Heads or Tails (17 page)

After our snack, we meandered on. Jesse took his time winding through the paths, swaying almost imperceptibly as he walked. G especially loved the Giraffe Lodge, squealing and kicking excitedly as Jesse carried her. I took a photo of them with my phone and texted it to Sarah.

“At the zoo!” I wrote.

A few minutes later, she replied, “Whoa! Never thought I’d get zoo pic from U. Good 4 U guys.”

I couldn’t help but smile proudly as I pushed the empty stroller behind Jesse and the baby. As I frequently did, I felt so grateful to have Jesse as my partner, whether it was in marriage or race training or in challenges like the one we were facing then. He’d certainly protested our current situation, but he’d nevertheless remained my partner, even though it had taken him time to accept the situation. It was a good thing I hadn’t become a therapist or a judge or some other professional who was prohibited from telling a spouse absolutely everything — like how I’d started to resent Margot for putting such a strain on my life or how hapless and incompetent I felt taking care of a baby. How I’d sometimes wanted to scream at the baby and once even whispered, “Please, shut the fuck up.
Please
,” when she’d been crying from teething for two straight hours. How I’d accidentally stepped hard on her fingers while I was changing her on the floor and stood up to retrieve a new box of diapers. I realized that Margot had all the hormones of childbirth thrumming through her but no one like Jesse to support her emotionally.

Inside the Animal Resource Center, Jesse turned the corner and paused in front of a glass display of tarantulas. My phone dinged with a follow-up text from Sarah.

“FYI. I don’t go 2 zoo anymore since tiger incident.” Several years before, a tiger had escaped an enclosure, killing a teenager who’d been taunting it.

“But that’s not going 2 happen again,” I wrote back.

“Right. But it revealed huge flaws in zoo’s whole emergency plan. No bueno.”

I sighed, feeling my chest shrink. Unlike me, Sarah just
thought
like a mother. I returned my phone to my pocket.

At the Meerkat exhibit, Jesse chatted with a pimply teenager who served as the official zoo photographer.

“On your way out, you’ll get a chance to view and purchase a photo,” the kid was saying as I caught up to them. Then he reached out his hand for G’s, shaking it as if she were a business colleague. I noticed his fingernails were jagged and bitten and full of grime. “Do you want your picture taken with mommy and daddy, little cutie?”

Instinctively and impolitely, I tugged G’s hand away from the teen’s grubby paw. “That’s okay,” I said, and reached for the hand sanitizer I kept in the stroller pack. “We’ll pass.”

Through some therapy and a few decades of retrospection, I’d devised an analogy for my childhood. It was like a storm. But not a frightening rain storm with booms of thunder and shards of lightening. Rather, it was like a snow storm — utterly silent, but with the power of destruction nonetheless. Packed snow crunches and creaks like a building on the verge of collapse.

I’d come to understand that my bereaved mom and dad wanted to parent me properly. But they just…
couldn’t
. My very existence was an ever-present reminder of what had been lost and of what they’d never get to experience with Julia. As I was growing up, they did only the most prescribed things with me and for me. Birthday parties, graduations. They took turns bringing me to annual check-ups at the pediatrician and attending parent-teacher conferences. For almost everything else, I was on my own. And there was Virginia.

My mom and dad told me they loved me. But regardless of their intentions, it felt robotic and obligatory. They weren’t abusive — to me, themselves or each other — though I do think my father had what they now call gym anorexia. When he wasn’t at the office working as an accountant, he spent untold hours at the gym, lifting weights, exploring every trendy new machine the facility acquired: stair climbers, rowing machines, elliptical trainers. I suspected that he was now fully ensconced in kettle bells and body-weight exercises. He was perhaps the only accountant in history who actually looked forward to tax time. He relished any excuse to dive more into work because working more, I’d come to realize, enabled him to experience something other than his own pain. Between work and the gym, he was no better than a crack addict or a cutter. He simply self-medicated in more socially acceptable ways. My mother, meanwhile, kept busy by crusading for the adoption of progressive educational philosophies by her public high school, winning her accolades from the school district and a national principals association. I suspected that she rationalized her time away from home, telling herself that enhancing the lives of hundreds of public school kids was worth the cost of ignoring me. Just like the CIA at Guantanamo Bay justifying the torture of one who killed many.

Once, when I was about eleven, I had to have an appendectomy. My father had rushed me to the hospital in the middle of the night after what he and my mom had assumed was a twenty-four-hour stomach bug only got worse forty hours in. I laid across the back seat of his Volvo, wincing as we hit ruts and bumps in the road. By the time we arrived at the hospital, I was cross-eyed with pain. The doctors knew immediately what was wrong and whisked me into surgery. When I woke afterwards, I was all alone.

“Anyone here for you, sugar?” the nurse asked when she came in to check my vitals.

“I, I don’t know,” I said, drawing the hospital sheet up to cover my chest.

She handed me the phone and I dialed home. My father answered hoarsely. I glanced at the clock: five-fifteen in the morning.

“I’m done,” I said, tears prickling the corners of my eyes.

“That’s great, honey. Glad you’re feeling better,” my dad said. “I’ll come get you in a few hours.”

“Can you come sooner?” I heard rubber-soled shoes slapping urgently along the linoleum floors in the hallway outside my room and it frightened me. I yanked the sheet just under my chin. The movement triggered a sharp pain in my belly, which I saw from peeking under my gown was covered with gauze. “What about mom?”

I heard a muffled sound as my dad covered the receiver and spoke to my mother.

“She’s got meetings all day today. I’m sorry. I’ll come get you before too long. Just get some sleep now. Glad you’re okay.”

A few hours later, the door to my room opened slowly and I quietly prayed it was my father arriving to take me home. Instead, it was Virginia, which astounded me. Not only would she have had to make four bus transfers to get from our house to the hospital, but it was also profoundly odd to see her outside of context, outside our home. It was as weird as bumping into a science teacher at a restaurant or a baseball game.

“Can I go home now?” I asked Virginia, who wore the wool skirt usually reserved for her weekends off with her sister-in-law. She handed me a mini loaf of my favorite banana bread.

“That’s not for me to do. Your daddy’s gotta come here and sign all kinda papers. And your momma, she told me once she’d never set foot in this hospital again — not after what happened here before.”

I realized then that I was at the same hospital where Julia had been treated, the very same hospital at which she’d died. I was convinced that had Julia lived, I would have been raised by totally different parents. Or maybe I’d never have been born. After all, even as it was, I wasn’t wanted.

Just like I hadn’t wanted G.

Somehow, now, everything was turning upside down. I never wanted to become a mother myself and I didn’t want to be in charge of Margot’s baby. Metaphorically speaking, I’d been forced to return to the same hospital I vowed at age eleven never to set foot in again. But something wholly unexpected was happening as a result.

I’d sort of gotten the hang of bathing GiGi, her nickname having evolved once we realized that GiGi was somehow easier to say than just G. It was Wednesday evening and I was preparing to give what would be her fifth or sixth bath since she’d arrived two and a half weeks before. I could have asked Mercedes to bathe her during the daytime but I’d actually come to enjoy it — and so had the baby. Plus, it gave us an automatic activity for the evening, those long hours when we waited for Jesse to finish work and his workout.

I gathered towels from the linen closet while she banged Gavin’s plastic head on the tile floor, which I didn’t halt because I happened to know that our downstairs neighbor wasn’t home from work yet. After I laid all the soaps and towels out by the sink — what Jesse had joked was our bathing “mise en place” — I unzipped GiGi from her red fleece onesie. The day before, Sarah had dropped off more hand-me-downs, this time more wintery attire. (“By the minute, she’s getting bigger and bigger and the weather’s getting colder and colder,” her note had read.) From its distinctly masculine fire truck emblem over the heart, I could tell this one had been Henry’s first. No matter how it looked, it was fine with me. I was never one to spend much money on my own wardrobe, let alone one for a baby who’d quickly outgrow it.

GiGi, we’d discovered, loved being naked and she’d come to relish bath time. Perhaps she sensed my own growing confidence. She squealed and kicked her pillowy thighs happily when I removed the onesie and lifted her into the air above my head. As I filled up the sink, I held her hand under the faucet. Water streamed through her pale fingers and she blew a happy raspberry, aware of what was coming. Evening autumn light streamed in through the side window, spotlighting the water and helping to warm it.

I lowered her into the sink and she almost fussed as I gently pried Gavin from her fingers. Quickly, I replaced him with a small rubber ducky wearing Giants orange and black that Jesse had picked up on a recent Walgreens run. She took great interest in the duck, squeezing it with fingers from both hands and then inspecting it with her gums.

I squirted a few drops of lavender baby shampoo into the sink and lathered her up, cleansing first under her armpits and her chin. Within moments, her skin glowed, pure and shiny.

She held the duck out and, with a serious expression, implored me to inspect it.

“Thank you,” I said, turning the rubber bird around with my hand. Then I held it next to my face and asked, “What does a duck say?”

I handed the toy back to her and began soaping her hair.

“Cak, cak.”

“Mmm,” I replied distractedly, pouring more lavender soap onto a wash cloth and scrubbing between her toes. Then it hit me.

“Wait, what does a duck say?” I asked again.

“Cak, cak,” she said shyly, her new teeth shining like jewels.

I regarded her in disbelief. She was
responding
to my question.
With words
.

“That’s right!” A warmth traveled through me and I felt like rainbows were sprouting from my pores. “A duck says ‘quack, quack.’”

I nearly wept from amazement. I looked over my shoulder, wishing that someone, anyone was there to see. In less than three weeks, GiGi had cut new teeth, started solid food, learned to sit up and spoke her first words. Babies continued to baffle me, but I’d come to recognize that they were truly astonishing.

With renewed vigor and sporting a satisfied smile, I finished the bath swiftly, making a game out of rubbing her hair dry with the towel and asking, “Wwhhhhereeee’s GiGi?” every time she disappeared under it. With a pride that I knew was wholly misplaced, I couldn’t wait to tell somebody about what she’d just done. It struck me as nothing short of miraculous. I planned to tell Jesse in person — hopefully by getting GiGi to repeat her feat. In the meantime, I texted Sarah, who immediately wrote back, “Freakin’ enchanting, ain’t it?”

For a few minutes, I carried GiGi, double-wrapped in a bath towel, around the apartment, bouncing her up and down and singing, “A duck says ‘quack, quack!’” I felt taller than I had in weeks.

It was only after a few minutes that I realized the first person I should have contacted was Jean. That it hadn’t even occurred to me before then gave me brief pause and a stab of guilt. But I told myself that Jean would understand and would be happy that I’d become so engrossed in caring for her granddaughter.

To assuage my guilt over taking ownership of GiGi’s achievement, I sat her down on the floor of the bedroom and pulled up pictures of Jean and Margot on my phone. “A duck says, ‘quack, quack,’” I said again, this time like a school teacher. “And this is Grandma. And this is Mama.” As if in recognition, she leaned forward, keeping herself propped up with one hand, like a tripod. She slapped her other hand excitedly at the screen.

I looked over her shoulder at the photo of Margot, one from our trip to Iceland. It captured her essence perfectly. Though she was in a lounge chair by the pool, she sat cross-legged and upright, a classic Margot pose — confident and ready for anything. She wore a tasteful but incredibly stylish green bikini. Diligent about attending six a.m. power yoga classes every weekday, she was the picture of fitness. Her blond hair shined in the Northern sunlight. She beamed health, energy and confidence. When I took the photo, I remember feeling like I often did as her roommate at Egan — hoping that her zest, her jubilance, her confidence would somehow seep into me by osmosis.

In that moment, I rededicated myself to my mission: helping Margot by taking care of GiGi. Good care of GiGi. Helping her thrive. I had to finish the job, no matter the costs. I felt a strong satisfaction in knowing that, as evidenced by the evening’s developmental milestone, I was doing at least okay, maybe even a tad better than that.

Completing the assignment would require continued sacrifice — my tri training, my Spanish class, perhaps even a new client or two. Maybe I’d even have to give up what I’d thought about myself — that, at my core, I wasn’t a baby person.

By then, the evening light had disappeared and blasts of Northern California wind whooshed crossways outside at the intersection of Frederick and Cole streets. I changed from sweats and a t-shirt into flannel pajamas and then cloistered myself in the safe embrace of Jesse’s oversized bathrobe.