Naomi Leimsider
A Little Sacrifice
In my dream I am pushing a baby carriage -- something in a light blue or red and green plaid. The baby is tiny, as babies tend to be. It looks up at me with violet eyes. It moves its mouth, its little tongue darting in and out, as if it is talking, it has something to tell me. The baby is cute, there is no doubt about that -- babies are cute. But we are not attached, this baby and I are not an item. We have no history and no future. And then I discover that the baby wants me. Its little eyes water at the sight of me, its little face becoming pink and stiff -- it starts to sob because it knows I don't want it. The baby says, What are you waiting for? There isn't much time left. Pay attention. The clock is king.
I can't stomach the smell of hamburgers today. So, of course, he is making them for dinner. He's frying them with onions and cheese and the fat greasy smell is everywhere.
Salads, I say. I'm absolutely huge.
You're not fat, stop it, he says. You are wonderfully curvy. But you are going to put on some weight now.
He slices potatoes and puts them one by one into the popping oil.
I haven't decided yet, I say. What if I don't want it?
Maybe I don't care, he says.
It is his opinion that I'm just going a little crazy. He calls it pregnancy hysteria, it's his own diagnosis. He's confident I'll be back to normal after the baby is born. He says, Micayla, (Micayla is not my real name, it's fancier and prettier than my own.) He says, Micayla, it's normal if you suddenly don't think you can eat hamburgers. Everyone goes through this. My ex-wife went through it. She could only eat cornflakes with blueberries and low fat chocolate syrup for a whole month before she decided she didn't want to have the baby.
His ex-wife and the baby that never was is still one of his favorite topics.
His ex-wife is Reese Milkowski, supermodel. She is a strong Polish girl with slim potato-colored thighs. He picked me up on a street corner two weeks after their divorce became final. I was a thirty-two year old orphan -- exactly what he was looking for in a woman.
Most of the time I don't know what to think, how to think. But sometimes when I just sit quietly in a chair and concentrate on what is happening to me, I realize I am alive. Every pore is open and electric, and for a moment my thoughts clear and I am excited to have my soft pliable belly filled and hard with his child.
It's just pregnancy hysteria, he says. It's only been eight weeks. You'll calm down, just let it pass.
My favorite fantasy has always been that I am slender and blonde with magnificent breasts -- firm and pretty. Pink, sweet, airbrushed breasts -- no visible veins or extra lumpy skin. I'm a video game girl with a slight waist, tremendous muscled thighs, and pointy boots. Men stare, they can't help it. I wield a weapon, a long silver sword that I slay evil with. In this fantasy I am worshipped by men the world over. I am unstoppable. I still believe this will happen someday.
When his friends asked how we met, I gave everyone a different answer. I told one that he was sleeping with my best friend and I intruded on their affair -- I seduced him when she wasn't looking. After all, I am such a seductress. I told one I was his waitress at his favorite coffee shop, I always brought him his eggs just the way he likes them. I told one that I am a stripper. I told one friend that I used to be a hooker. I told one I was a blind date and sometimes blind dates just fall in love, you know how that can happen -- just when you are least expecting it. And they all nod politely because they suspect I'm a little crazy.
But the truth is he saw me on a street corner waiting for the red light to change, holding too many bags of things I bought that I don't really need, and he opened the door to his sleek blue car and let me in.
His friends talk about Reese Milkowski like she is a goddess, an amazing specimen. They say they can't understand the divorce. But then they remember how difficult it is to be married to someone like Reese -- she is a wild thing, a heavenly beauty that cannot be tamed. Then they say they do understand the divorce. Reese didn't want babies, she's too selfish for babies -- a woman like that can't be tied down. They look at me and they understand me. Micayla seems all right, a little crazy, but she's a good woman, they say. Solid.
Why are skinny girls so damn skinny? The obvious answer is that skinny girls don't eat. Well, they must eat sometimes, even if it is just the bare minimum that keeps them alive. Don't they want to eat? Don't they get hungry? They must not get hungry the way I get hungry. I unhinge my mouth so that it opens all the way up. I order the Thanksgiving sandwich - the triple decker turkey with pickles and cranberry and stuffing. I talk about pie. I swallow chocolate wafers whole with pudding and marshmallows and oatmeal with maple syrup and raisins. And honey. And milk. And brownies. With a pint of fudge swirl and oversized vanilla chip cookies. I eat not one, not two, not three, but all of them. The sweet thickness of them, pushing them all in my mouth at once, can't get my mouth around them fast enough, trying to get them all in. I sit in the glow of having done something bad and not being able to do a thing about it. Then I curl up like a doughnut and fall asleep.
It probably has become a legend in modeling circles that two weeks after Reese Milkowski, supermodel, left her unworthy-of-someone-like-her husband, he took up with a fat girl. She's got a pretty face, they say, but too much around the you-know-where and not enough you-know-what. He hasn't married this Micayla girl yet, he's still feeling out the situation, he's still not entirely sure. But she is pregnant -- it was an accident, that's true, but sometimes babies want to be born so badly that all the birth control in the world won't work. He told us they are going to have this baby together. It'll be nice for him to have a family, his friends say. He's always wanted a family. Perhaps they'll have more children and settle down. Perhaps Micayla isn't the awkward, anti-social girl he introduced us to. Maybe she is just what he needs.
But they have their doubts. They threw a party for us when they found out about our little surprise. It was nice of them to order all that food (they must know I'm a hungry girl). I wanted to eat it, but I ate so much at home that my dress ( already a size bigger -- and only eight weeks along!) was so tight that it pulled and the stitching strained. I did have pretty party shoes though. Black and sparkly. Very expensive. But I had to force my feet into them and I could barely walk. The pressure from the straps formed little hard lumps everywhere and I couldn't stop touching them, playing with them. In an instant those little sacs filled with fluid. I ran my hands over them, they were so disgusting. There were pregnant blisters all over my swollen tired feet.
Do you want this child? I ask myself this standing naked in front of the mirror. Everyone should look at themselves completely undressed in daylight. Soft orange man-made light plays tricks, makes you look sexy. But sunlight lets in the true you. I turn sideways and try to see the child, try to see a curve or a bump that wasn't there before. Nothing. All of the curves and bumps are familiar.
The problem is that I don't want this child and I already know this. I don't really know this man -- my boyfriend is a stranger. He picked me up on the side of the road. I was wandering around aimlessly, lost. He took me home, washed my face, cleaned behind my ears and made me presentable for the rest of the world. We've had plenty of sex, but sometimes when he laughs or sneezes I don't recognize the sound. I don't know who he is and I'm frightened because I can't remember how I got here.
I'm only eight weeks along. There is still time to change my mind, there is still time for a change of heart, for a complete turn around. But I'm getting closer to the time when the door is going to slam in my face.
In the meantime, I have lists of things to do. It is my job to put together the nursery. I never had a nursery, my parents were poor, I slept in the kitchen and we all ate strained bananas for breakfast -- but my baby will have a nursery. The wallpaper has little chicks and ducks all over it and the miniature animals are smiling. I also bought ceramic chicks and ducks for display. It really has become a beautiful room. A crib has been purchased, it is in the corner of the room that is a safe distance from the heaters. When you are a parent, you can't be too careful.
In the maternity store I pull clothes off the racks, distorted clothes with big ballooning stomachs. The woman behind the counter looks at me disapprovingly. I'm a liar and she knows it. She senses it, she's the woman who works in the maternity store, she can smell indecision.
Can I help you, she asks.
So polite and gracious.
Maybe she thinks I'm not pregnant at all. Maybe I'm just a fat girl with strange ideas about fashion.
No, thank you, I say.
The woman smiles and heads off in the other direction. She busies herself with hanging up
wrinkled blouses that have been thrown carelessly to the floor by irritable pregnant women.
But I know what she's thinking. I shouldn't be in here buying clothes. This is ridiculous. It's a farce. A sham. I slink out the front door.
In my fantasy I am nineteen years old again, but a different nineteen year old than I was -- a teen-aged movie star. I am ripe and lush, beautiful in a stunning red velvet dress. I know what men are thinking when I look in their eyes. I understand their desire, I can see the desire. It is so thick and heavy it weighs down the air like a fog. It is a kailedescope of desire -- all bright colors swirling around me. And the sex is amazing. The sex I have with these men is amazing. It is up against the very expensive furniture sex, not worried about the maids coming in or the tabloids sneaking pictures sex, it is ripping off my red velvet dress and not thinking about trivial things sex. That's the kind of sex movie stars have. Everybody knows this.
I can just be myself when we have sex. I don't have to think too much or pretend. I don't have to be anyone else -- his hooker, his coffee shop waitress, his blind date -- there aren't any expectations. He knows I'm just the fat girl he picked up in his sleek blue car and that's all I'm expected to be. And that feels good. Maybe even great. Maybe even fantastic. But still...
My name. In order to fill out their endless forms, file their endless paperwork, I have to include my real name. They want to know who it is they are talking to. They want to talk to me first. How did I come to my decision. This is a very important decision. It will affect the rest of your life. Count on that. I will never be able to walk away. Do I know the father. Have I spoken with the father. Does he agree. What does he want to do. Have I thought about these things. What can I handle. What kind of person am I.
I am surprised by my own name. MaryAnn Sneed. What kind of name is that anyway? It's so nothing, so ugly, so unbelievably plain. I'll tell the doctors to call me Micayla and I'll smile like I'm someone special and they'll say, Okay, Ms. Sneed, like they can't see past the name and call me Micayla.
There are a lot of women in the waiting room, waiting, presumably, to make the same appointment I am. They sit around looking old and tired. Or young and tired. There are some men. They are quiet. They have nothing to do.
The slim young woman sitting next to me reads a fitness magazine and takes large gulps from her huge bottle of diet yellow soda.
In the end, you have to give it up, she says.
Maybe she has all the answers.
In the end, everyone gives up jogging, she says. It's so rough on the knees. How can you keep it up?
When my boyfriend married Reese Milkowski, he was sure she was the right girl (everybody's sure, he told me). I was so sure, he said, I would have bet my life on it. He was a friend of a friend of a friend, and she saw him at a party given by this friend that she so graciously attended with several of her fellow models. She thought he was good-looking, debonair, an investment banker with style. He knew she was Reese Milkowski, how could he go wrong? They had sex in the bathroom the night they met. I know the whole story.
Her pregnancy was a mistake. The condom fell off/broke/never existed at all. Does it matter, my boyfriend says. We were married. But she never wanted babies. She told him that from the start or she thought she did or never really made it clear so things were kind of up in the air. They had been married for almost two years by then and they didn't hate each other yet, so why not?
But she didn't want it. Never wanted any, not really her thing, doesn't like changing diapers. She said she was sorry, that's what he told me, she said she was sorry, she couldn't, this
was not going to work and he cried and cried and begged her to keep it, didn't he have a say it was his baby too and he wanted it. Fuck you, he told her. I'll raise it. Have it and I'll raise it if you can't handle it. She said she was sorry, so sorry, but it was her decision. Her decision, my boyfriend says now, still angry, still red-faced, little drops of spittle all over my shirt, in my hair.
I was eighteen, so young. I wore glasses with black plastic frames, metal braces on my twisted neglected teeth (they are super straight and bright white now!). I was a soft baby chick, I was born yesterday.
A pregnancy scare. Everyone gets them. They come in bunches, they are contagious -- the flu of careless young women. The heart pounds, the morning feels strange ( you can suddenly remember other mornings that were normal and you long for them in a way you've never longed for anything before). You can taste the sour fear on your tongue. Everyone else I knew already had theirs. I was trying to catch up. I was a late bloomer.
Ten days late and what is the name of the boy I slept with? Fourteen days late and I spent two days trying to remember how much time is in a fortnight. Twenty-one days late and all of the sudden it occurs to me that twenty-one days equals three weeks. Three weeks late.
A week later I got my period. A whole month skipped, as it didn't exist, as if it wasn't important. I had never missed one before -- why now?
I found religion during that month. I prayed and promised and was willing to sacrifice. I didn't want children. I didn't want to make decisions. I don't want children. I don't want to make decisions. I never shared my scare the way the other girls did. Laughing and crying to each other, the experience bringing them closer. I was removed from that. I was helpless. I couldn't gather the strength.
I am surprised by my own face. I hardly recognize it. My eyes are streaked with red. I am exhausted.
I have to make a decision. But then I say -- after a nap, after some ice-cream, after I order baby-sized hats and tiny slippers.
My boyfriend is happy. He makes dinner for me, he clearly enjoys being the housewife.
I think he figures if the women he chooses don't want to, he'll be up for the challenge. He can afford it, but he's never hired help. He says he doesn't want a stranger touching his underwear, looking through his personal belongings, getting to know a side of him that he chooses not to share. He likes to have his hands deep in his own murky sink, he's happy to vacuum up his own mess. I played the role for a while when I moved in, but I couldn't keep up my end of the bargain. I don't scrub and polish even half as well as he does. He became impatient, taking the mop or the broom from my incapable hands, showing me how to go back and forth across the floor so the area becomes really clean, not sort of clean, not, as he put it, "Micayla's idea of clean."
But I did get pregnant. That is something he really wanted. It was an accident, as in, it wasn't planned, that's true, but there was no condom. No pills, potions, or powders. No barrier, no blockade of any kind. What the hell, we're adults now. No longer eighteen. Nothing to worry about. The rush of Russian roulette.
Women who have more than one child seem resigned to be mothers. After the first one they gave up and had more and more children until they are surrounded -- that's why they are always screaming, pulling violently on their mother's sweater. They want attention. Each one of them needs her full attention, and she tries to give it to each one of her little piglets.
But women who have one child -- did they want to just try it out? See what it's like? And then when the child arrived decided that maybe they didn't like it? Do I want to try it out, see what it's like? No. I never wanted to. I am afraid. Yes. I am not capable. Yes. Not now. Someday, not now. Not now? If not now, when? How much time is left?
It is my fantasy that this never happened. I wish I had never been on the street corner that day last year looking expectantly into the face of every man who drove by. Who will save me? And then the good-looking investment banker in the sleek blue car stopped for me and I became Micayla, ex-queen of the street corner, ready to be taken care of, ready for a soft life.
I'm wearing an oversized sweatshirt to hide the big belly I don't have.
It's still early, no cars on the road.
My appointment has been scheduled for the unearthly hour of six-thirty in the morning. Got up at five and ate three bowls of cereal. Packed some things.
Where are you going, Micayla?
To my appointment.
And then where will you go?
I don't know.
I remember I once saw a girl who wasn't trying so hard to be pretty. She had a perfect waist -- smooth and browned (she wore a simple skirt and a T-shirt that hung carelessly over her breasts). She stood waiting on a street corner for the light to change with a bored expression on her wonderful face -- all of the men stopping for a moment to get a better look at her. She was all alone out there and she didn't care a bit. She wasn't even trying. No heavy frosted black underlined fancy high heeled buttoned down hook and eyed anything. I wanted to taste the inside of her skin. Find out what I have been missing. I wanted to fit inside that skin neatly, snugly, like a dress made especially for me.
No more hysteria, my boyfriend says. The time for that has passed. You're beautiful just the way you are, how many times do you need me to tell you that? Time marches on, he says. Closer to nine months. No more craziness. Act your age. Take some responsibility. Pull yourself out of this rut you've fallen into. Wash your hair.
The difference between life and no life is five minutes and a couple of hundred dollars worth of technology.
What do you want me to tell you, the doctors say. That this is easy? It isn't. This building is under more protection than the fucking President, we can't even send out for sandwiches, we eat microwaved food for lunch that tastes radiated. We can't go outside until it's time to go home. Then, we wear bulletproof vests and pray. My children disguise themselves on the way to school.
What do you want me to tell you, I say to the pretty nurse (I bet this is all she ever wanted, to be a pretty nurse) when she asks if I'm all right.
Last night my boyfriend made hamburgers for dinner. Onions and cheese, french fries and all the rest. He made up a soft sitting place on his expensive yet uncomfortable sofa (I've become a puppy who needs a safe place to eat my dinner) and fed me bite after bite.
What do you want from me, I asked.
He didn't answer (too busy wiping my mouth, cutting up chunks of fried potato).
Who are you, I asked.
He doesn't hear me.
He's my savior so now it is my job to do this for him.
Why does he get all the credit?
Because he pulled you out of the scrap heap.
It could have been anyone. I was looking for a way out. I wanted a different life.
Bullshit, Micayla. You owe him. And this is how you repay him?
©2004 by Naomi Leimsider
