Godmother Night

by Rachel Pollack

  Funny, Laurie thought, how you think of yourself as a child until you get one of your own. Like being wrenched inside out, a mirror image of who you used to be. Except somehow you start looking like a child. She imagined Jaqe’s face looking like that when she was, oh, six months old. The thought made her want to wrap her arms around both of them and squeeze them as tight as she could—except that Kate would just start screaming.

  Besides, Laurie knew she stank. Shame rushed through her. She hurried to the bathroom to strip off her clothes and wash her face and brush her teeth.

  Back in the living room, Laurie kneeled by the side of the couch, watching Jaqe’s face quiver as she breathed. Jaqe had on the bathrobe Laurie had given her to wear in the hospital. The once-gleaming white robe was now pink, from the time Laurie had washed it in the same load with Jaqe’s red jeans. Stains spotted it as well, though whether from the baby throwing up or just from Jaqe trying to eat while holding her daughter, Laurie couldn’t tell. Jaqe hadn’t knotted the robe very tightly, so that Laurie just had to spread the flaps slightly to expose Jaqe’s belly and much of her breasts.

  Laurie moved around to the front of the couch, where she squatted with her legs slightly apart. The posture spread her vaginal lips enough that she could smell her own arousal. She had to press her mouth closed to keep from laughing. As softly as she could, Laurie ran a finger from below Jaqe’s throat and down her chest to her belly, just above her scar. Laurie closed her eyes. Pregnancy had made Jaqe’s soft skin smoother than ever, and the—release—of the baby had not changed that. Laurie tried to think of a metaphor for Jaqe’s skin, but nothing was adequate, certainly not butter or silk.

  She moved the tip of her finger back and forth between the inner line of Jaqe’s breasts, pressing them to feel the springiness against her fingertips. She wondered how much she could do without waking Jaqe up, and how little it would take—just touching the sides of her breasts? licking them? licking the aureole around the nipple? the nipple itself?—to move her own body to orgasm. Maybe she could slide open the bottom of the robe and move her face or at least her lips along Jaqe’s thighs to just below the crotch, without actually waking her.

  But it was Kate who woke up. She opened her eyes and instead of crying or moving her hands she only turned her head slightly to stare at Laurie, as if she were studying her. Laurie tried to stare back until Kate’s unflinching steadiness turned her away.

  Now Jaqe woke up too, with a sputtering noise and a squeezing of her eyes before she opened them fully. She jerked her head to the side, as if to make sure Kate was there. Only when she confirmed that her child was all right did she move her gaze to discover Laurie squatting naked in front of her. “Wow,” she said, “I hope you didn’t go out like that.”

  Laurie was so relieved that Jaqe wasn’t angry with her that she nearly fell backward onto the thin rug. She said, “I was just…umm…my clothes were dirty.”

  Jaqe nodded. “So you got rid of them. A wise policy.”

  Jaqe didn’t seem to notice that Kate was staring at Laurie. Jaqe herself was staring, though with a lot more expression than her daughter, and Laurie felt like someone had put her on display. She was about to give up and get dressed, when Jaqe reached out and said, “Give me your hand.”

  Jaqe pressed Laurie’s hand against her own mouth, sucking with her open lips while she licked the hollow of Laurie’s palm. Laurie cried out with her eyes closed. She would have fallen over if Jaqe had not been holding her.

  Jaqe moved Laurie’s hand down to her breast, rolling the palm around the nipple. “Oh God,” Laurie whispered. Without taking her hand away, Laurie waddled forward so she could bend over and kiss the side of Jaqe’s belly, careful to avoid the scar. She moved away when Jaqe moaned.

  Jaqe said, “I like that. Why did you stop?”

  Laurie said, “I thought maybe I was getting too close. You know, to your surgery.”

  Jaqe pulled her back. She said, “That sound you heard was pleasure. The same goes for any unexpected movements. I promise to let you know if you’re hurting me.”

  Laurie felt flickers of movement through her body, the distant beginnings of orgasm. Instead of kissing Jaqe’s side, however, she glanced the other way, where Kate was still watching her, empty of any expression except maybe curiosity. Laurie said, “Maybe we should put the baby away.”

  Jaqe glanced at her daughter. “Do we have to?” she said. “She’s quiet right here.”

  “Well, what if we’re…in the middle of it, and she wakes up?”

  “The middle of it?” Jaqe repeated. “What do you think she’ll do? Report us?” She laughed at Laurie’s shocked expression. “Sweetie,” she said, reaching out to stroke Laurie’s brush haircut, “don’t be so squeamish. Do you really think Kate would understand anything that’s going on? And even if she did, it’s only love, isn’t it? You’re not a Freudian, are you? You don’t think Kate secretly desires me, and wants to do away with you?”

  Laurie looked again at the baby, averting her eyes quickly from that steady gaze. “No, of course not,” she said. “But suppose we’re…”

  “Making love? Screwing? Licking and sucking?”

  “Making love,” Laurie said. “And suppose she does get uncomfortable. Or suppose you wanted to change position.”

  “Or thrash around,” Jaqe said.

  “Or thrash around.” Laurie stood up. “Why don’t I put her to bed, and then we can do whatever we want.” She thought to herself, Until she starts screaming.

  Jaqe sighed, but she was smiling as well. She held the baby up to Laurie. “Here,” she said. “Maybe you should give her her pacifier. Then she can have something to suck on, too.”

  In the bedroom, Laurie laid the baby in the crib the Langs had given them. It seemed too warm to tuck her in, so she just made sure Kate could reach her stuffed toad and turtle. (Kate had never shown any fondness for Nora the lion, so instead of living in the privileged zoo of the crib, Nora remained in the world, standing guard over the room from the top of a chest of drawers.) Laurie checked to make sure that Kate’s feet could reach the mobile of musical spheres hanging from the ceiling. Finally she gave her the rainbow-colored pacifier Louise had given them, Kate’s favorite. Throughout this process, Kate didn’t make a sound, leading Laurie to bend over and examine her as well as check for fever.

  Instead of rushing back to Jaqe, Laurie went to piss, then washed her hands and face, telling herself she wanted to get everything taken care of for their first chance in so long. All the same, she thought, why couldn’t they just have gone right on and done it when they were both so hot? Guiltily, she reminded herself that she was the one who’d wanted to get rid—to put the baby to bed. But it was Jaqe who’d wanted the baby in the first place. Without Kate they wouldn’t have to worry about someone else, a third party, when they wanted to do something that was supposed to involve just the two of them.

  Laurie closed her eyes to picture Jaqe. She wanted to remember her before she saw her, remember the way her skin had looked when she was asleep, the feel of Jaqe’s nipple against her palm. She smiled as her skin tingled and a pulsing began between her legs. She nodded her head and swayed slightly to her own rhythm. She laughed, trying not to make noise. She was ready.

  But when she came in the room, Jaqe said to her, “Did you make sure she was on her side?”

  Shit, Laurie thought. They were supposed to keep the baby from lying on her stomach because of SIDS, Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. Medical researchers had found that fifty percent (or something, Laurie couldn’t remember the actual number) of SIDS babies had been lying on their stomach when their mothers found them. So even though they had no idea what this meant, if anything at all, Jaqe insisted they keep Kate on her side or her back if they were going to be out of the room and she was likely to fall asleep. The problem was, Kate liked being on her belly. As soon as they turned away she would flip herself over, sometimes doing it again and again, and laughing, like it was a game. They could
prop her up, using pillows and stuffed animals to hold her, but even if the baby didn’t manage to shove them away, Laurie wondered if the props themselves might be more dangerous than the remote chance of the mysterious SIDS. And besides, maybe Kate would sleep longer if they let her find her own position.

  “She’s fine,” Laurie said. “She’s wide awake.”

  “But she’s so quiet. If I can’t hear her, I’ll just worry all the time.” Laurie sighed loudly and headed back to the bedroom, where she propped Kate against the side of the crib with a rolled blanket. She had to smile at Kate’s burbly look, her roundness and pliancy. Stroking her bottom, Laurie imagined herself turning into a giant bird and lifting the baby high above the smoke and anger of the city to carry her to some far land where no one ever cried or got sick, or needed to run away into sleep ever again. Maybe that was how stories got started, she thought. Out of longing and fear.

  When Laurie returned again to the living room, Jaqe asked, “Is everything okay?”

  “She’s fine,” Laurie said. “Sucking on her rainbow stick and staring out the window.”

  Jaqe smiled and held out her arms. “Then come here,” she said. “Right now.” Instead of kneeling on the floor again, Laurie sat down alongside Jaqe. Taller, she had to slide back a little to put her head on Jaqe’s shoulder while Jaqe hugged her.

  “Kiss,” Jaqe said, and Laurie sat up to hold Jaqe’s face in her hands while she kissed her. Jaqe moved a hand down Laurie’s spine until she found the spot where a sharp press jolted Laurie’s body so that her skin nearly bruised Jaqe as she arched away.

  Laurie reached forward to hug Jaqe very tightly before she opened her mouth wide on Jaqe’s neck, moving her whole head in a circular motion while sliding her tongue across the skin. Jaqe cried out and scratched her fingernails along Laurie’s back.

  It seemed to Laurie as if she was speeding up—moving from Jaqe’s neck to her side, and then under her breasts, and then to her nipples—much faster than she really wanted. It’s because of the baby, she told herself. Kate could start crying at any moment and they’d have to stop with their bodies surging. But she knew it wasn’t just Jaqe’s daughter. It was as if they had to follow a magical performance, and any mistake would ruin everything.

  Jaqe wasn’t worried at all. When Laurie slowed slightly, circling around the middle of Jaqe’s breasts with her tongue, Jaqe just settled deeper into the couch, smiling happily and making soft noises, more like her daughter than ever, like an enlarged photo. Then, when Laurie speeded up again, licking Jaqe’s right nipple and moving the left with her finger, Jaqe began to push against her, turning sideways so she could lift a leg to go around Laurie’s waist.

  Laurie thought how sucking Jaqe’s nipple was something else lost because of the baby. She used to love pulling really hard so that the nipple would slide through her slightly open teeth. But now milk would squirt out, and even if Laurie had not minded the extreme sweetness, the flow of liquid confused her.

  So she moved her mouth to Jaqe’s thighs, kissing first one then the other, until she moved her whole face against Jaqe’s vulva, holding the thighs open and apart with her hands. Jaqe let out a yell, muffled to avoid alarming the baby, but still a yell, of joy, or triumph, or maybe just power.

  Laurie felt her own rush of power when another swallowed cry and a flexing of Jaqe’s thighs signaled her orgasm. They had done it, Laurie thought. She had done it: outlasted, outwitted, outsmarted their three-month-old daughter.

  But the push inside her own body seemed to evaporate, and when Jaqe finally told her, “No, stop,” Laurie just sat back and sighed, holding back when Jaqe tried to pull her close, until she realized that Jaqe might ask what was wrong, a question she didn’t want to have to answer. It was just timing, she told herself as Jaqe kissed her with a wide wet kiss that slid over half her face. They could get away with one of them, but there was no way the baby would let both of them go through to orgasm. As Jaqe continued to kiss her, Laurie found herself listening for the baby as if for the sounds of a rescuer.

  And then something happened. Jaqe had her arms around Laurie and was kissing her cheek, her ear, tickling Laurie a little like the way you might tickle a child, when suddenly Laurie remembered something she often forgot, even before Kate, which was how it felt to let Jaqe take over, to give up directing what Jaqe should do to her, and what she would do to Jaqe, and instead just slide fully into Jaqe’s hands and mouth and belly and legs. The very thought stroked her with excitement, and when Jaqe ran her fingernails from Laurie’s thighs all the way up Laurie’s back, she felt that movement that begins at the toes and swirls upward, pausing at the groin to gain strength before it reaches up through the breasts, ready to burst, before it flows out the face and the top of the head.

  For a second, Laurie wanted to tell Jaqe to lick her nipples or just to offer them, arching her chest toward Jaqe’s mouth, but then she remembered again. Do nothing. Nothing. Become a leaf, or just a breath, lifted in the wind of orgasm.

  Jaqe pushed her thigh up between Laurie’s legs, not harshly but with enough force for Laurie to cry out. And yes, the sound brought the baby’s yell—of competition, or curiosity, or just coincidence. For once, however, Jaqe did not jump up, but in fact whispered to Laurie, “It’s okay. We can just let her cry, it’s all right.” For Laurie it didn’t matter; she was beyond worry other than the fear that Jaqe might stop, and she didn’t have to fear that at all, for now Jaqe slid two fingers deep into Laurie’s vagina, far enough that the heel of her hand covered Laurie’s clitoris. Laurie didn’t know if she was crying or just breathing raggedly. Instead of moving them in and out, Jaqe wiggled her fingers and vibrated her hand. Laurie cried out again as her back and legs arched and her fingernails dug into Jaqe’s sides. (An image flashed in Laurie’s mind, the taut bow of the Moon Goddess, who shoots her silver arrows of healing deep into women’s bodies.)

  It was the kind of orgasm that is always new, always something you’ve never experienced before, even when you know you have, and in fact even when you remember that exact feeling of newness. And Jaqe let her ride it, with Jaqe’s fingers now pushing deeper and harder in time with the undirected movement of Laurie’s hips (or was it the other way around?), while Kate called out to them, her gulping cries in perfect time with Laurie’s thrusts.

  Laurie could tell the exact moment the rhythm broke. It wasn’t Kate but Jaqe who broke it. “I’d better go see how she is,” Jaqe whispered, and slid her body away from Laurie, who until that moment had thought she could go on for hours. As if a spell had broken, Kate’s magical song reverted suddenly to the shrieks that had knifed through Laurie’s head for three months. Or maybe the spell hadn’t just collapsed. Maybe Jaqe had snapped it deliberately. Watching Jaqe close her bathrobe, like a grease-stained shield of modesty, Laurie wondered if Jaqe had sensed the flow between Laurie and Kate, and blocked it, wanting to keep her place as the pivot between them.

  The thought depressed her, and she wished she could gulp it back, like someone literally swallowing her words. But the more she assured herself that Jaqe would never do such a thing, the more ashamed she felt for thinking it. She was just tired, she knew. Worn down by a constant wind of screaming.

  The cries stopped, and Laurie assumed Jaqe was feeding, the only time when Kate stayed constantly quiet. Laurie got up, feeling almost as sick now as when she’d come home. She remembered how it used to be after sex. The quiet lying softly in the bed, the little sounds she and Jaqe used to make to each other (baby noises, she realized now), the occasional prodding or kissing along each other’s bodies, maybe plans for the day if it was morning or rolling into sleep if it was night.

  Shaking her head, Laurie got up and walked into the bedroom. Jaqe sat in the worn pink chair the two of them had once dragged up from the street, and, yes, Kate was at her breast, claiming the property rights of the hungry. As soon as Laurie sat down on the arm of the chair, Kate moved her eyes slightly, to Laurie’s face. Laurie looked at Jaqe, w
ho smiled at her.

  Laurie bent down to kiss Jaqe’s cheek. She frowned. “Do you feel hot?” she asked.

  Jaqe laughed. “I would have thought that was obvious.”

  “No, really, I mean it.” She touched Jaqe’s forehead. “Are you all right?”

  “It’s just the flames of love pumping through my veins.” Laurie rolled her eyes. “Really, honey,” Jaqe said, “I’m just wonderful.” She tilted up her head and pursed her lips for Laurie to bend down and kiss her. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  Five

  The Baby on the Bridge

  Laurie discovered she could hear Kate crying even after she’d stopped. She discovered this in the shower one day, where she’d gone in hopes the sound would drown out the baby. But Kate’s shrieking sliced through the torrent of water. Laurie thought of turning the hot water high enough to scald herself so she would have an excuse to scream even louder than Kate. Only when dizziness forced her to turn off the water did she discover that the baby had stopped crying, probably had stopped minutes ago.

  Laurie stood there, dripping, with her arms out slightly as if to let the water run off, and she thought, I’m going to hear this forever. Some switch in her head had been thrown, and now, at parties, in the bookstore, on the subway, she would hear that high pulse of rage, or pain, or just power, throbbing and throbbing in her head.

  If only she could do something. Drying herself off, she imagined someone kidnapping Jaqe and the baby, shutting them away in a dungeon deep in the mountain, so that Laurie would have to ride out and rescue them (after a decent night’s sleep). But she couldn’t do anything about the crying. Once, she’d even tried to offer the baby her breast. Jaqe was trying to sleep, and Laurie had held Kate while she clumsily undid her shirt. But after a minute or two of trying it out, Kate knew when someone was cheating her. She removed her mouth to yell for the real fountain of peace. With disgust stoked by exhaustion, Jaqe had gotten out of bed and pushed Laurie aside to grab hold of the baby.