Lauren Weedman: Skin on Skin

Lauren Weedman was commissioned by Hugo House to write a new essay on the theme of Mother Knows Best as part of the second event of the 2010-2011 Hugo Literary Series. Lauren premiered her story, "Skin on Skin," at Hugo House on November 19, 2010, alongside novelist Stacey Levine, cartoonist David Lasky and country singer Zoe Muth. Read more about Lauren at laurenweedman.net.

Skin on Skin

I.

The house I grew up in smelled like dried cat shit, microwaved weight watchers ravioli and my sister Emily.

My best friend in third grade would take one step into my house and start sniffing the air like a dog. She was picking up the scent of Meryl Norman’s Ice Blue eye shadow mixed with stamp collecting and cystic acne. “Emily’s here… isn’t she?” Before I could answer, she’d suggest we play in the street, where it was safe.

She didn’t want to witness the jail cell violence that went on between my older sister and me, because it was ugly and raw, and because the warden who should have broken it up was an 89 pound ex-ballerina. My mother would sit licking rice crackers as my sister pinned my face down with her knee in the family room. Emily would wait until my mouth was wide open, screaming into the carpet and then she’d tell me, “Right where your mouth is, that’s where the dog threw up last night. That’s why it’s still damp.” Then she’d rug burn my face.

One sunny Hoosier spring day, as Emily pretended to burn me with her candy cigarettes, my mother’s voice came screeching through the house. “EMILY! COME TO THE KITCHEN!” The kitchen. The kitchen is where we went to be told things like, “Santa is dead.” Or, “You’re adopted.” Or, “I’ve signed you up for Weight Watchers. At 7 years old you’ll be their youngest member. Congratulations.”

Something was going down. Maybe somebody had died. I ate two cigarettes while I waited for Emily to emerge.

Ten minutes later the kitchen door flew open and Emily came running full speed heading directly towards me. My first thought was that my mother had given her a knife and directed her to kill me. “Go, run… do it now before she suspects.” But before she hit the shag carpet of the family room, my mother screamed, “Lauren… COME TO THE KITCHEN!!!!”

I kept a wide berth around Emily as I ran towards the kitchen.

As soon as I’d climbed up on the kitchen stool my mother began, “Listen, I don’t care how much pain you put each other through physically, but I don’t want you two hurting each other mentally. Those scars never heal, okay? So I want you to promise me that no matter how angry you get at your sister that you will NEVER, EVER tease her about not having any friends. That is off limits. Okay?”

I couldn’t believe what my mother was saying! Emily had friends. And if she didn’t really have any, then why didn’t my mom help get her some? Get some stamp collecting types over here. Get her some acne medicine. Host a foster kid—do something. And geez, if you say that about her, what do you say about…. oh no.

It took me about five seconds to run out the kitchen and find Emily. She was waiting for me on the couch in the family room. As soon as she saw me she stood up. I walked towards her. Neither of us spoke. She looked at me for the first time in my life like she maybe felt sorry for me. Sorry that I was the only adopted kid in the family… sorry that she’d turned me in every single time she even suspected I was doing something wrong. We’d been through a lot but we were still sisters. We were still—

 “You’re fat,” Emily said.

“Well, you have no friends,” I replied.

I waited for her to crumple, and to my horror she did. She fell to the floor, and while she was down there she picked up a piece of dried cat shit up and hurled it at my head. I wish I could say she missed me, but she didn’t. It hit my forehead. A direct hit.

It’s 30 years later and my sister Emily and her daughter, Caitlan, are coming to visit me from Indiana.

My niece Caitlan is all about hip-hop, and coincidentally, the one part of her body that I’m getting to know during her trip is… her HIP. That’s the part of her body where she wears her Ritalin patch. If she doesn’t wear her patch, according to Emily, she’s moody. When Caitlan was five Emily said Caitlan suffered from depression, when she was 10 they thought she was bi-polar, and now at 15, they’ve downgraded her to ADHD.

Over the years when I’ve complained to Emily that I don’t believe in putting minors on drugs to alter their moods just to suit our comfort levels, my sister reminded me of my last trip home. “Remember when Caitlan screamed at me, ‘Motherfucker, don’t touch my yearbook!!’? She wasn’t wearing her patch that day.”

Because the patch is like a giant piece of packing tape, my niece has decided to follow a pattern of:
1.    Reapplying her lip gloss;
2.    Yanking her mini skirt down;
3.    Yanking at the hairs that have gotten stuck to the patch.
The patch is a repository for every imaginable hair—cat hairs, sweater hairs… hairs that were blowing by in the wind.

Our first stop on their “Lauren’s Hollywood tour for visiting family” is at Rose’s Café in Venice for brunch. Light and airy and lovely and sunny. My niece and sister say nothing about how lovely the restaurant is, which makes me think they’re mad there isn’t a race car hanging from the ceiling.

My niece spends most of the meal hoping her friend will text her. She likes this one friend, she tells us, even though that friend is a real COCKBLOCKER. The word COCKBLOCKER is like a magic wand, tapping me on the forehead and POOF, turning me into a shocked granny. Clutching my heart, I ask her if she still has the finger puppets I’d given her for Christmas when she was 3. “Or have you been using them as whimsical condoms?”

At the end of a long day of shopping I take her and her mom to a café so they can watch me drink. We go to a place that I thought would have a Venice Beach-y vacation-feel but instead, it’s a complete date-rape sports bar.

As we stand at the hostess podium, my niece starts hiking her mini skirt up—or down—(What’s the difference, really?) and ferociously weeding the stuck hairs out of her patch. When she notices me watching her she reminds me that “Mommy’s gonna bring one for you tomorrow… you’ll love it. You’re never hungry.”

I start to get stressed out wondering if the restaurant was appropriate, if the patch is working, or not working, and would my sister really bring me one of those patches like she’s promised? I had a bunch of phone calls that I’d been putting off.

As soon as we sat down I realize that yes, indeed, I’ve taken them to the wrong place. AGAIN. The chairs are these odd plastic balls with no backs. We have to grip their sides with our thighs to prevent slipping off. My niece, who is absorbed in taking pictures of herself with her camera, doesn’t seem to mind that she’s sitting on an egg. But I still want to make sure that they’re comfortable and that they won’t go back home and tell my Dad that their vacation felt like they were just back at home—sitting on eggs in a sports bar, just like every afternoon.

I ask, “Are you guys okay? Do you want to sit in a booth?” Emily and Caitlan share a look and sit down on their eggs. Without speaking, Emily opens up a pillbox. Caitlan puts out her hand, and her mother pours about 10 pills into her palm. Caitlan throws them all in her mouth, swallows, then turns to me and speaks to me in the same tone that I’d used with her when I asked her not to scream COCKBLOCKER at breakfast, “Um, Aunt Lauren, you need to calm down. Right now. And stop caring about what people think all the time. You really need to relax… I’m not kidding.”

Then she gives her mom a sort of “NOW I know what you mean about her” look.

I reach out and start patting her leg. Little staccato pats. I can’t stop. The pats just keep going and going. Five minutes later, when her leg has gotten a little pink, I stop, take a deep breath and get right in her face like a basketball coach. “YOU ARE MY GUEST AND I WANT TO MAKE SURE YOU GUYS ARE COMFORTABLE. DO YOU WANT TO SIT IN A BOOTH OR NOT!?”

Either my screaming in her face was the most relaxing thing that had happened to her all day or else her Xanax had just kicked in because her face lit up in a big smile and she said to me in this little baby girl voice, “Nooo… I like my egg!”

II.

Before I got pregnant, I’d see a child and think to myself, “Welcome to the earth, little spirit. Enjoy your journey—and what are you here to teach us?” Then, I’d throw sand on their feet to make them grow. Now that I’m eight months pregnant, when I pass a baby I think, “Oh my god. His head is so flat.” Kids are freaking me out. And so are the ones that make their heads flat, the mothers.

I’ve decided to spend the day with my friend Julie because she is my one friend who has not let having kids change her one single bit.

I go over to spend the afternoon at her house and she’s standing her kitchen trying to figure out how many Weight Watchers points are in a cosmo. “The glasses were minuscule,  plus my husband kept taking sips from each drink with his big old horse mouth, so I’m rounding down… fuck it. 10. I’m saying 10.” She says all of this while managing to also complain about her mother.

 “She’s selfish! Did I tell you about our trip to see her last weekend in New Hampshire? Oh my god. She was up all night playing her banjo! ‘Five foot two, eyes of blue… would she would she?’ She’s a kook! And she knew my kids needed to get to sleep but she had a Contra dancing concert to go to the next night, so she insisted on staying up late and practicing. I told her she was being loud and my kids needed to get some sleep, but she doesn’t even care. She cares more about her sheep than she does her grandkids. She’s selfish. All she cares about is her sheep and her banjo! And she’s cheap. I know she’s got money but she won’t buy the kids new gifts. It’s always something used. I’m sick of it. She’s an insane person. She just spent all this money on some special electrical fence for her sheep.”

By the time she gets to the word “sheep” her voice is so shrill I feel like my ears are gonna start bleeding. And my nose. And maybe my feet.

 “Yeah, “ I say, “The last time your mom was visiting for Christmas and I came over to visit her all she did was show me pictures of her sheep wearing wool sweaters that she made out of them.”

As soon Julie hears this she throws her head and back and screams, “Ahhhh!! She should be showing you pictures of her grandkids—not her sheep!!!!” She then starts shoveling what looks like homemade tapioca pudding into a coffee mug.

“I can’t talk about her anymore. Okay, let’s go get Annabelle and Oscar out of the hot tub.”

Annabelle and Oscar are Julie’s kids, and they are five and six-years-old. I didn’t even know that they were home because I’ve been here for over an hour and haven’t heard them screaming and fighting like I normally do. I just assumed they were being driven around town by their 17-year-old live-in nanny from Yugoslavia who didn’t have a driver’s license. Per usual.

There are no noises coming from the backyard, and I can’t imagine that kids this age are just laying back in a hot tub, relaxing with their thoughts.

Julie must see the panic on my face because she hits my arm and says, “Take it easy. It’s empty!”

It turns out that Julie wanted us to spend the day drinking wine (“Oh, come on, pretend you’re a French mom!”) and soaking in the hot tub (“Come on, pretend you’re a Swiss mom! They do it all the time!”) so she drained the tub, but when she saw how filthy it was she stripped her kids down, gave them each a sponge and plopped them in the empty tub with a running hose,  telling them to “Scrub scrub scrub!” before going inside to make herself a cocktail.

We get to the edge of the hot tub and peer in. Oscar and Annabelle are naked, smeared with dirt and sitting in about a foot of filthy black water while quietly chewing on their antiseptic sponges. These are the kind of sponges they tell you not to clean your fish tank with, or all the fish will die.

Julie hoses them down and then sends them to go inside to play. About a second after they’re back in the house we hear a scream, one of definite physical pain. At eight months pregnant, I go running into the house full speed. When I look behind me, I assume I’ll see Julie about to PASS me or at least KEEPING UP WITH ME but instead, I discover her at the fridge, scooping out what looks like homemade tapioca pudding into a coffee mug. She sees me see her and says “Oops!!!” and laughs, grabs a spoon and then follows me into the bedroom.

When we get to the bedroom, Annabelle is pulling on Oscar’s penis. Full weight, leaning back like she’s water skiing. Oscar is freaking out, screaming. It’s so horrifying I can’t even speak.

Julie jumps in and ungrips Annabelle’s hand from poor Oscar and says, “No no no!!” with her mouth full of pudding.

“You guys, go put your clothes on, and if you want you can do your ‘High School the Musical’ show for us—we’ll watch.” Oscar still has the hiccups from crying, but this cheers him up and suddenly he and his sister are back on. “He’ll thank her later, I’m sure,” Julie says after they run, hand in hand, out of the room.

As soon as Julie’s sure the kids are in the living room rehearsing she takes her one-hitter out of her pocket, packed and ready to go, and offers it to me. “Here… take a tiny hit. It makes their shows so much better… otherwise they can get really long.”

I calmly explain to Julie that I’m pregnant and I’ve decided that I’m going to wait until my kid is born to start fucking them up. “Oh come on,” Julie says, “Take a tiny hit. Pretend you’re a Dutch mom!”

In the living room there’s no pre-show excitement in the air—in fact, Annabelle and Oscar are both just lounging on the couch. Still naked. I head towards the lazy boy chair in the corner of the room, but Julie races over and beats me to it, leaving me to sit on the couch flanked by naked children.

Rocking in the lazy boy while eating another mug of pudding starts to make Julie uncharacteristically self reflective.

“When both the kids were first born, I talked on my cell phone all the time. I think that’s why Annabelle has attachment issues. Poor Annabelle, she’s all fucked up.”

“Julie, she’s right here.”

“Oh, she didn’t hear me.” Julie waves me away and jumps up, gets a handful of pistachios and throws them in her mug, then flops back down in her chair.

“Yes, I did,” Annabelle says.

I’m going to spend more time with her, I think. I’m going to look in her eyes. I look over my shoulder to start the resolution right now and discover Annabelle sitting on the couch with her feet up in the air, staring off into the distance as she puts a pistachio in her…crotch. She’s doing it very innocently and absentmindedly. Just ‘la la la’. She doesn’t even seem like she’s aware she’s doing it. I, on the other hand, notice.

“Julie… Julie!” I’m trying to get Julie’s attention without shaming the child.

Finally, Julie sees what’s going, looks slightly embarrassed and says, “Oh gross. Annabelle, stop!”  

She then starts talking about how important making eye contact with your baby is.

“I know it sounds dumb but you have to try and remind yourself, if you can, to look your baby in your eyes. Believe it or not, it makes a difference. I didn’t do any of that stuff, the skin on skin after they were born… none of it. I really regret it. I do.”

For a moment Julie looks like she’s going to cry. I might join her. When someone with seemingly no self-awareness suddenly becomes aware, it’s painful. I feel as if she was in a coma for years and we all just assumed she had no idea what was going on around her, but it turns out she heard us talking shit about her the entire time.

I’m about to tell her, “I’m sure it’s going to okay; you can make it right!” when I notice a little hand feeling around on my face. At first I don’t know what’s going on, but then a pistachio is suddenly being shoved into my mouth. I clamp my lips shut, but Annabelle’s little fingers manage to push the nut in through the side of my mouth. Annabelle, Oscar and Julie shriek with laughter.

I spit it out across the room and it flies at Julie and hits her in the face. A direct hit.

Will I be the mother who relishes the bond with my child to such an intense degree that I refuse to stop breastfeeding in public? Even on airplanes after the child un-latches himself to ask a flight attendant, “Hey, can I get a Pepsi with this? The whole can?”

Will I be the mother who is so sensitive and attuned to her baby’s needs that instead of diapers I just wait for that certain twinkle in her eye that tells me it’s time to hold her over the sink so she can pee?

Or, will I be the drunk lady at an art opening shoving goat cheese in my red wine stained mouth, screaming, “I had dreams once! They all died! There are file cabinets full of my plays, but that’s all over now!! You cannot be an artist and a mother—I don’t care what they say; they lie! They lie because they want to lure you over to the other side… ‘Have a baby, I did! And, why, I’ve never been happier!’ Believe me; the serpent draws blood along with milk!”

III.

Leo was born less than 20 minutes ago, and right as I was about to do skin to skin contact with him, look in his eyes and give him a firm handshake, I had to give him to his father because I started to feel sick from the magnesium they’d given me before the birth. As I lay there waiting for the nausea to pass I started wondering what kind of mother I was going to be.

I have no idea.

When I open my eyes to tell David that the nausea has passed and I’m ready—the sight that greets me is of David with his shirt off, Leo on his chest and a nurse standing over them with her fingers on David’s nipple, pinching it and directing it towards Leo’s mouth. The nausea comes back with such force that I can’t speak. I just lay there watching the bizarre first moments of Leo’s life.

There are conflicting stories. David claims the nurse acted on her own accord. She saw him trying to give skin on skin contact (like the classes told us to do) and assumed that we were doing some role reversal hippie bonding moment, so she jumped in and was trying to support whatever it is we were about. The nurse says that she walked in and was shocked to find a half naked man in the corner holding Leo. When she told David she was going to give me the baby to nurse, David said, “I’ll do it”, and she thought, “Okay, dirty hippies, whatever you want.”

The first night I get Leo home I lay awake thinking—what have I done? What have I done? I’ve brought this poor baby into the world. How selfish. I’ve brought him into the cycle of suffering. He’s going to have to face his death and my death…

The night is an anxiety attack that I know will never end. It isn’t hormonal—it is the TRUTH coming through. I get it now. I see. I’m evolving. We live on a dark planet with dark horrible people, a place where monkeys eat other monkeys faces off. Sophie had to make a choice. The champ died. “I want the champ—I want the champ!” John Kennedy Jr. crashed his plane, and the show “Intervention” will never run out of addicts to follow. This is life and this is the party that I just invited Leo to. An awkward party with shitty parking.

The next morning, I wake up to Leo crying to be nursed. I sit up in bed, ready for the anxiety again, but it isn’t there. While I nurse I stare at Leo and wait for it to return, but it has vanished. At first I’m relieved, and I want to guarantee it won’t return by going online and getting a month’s supply of Xanax for Leo and me. But maybe it’s a good thing. If I can face the existential angst of being alive, I think I’ll be a better mother. Yes, a few ‘dark nights of the soul’ are a good thing, a necessary thing, and I shouldn’t spend my valuable time trying to escape it by brushing it off as ‘hormonal’ or shutting it down with some online black market Xanax from India. Especially because my niece Caitlan would be coming to visit next month and she could hook me up with handfuls of the real stuff for free.

Ahhhh.

I am going to be an amazing mother….