Jep is standing up in the cot I bungled together from bits and pieces. Things chucked in skips. It’s probably a death trap. I’ve tried to make it safe.
Whenever he wakes me I hate him. I get so tired. But the sight of him, bracing his weight on unsteady legs, makes my heart contract and relent. I touch him and there’s all his soft, resilient bristles and I feel scared and angry, too. I press the meat on him and, closing those too expressive, too alert eyes of his, he nibbles it experimentally. And I feel rather than hear the satisfied clasp of his pointy little teeth as he gobbles up the flesh. His eyes open slowly, almost shyly and look at me, I think, in gratitude. And I hate the way he can see in the dark.
It is then I decide to do the impossible thing. The thing I decided upon in the dead of one night last week. The cruel but perhaps necessary thing. I lift him up. He’s turned so heavy. I tell him this, holding him up under his armpits as I walk to the bathroom. There’s no window in the bathroom. The light comes on like the light inside the fridge and at the same time the air conditioner rasps into life. It has a grill of metal slats clogged with lines of dust, all heaped there. It makes you wonder how much dust you are taking in all the time. As I strip Jep of his baby things on the bathroom floor, I’m imagining running a finger through those lines of dust and dislodging them. How they would feel, soft and brushy, and trickle through my fingers.
What if I hurt him? If anything happened to him, I know I would feel it twice as bad. I hold the pad of one of his tiny hands between my thumb and forefinger and I feel the squash of it. I’m more scared of my potential to do him harm than he is. I run hot water, cold water into the basin. I’m glad there’s still hot water left. The immersion tank here is rubbish.
Because he’s so tired — and contented now that he’s at last eaten his fill — he’s quite compliant and lies nearly still for me. Oh, his underbelly’s such a lovely, pale shade of gold. The rest of him is tougher and darker, autumn-leaf gold. I’ve got soap, lots of it and with my one free hand, as I use the other to stroke his tummy, I froth it into a rich green lather. Under my hand he gurgles and purrs. I work the soap into his fur, all over, soaping these little limbs, every inch of him. I am careful around his eyes, of course, and he blinks at me, watchful. Then I have to hunt around for a fresh, unused, disposable razor blade. By the time I have found one the soft, lathery bubbles have begun to pop, leaving his fur smarmed and sticky. I wet him up some more and, taking one little hand in mine, shave a first, experimental strip off his chest.
Even in a city full of queers, I still get panic attacks about standing out in a crowd. Nanna Jean once said, in one of her more dour and paranoid phases, “Ah, you shouldn’t be dyeing your hair red, Andrew. That’s how they see you in a crowd. That’s how they get you and beat you up.” Now, is it any wonder that I grew up like this?
Today, trolling round the shops and the sales in Princes Street, I had this awful, sneaking sensation of panic. I wanted to scream out in the record shop. I couldn’t get home fast enough. Of course I couldn’t scream out. Not now that I have responsibilities. I couldn’t scream out for the sake of the child.
I took him out round the shops with me for the first time. He clung to my neck in one of those baby pouch things they design for parents. Walking the streets, not looking for anything in particular to buy, I felt proud and scared and worried and conspicuous. In the end I just had to come home. I used to love going round the shops. In the past few months everything has turned on its head.
Jep was asleep when I came back up the red fire escape. I put him in his cot and paced the flat.
Of course I have to learn to be happy and confident, walking about with him on the streets. I can’t leave him here all the time when I go out. Though already I’m guilty of that. If I lived in Phoenix Court, the women would be reporting me for neglect. But I can’t be with him twenty-four hours a day. Anyway, he’s more resilient than a normal child.
When I first walked out with him, his slight weight pressing on my chest, his bundled legs squashed against my stomach, I was struck by a very odd similarity. It was something I’d never have suspected. The conspicuousness I felt walking around with my new child was very like what I feel, now and then, when I think people are giving me second glances and thinking, queer. What a strange and sticky comparison! I don’t know whether I feel better, if it makes queerness more normal, or whether I feel sad, because I feel doubly on show. have to have a think about that one.
I went to sit in Princes Street Gardens. I sat on a bench and watched the sunbathers, the rollerbladers,
