CHILDREN IN THE PARK
When Rachel finally got Sassy on the line, she said, "I want to thank you personally for scaring the be-jesus out of me. I have a couple of your photocopies here in my purse and I can't tell you how entertaining it is to know I live in a chamber of horrors." Sassy snorted a laugh on the other end of the line. "I've even found another article or two. That place is some kind of magnet for lunatics. You and Hugh are just two of the recent ones. Makes much more interesting reading than most of this home shit I've got to research."
"Yeah, well, do me a favor, Sass, and don't spread that stuff around at the party."
"My lips are sealed. You all prepared?"
"Hardly, and I've got a shitload of work, I got yelled at by a client who I know for a fact is guilty and -yikes! It's four, I want to get out of here so I can get some shopping done before Larimers is swamped with yuppies."
"Can I bring anything tomorrow?"
"Your ass, now gotta go. Bye."
"Bye."
Rachel had to run to the bank, which she'd forgotten to do earlier in the week. She'd barely done any shopping for the housewarming party -time seemed to be rushing by this week, between the briefs she had to prepare, and her mother calling at work to see how she was doing. ("It's just that it's been a week since you called, and that always means you're keeping something from me," mom had said, and Rachel wondered if her mother were clairvoyant: Rachel's mind, when not in gear, went to the thought of the baby she might be carrying. But I'm not going to jinx this and blab it until we're both a ways along in gestation.) Rachel broke down on the phone and invited her mother to the housewarming party when her mother kept needling her about seeing the house.
But the sphere (Don't call it a baby yet, if you call it a baby, Scout, you'll lose it, it'll drop out of you and once it's out you can't put it back) was on her mind through all of it: work, play, rushing as she was to the bank, waiting in line at the automatic teller machine. Her blouse was soaked with sweat; the back of her neck was itchy; her pantyhose was like heavy fur -why the hell are you wearing hose in the middle of summer anyway? Do you think any of your colleagues are going to care if your legs are once again pale and knobby?
The line at the bank was long -everyone ahead of her seemed to move in slow motion, making deposits and withdrawals, not writing their checks out until they were right up to the machine, inserting their bank cards the wrong way. She dropped the cash into her purse, wrapping it with a few of the articles Sassy had messengered over earlier in the week. I haven't thrown these out yet? Larimers Market was already packed with shoppers. Rachel did her best to squeeze between people to get to the produce, and then there was another line at the deli counter. She glanced at her watch: 6:15.
She was just crossing Winthrop Park with her arms full of groceries when the street lamps flickered on. Children, like playful lost shadows, ran across the thin grass after one another, ducking behind the bushes, leaping over each other's backs, playing tag and hide-and-go-seek near the playground. A little girl in a pink party frock sat crying on the swing set -a street lamp spotlighted her. Rachel had seen her before, playing with a boy out in the alley one weekend day. Rachel thought she was both the most beautiful child she'd ever seen, and the saddest. Rachel's arms ached from carrying the groceries, the headache seemed to be kicking in again, and she was getting a mild, distant pain in her stomach. You be okay, 'sphere, we don't want anything happening to you, we're going to do this pregnancy right. She went over to the little girl, setting the grocery bags down in the dirt, her purse propped between them.
"Hello. What's your name?" Rachel asked, sitting down into the curve of the swing next to the girl.
The girl, who was probably no more than eight years old, eyed her suspiciously. Her eyes were red from crying. She had wispy brown hair tied back with a red velvet ribbon; her face was empty as if she were all cried out. Her eyes were pale green like lima beans. "Pudd'n'tame, ask me again and I'll tell you the same." Rachel felt pressure on her back, and then she was swinging upwards, down again, skidding her shoes into the dirt to stop. A small boy ran out from behind her. "Ha!" he shouted. "I pushed you!"
"He's Jamie and he's my brother," the girl said. "And he's a wicked little boy, too. He made me cry."
"And he's a strong little boy, too. Jamie, is your mommy here?" The boy, Jamie, smiled. "I stepped on a crack and broke her back." He started rummaging through her groceries.
"No you don't." Rachel caught him by the arm and pulled him backwards, lifting him up on her knee. So light, like lifting a pillow.
"Naughty, naughty boy," the girl said.
"Where's your home?" Rachel asked. The boy giggled, made a snarling noise, then giggled again. The little girl pointed across the darkening park. "The one in between."
Draper House. Mrs. Deerfield's lights were off. Their floor, the second, was brightly lit up. Hugh's home. I hope he got a job, oh please, just any old job. "But that's my home. Are you friends of Mrs. Deerfield's?"
The girl shrugged. "We haven't been out to play in forever." Jamie, now sitting sturdily against Rachel's knees, kicking his feet up and down, farted. He pinched down on his nose with his right hand, fanning the air with his left. "I have this secret," he said.
"Is it a secret secret, or a telling secret?" He giggled. “It's something you know. It's about babies." The girl reached across with her right hand and gave him a resounding slap on the cheek. “You wicked boy! If you tell I will tell. On you." The boy rubbed the side of his face. "I know how babies are made." He leapt from Rachel's lap, crouching down in front of her, writing with his fingers in the dirt.
"God makes them. Is your mommy somewhere here?"
"No ma'am. A man's got to fuck a woman with his prick head. In the place where she makes wee-wee."
In Rachel's head, a drumming pain, no migraine, no migraine," in her stomach, a spasm. She gasped as if for air. Rachel turned to the girl. "Is your mommy in the park?" The girl shrugged her shoulders. She began swinging back and forth. The chain clanked against the swing-set bar. "He knows he's not supposed to say these things."
Jamie kept his head down, his fingers scratching in the dust. "He sticks it in and then goes to the bathroom inside her and that makes the baby."
Pain along ribs, down to stomach, side stitches. Be safe, sphere, be safe.
The little girl scowled. "Wicked boy."
"It's true! And then the baby crawls out of her cunny. Only if it's all done. If it's not all done, it has to crawl back in. What do you suppose would happen if the half-done baby couldn't find his mother's cunny again? I suppose it would find one eventually. Teacher says one is very much like another." The pain was subsiding, like summer thunder, becoming more distant every few seconds. “That's very bad language for such a nice young boy to be using."
“You're not supposed to tell." The little girl stood up, pushing the swing away from her. “You're a bad wicked boy and bad wicked boys get cooked and eaten like in Hansel and Gretel if they don't watch out!"
"Cunny, cunny, cunny!" Jamie screamed at the top of his lungs, leaping up like a frog from the dirt and running off, out from under the street lamp, through the darkness, hooting like an owl as he went. His sister took off after him, crying, "Wicked, wicked bad boy! She'll get you, she'll get you and turn you into gingerbread!" Rachel leaned forward in the swing, wondering if she really wanted to have children after all. But mine will be different because they'll be mine. She bent down, lifting the bags, sliding her purse up under her arm, expecting a hernia at any moment.
She saw what the boy had been drawing in the dirt: a clumsily sketched penis entering a hairy circle which must've represented a vagina, and beyond that, a stick figure wearing a top hat. Beneath this crude diagram, a word: