Tales From the Crib (12 page)

“How’s that lunatic of a friend of yours, Lucy?” Rita asked while Jack was undoubtedly following up his Seuss reading with a discussion of whether
Green Eggs and Ham
was primarily a story about trying new things or persistence. “The one doing the confession show? What’s her name, Zuzu?”

“Zoe,” I corrected.

Zuzu?

“Whatever her name is,” Rita continued. “That girl’s out of her mind.” I also thought
True Confessions
was doomed for failure, but I didn’t like Rita’s characterization of my best friend as a lunatic.

“I think it’s clevah!” Bernice defended. “I’d be very interested to hear what these Catholics are confessing about. You tell me when that television program has its premiere and I’ll tune in.”

Rita switched gears to her favorite topic—sex. Her philosophy: What a mess, but so pleasurable. “Speaking of confessions, tell us, have you and Jack been intimate again?” I cringed. “When I had your cousins, the doctahs told us not to have relations with our husbands for six weeks!”

“So we had to call our boyfriends!” Bernice quipped.

“You stole my punch line!” Rita exploded.

“I did no such thing. I thought of a clevah thing to say, so I said it.”

“I was about to say the same thing!”

Anjoli interrupted by telling them that they should seriously consider a two-woman show together.

“Really?” Bernice bit.

“Of course, not really, you maniac. She’s trying to distract me from the fact that you stole my punch line.” And with her accusation that my mother was trying to distract her, Rita scanned the room and noticed that Adam was no longer with us. “Where’s the baby?”

“With Jack. He’s reading to him,” I said.

“Reading to him? Tell that moron we didn’t drive from Merrick in the snow to have him disappeah with the baby. I want to look at the baby. That baby really should cry more. You need to have his hearing checked, Lucy. I’m telling you, the sooner you know, the faster you can learn sign language.” Bernice added, “Like in that beautiful movie,
Mr. Holland’s Music Class.”

After my aunts left, Anjoli asked Jack to give her a lift to the movie theatre. I settled into my glider chair, took a deep breath, and endured the pain of another nursing. I grabbed a copy of
The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding,
but wound up cursing at the pictures of the serene looking women pictured on the pages. They smiled contentedly, almost smugly saying
I’m nursing just fine, why can’t you?!
“Liars, frauds, and lunatics!” I accused, not surprisingly, in a Long Island accent.

I picked up the phone to call Mary, the La Leche League leader who urged me to call her “any time.” Nine at night didn’t seem too outrageous. By the grace of God, she answered and actually sounded happy to hear from me. “What if I used formula just for tonight and tomorrow, then come to the meeting on Tuesday morning?”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes, honey,” she said.

Over the past few days, everyone had gotten sucked into my nursing drama. The word “you” became synonymous with “your nipples,” as in “How are your nipples this fine morning?...Can your nipples have lunch next week?...Hey, have your nipples been able to make any headway with the novel ?” I even bought plastic protective shields so my bra wouldn’t touch my nipples. These hubcaps made me look like Xena’s older, fatter sister, Lactatia, the Nipple Warrior whose secret weapon was a milk spray of four feet.

Jack was great, reading a list of benefits of nursing, urging me to “hang in there, kiddo.” Still, I needed more practical advice than what Jack could offer.

Mary arrived at my house minutes later in a boob-shaped car with a nipple siren on top. Okay, maybe it was really an early model VW bug, but it looked like a breast to me at the time. With her, Mary carried a yellow page-sized book of questions about breastfeeding. After I explained my problem, she asked if she could look at my nipples. Before her question was punctuated, the snaps of my blouse crackled open so fast they sounded like fire works exploding.

“I can’t diagnose anything, you understand, honey, but this looks a whole heck of a lot like thrush to me,” Mary said.

“That’s what you said when we talked on the phone,” I said.

“And now that I can see your nipples, I’m even more convinced.”

“So how does she get rid of it?” Jack asked.

“You’ve already tried every natural remedy, so why don’t you call your doctor tomorrow morning and see about getting a prescription for Diflucan.”

We thanked Mary, who told me I wasn’t off the hook in coming to her La Leche League meeting on Tuesday. “Don’t forget, Lucy! You’re going to love meeting other nursing mothers. Unitarian Church at ten. See you there.”

I did not want to go to this La Leche League meeting, but felt indebted to Mary. What did we need to meet about? How long could we talk about breastfeeding? But my Jewish guilt would not allow me to simply take Mary’s free advice and ditch her meeting. La Leche League it was. I could survive one meeting. But first, I needed to survive the next feeding.

“Jack, I think I’m going to bottle-feed tonight. Just till I can get my doctor to fill the prescription.”

“That’s not an option, kiddo,” he said. He informed me that Mary swept through the kitchen and made Jack hand over all of the baby bottles. “She seemed very serious about it, Lucy. She kept telling me I’d thank her for this someday.”

That day was not today. Jack explained that my milk supply would diminish if I took even one day off. How Jack suddenly became a lactation expert was beyond me. Between Jack and his mother’s mailings of articles on infant care, he was becoming more of an expert on mothering than I was.

For the next hour, Jack and I tried unsuccessfully to convince the doctor on call to phone in a prescription to the all-night pharmacy. “No can do,
amigo,”
he kept saying in a surly Texas accent that suggested he did not consider us amigos at all. A red sports car pulled into our driveway and its headlights shone into our living room. We heard music turn off and voices chatter. Dr. Comstock was sitting in the driver’s seat and Anjoli was his passenger. I’d never been so conflicted in my life. On one hand, I abhorred my mother for making me an accomplice in her adulterous affair with my infant son’s pediatrician. On the other hand, Dr. Comstock could have me on my way to the pharmacy in minutes. “Dr. Comstock!” I burst onto my front steps. Saying his name created a cold fog from my breath. Were life equipped with a rewind button, I would’ve done the second take with slippers on my feet and a sweater tossed over my t-shirt. The pain from the snow on the soles of my feet was minimal compared to the crushed glass beneath my bra.

“Hiya, Lucy!” Dr. Comstock said like a jolly old guy with nothing to be ashamed of. “How’d you two kids get along without Anjoli holdin’ down the fort tonight?”

“I need Diflucan!” I shot with no pretense. He looked puzzled. “I have thrush. I need you to call in a prescription for Diflucan.”

“Good God, darling. Let the man in the house before you jump all over him like a dog that hasn’t seen his master all day,” Anjoli said. They giggled. Anjoli hung her coat in the front closet and offered Dr. Comstock a cup of coffee as she took his coat. “We saw a fabulous film tonight,” she began.

Like all of Anjoli’s best boyfriends, Dr. Comstock tried to make an ally of me without alienating my mother. “We did,” he smiled. “It was great luck bumping into your mother at the Cineplex.”
Oh please, even my son wasn’t born yesterday.
“What do you need the Diflucan for?”

“I have thrush. I can’t go on another day with this pain.
Please
call the pharmacy so Jack can run and pick up the Diflucan tonight?!”

“Why didn’t your ob-gyn write a prescription when he diagnosed you?” Dr. Comstock asked.

“Lucy, darling, I’m not crazy about your taking antibiotics. Why don’t you let me try to Reiki your nipples tonight?”

Dr. Comstock raised his eyebrows to question her term. Jack answered for Anjoli. “Energy healing through the hands.” Jack gave Dr. Comstock a subtle eye roll, but he didn’t return the gesture. Instead he let out a hearty guffaw and claimed that my mother was “refreshing.”

“Who diagnosed you then?” the doctor asked.

“The La Leche League lady,” Jack answered.

“They shouldn’t diagnose,” he said indignantly.

“And why not, darling? You said you don’t know enough about breastfeeding to help my daughter. Her ob-gyn said the same thing. So if you doctors can’t help her, why shouldn’t she turn to these Leche people?”

“Anjoli,” Dr. Comstock said as he sat at the kitchen table. “If I let patients tell me what type of prescriptions they need, I’m basically a drug dealer.” No one made a move. It looked as though Jack, Anjoli, and I were frozen as we waited for Dr. Comstock to talk himself into writing the prescription. “Well, I suppose there’s no harm to be had from a little Diflucan.”

The next morning, the thrush had cleared up almost completely. No pain. No swearing. No gnashing my teeth. I was fit for my own page in the nursing book. I was so proud of my new skill, I wanted to share it with everyone. I told my letter carrier about how my nipples were in top form again. He was thrilled for me, really. That day, I was such a show-off I had to resist the urge to lie down on the supermarket floor and squirt my milk into the air like fountains. I thought I had such a choice piece of entertainment, I imagined spending my spring afternoons in the park collecting tips in a cup for my milk-producing excellence. I considered opening a game park for milk-shooting wars among new mothers, like paint ball or laser tag. Forget Desdemona and her stupid walk through the rain. I’d produce a
Nipples of Steel
video.

Chapter 15

There’s a story from Anjoli’s collection of greatest hits that goes something like this. (There’s an unspoken rule in my family that you can tell someone else’s story for them if you’ve heard it more than ten times. This policy is not just about ensuring accuracy; it’s payback. Like a rewards card for listening to the same blasted story year after year.)

I was twenty-one years old, living with three roommates in Greenwich Village. It’d been two years since I’d run away from Newark, from an oppressive family in an oppressive city in an oppressive state. I was just starting to explore my spirituality, and saw a little ad for a meeting of the Young Metaphysicians on West Thirty-Fourth Street. Fabulous! I showed up and I said to the guy up at the front, “I’m here for the meeting.” So he said, “Next door to your left.” I went in and the first thing I noticed was all of the great-looking, fabulously dressed men. A few freaks too, but mostly very sharp-looking businessmen in suits. So I sit down, and I suppose I must’ve been a tad late because there was someone up front talking about his life, and how after he divorced he started drinking more heavily, blah, blah, blah. The first thing I thought was how wonderful it was that these men were so connected to their feelings. He went on a bit longer, then everyone started clapping and he sat down. So my second observation was that these young metaphysicians really needed to learn to tell a better story. This one was so depressing. Not even a hint of a kicker. I mean, really, of all places to have an uplifting ending, you’d think it would be among a group of spiritualists. So the next guy got up and he was stunning, obviously gay, but delicious to look at nonetheless. And believe it or not, his road to metaphysics was also paved with alcohol.
At this point, she raises an amused, but suspicious brow.
I didn’t want to be rude and just walk out of this guy’s testimony because I know how sensitive these alcoholics can be, but obviously this was not the meeting I came for. I waited until he finished, picked up my coat, and stood to leave when the leader said, “I see we have someone new today.
”
And all eyes were on me. So I told them how wonderful it was that they were in recovery and I wished them well, but that I was in no way, shape, or form an alcoholic. “I don’t even drink socially,” I told them. “I’m a dancer. With the Joffrey.”
There’s a fifty-fifty chance she actually referenced the Joffrey Ballet Company, but it’s always thrown in for the story to let her audience know she was with the Joffrey at one point. If Anjoli did actually say this, I have to wonder what the AA folks thought of her comment. Were ballet dancers somehow immune to alcoholism?
Everyone looked at me as if I was to be pitied, as if I were in such heavy denial that I couldn’t even admit to social drinking. “I thought this was the Young Metaphysicians meeting. Obviously, I’m in the wrong place.” A woman in the back shouted, “We were all in the wrong place once, lady.”
Ten-to-one that never happened but it always gets a laugh.
They were so concerned, they didn’t want me to leave. Of course, no one blocked the doors or tied me to my chair, but they were so earnest in their desire to help me that I couldn’t just brisk away. The more I tried to explain that I was not an alcoholic, the more invested they became in my taking the first step and admitting that I had a problem bigger than myself. There was no escaping these do-gooder teetotalers. I couldn’t help wondering if they weren’t more fun in their drinking days because after about a half hour of this, I must admit, their persistent charm wore thin. In any event, it was time for me to either make a huge fuss, which admittedly I’d al ready been doing quite unsuccessfully, make a run for the door, or simply admit that I’m an alcoholic.
If people weren’t already squealing, “You didn’t?!” Anjoli pauses so they can. “You didn’t?!” her audience says on cue.
What else could I do? I stood up there, took a deep breath and said, “Hello, my name is Anjoli and I’m an alcoholic.”
Now this part I know is made up because back then she was still called Margaret Mary. Name discrepancy notwithstanding, she does quite well with this story.

My mother also has a story about the time she went to a Chinese cooking class and wound up at a Nation of Islam self-defense class. Don’t ask me how it took her so long to figure this out. No woks. No Chinese people. No food! Just a half dozen brothers in bow ties and gym shorts talking about Elijah Muhammad. Yet she stayed for an hour, thinking she just might be in the right place. The men assumed she was a reporter from
The New York Times
who was scheduled to do a story on them. “Did you see the fabulous story on organic stir fry in the Sunday Styles?” Then she points to herself as though she was at the center of an adorable little mix-up. Alfie called her “Farrakhan’s bitch” for months after that.