Postpartum Confession
It was 2:42 a.m., and I was trying to put my hand through the TV screen even though it wasn’t on. Portals, I thought, to another place, a place where I didn’t have to think of what to do next. I remembered the pills my doctor had prescribed for the pain after delivering Tommy and went to the kitchen to check for potentially fatal side effects of an overdose on the labels of all the orange plastic containers in the cupboard. Vicodin listed serious breathing problems and drowsiness, so I took four times the recommended dose.
The phone rang. I picked it up and whispered, “You’re going to wake the baby.”
“Sorry,” a man said.
“Who is this?” I asked.
“Who is this?”
“You called here,” I said. “You know who I am.”
“It’s true,” he said. “I’m calling to ask you to please fax your will to our office.”
“I don’t have a will,” I said.
“That’s unfortunate,” he said. “We’re going to need one when you die this evening.”
“You must have the wrong number,” I said.
Then he said he had to check his files and put me on hold. The hold music was the national anthem. The bombs were busting in air when he clicked back and told me, “I’m sorry for the confusion, Mrs. McMahon.” Papers rustled on his end of the phone. “Looks like I’m going to need your son Tommy’s will.”
“He’s only five months old,” I said. “He doesn’t have one.”
“Well, he’ll need to write one soon,” he said. “And please fax it to our office once he’s done.” He coughed. “Excuse me,” he said. “I’m not feeling well.” Another mucusy cough. “I’m due to die next month. Complications from some kind of respiratory infection, probably bronchitis.” He coughed again. I held the phone away from my ear so I wouldn’t catch whatever he was dying from. “Sorry. Excuse me. Just have him fax his will ASAP. Thanks.” He hung up the phone. I listened to the dial tone for a few seconds, long enough to hear some distance in it.
I walked into the bedroom and stared down at Tommy in his crib. He slept on his back with his arms and legs spread like he froze that way while playing in snow. I climbed into my own sheets, which felt cool without my husband in them. It was the second of four nights without him while he was on a business trip. I closed my eyes and tried to transport myself with what was left of my mind to where he was so I could convince him to trade places with me, and I could sleep in a quiet room all by myself for four nights.
It didn’t work. When I woke up, Tommy was screaming in his crib, choking cries that meant he had been screaming for a while. I crawled to the edge of the bed and looked down at him, red-faced on his cowboy printed crib sheet.
“What?” I said.
He stopped screaming and rubbed his eyes. “I’m hungry,” he whined.
“Me, too,” I said, and picked him up. I held him at one breast so he could eat and squirted milk from the other into a bowl and added some corn flakes to it for my own breakfast.
I didn’t want to take care of Tommy by myself that day, so I decided it was a good idea to take him and drive to my parents’ house. The label on the Vicodin said not to drive, operate machinery, or make serious decisions for six hours after taking it, so I decided to wait until 9:00 a.m. to leave the house to be safe.
When I got to my parents’ house, I handed Tommy to my mother and sat on a wooden stool in the kitchen staring at a gossip magazine on the counter. It stayed open to the same page, a picture of Paris Hilton in the back seat of a police car, while my father mowed the lawn outside.
Before I knew it, it was getting dark, and I can’t drive in the dark without my glasses, which I left at home, so I told my parents it was time for me to leave. They said I might as well stay for dinner, which was Sloppy Joes and baked potatoes, so I did. Then my brother, who used to be a baby but was now seventeen, walked me to my car since it was parked two blocks away and my parents didn’t want me to walk alone. He said good-bye, gave me a hug, and I got in the car and started driving. I could hardly see where I was going. I felt a thud beneath my car and realized I had run over my brother. How had I managed to hit my own brother? It was dark out, and I can’t see in the dark.
I got out of the car and screamed, “No!” He was sprawled out like Tommy when he sleeps, but with blood pouring from his head. I shook him and said, “I hope you remembered to fax your will.”
I looked around for someone to help, but the street was empty. There weren’t even dark houses with doors to pound on, or parked cars to look into. I put my ear to my brother’s mouth to listen for his breathing, but all I could hear was my own heartbeat in my temples. I looked up when the light at the intersection a quarter mile from my brother’s body turned green and saw a man with a large jug and a woman with a broomstick walking toward us.
“We can help you,” the man said. “This happens all the time.”
“Thank God!” I said and stood up over my brother.
“Hold this,” the woman said, and handed me her broom. She dragged my brother’s body to the center of the street, lifted a manhole cover, and struggled to shove him down the hole while the man poured liquid from his jug over my brother.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“We’re pouring acid on his body so no one will know you killed him,” the man said calmly.
The woman took the broom from me and poked at my brother’s disintegrating body with the stick end until he disappeared down the hole.
“I don’t want him to be gone. I want him alive,” I said.
“Too late for that, missy,” the woman said. The man put the cover back on the manhole, clapped his hands together, and smiled at me.
“You’re welcome,” they said in unison. They each lit a cigarette and walked back toward the intersection with their arms around each other. They stopped at the light, waited for it to turn green, and crossed the street.
I ran back to my parents’ house and rang the doorbell. My father answered the door in his robe, holding my little brother in his arms. He was alive! But he was a baby. At least he was alive.
“Of course he’s alive,” my father said.
“Did I say that out loud?”
“No,” he said. “Come in and have some coffee before you hit the road. You don’t look so good.”
My brother started to cry, so my father took him upstairs. My mother came down and poured me a mug of cold coffee from the pot she’d made that morning, added cream and sugar, and told me to leave.
“But this mug isn’t disposable,” I said.
“I don’t care, honey,” she said. “You can have it.” She pushed me out the door and closed it gently behind me.
I walked back to my car, which was in the middle of the street two blocks away where I left it. I turned the key in the ignition and told myself to be careful not to kill anyone this time. The lights lining the street flickered on and off. That must be why I hit my brother earlier. But that was in the past, and he was alive.
I realized I wasn’t breathing, so I slammed on the brakes to find my breath, or at least take some. I heard a knock on the passenger side window. It was the man who had helped destroy my brother’s future body. He signaled with his hand for me to roll down the window, but it was broken, so I turned off the car and got out. “What?” I asked him.
“Just wanted to say hello,” he said.
“Hello,” I said. Something told me to smile, so I did, but then I couldn’t stop, even after he turned his back to me and started walking away. I got back in the car, smile stuck on my face so my cheeks started to hurt. The car wouldn’t start, so I got back out and started running home. The freeways would be clear by this time and it should only take me a few hours to get home.
I was running, sweating. My breasts ached with milk because it had been hours since I fed my son. My son! I had left him at my parents’ house, so I turned around to run back. Once I made it to the street where I abandoned my car, I saw those two people again, the ones who pour acid on dead bodies and shove them down the manhole in the middle of a deserted street. The woman was holding my little brother close to her chest like she was burping him. She rubbed his back softly and whispered something in his ear.
“That’s my son!” I screamed, because although she had been holding my brother, she was now holding my son. “He hasn’t even started his will!” Milk was dripping from my breasts, soaking through my bra and T-shirt, already sweat soaked from running north along the 405 Freeway, and then south. The woman looked at me as she lowered my son’s little body toward the manhole. The man held his jug of acid. My son wore his blue and white striped onesie with a poo stain on the back. He always managed to shoot poo up his back out of his diaper.
“Tommy! Tommy! Tommy!” I screamed over and over again because that was my son’s name and because I was trying to stop those people from killing him.
“Don’t worry,” the man said. “We do this all the time.”
“But he’s not even dead,” I said.
The woman stopped lowering Tommy toward the manhole and looked at him. He opened his blue eyes wide, staring at the faces around him. His head bobbed on his chubby neck, and he stretched his lips in a gummy grin. He burped, and curdled milk dribbled across his cheek and down his chin. “You’re right,” the woman said. “We thought you had killed him.”
“We were just trying to help,” the man said.
I grabbed Tommy out of the woman’s arms and squeezed him so hard that he started to cry. “I’m sorry,” I whispered in his ear. “I’m sorry I forgot you.” Then I held him to my chest and ran toward the freeway. “We’ll be home soon,” I told him. “We’ll be home soon.”
Michelle McMahon
SHELFLIFEMAGAZINE ARCHIVES: issue #001 |