That pissed me off. Helpful? This was his job. It was policy. It was all politically motivated. People like him needed people like me. I had read this in an editorial in the newspaper, and besides, I could have a dozen children and not know the father of any one of them and they’d still have to give me money. I knew that. “Oh,” I said.
“Yes, oh. If you find yourself in a similar position in the future, I’d advise you to a) utilize some type of proven contraceptive device, or b) obtain the identity of the male, be that through direct communication, that is, by asking him his name, or if need be, that is, if he is not forthcoming and refuses to cooperate, by taking down his license plate number, providing he owns a vehicle, and from thereon in his identity can be traced by the police, that is, if the need arises.”
I concentrated on breathing. I noticed the sign on his door. It said F. Podborczintski. His eyes were small and blue and his nose was large and red. He had managed to comb a few strips of hair over his shiny scalp. His shirt tugged around his armpits and was the colour of dust. He looked sad and tired. I wondered if he was married and had kids of his own. I wondered if he always talked this way about sex.
“Okay,” I said.
Type, type, type. He put more information into my file and then he gave me a slip which meant I should follow the red line out of there and then switch onto the green line towards the tellers who would dole out my money. There were about seven of them and they sat behind bulletproof windows that had little slits at the bottom close to the counter where we slipped them our papers and they slipped us our cash. We didn’t have to say anything to each other. Before I left his office, Mr. Podborczintski tweaked Dill’s cheek and this made him cry. Podborczintski looked so uncomfortable. It would have been nice if Dill had smiled at him.
I had to stand in a teller’s line for about fifteen minutes, while Dill tried to lift my shirt and get his mouth on my breast. After that tweak, he needed some soothing. Lish had told me that feeding your child was nothing to be ashamed of and if people didn’t like it they shouldn’t look, so I stood there while Dill slurped away to his heart’s content. I knew the receptionist was staring, and sure enough, after a few minutes, she clomped over to me and said she was sorry, but breast-feeding wasn’t allowed in the building. There had been complaints. I felt like ripping off my shirt and shaking my milky tits in her face. Just then Terrapin came around the corner and waved. I motioned to her to come over and then asked her to chase Dill around because if he couldn’t eat, he sure wasn’t going to stand there in the line-up with me and I didn’t want to lose my spot. I had heard a woman behind me say, “That’s disgusting,” after the wet thwop sound that happened every time I took my nipple out of Dill’s mouth before he was ready to let go.
On the way home, the stroller was working remarkably well, so I decided to take a chance and go to the mall to pay my phone bill. One more day and I was going to be disconnected. As soon as Dill and I hit the mall, the stroller started acting up. Every ten yards, kick kick. Dill had fallen asleep by then and I was trying to ram the thing back on gently so he wouldn’t wake up. I deposited my dole cheque into the instant teller and then expected to get cash back. But because I had no funds in my account to cover it I was told there would be a two-day hold. Have a nice day the instant teller told me and then the window slid shut over the screen. I looked in my pocket and counted two dollars and twenty-seven cents. CRASH! I had put my heavy leather jacket on the stroller handles and the weight of it pulled the stroller over backwards onto the floor. Dill woke up screaming and staring up at the ceiling. I picked up the stroller and Dill from the floor and took off for the phone place to tell them that they’d just have to wait. I’d explain and pay in full as soon as I got my money. Every ten yards the wheel came off and I’d kick it back on, but then it started coming off every five yards. I was kicking it harder and harder. Dill was really screaming now. People were staring. I thought I saw Gore-Tex Guy going into the Gap store. My head was starting to pound and my jaw was clenched like a psychopath’s.
Suddenly I stopped.
“I CAN’T FUCKING STAND THIS FUCKING FUCKING PIECE OF FUCKING SHIT NO FUCKING MORE!” I screamed. I thought to myself that I sounded like Teresa. I scooped Dill from the stroller and then starting kicking the stroller for all I was worth. I kicked it and kicked it. I kicked it at least fifty yards down the mall. Everybody was staring at me. Dill was crying. Then I picked it up and carried it over to the fountain in the centre and heaved it right in. Over the heads of a few old people that were sitting around it killing time.
I remembered my mother getting pissed off at an umbrella that wouldn’t close. She was standing in the doorway, she had just come back from the neighbours’, and she couldn’t get the umbrella to close nor could she get it through the door into the house. The wind was howling. The rain was coming down so hard it hurt. I was sitting on a chair at the kitchen table watching her fight with the umbrella. Then the door shut. I looked out the window and there was the umbrella tumbling through the sky lifting higher and higher. It was beautiful. My mom had thrown it away, let it go. I was impressed. I clapped. My mom put a pot of coffee on and sat down with the crossword puzzle.
I shifted Dill over to my other hip, stuffed the Safeway bag and our jackets under my arm and marched all the way to the other end of the mall and into the Sears store. Dill had stopped crying and I felt quite good. I walked over to the baby appliance section and put Dill into the first floor model stroller I saw, heaped my jacket and the bag on top of him, and walked right out of the store. I walked out of the mall into the rain and I didn’t have to stop until I got to the front doors of good ol’ Half-a-Life.
Dill loved his new stolen stroller. He’d sit in it for hours and Alba and Letitia would push him up and down the hall. I stayed away from the mall for a while.
four
One morning I looked out my living room window and on the fence surrounding the small parking lot (parking lots for public housing are always small because they know few of us have cars and they think they discourage overnight visitors that way) was painted in big red letters FUCK THE RICH THAN EAT THEM. When I saw that I thought Teresa must have done it because of the spelling of “then,” but I realized it might have been a kid, or kids. Besides, Teresa hadn’t seemed miserable at all, especially since she had been studying French two evenings a week. Sing Dylan was in the parking lot trying to scrub the painted letters off, but he wasn’t having much success. Sarah was laughing, standing in the rain wearing one of Emmanuel’s t-shirts and her jeans were rolled up. She was barefoot. I had never seen her laugh before. Sing Dylan was shouting at her for something and this made her laugh even harder. At first I was worried that she had finally gone insane over Emmanuel. But eventually she stopped laughing and handed Sing Dylan his pail and acted normal again.
Sarah had cut her hair and she looked like a little boy. She looked good. Seeing her and Sing Dylan out there laughing and shouting in the rain made me feel so pathetic. I wanted to run out there and be crazy too. I actually envied Sarah for a second, not having her kid with her. I was an old woman. I never had any fun anymore. I should have been hanging out in cars with guys my age, drinking beer and staying up all night, sleeping in. At least I could go out into the rain and laugh for a while. But that would have been ridiculous, walking out there and then just laughing. Sarah and Sing Dylan would have thought I was insane and I would have felt like Gore-Tex Guy. They were content, just the two of them, and my life seemed like one big mistake from start to finish. I thought of my mom and wondered if it hurt her to see me this way, that is, if she could. My mom was always telling me, “Good Luck Lucy, Good Luck.” I’d leave for school, she’d say Good Luck, I’d take out the garbage, she’d say Good Luck, I’d go to bed, she’d say Good Luck. I’d tell her I wanted scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, she’d say Good Luck. Ha ha. But she didn’t just say Good Luck just like that. She said it like it was two sentences, both with exclamation marks after them. GOOD! LUCK! and move her chin down with each word, like someone saying FUCK YOU! but of course not at all the same as that, just with the same vigour. Was I lucky? Had it worked? Is this the kind of life my mom would think was lucky?