Elisa Albert - After Birth

You’re a total jerk.

Shira switched rooms before winter break. Her mother died in the spring. After graduation the very attractive guy must have broken up with her for real because last I heard, she had married a pediatric dentist, made a bunch of kids, and lives in one of those upstate towns full of Orthodox Jews. It’s probably not far from here.

Christmas Eve at Cam and Betsy’s. The house is done up pretty festive, and everyone’s in a good mood.

Cam and I do that thing where we both go in to kiss the right cheek, then both correct to the left, then very subtly freak out about how close we are to meeting at the mouth.

Aren’t you, like, Jewish? I ask him.

So they tell me.

All righty, then. Merry Christmas.

Cat is dying for the scoop on Mina. She hasn’t even paused to hate what I’m wearing.

I heard she had her baby.

Yeah.

She seems really cool.

She is.

Walker climbs into my lap. Boobie , he says. Boobie?

I let him nurse pretty much whenever he wants, and occasionally people ask in this airy voice oh, are you still breastfeeding?

Sure enough, condescending poli-sci guy’s dead-eyed wife: still breastfeeding, huh?

Whoa , says condescending poli-sci guy. If they’re old enough to ask for it…

In August at a café in Chatham, a second-home grandma type sat down at the next table and said, quite companionably, you know you can breastfeed that kid until he’s twenty, but you’ll fuck him up for life.

Oh, don’t worry , I told her, just as companionably. He’s not mine. Downright clairvoyant, wasn’t I.

The look on her face! (“I don’t argue where there’s real disagreement,” says the woman in my favorite Grace Paley story.)

Like they wish you would just stay home, out of sight. No, I will not stay out of sight. I will not go sit in the toilet in the middle of my dinner so you don’t have to trouble yourself about the fact that you’re a bipedal mammal, bitch.

I wish Crisp and Jerry were here.

Yes , I say. It would appear that I am breastfeeding.

Well, that’s okay , Dead Eyes says.

Well, thank you.

Is it painful? Cat wants to know, ever the academic.

No. The comments are painful. The stares of disgust kind of hurt.

Who cares what anyone thinks? Paul says. A for effort, sweetheart.

My sister-in-law still nurses her kid, and he’s, like, twelve , Cam says.

He’s three! Betsy hollers.

Whatever, man, it’s weird. He, like, massages her other one while she tries to carry on a conversation with you like nothing’s happening.

Well my God, imagine, the nerve to multitask like that!

Everyone looks at me.

No, seriously, you should bury her up to her neck and throw rocks at her until she dies. What a crazy lunatic, offering her child a normal, healthy mammalian childhood. A woman in full bloom of health daring to use her body according to its biological design and function? Gross! When she could be purchasing from a multinational corporation a totally inferior product for the same purpose. That’s downright un-American. And to do so within full view of an intellectual such as yourself!? Tie her up and SET HER ON FUCKING FIRE.

Paul is stock-still. Betsy emits a nervous, high-pitched giggle, and Cat keeps taking these extraordinarily small bites of her food, and I think: I fucking hate you. I really fucking hate you all.

Then, oh great, just wonderful, of course, sure, my mother is resting an elbow on the mantel, nodding at me, mock impressed.

The doctor told me breastfeeding was “for the natives,” she says. They had these pills you could take so you wouldn’t make milk. The nurses were adamant about formula. I hardly saw you the first five days. It was absolute heaven.

Before anyone says anything else I gather up the baby and go out the front door with a tit still hanging out.

Slam . I forgot my bag, which has my keys in it. I sit on our stoop for a while, heart pounding, tears a-rolling. Then I carry Walker down to Crisp and Jerry’s and sit on their steps for a few, trying to calm down, waiting for something. Can’t tell you what. A sign. Absolution. Grace. None shows, but when I knock, Mina opens up and I don’t have to explain a goddamn thing. She locks the door behind us.

Weeds or flowers , Marianne told me the first time we had dinner. She singled me out early. I was terribly flattered. Those are your options. Are you hardy, do you have that sturdy beauty? Or are you a delicate cultivation? Nothing sadder than a weed hard at work to become a flower. Or a flower pretending she’s a weed.

Isn’t that kind of essentialist?

Weed or flower, sweetheart. Weed or flower.

On the last day, bleeding pretty much over, back to normal, I try to convince Paul it’s okay. “Safe,” as they say.

Please , I say as we near the end. He’s on top, which despite the weight of history and religion is truly my favorite. Lately it feels like this is the only way I can get anywhere near him.

Baby , I say to him, it’s okay.

You sure? He is unconvinced, but there is some willingness to be convinced.

Yes, baby, yes. Please. Yes.

You’re sure?

The thought of him coming inside me, just this once — like old times! — is itself almost enough to push me over the edge. I’m close. So close.

Please , I beg him. Please.

The uterus is a monster. Insatiable. It wants to eat my brain alive. The minute I begin to relax and really inhale, exhale, clear my head, look around, start to see the world again, recognize myself and the people around me, at that very moment there’s this malevolent whisper, this taunting have another baby, have another one, c’mon, what’re you, chicken or something, when are you going to have another one, go for it do it do it do it come on come on you know you want it you want it, you know you do.

Before I had a baby it was all about are you going to have a baby? How many more years left until you can’t have a baby? What happens if time runs out and you’ve failed to have a baby? Will you have a baby? Will you, will you? What if you miss out and don’t have a baby? Tick tock, tick tock! (By the way, psssst! Don’t you want a baby? Does it matter?? Have one!)

Fine, great, okay, so it all worked out and you had a baby before the iron curtain of forty-whatever came down, and you didn’t even have to manufacture one out of questionable medical ethics, sheer will, and a suitcase of cash. High-five, you did it! Well done. Now: are you going to have another one? Don’t you want another one? And another? Are you going to have another? Are you? Are you?? Having the one, it turned out, wasn’t enough to get the world, or the world inside your body, off your back.

Paul finishes on my hip and I get myself a washcloth.

The final college roommate was Liz. Her father had killed himself. She was weirdly quiet and quite shitty at eye contact, sitting on a trash heap of anger, lying about it as hard as she possibly could. She was queen of the dykes, and I loved them all, my darling dykes, done with the defects of straight girls. It seemed to me at that point that one could not be a fully realized woman — nay, human — if one was not a lesbian. Or, distant second, a straight man. A person who is interested in women, in other words. A lover of women. A person for whom women are the focal point, the main intrigue.