Seattle Press on Line - National Baby Day

By Wendy Tokunaga

National Baby Day

May 18, 2001 -- It was a familiar sound but startling nonetheless. It began as a lone piercing scream in the distance--about a half-dozen cubicles away from mine. It was a female voice of course--not even a eunuch's voice could soar that high. Then I heard more and more of these calls that reminded me of birds--of crows cawing or parrots screeching.

"Ooh, ooh!" the voices shrieked. At first these were the only words I could make out but then others became clear.

"Keeeaeyute!"

"Precious!"

"Just adorable!"

The voices got louder and louder. One shouted my name.

"Audrey!"

I saw the administrative assistant, Teri, as I turned around.

"Come on! Yvonne Callahan's brought in her new baby!"

Teri said the word "baby" as if she was singing in a hallelujah chorus. This was the third baby visit this week. Five of my co-workers had gotten pregnant about ten or eleven months ago and now each one was bringing in her accomplishment.

"What happened, Teri? Was there some kind of pregnancy Legionnaire's Disease virus that seeped through our air conditioning vents?" I smirked.

She laughed and broke into a healthy trot as she made her way over to the display showcase in one of our co-worker's cubes.

I didn't have anything against babies particularly but it was nothing to get goofy about. Yet I felt that I'd be thought of as some kind of office outcast if I didn't mosey on over and pay my respects to the latest boy king, especially since there'd been a company-wide e-mail sent proclaiming Yvonne's visit.

I perused the scene of about ten women oohing and ahing over a newborn wrapped in a pastel blue blanket that I remembered Yvonne receiving at the shower we'd been coerced into giving her at the office. Yvonne was thirty-six--just a year older than me--and had to have an amnio. By the time of the shower she knew she was going to have a boy.

What was the name of that old movie where Jimmy Cagney smashed the grapefruit into Mae Clark's face? Well, my mother Lylah would know and would be disappointed that I'd forgotten. But this was what newborn babies looked like to me--as if someone had smashed a grapefruit into their face.

"Oh, Rodney! What a sweetie, my little baby-waby Rodney. Aren't you the cutest little Rodney I've ever seen? Rod-ney! Rod-ney!" My boss Carole turned her cooing into some sort of mantra, accenting a different syllable each time.

Rodney's face proved my grapefruit theory; it was blotchy pink and all scrunched up. Maybe he looked more like a grapefruit rather than a recipient of one with his big round face and sallow yellow wisps of hair on a mostly bald head. Oh, he was a healthy baby all right (didn't look anything like the newborn in Eraserhead), but he was a baby nonetheless and couldn't hold my attention for long. Besides, I had to call back a software developer who was incensed that the software upgrade one of the support staff sent him still didn't solve his class library problem.

"Whoa!" I shouted at the onset of a smell more deadly than when all the toilets backed up in my old apartment building. "What happened? Has the bundle of joy turned into a bundle of poop?"

"Baby's poop doesn't smell," Yvonne said, as if it was common knowledge. "I think Rodney must have made a little fart. But oops! He's wet. Looks like he needs a change!"

All the women laughed and I couldn't believe the goodly number who exuberantly followed Yvonne into the ladies room to witness this momentous event.

"Congratulations, Yvonne," I called out, a little half-heartedly as I went back to my desk.

What was the matter with me? It wasn't just the women in the office--this was a pervasive trend with my girlfriends as well. Everyone seemed to be getting pregnant and getting pretty excited about it too. And then once they had their babies I never heard from them again. It was as if they were sucked into the black hole of motherhood, like airplanes forever lost in the Bermuda Triangle.

At least my best friend Jocelyn hadn't had a baby. She'd been married for five years--just about two years less than I'd been living with Doug--and she'd boldly said that she and Stephen might never have kids. I was so proud of her. She hadn't succumbed and she was the only person I knew other than myself who even considered never having them. It was comforting to think of Jocelyn and be able to say, "Well, at least there's someone else in the world who doesn't feel it's the end-all to have a baby!"

It was quiet and nearly deserted when I got back to my cube, with everyone at the latest baby celebration, but I noticed a man sitting in the cubicle across from mine, and two down to the right. It had been empty for about three months, since the last layoff. This guy seemed to be moving in--setting up his computer and unpacking boxes. I saw that he'd already gotten an i.d. badge that was clipped to his belt. It had a red circle over his photo, the telltale stigma that showed he was a contractor like me. No one was quite sure at RandallSoft just how one could go from being a contractor who had no benefits and could be let go at any time, to becoming a permanent employee. It seemed to be so random. And when you were with a bunch of permanent employees it was enough to make you feel like the only non-breeder in a room full of new moms.

A moment later Paul Doyle, the manager of the software engineering department came over to my cube with him.

"Audrey, meet Aldo Puccetti. He's a technical writer who'll be working with engineering on the Kentucky Kernel project. Aldo, this is Audrey Mills, assistant manager for technical support. I'm afraid we don't have any space in engineering for Aldo so he's going to have to suffer here in support," Paul joked.

"Nice to meet you," Aldo smiled and extended his hand to me.

My face felt warm and prickly and I was hoping that Aldo wouldn't notice a rash that must have started engulfing my body as I shook his hand. Had Tyrone Power come back to life? Aldo looked like Tyrone did in the Sonja Henie film Thin Ice, with his dark wavy hair and nearly black eyes. I was intrigued that this man with a very Italian name had a very American accent. He seemed to be in his early thirties and I wondered who would be the first in my group to start flirting with him. I could just hear Teri saying, "God, what a hunk," although she seemed to say that about almost any new guy at our company who wasn't an out-and-out-geek. I wouldn't have characterized Aldo as a movie star "hunk," though. There was no swagger, only sweetness.

"Nice to meet you too. I see you're a contractor."

"Yeah, I just signed a nine-month contract."

"Well, I'm a second-class citizen too," I said, extending my hand.

"Yeah, he'll be our slave for at least nine months." Paul gave an evil smile.

Upper management didn't like us pointing out the downside of being a contractor so I thought I better change the subject. "Well, I hope all the activity around here won't hamper your concentration. It gets pretty crazy." I tried to sound as nonchalant as I could.

"I'm sure it'll be fine," Aldo said. "I've worked in some pretty chaotic environments."

"Oh, but you don't know the support group. They're a wild bunch," said Paul. "Right, Aud?"

"Yeah, it's just party, party, party."

"Well, I'll try not to get in the way," Aldo smiled.

"Well, nice meeting you but I've got to run." And that developer was going to have to wait to yell at me about the bug fix because I had to leave early and drive to San Mateo for my yearly gynecology check-up. Now, what was worse ae having to change a baby's smelly diaper or getting a pelvic exam?

And my favorite doctor, Dr. Pelton, was on--you guessed it--maternity leave so I'd be seeing someone named Dr. Freestone. Well, at least it was another woman and not one of these male physicians who'd maneuver a speculum as if he was excavating through a mineshaft.

Sitting in the waiting room I was disappointed to find my choices were either Highlights or Parents Magazine. I was surprised when I had been there only about ten minutes and heard, "Audrey Mills."

"Here for your check-up?" the nurse asked me in a pleasant voice.

"Yeah," I tried to smile.

She took me to the exam room where I eyed the scale nervously. I was certain I'd gained the ten pounds back that Dr. Pelton had me lose the last time I'd been in. But that was almost a year and many lasagna dinners ago and I hadn't stepped on a scale since.

"Well, let's get on the scale and check your weight," the nurse said cheerily.

Gosh, I thought, you never get weighed when all you have on is that drafty gown they make you wear. I took off my shoes and jacket.

"148." Her chipper voice made me feel like it wasn't all that bad that I'd gained back eight pounds.

She went on checking various other matters such as birth control and my last menstrual period and then said, "Take off all your clothes and put on this gown. It ties in the back. Dr. Freestone will be with you in just a few minutes."

Dr. Freestone turned out to be a petite and portly woman probably in her mid-fifties--very different from Dr. Pelton--who was most likely younger than me, wore her hair long and flowing, and sported batik-print skirts with peasant tops under her white coat.

"Well, everything seems fine in there," she said matter-of-factly. "And your breast exam is normal."

I breathed a sigh of relief, having just seen one of those made-for-TV woman-in-distress movies the night before. Valerie Bertinelli went in for her physical and found out she had only three months to live, having picked up a rare virus while she was on vacation in Tonga. Luckily I'd been nowhere near Tonga.

"Now, Audrey," she went on as I sat up on the exam table. "You're going to be 36 in a couple of months?"

"Yes." I was hoping she was going to tell me that I looked younger than my age but, unfortunately, that wasn't it.

"Have you given any thought to when you're going to have a baby?"

Baby? The word was practically emblazoned on the ceiling in a flaming pie. What was this? The Pregnancy Conspiracy? Hadn't I heard enough about babies today?

"Well," I stammered, feeling like I was in the presence of my old fourth grade teacher Mrs. Linnehan. "I'm not married and I don't think I even want to have kids."

She chuckled and rolled slightly from side to side on her little three-wheeled stool. "Well, I'm not here to make judgments. People these days don't care if they're married or not when it comes to having babies. I have many patients who know their biological clock is ticking away so they make up their minds pretty darn fast. Now, I know there are a fair amount of women having babies in their forties, but you just have to be aware that the best policy is the sooner the better. It's just a word to the wise." She slapped her knee and stood up and scribbled something in my chart. "Well, we're all through here. You can get dressed now and I'll write up a slip to take to the lab for your routine blood tests."

Was I crazy, I thought, as I put on my clothes. Everyone else wanted babies and more babies. No, women didn't have their whole lives to finally make a decision ae not like those male movie stars in their sixties who finally decided to settle down and procreate with their third wives who were conveniently in their twenties. But I didn't think it was something someone should do only because time was running out.

I knew Doug wouldn't mind. "My mom called me today and said my cousin's having her wedding in Maui. Wouldn't it be great to get married in Hawaii?" he'd said the other day. This signaled to me that he wanted to finally do it. I thought things were fine the way they were.

"We're not getting any younger," he'd added and all I could think of was, "What a cliche." He'd always been pretty ambivalent about being a dad; it never seemed to be any burning issue with him. But then he surprised me by saying in the next breath, "Wouldn't you like to have a little Doug or Audrey running around the house? That way you'd have some really good subjects for your videos."

A little Doug or Audrey? Videos? Give me a break. Doug never understood the homemade videos I made; I liked fooling around with the cheap camera I picked up at a flea market. I filmed friends, the geese at Golden Gate Park, the people in coffee houses in North Beach. I wasn't very skillful but I tried to imitate what I saw in movies with different angles, depth of field and lighting. Little Doug's and Audrey's weren't on my video subject list. Doug made his comments sound like a joke, but I knew something was going on.

I'd never been attracted to babies for as long as I could remember. Even when I was a kid I didn't like dolls.

My first grade classmate Tina used to invite me over and show off her huge collection of dolls that were neatly arranged in a curio cabinet with four shelves.

"Look!" she said one day, holding one of her precious plastic babies in her arms. "When I give her the bottle she pees down here." She pointed to the water coming out between the doll's legs and looked at it as if it was the stigmata. I thought she was nuts.

Any dolls my relatives were stupid enough to give me for Christmas or my birthday would go into the torture pit that my best buddy Brian and I made in his basement. We'd take an old record player, put it on 78 rpm and make the dolls spin and spin until they slammed against the wall. Or they'd get the rack. We'd put them in his father's vise and squeeze them until their rubber bodies were practically smashed as if they'd been run over by a truck. After we were through with our chamber of horrors I would put on my Superman cape and chase down bad-guy Brian or go roller-skating while he rode his skateboard.

Why hadn't Dr. Freestone just minded her own damned business? I sighed. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to run to San Francisco and go to Rag Time on Fillmore, my favorite vintage clothing store. Some women ate chocolate, others went running when they were down; me, I'd go try on old clothes and pretend I was Myrna Loy in one of the Thin Man movies.

I decided to put what the doctor said out of my mind and instead give myself a lesser treat with a cappuccino at an outdoor cafe in Burlingame. For a moment I could pretend I was somewhere else. I soon heard the gunning, rat-a-tat sound of a Ducati motorcycle coming from around the corner. My Italian lover, pulling up right in front of me was too wild and reckless to wear a helmet. He shouted, "Ciao bella, Audrey!" or some such romantic Italian. "I am missing you so much, mi amore. It's been so long. I have not seen your beautiful face since this morning." Even though he was wearing dark glasses I knew his eyes were burning with passion, with no thought of marriage or babies. I jumped on the bike, threw my arms around his waist and pressed my cheek against his back, anticipating his large bed with the satin sheets, our swallow-your-face kisses, our shouts of ecstasy, our...

"Ma'am? Excuse me, ma'am?"

My eyes snapped into focus as I saw a teenage girl wearing a candy-striper uniform, holding a can and shaking it like a maraca.

"Excuse me, ma'am, but could I ask for a donation for the San Mateo County halfway house for recovering addict single mothers to help them and their babies have a chance at a decent life?"

"Uh, sure, yeah," I said, fumbling through my purse and pulling out a dollar to put in the can.

Ma'am? Did she call me ma'am? Was I her grandmother or something? I thought for a moment as she walked down the street. But I was probably old enough to be her mother. I eyed my reflection in the coffee house window. How did that happen?

I looked at my watch. It was time to get home to Doug and the house in Millbrae.

What was I doing living in the depths of suburbia by San Francisco International Airport? Where Donna Stone lived in the house between Carol Brady and Laura Petrie and all a few doors down from that weirdo Audrey Mills who still hadn't married her boyfriend? It was only because Doug's friend Kevin had packed up his wife and three kids when he was transferred to London for two years and we got a great sublet deal that was just too good to pass up. Otherwise I would never have considered living in Wonderbreadsville after growing up in San Francisco and giving up a fantastic apartment in Cow Hollow. When I first saw the block we were going to live on I thought I'd stumbled onto the Leave it to Beaver back lot at Universal Studios. But it was easier to go along with Doug than to fight about it and I just couldn't spoil his excitement over the low rent.

As I walked in I heard the familiar melody of Doug's other love--his modem. Here he was, a software engineer staring at his computer all day at work--but then he couldn't wait to run home and do what? Turn on his computer. It had to be some kind of sickness. Sometimes I didn't know whom he loved more--me or that damn modem singing its cheery "dee-dah-dah-dah-dee-dah-dah." And then clearing its little throat when it made the connection.

"Audrey?" he called.

"Yeah?"

"There's a phone message for you from Jocelyn."

I was lucky that Doug actually remembered to give me the message. He would eventually have told me but he had an annoying habit of letting me know something days after it happened.

Jocelyn and I loved to talk on the telephone but for the past year or so we had started corresponding more by e-mail. It was less intrusive than the phone and you could avoid playing telephone tag. So it was a little unusual that she had called.

I saw that he hadn't erased the message so I played it.

"Hi Audrey, it's Joc. Give me a call sometime tonight if you can. Bye." Her words were ordinary enough but the tone was odd for Jocelyn. Her usual cheery voice sounded subdued and hesitant. I was hoping everything was okay between her and Stephen. Jocelyn had seemingly dated every straight guy in San Francisco on her quest for marriageable material. Just when she'd exhausted all the matchmaking services in the Bay Area she met Stephen, a dermatologist, and conveniently got eczema on her leg.

"Hi, it's Audrey," I said when she answered the phone on the first ring. "What's going on?"

"Oh, hi, Aud. How are you?"

"I'm fine. What about you? Your message sounded a little strange."

She sighed. "I've got some news," she said in a quiet voice.

"News?"

"I'm pregnant."

I almost dropped the receiver. Truly it was National Baby Day. "Pregnant? But you..." I didn't know what to say.

"Oh, Aud, I knew you'd be kind of shocked. Maybe I should've just sent you an e-mail."

"No, I'm not shocked." I tried not to sound defensive. "It's just that it's so, well, surprising. Was it planned?"

"Well, one night I was too lazy to put in my diaphragm and, uh, I guess that was the night. But you know, Aud, I was so surprised but I really felt excited when I found out for sure. And you know what I did? My period was late and you know it's never late so I went to the drug store and bought one of those home pregnancy tests -- you know like on TV? And Stephen had been bugging me about how dirty the Subaru was getting. So I went to the car wash but I was so excited that I went into the bathroom there and I did the test. And it came out positive and I called Stephen from the car wash!"

I envisioned Jocelyn telling every attendant and them all bursting into song like something out of a bad thirties musical. The little lady's gonna have a baby!

Her excited voice was peppered with laughter. "And then I went to the doctor and she confirmed it... I can't believe how happy I feel. I never imagined it."

Too lazy to put in her diaphragm? No matter what kind of birth control I was using I always used it--my biggest fear was getting pregnant and that used to be hers as well. I could never forget when Jocelyn called me up in the middle of the night (on a school night), screeching with happiness to tell me that she had finally gotten her period. She felt that if she sat on the toilet and prayed long enough, it would come and it did.

My face became hot and my stomach tightened when I heard her news. It was selfish, I know, but I was losing another friend into the black hole. And this wasn't just one of my coworkers--this was Jocelyn! My best friend since seventh grade. Everyone knew that Joc didn't go anywhere without Aud and Aud didn't go anywhere without Joc. We used to say how boring we thought babies were (and how stinky). We never considered doing babysitting to earn money when we were in high school; Jocelyn worked as a lifeguard at one of the indoor pools in the City and I worked in the Juniors department at Macy's. Having a baby would tie you down; you couldn't just dash off on a spontaneous weekend trip or sleep in till 10:00 on a Sunday. And sometimes you had to give up your career just like Jocelyn's mother who stopped being a lawyer to have four kids. Truly your life would be over.

"Well, congratulations." I tried to make my voice sound bright.

"Thanks. I know you probably think I'm crazy."

"No, of course not." Well, I did, but I couldn't tell her that. "What does Stephen think about it?"

"God, Aud, he's ecstatic! You know he never thought we'd have kids but I can't believe how happy he is. It just goes to show you--you never know what's going to happen in your life."

"Yep," I said distractedly. "I guess not."

* * *

"Hey, Audrey, what's the matter? You're usually finished with your super burrito before I even get to my second taco. You've hardly touched it."

Doug and I had gone to Lupe's Taco Emporium in San Bruno because I didn't feel like cooking.

"I guess I'm not that hungry," I snapped.

"Oh, is it PMS time?" He laughed. "No, I guess not--that's the time when you'd have enough room for two burritos."

I sighed. "Every time I'm in a bad mood it has to relate to my period? What's your excuse?"

He frowned. "So what's the matter? Is it something Jocelyn said?"

"She's pregnant."

He looked surprised. "Really? I thought she wasn't going to have any kids."

"I know. But she didn't use her diaphragm one night and bingo."

"So they're happy about it?"

"Yeah, they're in seventh baby heaven. But it's too bad I'll lose my best friend."

"What?"

"Come on. Once a woman has a kid her whole life is taken over by it."

"Well, maybe in the beginning but I'm sure you'll still see each other."

"Her whole life will get zapped out of her. It'll only be diapers and strollers and breastfeeding."

"It's just that peoples' priorities change, that's all. That's natural, you know." He got a pensive look on his face and I wondered if he was going to start talking about little Audrey's and Doug's again. He reached for my hand, squeezed it and smiled at me. "Well, we're not getting any younger either. Maybe it's time for us to start thinking along those lines too."

He looked so sincere with those warm brown eyes that I wanted to cry. How could I disappoint this guy who'd been so patient? Who wanted to marry me practically from the first date. Who always said he was willing to let me get anything out of my system until I was ready, whatever it was that I had to get out of my system. And it was seven years and I still hadn't married him. God, he deserved better than me, that's for sure. He needed Carol Brady or June Cleaver or Jocelyn Talbot. What the hell was the matter with me?

I held back my usual sarcastic answer to his comment and tried to put on a brave face. "Yeah, who knows? Maybe it is."

Tokunaga's novel, No Kidding, is available through many on-line sources including the author's Web page, www.culturewave.com/nokidding.

Reader Comments

Discuss this article in the forums!

No comments yet!