is it, she thought. This is the way it will come. Things has been good up till now; but now it comes. Now we’re going to pay for all this. It ain’t right, being the way we’ve been, and now it comes—the splitting open and destruction, the screaming and crying. It was meant that it should happen—that even the water couldn’t wash it away. We going to be held to it now, C and me. We going to be thrust back to the real world like we was flung from the sky.
By the fourth miss there was no doubt in her mind. She weighed ninety-eight and a quarter pounds, a lifetime record, and she no longer bothered to weigh herself after that. C’ll know before long, she thought. He can’t help but notice, he knows me so well; and as soon as she thought this, she became anxious that he should notice. Especially when I’m on top, she thought, he should notice.
But he didn’t notice at first. At first he noticed that whenever he lay down, his wife would crawl on top of him, many times just to lie there, as though trying to sink into him, sometimes in the morning when neither of them had any inclination at all, despite his erection, which was a phenomenon that always bewildered him to the point of a prolonged astonishment . . . much more bewildering because, he reasoned, it was himself that was doing it, no outside forces were operating, and to no purpose or end. Sometimes she climbed on top of him when he was lying on his stomach. This is curious, thought C, and nothing else.
“WHY ARE YOU THROWING UP?” ASKED C, LOOKING DOWN AT CELL kneeling over the toilet, her face red.
“I’m sick,” said Cell.
“Maybe we should get you some Pepto-Bismol.”
“I don’t think it would help.”
“You’re sick almost every morning. Have you been worrying about something?”
“Worrying? What’s there to worry about? Everything’s fine. I’m just a little sick, that’s all.”
“Oh,” said C.
“Are you worrying, C?”
“No,” he said, and began to leave.
Cell sat down on the floor and put her arms between her legs.
“C,” she said, looking not at him but at the bathroom linoleum, “a wonderful thing has happened. Wonderful. I’m pregnant.”
“I thought you were getting a little heavier.”
“Did you?”
“That’s good,” said C. “That’s very good. Are you sure?”
“Yes. I’m over four months into it.”
“That’s good,” said C and there was a grand mal seizure inside his head that drained all the blood from his face, and like a ghost he stole from the room and, half dressed, stumbled outside to sit in the rocking chair. . . . Pregnant . . . pregnant.
For the next five months C had what seemed like a projector in his head that showed a stream of home movies—something that developed by a series of awful scenes, with the only sound being that of C’s own thinking voice—something impossible to turn off but impossible not to notice when it was running. These scenes were in black and white and the characters (usually only two, he and his future child) sometimes just fused into the gray background and disappeared, only to reappear in the same place. C of course was always himself in these, but his hypothetical child began as a normal-ish baby somewhere between one and five, and ended up either a belligerent, brutal, egotistical, raving monster or a cowering, crawling, suffering, pale, pink-skinned animal that whimpered and hid under tables and in corners. For instance: one movie would begin with C in some way setting an example for his child—concluding a successful trade—and would end by his experimental child either hating him for being a cheat and enrolling in a monastery, or following in his footsteps and going on to become the biggest swindler in the country. One of the more dreaded of these movies was one in which C told his son that stealing was wrong. This movie had two endings too: one where his son lies and steals his way into Fort Madison Prison and becomes a punk, the other where he is naked in a barren acreage, cleaned out by all the shrewd traders in the world, who manipulate around him with half-truths. C tried to explain at this time in the film that lies are only bad if they are abundantly self-centered—that half-truths are sometimes helpful. But his son looks back and hates him for being wishy-washy and afraid to take a stand on the vital questions and issues of the day.
Another character was Ansel Easter, who would come shifting into a scene carrying a black belt which he offered to C for use on the child. “Bring welts to them,” he would say, “big blue and black ones that will last forever. Make ’em scream. Teach ’em the Bible and everlasting glory. Teach ’em of repentance and damnation. Teach ’em of God and his infinite wisdom. Teach ’em Hell.” And in these movies C would not only be standing, shaking in revulsion at his reborn character, but searching desperately for the projector, wondering why inside his own mind such a thing could go on, seemingly out of his control.
No, he thought. All fathers are not mine. All fathers are not mine. It doesn’t have to be like that . . . things can be different. Someone can be happier than I was, and than I am. It’s possible. It doesn’t have to be like that—like a living worm that everyone catches from their father—and wishes from then on for the darkness and the warmth and the . . .
But C wasn’t sure of this. He wasn’t sure that it wouldn’t happen all over again, and even when he talked to Cell about how their lives would be changed, and how much joy would come into their hearts, he was watching home movies of what he was sure it would be like. And as Cell grew to well over a hundred pounds, these movies became more frequent and more vivid, many times intruding into his dreams and making his body sweat even outside the covers.
C WAITED WITH HIS WIFE IN THE INDIGENT WARD AT THE HOSPITAL—A large room with many beds and many pregnant and very pregnant women. Cell had insisted that he be there, not during the birth (which she didn’t care about because she figured that if it killed her, well, then it wouldn’t matter), but be there when they carried in the baby, in order that he would have to accept some of the blame, in order that she wouldn’t have to show it to him later, in order that they could be together when the blow fell.
C was glad for the large room, the other women, nurses, orderlies, water canisters, the noise, and the activity. It’s better here, he thought, than I imagined. There are witnesses. There are other fathers.
He sat beside her bed and they waited, watching everyone and everything that moved in the room, not ever taking their complete attention away from the two swinging doors through which a nurse would emerge carrying the baby.
“How wonderful it is,” said Cell, “that we have a baby—a baby boy.”
“A boy,” said C. “They told you that? That it would . . . that it is a boy?”
“Yes. Before I came out of the room they told me.”
“I thought it might be a boy.”
“That’s what we wanted. Isn’t that what we wanted, C?”
“Yes,” he said. “I thought you wouldn’t be conscious then—that they put you to sleep . . . because of the pain.”
“No. I think it’s more natural to be awake . . . and I didn’t want to miss anything.”
That takes courage,
