Marcia Golub

  I listen to the child cry downstairs. I don't think they beat or abuse him, but he cries, "Stop it, Mommy. Stop it." I do not hear hitting. He has cried like this since they moved in three years ago. There are two other children and a dog. There is a live-in maid. She comes from Central America and takes care of the children during the day when the mother works. The apartment has two bedrooms, a parlor, a kitchen. One bathroom. The maid must sleep in the tub, otherwise where do they all go?
  The boy is now eight. I am alone. I am trying to read. He cries, "Stop it, Mommy." What is she doing so soundless that makes an eight-year-old boy cry? She is a single mother, a lawyer. The family is from Central America, not just the maid. Often the boy cries in Spanish. Maybe she tells him to take a bath, do his homework, stop pulling the dog's tail. I do not know. Sometimes children cry, and no one is at fault.
  When the little boy cries, he gasps. I remember that catch in the throat, hiccups that come when you can't get your breath. He wails in Spanish. The sound pulls my ghost awake. She cries, my cheeks grow wet. What would the boy think if he knew a lady sat above him, her face squeezed tight like an unhappy raincloud?
  Perhaps he is bored. Perhaps he wants a new toy. Do Spanish mothers tell their children to bang their heads against walls when they are bored? Now he is screaming. Is she leering like a gorgon? Staring with dead eyes? "Leave me alone," my mother told me. "You're just like the rest, using me till I have no more to give. You'll grow up too and leave me." Does the mother accuse him of plotting betrayal behind his eyes? I don't have children. Perhaps it is just the way of children, to carry on as if they were being tortured. Perhaps it is just the way of families, to torture their youngest child.

  I want to tell you about a woman. She is married. She has no children. She thinks, "In every marriage there comes a time when one will either have a child or an affair." This woman wants the former but feels the fates conspiring to produce the latter. This woman, let's call her Renie, which happens to be my name, used to get up every morning at seven, even on weekends. She put a thermometer in her mouth and tried not to fall back to sleep. If she did, she feared she'd clamp her jaw shut and break the thermometer (she was a tooth grinder; her dentist said so, her husband confirmed it), or else her mouth would fall open, the thermometer slipping out.
  Every morning she lay on her back for eight minutes, thinking how slowly time moved till suddenly you were too old to have a child. Every morning she graphed her temperature on the blue and white grid, marked coitus and mucus and menses, made coffee and toast, washed, dressed, and went to work. She had been doing this for two years.
  When she first began plotting her chart, it seemed just a matter of proving her temperature rose at midcycle. "Here, Dr. List, don't you see? I ovulated on the fourteenth day of my cycle. My husband and I had intercourse on the thirteenth. So I must be pregnant." She seemed to believe that, if only she could prove ovulation and intercourse took place on schedule, Dr. List would throw his hands up and say, "Yes, Renie, you got me there. Okay then, you're pregnant."
  What Dr. List did say was "Keep taking your temperature. Tell your husband to see Dr. Nosringer, to test his sperm."
  So Barry made an appointment with Dr. Nosringer. The nurse said he could pick up a sterilized specimen jar beforehand or come in that morning and produce a sample.
  "What are you going to do?" Renie asked.
  "I don't know. I don't want to go all the way downtown for a jar. She also said to keep it warm. Can you just see me carrying a jar of come under my coat? What if I left it on the train?"
  That night Renie asked how it went. "Horrible," Barry said. "I told the nurse I was there to leave a specimen and she put out her hand. I said, I don't have it yet. She said, You mean you want to do it here? The people in the waiting room all looked at me. I felt like a child molester. She took me to a room, gave me a jar. I said, Fill 'er up? Just to break the ice, you know? She didn't smile. So there I was, in the doctor's bathroom. You know how they smell, like disinfectant? It wasn't easy. I kept expecting the nurse to come in, yell at me to hurry up."
  "The boy is crying again," Renie said. "Every day. Why do people who don't want children get pregnant? Why did Alice have to have an abortion? She was using birth control." She thought of herself and Barry making love every two days from the tenth to the twentieth day of her cycle. It didn't matter if they were tired, turned on or off. She had to keep her legs up in the air like a trussed turkey for fifteen minutes afterward. Was it such a terrible thing to want a child, to want to love a child to redeem her from childhood?

  The child has stopped crying. Is he watching tv with his brother and sister? Are they eating dinner? It must be hard, all those people in four rooms, all those people dependent on one woman. I hate them. Why are they so noisy? Why do they slam doors and scream and cry? Even the dog screams. It's a small lap dog. It cries like a woman who wants her husband to know she's unhappy. Why can't they be happy?

  Abel is happy. He works with Renie. Maybe he is not so much happy as self satisfied. When he began working with Renie she disliked him. He let everyone know he was fluent in Latin, Greek, Russian, German, and "Spanish and French, of course. Who doesn't know Spanish and French?" He was studying Italian. Renie coldly assessed him. "He's pompous," she told Barry. "A prig. I can't bear him. Of course it's useful to have someone at the encyclopedia who knows all those languages, but he thinks so damn much of himself."
  "Give him a chance," Barry said. "He's probably okay."
  Renie noticed the gap between Abel's teeth when he smiled. He had a warm smile. His hair was sparse, a color that could best be described as beige. Baby fine, it floated about his head like random thoughts. He always seemed to be reading when Renie came in. His hands trembled. He walked by Renie's desk on his way to the elevator, even though that was the long way around. One day it hit Renie: Abel was in love with her. "That's so cute," she thought. "Here I am, married 12 years, and Abel has a crush on me."
  She began to dress more seductively. She didn't mean to, but she thought about Abel when she picked out her clothes. She imagined his desire. She went out of her way to be friendly. Abel remained cool. It was best, she thought. She didn't want an affair, she wanted wanting. His hands still trembled when he was near her, he continued to walk by her desk. "He must be afraid of me," Renie thought. She liked that best of all.
  Then one afternoon as Renie sat reading a manuscript at her desk, Abel reached over to get a book above her head. She turned. Seeing Abel so hopelessly in love she smiled. "Don't worry," he said. "I'm not flirting with you. I'm just getting something." Her mouth clamped shut as if spring-loaded. She made no reply. That night she dreamt she was in a classroom. She looked down and saw she had forgotten to put on clothes.

  Children cry in the park. Laugh. Sing. Play skipping games. Children are eternal. They hold hands. They race, they tag one another. "You're It," they scream. They are the same ones--red-haired, freckled, pug-nosed--who wouldn't let me in when I was a child. Hearing them, the ghost inside me pulls and whines. She wants to play. She forgets she is dead, a memory of a girl.
  "I am too old for Hide and Seek," I tell her. I am tired. I am middle-aged. The children in the park don't see me. Grownups are invisible. I hurry by. My feet hurt. I take the bus.
  On the bus the ignored child says, "Right, Mommy?" and gets no reply. When the child crawls on the aging woman's lap and says, "Right, Mommy? I love you, Mommy," trying to kiss the woman with gray hair and tired face; when the woman says, "Stop it, sit down, be still, you're messing my hair," and the child sits, looks up, ready to be noticed, ready for a smile, it is then that the little ghost inside me stretches and yawns. She looks around. Bored by my middle age, she is looking for something to do. "Behave, behave," I tell the ghostly girl. I know her well. She is up to no good. Looking for eggs to drop, milk to spill, curbs to trip on, keys to lose. Something, anything to annoy us. I have become my mother. "Can't you sit still?" we ask. Some parents are infuriated by childhood. I have three sisters. I am the last. They called me The Accident. The Broken Pitcher. My parents were old when I was born. By the time I grew up they were dead.

  Abel had the power to make her sink. The way he looked at her, looked away. She saw she was nothing in his eyes. But if he had never looked, his looking away would have been nothing; as it was, it was everything. When she learned she was seven years older than he, she fell hopelessly in love. That's when Renie became middle-aged.
  "Do you mean to tell me that Abel is only twenty-eight?" she asked Marian. "When did he have the time to learn all those languages?"
  Marian smiled. "Twenty-eight. You make it sound like fourteen. He's a grown man, Renie. We're just growner."
  "Marian, think--1963. I remember 1963. I remember writing 1963 in the heading of my homework. I can't even imagine talking to someone born then, let alone taking direction from him."
  "What's your story, Renie? Don't you like Abel?"
  The next morning Renie discovered her first gray hair. It stuck out from the side of her head like an antenna. She did not pluck it. Her mother used to have her pull out her gray hairs till she started going bald. Renie's stomach would turn as she watched the white scalp kiss the plucked hair goodbye.
  A week later Renie noticed wrinkles around her mouth. "I can take it," she said. Then a wart appeared in the corner of her right eye. Each day it was bigger than the day before. She knew she had inherited her mother's lid polyps and would soon be a hag. "My mother had perfect teeth, a winning smile," Renie thought, "but I got her warts, wrinkles, and psoriasis." She resolved not to use the bright mirror light anymore.
  "Do I look old?" she asked Barry.
  "If I were a bartender, I'd proof you."
  Renie kissed him. She knew he didn't see her as she was. It wasn't fair for her to point out the wrinkles, the warts and gray hairs, to steal from him his dream of a bride.
  "What day is it?" he asked.
  "The eleventh."
  "Renie, how could you let yesterday slip by?"
  "I'm sorry. I was tired."

  When Barry's sperm all turned out to be Olympic swimmers, Dr. List suggested they see a fertility specialist. Dr. Weiz told Renie to have intercourse the night before, "then come in for the post-coital examination," which seemed perverse.
  "Antibodies," Dr. Weiz said. "I'm testing for antibodies. Sometimes a woman's fluids reject a man's sperm. I'll know if that's the case after taking your sample. You had intercourse?"
  Renie nodded.
  Dr. Weiz prepared a slide. She let Renie look in the microscope. Renie pretended to see the sperm swim. Later she told Barry they had worn glasses; some had pink bows.
  "Nothing wrong there," Dr. Weiz said. "You sure you don't want to try a fertility drug? If you produce more than two fetuses we can do selective elimination."
  Renie ironed her skirt over her knees. "I don't want a litter," she said, "but I can't see aborting the surplus."

  "Renie," Abel said. "Do you want to edit `Sacred Space' or speak to John about `A Goddess's Descent'?"
  "I don't know, Abel. What do you want me to do?" She didn't smile.
  "Renie," he said. "What are you thinking behind your face?"

  When her period was late she knew. Her breasts hurt so much she couldn't put on her bra. She called the doctor's office and asked how late her period had to be before the test. "Come in anytime," the nurse said. Renie called the office. Abel answered. He asked if anything were wrong. "I'm fine," she said. "I just have to pick something up. I'll be in soon."
  The nurse told her to pee in a jar. She sat twenty minutes in the waiting room, wondering if the other women had cancer. Her gynecologist no longer did obstetrics. "Maybe I have a tumor?"
  "Congratulations," the nurse said. She handed Renie a plastic egg with a blue dot. "Do you want to keep this? A lot of women do. It shows the test was positive."
  The nurse was pregnant. "Thank you," Renie said. "Oh, thank you so much."
  "Here is Dr. Winerose's number. He's the O.B. Dr. List recommends. Call him as soon as possible."
  "Oh yes," Renie said. "I will." She felt like the newest member of a club. "Oh, I'm sorry. I'm crying because--"
  The nurse laughed. "It's okay," she said. "I know."

  Barry cried too when she called his office. "Oh Renie. I can't believe it. Oh Renie, I wish you were here. I'm so happy."
  Renie laughed and cried. "I feel blessed, Barry, I know it sounds corny but I do. I feel blessed, like this has never happened to anyone before."
  She called the encylopedia. Abel answered. "I'll be in soon," she said. She didn't tell him. She wanted to but didn't. She made an appointment with Dr. Winerose for Tuesday. She went to work carefully, walking on her toes as if balancing a bowl of water in her belly.

  "Marian," she said. "You don't know what it's like."
  Marian smiled. "I don't know. I don't want to know. But I'm happy for you and Barry. I really am."

  The child downstairs rang my doorbell on Halloween. He was dressed as a ghost. His sister came as a table, his brother was a ghoul. I gave them Snickers. I didn't want their mother to think I would give them poisoned apples. A week earlier, my husband had gone downstairs to complain. "It's so noisy," he said.
  "You think you don't make noise?" she said. "I hear you and your wife, night after night, but I don't complain."
  I was meant to live in the country, in a house in the woods with a big dog. My children could play outside. I could listen to them playing. When they grew up I'd hear silence. I am afraid to be alone.

  On Monday the bleeding started. "It's nothing," Renie told herself. "It's common for women to bleed in the early months." She called Dr. Winerose's office. She hadn't had her first appointment yet. She explained who she was, asked if she should do anything or just come in the following day as scheduled. The nurse said, "Lie in bed. Put your feet up. Don't move till Dr. Winerose calls. He's in surgery. He'll call as soon as he can."
  Renie concentrated all her positive energies into her womb. "Love," she intoned. "Life. Joy." She refused to allow any bad thoughts to constrict her breathing. When Dr. Winerose called two hours later, she sounded as peaceful as a madonna.
  "I want you to go to Dr. Raner's office for a sonogram," Dr. Winerose said. Renie knew. "Don't be alarmed," the technician said. "It's common not to find any sign of the fetus at six weeks. It doesn't necessarily mean anything." Renie knew. "Don't be alarmed," the receptionist said. "We just wrote this for insurance purposes, okay? It doesn't mean what it says." Renie nodded. "Spontaneous abortion," she read, but she already knew.
  "Abel," she said, calling the office. "I won't be in today." She began to cry, but he didn't notice.

Copyright © 2003 by Marcia Golub
All rights reserved