Large Hairless Mammals

Abstract

Large Hairless Mammals Rebecca Saltzman (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Photo by Sam Farkas, NOAA Daphne and Thiago move to Florida in the radiant swell of August, when she is still bleeding. The birth, four weeks ago, did not go well. She shoved the resident physician to the floor, and that wasn't even the worst [End Page 130] [End Page 131] of it. Now the baby is here. Dough punched with eyes. She unbuckles him from the car seat and reassures herself: He'll get cuter. At their new apartment complex, flamboyant date palms flank banana-colored buildings. There is a bright blue swimming pool. When Daphne carries the car seat to their front door, brown lizards skitter away from her feet. The apartment has tall, thin windows. Just below the ceiling, a gecko glues its toes to the drywall like little loamy stars. The unit is smaller than it looked in the photos. But clean; Thiago is starting his PhD in geology, and this was the only place they could afford that wasn't a mold colony painted over in eggshell white. Thiago unpacks the car: a Pack 'n Play, a white noise machine with six soothing varieties of nature sound, Daphne's oil paintings, and his collection of luminous geodes. Daphne thinks about the doctor and feels a secret, guilty pride. She had never before been a person who shoved. In the bathroom, she pees and tends to the blood, which at first left Rothko-like stains on the bedsheets and has now tapered to a soft, ferrous brown. She thankfully no longer requires the mesh panties and brick-sized pads from the postpartum ward. On the other hand, she still needs to rub A&D ointment on her asshole. This was something no one told her about having a baby—that you'd leave the hospital in diapers, with an A&D-slicked asshole. Thiago has left the welcome folder from the apartment manager by the sink. She thumbs past the lease and the pizza coupons, stops on a brochure: See Manatees in Crystal River! On the cover, a bristle-nosed manatee swims in emerald water. When she was a child, her mother refused to take any tropical vacations, scheduling family trips around the art exhibits she wanted to see in gloomy Northern cities. But once, her mother took her to a conference in Florida, promised she could choose how to spend their last day. She picked out a similar manatee brochure in the hotel lobby. This, she said. But she never got to see the manatees. Instead, they spent the appointed day in the local emergency room receiving IV fluids and Zofran for a violent case of gastroenteritis, most likely contracted, the ER pediatrician said, from the hotel breakfast buffet. She traces the round figure of the brochure manatee, its body like her own postpartum shape—but while the manatee's is gloriously buoyant, hers feels heavy with gravity. [End Page 132] The baby is crying. Daphne has briefly forgotten, while thinking of the shitting vacation, that there is a baby at all. "He wants you," Thiago calls. In the bathroom, where no one can hear, she sighs. ________ They set up the Pack 'n Play in the bedroom. The baby, swaddled inside, is a little Moses with severe infant acne. His fontanel pulsates. It would be so easy to press her thumb in the membrane. A terrible thing for a mother to imagine. But a baby skull is like this, with a keyhole for angels. Their Zippy Pod from New York won't arrive for two more days, and they didn't pack a bed. Their furniture was the variety that gets assembled from particle board with an Allen wrench, not worth schlepping. Only Thiago's creaky metal futon from college survived the cull. Some kind of bromantic attachment, she suspects, brought into sharper relief by the wet, screaming presence of a newborn. They turn on the white noise machine to help the baby sleep. In the darkness, Thiago curls up next to her. He has always been a good big spoon. But his hand moves near her breast, and the...