crap, pretty much all the way up to her neck, and I have no idea how a tiny baby shits with such force.
I don’t know how to give her a bath, though. She’s slick and kicking, and I can’t tell if the water’s too warm or too cold, or how much of it to put in, but finally I get her down in the tub, with my hand cupped behind her head. She looks scared when I put her in the water, and her arms clutch at the air, like she’s looking for something to hold. Since there’s nothing, she braces her arms like she’s holding air, like she’s fighting hard to hang on to even that. I run my finger down her forehead and nose to calm her. She keeps still and stops crying, thank god, and she looks like she’s busy feeling whatever it is that she feels.
“Good idea,” Kay says. I turn around to see her standing behind me in her pajamas, which consist of her white, baggy underwear. She’s got her arms crossed over her chest and she’s leaning against the doorframe, slender and muscled, light blue veins crossing underneath her white skin.
“Sorry. I tried keeping her quiet.”
When you look at Kay, you can’t help but notice how beautiful she is, even if you don’t want to notice a thing like that. Being pretty is the last thing on Kay’s mind, and it ought to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, according to her, because it’s just one more example of a ridiculous world where everyone is hell-bent on seeing what doesn’t really matter, basically so that they can avoid seeing what does, which is the fucking inside of people. All this came out in one of her recent drunken rants, in her gone-berserk tone of voice, and what I was thinking at the time was, Kay, there aren’t that many people that want to see the inside of you, believe me. But all I’m thinking now is, Kay, you are so pretty; you and Tess both have that, like it or not.
Kay yawns. “When’d she lose her umbilical cord?”
“Yesterday. I forgot to tell you. I saved the stub in her memory box.”
“Libby, that is—”
“Disgusting, I know. But it seemed crazy to throw it away since it’s the part that was attached to Tess, after all.”
She sits down on the toilet seat and her bony knees bump my side. “I remember bathing Tess. Just like this. Same tub, same kind of night.” She grabs for her toothbrush and starts brushing, and I know from the smell that it was whiskey and Coke that she’d been drinking before she fell asleep. “She thinks she’s so good, so brave, that Tess. But you know, one of these days she’s not going to feel superior to anything anymore. That’s when you know you’ve grown up. You quit feeling superior.” Then she taps her knee against my back, like she’s playing. “I was pretty smart once. Then I wasn’t. I don’t remember some of my life, your life. That’s crazy. That’s wrong.” She sighs and looks out the window across from the toilet, then leans sideways over to the sink and spits out the toothpaste. “I was busy with something else.” After a bit, she says, “Some of my boyfriends, they were all right, don’t you think? Remember Sy? He was the one with a motorcycle. He was nice.”
“Yeah.”
“And Grant. He fixed up this place a lot.”
“He built me my bookshelf,” I say.
“Did he? I don’t remember that. But then there was T.J. He was no good.”
“Look at how much Amber likes the water.”
“Give her a few weeks and she’ll be lying there, kicking and splashing and smiling. Libby, I always wanted to ask, if any of those boyfriends, did they—”
I wondered if she’d ever ask this. Probably because she has enough reason to. With some of her boyfriends it was something floating on the air, and she should have known that, and she should have been wondering all along.
“No. They didn’t,” I tell her, which is the truth. They did something else, though, which was to keep me and Tess confused about who was staying and for how long and whether or not they’d like us and how strict they’d be, but that’s not what she’s asking and so I don’t bother. Besides, some things are too hard to explain.
She runs her finger across the scar that’s down low on her neck and keeps her other arm folded underneath her breasts. “That’s good. Because I wonder what’s inside Tess, buried so deep.” Her eyes go a little empty; they always do that whenever she’s thinking something quiet, and I noticed that about her once, how her eyes are either empty or fierce and there’s not much space in between.
“She just wanted to leave. That’s all. That’s all it is. She just didn’t want this baby, and she didn’t want to stay with us.” I wish Kay would leave. I hate that feeling of being closed in, of a body pressing into your space when you don’t want it there. It’s hard to shuck somebody off, to say, Look, back off, please.
“Tess left me a note, you know. ‘Don’t come after me this time. I’m eighteen. I can leave if I want. Don’t worry any, blah, blah, blah.’ Jesus, you girls.”
“I bet she comes back.”
“I bet she doesn’t.”
“She said she was just getting out of here for a while.”
“She’s gone for good. And that’s too bad, because a kid needs her mother. Needs a father and a mother, but at least her mother.”
I can tell what’s coming now. Something about her tone of voice has shifted again, and that means that one of her big, long, loopy rants is coming, and I put my head down on the edge of the tub, which is cool and hard, and I keep my hand on Amber and start to zone out.
“Only a mother can love a kid through all that hard work. Once it took every last ounce of goodness in me not to throw you out the window, Libby. You just kept screaming. You were the damndest colicky baby that ever lived. I was at a hotel. I even opened the window. I even stood there, looking at the sidewalk below. You’ll want to do the same thing.”
“Jesus, Kay. I will not.” I say this to the white hardness of the tub.
“Yes you will. When it comes, just don’t do it. Last night, Amber was crying forever and you were so tired and you thought, Man, I hate this baby. Didn’t you? You thought, Maybe I wouldn’t hate this baby if it was mine but right now I goddamn hate this baby. And you thought, I’m going to kill this kid if she doesn’t shut up. I’m just saying the truth. That every mother in the world has thought it. They just won’t say it. Just don’t take the next step. Don’t ever do it.”
I bite my teeth together until my jaw hurts to keep the tears from coming, the stupid tears from I don’t know what. Being tired, being yelled at, being so hot.
“This kid’s going to make you tough,” Kay says.
“You’ve told me,” I whisper.
“You’re a bit slower than most, that’s for sure. But you still gotta learn that the world is a hell of a lot harder than what you could even imagine.”
“You’ve told me.”
“Getting older is basically a process of getting tougher, of dealing with new kinds of pain.”
“You’ve told me.” I sit there with my eyes closed, my hand underneath Amber’s head. My back is killing me, staying in this position, but I don’t bother moving.
“Kids will tear you down. Then, if you can, you build yourself back up again.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not hell, Libby,” she says. “And in fact it can be great. I’m just saying it’s hard. You’re going to break. I just don’t wanna see it happen, I guess—see you break like that.”
It’s a moment of too much said, too much nice, Kay offering this last bit, and so to make up for it she starts up with one of her usual rants: two dumb daughters, one who won’t leave, the other who won’t stay around, and what sort of daughter runs off, just disappears in a truck with some