Maybe Baby Read online

  M16’s deep blue eyes brightened.

  “Run up and ask your parents,” Gretchen said. “We’ll wait right here.”

  Ray emerged in a fresh T-shirt and rainbow sarong. “You put on aftershave,” Gretchen observed.

  “For my mother.” He shrugged, then said, “It was a present from her.”

  M16 bounded down the stairs and out the front door onto the stoop, ringlets of shoulder-length blond hair bouncing. “It’s okay, I can go. But I’d like to be home to watch a documentary on rockets with Glyn later.”

  “Great,” said Gretchen, taking M16’s hand. “Did you hear that, Ray?” Gretchen called to Ray, who was sauntering ahead of them, snapping off the heads of some dead marigolds along the walk.

  “Yes.” Ray nodded. “I heard. We won’t stay too long.”

  In the car, Gretchen changed her mind about the Barbie. What had she been thinking? It was against every bylaw she herself had helped draft. She and Hael sat on the policy committee, which meant distributing copies of policy changes to all six families and keeping a master copy, which was bound and stored in a supply closet. Every Sunday, the policy committee met in the gazebo out back and hashed out conflicts, ironed out policies that were too strict or too vague, mulled over terms. Several meetings ago, for example, it had become clear that some residents were uncomfortable with the term “gender neutral.”

  “It’s not like we can be neutral, not after living in a society that has pushed us to believe in the adherence to two and only two codes of behavior,” said Kenn, the group’s newest member.

  “How about ‘gender open’?” offered his partner, Colima.

  “How about ‘belated genderists’?” called out Glyn.

  “But isn’t our ideal really gender neutrality?” asked Kenn.

  “Good point.” Colima was there to back him up.

  “Well, we’re really questioning what gender means, whether it needs significance,” Kenn went on. “It’s such a guarded belief system—I like to think of myself as a ‘gender warrior.’”

  Gretchen had rolled her third eye, a practice she’d learned from Hael. “How about ‘gender lax’?” she suggested offhandedly.

  “Hmm,” said Colima.

  “Hmm,” said Kenn.

  “I’d like to suggest the community work with ‘gender lax’ on a trial basis,” Glyn volunteered.

  “Do we have consensus?” Hael asked.

  All heads nodded. Other issues proved much harder—like at what point a child’s true sex could be revealed to the greater community. Some argued for a strict age—say, five. A school-age child is fully aware of his/ her genitals and even when homeschooled within the community will want to share and exchange information, sometimes information of a personal nature, with his/ her peers. To shun this and commit children to secrecy seemed false. That was one opinion. Then there was the question of how to tell the greater community—some argued for a ceremony, a rite of passage. Others felt that gave a child’s sex too much of a spotlight.

  At present, there were only four children in the community, though others were imminent. Besides M16 and M46, there was a set of twins that lived two doors down: Trust and Chance Figgis. Their parents, two outgoing nudists who taught anthropology at Loyola, raised issue with trying to foist too much gender-lax dogma on children who, accustomed to the community vibe, would naturally express their sexual potential in ways that did not necessitate administrative oversight. The Figgises, who had once been accused rather vehemently at a community picnic of joining the group as an anthropological prank, took great pride in running against dominant paradigms. Though they appeared uninterested in community events after the picnic incident, they continued to hover about the sidelines, jotting things in notebooks when they thought no one was looking. Lately, their termination from the group was under discussion since four-year-old Chance had taken up the practice of flashing passing cars—something the Figgises refused to address for fear of impinging on Chance’s freedom of expression.

  “Now everyone will know Chance’s sex,” Gretchen had fumed at Eve Figgis one morning in the yard when she’d caught Chance in front of the oak tree, pants down. “That’s not exactly helping our cause.”

  “Cause!” Eve snapped, slamming her little notebook down on the front steps. “Just what is our cause? To suppress our children’s naturally forming identities or to encourage them to develop at their own rate?”

  When Gretchen tried to interrupt, Eve hedged. “Maybe the problem, Gretchen Glide, is that people like you haven’t learned to wean themselves of their own maladjusted extremism.”

  Gretchen was stunned. She’d stood dumbstruck on the walk, feeling impervious to the lawn mower across the street or the children tossing gray blobs at the pigeons. Her, an extremist? That seemed ridiculous. She was about to say so when Eve promptly stood up and went back into her apartment. Gretchen spun around and sauntered breezily off to the corner grocery as if nothing had happened. But Eve’s words had haunted her. Even after Eve stopped by a few days later with a basket of wheat-free muffins and apologized, explaining that she and her husband, Stu, were having problems, that her parents were applying pressure to send the twins to a mainstream private school, Gretchen went on feeling mortified and sheepish.

  Maybe she was an extremist. She had never thought of herself in those terms. She always considered herself a rather quiet, shy person who survived the mainstream by secretly ducking off the road for private diversions. Her women’s studies major was one such detour—one that she never had the guts to face her parents about in case they threatened to freeze her tuition. Ray was another such secret detour. She’d spoken to very few people about him during their two-year courtship and probably wouldn’t have if she weren’t pregnant. The baby, in fact, seemed like her first public statement, the first real admission of who she was and what she believed. She wasn’t like some of the others in the community who had grown up in unusual circumstances: Ray had been raised moving from commune to commune, Hael came from a peculiar background of Quaker Trekkies, and even Eve Figgis had run away from home at a young age and foraged in the woods for nuts and berries until nudist Stu swooped her up.

  Gretchen was doing her best to break out, and that meant trying to forge a new order, to create a new community, to reinvent the rules. So she was in favor of the strictest gender neutrality —did that make her an extremist? She saw good sense in cutting out television, dressing babies in black onesies, keeping a spare house, limiting contact with the outer world, and forbidding public removal of clothing or any talk about a child’s sex. Until the child is at least five, she felt, pretend it isn’t there, pretend the only thing between a child’s legs is air. Together she and Ray had spent hours role-playing with the other couples and chatting over the Internet with several like-minded families who were trying to develop communities elsewhere. Hael’s book had inspired underground “maladjusted extremists” in New York and even Shanghai to work on raising children with less gender specificity. True, no other group was as absolutist or as organized as theirs, but all of them made use of Hael’s guidelines in one way or another, even if they didn’t have the courage to practice them in public. Many progressive expecting couples practiced her exercises, something Hael recommended even for those who didn’t have children.

  Q: Isn’t that a cute baby. Boy or girl?

  A: Either way.

  Q: Is —— a boy’s name or a girl’s name?

  A: It’s both.

  Q: Is your child male or female?

  A: Our child’s gender is a private matter. How would you like it if I made inquiries into your sex?

  Over the winter, Gretchen and Ray had attended several conferences with Hael on raising gender-free babies. They weren’t publicized or even very organized—just people who met on the Internet and offered up their farmhouses or their flats to work through this new notion of parenting. Some were middle-aged, frustrated with their teens who for some reason had ADD or no self-esteem. They were c
urious about whether this new method of child rearing offered a solution. Most couples were young, in their twenties and thirties, looking for a new vision. Some were lesbians or gays seeking the company of a supportive network.

  And, somehow, the term that stuck was “Future Parents”—FPs. “My friend so-and-so is interested in becoming an FP,” someone would write. “Does she need a license?” Letters and e-mails had begun to flood Hael’s house over the summer: “How can I find out more? Are you teaching a seminar?” Part of Hael’s mission was to raise awareness about gender in the community through subtle means, but people from all over the country, a little pocket of maladjusted extremists here or there, seemed to demand it.

  Hael, who never expected a surge of interest about her book, published by an obscure little press out of Maine, never took calls from the press and begged everyone to keep things under wraps. “This is not the sort of thing we want to make public until we’ve really got a strong base.” In a recent step to address these issues, she had banded together with Ray on his latest performance piece. Set up as a pastiche loosely based on the experiences within the community, it was scheduled to debut in late fall and would be followed by a spring tour.

  “Hello, gorgeous!” cried Sunny from the balcony of her rental condo when Gretchen and Ray stepped from the car with little M16 in tow. She was four floors up and wearing a loud turquoise muumuu with what looked like peach jellyfish all over it. She waved frantically and raised a glass. “Room four-fourteen,” she called over the railing. “Just tell the door guy you’re with me.”

  Ray took Gretchen’s hand and smiled sheepishly. His head, recently shaved to mirror hers, now looked like a foreign bulb, a strange thistle she did not quite know whether to touch. She had loved his long hair so much, its deep shade and soft girlishness. It was the first thing she’d noticed about him, seeing him across the room, his back turned. She’d been almost surprised when he whirled around to reveal a face with a beard.

  M16 hung by Gretchen’s leg, one hand on her shoulder bag. “Now can I play with it?” the little mouth asked as they crossed the parking lot.

  “Just a minute,” said Gretchen. “We’re going to meet Ray’s mother.” Then she added, “Our baby’s granny.”

  “What’s a granny?” asked M16 as they passed the doorman in the lobby. Gretchen furrowed her brow. She’d forgotten that M16 had no contact with the parents of Glyn and Hael, and now she felt guilty for bringing it up. “It’s nothing, sweetie,” she said as she nudged M16 into the elevator.

  Ray gave Gretchen a tight smile, then leaned down and wiped his brow with the flap of his sarong. “I have to pee” was all he said.

  “Why are you acting so nervous?”

  Ray shrugged.

  “Look, if your mother’s a pill, we’ll just leave,” Gretchen whispered, her voice matter-of-fact.

  “She won’t be a pill, I promise,” Ray said. He shifted nervously from one foot to the other. “It’s just that there’s a lot happening, and I’m tired.”

  Gretchen put her arm around him. He’d been practicing his new show with Hael sometimes late into the night, trying to get as much done as possible before the birth. Despite her own discomfort, she tried to be sensitive.

  The elevator doors parted, and down the hall a door flew open to reveal Ray’s mother in all her glory—a tall, angular woman, whippet thin, with red spiky hair and freckled arms glittering with bangles.

  “Granny!” cried M16 joyously. Sunny looked from Ray to Gretchen to M16 as if she didn’t know whom to hug first, then commenced weeping. “Oh, oh, this is too much,” she cried. “And this must be Gretchen, and, Ray, you look so handsome, darling —come here and let me kiss you. And now who is this little wonderbug?”

  M16 stepped forward proudly. “I’m M16. Don’t ask me what that means!”

  Sunny bent over to shake the small pink hand, then scooped the whole bundle up in her arms and carried M16 through the doorway and into the living room. It was then that Gretchen noticed Sunny’s muumuu—it wasn’t covered in jellyfish at all; it was printed with little fetuses, jumbo-headed, snail-shaped fetuses. It was both too awful and too good to be true.

  The condo was airy and empty except for two curvaceous hot pink couches in front of a white tile fireplace. On the mantel there was a row of fertility dolls. “Magnificent, isn’t it?” crowed Sunny over her shoulder. “We’re renting from two lesbian obstetricians.”

  Sunny deposited a giggling M16 on one of the couches and scuttled off to the kitchen, beckoning wildly with one of her gilded arms. “You like smoothies? Klaus makes the most fabulous smoothies.”

  In the kitchen, which was lilac with scrumptious pewter cabinet knobs, a lean hairless man with a Florida tan worked the blender.

  “And this is Klaus, of course,” cried Sunny, swooping down to pick two tall glasses off the marble counter and press them into Gretchen and Ray’s hands. “You’re going to love these,” she said with a titter, “and if you don’t, well, we can just toss them over the balcony or something.” She stepped back to watch their faces as Gretchen and Ray stood in the middle of the kitchen, gulping. “Oh, my.” Sunny clapped her hands together. “Isn’t this wonderful? I’ve been so excited about coming here I even had this special outfit made.” She curtsied.

  “I love it,” Gretchen gushed. She felt suddenly overcome with emotion. “I wish my mother would come up with stuff like that.”

  “I’m touched.” Sunny chuckled, her bright eyes twinkling. She was darkly complected with a warm, weathered face and long manicured fingers she kept rubbing together. “This baby is going to have one wacky granny!” she roared, forcing a coffee-colored nail into the air. “But that’s only because this granny is so overwhelmed with happiness.” She fanned her face and dabbed at the corners of her eyes, using the edge of her wide sleeve.

  “I want a granny,” called M16, jumping up and down on the couch. “Please, please.”

  Gretchen reached into her bag and passed M16 the Barbie.

  “Oooo,” cooed M16. “I love this granny.”

  Out on the balcony, Sunny ushered Gretchen to a patio chair and pushed a footstool under her legs, giggling to herself and snapping her fingers as things occurred to her. “You need anything”—she snapped—“you just tell me, and it’s done.” She gave a quick little shrug and sat down, crossing her legs. “Any worries”—she snapped again—“you just ask Klaus. He’s a doctor—was a doctor. He gives a great massage.” She winked and took a sip of her smoothie.

  Klaus, who was bronze and boyish, even in his seventies, gave a monkish nod as he came out onto the patio. His chest and thighs glistened as if from health. He wore satiny blue running shorts with the waist pulled up high. These two will be good for Judy and Rusty, Gretchen thought.

  “Listen”—Sunny leaned forward and, as if she had channeled Gretchen’s thoughts, said, “I’d like to propose a little dinner party. All of us and your parents—what do you think? A sort of prepartum party, a mixer. I’m thinking kabobs, I’m thinking strawberry daiquiris, a prebirthday cake.” She leaned back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. “Or not—you know, we can go with the flow.”

  “Actually —” Ray said from the doorway, a note of protest in his voice.

  “I think it sounds wonderful,” said Gretchen. “And I hope you’ll wear that muumuu again.”

  “I loved the baby lady,” said M16 on the way home.

  It was dusk and the sun coming through the leaves struck Gretchen as golden and magical. “Your mother is wonderful,” she said, reaching her hand out to cover Ray’s, which was clamped over the truck’s gearshift.

  “Maybe,” said Ray. “We’ll see.”

  Later that evening, Judy called. “Ray’s mother is such a dear,” she said to Gretchen. “She invited us to a party. I’m supposed to bring deviled eggs. It’s a prepartum party—isn’t that cute? Everything is going to be birth-oriented, even the food.” Judy giggled.

  “I thought we were having
kebabs,” Gretchen said.

  “Oooh, I doubt that, not at a party for a baby. Those sticks are choking hazards.”

  “Mom.” Gretchen paused. “How are you and Dad doing?” She added “with things” when she sensed a long pause coming. Gretchen was lying in bed with a pillow under her knees. Next to her, Ray snoozed naked, the breeze from the rotating fan ruffling his chest hair.

  “Oh, it’ll be fine,” Judy said. “How are you feeling?”

  “Easy breezy,” Gretchen said. “I’m feeling more relaxed by the day.” She was sewing a seam on a little black onesie. The fan made it flutter like a bat. “I never got to ask you about Henry’s visit,” Gretchen said. “I thought he and the band were going to spend the night.”

  “Oh, you know,” Judy babbled brightly. “They had to push off sooner than they realized. I’m just glad that he even thought to stop by and see us.”

  “He’s wanted to come home for a while,” Gretchen ventured, licking her finger as she rethreaded her needle. “Especially now that things are happening for him. He’s got a new song that’s making the charts. He finally feels like he’s worth something.”

  Judy was quiet.

  “If you showed some interest, Mom,” Gretchen went on. “He feels a lot of remorse about how he left.”

  More silence.

  “I think both he and Carson would come visit if Dad wouldn’t act like such an ogre.” Gretchen sewed drowsily, aware suddenly of the clock and the dark night behind the window screens. From somewhere outside, she heard a little voice cry, “I want a granny.”

  In her dimly lit kitchen, Judy stared down into the pot on the stove, where she was boiling eggs. Bubbles gathered at the water’s surface, rising from the shells. The eggs knocked together like something tapping to be let out. Judy lowered the flame and stood over the stove in her robe, letting the steam dampen her face. “If you showed some interest,” she heard Gretchen say, replaying the conversation in her mind. “If Dad wouldn’t act like such an ogre.”