Elisa Albert - After Birth

Are you fucking joking? Are you kidding me right now?

What?

Nothing. That’s really nice of you. Good.

A house fell down on Main Street. A nineteenth-century brick row house. Most of the façade and the southeastern wall of the thing. Looks like a dollhouse now. All the rooms are visible from the front. There was work being done on the house next door, and you know how sometimes when they mess with the foundation of a two-hundred-year-old house the one next door decides to fall down? It’s like the house says oh great here we go again with another round of these jerks, another generation of assholes making noise; I think I’ll call it a day.

I stand across the street for a while with like thirty other people watching the trucks and the flashing lights. Walker asleep in the stroller.

I loved that dollhouse my father got me the first time my mother was sick. Getting to see inside the whole house, inside every room, all those private spaces that make up the life of a family. I was godlike, omniscient. I knew every corner of that house. All its goings-on were so, so small and so very manageable as compared with mine. No unknown rooms, no known but uninhabitable ones.

Agonizingly new baby at the co-op.

How old’s your baby?

Just about two weeks.

Tiniest person. The mom is not friendly. Does it cost her money to smile?

The baby’s big brother runs up and kisses her face, runs off again.

Her protector , the dad says. I nod.

Lucky girl.

Naomi hands me a flyer when my shift’s over.

Gonna be amazeballs this month. Bunch of farmers from Germantown are joining up, gonna start a monthly CSA tie-in. How great is that? You can pick up your produce at the party!

In January the CSA consists exclusively of potatoes and onions and kohlrabi, but I do like it up here, in theory.

My lame book , Mina says when I finally tell her how much I adore it.

It’s not lame. I really loved it.

Thank you. That’s nice to hear.

I mean, and it was kind of a big deal, wasn’t it?

To you, I guess.

We both know quite well her book’s a big deal. I’m pretending otherwise so she won’t think I’m a culture vulture. Only decent to make believe you don’t know how to use the Internet. Pretend you can’t find out all sorts of shit about people before you actually get to know them. Or in lieu of actually getting to know them.

She shrugs. She won’t trade on it. Not a trace of arrogance.

Maybe I’d feel better about it if it’d been less of a big deal. It just fucks with you, how people fall all over themselves being nice to you all of a sudden. They write you off as a crazy bitch for years, then suddenly they stop and pay attention and reward you for being a crazy bitch. Complete mindfuck. And speaking of mindfuck. Turns out we’re going to Brooklyn at the end of the month.

Like, to visit?

No.

I would rather she just hit me in the face.

Wait, you’re going to Brooklyn to live?

For now.

But. What? Why? Crisp and Jerry aren’t coming home for another six months.

The gig is over. And this town is kind of a shithole, and my sister’s being weirdly nice.

They already have sisters, the best girls. If you can find a girl to love, it’ll turn out she already has a sister.

So you’re going to Brooklyn. To live.

My sister has a lot of space.

Ooh, like a brownstone?

She has a lot of space.

But you have a community here.

By which I mean, I have a community here, and it’s you.

This was always temporary.

I just thought.

Brooklyn’s not that far.

Seriously, though? Brooklyn?

What’s wrong with Brooklyn? But she can’t even keep a straight face long enough to get past the “Brook.”

Wow, dude.

My sister’s been really amazing the last few weeks on the phone. Really supportive.

You’ll just love living among the bourgeoisie. Such good people. Salt of the earth.

She’s my sister.

I’m your sister, you fucking whore.

Don’t be weird.

Do you not understand what my life was like before you?

I do , she says.

You are going to completely despise it there.

You’re probably right.

Whatever, no, go live a highly curated little life along with all the other highly curated little lifers.

My sister wants to help. I think she misses when her kids were little. And this way the kids get to know each other. And she lives in a giant house, and her marriage sounds like it’s just about over…

So what’d you put a fucking spell on me for?

You saved my life.

How nice for you.

Another one bites the dust. This house can’t be salvaged. Gonna have to tear it all down.

At pickup I am fleetingly overcome with wanting Nasreen’s stepson. Built, broad, twenty-five, tattoo sleeves in brilliant colors on both arms, radiates sex.

It takes me by surprise, the wanting, and I understand that in some way I am better.

I don’t need her.

Forget her.

You okay? Paul wants to know in the thirty seconds before he’s asleep.

Don’t be one of those women who bitch to their husbands about other women all the time , my mother advises in singsong. Men do not care about the dramas of women and are exhausted by women who do. She’s trying to be helpful. And she’s actually not wrong.

I’m fine. I say.

What? What’s the matter?

My good Paul.

Spare him , my mother croons.

But you can’t complain to the source of your complaint, so.

She’s leaving.

Who’s leaving?

He’s snoring before I can answer.

A night in the city again.

On the train down I’m sitting next to some fifteen-year-old texting texting texting the whole way. Hate these little girls because they never have to be alone with themselves. Life is going to be so fucking cruel to you, you prissy little bitch.

So it seems I’m the kind of old person who hates young people. This is a bad sign.

I’m crashing at Erica and Steve’s, because it’s free and luxe and huge and there are views and I figure I owe them a visit. It’s decorated like an expensive, of-the-moment hotel.

Hey wow your tits look semi-normal again. I got used to seeing them so freakishly huge , Erica says before hello. She is wearing the scariest shoes I have ever seen. What? What? I’m saying your tits look good! Don’t be so fucking touchy.

I’m fond of Steve, it turns out. He’s a shameless good time. Ribald, hilarious goofball undercover stoner with the most abhorrent politics you can possibly imagine. I can’t help it; I’m fond of the dude.

He’s gotten into fancy-cocktail making, simian brow all knotted in deep focus for the twenty minutes it takes him to mix us some drinks.

But the other thing about Steve is the sense that because I am a female he can’t immediately classify, I set him more or less on edge. Call it low-grade misogyny. It’s not extreme-porno misogyny, not I’m-gonna-rape-and-kill-you misogyny, just plain old run-of-the-mill semiconscious women-are-to-fuck-or-mother misogyny. Fear of the female. Menstrual cycle as mysterious sinister secret, et cetera. Women as doormats and/or commodities and/or hookers, the end. Intuition an absurdity. Life only and always about what we can touch/articulate/own. And me with my insistence on eye contact, my opinions! My candor! My always! Feeling! So! Much! Something about how these kinds of men would never dream of hanging out with a woman for fun, talking to a woman just because her perspective on life is inherently valuable. Not, at least, if he wasn’t also hoping to fuck her.