“Thank you for coming with me,” she said, beating him to it.
“Thank
you,
” he said with too much emphasis. He knew he should not have said anything at all. She had thanked him. She was being gracious. Being gracious in return seemed like mockery.
“I hope you—” he began but stopped. She looked relieved.
“Come,” he said instead and rubbed his eyes with force. “Let’s go.”
She wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and slipped on her shoes. Was she wearing a nightgown? Some days, she looked like a child, with her large feet and little belly. Some days, he noticed how she’d aged even in the few years since they’d met. Creases puckered the outer corners of her eyes, directing attention away from the prettiest part of her face. Joseph dusted a patch of flour off his sleeve and into the sink. He ignored his urge to use the toilet.
He walked down the stairs with one arm outstretched behind him, reaching for her. She rested one hand on his shoulder and with the other slid a tissue against the banister, making a tiny swoosh as she gathered the dust. Outside, in the milky afternoon light, she opened the tissue to him. It looked like a tiny gray mouse.
“So filthy,” she said, to prove a point.
Joseph was elsewhere, imagining Victoria with a red coat cinched around her waist—the kind in the shop windows. She was leaning down to wipe their child’s hands with a wet cloth, getting the dirt out of the crevices. In his mind, the child’s hand was a little sun, radiant and hot. He kissed Victoria on the head. She looked at him like he’d said something suspicious and strange.
They took the bus to the doctor’s office. She kept her fingers interlaced in her lap. When she spoke, she whispered. She still hadn’t adjusted to using English in public. She’d been here more than three years but rarely went out except to go to work.
“Are you hungry?” she asked. “I was going to make
fasoulia
.”
He tried to imagine her at her hostessing job, the only time she left the apartment—if she was confident without him. He imagined her giving directions to the restrooms, suggesting something off the menu, talking to men. It made his stomach turn.
“I’m not hungry,” Joseph said. “Are you? You shouldn’t let yourself be hungry.”
Red triangles flushed on her cheeks. He knew he shouldn’t have. He had been so careful.
“Why?” she snapped. “Why should I be hungry less than you?”
She blamed him for not simply going along with her wishes. He knew that. She blamed him for the horrible things she’d seen by herself: the public hanging of her uncle, for example. She wouldn’t mention her own father’s name. But Joseph couldn’t apologize. Wouldn’t. He wanted to tell her to think of his feelings but didn’t. He focused his eyes on the back of the driver’s head.
They were quiet. This would not do, he thought. This would not help his cause, this anger. He took her hand. She gave it to him grudgingly, unknotting her fingers. A clam.
“Habibi,”
he said, oblivious. She put her hand on his chest, blocking him.
“A penny,” she said, “for that word.”
He was looking at her so intently that he no longer could identify her features. He was hoping that something explicit, something radical could happen between them without his even saying anything, but she was busy penalizing him for speaking in Arabic.
Understand,
he wanted to tell her.
Try to understand. I want to love you. I want to see you with our baby in your arms.
She put out her palm. She kept it there for a moment, between them. Then she put it into her lap, embarrassed.
“I’ll put in two,” Joseph said, taking a nickel from his pocket. “I’m sure to mess up again.”
She looked out at the street. A man was being pushed against a building by two policemen. He writhed as they pinned his hands to his back. They pushed their bodies against him. Joseph thought he saw them whispering into his ears. Victoria turned her face away. She was thirteen years old during
farhud,
when the killing of the Jews began. She’d been sleeping on the roof with her mother when she saw the city light up, swell, and splinter with explosion. It was as if, she’d said once, the cries themselves generated the light. “You can’t imagine a color like that. Like the insides of a person, ripped out.” Joseph had been in Mosul with his rich cousins.
They passed Abingdon Square and moved along Fourteenth Street. He had never been in this part of the city. He did not know where he was going. For the first time, she was the leader of them both.
“You’ve become a real New Yorker,” he said and threw his hands up in mock surrender. “You see? You show me around from now on.”
He was trying to empower her. It was clear, however, that the first parts of his plan were absolutely not working—at least, not in the way he would have hoped.
The office was lined with thick wallpaper. The color of flesh, Joseph thought. They waited for the doctor in a windowless room full of tools and small jars. They tried not to look at each other.
Dr. Elliot Espy
was written in fancy lettering on two plaques and four framed papers. Joseph sat on a chair, and Victoria’s feet dangled above the floor. She was on a high table with her back like an arrow on a drawn bow. She was wearing a blue gown, and her hands were crossed over her chest. Joseph noticed the bumps on her arms, the dark hairs sticking up. He looked at her until she looked back at him and then he looked to the floor, afraid that she’d say something he didn’t want to hear. He reminded himself of what he must do and he hoped the doctor would be on his side. He’d never been to an American doctor. Victoria said the gowns reminded her of white paper napkins.
Joseph wasn’t sure how long they’d have to wait. There was a big clock with black hands above the door. He’d never seen seconds move so slowly. The ceiling, he noticed, had no wallpaper but was painted with very shiny white paint. So shiny he was convinced that he could see his own reflection. He felt as if he were being watched.
“It’s okay,” Victoria said. He wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to herself.
Joseph looked at the cupboards and wondered what was behind the closed doors. Maybe Victoria knew. Maybe she didn’t. That made it worse. That Victoria had been in there alone enraged Joseph.
He opened a cupboard. Boxes were neatly stacked according to size. He picked up one, changing the entire formation of things. He shook it next to his ear.
“What are you doing?” Victoria whispered. Her voice was low and tight. “Are you crazy?”
Joseph put the box back and opened another cupboard. This one was less full. A pile of dressing gowns. Some gauze.
“It’s not so interesting,” he said to Victoria, as if that would matter.
Before he opened the final cupboard, he looked around.
“Don’t,” Victoria said. “Joseph, do not.”
But he couldn’t help himself. He had come this far. And he felt he had something to prove.
We belong here,
he wanted to say.
I’m not afraid.
He pulled on the handle but it wouldn’t budge. It was locked. He pulled again, and it moved a little. A light went on inside. He tried pushing it back into the position it had been in. But it was stuck, locked, slightly open and lit.
“Oh,” he heard Victoria say. Her hands covered her entire face. He scurried back to his seat and sat down very quickly. The doorknob turned, and Joseph trapped gas from his stomach with a giant inhale.
“Hello, folks,” the doctor said cheerily. A tall, red-haired nurse followed on his heels. She nodded to Victoria, then to Joseph. She looked more like a movie star than a nurse, Joseph thought.
“How are we doing?” the doctor asked, resting his hand on Victoria’s knee and sticking a silver tool into one of her ears. Joseph moved forward in his chair, wanting to hold her, protect her. A vein flared in her neck. She sensed him. He sat back and crossed his legs.
“Fine, thank you,” Victoria said. “How are you?”
“That matters less,” the doctor said, laughing importantly. Victoria blushed. She didn’t seem uncomfortable, Joseph thought. The doctor looked toward the cabinet and then to Victoria. He was concerned.
“Did you need something?” he asked Victoria. The concern made Joseph angry. She didn’t need anything. She wasn’t the one who’d been snooping around.
“I did,” Joseph said. Victoria looked right at him. Her eyes didn’t flutter. In crucial moments, Joseph could never have been so calm. He thought for a second that she would make a very excellent assassin. Then he told himself to stop being dramatic.
“A little towel,” Victoria said. “He wanted to wipe his head.”
The nurse got right to it. She opened a cupboard below the sink that Joseph hadn’t even noticed and handed him a stack of towels, sturdy and thick.
“There you go,” she said and smiled to show a set of fancy white teeth.
The doctor’s hand was still on Victoria’s leg. He put the silver cone into her other ear and looked through it.
“Great,” the doctor kept saying as he moved her jaw, opened her eyes wide. “Excellent. You’re just perfect.”
Victoria didn’t move. She let him inspect her like an animal, Joseph thought. Less. In Baghdad, the Hassawi donkeys were like royalty. They carried only watermelon, dates, and honey. They gave birth once in a lifetime.
“You’re eating properly?” the doctor asked while opening Victoria’s mouth and peering in. “And you’ve been resting?”
Joseph wanted the doctor to answer Victoria’s question: How was he? Joseph hadn’t forgotten it. Before the towels, before everything, she had asked him that. Joseph thought a doctor should have better manners than this.
“Yes,” Victoria said. Joseph wanted to tell the doctor otherwise, that she refused to give up her hostessing job—four to midnight three evenings a week.
“Have you given any thought,” the doctor said, suddenly lowering his voice, “to what we talked about?” Joseph felt like he’d been punched in the stomach. He felt sick. They’d talked about it? She talked to him, Joseph thought, and actually shook his head. The nurse shuffled a bit and cleared her throat. She looked at Joseph. Maybe she wanted him to say something too. This was his chance, Joseph thought. It was now or never.
“We—” he began, but Victoria shot him a look. He went silent. He picked one towel off the stack and dragged it across the sweat on his forehead.
“I have,” she said. “I’ve thought about it a lot.”
Joseph wanted to catch her eye. He wanted to beg her to have the baby. He thought of his life without it, just the two of them, and he couldn’t take it. Her anticipation, her gloom—it was too much for him. He craned his neck toward her.
“And what does your husband think?” the doctor asked. Now he met Joseph’s eyes. Finally.
“We’re not married,” Victoria said suddenly. They all looked at her—Joseph included—as if they couldn’t understand, as if she’d offered to deliver the baby herself. They were shocked. Joseph wanted to shout. They hadn’t gotten married because Victoria had wanted to wait until they were citizens, for a nice wedding they could be proud of. It was never an issue. They acted as though they were married because in their minds, or so he thought, they might as well have been. But now, Victoria was using this fact to isolate him. Joseph was determined that it wouldn’t. What was the big deal? he thought. These people were not saints. They were in the business of auctioning off babies. Well, he didn’t know that for sure. But that was how he imagined it happening, at a red stall with a canopy and a yellow flag—like at the state fairs he’d seen in photos.
Joseph tried to remind himself to be understanding. Her family hadn’t been like his. Her father, to whom Joseph, gratefully, had never been formally introduced, was loveless, cruel. Every evening he spent at the Mee-Dan, and even on family nights there, Victoria had told him, he brought just his sons. Her mother was beautiful but sad, desperate. She used to wander around the market, he remembered, looking defeated, lost, like a flower in terrible need of sun. Joseph’s own family consisted of just his father and himself, which was why when Joseph left for the States, he was banded with hope. He was sure his father would make it to Israel and things would be all right. That was his father’s promise and why Joseph could leave unburdened. If it had been otherwise, he would have stayed. But his father believed that Israel would provide nothing new for his son, so he urged Joseph to flee to the United States. “Go where I could never go,” he’d said. “That is the best thing a father can offer his child.”
“We are planning for marriage,” Joseph said now. The doctor and the nurse turned their eyes to each other and then to the white floor, waiting. Victoria was staring past the doctor, past all of the shiny silver tools and white towels, toward something that Joseph could not see. Wallpaper? Was something there? Joseph noticed nothing remarkable. Not even a tear.
“I want to do the adoption,” Victoria said, her voice shaking but determined. “To keep this baby would not be right for me.”
“You?” Joseph said, feeling like he was yelling through a hurricane, trying desperately to be heard.
“Doctor,” he finally said, no longer able to hold it in. “I don’t think that’s necessary. I really don’t. Do you?”
“Well,” the doctor said, putting his hand to his chest as if flattered. “I really don’t feel privileged to say.”
“But she doesn’t want to discuss it with me,” Joseph said. For the second time, Victoria put her face in her hands. The doctor gently touched one of her wrists.
“That’s her choice, isn’t it?” the doctor said. “My opinion? You aren’t married. Somewhere, this baby will have a good home.”
Until then, Joseph hadn’t thought of the baby, exactly. He’d thought of other things. A toddler. A playground. A crib. But a child, a little delicate thing curled into Victoria’s chest—that he had left out of his head. Thankfully. Now he saw Victoria’s arms with nothing in them and a gaping hole through her body where the baby had been. He turned away quickly. He would have gotten up and walked out if he hadn’t feared for Victoria, for what might happen if he left her alone. So he slumped deeper and deeper into the chair. He snuggled his hands into his armpits, away from the itchy armrests. He waited, shutting out all the sound he could, concentrating on the rhythm of his heart. He imagined how fast a baby’s heart must beat, pinging like rain on tin.