She need not be modest. Modesty is no longer required. There is nobody to see her. Even the girl-of-all-work, she who was nobody and who saw nothing, is gone now.
Everyone is gone.
For the first time, Leo and Clotilde are truly alone. Or rather, we are alone, the three of us. Because of course I am there, too; though I do not yet exist, I am a determining presence. I turn with my mother, revolve with her. We wax and wane together, she and I, on the worn-out cushions of the sofa. We seek a point of compromise. Seek and do not find.
• • •
Around us all is disorder, disarray bordering on squalor. With Mary gone there is nobody but my mother to do the cleaning up, and Clotilde does not clean. And so, everywhere: piles of books; old newspapers; my father’s sketches, pencils, paints; boxes, half unpacked, with half-eaten plates of herring balanced on their lids; discarded stockings; half-darned pillowcases with the needle and thread still in them; a hairbrush knotted with tangles of blond hair; a comb likewise, knotted with dark; stained shirt collars, stained shirt cuffs; scissors; opened envelopes; sealed envelopes; cold toast; and bills. Bills from the grocer, the butcher, the fishmonger, the coal merchant, the surgeon, the chemist, the tailor . . .
Leo and Clotilde survive on credit. On good will. On air. Mostly.
Downstairs, in the kitchen, roaches dine languidly on weeks-old bacon grease and drippings.
It’s not my problem, of course. We are together, we three, but their struggles are not my struggles. I am safe and well fed, turning silently on my tether, leeching off my mother, tethering her to me, opposing from within: rotating left when she turns right, then right when she turns left, migrating down when she stands up, and up when she lies down . . .
In this I mean no harm. It’s just my nature, something I can’t help. Despite this, how she complains about me:
Oh, Leo, it’s so awful . . . this thing . . . this awful thing . . . it’s so heavy . . . I can’t put it anywhere . . . I turn here and it kicks there . . . turn there and it kicks here . . . I hate it, the little monster, and it hates me . . . look at the size of my ankles! Bring me a pillow, will you? A lemonade? My Papa’s book? . . . Oh, it’s so dreadfully hot in here, Leo . . .
In the green light cast by the vines of the climbing roses, my father regards his wife, the beautiful smooth globe of the belly, the mystery of what lies within. What am I? He doesn’t know. I am an unknown substance. She doesn’t know me either, though she has her suspicions.
Such an awful thing . . . I wish I could get rid of it.
She still makes these bitter remarks, but without the old conviction—her physical assaults upon me are a thing of the past. Though she tosses and turns, rages, complains, calls me this thing . . . this awful thing . . . this terrible thing . . . the little monster . . . the beast within . . . she has fully acquiesced, in her way, to my presence: all the self-inflicted bruises have healed, her body ripens unimpeded, expands, blushes, softens, even seems to emanate a radiant light—
Thanks to me she has become even more lovely than she was before. Not that she is grateful. There’s no gratitude in her. She will go on, calling me names, even after I am born. It’s true: on the day after my birth day, she’ll hold me to her warm, soft, milk-scented breast, dangle her lovely blond curls in my face, stare speculatively, and say: What an awful, ugly thing . . . it don’t favor me a bit, does it, Leo? It’s biting me something awful, the beast.
• • •
But this is still in the future, as well as in the past. For the present moment we are still one creature, she and I. I still dance at the end of her umbilicus, though not for long now.
Leo, my back hurts! Leo, will you rub my back? Oh, and my feet, too . . . will you rub my feet?