Miranda July - The First Bad Man

“No,” I yelled.

“Kate didn’t know either. Is Clee there?”

I cracked my door the tiniest bit. Clee was sitting up in her sleeping bag. Her face looked blotchy from crying or maybe just from being pregnant.

“She’s here,” I whispered.

“Well, please tell her she’s on her own. I’d tell her myself but she’s not answering my calls. Actually, you know what? Don’t talk to her. Just make sure she doesn’t leave. I’ll be there in an hour and a half.”

She broke the contract. It didn’t cover this, of course it didn’t, why should it? What did I care? What contract? We didn’t have one. I pressed my face into the bed, smothering myself. Was it the plumber? Of course it couldn’t be the plumber; that was imaginary. But something unimaginary had happened, probably not just once, more likely many times, with many people. That’s who she was. Perfectly fine. Not my business. She could have as much unimaginary intercourse as she wanted. Of course, she would need to leave immediately; our contract was terminated. What contract? Where did they do it? In my bed? I would throw her garbage bags onto the street myself. I put on exercise clothes for swift movement.

Suzanne’s Volvo rolled up silently; she must have cut the motor for the last block. I tried to give her a thumbs-up through the window but she didn’t see me. She was also wearing athletic clothes and she looked as if she had been battle-crying for the whole drive and now was ready for the kill. There was a sharp rap on the door, a metal beak or her keys. I rolled my shoulders back and came out of the bedroom, stone-faced.

Clee was peeking through a crack in the living room curtains. She looked from her mother’s wrathful face to mine, from my exercise clothes to her mother’s. With her arms folded across her stomach she stepped back until she was against the wall with her garbage bags. Rap, rap, rap went the beak. Rap, rap. My eyes fell on Clee’s bare feet; one was on top of the other, protecting it. Rap, rap, rap. We both looked at the door. It was shaking a little. Suzanne began to pound.

I swung it open. Not the big door, but the tiny one within it. It was just big enough to contain all of my features. I pressed them against its rectangle and looked down at Suzanne.

“Is she still in there?” she mouthed, pointing at the windows conspiratorially.

“I don’t think she wants to see you right now,” the door said.

Suzanne blinked; her face sank with confusion. I pressed myself against the oak door. Stay oaken.

“No one home. Keep out.”

“Okay, Cheryl, ha ha. Very theatrical. Let me talk to Clee.”

I looked at Clee. She shook her head no and gave me a tiny grateful smile. I redoubled my efforts, retripled them.

“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“She doesn’t have a choice,” Suzanne snapped. The door handle rattled desperately.

“Double dead bolt,” I said.

She slammed her fist against the small iron grate that covered my face. That’s what the grate was there for. She examined her fist and then gazed at her parked car and Clee’s car behind it, her old car. For a moment she just looked like a mom, tired and worried with no graceful way to express herself.

“It’ll be okay,” I said. “She’ll be okay. I’ll make sure.”

She squinted at me; the rectangle was starting to cut into my face.

“May I at least be granted permission to use the bathroom?” she asked coldly.

I shut the tiny door for a moment.

“She wants to use the bathroom.”

Clee’s eyes were shining.

“Let her in,” she said with careful magnanimity.

I unlocked the door and swung it open. Suzanne hesitated, eyeing her daughter with a last-ditch harebrained scheme. Clee pointed to the bathroom. We listened to her pee and flush and wash her hands. She exited the house without looking at either of us; the Volvo rumbled away.

Clee took a long swig of old Diet Pepsi and tossed the empty bottle in the general direction of the kitchen trash. It bounced on the linoleum a few times. I understood. She had temporarily forgiven me in the heat of the moment without really meaning it. With all the fuss I had forgotten to make my bed; I headed to go do that.

“So,” Clee said loudly. I stopped. “I don’t really know a lot about health and stuff? But I figure you probably know what I should be eating. Like vitamins or whatever.”

I turned and looked at her from my bedroom door. She was standing on the moon and if I responded I would be on the moon too, right next to her. With her and away from everything else. It looks so far away, but you can just reach your hand out and touch it.

“Well,” I said slowly, “for starters you should take a prenatal vitamin. And how far along are you?” The phrase far along just fell out, as if it had been waiting in my mouth this whole time.

“Eleven weeks, I think. I’m not totally sure.”

“But you’re sure you want a baby.”

“Oh no.” She laughed. “It’ll go up for adoption. Can you imagine? Me? ”

I laughed too. “I didn’t want to be rude, but…”

She mimed cradling a baby, rocking it frantically with a manic grin.

IN WEEK TWELVE IT WASjust a neural tube, a backbone without a back; the next week the top of the tube fattened into a head, with dark spots on either side that would become eyes. I read these developments aloud to her each week from Grobaby.com.

“All clogged up? Those pesky pregnancy hormones are to blame. Time to fixate on fiber.” She was constipated, she admitted, starting this week. The website had an uncanny ability to predict what she was about to feel, as though her body was taking its cues from the weekly updates. With this in mind I often reiterated parts that seemed important. (“Paddle-like hands and feet emerge this week. Hands and feet: this week. They should be paddle-like .”) When I accidentally skipped a week the cells twiddled their thumbs, waiting for further instructions. She took the vitamins and ate my food but the idea of a prenatal checkup sickened her.

“I’ll go when it’s closer,” she said, hunched over her sleeping bag. I dropped it for the moment. Talking to her this way felt like a role — not unlike “Woman Asks for Directions.” “Woman Takes Care of Pregnant Girl.”

“I don’t want anyone from the medical establishment touching me,” she added a few hours later. “It has to be a home birth.”

“You still have to get checked, though. What if there’s a problem?” Somehow I knew just the right thing to say, as if I had watched Dana say it in a video.

“There won’t be a problem.”

“Hopefully you’re right. Because sometimes it just never comes together — you think there’s a baby in there but it’s just unconnected bits and when you push it all comes out like chicken rice soup.”

When Dr. Binwali showed us the fetus with the sonogram I was sure Clee would weep like every astronaut who has seen the earth from space, but she turned away from the screen.

“I don’t want to know the gender.”

“Oh, don’t worry, it’s too early to tell,” said the doctor. But her eyes held fast to the ceiling, avoiding the sight of her own splayed legs. She meant ever. She hoped to never see it.

“Grandma might be curious to see the last bit of the tail,” he said, tapping the screen.

Neither of us corrected him. We were rolling on rails now; the good people of the world glided around mothers and daughters, opening doors and carrying bags, and we let them.

HER SHAPE SHOULD HAVE LENTitself to a fertile appearance, but it was her biggish chin that I noticed now, and her burly way of moving. Together with the swollen stomach it created a peculiar picture, almost freakish. The more pregnant she became, the less like a woman she was. When we were out in public I tried to see if other people flinched or did a double take. But apparently I was the only one who could see this.