Tessa has made a twelve-layer hand-carved phallus in matte pink icing, installed a hand pump, and given it a sharp squeeze. White pudding spurts from the top. Tessa whoops with glee. Margo blows out the candles — why? it isn't her birthday — and pretends to laugh.
Later. The bathroom stall. The fluorescent light. The belly. The smile finally gets to come off.
Shyanne arrives at the hospital four hours late. She has been driving all around town looking for the best teddy bear and wound up back at Bloomingdale's. She holds it out — white, with a slightly constipated face. You are not going to believe this, Margo.
Shyanne in the corner, phone glowing, chewing gum, playing PokerStars all night long. She mouths the words: stomp those jokers. Margo is in labor in the background.
A nurse mocks the name Bodhi. Shyanne's arm moves. The nurse's face registers perfect surprise. For many years to come, Margo will replay the memory of that slap — and the perfect look of surprise on the nurse's face. It is the time she feels most loved by her mother.
The epidural. The ice chips. The yellow sponge that tastes of lemons. The pooping on the table. The OB laughing: You're right, you're right, I have, Mama, now let's have one more big push. Then Bodhi's slippery purple body on her chest — six pounds, tadpole legs, eyes pinched shut. She loved him so much it made her ears ring.
She drives out of the parking lot alone, shaking the whole forty-five-minute drive. At Park Place she parks on the street, goes to the back, and presses the button on the car seat base. It does not do anything. Bodhi screams. She presses it again.
She remembers she can just unfasten him. Both bags slung across her chest like bandoliers, she snatches up Bodhi and waddling up the street past the Fuel Up! gas station to the slumped brown buildings of Park Place — which look, compared to the cheerful 1940s homes lining the rest of the street, like an uninvited guest.
Her room. Door closed. Bodhi latched. She keeps thinking: I am so fucked, I am so fucked, I am so fucked. All around her she can feel the echoey space of no one caring about her or worrying about her or helping her. She might as well be nursing this baby on an abandoned space station.
When he falls asleep, she does not put him in the crib like she is supposed to. She lies down next to him. His face eighteen inches from hers — the only distance a newborn can focus. She was afraid to fall asleep. Her body was not giving her a choice.
Months earlier. Fullerton College. Mark's class on impossible points of view. Derek — dirty beanie, lank hair — keeps trying to diagnose the protagonist. Mark keeps saying: The main character is not a real person. Margo sits in the back row and says nothing. She never speaks in class.
After class. He holds up her essay — an A in red pen. What are you doing here? You could go anywhere. She has no idea yet that he is interested in her. It doesn't occur to her at all.
It is raining. They have been walking in circles around campus. Under a huge eucalyptus tree, both in hoods, he asks: Can I kiss you? She nods. He is exactly her height. Both hoods up in the rain. Even she thinks: We are kissing openly on campus. This seems like a very bad idea.
He arrives wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses indoors, clutching a six-pack of Red Stripe to his chest like a child who doesn't want to share. Suzie is on the couch. Pay the troll, she says, holding out her hand. Mark looks horrified.
When it is over, he sits in her desk chair and spins. She returns from the bathroom to find him going through her desk drawers. She lies on the bed watching him — her disdain a folded promise waiting in a drawer within her. He pries a bottle cap off the Red Stripe on the edge of her desk. She is astonished by the rudeness of this. Then: I slept with my wife's sister on our wedding night.
He writes her almost a dozen poems. This is the one she likes most. She will read it many times. It gives her nothing to hold on to. She holds on anyway.