I wake fretting.
Red! Over here, Red!
You see I am desired. Just not by her.
• • •
I think it needs to be changed, my father says.
He has to repeat himself several times before my mother hears, and then finally he gives up, and changes me himself. His hands, though rough, are deft and precise; he turns me over carefully, unwraps me and then wraps me up again, neatly, every detail in place, as if I am a piece of glass he is forming at his lamp, while my mother, who is sometimes nearby—in the same house certainly, sometimes even in the same room—wonders how much longer before she can get back into her strictest corset. Not too much longer now. She is a beautiful woman; she has kept her figure. The mirror is back, its cover removed. We are reflected in it together—here we are: she, smoothing her dress down tight over her narrow waist, turning from side to side, blond curl pendant over bare, white shoulder. I am behind her, a blur in the cradle. My mouth is open wide, oral apparatus on display, tongue first, tonsils behind. In reflection no one can hear me screaming. The reflected me is the one my mother much prefers.
She is usually someplace nearby. Almost always in the same house. Sometimes in the same room.
Out in the yard, sometimes.
Although I am the omphalos, the center, I am sharply aware of my mother in all her peregrinations, those orbits that take her in a series of ever-widening gyres away from my cradle—at first, harmlessly, just downstairs, into the sitting room; then, from my perspective more unnervingly, two floors down, into the kitchen; then, more ominously yet, through the door and out into the yard; then, inevitably, into the shed where my father is working; then, at last, terrifyingly, out of the yard, into the street—foreign place of neighing ponies and rattling cart wheels, of roaring river, from where, despite all, above every other squeak and whistle and rattle and thump, above every catcall and cry, above the passing songs of balladeers and barrel organs, I can hear the distinctive ring of my mother’s bootheel on the cobblestones as she recedes up the street.
I don’t know where she is going.
Away. Away from me.
Still fresh in the memory of an earlier time, a time when she would, by necessity, have taken me with her everywhere, I grieve at being left behind. The physical tether binding us has dissolved, only to be replaced by a tangible, finer, yet equally strong filament of connection; and I am exquisitely sensitive to every tug upon it. Yet it seems that, in spite of all, she is free of me. I am bound, but she is free. With what carelessness she shifts her orbits, moving farther and farther away from me.
I rage, loudly, at the unfairness of life.
My father, putting his mild finger inside my wrapper, says, I think it is wet, and proceeds to unfurl me—finds me dry, and furrows his brow. He doesn’t know what’s ailing me—let alone that it’s the same thing that ails him.
When she is nearby we are both aware of her, we two; exquisitely aware. There is her scent: the perfume, yes, but beneath it, more importantly, the earthier odors of her body, the sweet commingling of sweat and milk, armpit, neck nape, and cunt. We are always aware.
• • •
My mother. His wife.
She is moving away from us. Downstairs. Outside. Out into the street.
• • •
Birthing me has hardly changed her at all. She is, if anything, more beautiful than before. Unlike me, she sleeps soundly every night, the gentle, white curve of her brow unperturbed by the various songs I have composed for the purpose of gaining her attention. She is unconscious, slumbering. My father gets out of bed and slips my coral into my mouth. For a while I will suck on it, this hard thing, calcified exoskeleton surrounded by four jolly bells that jingle and jangle softly as I suck, ring-a-ling-ling-a-ling-ling! My mother does not wake; undisturbed, she sleeps on, sleeps profoundly. Ring-a-ling-ling-a-ling-ling!