One sunny Sunday, my husband, Sean, was outside cleaning the glass, with a Shop- Vac from the interior of our station wagon while I paced the sidewalk behind him.

“Why break into a car filled with baby gear and dirty breast pads?” I asked our daughter, Scarlett, over the noise. There were glass crumbs in her car seat and all over the back. Sean called it the Oakland tax.

Just then I felt something rumble below me and looked at my watch. Eleven a.m. It was “Domino” time. I left Sean, butt waggling out of the back seat, and proceeded into the bathroom. I laid Scarlett whimpering down on the changing table, and draped the hanging stripey towel around her head mosquito net style. I surveyed the magazine library, skipping over entire weeks of relentless “New Yorkers,” grabbed the latest Domino magazine, and took a seat.

For fifteen minutes every day, I daydream about remodeling. Those perfectly decorated rooms are my version of “Playboy.”

Just as I was about launch the first torpedo over “Safari Nest,” Scarlett’s plaints escalated to fever pitch. I put the magazine down and crab-walked to her, jeans and black thong strained around my ankles. Scarlett’s red face emerged from her tent of stripes, tears rolling down the sides of her head. I carried her awkwardly back to the toilet, making throaty sounds of comfort.

Once I sat down again, she began plying my breast. Was this really happening? She began her warning cry. I quickly pulled up my tank, lowered by bra and lugged out a boob. Scarlett made excited noises, opened wide and began earnestly sucking. Soon a blast of oxytocin cascaded down my brain, relaxing all my muscles. Torpedo after torpedo dropped into the bowl, followed by a musical pee.

The relief was sublime.

I closed my eyes and thought about the strange position I was in as a mother.
Before my baby, my body was a continual source of shame, an animal controlled through diet, exercise and fashion. Gross natural functions betrayed me. That pretty women made dirt seem a flagrant flaw in the human design. But by the time I gave birth, I had changed my tune.

That my body produced another body was a beauty so great, I had no choice but to feel powerful. Yes, it was a wild animal of profound intelligence that I was riding around inside of. Finally in my ultimate womanhood, I no longer had to hide behind femininity. Scarlett in my arms meant that I was no longer a girl. I could be real.

I sat daydreaming in my bathroom, without noticing that the Shop-Vac’s huffing had ceased. Suddenly the bathroom door opened and there was Sean standing in a big slice of sunlight, observing me nurse our daughter on the potty as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He said just three things:

“They took the iPod.

"It stinks in here.

"How are you going to wipe?”

By Mary Wang

Labels: Mary Wang

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