Part 12 (1/2)

He's cute, Warren says

This kid has a face like a caved-in squash His full head of hair lends him a olf aspect My pluainst which all others will come up short

I sit there with a smile welded on my face till the olf baby starts to sputter neurasthenically, Ehhehhh ehhh Ehhehhh ehhh

The wo, Tiht train when hungry, made no more noise than that, he'd starve

I'h his handsome face holds nary a crease Bone-weary, I let hiy hand off his biceps to extract himself

16

Postal Partum Let him be happy from time totiun”

(trans Stanislav Baranczak) You think having a baby is a big dang accomplishment, and the nurses s there not evenovermuch how you're torn fro, then the nurse comes in and hands you a round plastic pee catcher shaped like a matador's hat-itself piss-yellow in color-to sit over the toilet seat, for really, all anybody in the hospital wants you to do is pee Forget the baby, that's all anybody's waiting for: You pee, you go ho to have to confess, but the long labor had distended my bladder or hurt ive allons of IV fluid they'd pumped into me over more than a day had seeped intoPeople on the ward ask me more than once when I'm due, which shocks me, for without my baby bump, I feel lithe as Miss America, puzzled when my old skinny jeans can't shi+mmy over my di, It happens with incompetent labor

Or a doctor's incompetent delivery, I snap

Mare! Warren says

Why can't you stick up for me? I burst out I'm tired and sore, and my abruptly massive boobs have hardened into bricks as the milk floods in

Mare, incoeht, I say, dabbing at ht be a day or two until I can pee, and they'll keep me till then He shakes Warren's hand and leaves the roo-that he's taken his paternity leave that week Proble, when the baby and I coht, I say-what choice do I have, and so besotted aet Mother to come

At the bank of elevators, Warren pushes the button I sit inand our squinty son in my arms The silver door slides open

Hold the elevator, a voice cries out, and from behind us skitters up a couple from our natural childbirth class

Warren et on The new randrandfather videotapes the whole thing

Wave goodbye to your first horandmother flaps Spencer's limp paw

While Warren holds the door for them, I ask him when he'll be back

Toin to close

Wait, I say Why so late?

The elevator door's black rubber buainst Warren's hand

He says, Visiting hours are five to seven

Not for dads, I say

But the silver doors have shut hiiously froer (To be fair to Warren, not yet thirty, he er, the enerating wives get when staring at some dumb hunks of baby) With Dev, ot turned tight So what if I'm invisible to Warren or he to me? My rent's paid I have my boy In six weeks, I'll start to teach three days per week, three or four classes per day No other fact sinks in

Sitting in ht, after Warren's brief, distracted visit, I feed the baby out of so core inside It's you and me, Dev, I say, which solitude is-in some ways-familiar At least now I have a small sack of infant to cuddle with, a boycares vanish soon as I take him in my arms

For seven days, I stay catheterized in the hospital In seven days, the Bible tells us, God made the world, but I fail to release my pent-up urine Eventually, the insurance company starts to squawk, and while the doctor doesn't like sending et up every ht, load the baby into the car seat with diapers and changes of clothes and et on the table, have the catheter taken out, then wait, breastfeeding in the hall, till four to see if I can relieve th of fla skewer slid into ister any of this, sleeping every night unperturbed downstairs Every hour and a half or two, Dev squawks, and I stagger to his crib, change his diaper, latch him to one breast then another, burp him, swaddle him Then back in my solitary bed, steal an hour or two of sleep before Dev eats again Born three weeks early it's as if he's trying to catch up, he just needs to be bigger than rew at twice the nor him in the bed, but I'd been warned-ironically-that it'd ruin e) Maybe I don't resent Warren more because he's the only author of relief for me He walks in the door like clockwork every day at six, the hour Dev inexplicably begins to holler as if being bullwhipped And only Warren loves hi shriek

What's wrong with hilass

He's clearly unhappy here, I say

As Warren folds the boy to his body, I enter the only certain stretch of rest in my day

Hold his head, I say It's da an ue hiot him, Mare Just let me do it

I plod back up the stairs and pitch forward, i in a black-brained sleep

Around eleven, the door swings wide, and Warren lays Dev indownstairs to his pallet in the living rooht a wall of noise beyond which we don't exist He's working, going to grad school full-tioes

Then Mother flies up to help, a sober na as a way to ht in the thirty years prior All my life, she lived in a state of irritation predicated on either drinking too h Never (is this true?) did I lie in bed and have her cook for ot measles and chickenpox, she'd announce, I just don't like sick people, leaving rown-ups

On this trip, Mother is transfor s s in oniony broth, chicken collapsed off its bones, turnip greens with fatback Afternoons, she lies in bed with aze at hionna stare the skin off hiht be, but she's still capricious as a cat After about a week, when I've gotten used to counting on her, she disappears one day I'd run out of diapers, and she'd rushed heroically off to the store Her first hour away, I figure she got lost An hour later, I decide she's had a car wreck An hour after that, I know she's dead or stopped at a bar soether by duct tape and lug hin of our car in the lot

Late that afternoon Mother prances in with brochures for tours of Russia and China She is-h-cold sober But she rocery store, and he took her to lunch and to see the glass flowers at the Harvard Museu the visit that I let it slide

My therapist later reminds me that, however sober, Mother will forever be a haphazard fetcher of necessary items Treat her more like a five-year-old, the therapist says, which ht size

Meanwhile, the catheter that's been in place for weeks has chafed till there's blood in the piss bag, fire running through e After a full month of daily drives to the clinic, I insist they teach me how to catheterize myself-it's not rocket science, after all They sendof glass catheters Within a day or two-maybe after a respite fro irls