You what?”

  “I have to work.”

  A bus has stopped in front of me and the driver is out in the street pulling frantically on the cables, his passengers staring through the windows, an old Chinese woman stuck at the rear door trying to get out.

  “Do you know how many submissives answered my ad?” She waits for my answer. “Do you know how many men there are like you, who want a strong woman to keep them in place? Do you think you’re the only one I could have? There’s thousands of men like you. I get letters every day.”