March - Like Lions 7 страница

"Can't everyone?" I asked, wanting to deflect some attention. I looked around her room and her house, her five kids, and Mikey's contribution. They seemed to be doing a wonderful job themselves, and I told her that. "I mean, can't you and Mikey and everyone else do something like that too?"

She nodded, with a smirk. "That's the point. Find the right people, and you can change things. You can be remembered. Memory takes two people, two things, Frank, or else it withers away and dies. Everything is linked and there is always a relationship. Don't waste it. Find the people you need and make it work. I see something huge happening for all of you - and I don't need to look into tarot cards or horoscopes to see it. I just do. It's about time you saw it as well."

I didn't know how to respond. How was I even supposed to? I knew we were different, that we were special and separate from all the other people I had even come into contact with. I felt the alienation of not being around Vivian or Gerard or Jasmine each time I went to work. It was rare for me to find people who got me on the level that they understood. I knew that, but so did Alexa. She was one of those people who got me as well, but on a different sphere of intimacy. The way she was talking implied that I wasn't aware of the huge amount of power I had, but I was pretty sure I did. Her dialogue seemed to oscillate between having a lot of power, and yet, feeling so insignificant. I wasn't sure how to interpret it all or what she wanted me to say back.

I never got a chance to, anyway, because Jonah began to cry. Alexa broke herself out of her integral lock with me and rose gracefully to her feet. She began to walk away and I felt what she was talking about before - that relational link. That pull between people, the formation of a relationship. I told her to wait. She stooped at the doorframe and looked back at me.

"Can I come too?" I asked quietly and she replied, "I wouldn't have dreamed it any other way."

Jonah's small cries were echoing through the house and closer to us as we walked up the stairs. A small girl ran past me with Mikey's dark blond hair in pigtails and I figured that must be Elizabeth. She said a quick, "Hi mom, hi new person," and then never gave us a chance to respond. Jonah's cries still went on and on, though he was running of out force. Alexa went to Jonah's room and opened the door. He was standing up in his crib and looking over the edge. His face was red and snot-covered, and he was chewing on his hand. "Teething," Alexa said to me. "It's one of the reasons he's not sleeping so well. That, and I think he's having bad dreams. We all have vivid dreams when something dramatic changes in our lives. Even if it's just our teeth."

I didn't say too much. At first Jonah had captured my attention, but as Alexa picked him up and out of the crib and began to coddle him, I noticed the room we were in. The walls were painted with a scene from the bible, the time just after the flood when Noah and the animals have landed and the rainbow has appeared. Each pair of animal - elephants, giraffes, lions, and bears - were all standing and watching as Noah's arm extended and seemed to say, 'This is me, this is what I found here, this is what I remember.' The mural was not done in a typical cartoony fashion. It was utterly gorgeous and realistic, and I almost wanted to believe that this was true instead of a story.

Alexa noticed me staring at it and smiled. "Gerard did that years ago. For Isaac when he was first born. I can't believe it's stayed as beautiful as the first day."

"I'm surprised he painted this after his contempt for the bible."

"They're just stories, Frank. Harmless so long as they are treated as such. Unfortunately, not many people do. The flood is a useless and highly problematic narrative that too many people take as fact. But it's the idea of the flood, and the resolution afterwards, the new life spilling forth that has always worked for me, especially when I considered my children."

She lifted Jonah up, whose face was still twisted in a grimace, but he was no longer crying. Alexa smiled up at him and the joy on her face was incomprehensible. Even when he began crying again and snot covered her shirt, she didn't care. She continued to bounce around with him and make his tears go away. She gave him her finger to chew on for a little while, and then began to wonder if he was hungry. She had just stopped breastfeeding him and he was probably still upset about it and getting used to being bottle fed right now.

"You should feed him," she suggested. She handed him over to me after cleaning off his face, and this sudden weight filled my arms. She went off to go and find a bottle, leaving me alone with the baby. I was so surprised that she just handed him to me. She had been staring at him with adoration and now, he was mine. For the next ten minutes, at least. I was used to moms being highly possessive and if she enjoyed Jonah as much as she seemed to ---

My thought was cut off by Jonah and his continual cries, and I tried to figure out how to manage someone else's emotions in addition to my own. He was squirming in my arms and I began to panic as I felt like I was going to drop him, or hurt him, or do something stupid. I was glad he could support his own head because I had forgotten all about that. What was I even doing? I felt like I was being watched by some otherworldly parental panel and they would take Jonah, and then my own kid, away from me if I kept fucking up. The animals from the arc stared back at me and I struggled under the flood of the baby's tears.

I picked him up in the same way Alexa had. I held him above me, like he was flying. I was frustrated. I wanted him to stop grabbing at me, and making me feel insecure. He seemed to like being up high, though. He didn't stop crying, but he stopped making noise. I moved from side to side, and he opened his eyes and looked around the room. He was growing more subdued the more I moved with him.

"Do you like that?" I asked, feeling a bit ridiculous. "Do you want to fly a bit more?"

I walked around, careful not to step or bump into anything, and told Jonah he was flying. Or swimming underwater, about to get swallowed by the whale. I told us both stories until we felt better about what was really happening. He began to smile and that lightning bolt, the one that had passed through me when Jasmine was pregnant, passed through me again. Oh god, I thought, I had done something right. I took Jonah down and placed him against my chest. He squirmed a bit, but he was no longer crying. He grabbed at my face a bit, then ran his hands over where I was getting stubble, and then was calm.

My pride oozed within me. I did it! He was calm. This actually felt okay. I wanted to show off somehow, so I began to walk down the stairs, going super slowly so that I didn't jostle the somewhat quiet baby in my arms. In my arms! I couldn't believe it. I had never held a baby before. Maybe once in high school when a teacher brought a kid in, but my family was small and I had no siblings. I had no exposure before this. I kept replaying horrible accidents in my mind as I walked, but nothing bad happened. I knew that all babies were different and just because I could handle Jonah this one time for these few minutes really didn't mean much in terms of my own kid. But it did give me a lot of hope.

I turned and walked into the hall, towards the kitchen. I was almost about to burst inside and proclaim my accomplishment, but I stopped. I heard murmuring and gigging. I peered around the corner and saw Alexa leaning up against the counter, the bottle next to her on the right. She was in the crevice of the breakfast nook, and Mikey had come around to her side. He leaned her into the corner and they both stood very close to one another. He touched her hair and curled it around her ear, and she smiled up at him. I couldn't see Mikey's face, just his back, but eventually they leaned down and kissed. It was odd seeing it; not only did I feel like I was invading their intimacy, I was surprised they still had some. Mikey was so proper that I couldn't see him just walking into the kitchen and getting super close to his wife. It was the middle of the afternoon, and they had their five children running around them. I was used to my parents who kept their love, if it was there, confined to one room. Mikey and Alexa seemed to leave it all over the house, all over one another, and all through their bodies. I saw the way she looked at him; they were clearly as in love as they always had been.

Jonah made a noise, a small gurgle, which called attention to my presence. I walked into the kitchen with a few final steps, and pretended I had not seen that display. I began to tell them that, hey, look, I got him to be quiet, expecting them to be super proud and then to break up their display, but they didn't. Mikey locked his arm around Alexa's waist and kissed her temple as she smiled at me.

"See Frank? Not so bad. Now that you've mastered human communication without language, let's see you feed him." Alexa passed me the bottle and wrapped her arms around her husband afterwards. They both watched as I tried to get the nipple to reach Jonah's mouth. It took a few tries, but I eventually got it. I smiled proudly at them.

"It's not about you, it's about life. That life you're providing for him right now so that he can go on and be an important role in yours," she said, efficiently humbling me. She reached up and kissed her husband, who kissed back for longer than a standard embrace. I had no idea why their affection baffled me. It really shouldn't have, but it was odd. It was monogamy and a heterosexual lifestyle with kids, and yet... it worked for them.

I focused on feeding Jonah, on watching his little mouth suck on the bottle and how this went into his system and then he would grow and grow and grow and eventually become a person. Like Isaac, like Elizabeth, like Jasmine, like Alexa. Like me. I suddenly realized that I, too, had a mom, and she was going to need to know at some point or another that I was having my own kid.

When Jonah finished his bottle, Alexa and I both took him upstairs. Mikey kissed her again before going back in the living room to finish up his session with Gerard. He was almost done, apparently, and I knew we were going soon. But I didn't want to leave. I wanted to hang out with the other kids, I wanted to go back into the room with the painting, and I wanted to know more about Alexa. And more about how Alexa saw me and the world that I was apparently saving - I needed to know that most of all.

"Why did you decide to have kids?" I asked her as she laid Jonah down. I struggled with my words, trying not to be offensive. "I mean, you and Mikey both could have done a lot with your lives. Not saying that you haven’t now, it's just.... why kids? It's so..."

"Normal?" she laughed. She looked at Jonah for a while, and then back up at me. "Why bother doing anything?"

"Because...." I started, and then realized that I had nothing good to counter that with. She smirked, she knew.

"Gerard says that the end is darkness. Well, to me, the beginning is the same and also surrounded by darkness. If all we have is right now and this lifetime, then most of us have no idea what this life is other than darkness because we do nothing to change our circumstances. But the light in those tarot cards, that is a pure creation and it is the only hope for us. We can choose to live our life in darkness and only accept the negative. That is very easy to do because there is a lot there to accept. Or we can find a balance. We can try to figure out why we should be here and do it. Children, for me, are one of the ways that I found a light and a reason in the darkness. It's not the only way. It won't be the only way for you. The important aspect is that you accept that it's yours to make and do it, or just live in the darkness."

I nodded. It was all getting to be a bit much for me. There were too many abstract concepts and metaphysical leanings, Light and dark, stars and horoscopes, names and their meaning. I didn't know how Alexa did this all the time. How she could live with all the signs and symbols of the world and then try to forge a meaning in them, in addition to making a life with five children and a husband. It seemed exhausting to me right then, but Alexa was making it work. Somehow, she was making it work. I looked around the room again, and fixated on the mural. The pairs of animals on the wall did not resonate with me. I knew I was not a pair; Jasmine was at her place and Gerard was downstairs. There were three of us and we would also figure out our own way of making it work. I was sure of that now.

As we turned to leave the room, the lions' eyes stared back at me, and I noticed that behind Noah, there was a dove.

Downstairs, Gerard was waiting and holding our bags together. It occurred to me that I didn't take any pictures at all and I internally kicked myself. I wanted to remember certain details and specific elements about their house, but the moment was gone. It just meant that I would need to come back again. Standing with Gerard was the younger daughter, Elizabeth, who I had not fully met other than a quick hello. She said hi to me and then hugged Gerard's leg. He was shocked by this little body attaching herself to him, but he eventually hugged her back, though the height difference was a bit much. He gave me my bag when I reached the bottom and it was easier for him to return her affection.

"Thank you, Rachel," he said, getting her name wrong. There were just too many names for him. She was good about it though; either she didn't hear it or she didn't care. The next thing I knew she was trying to give me a high five "like the boys" and then ran off to go see her brother David. Apparently they were having chair races and Alexa shouted that the first person to reach counting one hundred won a prize.

Mikey had joined us in the hallway as well, and we all said our goodbyes. When we stepped outside and got into the car, I noticed how much warmer it had gotten. The afternoon heat, coupled with Mikey's salting job, made the driveway clear again. It was finally feeling like the beginning of spring.

"How did your drawing go?" I asked Gerard. He showed me some of his sketches as I paused for lights and signs.

"I think Degas was full of shit sometimes. It's hard to draw a portrait without feeling them and movement? Hah. I think he made those dancers up." He flipped to some of the pages of the kids he had tried to draw. He kept calling David Isaac and referring to him as "the one that may as well have eight arms and nine legs because that is how fast he was and how hard it was to draw him." He went through a few other scenarios from that afternoon. I laughed at his commentary and then the conversation switched towards me.

"You look good," Gerard stated. "You look... happy."

"I am," I stated, practically proclaiming. I realized I was sitting much straighter than average and I reached over my hand and cupped Gerard's thigh. He held my hand back. "I saw the room you painted in their house."

"Hmmm?" Gerard asked.

"The baby's room. The Noah's ark scene. It looks really good."

"That was so long ago, I'm surprised they still have it. The water-thing was the most awkward shape to paint, especially since I was not able to turn the canvas on its side so I could get it from a better angle."

"Water-thing?" I questioned. We had been at a stop light and I was turning onto a one-way street, so I thought I had misheard him at first. "Oh, you mean the ark."

"Yeah. Water-thing, boat-thing, same thing." He smiled at me, but then rested his face in his head. We were both getting pretty tired and we didn't say much after that. Our flipped sleep schedules got the better of us some days and we decided to take a nap before Vivian came back with Cassandra and dinner would be started. We crawled into the bed with our clothes on and didn't bother with the sheets. I laid my head on his chest, and his heartbeat lulled me into a light sleep.

My dreams were vivid. All dreams were, Alexa had said, especially when faced with a large change. Like Jonah, all the teeth fell from my mouth, but Alexa picked them up and threw them into a house. I followed her inside, but she disappeared. When I looked up, each ceiling was painted with stars.

Chapter Five

Jasmine called me up later that week and told me she had a surprise. Nothing special, but she wanted to see me. She told me to come over to her apartment before my job one weeknight and to bring food, too. She gave me detailed directions on how to get to this gluten-free vegan bakery downtown and then a vegan Indian place to get the exact meal she wanted. She was precise right down to how much spice to put in (a lot, but only on the main dish and only if there was extra coconut milk) and what she wanted to drink (ice tea, no preference of what kind, just so long as it was herbal and not sugar-free). By the time I was done writing all of that down, I had nearly forgotten what her original purpose was.

"A surprise, huh? Are you sure this wasn't some elaborate ploy to get me to bring you food?"

She sighed, but took my joke in good spirits. "No conforming to any old pregnancy narratives, Frank. I'm not going to ask you for ice cream in the middle of the night and start to eat pickles right from the jar. I want to have dinner with you and I actually do have a surprise. I would ask you to bring the food regardless of my condition. Besides, I'll be providing the dessert.”

I was about to ask her if she wanted me to pick up that ice cream, to save her the trip at midnight, but I held my tongue. I was feeling playful, but she was taking this all very seriously. Although part of me still doubted that she would have asked for food this specifically, I conceded to her point on the issue. She was the one who was pregnant and had to deal with the repercussions: including physical, emotional, and social, one that I had not considered before. I suddenly felt self-conscious on the phone with some of the things I said related to her pregnancy and some of the thoughts that ran through my head about it. These narratives about pregnancy weren't just the medical ones of the nine month waiting period (which was frustrating enough as it was) but what people told us pregnancy meant. I didn't want to feel like I was conforming to stereotypes, nor did I want to box Jasmine in. But when I was out getting her ice tea, I saw pickles and I felt myself smile inside. Pregnant people liked pickles, and that was why I was smiling, but that wasn't true of Jasmine; she had always hated them (along with anything in a brine, like olives or hot chilies). I tried to separate the images in my mind of what I considered to be Jasmine and what I considered to be pregnant behavior, but it took some work. I would need to practice it more. I had to figure out what our own social narrative was in all of this. We knew how we were feeling (scared shitless and happy) and we knew the physicality of it (we had both been to doctors now), but our social lives were harder to grasp and understand. I knew and loved Jasmine, but I still had no idea what pregnant Jasmine was like or if there was a difference.

By the time I was done driving around to get her specific items, I had two bags full of food. I parked in her apartment complex and struggled through doors as I carried them up to her floor. She greeted me with a smile, already open and waiting, and took the bags off me before giving me a hug. She kissed my cheek quickly before heading off into the kitchen and I felt my heart skip a beat. Ever since we had decided to put off the house hunting, she had been a lot more even-tempered. She had been so worried about losing herself in this process that she clung to every last shred of independence. She had begun to work longer hours here and there in order to cover for herself when she went out on errands or for doctor's appointments.

Other than the strict authorization that she was keeping her own apartment, her body was another essential part of this process. She had been researching and going to doctors recently and I hoped that one of the things she wanted to tell me was some information on her condition and what process she could expect in the future. I grappled with my overwhelming urge to want to know details, and anticipating the limitations on what I would be given. I didn't want to take over her body, to claim ownership to something that wasn't mine, to something that wasn't even born yet, because I knew I had no rights. It sucked when I thought about it sometimes, but she, and anything that may be a part of her, wasn't mine. It was as simple as that. It wasn't just for pregnancy, either. If I wanted to get a nose job or a tattoo and if Gerard wanted to get liposuction, then we couldn't restrict the other's behavior. I kept translating the pregnancy dilemmas that I was coming up against into scenarios where Gerard and I were instead; 'if something happened to Gerard and he did this, would I care this much?' type of set-up, which did seem to help. When you were that close to someone, regardless or not if you conceived something together, it was hard to differentiate what was yours and what was theirs. Our bodies had meshed in some way and it was hard to differentiate after acts that were so close. Jasmine was always going to be a part of me and I was always going to be a part of her. But I was also slowly learning that there was always going to be something that was inaccessible to me from her, from Gerard, and I would always have something that they would never grasp either. It wasn't bad necessarily and I didn't need to freak out. It was just there.

So I could wait, I told myself. It wouldn't be that long, anyway.

I sat down at the table as she divided up the food between the two of us, thanked me profusely for getting it all right, and then sat down with me. We talked a bit about the random occurrences that happened to us during the day, clearly as a way to distract and build up to the surprise. Jasmine was never that interested in my drug store job, and I didn't really want to get into it, really. I had to go there tonight and leave Jasmine's by eleven-thirty or so, and I was not looking forward to it. Time seemed to move so much faster with Jasmine. It was already heading towards eight and pitch black outside.

"So," she stated as we began to move onto dessert, which consisted of brownies she had made earlier in the week. She also set up some decaf coffee, which had begun to percolate. "I do have some things to tell you."

I leaned over and listened intently, waiting to see what it was and wanting to have what she was willing to give me.

She had found a doctor. Actually, a midwife. "Her name is Lydia. Her mother owns the tea shop that I usually go to. It's the same one that Gerard and I went to the night after the jazz club. Oh, which reminds me." She got up and grabbed something from her counter. It was the St. John's Wort tea he had bought ages ago when he was with her. He had left in such a hurry that he had forgotten about it, and apparently all this time. He had never mentioned it, but Gerard was like that. Completely absent-minded, especially with the lectures that kept him busy. I was sure as soon as I showed it to him that he would recall and be very happy to have it back. I thanked Jasmine and eagerly waited for more.

Lydia was a trained midwife and also ran Lamaze and alternative birthing classes downtown. Jasmine had been trying to find something herbal to take away some of her nausea and to help her sleep better, when she saw Lydia putting up fliers on the bulletin board. Most of the time that space was used to display yoga classes, but Jasmine saw the words pregnancy and alternative from across the room. She barely had time to bag up what tea she was getting before she barrelled over to her. It seemed like the perfect opportunity, the perfect moment. She had been searching for good places, and even back at her old family doctor, for the last few days and weeks, finding nothing and completely discouraged. She and Lydia ended up having tea in the back of the shop, talking for hours.

"She's fantastic. I don't think I've ever met someone so supportive. She's vegan, too, and has been vegan for ten years. She knew about it before it was something that college kids did for fun or to be edgy. She could tell that, though I was one of those college kids, I was not doing it for fun. I appreciated that, and she was able to tell me more about veganism, stuff I had never considered as completely as she had before. She told me the history of meat and how it was used as a means of control, a way to signify wealth and then therefore exacerbate class divisions. It became a signifier of masculinity and a way to punish women, too. She told me about Alice Walker and her animal rights activism, and we were able to talk about feminism for awhile, too. She's never taken Women's Studies, she's never even really been to school other than midwifery, but she knew so much more than I did. She told me about the erasure of black women from public spaces that happened within the first movement, and she gave me more books to read about, so I could fill in the gaps that I missed. She's so smart, and I felt completely meek speaking after her. Like I had nothing of real important to say, but she was good. She made me think, and that's what mattered. That's what I need right now."

A lot of the rhetoric went over my head, since I only knew about Jasmine's schooling from Jasmine's mouth, and this was all being further eradicated and critiqued. It was good for Jasmine, and she spent a lot of time on these points. But Lydia had also provided her with better options for giving birth. Jasmine was a bit weary on the natural birth ploy, but the whole ideology the medical establishment had behind epidurals also made her uncomfortable. Lydia had explained to her how hospitals work in terms of how they prefer to structure the birth of children. It was all done to please the doctor, not the person actually having the kids. Natural child birth had a tendency to put on a pedestal, when, in reality, it was extremely hard to do in a hospital situation because the woman was lying down. Most people went in with the best intentions, and then, halfway through felt like failures when they needed to take the drugs because it was extremely hard to do to begin with. It was always turned on the pregnant person's fault, and not on the design actual system.

"So, if lying down isn't good, then what is?" I asked.

"Squatting. Sometimes with water and sometimes just in your own house," Jasmine said, her eyes lighting up. I had never seen her so happy about this. Lydia had given her what she needed; a new way to see her experience. That was what Jasmine had been looking for, along with validation for the most important parts of herself. She knew we were different as a couple, and that she was already going into this as vegan and needed someone who wouldn't tell her she was trying to harm the baby by doing that. She had found that in Lydia. I couldn't believe that someone like her existed where we were. It seemed like this place was so closed-minded. I thought we had found all the good people here, and for awhile, we had just been the four.

"It is hard sometimes in Jersey," she confessed. "But everywhere is hard. There are pockets of really good people and of safe places if you just look hard enough. I had always been convinced of that, ever since I met you." She smiled as she began to make a mug of one of the teas she had gotten, and began to tell me less information about birthing, and more of her experience with Lydia. She was a tall, slender woman who was super serious, and sometimes lacked tact, but she always meant well. She always wanted the best for people, which is why she was so brutally honest. Jasmine had joked that if she hadn't already been vegan when first meeting Lydia, by the end of their first conversation, she would have made her go vegan for the baby's sake.

"They have a map of the world in the back of the tea store," Jasmine went on. "But it's different from the ones they teach in school. It makes Africa the focal point, and it shifts everything so Africa and all the countries that people want to forget about are front and center and you can't do anything but stare at them. It's the same content of the map, but its structure is different. I liked that. She also told me she had a new food pyramid as well in her work station at the birthing center that was a guide for vegans, where the entire meat and dairy groups are removed. There is also a guide for vegan pregnant people there, too. That was another thing I liked about her. She said pregnant people. She didn't say women a lot; she didn't call me a sweetie or a lady or anything else like that. She just called me a person."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14