Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

Eric swallowed. He felt so stupid. The picture of his son’s penis, that pinkie between curled frog’s legs, being cut — Eric shuddered at the image, at the ease with which castration could occur. They weren’t having a bris because of Nina, but Eric was glad for selfish reasons. He could never witness the event, much less celebrate it in a ritual.

There was more wailing.

“Okay, let’s walk around.”

“No,” Nina said.

“But you just said—”

“They’re bringing him in afterwards to be fed. To help comfort him. I’d better stay. You go for a walk.”

“No,” he answered, angry that she could be casual about his presence. “I want to make sure it’s still on, for Christ’s sake.”

“Eric!” she said, laughing, but her eyes teared. “Don’t say things like that.”

“Well, that’s what we’re worried about! What’s the point in not saying it?”

“Nothing is going to happen,” she chided.

“You’re so full of shit with your brave act.”

“Come on,” she said, and offered her hand for comfort. “Shut up.”

He took her slim hand in his big, thick palm, disarranging her fingers so they were like pencils stored in a bowl. They waited.

“I can’t take this,” he whispered.

“Shhhh,” she said.

“How are you feeling?”

“Fabulous.” Her voice was listless.

“Seriously. How are the stitches?”

She winced at the mention of them. “I lied to them.”

“What?”

“I told them I had taken a crap. I haven’t.”

“You have to take a crap?”

“Before they let you go.”

“What? They won’t let you go until you take a dump? What kind of country are we living in?”

She tried to smile, but her worry weighed her mouth into a sorry grin. “They just want to make sure everything’s working okay. That the stitches and everything”—She shut her eyes, as if she could see the wound.

Eric nodded. The wailing could still be heard. “Maybe you shouldn’t be lying to them.”

“It’s nobody’s business whether I go to the bathroom!” Nina sat up with outrage, her back stiff with rebellion.

“Yeah, I think that’s in the Constitution.” He winked at her.

“That’s right,” Nina agreed. She tried another smile. Her skin was exhausted; even her freckles had paled into virtual nonexistence.

There was a knock on the door. A nurse looked in. “Put on your smock,” she said to Eric. “Baby’s here.”

Eric took the cloth gown from the hook on the door. It was wrinkled and stained with coffee from yesterday’s visit. “This is dirtier than my shirt.”

“There are laundered smocks at the nursery,” the nurse said, opening the door for Eric to pass. Beside her in the hallway, asleep in his bin, was Luke. Nina peered at Luke, an alert deer. “He’s sleeping,” the nurse told Nina. “How are you feeling? Haven’t done any more fainting, I hope?”

“Fainting?” Eric stopped on his way out, next to Luke. He looked down at his son. Luke’s exhausted head lay on its side. The eyelid looked puffy, worn-out.

“Nothing,” Nina said. “First night I was here, I got a little dizzy. Did they do the circumcision?”

“Didn’t the doctor come by?” the nurse asked with surprise.

“No,” Eric asked, afraid. “Why?”

“Supposed to,” the nurse said with disdain.

“Is everything all right?” Nina asked.

“He’s perfect,” the nurse said. “He’ll sleep for a while and then want to eat.”

Eric left and went to the nursery, finding a clean gown in a basket at the entrance. On his tall body, it looked like a short dress. The nurse on duty laughed at the sight. “You could use two of them,” she said.

He smiled pleasantly, but he wanted to punch her out. With their faint air of contempt and amused anticipation of nervousness and incompetence with children, the nurses made Eric feel he was a baby. When Eric got back to the room, the other nurse was lecturing Nina on how to change Luke’s diaper until his penis healed. Eric forced himself to listen. Some Vaseline had to be put on a gauze strip and placed on the wounded tip, “to prevent the raw skin from getting stuck to the diaper,” she said casually.

The image pushed Eric down into a chair and he crossed his legs. He wanted to laugh at himself, but couldn’t. His eyes went to Luke. Circumcision is insane, he judged, despite the ghosts of thousands of his forebears. More Jewish insanity, he thought. An image of the local Washington Heights temple, a tiny ugly modern building squeezed between two tall apartment houses, answered Eric unconvincingly. He remembered the first time his father took him to services. He was squeezed, like the temple, between the tall men, pushed along will-lessly, overwhelmed by their heavy smells and frightened by their low, rumbling voices. When the rabbi spoke of his people wandering for forty years in the Sinai, Eric imagined shuffling slowly amidst a crowd of the Washington Heights devout. He thought of the wandering as a rush-hour subway ride on the IRT, rather than a lonely journey in an immense desert.

“Poor baby,” Eric heard Nina say as she pulled the bin beside her. The nurse had left. Eric couldn’t speak. He watched Luke; his head rested heavily on the tiny mattress, revealing only a profile to study. The mouth worked from time to time for invisible succor. The bruises of birth were almost gone; Luke looked pretty, the small skull covered by a chaotic mass of black hair, curling up on the compressed fat nape of his neck. His back rose and fell with effort. His eye winced at a memory.

“Sorry,” Eric heard himself say.

Nina looked at Eric with remorse and affection. “He won’t remember,” she said, sounding unconvinced.

“How do you know? Now I feel like I remember.”

“No,” Nina protested, but uncertainly.

“And with me they had some schmuck do it. ‘The mohel is very safe,’ Dad said, trying to get me to do it with Luke. ‘Much safer than some schwartzer intern.’ ”

“Shhhh,” Nina said.

“Dad wants to drive us home,” Eric said casually, praying for an easy passage of this bill.

“Okay,” she said. “The doctor said they can’t feel it.”

“Oh, yeah? Fuck the doctor. What’s she been doing, interviewing the newborns?”

“Something about the nerves,” Nina said. She put a protective hand on the bin. “They aren’t really developed.”

“Oh, bullshit. They say that to make us feel better.”

“Eric, calm down.”

He tried. He shut his mouth and folded his arms, but his leg hopped up and down nervously. Luke shuddered and that quieted Eric — he froze in position. Luke’s head moved, and then, abruptly, his mouth opened, his face reddened, and he let out a pained squeal.

They reached for him simultaneously, but Eric backed off at the last moment. Nina picked up Luke. He curled in the air, his legs drawn up, his head falling forward, a spineless creature shrieking in pain — an outraged, betrayed series of squawks that terrified Eric.

“Oh, poor baby,” Nina said. But her tone was confident, casual. She cradled Luke in one arm while slipping her gown off with her free hand. She brushed her mane of brown hair off her shoulder and exposed her breast; it was expanded, puffed like a torpedo, her nipple thick and dark red — unrecognizable to Eric. Luke cried, helpless, and flopped in her arms, muscleless, his delicate features twisted by his agony.

Hurry, hurry, Eric thought, disgusted by her slow movements, her calm. “Yes, baby, yes, baby,” she said, picking up Luke again (his body curled pathetically, impotent in her hands) and speaking to his distorted face. “Mommy’s going to feed you.”