Little Labours. Rivka Galchen
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Название: Little Labours
Автор: Rivka Galchen
Издательство: HarperCollins
Жанр: Биографии и Мемуары
isbn: 9780008225193
isbn:
But another problem with being the mother of a baby is loneliness. On many days I speak with only one adult. And for many months now, I have not seen Dynasty. Where is she? She had been so enlivening; she is so clever, and so pretty; now I am tired. I wait at the elevator, with my daughter who now walks, who pushes the button to call the elevator, who now understands the elevator, and never does the elevator door ring open to reveal our special upstairs neighbor. Each time my daughter and I are again in the hall waiting, I wait with hope. I would really like to see Dynasty again.
The baby likes to stand near the toilet, tear off small pieces of paper from the toilet roll, toss them into the waters of immeasurable depth, and flush. Then repeat. A sacred ritual.
In her ten-word Moby-Dick board book, she above all loves the page that says captain. She loves to find a ball in a picture, especially a ball that is green or blue. Of the six animal notecards of black and white drawings, she exhibits a strong preference for Penguin. She has not yet encountered a quantity of olives that is sufficient. When she makes a scribble on paper, the result makes her giggle. When she finds herself trapped in her crib and wants out, she calls out to me; when I enter the room, she says, “Eyes?” If we come upon a square or round of metal on the sidewalk, she wants nothing more than to stand on it, and then to go on standing there. At other times, in the apartment, she’ll set down a book, also so as to stand on it. When she sees a bottle of milk being poured out for her, she laughs. Little holds more interest than a set of stairs, or a handicap-access ramp. Always she is the first to notice the moon.
Despite having as a child refused tomatoes, refused olives, refused mushrooms, despite having as a child been unwilling to eat anything at Chinese restaurants save the white rice, and despite having as a child made a diet nearly entirely from couscous with butter and Pepperidge Farm Chessmen cookies, and for some reason, cauliflower—an achromatic diet—despite all that, I have historically had little tolerance for finicky children. I try not to judge such children, since they are children, but in the end I find I do judge the children and I judge the parents as well, even as it was through no effort on my part that I eventually became someone who will eat most anything.
But then I became pregnant and found I was a finicky eater all over again. I was nearly unable to bear the sight or taste of much of anything save potato chips, and lemonade, and occasionally, a slice of pizza. But only low-quality pizza, the kind of pizza where the cheese seems not to have a dairy component but instead to consist exclusively of partially hydrogenated somethings. All other foods seemed really gross. Oh, I thought, for the first time: children are pregnant with themselves.
Unfortunately, once my appetite returned so did my flair for being judgmental.
Her tossing and turning at night leadeth only to ascent, so that each morning she is head to the western border of the crib. Her pouring of sugar from cup to cup leadeth only to more sugar. When she unlinguines a box of linguine, then secrets away the pasta sticks into the bookshelves, within a zipper bag of pencils, under the pantry shelf, into a coat pocket, she revealeth the previously unconsidered negative spaces of the apartment. Her fear of the aloe plant at the neighbor’s home is unmoved by the plant’s persistently staying in place. Again and again she faces the challenge of the spoon, though its face turneth downwards and spilleth its contents, unless the contents of that spoon be yogurt, which hath imparted a false confidence, as it spilleth not, and in this way it deceiveth her, and yet even after repeated defeats with other-than-yogurt-substances, she returneth to the spoon with bright eyes and an open heart. When she desireth the opener of the cans, so as to turn the knob designed for arthritic hands with which she is happily acquainted, but the large person with whom she liveth denieth her the opener of the cans for the ancillary reason of the proximate rotating blade, she throws her head back and cries like a featherless bird.
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