Shine of the Ever Read online

  Seth had one she could use.

  She worked part-time at the Children’s Hospital, in the cafeteria, and spent every spare moment upstairs with Neil in the respiratory ward. She was in her early twenties and still very pretty. She didn’t wear her silver-plated cross anymore, or the big amethyst ring Noah gave her. She lived in an extended-stay hotel across from the hospital. With the “Good Samaritan” discount plus the money from Noah, she could afford it, week by week. She ate cafeteria food and drank coffee from the urn at work. She kept hoping that this, whatever this was, wasn’t forever. She cut her hair short, a sensible length, and clipped it back with a plastic barrette, the kind she’d had when she was in grade school. She didn’t look like an eager Christian, or a mother, or even like a grown-up. She was nothing, starting over as no one.

  Seth said, when he finally took her to his house, that he’d assumed she was a dropout.

  “Dropped out of what?” she’d asked. Her hand looked so small next to his. He kissed her fingers.

  “You look like a runaway.”

  “Run away from what?” she pressed, but he didn’t answer. The bees on the lavender bush outside buzzed in and out of his bedroom window like idle thoughts, dipping over their heads as they lay together, gathering nectar.

  He understood her situation, or what she told him. He felt sorry about Neil, who was not even three and spending every other week at the Children’s Hospital. Neil’s life expectancy kept shrinking. He outgrew each prescription almost as soon as it started working. He was withering in the bell jar that was supposed to keep him safe.

  The waiting made her crazy. She watched Neil’s lungs slowly fill with sand. Some days, she wished he’d never been born; on others, she fantasized about strangling him or unplugging the machine that kept oxygen flowering in his blood. He’d spent his whole life packed in plastic. Two years and counting. She’d stopped believing in healing miracles and was just waiting for his term to be over. She wished he’d died in utero. She imagined lying on him and smothering him until he wasn’t sick anymore.

  Mothers weren’t supposed to have those thoughts. And Seth’s sympathy felt safe, like a place to hide from her worst self, a refuge. He was twice her age, secure. He worked construction, piecing together the many tall, sparkling towers of condos that sprouted up like saplings all over Portland.

  When he helped move her boxes and bags out of her hotel room and into his truck, he joked that the load was like feathers, compared to the beams they lifted daily at work. He told her how small she was and light, nothing at all, not like the city he constructed around her. His job was remaking the garden of the world into a cage; hers was to admire what he built and celebrate her captivity.

  Jessie told Seth everything except that she was probably gay and also not divorced yet. Eden only had room for two people: a mating pair of humans. So that was the price you paid for living there: You couldn’t tell men that you didn’t love them like that. But you had to leave, after a while, even though they loved you and would do anything to make you change your mind. Even though your son would be sick again, and more often, you couldn’t sacrifice your body for his; you had to leave, because something in you was broken and no matter how sorry you were, you just didn’t belong in paradise.

  Those were the rules. That’s how Eden worked.

  * * *

  Jessie opened every window and the front door of her new apartment to try to air out the stink of cat piss and cigarettes. Even with their bodies cloaked in black abayas, Jessie could see that some of her neighbors were pregnant. Having babies was a holy commandment: the body of God called out of your body, to multiply His message on earth. Every religion said as much, which is how they’d all managed to propagate themselves so efficiently.

  Neil might never live here with her, but she set up his room anyway, arranging his stuffed animals on his bed in a friendly receiving line. She plugged in the various filters, masks, and breathing machines and turned them on. The familiar hiss relaxed her. Home is where your respirator is. It didn’t take long to open the rest of the boxes and put her few dishes, pans, and books away. She didn’t have any furniture, aside from the twin inflatable mattresses Seth had bought her at an outdoor store.

  “How is it possible you’ve never been camping?” he’d teased her. He picked out solar lamps and a shower that could be rigged up in a tree while she examined pods of dehydrated meals. They were probably worse than they looked.

  “I wasn’t raised like that. The only reason anyone sleeps outside is that they’re not allowed in the house,” she said. He thought that was funny.

  “You’ll love the mountains,” he’d said.

  They didn’t make it that far. Now, she was across town, and her landscape was not exactly picturesque. On her walk to check the mailbox, she noticed a lavender plant pushing a fistful of stems out of the mulch in a concrete planter. She was tempted to take some: just one flower, pinched between her fingers, would bring back the smell of Seth’s garden and all the easy times she’d had there. Instead, she jammed her mail key into the rusty lock and felt inside, even though it was too soon to get mail, even flimsy circulars with coupons to clip for dental whitening and thin crust pizza. She slapped the door shut and, mad at herself for expecting anything to change at her behest, wrenched the key out, stepped back, and collided full-on with a woman she didn’t realize was standing right behind her. Jessie’s elbow connected with the woman’s belly, which was full and pregnant, solid as a watermelon.

  They both screamed.

  “Sorry, sorry,” Jessie said, reaching for the woman, who moved back, covering her belly with her hands. “Are you all right? I’m so sorry, I didn’t see you. Are you hurt? I’m sorry.”

  She babbled, knew she was babbling. The woman stared at her.

  Maybe she didn’t speak English.

  Jessie put her hands over her own belly, where Neil was briefly housed, and frowned. The woman’s expression did not change. She turned on her heel and walked away, so heavy with her pregnancy that she swayed from side to side. Jessie watched her climb the stairs and heard a door slam: This was her downstairs neighbor.

  She waited a minute, then followed. She felt a terrible pang, a stabbing guilt that squeezed her stomach. What if she’d hurt the baby? What if the woman went into labor? What if she’d broken some Muslim taboo and created a problem she knew nothing about? She tiptoed up the steps and held her breath as she went past the woman’s door. She could not detect any movement or sound inside, not even the noise of a TV or radio. She went into her own apartment and carefully closed the door. She wondered, for the first time, if the woman downstairs could hear her footsteps overhead and if that was a disturbance.

  She took the bus to work, leaving earlier than she needed to. Every car in the apartment complex parking lot had Lyft and Uber stickers on its windows. The cars, spotless black Hondas and Hyundais with seat covers, were as identical as a fleet of real taxis. The bus, in contrast, was filthy and smelled like weed, feet, and wet laundry. Jessie sat by the window with the screen vented open even though it was bitingly cold. The heater blasted her feet until she could barely feel them. She served two of the day’s menus, visited Neil, and went home.

  And then, the same thing again. And again. Again. Six days a week, six hours a day. Only full-time employees got health benefits, and every week she was scheduled two hours short. Her day off was Friday. She didn’t sleep in. She caught the bus and brought Neil a coloring book in the morning.

  Intent, only partially understanding, he watched her trace the princesses with a crayon. Oxygen deprivation affects every system in the body, from the brain to the cellular ganglia. The whole body needs to breathe: Without air, its parts die slowly, one at a time. They shrink. Neil, a compassionate nurse once explained to Jessie, was choking, gradually, in the very gentlest possible way.

  Jessie had heard in church about death by crucifixion, whe
n Noah told the congregation it was excruciating. Even the two words had the same roots. Stretched to death, nailed up. On Good Friday, he gave a scientific sermon about the torture and death of Christ. He explained how the lack of oxygen in the Lord’s blood would collapse his blood vessels one at a time, allowing fluid to diffuse into the tissues of his body, including the lungs and the sac around the heart. Death by drowning. Sac. Sacred. She colored in a crown and a bridal veil. Neil took the crayon from her, and she let him. His hands were hot and stiff. He scribbled over the princess’s face, dropped the crayon, and screamed when it rolled off his bed onto the floor.

  Jessie retrieved it.

  “See?” She blocked in some of the shapes he’d scrawled.

  Now the princess was wearing a CPAP mask. She held up the drawing, and he bapped it. She didn’t think of him as knowing what he looked like, or able to comprehend his own reflection in a mirror. At least the picture made him laugh. She stayed until afternoon meds, then kissed him, sang him his favorite alphabet song, and tucked him in. She zippered the vinyl tent around the bed and turned the lights off as she left his room. He spent so little time away from the hospital that he slept poorly in other beds, in rooms with different sounds and smells. Seth’s fountain lulled him, but that was all a dream now, an experience Neil wouldn’t remember. She’d taken her son there knowing it could not last, would not heal him, could never change what was wrong with either of them.

  Neil was susceptible to fevers and agues, which came over him like possession and had to be cast out with antibiotics and special tanks of flavored air. During these periods, Jessie was banished and sent back to normal, oxygenated life. She was unusually aware of heat and wind in these times: the clouds of steam that came out of the chafing dishes at work, the stove’s flame that greedily sucked air into its blue corona, and the cigarette haze that seemed to follow her when she walked past the people smoking at the bus stop. Rain touched her less, when Neil was sick. She always seemed to be waiting.

  A month passed.

  At the new apartment, she paced. She opened and closed windows. She bleached the bathtub and disinfected every surface. Her hands were saturated with the smell of Lysol wipes. Seth didn’t text, which was fine. Cleaning distracted her from herself and made her feel better, in control. She didn’t want anything living in her new space, not cut flowers or a cactus or even ants investigating the baseboards in the kitchen. She found a black smear that might possibly have been mold in the bathroom behind the toilet and was kneeling down, ferociously scrubbing the ever-loving, almighty shit out of the grout, when she heard a tiny scream.

  She dropped the sponge and flinched, smacking her ear against the ceramic tank. Her head buzzed. Maybe she was wrong, imagined it. The sound. The shriek. Again.

  The cry, both irregular and inconsolable, was worse than the piercing wail of a cat. A newborn baby was screaming in the apartment downstairs.

  She lay on the bathroom floor and listened. She could hear someone down there, talking or singing. Water running. Feet. Then, more crying. More. Each scream sent shivers through Jessie’s body; she remembered Neil making that sound and the way she’d resented her body’s instinctive obedience to his imperious demands. Her nipples had beaded with milk if she even thought about Neil, early on. She’d ruined every bra she owned. If he snuffled or even whimpered, her breasts ballooned. The only thing she could do was pump and pump and save it all for later. She spent hours sitting next to Neil’s antibacterial baby pod, gazing at him and listening to one machine put breath in him while another one took milk from her.

  She’d hated it.

  The baby downstairs howled, and Jessie heard another voice crying too. Those uneven, exhausted sobs—she knew that sound. She’d made it a few times herself.

  The woman downstairs was not holding the baby when she answered the door. She had gray circles under her eyes and her head was uncovered. Her hair, pulled back in a bun, was greasy at the roots and dyed deep auburn. She was wearing cotton-candy-pink sweatpants and a loose, stained T-shirt covered in Minnie Mouses. Without her abaya, she looked young, not much older than Jessie.

  “I’m sorry about the baby,” she said. “She won’t eat and she’s exhausted.”

  “You both are.”

  “I hope it doesn’t disturb you.”

  “No. May I come in? To help?”

  The woman looked her over and nodded, stepping back. Jessie slipped off her shoes. She heard another shriek, louder now that she was inside, and she felt the old adrenaline rush start to kick up. She washed her hands with conspicuous care, twice, and dried them on a paper towel. The woman came back into the kitchen with the infant, who was shivering with rage. Its tiny hands clawed the woman’s skin and shoulders, scraping her with nails as flimsy as Bible paper. Its yellow duck onesie was new and crisp looking, as though it had been ironed; it wore matching socks. A tiny tyrant in a tutu.

  “She just cries,” the woman said. “Do you have kids?”

  “My son.”

  Jessie got a glass from the dish rack, filled it at the sink, and pointed to the sofa in the living room. They sat down, deafened by the baby. The woman murmured and tried to soothe it. Jessie remembered pantomiming this same performance for the lactation aide, petting and singing to Neil when she would have liked to jump out of the hospital window with him clutched screaming in her arms. They’d land in the trees; at least it would be quiet.

  The woman looked at her, humiliated. “She cries.”

  Jessie smiled in empathy. “My son was like that too. She won’t eat?”

  The woman lifted her shirt and held the baby against her chest. It nuzzled her but didn’t latch on. The woman bent over it, crooning. Her left breast, uncovered, began to seep.

  “Help,” she said. “I’m so tired.”

  Without thinking, Jessie reached out and touched the woman’s bosom, lifted it. The first bead of milk slipped down over the tight, curving flesh and drizzled across Jessie’s hand.

  “Put her on this side,” Jessie said. Together, they adjusted the baby. Jessie took a pillow from the sofa and stuck it under the woman’s arm for support.

  “She’s going to cry.”

  Jessie touched the woman again, clasping her nipple between her first two fingers and pulling it gently out. The woman hugged her baby, and its mouth connected with a stream of milk. The latching-on was instant: always so fierce, that survival instinct and the animal-fast reflexes inside even a week-old, unformed body. The baby clicked and sucked. Its mother—her mother, this was a girl, or could be someday—relaxed. Jessie handed her the glass of water.

  “I always got thirsty when I did this,” she said.

  The baby’s head was warm and sweet-smelling, surprisingly heavy. She’d forgotten how big babies were, how their presence was intoxicating. Like alcohol or God, babies changed the laws of nature; the rules didn’t apply.

  “Then I do the other side, same way?”

  Jessie nodded. “Did the nurse show you, in the hospital?”

  “There wasn’t one. And honestly,” the woman said, her voice suddenly tangy, “honestly, do I need another white person telling me what to do? My usual doctor wasn’t there, and the one they gave me assumed I was Arab.”

  “Jesus.”

  “If one more person tells me how good my English is, or asks any stupid questions, I am going to lose my mind. One nurse tried to make sure she pushed my wheelchair five feet behind my husband when we took Sariah out to the car seat, because she thought that’s what good Muslim wives do. Walk behind! And they asked if a family member was going to bring a cab!”

  She laughed, but it wasn’t funny. The baby let go of her nipple, and she looked down at it, dazed, as though she’d forgotten what her body had been doing all this time.

  Jessie nodded. She patted the sofa cushion and asked, “Ready for the other side?”

  “She’ll
probably sleep after this, right?”

  “I hope so. And you too.”

  She reached for the woman’s other breast, uncovered it, and stroked the milk into it, coaxing its tissues to perform their natural calling. The woman started to sing again, quietly, and to Jessie’s surprise it wasn’t a psalm or holy chant, as she’d assumed, but a song from The Little Mermaid about kissing the girl and making the most of the moment at hand. Jessie, to her surprise, remembered this one. The tune popped into her mouth. She hummed along with the parts she knew, sha la, don’t be so shy, and she felt the mother and child responding to each other, turning inward to fulfill some private, divine purpose, the passing of life from one to another without will or resistance or even love. She held them both, though they didn’t need her. They had a way all laid out for them: They knew it was meant to be.

  Domestic Shorthair

  Amanda wasn’t even pretty, but she knew how to work it. Leaning in the bathroom doorway, I watched while she applied her makeup for yet another Tinder date. Her nose, too heavy for her heart-shaped face, got a couple lines of contour. She combed her eyebrows with a tiny dry-mascara brush and penciled them. For a casual first date, she didn’t put on the individual fake lashes, which looked to me like disembodied tarantula legs preserved in a plastic vanity bubble. She was a lot shorter than me, and I could see the sandy roots of her natural hair color coming in. She took out a powder puff and blended the layers and lines, making a smooth mask that was both just like her face and nothing like it at all.

  “How am I doing?” she said, pressing her lips together.

  “What’re you wearing? The black top again?”

  She blinked, exaggerating her eyes like a doll’s. “Probably. And my boots.”

  Men loved those boots, and she knew it. She called them her catnip: fake Louboutins whose red soles were peeling off. They gave her about four or five inches and made her walk with a sexy swivel, totally different than the heavy kitchen clogs she wore for work every day.