P: The Sudden Charm of Post-Pregnancy

This might dash my long-held hopes of ever intermingling with British aristocracy, with my even more secret hope of populating the House of Lords with little "Patty's" (cf:"Caliban from Shakespeare's The Tempest, as the anti-"noble savage), but I am convinced WASPs and Koreans should never procreate.

Besides the fact that they make the most beautiful Amerasian babies (see Exhibit A), I'm afraid that our characters, particularly our anger-management approaches, are just too incompatible to make for a successful match-up. What the hell am I talking about? Well, let me recount for you the day my sister and baby Clara (not pictured here; camera's broken) came home from the hospital.

(Exhibit A: Adorable Amerasian nephew Richard)

When I get to their apt (after having had a tooth extraction, so I'm bleeding up the wazoo with a wad of gauze hanging from my mouth), my sister looks exhausted. She says, "Why are you talking funny?" and I say casually, I had an extraction. Anyway, there are a ton of people at the house: their Trinidadian nanny Yanqui, who, by the way, has a high fever. James, my bro-in-law, my mother, the Polish housekeeper, the newborn Clara, and of course little Richard. We're all crammed into their small but beautiful West Village brownstone co-op apt. Anyway, Theresa, the Polish housekeeper, is in their even tinier kitchen (top of the line appliances, but it's about half the size of the tiny kitchen in my Brooklyn studio), and she's yanking on the dishwasher because she can't get it to work. So I go to the kitchen to try to help her, but the child guard is on, and I have no idea how it works.

Suddenly my sister, who'd been sprawled on the couch with her still-swollen, post-ceasarian belly, marches into the kitchen. "Patty, what are you doing? Get-Out-Of-The-Way."

"I was just trying to save you from getting up--"

"If you don't know how it works, then don't try to help. You're in the way."

This was going to be the start of a long day. Throughout, there are snips, snaps, and annoyances. It seems like everything I do just irks the hell out of my sister. At one point, Theresa is going at it with the vacuum, and my sister has moved to the bedroom, and she's lying down. Clara's asleep in her cradle. So I move to close the door.

"What are you doing?" my sister snaps.

"I'm just--I just thought the vacuum was bothering you."

"Don't you see that if you close the door, Richard won't have access to me?"

I told her I wasn't closing the door all the way. "The door is still ajar. Which means not closed. Look!"

"DON'T argue with me."

In another moment, when my sister's hands were full, Clara started crying her head off. Earlier that morning, James and my sister said that when she cries, it's because she wants milk. So I thought I would save my sister the headache of having to do this, and my mother, who was standing right next to me, said, here, give her a bottle. But when I went to put the bottle in baby Clara's mouth, she still continued to cry.

My sister once again came barreling on the scene. "What are you doing?! Did you check her diaper?"

"No..."

"Then CHECK HER DIAPER!"

But I couldn't get her out of her swaddled blankets quickly enough.

"Stop feeding her! Change her diaper!" my sister said.

I am getting super-frustrated by this point, but I'm thinking to myself, Patty, just be cool, be cool. But I do something in between--I throw my hands up in the air and call my mother in to change the diaper and figure out the situation. Meanwhile, their babysitter is still in the living room, sitting in the corner, drinking tea and looking miserable. I ask her what's wrong, and she's like, "I have a high fever," her lilting Caribbean accent only emphasizing her state of misery.

All the while, little Richard's reaction to his new sister Clara has undergone quite a progression. When he first saw her, he kind of ignored her. Or at least, he didn't know what was going on. My brother-in-law James could have very well been cradling a loaf of bread, for all it mattered to Richard. Then, say an hour later, when Clara started making noises, he kind of wandered over to her. He was very curious. Then James left for work, and my mother was feeding Clara. Richard started to vy for my mother--his Hal-muh-nee's --attention. He took the bottle cap of Clara's bottle and handed it to her.

"Oh, thank you, Richard!" my mother said, but her hands were full, so she received the cap with her mouth. The cap then fell from her mouth, bounced off her arm, and fell into her lap. So Richard seizes the bottle cap and then rushes from the room. He runs into the hall and throws the bottle cap on the floor, a mischievous smile spread across his face. He picks this up and does this again.

Meanwhile, I'm alternately mortified and laughing my head off. Somehow he knew this was Clara's bottle cap, and his first instinct is to take her things. It's like the big baby chicks taking the worms from the little baby chicks in the nest. But it's also kind of hilarious, because you can totally tell that Richard knows that what he's doing is naughty.

Then my sister is swaddling Clara in her arms, and Richard runs over to her and tries to clambor into her lap. But my sister's not allowed to do any heavy lifting (after all, she just had her stomach split open days earlier, and she still has fibroids, which thankfully didn't impale Clara during the pregnancy). So Richard's sitting on my sister's knee, while my sister's trying to hold Clara, and then Richard flies off his mother's lap and throws himself on the floor. Wahhhh! Wahh!! I have never seen the kid throw a temper tantrum before. And so I rush over with his rolling clown toy, and I pretend to have the time of my life with the toy (reverse psychology seems to work well on peoples below the age of 10 and all men from 22-35), and then Richard gets distracted and he runs over to the toy and takes it from me. Okay, all's well and good, until like a half hour later, he does the same thing. He runs to his mother, then he sees Clara and starts to cry. And then I start the toy up again. And then Clara starts to cry, which then makes Richard stop.

The afternoon is a series of the two of them switching off on crying. Meanwhile, Yanqui is sitting there miserably with her cup of tea, my sister is coughing up a storm, the Polish housekeeper is vacuuming or scrubbing or has five billion cleaning products nearby, and my mother and I are running about in circles.

At another point in the day, while my mother is rocking little Clara in her arms, and Richard is watching her, she says, "Richard is good boy, such a good boy. RIchard is better than Clara. I don't like Clara. Richard is BETTER than Clara. Richard is my favorite boy!"

Who knows if Richard has any idea what my mother is saying, but it seems to appease him temporarily.

We decide to take Richard to the park. This proves to be a nearly impossible feat, as Richard has now taken to running about the apartment (his invitation to play "chase"), and I'm on my hands and knees crawling after him (the next morning I woke up with bruises that looked like I gave one too many blow jobs). Yanqui is kind of making the gestures to go to the park, too, but she looks pretty miserable. I'm not sure whether she wants to go outside and get fresh air, or whether she's territorial/proprietarial (sp?) and wants to make sure Richard is in her sight, or whether she'd just be happier sitting in the apt. So I go over to my sister and say, "Um, so should Yanqui come with us to the park?"

"Why are you asking me for? If you want her to go to the park with her, ask her yourself."

"But if she's sick, I don't understand why..."

"Would you stop complaining to me? I am sick of hearing you complain. If you want her to go, she'll go! If you don't want her to go, then don't! What are you doing here, asking me for?"

"Alright, God! I was just trying to explain--"

But she shot me dead with one look. So my mother and I bundled up Richard, strapped him in his stroller, and rolled him out on the street. On the way to the Park, we run into one of my sister's neighbors, who is this older, distinguished looking woman that has apparently been giving my sister and James HELL to the co-op board, based on the renovations that are happening. This woman was in large part the reason why my sister and James had to reorder their windows, which cost them something in the ballpark of 10k. Nonrefundable. This woman is also the head of one of the top divisions of Random House. She is the editor of one of my AMerican BOok Award-winning professors (okay, Ha. J. in). My mother scrambles to introduce her. "Oh, you are--she is--Random House! Random House!" my mother says, while pointing to me.

"Hi, I'm Kathy's sister--I--please excuse me, I just had dental work done," I said, tucking the bloody gauze filling up in my mouth to one side of my cheek. She introduces herself, and I play dumb. "Oh, what division of Random House do you work for?" I asked, harmlessly. SHe tells me, and then I drop a name...of the lowest ranking person there (who I think used to be her assistant.) This woman nods, and then gestures to little Richard, whom she says is "adorable" (the same "adorable" kid she complains about making a ton of noise through the apt), and she makes her getaway.

And as soon as this woman leaves, I'm like, oh sh*t, I f*ed up! I could've had an IN! I could've name dropped-- Oh, my professor is so and so, and he's one of your authors," and then that might have shut up this woman in complaining to my sister's co-op board about all of the construction they're doing. So I start cursing myself and my slow-wittedness, and as we're walking to the park, I keep saying things like, "darn!" "grr!" "argh!" "I hate you, Patty," to myself until my mother's like, "Stop it! This is how you drive yourself crazy. You did great job back there. You not know how much your sister will appreciate it."

To which I retorted, through bloody gauze, "What the heck kind of stupid publicist am I? It was MY JOB to think quickly on my feet like that. What the hell is wrong with me?" and continued to grumble to myself all the way to Bleecker St Park, where I once had a Nigel Barker (noted fashion photographer) sighting. He was once there with his beautiful modelesque wife (who I think was preggers) and their little son. Incidentally, I was there with Richard, my parents, and my sister, shortly after my sister and I had another fight about me taking a picture of my nephew while they were crossing the street. Anyway, Nigel wasn't around this time, but I did notice that little Richard was kind of morose. He wasn't running about and smiling with his usual gusto. So after about forty-five minutes, we packed it up and headed home.

While I carried the stroller up the 4 flights of narrow stairs, Richard started crying on the second floor. My mother tried to hoist him up, but he continued to bawl. We panicked--the neighbors were surely going to complain. But the kid would not budge! Eventually, my mother and I got him up, and my mother's prying off his jacket and I'm trying to take off his sand-ridden shoes, when my sister yells through her closed bedroom, "OPEN THE DOOR! OPEN THE DOOR!" So after I just manage to get his shoes off, she is shouting. So I open her bedroom door--Richard comes running in--and I see my sister hooked up to a breast pump.

"Jeez! You didn't have to yell!" I am totally fed up by this point.

"I first said it quietly, but then I figured you couldn't hear me, so that's why I said it louder, Patty," she said, the tubes of the breast pump squirting away.

"I was just trying to take his shoes off so he wouldn't track sand all over your room! Because last time, you yelled at me because he had the vacuum toy on top of your bed and it was dirty."

"I didn't YELL at you that time." SHe was actually right about that; she didn't yell that one time. What she had said was, Patty, can you please hand him the vacuum attachment after he gets down from the bed? which was the only even-keeled piece of running commentary she gave to me all day.

"I thought before you didn't want him to see you when you were pumping."

"Well, I didn't have A CHOICE. You and Umma buzzed the apt door WHILE I'M PUMPING, so I had to detach the things, go to the door, buzz you in, and go back."

I didn't point out that Umma and I didn't have a choice, either.

In transcribing my sister's dialogue, I realize that it all sounds very histrionic. But in truth, it IS histrionic. I wish I could say I was writing in hyperbole, but it's not the case. Like, if you were going to write a fictionalized story with my sister's words, and you put it through the workshop mill, all of your classmates and your instructor would say, that language is not believable. You better tone it down and gradually build, because right now it just sounds like a caricature. But in truth, every time my sister speaks to me, her language is so fraught with anger and frustration. And by the end of the day, I was exhausted. So is my mother.

Bear in mind, that my sister has been snapping at my mother this whole time as well. She doesn't snap at the hired "help," but she has been lifting Clara out of my mother's arms, saying, "NO. You are doing it wrong. THIS is how you swaddle her, " or "Why, UMMA, must you keep feeding her? I don't have much milk left. That's ALL The milk I have, and I won't produce any more, and if Richard catches me breast-feeding then he's going to start crying again." So the two of them start arguing about that.

At this point, James comes home, and he sees me playing--well, distracting Richard from the chaos, and he says,"Patty, that's FANTASTIC that you want to play with Richard, but I just ask that you please, please play with him on this side of the apartment. Our neighbors have complained about him running around."

"Okay, James, but I only moved him to that side of the apt because my mom and sister were arguing in the next room--"

"That's fine, okay, that's fine. But I just ask that you please move him to this side of this apt."

So I move Richard and me over to the appropriate side of the room, and I see my sister and mother arguing, and I'm really starting to feel a total sense of injustice, so I say, "Unni, I wish, I really wish you could talk to me like a human being instead of treating me like I'm some kind of animal."

"Patty, when I ask you to do something, you should do it. Don't question me. What makes me so goddamned pissed off is that you ASSUME you know everything. Have you ever been pregnant? No. Have you ever had a baby? No, I don't think so."

"Yeah, but I don't understand why--"

" 'You don't understand why,' " she mimicked. "You and Umma are supposed to be here to help. But you AND Umma don't know how to handle babies. You're not here to make my life harder than it already is. If you keep getting in the way, then it would have been much easier if you never came AT ALL."

"You could at least give me the benefit of the doubt and not yell at me right from the beginning--"

"Me give you the benefit of the doubt!" she scoffed. "You have been treating me like shit! You--"

"Can you please not say that word in front of the baby?" I said, pointing to Richard, who was running about the room. Alarmed, he stared to look up at his mother, who was shooting daggers at me with her beady eyes. My whole life, I've been scared of those beady eyes.

"Patty, I am so fed up with you, and your crap. You have to EARN my benefit of the doubt. Every time I talk to you, you just--"

"But you never talk to Obba [our brother] that way. You're always smiling when you see him."

"How many times have we talked about this? I had no expectations of Richard [she was referring to Richard senior, my brother]. RICHARD never whined while I WAS PREGNANT to plan his birthday dinner. Richard was never around, but he also never asked me to do anything for him! He could only go uphill from there. Meanwhile, the whole time I'M pregnant, you're whining on the phone about 'boo hoo, Doug broke up with me, I'm so upset' and making ME call ALL of these restaurants for your stupid birthday." My sister resumes her hacking cough at this moment. My heard thuds harder, louder, in my chest. "So yes, Patty, until you EARN my benefit of the doubt, that's how I'm going to talk to you. And until YOU stop treating me like shit--" there, she said it again, in front of both her children "--then that's how I'm going to talk to you. I'm so sick of your crap. I'm about ready to give up on you.'

At some point during this conversation, I start to cry, involuntarily--they are tears of extreme frustration. "YOU give up on me? You really should watch your language, Unni. You are SO melodramatic--"

But then James inserts himself into the conversation. In an even-keeled tone, he says, "Umma, Patty, now I know the Park and An families have a certain way of doing things. But in our family, Kathy and I are just trying to raise a family. And I know the way we do things might not seem logical to you, but if you don't know, then just ask us. Just the same way I don't come to your house and tell the housekeeper what to clean and what not to clean, I would ask that you please not tell Yanqui what to do, or when to go home."

"But you guys have like, five billion different rules that I'm trying to memorize--" I start to say, but James interrupts me.

"N-n-no," he tsks, "N-n-no." I feel like I'm being chided by a grade school matron. The way James is saying "n-n-no" reminds me of that annoying scene in Jurassic Park, where "Newman" from Seinfeld pops onto the computer screen and wiggles his little finger, No no no, you forgot to say the magic word!

James continues, "That's why you should ask either me or Kathy beforehand. You just have to realize it makes more work for me and Kathy when you assume something and do it wrong. Just ask." He smiles, but it's the most unsettling smile I've ever had flashed my way. He twirls his wedding ring and says, "I don't think you understand, but Yanqui spends more daytime hours with Richard than anyone else, than even Kathy or me. And on a day like today, on such a momentous day, and a potentially traumatic day for Richard, he needs as many familiar faces surrounding him."

"But she had a fever! She was going to get little Richard sick!"

I found the whole conversation extremely off-putting. Was HE there for any of the episodes through the day when my sister started yelling her head off at me and my mother? NO! Would my sister dare insert herself if James was having a fight with his brother Donald or his sister Nan? No, certainly not! And yet, why did James think he could talk with the kind of air of authority like he had been omnipresent through the day?

Then James and my sister started to lay in on my mother for bringing so much food. To which my mother said, "But I only give you best food! Do you know how much I could do with that food? And I am patient, I only give you the things I want to eat myself. You think it's easy for me, I spend all night cooking and peeling eggs and boiling potatoes. But if you not want it--"

"Umma, it's not that we don't APPRECIATE it," James said. "Like, for example, brunch on Sunday. My parents aren't...expecting Korean food. They just need to be...mentally prepared for that. So I ask that you please, not bring so much food." Incidentally, my sister will talk to my mother the next day and ask my mother to order a platter of California rolls and kimbap for said brunch.

"Well," my mother says, "that's enough talking today. To be continue." They don't stop us. And we leave the apartment and wait outside for my brother to come pick us up. Which meant we were waiting outside in the semi-freddo for twenty minutes.

"American people," my mother said, "they so scary. James, he is so good, he too good at fighting. I'm scared I fight with him. I not understand American people."

******
I almost vow to never go back to their apartment, but I know that they need someone to watch Richard. Or to distract Richard. But it turns out in the middle of the night, Richard started throwing up, and the next morning he wakes up with a fever.

My sister and I are cool with each other that day. And by cool, I mean chilly; we're not talking. THis is familiar territory; I know that once I go back to Boston and I try to call her to see how she's doing, she will first give me the silent treatment before screaming into the phone, "How dare you act like nothing's happened? WAH WAH WAH WAH $#@!%"

So I decide to broach the subject again. "Unni, I'm really sorry that I made assumptions and acted like I knew what I was doing yesterday."

"Well, I don't know about that."

"It was wrong of me to make even more work for you. I was just trying to be helpful, but--"

"THere is no BUT in an apology. That's not an apology. You can't say, 'I'm sorry, but'. Look Patty, I don't need your excuses."

I took a deep breath, exhaled loudly--if only to calm my boiling nerves, and restarted. "I"m really sorry, Unni. I have no idea what you're going through, and I've never been pregnant--"

"Patty, I'm not asking you to know every minute of what it feels like to be pregnant. I just ask that you don't talk back to me. When I say something, just please, just do it."

She wheezed, then resumed her hacking cough. "Patty, do you know that this morning I was bleeding? The doctor said, no picking up Richard for two weeks. But every time he sees me with Clara, he starts crying. All he wants to do is to be held. And so I have to pick him up. And Clara has a high bilirubin level, and I had to take her back to the hospital four days after I delivered, because the doctor thinks she might have jaundice. And on top of that, I have to come home to an apartment that's still not finished. Mike promised me all the construction would be done BEFORE I delivered. Then he promised to have everything done by the time I came home from the hospital. Do you know how much it took for me to hold back and not punch him in the face when I saw him?"

She paused, taking belabored gasps of air, before continuing, "Patty, as bad as my cough sounds now, know that it's twenty times' worse at night. I am in so much pain right now. Last night...last night, I thought I was going to die."

My sister, who generally trends towards hyperbolic, overly-dramatic language, was dead-pan, and I knew she was in more pain than she was even letting on. I thought of the seven fibroids--two the size of grapefruits--riddled in my sister's uterus, the ones that actually prevented little fetus Clara from getting skewered when my sister was getting her amniocentesis. Tears welled up and dribbled down my cheeks.

"Patty," my sister whispered, "I'm not asking you to feel sorry for me. All I ask, is that you not make my life any harder. Because I just don't--I don't have the energy for this." She herself started to tear up.

I walked over to her and stroked her back, but gently (my sister and I don't like to touch). "I'm...I'm so sorry, Unni. You don't know how happy I am that you were able to have a beautiful, beautiful baby. I should have been...more understanding of the situation you were in. You're right, I don't know one one-hundredth of the pain you're in now."

I hesitated before putting a tentative arm around her shoulders. "I...I love you very much, Unni. I'm so, so sorry."

She didn't push my arm away. Tears splashed onto the huge expanse of her still-swollen belly (when was that thing going to swell down, by the way?).

"I...appreciate your having this conversation," she said. She let me hold her for a moment more, before we both realized how corny the moment was. So I told her I'd boil her some tea, and left the room.

In the living room, my mother is rocking little Clara in her arms, with Richard watching her curiously. "RIchard," she says, looking at her grandson, "soon is time for the shower? Ay, Clara not able to take shower for fifteen days! Clara no good!"

My mother shakes her head and wrinkles her nose in feigned disgust. "She nothing but a baby! That's why Richard is better. RIchard is big baby, Clara is the little baby now."