Atlas & Alice | Issue 2 Winter 2014
The woman with twins is soldier-like holding a boy’s hand on either side of her as the class marches around the circle. It’s hard to read her tight smile, ironic but proud in the corners. The young mother envies her extra load. Why should the young mother sometimes feel so burdened with just one, a calm, sweet one? Burdened is not the right word. Before Clint, she remembers going to the grocery and deciding over apples as long as she wanted. Now she worries about Clint’s naptime, which she needs herself to rest. Lately she lies in bed and pictures dead people come to life. What a wonderful thing to imagine! The young mother watches the curly-haired woman bouncing down the line and whispers to the woman with twins, “Impressive, huh?” The woman with twins shakes her head. “You mean that robot, short-circuiting?” The young mother’s husband asks sometimes if she wants to go back to work, not that he wants her to, but would it make her happier. Working has not yet appealed to her. She waits for the pull in her gut, but the urgency fled when her husband received a promotion double what she’d made; and she does not wish to abandon Clint to daycare rooms stuffed with plastic toys and apple juice when kids can’t tell safe from poison. She does not envy the tired-eyed mothers who sit twist-legged on the Kindermusik carpet in wool skirts and strappy shoes. The woman with twins sometimes comes in a suit. The young mother wears sweatpants like the curly-haired mother. She is more like this mother than the others. During a free-dance around the small carpeted room, Clint stays near the young mother, jerking his hips. They watch other children run wall to wall smacking cinderblock or whipping themselves around like tornadoes trying to jumpstart themselves. The curlyhaired girl swoops low like a bird, gathers speed around the purple circle, and crashes into a twin. The twin swings a floppy fist into her chest hard enough the girl wobbles and stares quaveringly at the boy who then barrels across the room to high-five the wall. “None of that, friends,” the instructor says nervously. The girl suddenly wails like a siren causing all children to freeze mid-dance. The curly-haired mother gathers her daughter, smiles through gritted teeth. “She’ll be okay.” Her curls bob forward, shielding the girl’s head. “He has older brothers,” the twin’s mother says, grabbing the boy’s arm and demanding he apologize. He looks at the girl buried in curls, some hers and some her mother’s. But these kids don’t have language yet. A dozen slurred words maybe, and most of those accompanied by pointing. Why had the young mother expected a girl? Viewing the lump on the ultrasound which the nurse marked with an arrow and the words it’s a boy! the young mother had smiled then come home and cried in the shower. Perhaps because she was a girl and it seemed impossible for a boy to grow inside her. She felt ridiculous watching water fall on her ballooned belly; who else would grow boys? But now she is relieved. She sees little girls acting like girls and knows what it will do to them later, in society. But a sweet boy wins extra smiles from the Kindermusik teacher. She whispered once to the young mother as they left, “He’s one of my favorites.” The teacher closed the half-door behind them, grinning and waving like a puppet at Clint, who nuzzled the young mother’s shoulder and smiled shyly.
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