Lost in This World

“She’s hyperventilating.”

This is no joy ride. I’m doing all the exercises - relaxing opposite muscle groups, breathing in and out like a dimpled lady dozing off watching her late night show, and saying “lake” just like we planned, so Abie can tell me all about Killarney and the quartz mountains and how Pluto chased the bear and how I was chest high in muddy water. Abie has the time watch he used for sprinting at Wager High. I can’t imagine him sprinting, but then maybe I can. He’s got a lot of spirit and a heaping portion of competitive edge─he’s a hunter, he says.

Abie circles my belly with his fingers. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I say. “Rub my back, it’s my back,” because it feels like a dozen loggers have hauled off my lower back and they have a deadline with cash incentives. The lady across the way is yelling and wildly moaning “Yi yi yi.” “Will you tell her to shut the fuck up?” I say. “I’ve been here for twenty-two fucking hours and the bitch is screaming─” I feel a pulling and twisting: “Lake,” I hiss at Abie and he goes into his schtick which is what he calls his monologue. He says I’m not Jewish because I don’t talk Yinglish and I never set foot into a synagogue until I met him and then I broke out in hives.

“She’s ready.” Our procession speeds forward, nurse on one side, Abie dashing in front with his Minolta and I’m grinning away, giving Abie the finger as he clicks away. I adore fame.

“Sweetheart, my sweetheart, sweet heart,” I say, and I’m hers. From that moment there’s a change of scenery: the set with the husband glides stage left and is forever replaced by mother and child. He brings me yellow daisies and oranges and when I’m afraid to change her diaper, she is so skinny all arms and legs and big blue monkey eyes, he shows me “you see, you just ssslip the diaper under─”
“But it’s just as big as she is," I say. He changes the diaper like a seasoned cowhand and the nurse Dorothy flashes him a smile as bright as her red hair.

She cries all night. I ring for the nurse and still she cries. The nurse rustles in white, starched cool as a lily. “She’s just new in this world, poor little thing,” she says.

My heart ripped that night and never healed. I guess somehow I knew─she’d always be a poor little thing, always lost in this world.