After Birth

After Birth

Feedback (good, bad, indifferent, just want to bother me, whatever) is appreciated. Please write to: theangstguy@yahoo.com

Synopsis: A moment after midnight with mother and child (story #10 in the Pause in the Air series).

Author’s Notes: “After Birth” is the tenth story in the Pause in the Air series, in which Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane are two college freshmen in Boston—a married lesbian couple with a newborn baby. The back story of this alternate Dariaverse is given in the earlier Pause in the Air tales, which include (in story order): “Pause in the Air,” “Thanks Giving,” “Moving Day,” “Silent Night,” “Shock and Aww,” “Family Affairs,” “Writes of Spring,” “April Showers,” and “Labor Relations.” This story makes reference to the two previous tales, but it stands on its own for casual reading.

Acknowledgements: I’ve been here and done this, so thanks to the two who got me up.

She awakens with her head full of fog, feeling something is amiss in the darkness but unable to put her finger on what. A moment later she hears a tiny cough from the living room, then a halfhearted cry. Her spouse stirs beside her in bed. Fully awake at this point and resigned to the inevitable, she decides to take the bullet. “I’ll get him,” she whispers, and she flips away the blanket and sheet. Her partner makes no reply, either genuinely asleep or, more likely, pretending to be asleep and grateful to get a break.

The non-sleeping partner drops her legs over the side of the bed and sits up, collects herself, then stands and feels around the floor with her bare feet for her slippers. Once those are on, she shuffles out of the bedroom, pulling the door closed behind her, and heads down the creaky hallway of the two-bedroom apartment that she, her spouse, and their baby called home. The air conditioning is on low and the apartment is comfortable for Boston on a warm night in May, but money is tight; she shuts the A/C off as she passes the thermostat.

Jane can see quite well in the illumination from the two nightlights in the living room. They guide her to the cradle next to the coffee table, where someone is starting to cry in earnest. She sniffs the air, detects no disagreeable odors, then bends down to pick up the cradle’s lone inhabitant. Her head bumps into a number of chubby pastel dinosaurs hanging from a mobile over the cradle, smiling vacantly at one another as they swing in the air on their strings.

“Hey, there,” says Jane as she lifts a noisy Quinton Trent Erin Morgendorffer-Lane and holds him against her, swiveling gently from side to side to rock him. She kisses the top of his head. “Bottle Mommy’s here,” she says. “Shhh, Bottle Mommy’s here and she loves you. Breast Mommy’s getting her sleep so she can take care of you tomorrow while Bottle Mommy’s at class. Shhh. Hmm. You seem to be dry. That’s good. Let’s go get your—” She squints at an illuminated digital clock on a bookshelf “—three twenty-eight a.m. snack.”

Jane sniffs at Quinton’s diaper once more to be sure, then heads for the kitchen, guided by a third night light there. She gets into the refrigerator and pulls out a half-pint baby bottle full of expressed milk, putting it on the counter. She then picks up a saucepan, fills it with hot water from the sink, then plops the bottle in and leans against the counter to wait for the milk to warm up to the proper temperature. All this is done with her right hand; her left hand cradles a semi-noisy Quinton, who protests his hunger into her shoulder. He wears a blue furry jumper with his name on it, courtesy of his aunt Quinn, his namesake. Jane wears a bright-red knee-length nightshirt with cartoon lettering across the chest that reads: NERDY GIRLS MAKE ME HOT.

“You’re sleeping a little longer at night,” Jane says to Quinton in a stage whisper, making idle conversation as she bobs him up and down in hopes of quieting him. “Maybe in a couple months you’ll let both your mommies get their sleep. That will be so good, and we’ll be so proud of you.” She kisses him a few times, but he is still crabby and vocal about it. “Just a couple more minutes, promise” she says. “Want Bottle Mommy to sing to you while we wait? I won’t sing too loud, I promise. You want our favorite song Do ya? Okay.”

She checks the bottle—lukewarm but getting there—then clears her throat and begins to sing the only tune she ever sings for him at night. Her voice is barely audible, kept low because she’s been told all her life that her singing is terrible and she hopes that a whispered song won’t be so bad.

“‘There’s got to be a morning after,’” Quinton hears. His crying subsides. “‘If we can hold on through the night / We have a chance to find the sunshine / Let’s keep on looking for the light / Oh, can't you see the morning after? / It's waiting right outside the storm / Why don't we cross the bridge together / And find the place that's safe and warm?’”

Jane hums a few verses from memory, her body swaying from side to side, then pauses to feel the milk bottle again. It’s ready. She pulls it out of the hot water, dries it on her nightshirt, and carefully squirts a few sweet drops into her mouth to test it. Not too hot, not too cold, perfect. She walks back into the living room and finds the rocking chair she and her spouse Daria picked up at a rummage sale on the recommendation of Daria’s younger sister. Teenaged aunt Quinn lives hundreds of miles away near Baltimore, but her presence is everywhere in the little apartment. As Quinn recently told them: If you’re giving my nephew my name, which of course you should for quality purposes, then I’d better make sure that you’re properly equipped to spoil him in the manner to which I myself have been accustomed. Among many other things, she bought a $200 electric breast pump for Daria’s use. Where Quinn gets all her money is a question yet to be resolved. Daria suspects Quinn secretly gets it from their father. Jane and Daria make it a point never to ask.

Seating herself in the rocker, Jane holds Quinton to her with her right arm and puts the bottle in his mouth with her left hand. His cries abruptly end, and his tiny hands grasp the bottle as he sucks away. Bottle Mommy slowly begins to rock. Her song continues, skipping a few verses covered by the humming. “‘There's got to be a morning after / We're moving closer to the shore / I know we'll be there by tomorrow / And we'll escape the darkness / We won't be searching anymore / There’s got to be a morning after / There’s got to be a morning after / There’s got to be a morning after. . . .’”

She lets her voice fade out. Quinton is quiet. He is working the bottle, but his eyes are closing.

Jane rocks back and forth. She is starting to feel sleepy herself. Random thoughts bob in her head like driftwood on the sea. “I love you,” she says to her child, three weeks and one day old. “I love you, Q.T. I’m glad you’re a good kid.” She is also glad that Quinton’s arrival brought with it a breathing space from all the other troubles surrounding their world. It was bad enough that Quinton was six weeks premature, though he and his birth mother Daria came through delivery with flying colors and he displays the recommended number of fingers and toes.

With the recent passing of Daria’s wealthy maternal grandmother, however, Daria’s mother and two aunts have retained personal lawyers and are skirmishing over the will, with the promise of a brutal battle royal on the horizon. So far Jane and Daria are not involved, and Jane prays that state will continue. Daria got an extension on all her undergraduate classes at Raft, which she will have to complete over the summer. She has also shelved all of her writing projects for the time being. Jane completed her spring classes at Boston Fine Arts College, though with lackluster grades. She has two summer classes at present. A photographic exhibition she created, called “Handscapes,” is on display at BFAC’s student gallery, but it is getting mixed reviews. People don’t seem to get it, the close-up pictures of hands like exotic and beautiful landscapes. Jane wonders why everyone is being so thick. The point is obvious to her.

Jane reflects on this as she blinks and yawns. Quinton sucks irregularly now. He is getting full.

Only a few people call or visit the trio anymore, and this bothers Jane. Quinn calls frequently and is forever sending them things, even when she is told not to, but except for her, Jane’s older brother Trent, and Daria’s cousin Erin—all of whom live far away—the Morgendorffer-Lane household has few outside contacts. Daria and Jane have discussed this, but they are forever tabling the issue to discuss other things. We’ll get out more one of these days, they agree, one of these days when things are a little less crazy. Things, however, have never gotten less crazy, only more so.

“‘There’s got to be a morning after,’” Jane starts to sing again, but she stops. Quinton is asleep with his mouth open, the bottle nipple forgotten. She sets the bottle aside on the coffee table and continues to rock, looking down at her baby. Quinton is a handsome boy with a head of dark black hair like his twenty-something genetic father, Trent, and like Jane herself. He’s much better looking than either of you, Quinn told Daria at the hospital. If I hadn’t seen him actually being born, I’d have sworn he was adopted. Daria’s reply was unprintable but delivered with a sisterly smile.

Jane thinks of the day ahead of her. School still seems uncomfortably like work. Maybe something different and good will happen soon, something unexpected. She hopes so. They really do need to get out more.

She stifles another yawn and gets up from the rocker. Quinton makes no complaint as she puts him back in his crib. She then puts away the bottle, empties the hot water out, and pads down the hall back to bed. Kicking off her slippers, she gets under the covers again. When she finally falls asleep, her back is pressed against Daria’s, her face shrouded in her long black bangs.

It is very quiet in the little apartment. The chubby pastel dinosaurs twirl on their strings above Quinton’s crib and smile knowingly at one another as they watch over their sleeping charge.

Original: 05/28/07, modified 06/04/07, 03/18/08

FINIS