Paula Bomer - Nine Months

“And what exactly is that, the childhood you never had?”

“I was the third child and my mother was so overwhelmed. And how can anyone pay attention to three children? And then my mother became so miserable and she started sleeping with the neighbor’s son, a high-school boy. Then my parents got divorced.”

Sonia knew all of this back in college. Hearing it again refreshes her memory of that time. Backstage, a delicious joint being passed around. A cooler full of Rolling Rock beer. Another friend, Lola, sitting on the lap of the lead singer of Zug Zug, a band of five beautiful, sweaty young men. Zug Zug meant fuck in caveman, according to them.

Rufus stops nursing and Katrina rubs his head and kisses him. He does not look like a happy kid. He looks fearful and miserable, anemic even. He glares at Sonia.

“I feel like your son hates me.” There, she said it. Fuck Rufus’s feelings. The way Katrina talks in front of him, she wasn’t going to worry about saying the wrong thing.

“He doesn’t like visitors so much. We mostly spend our time alone, here in the house, or walking around the property, enjoying nature. We have four acres, so we have a lot of privacy” Katrina says.

“Do you guys have friends? I mean, you must have friends.”

“We have some of Joe’s customers — he deals weed … but, eh, not really. Friends are overrated. Family is everything.

“I understand that to a degree, but you are a person, too. And you need to be a person in the … in the world! I guess that’s how I feel. I’m out here, in the world right now. I’m letting the father of my boys take over.”

“Men are not made for child care. In hunter-gatherer cultures, the women take care of the children, while the men take care of the hunting and the government. There’s a lot we can learn from more primitive cultures. Listen, tomorrow is Sunday. Why don’t you stay the night — although I really feel like sending you back to your boys right this second …”

“I’m not going back right now. Not tonight. I will go back eventually.” Sonia feels small saying this. But it’s true and sitting here talking to Katrina makes her realize it. She can’t return yet. “We should go out, Katrina. You and me, at some local bar. Leave Rufus for a couple hours with his dad.”

“I don’t drink, Sonia.”

“We could drink club sodas. You know, just get out. I mean I love your devotion, but how often do we get to see each other?”

Katrina looks at Sonia with all her dewy, washed-out-colon energy. She smiles a smile of real generosity. “I know you think I’m crazy, Sonia. I also know that almost everyone thinks we, people like me, are crazy. But we’re sane in an insane world, you see? Thomas Szasz said that about schizophrenics. But really, it’s us, women in touch with their bodies and the humans that come forth from them, that are truly the sane ones even if people think we’re crazy. It’s really hard to be in touch with our natural selves in such a busy, technology driven world. We have to make a real effort to tune out the bad noise, the corruption of the so-called civilized world.”

“You wouldn’t have all this information about hunter-gatherer worlds and Thomas Szasz to base your ideas on if it weren’t for airplanes, universities, and Western education. That information is made available to you because of technology and Western civilization. Do you not see the irony of that?”

Katrina’s face looks pinched. Rufus has walked away from her, and disappeared into a dark room behind them. “Irony isn’t my thing, Sonia.”

“Well, do you understand the contrived nature of your ideology?” Sonia feels like an idiot even as the words leave her mouth. Ideology! Contrived nature! Who does she think she is?

“I understand you need to see it that way. That’s because you’re afraid.” The pinchedness leaves Katrina’s face. She looked serene again. “Rufus has headed back to our bedroom because he wants to nap. I better go back there to nurse him to sleep. First, I’ll show you our guest room. You’ll stay the night, won’t you?”

“I’d love to. Thanks.” There’s something about Katrina, something so magnetic, that has always drawn people to her, including Sonia. Even if her friend has changed, she still has that magic, of making you want to be around her. “One more thing. Do you still paint?”

Katrina looks straight at her. There’s no wistfulness, no regret in her face. “No. Painting is for children. I only do the work of a grownup now.”

Sonia pushes herself up from the couch. Following Katrina up the stairs and into a small room with peeling pink-flowered wallpaper, she is reminded of how she always felt following Katrina around. Big, ungainly. The ugly duckling behind the poised one. Now, here, pregnant and truly ungainly and on Katrina’s turf again — it had always been Katrina’s turf, the clubs, the parties — she feels the same again. Like an eager and stupid person, like the awkward one. A person who needs to be led.

AFTER NAPTIME, THERE’S DINNER. Katrina cooks, while Joe is in another room watching TV.

“How is it that you have a TV if you try to shut out the civilized world?” Sonia asks.

“Look — we have a TV. A stove. Indoor toilets. Although we like to camp. We camp a lot and then we really get back to nature.”

Sonia helps by cutting carrots and cauliflower and washing collard greens.

“I’m going to be frank. This dinner is going to give my pregnant ass major gas.”

“Gassiness comes from the sulfur and sulfur is so ”—Katrina draws out the word—“good for you.”

Sonia eats it all, the brown rice, collard greens, carrots, cauliflower and some strange, lumpy pudding for desert. She was starved and grateful for food. But afterward, she pays the price, shamefully and painfully spends the evening in her little room, trying to spare the others from her insane gas. She comes out to say goodnight to the three of them sitting around in the damp and cold TV room, watching some violent and graphic cop show that she would never in a million years let her children watch. It’s dark. The screen glows and reflects off their three moonish faces as they turn to her and bid her goodnight.

BACK IN THE GUEST room, piles of sour blankets lay heaped atop her. Farting away in the dark, her stomach a rumbling mess, she begins to feel the baby move. Kicking, turning around in circles, a little monster inside of her. Sonia tries to breathe out of her mouth, feeling bewildered. This has happened twice now, to carry another life inside of her, and yet the weirdness, the surreal aspect of it, is still surreal. It does not feel natural. It feels ungodly. She feels terror. Pain. And then, the stink of her own self, which brings her back to the room, outside of her body, is a sort of relief. A distraction.

The door to her room slowly opens, and there, lit up momentarily in the hallway, stands Joe. He closes the door behind himself and comes and sits on the edge of the double mattress.

“Jesus, it stinks in here.”

“Sorry.”

Joe whistles as he lets out a heavy, blowing breath. “Good God.”

“Sorry! I am in here to spare your family. I’d rather be watching TV out there, but I thought it would be cruel of me. I can’t eat cauliflower when I’m pregnant. Or collard greens, for that matter.” She pauses. “What you are doing here?”

“Oh, I think you know what I’m doing here.”

Sonia tenses, the baby flips around and kicks her in the ribs, and then Sonia farts again. Her eyes begin adjusting again, after being blinded by the hallway light. She sees Joe’s nose, thin and handsome, pointed toward her. The dark of his eye sockets. His small hands folded neatly in his lap.