Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Yet, in the silvery night air, wrapped in the perfume of the fading honeysuckle, as Nicole looked up at the windows, warm portraits of light, and thought of the women and men who filled the house, she felt a glowing approval that made her blush. They liked her enough to travel all the way out to the Island, she thought, before quickly reprimanding herself for acting so junior-high.

She spotted a light in the kitchen. Someone was awake, and they were downstairs. Only twenty yards from where she stood.

She ducked behind the car, then slunk past the shed. She ran, hunched over, in and out of the shadows to the side of the house. She crouched under the deck stairs, the crushed shells cutting into her bare feet.

As the sea air rippled through her thin shirt, Nicole relit and sucked greedily on the joint.

Susanna had waited,curled up on the sofa, pretending to sleep, fearing Rip and Michael might never leave their shared bottle of booze. When they finally staggered upstairs, she had gone to the dark kitchen.

Now sauerkraut dribbled down Susanna’s chin. She took a bite of a hot dog and dunked an onion ring in ketchup. Already, she could feel the acid mingling with the grease, all of it a roiling mess in the small pouch of a stomach perched atop her ballooning uterus. At thirty-five weeks, it seemed as if just two or three bites of food filled her. One too many detonated the heartburn. Sometimes, and especially after she binged, she stood over the toilet and stuck two fingers down her throat, hoping a good puke would extinguish the reflux.

In the last eight months, Susanna’s world had been a rainbow of puke. Bright pink after she ate a pint of cherry-flavored ice cream. Speckled green after the spanakopita from the Mediterranean Kitchen down the block. And once, after the boys’ third birthday party, a rainbow of pastels from their Thomas the Train birthday cake.

So, she had reasoned a few weeks ago, why not eat what she craved if puking was inevitable? As she stood in front of the open refrigerator in the beach house kitchen, the cold air spilling over her sweating body, she bit into a fat pickle, knowing it wouldn’t be long before it rose.

She had vomited at least once a day for nine months. She no longer feared the heaving return. It had become part of the routine of everyday life. She woke. She ate breakfast. She puked. She brushed her teeth. She got the boys ready for preschool. Hadn’t she puked practically everywhere by now? Outside the F train Carroll Street stop, into the gutter in front of their building, in the bathroom at the hair salon. In practically every restroom of what used to be her favorite restaurants. She had puked in the ladies’ room at a Broadway show. At the spa midmassage. In a marble-floored bathroom stall the day before at the courthouse where they’d gotten married. She had even puked on Levi one night, as he lay sleeping in her arms. Once a week, he reminded her, “Mama? ‘Member when you throw up on me?”

Dr. Patka, their diminutive obstetrician, insisted the vomiting was fine. It even had a long Latin name. Hyperemesis Gravidarum. Which, to Susanna, sounded anything but fine.

Don’t worry, Dr. Patka soothed in her singsong, North Indian accent. The baby was gaining weight, the heartbeat perfect. As if throwing up every day for nine months was no big deal. Susanna fought the urge to defend herself. She wasn’t some wimpy prima donna. She’d been captain of the MacArthur High School field hockey team. She’d pierced her own belly button in college. She had tolerance. For pain. For Allie’s bullshit. For her parents’ disgust that she was gay. A pretty girl like you, her father had said, shaking his head, when she’d come out to them after college.

But this was 247 days of retching until her throat was sore, heaving until she felt like she’d been kicked in the ribs. She had calculated it one night, as she sat in piss-soaked maternity sweatpants, her cheek resting on the puke-mottled lid of the toilet. And she still had a month to go.

She had tried everything. The cotton seasickness wristbands whose pressure points were supposed to alleviate nausea. She had taken extra vitamin B-12, usually vomiting the pill along with milk she’d chased it with. And there were those darn Preggie Pops lollipops ($4.99 a box). Oh the promises those lollipops had made with that smiling pregnant woman on each wrapper. A natural way to ease nausea! Great for labor! Alleviates dry mouth! Quick energy boost! She had ordered a box from drugstore.com, tried one, and thrown the rest away.

The OB nurse had given her a handout with yet another photo of a happy pregnant woman, her smile so placid that Susanna wanted to tear the paper into pieces, throw it in the toilet, and puke on it.

SUGGESTED SNACKS FOR MORNING SICKNESS:

Lemons (eat them, suck on them, sniff them)

Ginger (ginger soda, ginger tea, ginger jam on toast, ginger snaps)

Peppermint tea

Crackers

Jell-O

Flavored Popsicles

Pretzels

It wasn’t morning sickness, Susanna thought. It was all-goddamn-day sickness. And peppermint tea was not a snack.

There were more DON’Ts in this pregnancy than DOs.

Don’t eat spicy. Don’t eat greasy. Don’t eat foods with a strong odor. Don’t drink with your meals. Don’t overeat. Don’t nap after you eat.

At first, she had followed these suggestions. She was a do-gooder after all, she thought as she squirted a zigzag of ketchup on the half-eaten hot dog. After the birth of the twins, Allie had started calling her Miss Goody Two-shoes, especially when Susanna insisted they stop swearing in front of the boys, they eat strictly organic, they try to be more positive, less cynical, have more fun. They were mommies now, after all.

Susanna reached into the refrigerator ( aha, Brie! Screw your no-soft-cheese rule, Dr. Patka ), and the baby kicked hard, a low jab that made her lean on the cold freezer door for balance. She gave her belly a few firm pats, and shushed, “I know, sweetie, that lemonade’s got you all excited now.” The baby responded with a roll and Susanna’s thin tee shirt rippled.

She remembered her first pregnancy with the twins with a nostalgic yearning. Despite the scheduled C-section (they were six pounds each) and double the hormones, the pregnancy had seemed effortless. Susanna had felt that proverbial glow, as if the life coiled within had painted every part of her, inside and out, with a magical luminescence.

Friends said they’d never seen her so lovely and asked if they could paint her and photograph her. She had modeled nude for their friend Brett, a bisexual sculptor with a graying ponytail, and as the spotlight warmed her naked shoulders and the cool air hardened her nipples, Susanna had been certain she had never been so beautiful, because this beauty was necessary. Allie, and all of Susanna’s art school professors, had preached passion, guts, ferocity. Nothing as mundane as necessity. But every one of Susanna’s paintings paled next to the work of art she had become, and after the twins were born, the unthinkable happened — the photographs Allie had shot, some of which lined the walls of the country’s finest museums (and the walls of their lives), photographs that had once seemed like tiny miracles to Susanna, withered in the resplendent light of the double miracle of Levi and Dash.

Now, in this pregnancy, Susanna felt shriveled. Un miraculous. The tedium of slogging through each vomit-scented day, the hours of napping, the afternoons lying prone on the couch while the boys played Chuggington Traintastic Adventures on their iPads. Her once Pilates-toned muscles had slackened. Her skin was so dry, it itched, despite the cups of water she drank and the shea butter she lathered on before bed. What a waste of time, she thought, and quickly reminded herself it would be worth it in the end. Wouldn’t it? Wasn’t creating life enough?