The Push

In the morning I went to the bathroom to pee. The house was still quiet—my father hadn’t stirred from the couch yet. I opened the toilet. The bowl was filled with blood and what looked like the guts of the mice the neighbor’s cat sometimes left on our front porch. My mother’s underwear was beside the toilet. I picked them up and saw that the heavy brown stains were dried blood.

“Dad? What’s wrong with Mom?”

My father was standing over the pot of coffee, still wearing his clothes from the night before. He didn’t answer me. He fetched the paper from outside the front door and tossed it onto the table.

“Dad?”

“She had a procedure.”

I poured myself cereal and ate quietly. The phone rang as he flipped through newspaper sections, drinking his coffee. I stood to answer.

“Leave it, Blythe.”

“Seb!”

He sighed and shoved his chair back. He poured a cup of coffee for her and left the kitchen. The phone rang again and, without thinking, I answered.

“I need to talk to her.”

“Pardon?” I’d heard just fine but didn’t know what else to say.

“Sorry. Wrong number.” The man hung up. I heard my father’s footsteps come down the stairs and I quickly turned back to my cereal.

“Did you answer that?”

“No.”

He looked at me for a long time. He knew I was lying.

Before I left for school I went to my mother’s door and knocked softly. I wanted to see for myself if she looked okay.

“Come in.” She was drinking the coffee and staring out her window. “You’re going to be late for school.”

I stood in the door frame and thought of sitting beside Mrs. Ellington when she showed me her swollen stomach. My mother had the same strange smell. Two new containers of pills were on the nightstand. She looked tired and puffy. She’d taken off the hospital bracelet I’d seen the day before. The top of her hand looked badly bruised.

“Are you okay?”

She didn’t take her eyes off the window.

“Yes, Blythe.”

“There was blood in the bathroom.”

She looked surprised, like she’d forgotten that I lived in the house, too.

“Never mind that.”

“Was it from a baby?”

Her eyes lifted from the window and found a spot on the ceiling. I saw her swallow.

“Why would you say that?”

“Mrs. Ellington. She had a baby that didn’t make it.”

My mother finally looked at me. And then through me. She blew air through her teeth and looked back to her window, shaking her head. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

I immediately regretted telling my mother about Mrs. Ellington. I wished I could shovel the words back into my mouth—I didn’t want my mother anywhere near my relationship with her. It was the only thing I had in my life that was sacred. I left the room and went to school and when I got home everything seemed to be back to normal. My mother was standing in the kitchen, burning dinner on the stove. My father was pouring a drink. The phone on the wall rang, and he picked up the receiver to hit the hook and then let it dangle. We listened to the faint dial tone while we ate.



43



The day before Sam died we went to the zoo.

The weather was unseasonably warm and there was sun in the forecast.

We listened to Raffi in the car. Zoo, zoo, zoo, how about you, you, you? We packed our lunches and brought the nice camera, but we forgot to take pictures.

Violet tugged on your arm all day, wanting to run ahead. She always wanted to be ahead. The two of you against the world. I couldn’t take my eyes off you from behind, the way you looked so much alike. The shape of you together. The way you leaned a little lower to the side where she stood, how she always reached up to feel the bend in your elbow.

I fed Sam outside the polar bear exhibit and you got Violet some apple juice from the vending machine because she said our juice boxes from home had a weird taste. A squirrel stole a leftover cookie from the bottom of our stroller. Violet cried. She wouldn’t wear the hat I’d brought. Sam spit up his milk and I cleaned him with the brown paper towels from the bathroom because I’d forgotten our wipes. I made circles on his palm and then ran my fingers up his arm and tickled under his chin. His laughter was like a scream, spirited and expansive, and I lived for it. An older woman nearby with a little boy’s mittened hand in hers said to me, “What a cute baby you have, such a happy little guy!” Thank you, he’s mine, I made him. One whole year ago. He was so much a part of me that in the seconds just before he cried, my insides grew physically tight, like someone was blowing up a balloon in my rib cage.

“Wait until you see this!” you said to Violet, and we walked down the ramp to the dark, echoing underground, and you both stood at the glass wall. You were shadows against the electric green glow of the water in the tank, particles of dirt and fish scales floating around you like the dust from dandelions. I stood back, with Sam in my arms, and felt like I was watching someone else’s family. That you were both mine seemed impossible in that moment. You were so beautiful together. The polar bear pressed his paw up to the glass right in front of Violet’s face. She caught her breath and threw herself around your waist, in awe, in terror, in amazement, the kind of reaction you might catch only a few times in your child’s life, a reminder that they are new to this world, that they can’t possibly understand when they’re safe or not.