But on the way out I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. I looked very red-faced, my eyes black as a magpie's, hair tangled. I looked feral. It scared me. Niki hurried me out.
We were in the Contemporary wing. I never went there. When I came with my mother, she would stand me in front of a Rothko, a blue-and-red square, and explain it to me for an hour. I never did get it. Now Niki and I stood in front of it, in the same space I stood when I was young, and watched the three zones of color throb, pulse, and other tones emerge, a tomato, a garnet, purple. The red advanced, the blue retreated, just like Kandinsky said. It was a door and we walked in.
Loss. That's what was in there. Grief, sorrow, wordless and unfathomable. Not what I felt this morning, septic, panicked. This was distilled. Niki put her arm around my waist, I put mine around hers. We stood and mourned. I could imagine how Jesus felt, his pity for all of humanity, how impossible it was, how admirable. The painting was Casals, a requiem. My mother and me, Niki and Yvonne, Paul and Davey and Claire, everybody. How vast was a human being's capacity for suffering. The only thing you could do was stand in awe of it. It wasn't a question of survival at all. It was the fullness of it, how much could you hold, how much could you care.
We walked out into the sunshine, gravely, like people after a funeral.
I took Niki into the Permanent Collection, I had to see the goddesses now. In the Indian rooms lived the rest of the ancient equation. Ripe figures dancing, making love, sleeping, sitting on lotuses, their hands in their characteristic mudras. Shiva danced in his bronze frame of fire. Indian raga music played softly in the background. We found a stone Boddhisattva, in his mustache and fine jewels. He had been through the door that Rothko painted, and held both that and the dance. He had come out the other side. We sat on the bench and allowed his heart to enter us. Other people came through but they didn't stay. Their eyes flickered on us, and they moved away. They were like flies to a stone. We couldn't even see them.
IT TOOK a long time to come down. We sat with Yvonne for a while, watching TV, but it seemed incomprehensible. The room swirled with color and motion, and she was staring at tiny heads in a box. The lamps were more interesting. I drew the way the air filled with perfect six-sided snowflakes. I could make them fall and make them go back up again. Sergei came into the room, he looked just like the white cat that followed him in. He talked to us about something, but his mind was a goldfish bowl. The skirts and pants thing.
Suddenly I couldn't stand to be inside our cramped, ugly house, with Sergei and his goldfish, its mouth opening and closing stupidly. I took some paper and watercolors onto the porch and painted wet on wet, streaks that became Blakean figures in sunrise, and dancers under the sea. Niki came out and smoked and looked at the rings around the streetlights. Later Rena and Natalia shared their Stoli with us, but it didn't do a thing. Rena was the fox woman and Natalia an Arabian horse with a dish face. They spoke Russian and we understood every word they said. ,
By three in the morning, I was getting awfully tired of snowflakes and the way the walls were breathing. Make tinkle for Annie. That's what I couldn't stop thinking about. At first, I thought, maybe it was really make tinkle for Mommy, but when I heard it in my head, it was always the same. Make tinkle for Annie. Who was Annie, and why do I make tinkle for her? I was trembling, my nerves shot, as Yvonne lay sleeping on her tide-foam and the snowflakes fell in our room. Annie, who are you, and where is Mommy? Yellow, was all I could get, yellow sunlight, and a white swan, a warm smell like laundry.
IN THE MORNING, I cut out words from the funny section of the paper:
WHO IS ANNIE
29
As I HAD PROMISED, I accompanied Yvonne to baby class at Waite Memorial Hospital. I held her tennis balls, her towel. I couldn't seem to take it seriously. I didn't know if it was the aftermath of the acid, but everything seemed funny. The plastic doll we handled looked like a space alien. The young couples seemed like big children, playing a game, the pregnancy game. These girls couldn't really be pregnant, they had pillows shoved up underneath their baby doll dresses. I liked the feeling of all the baby things, even washing the doll and diapering it with the Mickey Mouse diaper.
Yvonne pretended she was my sister-in-law, and that her husband, my brother, was in the army. Patrick, she liked the name. A TV actor. 'I got a letter from Patrick, did I fell you?' she told me during the break, while we all drank sweet juice from tiny paper cups, ate ginger snaps. 'My husband,' she told the couple next to her. 'He's getting sent to, you know —'
'Dar es Salaam,' I said.
'I miss him, don't you?'
'Not that much,' I said. 'He's way older than me.' I imagined a big blond man who brought me dolls from his different tours. Heidi dolls, dope hidden up their skirts.
'He sent me five hundred dollars for the layette,' she said.
'Made me promise not to go to yard sales. He wants everything brand-new. It's a waste of money, but if that's what he wants ...'
This was fun. I was never a little girl playing games with other little girls, dolly mommy daddy games.
They showed her how to hold the baby to her breast, holding the breast in one hand. She suckled the plastic child. I had to laugh.
'Shhh,' Yvonne said, cuddling the space alien, stroking its indented head. 'Such a pretty little baby. Don't you listen to that bad girl laughing, mija. You're my baby, yes you are.'
Later, Yvonne lay on the orange mat, blowing and counting, and I put the tennis balls under her back, switched to the rolled towels. I held the watch and timed her contractions, I breathed with her, we both hyperventilated. She wasn't nervous. 'Don't worry,' Yvonne said, smiling up at me, her belly like a giant South Sea Island pearl in a cocktail ring. 'I been through this before.'
They explained about the epidural and drugs, but no one there was going to have drugs. They all wanted the natural experience. It all seemed wrapped in plastic, unreal, like stewardesses on planes demonstrating the seat belts and the pattern for orderly disembarkation in case of crash at sea, the people taking a glance at the cards in the seat pocket in front of them. Sure, they thought, no problem. A peek at the nearest exit and then they were ready for in-flight service, peanuts and a movie.
RENA SOAKED UP the fierce April sun in her black macrame bikini, drinking a tumbler of vodka and Fresca, she called it a Russian Margarita. The men from the plumbing contractor next door loitered by the low chain-link fence, sucking their teeth at her. She pretended she didn't notice, but slowly applied Tropic
