“G’night,” he said to the room.
“You’ll start on Miz Z. in the morning? I promised her,” said Arty.
Chick nodded and slid over next to the chair, looping an arm around Arty’s neck, pulling his face close. Chick planted a kiss on Arty’s bare, flat cheek and then went to the door and out. As he closed the door after him, my cap slid down toward my nose and then back up to its proper place again.
That was it. I didn’t feel anything. But I believed it. And I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to go on watching Arty at play, knowing he would talk for hours longer, until Sanderson’s flask was empty and the black sky turned green and fleshy in the first seep of dawn. But I also needed to crawl back into my cupboard and feel miraculous. So I went home.
This, Miranda, is how you were conceived. Don’t ever doubt that it was an act of love. Your father was as happy then as he was capable of being. Your uncle Chick, the dove, was delighted to do it, to be able to do it. And I was a seventeen-year-old dwarf, pink-cheeked, rosy-humped, scarlet-eyed. I was beside myself with glory. Understand, child, that my idea of you was as a gift to your father, a living love for Arturo. And that’s not bad, Miranda, considered as a motive for your existence.
• • •
Eleven days later the twins gave birth to Mumpo. It was a long labor, twenty-six hours, and a difficult delivery. Chick did a lot but Mama and Papa helped. I wasn’t allowed in the van. I sat with Arty all night and most of the day. He was sick with fear. I was sick myself. The Arturans were buzzing on the intercom constantly. I took messages and shunted them off. Miz Z. in her proud bandage (one little toe’s worth) appeared at the door twice with a sheaf of papers, but I shooed her away. Arty wouldn’t eat. He insisted on playing checkers, hour after hour, game after game. He beat me fifty times and he would have gone on forever except that I accidentally won a game and he threw the board off the desk in a fury. He rolled off to his bedroom and locked himself in.
When Papa finally came to the door with the news, Arty wheeled out of his room to hear. A boy. Twenty-six pounds, five ounces. The mothers were doing fine.
Papa looked young again, leaning in the doorway to shout the news; his mustache bristled with power and pride, which, he used to say, “are the same except that pride leaves the lights on and power can do it in the dark.”
“Twenty-six pounds?”
“Thought it was twins, did you?” He chortled. “Fat little! A natural! Twenty handsome inches long and twenty-six of the babiest pounds! What do you think, uncle? Cheeks like a politician! Ten chins right out of the oven! That Iphy! Took one look and says, ‘Mumpo.’ His name, see? Lily went to lay him on Iphy’s breast and she like to die! Couldn’t breathe, he’s so heavy. Got to tell Horst; he’s been sucking the bottle for two days worrying!” Then a sudden change, a confidentiality, a secret wondering, near whisper as he put one foot inside to keep it among us. “That Chick, Great Christo, he’s good. I would have popped it with a knife myself after so long. I was scared to death with the kid so big. Not Chick. He pumped in air somehow, don’t ask me. That baby breathing easy for hours and still inside. That Chick, sweet lollyballs of the prophet!” And he was gone, thumping down the ramp, hailing people in the line, hollering, “A boy … Fine … All fine … A boy! Yes! By the bouncing melons of Mary! I’m a grandpa!”
Arty sat petrified in his chair, staring through the open door. Miz Z. appeared, heading for us, a clipboard in hand.
“Scare her off,” said Arty. He looked deflated and a little damp. “Then go get the baby, will you?”
“What for?” I felt a fist of fear in my gut.
“I just want to see him!” He spun his chair away with a last look at my face. He disappeared into his room. I had hurt him. I tried to feel the little thing in my own belly. Nothing. But it was there. I’d make it up to him.
Mumpo changed people’s names. Suddenly Iphy was Little Mama to all the redheads and wheelmen, booth rats and artistes. Lily and Al were Gramma and Grampa. Even uncle and auntie jokes made the rounds along with Papa’s licorice-marinated stogies and the bottomless keg on tap in Horst’s van. But Mumpo himself lay like a big sagging pumpkin in the blankets. He was a bottomless craving and he was cunning. Arty saw it immediately. Iphy knew. I knew. Lily and Al refused to notice. Chick knew and didn’t care. Chick loved the big glob.
That first day I poked my head through the twins’ bedroom door and saw everything covered with white sheets and smelling of disinfectant. Lily hunched over the baby where he lay, naked and huge in soft, un-moving mounds on a wheeled metal table, as she sponged him, cooing. Chick was watching Iphy. He sat on the edge of the big bed and held her hand and Elly’s pale useless hand, the arms overlapping so he could hold them both.
“How are they?” I whispered. He grinned the kid grin at me as though he’d walked on his hands or found a frog.
“Bushed. Pooped out. Beat.” They were asleep. Iphy as bloodless as a rain-drained worm. Elly with her mouth ajar and a thin trickle of saliva shining on her jaw.
“I could have made it quicker but Mama said it was important to labor. It didn’t hurt them, though. I didn’t let it hurt them. Did you see him?” His eyes glanced toward the flesh mound. I shook my head and moved over to where Mama could smile at me. She reached out an arm and hugged me. “Isn’t he amazing?” His eyes were open, filled with black. The eyes blinked and squinted suspiciously.
“Could you take him over to Arty? Arty is anxious to see him.”
Chick said it was O.K. and Lily chirruped and twittered excitedly, wrapping the baby to travel fifty feet, and exclaiming over his weight when she hoisted him across her chest.
In Arty’s van she laid the big clump on Arty’s desk and Mumpo’s eyes went sharp and narrow, looking at Arty, and Arty glared at Mumpo and the two male things looked at each other with hate. Lily claimed that Mumpo couldn’t focus his eyes yet but it was wonderful how he seemed to look right at you, though he’s only an hour old and ought to be so tired he’d sleep, and she laughed at how excited Papa was thinking up “Mumpo the Mountain” and other fat-man tags for Mumpo’s show, though you couldn’t be sure with a baby and for all we knew he’d be skinny by the time he was two.
Arty stared at the flesh that oozed from the blankets and finally broke in. “O.K. Take him away. He needs to sleep.”
Lily took him out and that was the last time Arty ever looked at Mumpo.
The stick hit my ear and I yelled into the blanket as I woke up. My right arm jerked and the stick jabbed my elbow and the sting from my ear and my elbow pulled the plug on my nose and eyes so I looked wildly through the swimming murk of my watering sinuses as the white beam from a flashlight in the dark blinded my naked eyes and the stick whapped out of the blur again. “Waa!” I yelled.
Then I heard the unmistakable rasp of Arty, angry, sputtering behind the stick, “Cunt! … Slimy! Twisted bitch!” as the stick wavered toward me and I curled in my cupboard with my arms shielding my eyes, yelling, “Arty!” and the stick kept coming and I got a foot tangled in Mama’s old white satin robe, which I used as a top blanket, and Arty’s voice screeched in the light-smeared liquid blackness, “I’ll break you, you stinking …” and the stick was on its way again and I grabbed for it, snatched at the end as it passed my eyes and was amazed as the whole stick came loose in my hands with a slight tug and Arty wailed “Shiiit!” and I saw the rubber bulb at the other end of the stick and felt a laugh trying to choke its way past my thumping heart because Arty was hitting me with a toilet plunger.