Ramona Ausubel: A Guide to Being Born: Stories

In the parking lot, a bird flew over us with a fish in his claws. They were about the same size. The fish faced forward and flapped its tail. It flew. It swam through the air. What a surprise that must have been, to be swimming along and then suddenly to be plucked out and held between the sharp talons of a hawk, swooping out over the hills. Suffocating in all that air.

The girl was still in my chair when I got back at the end of the day. She was watching TV.

“So,” I said.

“Hello.”

“You’re still here.”

“My name is Madeleine. I’m eight.” She smiled, sharp. “You?”

“OK. Roger. I’m forty-three. Almost forty-four.” I kept talking. I did not find a stopping place. “My birthday is in May. The fifteenth. The ides of May.” I laughed in hollow, uncomfortable rounds. She nodded politely.

“Happy early birthday. I finished my drawing.” She took the paper out. It was Poppy, from the photograph. She looked upsettingly happy in it, the kind of happy where she can tell you exactly how the good things went down—the soccer goal, the A on the math test, the birthday gifts opened and piled.

“You drew my daughter.”

“I know.”

“What’s it called?”

“I don’t know. How about Still Life with Child .” She gave it to me and I folded it up and put it in my pocket.

“ Still Life with My Child ,” I repeated. “We can’t be friends, me and you.”

“OK. Why?”

“I already have a kid.”

“I know—I drew her. And I already have a dad. I just wanted to use your desk.”

When I got home, my girls were asleep on the couch. Poppy was covered in a hand-knit blanket and Laura was uncovered, open to the world. Her pants were twisted around her waist and her shirt was falling open, a square of breast visible through the buttonhole. On the floor, Laura’s sketchbook was open to a drawing of Poppy’s face. Her curled fists were absent. The uneasy shape of her body. In the drawing, her face looked like it could be talked into being normal. A few changed strokes and she would be a regular kid. Oprah was on TV without sound. She sat on her white couch and laughed with a famous person. They looked serious for a moment and then they rejoiced. Serious, rejoice, serious, rejoice. I could hear the breathing of my wife and daughter above all else. They were not in sync. I sat in the nearby chair and did not change anything.

Dear Poppy,

My mother was the last to admit your differences. She came to stay here from Boston when you were born and knit about a hundred blankets and hats and booties. She cooked us dinner every night and changed diapers and sang to you and me and everyone else. She was making a loud entrance as a grandmother. I saw that she had been waiting. When we first learned that you might not develop normally, she went on a tirade about the incompetence of doctors. “They always want to give you a prognosis,” she told me. “It’s a baby! How do they know anything about what’s going to happen!”

“They aren’t predicting that she’ll be a pro ice skater or that she’ll fail the seventh grade. They are taking note of her functioning, her body’s functioning.”

“Of course they are. And who stands to gain from that? How many tests do they want to conduct now? And what’s the price of those tests?”

“Should I refuse them, then?”

“You tell me that there is something wrong with your daughter. Say it, then, if you think it’s true. Say, ‘My daughter is a retard.’”

I didn’t say anything to her. I did let them do tests, though, and they kept coming back with bad news. Even still, your grandmother was your big fan all along. She was the one who set up most of our appointments with learning specialists and everyone else. These people told us happily in their offices that everyone has a different way of developing and all we’d have to do was embrace yours.

She visits you every three months. She still looks at you like a healthy girl. Your uncle has two now, so Grandma gets to do the regular things, which is good for her. She plays softball and reads Tintin to them. But when she comes here, she sits right down next to you and rubs your arms while she tells you about the world. “There have been some big trades in baseball already this year,” she says, “and I don’t know if you know, but I think the political tide might finally be turning.” You seem to listen. Your eyes are alert and you squeeze her hand back as if to say, “I hear you.”

We ate outside. It has not been warm enough in months, and we wore our coats and wool socks. Laura put out a nice tablecloth and we forked lamb and potatoes into our mouths with the sound of wind shaking the trees out. There were no buds yet, but the trees seemed ready. They seemed to be putting their fingers up, considering when to unroll this year’s greenery.

“How you doing, Poppy girl?” I said to her, holding her hand. Her eyes were bright but did not meet mine. “You had a good day?” I waved her hand around, I kissed each of her fingers. “Today I scared a lot of people—aren’t you proud?”

“She sang a lot,” Laura told me. “We sat out here all afternoon and she sang back to the birds. A squirrel came and ate the birdseed. I didn’t stop it.”

“A singing lady? That’s you?”

I do not know how to talk to my daughter in any way but as to a baby. She is the size of a large dog now. Her hands are hands, not miniatures, but my voice still jumps an octave when I address her. Laura is better about this. Though she lifts Poppy out of bed to bathe her, though she sits at the side of the tub and washes, she does not baby talk.

I heard her say through the bathroom door this morning, in the same, even voice she uses to speak to me, “You are covered in shit, my love.”

Poppy’s room is next to ours, and a door has been installed to connect them. There is an actual door, but for us what matters is the hole in the wall. Poppy’s bed has rails on it so that she doesn’t scoot herself out in the night. She sleeps the way she lives—on her back. Her entire world consists of whatever is above her. The nubby ceiling is her vista. Her panorama.

In our bed, Laura and I move close. She used to sleep naked and I remember the feeling of our skins wrapped up. Now she likes to be ready to jump out of bed and take care. To wash and comfort.

“There was a girl in my office today,” I whispered. “Someone else’s kid.” I waited for her to be angry.

“Are you trying to admit something to me?”

“I don’t know. She drew Poppy.”

“So did I.”

“I saw—it’s nice. A nice drawing.”

“Of a nice daughter,” she said. “What about this girl?”

“Poppy will never get to sit in my office chair and draw. It doesn’t seem fair that some other kid can.”

Laura laughed and brushed her hand over my neck. “You don’t have to avoid contact with every other child on earth. Poppy doesn’t care who sits in your chair, Roger. Poppy doesn’t even know your name.”

Around us the room was full of its noises. The streetlight outside went off for a second and then flashed back on.

Dear Poppy,

There was another letter addressed to us today, forwarded from the doctor. Since he gave a presentation about his planned procedure on you at a medical conference, he’s been getting a lot of mail, which he seems to want us to see. I don’t know if he is proving a commitment to his convictions or hoping that we’ll reconsider and save us all. It was postmarked from Lincoln, Nebraska. I opened it before Roger came home but got as far as “You have no right to toy with a body that is not your own” before I put it down. We had been warned.

“There is some concern over the rights of the developmentally disabled” was how the good doctor put it to us.