“He won’ stand for it.”
My husband looked into Walter’s mad face, feeding him another bit of muffin to keep his attention. “No,” he said approvingly. “Why should he?”
Walter’s eyes opened wide; he brought his face close to his father’s, swallowed the last bite, and shouted “Poo-poo, poo-poo” at the top of his lungs. Sarah jumped away from the sideboard, grabbed the horrid creature by one arm, and dragged him toward the doors. “He have to go out,” she said. When the doors were open, he scurried across the bricks into the azaleas and squatted down in the dirt.
“A charming child,” I observed.
Sarah closed the doors and resumed her post at the sideboard. “More coffee,” I said.
My husband looked abashed. It delighted me to see him trying to make his dull brain work over the problem presented by this monster he has brought among us. “So he can speak?” he said.
“Delphine taught him that.”
“Can he say anything else?”
“Maybe Delphine understand him sometime.”
“But you don’t.”
Sarah studied his face for a moment without speaking. Then she said, “Delphine say he don’t hear.”
“He’s deaf,” my husband said softly, as if a deep revelation had just come to him. Then, tersely, “I shall send for Dr. Landry today.”
I RARELY VISIT in town because I can’t bear my mother’s prying into the state of my marriage, her constant insinuations about my failure to conceive a child. For a few years I didn’t mind, I even felt a mild curiosity about it myself; as I explained to Mother, it wasn’t for lack of trying. She cherished the hope that the fault was with my husband, and I foolishly did too, until Walter was born. Then I knew the reason. In a way, Walter is the reason, but I could speak to no one about it. In the fifth year of my marriage, Mother and my husband consulted a doctor reputed to have helped other childless couples, and then there was no living with either of them until I agreed to be examined by this man. So I went to town and, at the appointed time, presented myself at the offices of Dr. Gabriel Sanchez.
He was a small, swarthy man, his thin hair gray at the temples, his eyes slightly crossed; perhaps one eye was only weak. I was required to undress behind a screen, wrapped in sheets by a nurse, then partially unwrapped, my modesty consulted to absurd lengths. The physical examination was extremely repugnant, but I did not object to it. I thought if I would submit, the doctor might find some physical reason for my failure to conceive, thereby freeing me of my detested conjugal duties, and also putting an end to my mother’s tiresome queries. When it was over, a girl was sent in to help me dress and I was escorted into the office where Dr. Sanchez awaited me. It was a surprisingly sunny room. The floor was covered with a rush mat; the chairs were in summer covers. The doctor motioned me into one facing his desk, which was really a table covered with papers, books, and, oddly enough, a potted geranium. As I took my seat I noticed a large wrought-iron cage hanging from a chain near the open window in which two canaries hopped about. During our conversation, one of these birds sang plaintively.
He began well. He told me that he was obliged to ask me a number of personal questions, and that I could be assured my answers would not travel beyond the walls of his office, that in particular he would not repeat anything I said to my mother or my husband. I found the darting, unfocused looks he gave me reassuring, and I made up my mind to tell him whatever he wanted to know. I wanted to enlist him on my side. He asked about my monthly discharges, were they regular, copious, clotted, or clear, attended by pain or swelling? He asked about my general health, my diet, how much riding I did, if I ever suffered from dizziness or fainting spells. As my health has always been excellent, I answered these questions readily, nor could he have been much surprised at my responses. He listened closely, occasionally making a note in a leather-bound book he had open before him.
Then he questioned me about my marriage, and in particular about my sexual congress with my husband. How often did our relations take place, did I experience pain, was there ever bleeding afterward? He asked most delicately if I was certain that my husband ejaculated into my womb, a question which made me laugh, though I could not look at him and felt a hot flush rising in my cheeks. “I apologize for being so indelicate,” he said, “but I have known cases of infertility caused by inadequate knowledge on the part of the husband.”
“My husband knows very well how babies are made, I assure you,” I said coldly.
He fiddled with his pen and made no answer. I looked past him at the window where the bird was singing. There was a plantain tree just outside with a big bruised purple pod of unripe fruit hanging from it. One of the leaves lay across the windowsill like a fold of impossibly bright satin. I thought of my husband’s embraces, so urgent and disagreeable, his kneading and sucking at my breasts until the nipples hurt, his fingers probing between my legs, his harsh breath in my face.