Don't Lick the Minivan

by Leanne Shirtliffe

  “The one that said to protect your babies from strangers’ germs. You know, after the Coke guy held Vivian.”

  “OK . . .”

  “Don’t worry. The women who took them work here.” I looked around and saw plenty of women but none holding my DNA. “Uh oh. I can’t see them.” I checked the stroller to ensure it was empty. “Do you think they dropped our babies into a big vat of soup?”

  “No,” Chris said, digging into his spicy pork. “They don’t sell soup here.”

  YOU SPIT AT THE TAXI DRIVERS WHILE PUSHING

  THE STROLLER?

  We got our babies back. Then a few days later, Chris decided to take them for a stroll without attentive Thai waitresses or the Food Source (otherwise known as me).

  While Chris was on his first solo outing with the twins, I was off to find nursing bras that fit so I could end my recurring mastitis.

  Mastitis—the infection and inflammation of breast tissue—can be as painful as childbirth. In case men wish to imagine having mastitis, here is an analogy in three easy steps: (1) when you have a fever of 102ºF, take a few Viagra tablets; (2) rub the juice from a hot pepper onto your penis; and (3) put on a pair of jeans three sizes too small and bash yourself in the crotch with a ball peen hammer.

  Having recurring mastitis made me as pleasant as Gordon Ramsay locked in a meat cooler with Mike Tyson.

  I knew it had something to do with wearing the wrong bra size. I could write a book on wearing the wrong bra size. Sometime during university, I got fitted for a bra and my life changed, or so I imagined. Add a decade, pregnancy, and breastfeeding twins, and I was heading further into the bra alphabet, to XXX territory.

  I was in the wrong country.

  I had been down this road before with footwear. Weeks after arriving in Bangkok, I realized that I could not purchase any size ten shoes for women. So, when I was in a beach town, I saw a posse of transvestites. I chased them down, stopped one who was taller (and had shapelier legs) than me, and asked him where he bought her shoes.

  With bras, it wasn’t quite as easy. Transvestites and transgenders tend not to have big racks. Thai women wear bras that come in battery sizes: AAA to C. You can occasionally find a D. Once, I even found an F cup in one department store.

  There were my breasts, red, hot, and oozing out some foreign substance in a too tight F-cup bra. For the third time.

  My quest—to find a bra that fit—was on.

  I had done some serious investigation. Eventually, through black market connections, I had learned that staff from the Wacoal bra factory visited one of the department stores weekly to measure Dolly Parton impersonators for custom fitted bras.

  I began my pilgrimage at the same time Chris went on his virgin outing with the twins. After waiting in the department store for two hours, dangerously close to the twins’ feeding time, I was seen by the bra factory people.

  “What kind of bra do you want?” the lady asked. “Strapless?”

  I laughed. “No. One with straps that will hold up two overripe mangos.”

  She looked at me for clarification.

  “I need a nursing bra that goes halfway through the alphabet,” I said.

  “A big one?”

  I nodded.

  “No problem,” she said. “But minimum order is three.”

  “OK. How much?”

  “2,800 Baht total.”

  I did the math: ninety dollars. “No problem.”

  Parenting Tip: Buy a nursing bra that fits even if you have to sell your baby to finance it.

  I walked into the change room, disrobed, and was measured in forty-seven places by a trio of Thai women. My breasts, meanwhile, knew it was time to feed my twins. So while the ladies measured and re-measured, milk dripped everywhere. I tried to think of anything but my babies: dead puppies, decomposing bats on power lines, even Leonardo DiCaprio falling off the Titanic during the opening credits, but my milk leaked, forming little pools on the floor amid my dignity.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, as one of the attendants got hit with milk.

  The women giggled. “Mai pen rai.”

  I smiled reluctantly. No problem, the Thai’s beautiful answer to everything.

  “When will the bras be ready?” I asked, stuffing my juicy mangos back into the too tight bra.

  “Next Saturday,” one of the women said, helping me fasten the clasp and adjust the straps of my boulder holder. “Is that OK?” she asked.

  Mai pen rai.

  When I got home, I stripped and fed my babies.

  Chris, meanwhile, told me of his stroller escapades. His outing is one of those tales that becomes part of a family’s lore. Due to my ooziness, I wasn’t present, but somehow it’s become my story too.

  Not long after I left, Chris ferried William and Vivian down our building’s refrigerator-sized elevator and deposited them into the limousine stroller, which was parked in the lobby since it didn’t fit in the lift.

  In the time our twins had been womb-less, Bangkok had not become more stroller—or wheelchair—accessible. Chris did what was common if you were on a less-than-chaotic street: he pushed the stroller on the actual street, literally in the middle of the road.

  He bypassed the mending woman set up with her vintage sewing machine and the blind man selling lottery tickets, pinging his way around with his rebar cane. It was midafternoon, which meant—like most other times of the day—the sun was relentless and the air was heavy. The mere act of being alive caused people to perspire; if they happened to be doing the push-the-twins-in-a-stroller obstacle course, a full-scale tourist sweat was guaranteed. Add a large man like Chris to this mix and you have rivers of perspiration.

  Chris dodged another muffler-less tuk tuk before turning the corner, a feat as easy as steering an overloaded supermarket cart with a locked wheel across a rice paddy. Chris’s shirt stuck to his back, he squinted in the sun, and he tried to ignore the jingle of the ice cream bike that was never quite out of hearing distance.

  He neared the motorcycle taxi drivers. On this corner, there were always a dozen or more, a rough-looking bunch outfitted in matching vests, joking, playing the odd game of checkers with bottle caps, entertaining each other while waiting for customers.

  With full smiles, they watched as Chris heaved the twins past them. They looked at the stroller and chatted to each other in Thai.

  Then, as Chris trudged further along, one said, “Hey, farang. F-fat!”

  Chris paused. He knew farang meant foreigner. And he was sick of the fat jokes.

  “Yeah,” chimed another, “f-fat!”

  Chris stopped, wiped sweat off his forehead, and looked back. “What did you say?”

  “F-fat!” one repeated, pointing at Chris and laughing with his buddies.

  Chris unleashed a barrage of obscenities, held up his fists, and motioned “you wanna go?” before spitting on the ground and taking a shortcut home.

  When Chris first told me this, I stopped him there. “You spit at the taxi drivers?” I said. “While pushing the stroller?”

  I had been in Bangkok long enough to know that motorcycle taxi guys knew where to hire a hit man for $100.

  Parenting Tip: Pray that no one puts a hit on your husband after he takes your newborn(s) on his first solo outing.

  Later that day, we shared the story with a Thai friend who’d come to visit and practice holding babies.

  “Fat? Fat,” she repeated, confused. We said it a number of times. Finally, her eyes brightened. “Oh, făa fàet,” she said, which sounded identical to our atonal ears. “In Thai, făa fàet means twins,” she said giggling.

  Chris sighed. “I’m such an idiot. Looks like I won’t be walking by that corner anytime soon.”

  “Mai pen rai,” she said. “Thais don’t stay angry.”

  HOW LONG WERE THOSE DRUNKEN WOMEN HOLDING

  OUR BABIES?

  I know you’re not supposed to compare your children. But when you have twins, that’s the equivalent of watching th
e Olympic finals of the 100-meters and saying, “All the racers looked good to me, even the guy who fell two steps into the sprint. I don’t care who broke the world record.” I’m not going to go all Tiger Mom here and suggest we put our children on podiums and rank them according to their performances. I prefer Tigger Mom: the energetic, encouraging kind who can pounce if need be and then run far away.

  Still, when your girl twin has been smiling for three weeks and your boy twin still doesn’t so much as smirk, you start to study the starting blocks.

  William, of course, eventually smiled. Actually, he didn’t so much smile as grin, showcasing one gorgeous dimple on his left cheek. The problem, however, was that he smiled for things: ceiling fans, chrome accessories such as chair legs, and wild patterns. But me? Nothing. I performed “Itsy Bitsy Spider” as a melodrama, I played peek-a-boo as though I were the understudy of a face contortionist, I sneezed like Donald Duck.

  Nothing.

  I said to Chris, “If I tape tin foil to my face, do you think he’ll smile at me?”

  “Not likely,” he said. “But I would.”

  “That’s not the trophy I’m after, you know.”

  Then something happened in the shower.

  Not conception.

  Not William’s smile.

  Not me seeing my feet after months of having a belly that had me questioning their existence.

  But the exfoliation of my stretch marks. It wasn’t pretty.

  They were bright red and wrinkled after the birth. Then one day, I managed a shower when Chris was home. This meant that I didn’t have two babies in bouncy chairs on the bathroom floor, squawking a never-ending chorus. I had time to use the best shower weapon there is, the loofah, that naughty sponge.

  I scrubbed. And the red, wrinkly stretch marks came off.

  In their place were these silvery-white stretch marks that glow in the dark, like the reflectors framing a dead-end sign on an abandoned country road.

  I kept scrubbing. More kept coming off. It was exhilarating and disgusting, like picking a scab or—worse—watching a teen pregnancy reality show while picking a scab. I hated those saggy red marks. “Battle scars,” Chris called them affectionately. Years later, when Vivian was three, she rechristened them “silver rainbows.”

  Yet that morning I scoured. And hoped they’d disappear.

  I got out of the shower and dressed, making it an auspicious day.

  “My stretch marks are shedding,” I told Chris.

  “Really?”

  “Yup, it’s Exfoliation Station in the shower. Enter at your own risk.”

  “I think I’ll stay out.”

  “Good choice. You know,” I added, “I’m pretty sure teen moms don’t have problems with stretch marks.”

  “Maybe. But they have a lot of other problems.”

  “Yes,” I said, plugging a pacifier into a fussy twin’s mouth, “they do.” I entered a reverie wondering how I could have coped with all this fifteen years earlier when I was a teen. I was barely coping as a thirty-three-year-old in a stable marriage. There were women stronger than me, that fact I knew. I also knew I was glad I didn’t have to be stronger than I already was.

  Vivian was born an extrovert. When she was still in the hospital nursery, I would always find her because she could outscream the other four-dozen criers. She liked to speak loudly, even then.

  “Like her mother,” Chris said.

  Vivian and William were the only two wrinkly things in the nursery without a shock of hair. Thai babies are adorable, tending to be born with this gorgeous black hair that almost seems to have been backcombed with salon-quality products. Our kids had wisps of hair in a bad Donald Trump-like comb over.

  “Like their mother,” Chris teased.

  I would’ve argued had he been wrong, but pregnancy and Franck had taught me I had hair issues.

  After we got our spawn home, their hair grew in bizarre patterns, changing each month. Vivian was a Baby Gaga, ahead of her time. At first, her new growth covered her temples and forehead in fine patches.

  “When she’s older,” I told Chris, “she can get her forehead waxed.”

  Later, that hair fell out and in grew a blond, Krusty the Klown fringe. Later still, she shed that, and new hair grew in the opposite pattern: a military flat top. Finally, near her first birthday, Vivian’s hair follicles had a meeting and decided on a coordinated release date.

  William’s issues were of the neck variety. When we weren’t referring to him as “the guy,” we called him Torticollis Boy. Torticollis, or wryneck, is a condition some babies are born with when their neck muscles are stiff or undeveloped on one side, making them twist their head more to the other. Sometimes, it’s caused by lack of movement in utero, like in William’s case, because his sister spent numerous months practicing her Thai kickboxing, wedging her bigger brother into a tiny corner of the womb. It’s no wonder Will was born first; I would’ve headed out as soon as possible too.

  For the first few months, we swaddled Torticollis Boy for his nap; this would stop him from whacking himself or his sister. With his arms and legs wrapped securely and his head tilted to the side and far back, he had quite a unique silhouette.

  “He looks like a human Pez dispenser,” I said to Chris.

  We both doubled over laughing.

  Because he did.

  We decided to take our Pez dispenser and his sister on an outing to the Thai countryside. Attempting to do a day trip from Bangkok was ambitious since it sometimes took half a day to leave the city. We hired a car and a driver, and headed out to some areas that made and sold pottery.

  After two hours of passing by street vendors selling lottery tickets and T-shirts, hearing two-stroke motorcycles roar past us, and looking at foreign men drinking morning beer with young Thai girls, we arrived in the countryside.

  I shifted my hips, neatly crammed between Vivian and William’s rear-facing car seats, while Chris and our driver discussed how corrupt the Thai police force was. William stared silently out the window, observing the world beyond our apartment. Vivian studied the toys suspended from her car seat handle, like an adult preparing for her LSAT.

  Parenting Tip: Placing hanging toys over your baby’s car seat will help her score 6423 on her SATs.

  I was squished and silent in Quiet Land.

  Then we arrived at the pottery village. Within moments, we were offered a trip to a gem factory by another driver’s “brother.” We wheeled our lucky babies around, bought a few pots, and headed to the car. I performed the never-ending routine: fed babies, changed babies, buckled in babies. Make babies ceased to be part of the equation months ago.

  As we left the village, Vivian launched into her nails-on-chalkboard series of shrieks with the endurance of a marathon runner. Our driver navigated around an accident—likely caused by a screaming child—and he maneuvered around other developing world road obstacles, like a family of five on a motorbike and a 1960s truck filled with jingling propane bottles. William fell asleep. Vivian kept screaming. Her eyes glanced from me to the window to the other window to her hanging toys to me, never breaking her scream. The moment I shoved a pacifier in her mouth, she spat it out, making it clear that she was no Maggie Simpson.

  The tropical rain started, but did little to silence the shrieks. Desperate, I took Vivian’s blanket and draped it over her car seat. She stopped crying and we were blessed with silence. I peeked. She was awake but silent.

  “What did you do?” Chris asked.

  “I put a blanket over the whole car seat.”

  “Do you think she can still breathe?”

  “I hope so.”

  I peeked again. Child was breathing. Always a good sign.

  “It’s like she’s a bird in a cage and was overstimulated,” I said. “Do you think the Birdie Treatment is in any parenting books?”

  “I think placing a blanket over my head is an answer to Thailand’s chaos,” Chris said. Our driver laughed as he slalomed around people packi
ng up their roadside food stalls.

  Parenting Tip: If unable to stop your child from screaming, try the Birdie Treatment. If placing a blanket on the head of your baby doesn’t work, try it on yourself.

  I laughed too, a forced laugh. I sat in silence and thought about Vivian and her blanket. Maybe that was what I was doing every day: walking around our apartment, around Bangkok, with a blanket over my head every day, not knowing where I was going, not caring if I could see.

  Because of the superficial success of Operation Escape Bangkok and a two-week visit from Chris’s parents, we left the chaos once again, this time for a weekend. Inside our ubiquitous white tourist van were a driver, my in-laws, Chris, and our five-month-old twins.

  It was Vivian and William’s longest car journey; from our apartment in Bangkok it was a four-hour drive south to a semiprivate beach near Prachuap Khiri Khan on the Gulf of Thailand. Besides big trucks barreling past us, pedestrians on the side of the highway, and the occasional gathering of police officers, the drive was uneventful. I even managed to stare outside the window for a few miles.

  Then we turned off the main highway and headed east on a bumpy road. William and Vivian awoke and started to scream. It was their feeding time, but I told the driver, whose eyes loomed large in the rearview mirror, to keep going. In thirty short minutes, we’d be at the quiet beachside resort.

  It was an eternity that no Birdie Treatment could subdue.

  I became Animated Mommy, digging into my reserves, anxious to show my loving in-laws that I was a perfect mom. I performed puppet shows, exaggerated facial expressions, and engaged in another Oscar-winning performance of Peek-aBoo. Finally, I resorted to singing. This is one of those areas I’m less than skilled at. I sang through “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” “Mary Had a Little Lamb,” and four verses of “Amazing Grace” to the theme song from Gilligan’s Island.

  Chris and his parents joined the choir when I started “Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.” We were at “three little monkeys” when our van pulled out to pass a motorcycle. I looked out the window, looked again to refocus, and stopped singing. I believe I sang something like “one fell off and—what the hell?”