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"Tender Beginnings"
My first thoughts on the eve of my daughter’s birth were of joy, celebration. I was making the preparations, paving the way to her life with open arms and outpouring heart. My wife had just arrived at the hospital and I was in the waiting room pacing round the bolted furniture ‘til they let me into the delivery room to join her as she alone pushed forth our new love into the world. When the doctor finally came, telling me that my daughter was already born, I felt trepidation as to why I had not been allowed to witness and participate (however peripherally) in the birth. Yet nothing could have prepared me for what I was told next. All thoughts of exclusion slipped away into abyss as the doctor informed me that my daughter was born a nigger.
“What!? Doctor, surely there must be some mistake! How could this be?”
“I know how troubling this must be to hear. It’s never easy being the bearer of such bad news. But perhaps if you came down and saw it yourself, things would be easier to explain.”
So I followed him down several corridors to the viewing room: partitioned by a wall of glass, and I stood in the hallway searching the sleeping babies’ faces for my own ‘til the doctor directed me with outstretched finger to a dark corner in the back, beside the shelves and currently unused breathing apparati. I could not see very well through the shadows and informed the doctor of this.
“Yes, in a few minutes we’ll most likely let you into a room where you can [ahem] hold. . . hold your daughter. . . That is if you want to. Of course, we wouldn’t. . . umm. . .”
“But, I mean, is. . . is it even mine? Are you saying. . ? My wife couldn’t! I mean. . .”
“No, no. . . no, no. . . nothing of the sort. We ran full DNA tests, the whole works, given the circumstances. You are the legitimate father. Besides, when you hold, or at least see the baby up close, you’ll see that’s hardly an issue.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“In a private room. As soon as she saw the thing she couldn’t stop crying. I speculate that when she calms down a little she’ll be wanting to see you.”
I braced back my own tears and pieced together a fragile façade of solidity when led to the side-room, awaiting the preparations for my child’s visit. A nurse, careful not to meet my eyes, wheeled it in on a flat, crib-like stroller. I looked down unsure of whether to pick it up or not. It struck me how much it looked like us—my wife and me.
“But, doctor, its skin. . . It’s not—”
“Oh, no, no. . . no, it’s not that, but if you look a little more carefully you can see what I’m talking about. After all, judging by your wife’s reaction, she didn’t need anyone telling her what’s so obvious. . .”
“Doctor. . . I don’t think I can pick it up. I mean, right now anyway. This is all quite a shock. My head feels like it’s spinning. I’m afraid I’d only drop it.”
“Oh, certainly! Keep in mind, we understand the grave stress you must be going through at this moment. Complications with childbirth are some of the most traumatic experiences for family members—especially the parents. If there were to be a [ahem] an accident, no one could possibly hold you accountable given your current state—both mentally and physically; I see how your hands are shaking. Look, if you hold it like this, the soft spot’s pointed right at the floor and— ”
“I think I’m going to be sick. Doctor, where’s my wife?”
“Well, I think she should be— ” A knock at the door. “Come in.”
“The wife is ready to see him now, doctor.”
“Very good. Now just follow this nurse and she’ll take you up to your wife’s room. I assume you’ll need some time to yourselves, so I’ll be by in a little while to check up on her and discuss the baby’s health. Until then, have a good day and may luck find you, sir.”
We met (arms and torsos) and cried. We didn’t speak a word. The plaster walls of the solitary room reverberated with our sobs, and the vacuum of apologies and regrets and empty accusations exploded and lent force to our wails sending shockwaves of sound to pummel our bruised ears and sweaty foreheads. We shivered and rose like the tides; our chests heaved and our cheeks—sucked in—felt the cold, damp breeze sting through the stinging sheets of tears. When we had stopped, the echoes died down slowly through a decade of seconds of a decade of years. Shortly after this sound subsided, the doctor arrived with a knock on the door and no pause for an answer.
“And how are you all doing now?’
“Umm. . . fine, doctor. . . uh. . .”
“Good, good. Now let’s have a look at the lady, shall we?’
He proceeded to examine my wife. She seemed to be doing well and was in quite fine condition.
“And I trust you’re feeling better as well, sir?”
My cheeks were sticky, semi-dry. “Yes, doctor, but. . . we’re still troubled by all this. We just don’t understand how this could be happening. Especially seeing as how, you know, on the surface the child seems normal.”
“Yes, on the surface. And, objectively speaking, the child is normal— ”
“Objectively speaking? Well, if the child’s objectively normal, then she’s not a nigger, right?”
“Hm. Keep in mind now that objectivity is subjective and in our line of work here— ”
“But, doctor, we’re not niggers!” My wife was looking at him desperately.
“Oh, no, nobody is questioning your decency, ma’am.”
“Then how!?”
“Well, madam, as you have most astutely pointed out, yourself and your husband are both normal, upstanding citizens in no way like your offspring. So how is it two top-rate specimens such as yourselves have misfired in the genetic rifle range, so to speak? Well, it turns out that our genes carry much more data than shows up in us as individuals. Certain traits, while not present in the parents, can be. . . oh, what’s the term? . . umm. . . regression!”
“Do you mean ‘recessive’?” I ventured.
“Something like that. The point is: you’ve just brought a healthy child into this world. You should both be proud.”
“We should?”
“Well, not really. I mean, it is healthy, but. . .”
“Well, thank you, doctor. I guess you did all you could. How soon before we’re able to go back home?”
“Well, yes, but first I thought I should make sure you’re aware of all your options.”
“Our options?”
“Yes, have you ever considered an abortion?”
“An abortion? But— ”
“I know. In most cases a post partum abortion would never be considered, but when you start dealing with these types— ” A gasp. “I’m sorry. I know it has to be a difficult thing to get used to. However, in a case such as this, certain allowances can be made for. And while I’m not at liberty to advise either for or against, I would suggest— ”
“But, doctor, isn’t there any chance it might get. . . better?” Tears were creeping back into my wife’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but once you’re a nigger you’re always a nigger. That’s just medical fact.”
Gaze cast down, words a mere wisp of wind beneath her breath, “I couldn’t do it. I just can’t let go of that hope.”
“I understand your feelings, ma’am, however wrong the sentiment may be. A parent can only hope the best for their children. It’s almost impossible to step out of those shoes and stop being a parent and to start thinking like a medical expert. In spite of your gross negligence of reason, I find your delusion to be slightly noble. I’d half-expected this reaction so I brought along a little pamphlet that might help you along the long, hard life that lay ahead of you.”
It was medium-sized as pamphlets go. The picture on the front was a colored drawing of two (presumably) parents, faces partially obscured in shadow and the distorting grimaces of abject horror/revulsion and pained resignation. In the background was a door, cracked, letting a soft, red light spill into the scene. The caption atop read Raising Substandard Human Specimen in These Troubling Times.
I held my wife’s hand in the ensuing silence—our now dry eyes quivering tears, a shimmering blue beneath the surface. The box of cigars with the pink ribbon had been sitting in my lap. I let it slip to the floor. The doctor asked if I’d still be needing them. I wouldn’t. He thanked us and left.
Somehow word had gotten out at work that I was a father. I was met with waves of handshakes and congratulations and then silent, uneasy glances when I replied that, no, I didn’t have any photographs. Every other father kept an album’s worth of family photographs in his wallet. I could sense their former camaraderie veering towards distrust. The truth is, I had thought of taking photographs of the baby at first, I mean, it didn’t look like anything too unusual, just looking at it. But each picture came out tinged/stained sepia in the hue of our misfortune. It was revolting. And there I was: stuck with lame excuses about a broken camera.
I called in sick at the company picnic: an act that surely raised more than a few eyebrows. My coworkers’ nervousness sharpening more directly, bluntly against me, “Say, why don’t you bring the family over this weekend? We’ve gotta see the baby!” “The baby!” “The baby!” Temporary excuses were mustered, but the dam could not hold for long. Something had to be done. My very career was at stake. No self-respecting employee would hide that most precious of gifts from being shared with the rest of the office. [And I couldn’t even fathom the scandal that would break should the truth escape of that thing I actually sired.]
This truth was not so easy [easy!] to hide from my neighbors. They were there—right there—staring at the child we so reluctantly welcomed into our home: into the spaces between their own houses. I heard the whispers. I felt the stares tearing me apart. Perhaps I was a nigger—perhaps my wife. Perhaps I was a nigger-lover. The neighbors’ association was in a panic. I can’t say I blamed them! Questions of property value crept into my own mind, though these were the least of my worries.
My wife was worn, ragged. Stress and fear were chipping away at her frame. Her typically gorgeous exterior was crumbling under the pressure. She obviously couldn’t let the thing breastfeed her. Just touching it was bad enough. While I was away at work every day, she was left alone with it. Naturally she couldn’t feel very safe, much less comfortable. We tried to hire a babysitter, even part-time, but you could see how difficult it would be finding a reliable person to agree to that! Our only choice would be to hire another of their kind and having one in the house was trouble enough. Let another in and they’d be taking over. Besides, that would have been accepting the reality of it on a level we just weren’t ready for.
After hours of searching through the phonebook, I finally stumbled upon someone I thought could might possibly assuage our situation (if not correcting at least concealing, maybe). He was listed under simply “Fixers of Rare and Unusual Problems.” That seemed as close as I could hope to get.
A river of shit bisects the city. His office was on the other side of town. I took a day off work and made the journey by foot, pausing on the bridge, letting the stench swim up—deep and viscous—effusing its effluvia to fill my every pore.
His office was in a small, brick building—a small backroom half-underground down twisting, wrought-iron stairs twisting down the back of a small, dirty, brick building. Many larger, brick buildings filled the area. His office lay snug in a network of narrow, brick alleys meshed snug between the space of the numerous, larger, brick buildings. Winding my way through the dirt and the brick I found the back of the small, brick building twisting down the steep, iron stairs as they creaked and I knocked on the thin-wood door of the small, backroom office in the small, brick building in the center sprawl of a deep, narrow, urban maze.
He let me in at once. I explained my situation and asked if could at least make it so no one could easily tell that my baby was. . . what it was. He said it would be difficult and he would have to see the baby in question before he could even begin to make a decision on what could or could not be done.
I raced back home to fetch the baby. My wife was only too happy to have it out of the house, whatever the reason. I strapped it down in the stroller and pushed it back across town. On the bridge spanning the river, I was once again found to linger. The shit raged in waves meters beneath my feet. I was guided by impulse. I unstrapped the baby and held it in my arms; out in the fetid air its touch didn’t seem so revolting. I held it out—out past the railing, out over the river and the empty air between it and its fatal plummet. I looked around. There was not a person to be seen (I can’t exactly say that this was the most popular part of the city for people to be hanging about). I felt my fingers loosen, the baby slip just an inch, my fingers quiver and then tighten back up again. I couldn’t do it. Even if it was just a nigger, there was some pang of conscience keeping me from murdering it outright. I strapped it back in the carriage and continued along to the small office in the small backroom in the back of the small, brick building buried amid rows and levels of long, narrow, labyrinthine, brick pathways.
I knocked and he opened. “Hm. Ya’ sure are right ‘bout its, umm. . . status. This’ll certainly be difficult if i’is even at’ll possible, which I’m not so sure i’is. The stamp offa nigger’s rollin’ all ova’ this thing.” He squinted into his lighted eyepiece. “I’ll take $500 now an’ 500 more if an’ when I’m successful.”
I was only too happy to hand over the cash.
“Now th’ trouble here’s is the shit jus’ seeps outta its pores. Th’ only thing wec’d even try’d be ta’ fill all’s its damn pores up. Each’n ev’ry one. Now what I’ll haveta do’s whip up a batcha my patented nigger-paste (patent pending) an’ rub it all ova’ its body. Now first ya’ll haveta change th’ damn diaper if ya don’ mind.”
Oh shit! My wife had always done this so far. I didn’t even know where to begin. I laid it face-down on his desk. There were two safety-pins and I figured it’d make the most sense to start with these. I peeled back the plastic-bordered cloth and suddenly had the sensation of crossing the river in a one-man tub—oars rearing and splashing—fighting the current as it bobbed and slipped—its lip just inches of slipping past the surface. It was close. I gagged and jumped back wanting to run around in circles, but given the room’s dimensions I instantly bumped against the back wall. I had no choice but to look at him shaking his head as he reached in a drawer and pulled out a roll of toilet paper. “Ya’ did say this’s your kid, right?” Unable to think a reply, I took the roll and spooled off a bundle, scraping and wiping its little bottom clean. “Th’ winda’s cracked. Jus’ stick it right out there on’th street.” I did. The used diaper went along with the used paper.
He had already begun mixing a seemingly random concoction in a mop bucket. I wasn’t able to keep up with the ingredients as not every item was labeled, but I think I saw toothpaste, artificial sweetener, lemon detergent, baking soda, sand, hairspray, and cheap glue. He was steadily mixing this with a spatula.
Through this, the baby retained its prostrate configuration. Occasionally a thin arc of liquid spurted out from its rear. Its feet kicked lackadaisically every now and then. When he had finished making his paste, I guess, he set the bucket on the desktop and began to slather it over the baby with a used, greenish paintbrush (the walls of the office were orange) flipping it over once in the middle, and lifted it up—eyes agleam with success—no doubt waiting for my joyed reaction. The pasty substance did smell better than the feces, but not enough to be proud of.
“I think it looks more like a nigger than ever before.”
“Whatever, now getth’ hell outta here!”
“But I don’t have another change of diapers. I don’t—”
He threw me some old newspapers and balled-up duct tape and pushed me back up the wrought-iron stairs, into the narrow, brick alley lined with dirt and bricks and used diaper, out through the larger, brick buildings—larger than his own small, backroom office’s small, brick building—out twisting through the labyrinthine, brick heart of the city.
Back home I thought my wife might be upset with the baby’s deplorable condition, but she barely seemed to notice, save for that unconscious rent of disappointment through her eyes when it did, in fact, return at all.
My daughter was a nigger: I couldn’t hide it, I couldn’t get around it, I couldn’t even murder the thing. If I accepted this. . . then what? Lose my job? Lose my house? Lose my wife to the slow stretch of scars and decay wrought with the old gait of a hag? But there wasn’t a thing I could do. My daughter had taken it upon itself to become a nigger, so if anything were to be done it would have to be by her own naïve work.
I began taking it for walks—long walks: through cold rain, through hospitals, resting only in infirmaries. We played in the trash heaps on the outskirts of the city with the rats, with the pigeons, with the wild, rabid dogs that roam in packs down from the hills at night. I bathed it gently in the shallow waters on the river’s strand. I snuggled it cozily in the soft, warm blankets discarded out back of the malaria ward. I loved it, cared for it, as deeply and passionately as I only knew how.
The baby, however, did not get sick. If anything its constitution strengthened. Its eyes shone bright; its muscles stretched firm; its fingers grasped tightly; its breath sang the cool, low key of the wind. It was a beacon of life and health aiming its beam far into the future. No matter how hard I tried, it deceived me, eluded me. If this were a game, it was one step ahead at every turn. This wasn’t a game, but it still got the better of me. I was not proud.
And just when things seemed at their end: job pressures cracking down on me, neighbors’ association hinting eviction, wife finding solace in sleeping pills; my daughter suddenly died one morning. We never found the cause. There was no illness, no strangulation, nothing that could even suggest a reason for demise. Oh well, I guess that’s just what babies do sometimes: they die. My wife and I held hands over the body. We’d forgotten how to smile. We still knew how to cry so we did: now these were tears of joy and release raining down our cheeks. We kissed. A little while later I carried the little corpse around to the back of an Italian restaurant and savored the dull, metallic thud of the dumpster as I threw the little body away. Back in front, I made reservations for later that evening.
After dinner, I told my wife I needed some time alone. She agreed: neither of us had had a moment to ourselves since the baby entered our lives. Even should we have found that rare second alone physically, the baby was there weighing its whole wretched existence down upon our shoulders. I drove out of the city. The sun was still out and shined down striking my face in deep relief. The lines and cracks settled and softened. I felt my skin stretch down into its former, youthful smoothness. I remembered how to smile.
When I reached the grand lake, I rented a boat and rowed out to its center. Nothing but water stretched out to all horizons. The sun had just set and the lake settled into darkness with just the faintest print left at the edge of the sky. Earth meets sky: the undefined image—lines of color meet and blur, shift and dither up to the solid mass of ethereal color. At the base only the idea of an orange or red remains, after that a substantial, little band of blue marks its space between the memory of day and the full realization of night dominating the sky above. It holds for maybe a few minutes as night slowly settles down extinguishing the last vestige of light, color, day.
I was alone with my thoughts and the slow, smooth waves against the boat. I avoided dwelling on the obvious. It was and I let it be. I had my whole life stretched flat before me with just my wife to share in its simple peace. So what if our first child was a failure? The odds of such a freak accident occurring again were not to be favored. We could just try again, in our own time. Breeding is the easiest thing in the world to do. We will begin anew! We’ll just keep having babies, each one more beautiful than the last. They will have our eyes, our smiles, our being. The gin will weed the chaff: mistakes will fall to the side forgotten. We will breed and our children will breed together and our legacy will never die, will never be tainted. Life isn’t miserable. Life isn’t bad. Life is about the easiest thing in the world. And our each life, each world will stretch off far: simple, pure, flat. This world is ours. Let us not forget this and those mistakes will forget themselves.
“What!? Doctor, surely there must be some mistake! How could this be?”
“I know how troubling this must be to hear. It’s never easy being the bearer of such bad news. But perhaps if you came down and saw it yourself, things would be easier to explain.”
So I followed him down several corridors to the viewing room: partitioned by a wall of glass, and I stood in the hallway searching the sleeping babies’ faces for my own ‘til the doctor directed me with outstretched finger to a dark corner in the back, beside the shelves and currently unused breathing apparati. I could not see very well through the shadows and informed the doctor of this.
“Yes, in a few minutes we’ll most likely let you into a room where you can [ahem] hold. . . hold your daughter. . . That is if you want to. Of course, we wouldn’t. . . umm. . .”
“But, I mean, is. . . is it even mine? Are you saying. . ? My wife couldn’t! I mean. . .”
“No, no. . . no, no. . . nothing of the sort. We ran full DNA tests, the whole works, given the circumstances. You are the legitimate father. Besides, when you hold, or at least see the baby up close, you’ll see that’s hardly an issue.”
“Where’s my wife?”
“In a private room. As soon as she saw the thing she couldn’t stop crying. I speculate that when she calms down a little she’ll be wanting to see you.”
I braced back my own tears and pieced together a fragile façade of solidity when led to the side-room, awaiting the preparations for my child’s visit. A nurse, careful not to meet my eyes, wheeled it in on a flat, crib-like stroller. I looked down unsure of whether to pick it up or not. It struck me how much it looked like us—my wife and me.
“But, doctor, its skin. . . It’s not—”
“Oh, no, no. . . no, it’s not that, but if you look a little more carefully you can see what I’m talking about. After all, judging by your wife’s reaction, she didn’t need anyone telling her what’s so obvious. . .”
“Doctor. . . I don’t think I can pick it up. I mean, right now anyway. This is all quite a shock. My head feels like it’s spinning. I’m afraid I’d only drop it.”
“Oh, certainly! Keep in mind, we understand the grave stress you must be going through at this moment. Complications with childbirth are some of the most traumatic experiences for family members—especially the parents. If there were to be a [ahem] an accident, no one could possibly hold you accountable given your current state—both mentally and physically; I see how your hands are shaking. Look, if you hold it like this, the soft spot’s pointed right at the floor and— ”
“I think I’m going to be sick. Doctor, where’s my wife?”
“Well, I think she should be— ” A knock at the door. “Come in.”
“The wife is ready to see him now, doctor.”
“Very good. Now just follow this nurse and she’ll take you up to your wife’s room. I assume you’ll need some time to yourselves, so I’ll be by in a little while to check up on her and discuss the baby’s health. Until then, have a good day and may luck find you, sir.”
We met (arms and torsos) and cried. We didn’t speak a word. The plaster walls of the solitary room reverberated with our sobs, and the vacuum of apologies and regrets and empty accusations exploded and lent force to our wails sending shockwaves of sound to pummel our bruised ears and sweaty foreheads. We shivered and rose like the tides; our chests heaved and our cheeks—sucked in—felt the cold, damp breeze sting through the stinging sheets of tears. When we had stopped, the echoes died down slowly through a decade of seconds of a decade of years. Shortly after this sound subsided, the doctor arrived with a knock on the door and no pause for an answer.
“And how are you all doing now?’
“Umm. . . fine, doctor. . . uh. . .”
“Good, good. Now let’s have a look at the lady, shall we?’
He proceeded to examine my wife. She seemed to be doing well and was in quite fine condition.
“And I trust you’re feeling better as well, sir?”
My cheeks were sticky, semi-dry. “Yes, doctor, but. . . we’re still troubled by all this. We just don’t understand how this could be happening. Especially seeing as how, you know, on the surface the child seems normal.”
“Yes, on the surface. And, objectively speaking, the child is normal— ”
“Objectively speaking? Well, if the child’s objectively normal, then she’s not a nigger, right?”
“Hm. Keep in mind now that objectivity is subjective and in our line of work here— ”
“But, doctor, we’re not niggers!” My wife was looking at him desperately.
“Oh, no, nobody is questioning your decency, ma’am.”
“Then how!?”
“Well, madam, as you have most astutely pointed out, yourself and your husband are both normal, upstanding citizens in no way like your offspring. So how is it two top-rate specimens such as yourselves have misfired in the genetic rifle range, so to speak? Well, it turns out that our genes carry much more data than shows up in us as individuals. Certain traits, while not present in the parents, can be. . . oh, what’s the term? . . umm. . . regression!”
“Do you mean ‘recessive’?” I ventured.
“Something like that. The point is: you’ve just brought a healthy child into this world. You should both be proud.”
“We should?”
“Well, not really. I mean, it is healthy, but. . .”
“Well, thank you, doctor. I guess you did all you could. How soon before we’re able to go back home?”
“Well, yes, but first I thought I should make sure you’re aware of all your options.”
“Our options?”
“Yes, have you ever considered an abortion?”
“An abortion? But— ”
“I know. In most cases a post partum abortion would never be considered, but when you start dealing with these types— ” A gasp. “I’m sorry. I know it has to be a difficult thing to get used to. However, in a case such as this, certain allowances can be made for. And while I’m not at liberty to advise either for or against, I would suggest— ”
“But, doctor, isn’t there any chance it might get. . . better?” Tears were creeping back into my wife’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, ma’am, but once you’re a nigger you’re always a nigger. That’s just medical fact.”
Gaze cast down, words a mere wisp of wind beneath her breath, “I couldn’t do it. I just can’t let go of that hope.”
“I understand your feelings, ma’am, however wrong the sentiment may be. A parent can only hope the best for their children. It’s almost impossible to step out of those shoes and stop being a parent and to start thinking like a medical expert. In spite of your gross negligence of reason, I find your delusion to be slightly noble. I’d half-expected this reaction so I brought along a little pamphlet that might help you along the long, hard life that lay ahead of you.”
It was medium-sized as pamphlets go. The picture on the front was a colored drawing of two (presumably) parents, faces partially obscured in shadow and the distorting grimaces of abject horror/revulsion and pained resignation. In the background was a door, cracked, letting a soft, red light spill into the scene. The caption atop read Raising Substandard Human Specimen in These Troubling Times.
I held my wife’s hand in the ensuing silence—our now dry eyes quivering tears, a shimmering blue beneath the surface. The box of cigars with the pink ribbon had been sitting in my lap. I let it slip to the floor. The doctor asked if I’d still be needing them. I wouldn’t. He thanked us and left.
Somehow word had gotten out at work that I was a father. I was met with waves of handshakes and congratulations and then silent, uneasy glances when I replied that, no, I didn’t have any photographs. Every other father kept an album’s worth of family photographs in his wallet. I could sense their former camaraderie veering towards distrust. The truth is, I had thought of taking photographs of the baby at first, I mean, it didn’t look like anything too unusual, just looking at it. But each picture came out tinged/stained sepia in the hue of our misfortune. It was revolting. And there I was: stuck with lame excuses about a broken camera.
I called in sick at the company picnic: an act that surely raised more than a few eyebrows. My coworkers’ nervousness sharpening more directly, bluntly against me, “Say, why don’t you bring the family over this weekend? We’ve gotta see the baby!” “The baby!” “The baby!” Temporary excuses were mustered, but the dam could not hold for long. Something had to be done. My very career was at stake. No self-respecting employee would hide that most precious of gifts from being shared with the rest of the office. [And I couldn’t even fathom the scandal that would break should the truth escape of that thing I actually sired.]
This truth was not so easy [easy!] to hide from my neighbors. They were there—right there—staring at the child we so reluctantly welcomed into our home: into the spaces between their own houses. I heard the whispers. I felt the stares tearing me apart. Perhaps I was a nigger—perhaps my wife. Perhaps I was a nigger-lover. The neighbors’ association was in a panic. I can’t say I blamed them! Questions of property value crept into my own mind, though these were the least of my worries.
My wife was worn, ragged. Stress and fear were chipping away at her frame. Her typically gorgeous exterior was crumbling under the pressure. She obviously couldn’t let the thing breastfeed her. Just touching it was bad enough. While I was away at work every day, she was left alone with it. Naturally she couldn’t feel very safe, much less comfortable. We tried to hire a babysitter, even part-time, but you could see how difficult it would be finding a reliable person to agree to that! Our only choice would be to hire another of their kind and having one in the house was trouble enough. Let another in and they’d be taking over. Besides, that would have been accepting the reality of it on a level we just weren’t ready for.
After hours of searching through the phonebook, I finally stumbled upon someone I thought could might possibly assuage our situation (if not correcting at least concealing, maybe). He was listed under simply “Fixers of Rare and Unusual Problems.” That seemed as close as I could hope to get.
A river of shit bisects the city. His office was on the other side of town. I took a day off work and made the journey by foot, pausing on the bridge, letting the stench swim up—deep and viscous—effusing its effluvia to fill my every pore.
His office was in a small, brick building—a small backroom half-underground down twisting, wrought-iron stairs twisting down the back of a small, dirty, brick building. Many larger, brick buildings filled the area. His office lay snug in a network of narrow, brick alleys meshed snug between the space of the numerous, larger, brick buildings. Winding my way through the dirt and the brick I found the back of the small, brick building twisting down the steep, iron stairs as they creaked and I knocked on the thin-wood door of the small, backroom office in the small, brick building in the center sprawl of a deep, narrow, urban maze.
He let me in at once. I explained my situation and asked if could at least make it so no one could easily tell that my baby was. . . what it was. He said it would be difficult and he would have to see the baby in question before he could even begin to make a decision on what could or could not be done.
I raced back home to fetch the baby. My wife was only too happy to have it out of the house, whatever the reason. I strapped it down in the stroller and pushed it back across town. On the bridge spanning the river, I was once again found to linger. The shit raged in waves meters beneath my feet. I was guided by impulse. I unstrapped the baby and held it in my arms; out in the fetid air its touch didn’t seem so revolting. I held it out—out past the railing, out over the river and the empty air between it and its fatal plummet. I looked around. There was not a person to be seen (I can’t exactly say that this was the most popular part of the city for people to be hanging about). I felt my fingers loosen, the baby slip just an inch, my fingers quiver and then tighten back up again. I couldn’t do it. Even if it was just a nigger, there was some pang of conscience keeping me from murdering it outright. I strapped it back in the carriage and continued along to the small office in the small backroom in the back of the small, brick building buried amid rows and levels of long, narrow, labyrinthine, brick pathways.
I knocked and he opened. “Hm. Ya’ sure are right ‘bout its, umm. . . status. This’ll certainly be difficult if i’is even at’ll possible, which I’m not so sure i’is. The stamp offa nigger’s rollin’ all ova’ this thing.” He squinted into his lighted eyepiece. “I’ll take $500 now an’ 500 more if an’ when I’m successful.”
I was only too happy to hand over the cash.
“Now th’ trouble here’s is the shit jus’ seeps outta its pores. Th’ only thing wec’d even try’d be ta’ fill all’s its damn pores up. Each’n ev’ry one. Now what I’ll haveta do’s whip up a batcha my patented nigger-paste (patent pending) an’ rub it all ova’ its body. Now first ya’ll haveta change th’ damn diaper if ya don’ mind.”
Oh shit! My wife had always done this so far. I didn’t even know where to begin. I laid it face-down on his desk. There were two safety-pins and I figured it’d make the most sense to start with these. I peeled back the plastic-bordered cloth and suddenly had the sensation of crossing the river in a one-man tub—oars rearing and splashing—fighting the current as it bobbed and slipped—its lip just inches of slipping past the surface. It was close. I gagged and jumped back wanting to run around in circles, but given the room’s dimensions I instantly bumped against the back wall. I had no choice but to look at him shaking his head as he reached in a drawer and pulled out a roll of toilet paper. “Ya’ did say this’s your kid, right?” Unable to think a reply, I took the roll and spooled off a bundle, scraping and wiping its little bottom clean. “Th’ winda’s cracked. Jus’ stick it right out there on’th street.” I did. The used diaper went along with the used paper.
He had already begun mixing a seemingly random concoction in a mop bucket. I wasn’t able to keep up with the ingredients as not every item was labeled, but I think I saw toothpaste, artificial sweetener, lemon detergent, baking soda, sand, hairspray, and cheap glue. He was steadily mixing this with a spatula.
Through this, the baby retained its prostrate configuration. Occasionally a thin arc of liquid spurted out from its rear. Its feet kicked lackadaisically every now and then. When he had finished making his paste, I guess, he set the bucket on the desktop and began to slather it over the baby with a used, greenish paintbrush (the walls of the office were orange) flipping it over once in the middle, and lifted it up—eyes agleam with success—no doubt waiting for my joyed reaction. The pasty substance did smell better than the feces, but not enough to be proud of.
“I think it looks more like a nigger than ever before.”
“Whatever, now getth’ hell outta here!”
“But I don’t have another change of diapers. I don’t—”
He threw me some old newspapers and balled-up duct tape and pushed me back up the wrought-iron stairs, into the narrow, brick alley lined with dirt and bricks and used diaper, out through the larger, brick buildings—larger than his own small, backroom office’s small, brick building—out twisting through the labyrinthine, brick heart of the city.
Back home I thought my wife might be upset with the baby’s deplorable condition, but she barely seemed to notice, save for that unconscious rent of disappointment through her eyes when it did, in fact, return at all.
My daughter was a nigger: I couldn’t hide it, I couldn’t get around it, I couldn’t even murder the thing. If I accepted this. . . then what? Lose my job? Lose my house? Lose my wife to the slow stretch of scars and decay wrought with the old gait of a hag? But there wasn’t a thing I could do. My daughter had taken it upon itself to become a nigger, so if anything were to be done it would have to be by her own naïve work.
I began taking it for walks—long walks: through cold rain, through hospitals, resting only in infirmaries. We played in the trash heaps on the outskirts of the city with the rats, with the pigeons, with the wild, rabid dogs that roam in packs down from the hills at night. I bathed it gently in the shallow waters on the river’s strand. I snuggled it cozily in the soft, warm blankets discarded out back of the malaria ward. I loved it, cared for it, as deeply and passionately as I only knew how.
The baby, however, did not get sick. If anything its constitution strengthened. Its eyes shone bright; its muscles stretched firm; its fingers grasped tightly; its breath sang the cool, low key of the wind. It was a beacon of life and health aiming its beam far into the future. No matter how hard I tried, it deceived me, eluded me. If this were a game, it was one step ahead at every turn. This wasn’t a game, but it still got the better of me. I was not proud.
And just when things seemed at their end: job pressures cracking down on me, neighbors’ association hinting eviction, wife finding solace in sleeping pills; my daughter suddenly died one morning. We never found the cause. There was no illness, no strangulation, nothing that could even suggest a reason for demise. Oh well, I guess that’s just what babies do sometimes: they die. My wife and I held hands over the body. We’d forgotten how to smile. We still knew how to cry so we did: now these were tears of joy and release raining down our cheeks. We kissed. A little while later I carried the little corpse around to the back of an Italian restaurant and savored the dull, metallic thud of the dumpster as I threw the little body away. Back in front, I made reservations for later that evening.
After dinner, I told my wife I needed some time alone. She agreed: neither of us had had a moment to ourselves since the baby entered our lives. Even should we have found that rare second alone physically, the baby was there weighing its whole wretched existence down upon our shoulders. I drove out of the city. The sun was still out and shined down striking my face in deep relief. The lines and cracks settled and softened. I felt my skin stretch down into its former, youthful smoothness. I remembered how to smile.
When I reached the grand lake, I rented a boat and rowed out to its center. Nothing but water stretched out to all horizons. The sun had just set and the lake settled into darkness with just the faintest print left at the edge of the sky. Earth meets sky: the undefined image—lines of color meet and blur, shift and dither up to the solid mass of ethereal color. At the base only the idea of an orange or red remains, after that a substantial, little band of blue marks its space between the memory of day and the full realization of night dominating the sky above. It holds for maybe a few minutes as night slowly settles down extinguishing the last vestige of light, color, day.
I was alone with my thoughts and the slow, smooth waves against the boat. I avoided dwelling on the obvious. It was and I let it be. I had my whole life stretched flat before me with just my wife to share in its simple peace. So what if our first child was a failure? The odds of such a freak accident occurring again were not to be favored. We could just try again, in our own time. Breeding is the easiest thing in the world to do. We will begin anew! We’ll just keep having babies, each one more beautiful than the last. They will have our eyes, our smiles, our being. The gin will weed the chaff: mistakes will fall to the side forgotten. We will breed and our children will breed together and our legacy will never die, will never be tainted. Life isn’t miserable. Life isn’t bad. Life is about the easiest thing in the world. And our each life, each world will stretch off far: simple, pure, flat. This world is ours. Let us not forget this and those mistakes will forget themselves.