Shout Her Lovely Name
Page 8
I kept that story to myself. Walter was already observing me for postpartum depression and the last thing I needed was Mr. Worst-Case-Scenario breathing down my neck.
They’ve delayed us here at the American Airlines gate for ninety minutes now. The most they’ll say is that there has been some mechanical difficulty. Rumor is there was a chipmunk onboard and they’re checking the wiring for nibbles. That news about sent Walter over the edge and he went for a Courvoisier on top of the Valium he took before we left. When I held out my hand for just one little blue pill he gave me that what kind of mad cow are you look, like it would go straight out my nipples and make Zeke a moron. Everything I do boomerangs back to Zeke. Now Walter’s wearing out the burnt orange carpet with his pacing and ujjayi breathing. I told him the combination of pharmaceuticals, alcohol, and yoga would keep him blissful through any in-flight disaster. I wanted to tell him it kept me blissful through the pregnancy, but he’s so damned sanctimonious.
Already I regret this blouse. I decided that since I could get the buttons to meet over the vast continent that is now my chest, I would wear it. Walter said the plum-size gaps level with my nipples made me look “overly-willing” so I said good, what a great impression to make on his parents in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, home of the Klan. The blouse clings like shrink-wrap and I can feel sweat collecting along my spine. Zeke is lying in the crook of my elbow, spacing out on the fluorescent lights, one of his two tricks, and my legs have gone numb from the rubberized tights I wear for varicose veins. The nursing blister on Zeke’s top lip burst this morning and the skin flap flutters in and out with each suck of breath. I tried to bend down and bite it off, but with my stiff neck from sleeping weird, it’s impossible. I used to sleep on my stomach and I was skying at the idea I could again once Zeke was born. But the first night I tried, it was like sleeping on two hard bladders, and my milk left nasty, ripe wet spots.
Some jerk over at the counter is laying into the flight attendant. I watched him stalk over, his hammy thighs rubbing together so hard I could actually hear him wearing out the inside seams on his Wranglers.
“What the fuck? It’s a chipmunk, like Chip or Bill, a fucking cartoon. How much longer are you going to keep us here?” He pounded his fist on the light blue Formica; you know how American Airlines tries to make everything patriotic, but not? I thought either the counter or the flight attendant would crack. She stood there with her fake smile pasted on her dark lips. I noted her lip liner when I was getting our seat assignment near the bulkhead, because Walter said it’s the most comfortable place when you’re schlepping an infant across the country to Idaho. I don’t know how he knows these things.
“Sir, I must ask you to step away from the counter. The service crew is working as quickly as possible. We estimate departure in the not-too-distant future.”
“What does that mean?” He pushed off from the counter and ranted all the way into the bathroom. I bet his stream is fierce. I never noticed anyone’s stream till Walter started pissing about his. Forgive the pun. He said when he hit forty-eight he lost his power.
“I hope he’s nowhere near the bulkhead.” Walter nodded toward the men’s room. “He looks potentially violent.”
I was too sick and tired of soothing and providing suck to deal with Walter’s paranoia. My nipples were chapped, the sutures from my tear barely dissolved, and Walter was already putting his head in my lap and mewing like a hungry kitten.
“I could get violent,” I said. “It’d give you something to talk to your parents about.”
“Shh.” His eyes flickered in Wrangler Man’s direction.
He stormed back toward us and dropped like a saddlebag in the seat directly behind me. I heard him strike a match and then I smelled the smoke. I closed my eyes, breathed in deep, trying to get a cigarette snack.
“Let’s move,” Walter whispered and cocked his head to the side like he had a bad twitch.
“No.”
“The secondhand smoke . . .” he insisted.
“There’s no place else to sit. Besides, I can’t feel my legs.” He didn’t know about the firsthand smoke I had every day at four thirty when he went out to get the paper. I kept the hard pack of Pall Malls under the center cushion of his leather couch. I’d take it out onto the balcony with one of those long fireplace matches and lie on his teak deck chair. I’d say, “Don’t watch Mommy,” and light up. My starved lungs soaked up the nicotine like sponges. After, I brushed my teeth, chewed two Certs, and made myself a cup of green tea. I’d be at the desk when he returned, ghosting a term paper for some Jane—“Eating Disorders in Twentieth-Century Feminist Literature” or “Poetry, Sylvia Plath, and Motherhood.” My nerves appeased for yet another evening of Walter’s prodding me, saying, “That could be your dissertation, Shelby.” Yeah, if I gave a fat rat’s ass.
Walter cleared his throat in his most professorial way. “Excuse me, sir.”
Nothing.
“Excuse me?” Walter leaned over me and tapped the shoulder of Wrangler Man.
“What?” he fired at us both.
“Sorry to bother you but this is a nonsmoking section.” He pointed out the THANK YOU FOR NOT SMOKING sign. “And the smoke, it’s not good for our baby.”
Wrangler Man looked at Walter like he was a chigger, took a big draw off his smoke, and exhaled a thick gray cloud.
“Secondhand smoke worries us.” Walter pointed across the corridor to the dozen or so seats inside a glass cube. The smoking lounge. “They have a spot for you people.” Ouch.
Wrangler Man snorted. “I am not moving again until I get my ass on that plane.” He dropped his butt on the carpet and crushed it with his boot.
“Thanks a lot,” I said to him, craning my neck to get one last whiff. “And by the way, it’s Chip and Dale. The Disney chipmunks. Not Bill; Dale.” Walter rolled his eyes at me and placed a protective palm on Zeke’s head.
“Ladies and gentlemen, good news. Our troubles have been eliminated and the ground crew has cleared us for boarding. Families traveling with small children and first-class passengers may pre-board at gate eighteen A.” It was such a blithe and lilting voice, like she’d be serving up Pop-Tarts to a table full of freckled, pintsize gymnasts.
“Eliminated?” Walter said a little too loud, seeking an audience from the poached faces of our fellow passengers “What? Little chipmunk mafia with cement shoes were called in?” And believe it or not, that’s what I think is kind of sweet about Walter, his incredibly bad jokes. I heaved up out of the chair and shifted Zeke to my shoulder. Walter collapsed the stroller and I lumbered behind. Wrangler Man had already barreled past us and was causing a scene at the lectern.
“Sir, we’re pre-boarding. Row twelve will board in a few minutes.”
“This row twelve will board right now.”
We struggled down the jetway like overburdened pilgrims, begging pardon for our bulky carry-ons. On the plane, Wrangler Man pillaged the aisle seats as he passed, grabbing pillows, blankets, and a Cosmo, for the breast shots, I was certain.
We squeezed into our row, stowing the baby carrier, the diaper bag filled with Parents’ Choice award–winning infant toys, bottles of frozen breast milk (in case I throw myself from the plane), and cotton diapers. Yes, we use a diaper service, and yes, we are carting crappy diapers across this great land of ours. Whose idea do you think that was?
Walter let me have the aisle so I could stretch my legs and get up to pace every so often if my veins throbbed. Between the armrests, the tights and blouse, my swollen feet, and the pads stuck in my bra—totally soggy now—I felt like a stuffed olive. I gained fifty pounds with this pregnancy. My upper arms flapped; even my head felt fat. My scalp itched and sweated. I would have panted like a dog if I thought it would cool me off.
“Did you remember to order the vegetarian meal?”
I didn’t answer.
“Shelby, you did remember to order me the vegetarian meal?”
“I might have forgotten.”
Squeezing past my legs, Walter bumped Zeke, who started his infant wail, thin and plaintive, which caused my milk to let down. At the hospital the nurse told me to think of crying as strengthening babies’ lungs. But to me it still sounded like woe.
“The captain says as soon as everyone is seated, we can pull back from the gate.” This was repeated over the PA system three times in gradually more hostile tones while Walter continued foraging and came up with one apple, a slightly bruised banana, and a stale half a bagel.
“Sit down.” It was Wrangler Man.
“Yes, okay,” Walter grumbled. “Does he have tickets to the World Wrestling Federation or something?”
“Shut your hole” came Wrangler Man’s lovely retort.
“Walter.” I winced as Zeke latched on to me like a roach clip. “Sometimes mathematicians shouldn’t try to make jokes.”
Just as the captain ordered a crosscheck of the doors we heard vigorous wails come down the jetway. A man dressed all in black, like Johnny Cash but for the white collar of a priest, stepped carefully through the door, his hair a fringe in front of his eyes, his cheek pressed into the dark head of the reddest-faced baby I have ever seen.
“Holy fucking Christ,” Wrangler Man cried from his seat, and we watched everyone lean away, like the parting of the Red Sea, as the priest and baby passed. He made his way along the aisle, petting the baby’s head and clucking awkwardly. A flight attendant helped him get seated, the door shut, and, finally, for better or worse, we pulled away from the umbilical cord of the jetway and tore through the permanent frosting of brown muck over Newark.
Zeke can’t settle down with the other baby’s screaming. He’s snorting and snuffling, and my milk is getting in his eyes. Every time he reattaches I dig my nail into the thin skin on Walter’s left hand. No age spots yet. Walter has his tray down and he’s arranged the limp banana along with the apple and bagel into a pathetic still life.
Behind us the priest’s baby continues its caterwauling with impressive lung capacity. I turn and see Wrangler Man slam on earphones and pound the buttons on his seat trying to get the flight attendant, the in-flight music station, anything to drown out the baby. Another flight attendant rushes past with a cute little bottle of Jack Daniel’s in one hand and a baby bottle in the other. The baby screams and hiccups and then is silent.
Walter sighs heavily and I close my eyes. Walter told me the name of the hormone that releases into a woman’s bloodstream when she lactates (his term). Oxytocin. I only wish it was bottled and sold because it puts me right to sleep.
Walter is twenty-five years older than I am. It isn’t hard to imagine that I was his student. I was in his Excursions in Math seminar and, surprise, I had to take even the bonehead class twice because math for me is like eating twenty-five hard-boiled eggs in one sitting, which I tried on a dare in sixth grade. I could swallow only the first six and they came back up. I won’t bore you with the details of how I ended up in this life with Zeke and Walter, heading to meet octogenarian in-laws in Coeur d’Alene. Basically I moved upstairs. Quit my downstairs boyfriend and moved upstairs with Walter. I’ll just say it was another in the series of nondecisions that my parents say make up the arc of my life. At least Mom and Daddy can say I married a professor, even if he is a Democrat.
At first I had all the time I wanted to lie around and read the Brontë sisters. As a faculty wife I could take classes for free, and I did, once. Walter didn’t put any demands on me. He just liked me to be home when he came in. I liked the straightforward sex. For added mystique, I had him whisper things about π and solving for x while we fornicated.
Then I was pregnant and all of the sudden he asked me to quit smoking and eat six ounces of soy protein at each square meal. He dragged me on long walks and encouraged me to squat whenever possible to loosen the ligaments in my hips. This was Walter’s Big Chance. His first wife, who raised Scottish terriers, fled after ten years of watching him calculate and avoid her. With me carrying his progeny, he took over my life, and now with Zeke here, named for his great-uncle, attention hasn’t waned at all. He highlights articles about how the baby should latch on with my entire areola pressed up against his soft palate and how nursing myelinates the nerves for rapid-fire brain activity. I want to know if Zeke will ever smile. Walter informs me the social smile comes at six weeks, but I can’t take two more weeks of waiting. I coo in Zeke’s face, tell him my best jokes, and I get nothing. Walter bought a digital camera so I could take a shot of the first smile and e-mail it to him at CUNY, but there the camera sits on the sideboard and I haven’t learned to upload.
When I wake, I’ve got a string of drool attaching me to the puce tweed fabric Velcroed to my headrest for lice control or something. I run my hand along my face and feel a crease down my cheek from sleeping on the seam. Still, when Walter notices me stirring, he looks at me like he can’t believe how lucky he is.
“I ate the salad and I saved the tuna casserole for you.”
“I’ve got to pee,” I say, standing and holding Zeke. Walter lowers my tray table. He puts the cold lunch leftovers on it and raises his tray. He shifts to get comfortable in his seat. He takes the blanket and lays it over his shoulder. He puts the pillow in his lap.
“Walter, I’ve got to pee,” I stage whisper. I’m swaying from one foot to the other, doing Kegels like crazy.
Finally he reaches out and takes Zeke. Walter’s warm hands cradle Zeke’s innocent neck and butt. He pulls the baby into his chest with devout attention and grace. I am moved and nauseated at the same time.
In the wan green light of the bathroom I try to wriggle out of my tights but I have to pee so bad I can’t hold it and a warm stream courses down my leg. The faucet won’t stay on in the thimble-size metal basin so I have to keep pushing it down to wet the towels and I barely have the space to bend over and wipe myself off. I’m turning from one side to the other like a dog chasing his own tail and I end up cramming the mountain of elastic into the tiny mouth of the trash can. I lean back against the door, close my eyes.
When I come out a baby starts to scream. It’s not Zeke; it’s the priest’s crier.
Wrangler Man shoves past me into the bathroom and attempts to slam the flimsy door. It’s a completely unsatisfying shump.
The in-flight movie has started, something about a can-do secretary who vacuums in her lingerie, and passengers are shooting the baby death-ray stares. The priest has dark circles of sweat under his arms and he’s rocking forward and back in his thirty-two inches of allotted coach-class space, holding the baby like you would hold a porcupine to your shoulder. As I pass him, I see his priest collar is cockeyed, and he has curdled spit-up on his chest. The baby’s face is again ruby-colored and sweaty. Its hair is black and thick as an otter’s.
My body responds with the prick of let-down, again. I swear, my whole being has turned into a physical response. I ask him, “Can I try?”
“Thank you.” His entire body goes limp as he passes the rigid baby to me.
I place the baby over my shoulder and begin to sway, rubbing his tiny spine. He must be about four months old because he can hold his head up fine, but he’s small, the same size as Zeke. He screams louder so I sway faster and start to hum. The priest looks from the baby to me; creases like question marks form between his brows, and I feel I’m being tested. I look up the aisle. Walter has the headset on. He’s probably reading and watching the movie and stimulating brain growth in Zeke.
“Finally, someone with equipment.” Wrangler Man comes back from the bathroom, jimmies into his seat behind us, “Tired of fucking hearing that kid.” He has three mini bottles of Jack Daniel’s on his tray table and he’s talking loud, even for him. He latches his thick fingers over the top of the seat, leans in confidentially. “What the hell are you doing with a baby anyway? Get someone in tro
uble?” He has a sour grin on his face. And then, with a wink to me, “I thought they only liked little boys.”
The priest ignores him.
“Maybe he has gas?” I project over the baby’s cries.
“At the orphanage, in Romania, I think they subsisted mostly on sugar water. Could be the formula? It’s hard on him?”
“Whiskey on a rag worked on my kid brother.” Wrangler Man snorts.
“Maybe it’s his diaper?” the priest asks.
He hadn’t seen me slip my finger under the elastic at the baby’s thin thigh. “He’s dry. What’s his name?”
“Stanyos. His new family may change it.”
“Get up. Let ’er sit.” Wrangler Man nudges the priest’s shoulders forward.
Father Matthew, as he turns out to be named, slips from his seat and I sit down. I stretch Stanyos over my legs, skin to skin, so my thighs press into his abdomen, hoping he’ll burp. His cries fade to whimpers and the three of us hush, watching his perfect little body writhe like he can’t get comfortable in his skin. Wrangler Man breathes down my neck.
“Stanyos?” he says. “That’s a name begging for a playground brawl.”
I can feel his breath, smell the cigarettes and whiskey.
“There’s nothing to him. He’s so damn loud.” His voice is softer now, slower too, as if my rubbing the baby’s back is working to ease his discomfort as well. “My kid brother cried all the time. Inconsolable. My mom paced a trail in the carpet.”
Walter has begun to look for me. When he sees Father Matthew standing, me in the seat, and Wrangler Man leaning over, alarm flashes across his face. I know he is going to get up, to come see if he can, once again, rescue me.
I turn Stanyos gently toward me. His eyes are screwed tight and he is preparing to wail. His face presses into my belly and he goes crazy smelling my milk. He immediately begins rooting around my blouse, banging his head against me, his mouth working eagerly at the fabric.
And then it is simple. I undo the top three buttons, lower the flap of my nursing bra, and bring his mouth, wide as a hatchling’s, to my breast. “It’s okay,” I whisper. Stanyos pulls greedily at me and I feel the sting of milk rushing from my body into his mouth.