Badness washes around my ankles on the deck, rising swiftly. I’m just crying into one hand and holding the phone with the other hand and Engin is silent on the other end. I have the distinct impression that we have entered a definitive moment, when Engin or I can say the thing that will snip apart the whole nest of skeins that tether us to each other. Now in this moment it seems incredible that such an apparatus, a child, all this paperwork, could have been born of something so careless as two people deciding to spend the night at the bar and never again be parted. But at the time all obstacles seemed to melt away with no resistance.
I wait for the word that will highlight what a disaster it’s all been. But he just says “I love you,” in English, and I say “I love you too” and I know it will carry us forward another day. “Listen,” I say, when I stop shuddering. “This is a Humanitarian thing, they have a category for it in Citizenship and Immigration. Maybe the lawyer can push it through on those grounds.”
“Okay,” he says.
“Are you mad at me?” I say in Turkish.
“No, my love. I’m not mad at you.” I want to ask what about your mother what about Pelin what about Savaş what about Gökay what about Özgür and Sema and everyone else you know but decide to stay with the answer that matters, the one that feels good. We stay on the line just listening to each other breathe and I take out a cigarette and light it and he says “Öfff” which is a sound expression that conveys all the frustration of the world and I say “Fucking hell” in English and he says “Fucking hell” too.
“I’m sorry that I made you do this,” I say.
“What are you saying? I’m the idiot who gave the immigration guys my card and signed that fucking paper.” While we talk I think suddenly of a thing I saw in a BabyCenter comment, a random flash of true insight imparted by a stranger. It was about the “culture” of your family, that only you and your partner can make and which dictates the things that you do and enjoy and the way you raise your kid. I think the remark was delivered in the context of making your baby go the fuck to sleep or something like that. But I think of how it is when Engin and I are in the Buick together or sitting on the couch each doing our own thing or when we talk throughout a TV show about where we should buy our stone shack or how much of an idiot Tolga is or the nature of Hugo’s essential being or what new bizarre baby behavior Honey is exhibiting. When Rodney and Helen visited when Honey was born she told me “Just remember that these are the good ole days” which seemed kind of sinister but now I understand. I have always just liked to be around Engin so much and it occurs to me that I am denying myself and Honey that opportunity, that I am robbing us of the good ole days, that I am stymying further opportunities to build our singular familial culture, and I get pissed all over again.
I remember too that I have been feeling very sorry for myself and not that sorry for Engin which is unfair because he is the one who had the god-awful demeaning interaction with the two men resulting in his being turned away from the United States and put back onto a plane and not being able to see his infant daughter and then discovering that his compliance with their demands, his signing of the dreaded fucking form I-407 meant that he is on record as voluntarily surrendering his green card and he like me must look back at that encounter and want to literally murder everyone involved, as I do, poke them with a knife, except that he can actually picture it and see the scene in his dreams whereas I rely on stock footage of various bland consular rooms I have known and every beefy male movie villain to fill in as the Homeland Security guys and every day I ask myself why I didn’t warn him to be careful why I assumed good faith on the part of these people why I pictured all the kind friendly consular officers of my childhood helping me renew my passport or giving my mother her terra-cotta urn, and not the people Engin had to see, people who took him away from his child because they vibrate with some higher mandate about securing our fucking borders. I feel so much hate and I wish I had somewhere to put it, that there was some decisive action to take.
“I’m so sorry,” I repeat. “I’m so sorry we did this to you.”
We sign off and I light another cigarette smoke it down to the filter staring across the road at the scrub beyond the split-rail fence, where some quail are making their coordinated swarm through the sagebrush, and then I wipe my face off and go back inside. I feel clean, somehow. Or neutral. It’s like the hangover and the anguish of the morning has wrung out sentiment from me, I am a dishrag that has been squeezed and placed over the rack to dry. Alice is there on the couch, petting the head of Honey, whose eyes are heavy but open, her rosy little lips pursed into a kiss, her hand reaching up toward Alice’s face.
“Well, this one’s awake,” says Alice. “Probably needs a snack.”
“Hi baby!” I say to Honey. “Did you have a nice nap on Alice’s lap?” and she kicks and strains to roll off Alice saying “Amee-amee-amee.” I kneel down to meet her and need to put my hand back to steady myself from mild spins. Alice stands up with effort, I can almost hear her back clicking, and then briskly straightens her skirt.
“Well, then. I guess I’ll go and get my nap.”
“Are we still on for dinner,” I say rather than ask, feeling bereft at the prospect of her absence.
“Oh, sure, I guess,” says Alice.
“I’ll pick you up at five at the Arrowhead,” I say. “We’ll go have the prime rib.”
“Okay,” she says, and walks slowly to the door. I scramble up from Honey’s level and intercept her and lay a hand on her bony shoulder and she flinches and looks at me with what seems almost like hostility.
“I just want to say thank you again, for what you did.”
“Well,” she says. “What else was I going to do?” Honey tugs at my knees and raises her arms to be picked up. I reach down and bring her up, using her as a shield against some faint but perceptible disapproval I suddenly feel in the air of the mobile home.
“Say bye-bye, Honey,” I say, waggling the baby’s hand. “See you soon.”
Alice exits the screen door and makes her painstaking way down the deck stairs and I watch her get very slowly into a Dodge that I note with some concern is parked partially up on the curb, although in fairness to Alice it’s a rounded curb and easy to glide up onto. I feel very lonely and very unable to cope. It’s 2:20. I have the thought that I could put Honey down for a nap and then realize that she has just had one. So that’s two and a half hours to pass, my head faintly throbbing my eyebrow throbbing the residual rivulets of badness still lapping around my ankles poised to rise at any moment. The only good thing is that Engin and I seem to have restored somewhat the ideal of our life together, the mirage winking into something corporeal even if it’s just through Skype. I change the Band-Aid on Honey’s finger which she is mercifully still for and then I sit on the couch to gather strength and watch her run to and fro; into the guest bedroom and the little tiny study then back into the living room bashing into my knees laughing hysterically, then staggering back and spinning all the way around on unsteady little legs for what I think is the first time. I see suddenly how the little stores of fat that formed the rolls on her wrists and ankles are melting away and the slim lines of a child are starting to assert themselves in her body. She was never one of those gloriously fat babies with huge dimpled thighs but she had the minimum mandated squoosh that babies owe us, and hands that made dimples when they clenched into tiny fists. I want to take her out of her onesie and set her loose in the diaper so that she will read like my baby again, and not this lanky, wild-headed hoyden spinning around the living room. “Come cuddle with Mama,” I say to her, and try to grab her as she rushes past, and hold my head to her head but she struggles free and says “NYO” and is off springing. I lie down on the carpet and wait for her orbit to bring her back to me. She runs over and laughs and starts slapping my face, hard, and pinching my cheeks with her little talons and I have to say “NO, HONEY” and grip her hands and she struggles and moans and I’ve ruined it all. I remember the guidance of BabyCenter about demonstrating the positive rather than censoring the negative or something like that and I say “Nice, nice, gentle, gentle,” and mime stroking my face with her hands firmly in mine. She smiles and begins to do it herself and I say “very nice, very gentle” but then she’s pulling my hair with all her might, and I yell at her and pry her fingers off hard and stand up and my head throbs with renewed vigor.