Ramona Ausubel - A Guide to Being Born - Stories

Mabel was holding a book in her hand, The Sonoran Desert.

“I’m into the outdoors and I think saguaro cactuses are amazing,” Booker said, opening up to a dog-eared page. Mabel read the highlighted sentence, “The outer pulp of the saguaro can expand like an accordion, increasing the diameter of the stem and, in this way, can increase its weight by up to a ton.”

“Wow.” Mabel tried to care about the cactus, because it was clear how much Booker did. But the real excitement was Sue, whom he took from her cage and brought over to Mabel on his index finger.

“It’s OK, you can touch. She’s Sue the Cockatoo.” Sue the Cockatoo checked Mabel out and seemed mostly to approve. Mabel stuck her finger out and Sue beaked it. Mabel made bird noises and Sue made no noises. Then Sue made bird noises and Mabel made bird noises and felt good, like they had connected. Booker put Sue down on the table and she walked awkwardly around.

Mabel watched while Booker stuffed two Cornish game hens with two whole hot dogs each, nested together and sticking out the back of the birds. He hummed and rubbed dried oregano and butter on the pinky-white skin. The birds went in the oven. Then Booker shucked corn, a few of the silky strands falling on the floor. Mabel collected them and braided them together. Booker opened the dishwasher, which was empty, and put the two ears of corn inside, in the place the silverware should go. “My mom’s special recipe,” he told Mabel.

“I see.” Mabel thought for a second. “And they cook in there?” She paused again, though he was nodding.

“They steam.”

On the couch, they drank sparkling cider out of coffee mugs. His had a picture of a rainbow and said 3rd Graders Are Number One , and hers had cats on it whose bodies spelled the word LOVE . They polished off a bag of Fritos. Booker told Mabel all about Sue the Cockatoo. He got her when she was a baby, just a hatchling , he kept saying. “She likes peanuts in the shell best. That’s her chocolate pudding.”

“I like chocolate pudding, but what I really like is tapioca,” Mabel said, a little tired of talking about the bird. For a while they discussed desserts. Neither one liked cake: too cakey. But both loved pie. “You can come over to my house sometime and I’ll bake you a cherry pie and we can eat it outside with our fingers,” Mabel offered. “But I live with my dad. Shit. Can I actually use your phone?”

She dialed her home number. “I’m sorry,” she said, twirling the cord around her finger until her skin turned purple. “I miss you too. Order some pizza or some Chinese food. We can have it again for breakfast. Don’t forget about street sweeping tomorrow. I know, Dad, I’m sorry. I love you.”

The dishwasher-steamed corn was covered in butter and tasted good and sort of clean. They laughed hard when Mabel went to cut a piece of meat and accidentally shot a hot dog out of her tiny chicken’s tiny chicken-hole and onto Booker’s plate. He gave it back to her. “Your hot dog, madam,” he said.

“Much obliged.”

They lay down on the floor to let the food settle.

“So why did you quit?” Booker asked.

“That motherfucker Mr. Joseph T. Bowers tried to kiss me in the break room this morning.”

“Will you sue?”

“Nah. I kneed him in the balls. And he’s already fat and lonely.”

“Here,” Booker said, patting his chest. “I’m sorry that happened.”

Mabel looked at him. “You’re a nice guy, right?”

“I’m a harmless dental assistant.”

She listened to his body make alive-noises. She thought about what it would be like if those noises were louder, if all the time when people were walking around buying turnips and drinking cappuccinos they could hear the juices in their guts making high-pitched squeals and low burbles. If they all had to speak up to compete with their own intestines.

“Where did you get your name?” Mabel asked.

“I’m named after Booker T. Washington. My dad’s really into civil rights.”

“Didn’t he invent peanut butter?”

“No, that’s George Washington Carver.”

“Oh. Apparently it’s been a long time since fourth grade.” Booker’s stomach made a long, howling screech. “Did you hear that?” Mabel asked.

“Hear what?”

“It’s very busy in here. Amazing.” She poked his belly. “You know, I didn’t used to like my dentist, but now I have a pretty good one. I like the free toothbrush,” Mabel said, and then before she could stop herself, “I have a retainer.”

“My mom has false teeth that she soaks in an ashtray at night,” Booker offered, laughing.

“Wow.”

“Where’d you get your name?” he asked.

“It was my grandma’s name. My middle name is Lady, which was my mother’s name. She died due to complications after childbirth. I guess you could say I killed her.” Mabel’s hands got slippery and she tried to ignore the picture of her father sitting in the living room of their grubby apartment this morning cleaning his boots with the end of a chopstick. “I have an idea,” Mabel said. “Why don’t you check and see if I have any cavities?” She lay on her back and opened her mouth as wide as she could.

Booker looked carefully inside, tooth by tooth.

“You have a mercury filling in number twenty-two. You might think about getting a porcelain one someday… I’d need tools to really tell, of course, but your teeth look good to me. You have nice, strong molars,” he told her, and he came so close that she could smell his spit, and she kissed him, one fast-and-over kiss on the mouth. “We could know each other really well,” he blurted out.

And just like that, Mabel saw a crack form on the surface of her life. An opening. She did not know if it was deep or shallow, or where it led, but she did know something that did not exist before had begun to exist now. “Do you know who you are, without your family? Who only you are?” she asked, without meaning to. Mabel did not know why she’d asked the question. She felt blood rush to her cheeks and wished she could have said something normal. Complimented something manly about Booker, or simply given him the coy, sexy glance she knew she was supposed to have practiced. But Booker did not pull away from her, or look at her like she was a crazy person, or even sigh. He squinted at the ceiling, and thought, and then Booker whispered, “Pretend we are two huge saguaro cactuses, side by side in the rocky ground.”

Mabel wanted to know the answer even if it belonged to another question. “OK. I’m pretending,” Mabel agreed.

“Our arms are wrapped around each other’s necks. It is warm out and we are growing bright pink flowers. Our spines prick into one another’s four-hundred-year-old skin and the water inside us seeps out in little beads. We could survive without rain for months. You can’t believe how many stars there are above us, just millions. Everything around us is alive and busy, but all we have to do is stand still. The small birds that make homes in our bodies have left us alone in the dark.”

POST-THANKSGIVING, this was Leonard Senior’s territory: pacing up and down the 100 block of Sapphire Avenue, his trigger thumb all the time ready. He wore a red sweater, the same red sweater every evening, tucked into a pair of slacks. A reindeer with a flashing red nose was pinned over his heart. He was lit up in red, green and blue by his homemade light display; the animatronic and the flashing. The whole block was lit up, in fact. The neighbors across the street had a separate set of heavy drapes made for these months. Their measly store-bought light-icicles hung limp and drooling toward the ground. Their palm tree was bare and brown, not wrapped in Christmas glory but standing with its one big foot in the earth, sulking.