Paula Bomer - Nine Months

“Sure, let’s go pick up some groceries and then go home. It’s so hot out here. I think we’d be better off inside, with the air conditioning going. Are you OK, Tom? You look so hot.”

“I am hot! I am hot meat!”

This comment makes Sonia dizzy. “Let’s go get the groceries and get indoors. I can’t take this heat.” They walk by a group of construction men digging up a hole in the street. A jackhammer screams in their ears. Cement dust burns their eyes — Tom starts coughing and Sonia’s eyes tear. They run to get by the mess. Every corner, it seems, is being dug up. For what, thinks Sonia? New pipes? How can every corner in Brooklyn need new pipes every summer? It feels like a lie. Like a conspiracy to torture mothers into moving to the suburbs.

“Mommy, when I’m five years old, I’ll be a big boy, right?”

“Yes, love, but you have quite a ways to go before you turn five. You just turned four a couple months ago.”

“I just keep getting bigger! Someday I’ll be a grownup, right? And a teenager?”

“Oh heavens, let’s not think about it. You’re still my little boy. I like you that way.”

“But, mom, there’s nothing you can do about it.” He’s smiling now, so excited. And Sonia thinks, yes, there is nothing I can do about it. We all get older, and then we die . Tom is jumping with excitement. “I’m just going to keep getting bigger and bigger! And stronger!”

“I know, but I love you just the way you are.”

Is he saying this to torture Sonia? Why this obsession with getting older? And yet, Sonia remembers wanting to get older, too. When does that change? And what’s up with the whole meat inside of him thing? Sonia can’t take it right now. She hauls the stroller, heavy with Mike, up the three stairs to the butcher on Court Street. This nearly makes her cry. Why, why must she be doing this? Why can’t she just do nothing? Why in God’s name is she out in this heat wave, hauling strollers with big sleeping toddlers in them? Inside, although it is air-conditioned and this feels very good, the smell of dead animals overwhelms her. Can’t she just feed her kids noodles for the next three months? Forever? Cold air, cold air. Take a breath. There are five other people there. This seems unbearable to Sonia. How long will she have to wait to order ground beef? Everyone is at the butcher’s. Everyone is eating meat.

Tom says, “Mom, when I’m ten years old, how old will you be?”

“I’ll be forty, I think.”

“Wow! That’s really old. Mom, when I’m eleven years old, how old will Mike be?”

“He’ll be nine. Or eight. I can’t think right now, Tom. I’m trying to get us hamburger.”

“I’ll always be older than Mike, right Mom?”

“Yes.”

“And I’ll always have more meat inside of me, then. Right?”

“Well, I’m not sure about that.” Help! Help me , thinks Sonia, as she tries to make eye contact with someone. Is it her turn? Who’s been helped? Who’s still waiting for help? Sonia has no ability whatsoever to cut a line. Not anywhere, but especially not here, somewhere she goes so often. She looks around, her eyes filled with panic. Who’s next? Is she next? Oh, God, she’ll never get hamburger. Never.

“Have you been helped?”

Is he talking to her?

“Me?” Sonia asks, pointing her own finger — her whole hand, in fact — at her heaving chest. Her shoulders slope downward and in. Her shoulders nearly shiver with the overwhelmitude of it all. “Am I next?” Her voice is a whisper, which prompts a very loud response from the nice Italian man behind the counter.

“Yes, ma’am!”

“Can I get a pound of hamburger meat? No, wait, make it two pounds. Yes, two pounds!” It was working, she’s doing it, she’s getting the meat for her family. Other customers, packages in hand, pass by her for the door. She tries to maneuver the stroller out of the way, and accidentally runs the wheels over an old woman’s foot. “Oh, I’m so sorry, I was just trying to get it out of the way.”

The white haired lady glares at her.

“I’m sorry, really. Are you OK?”

Again, the silent glare, huddling her small body closer to the counter full of steak and pork. Jesus, she could just say, “That’s OK.” She could just say, “It’s nothing, I’m fine.” She could just say something. What does she think, that Sonia purposefully ran the stroller over her fucking foot? God, what is wrong with people? Can’t she see that Sonia is trying to shop with two small children, and doesn’t she know that it’s not an easy thing to do? Can’t she see that she doesn’t feel well? That she’s pregnant? Sonia wants to yell at this old, dried-up bitter bitch. I bet you had kids once, you dumb cow! You just don’t remember how hard it was, do you? You just blanked it all out, because it was that awful! Because you sucked at it, too, just like the rest of us! And now, you walk around smug and mean to others who are no different than what you were. And soon you’ll be wearing diapers again! Soon you’ll be a helpless baby, dependent on some woman in her prime, like my fucking self, to take care of your sorry ass. And then, you’ll be dead. Sonia can’t take it. It’s all too awful. She was just trying to be nice, trying to move her stroller out of the way. What is she supposed to do, leave her kids at home alone while she shops? Tom and Mike, you stay here by yourselves because children shouldn’t be in public places! That’s right, stay home alone because I have to buy hamburger. I’ll just chain you to the radiator so as not to anger the dumb old ladies in the neighborhood .

Sonia is fuming. She is having a moment. She can’t keep it inside any longer. “You know, you could just acknowledge my apology in some way. It wouldn’t kill you to say, that’s OK, or something like that. It was an accident as I said, and I apologized to you and the right thing to do is to say something nice back. Not to just glare at me.”

This prompts another long, nasty glare, and then the old woman opens her wrinkled mouth, and with a coarse, Brooklyn accent says, “You people think you rule the world. Pushing your strollers all over the place.”

“It was an accident! For God’s sake, you never pushed a stroller around? You were in a stroller at one point yourself, being pushed around by your mother! Have you no mercy? I’m pregnant, I don’t feel well! I’m doing the best I can …”

“You come here, you push the real estate market way up, my son has to move to Staten Island because he can’t afford it around here anymore, and then you push those strollers down the street like you own the place. This used to be a nice neighborhood.”

“Tom, Tom,” Sonia says.

Tom is standing quietly, watching his mother with big eyes.

“Ma’am? Your hamburger?”

“Tom, see this lady here? She’s got meat inside of her. And she’ll be dead soon. And then she’ll just be a piece of meat. Not a person anymore. A piece of old meat, rotting in the ground.”

“Ma’am?” The nice Italian man looks at her, with caution in his dark eyes. “Your hamburger is ready.”

Mike sleeps on and Sonia pushes the stroller, the bag of hamburger meat hanging from the handle. They are out of milk. She’ll get it at the corner deli on the way back to her apartment. This thought makes tears come to her eyes. She has to buy milk and she really doesn’t think she can do it. Tom is walking very carefully, deep in thought. Sonia peeks at Mike. A melted Popsicle stick remains clutched in his hand and his hand is curled against his chest. A bright red stain, in the shape of a circle, lies directly where his heart is. Oh, God. Sonia’ll never get out that stain. It looks as if he’s been shot. A man, an attractive man in a nice suit, carrying a briefcase, walks by and glances down at Mike in the stroller, giving Sonia a scornful look. And now, she can barely push the stroller anymore. She’s only three blocks from home, but God, she just can’t do it.