At Birth

by Lia Smith

From Fiction Volume 9 Number 3 (1990)

Vilhelm Hammershøi, Moonlight, Strandgade 30, 1900, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

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LIKE HER MOTHER, Jenny was afraid of her father. Lorraine had been terrified of Norman's sheer physical size, his low, rumbling voice. Norman had been to an all-black college in the South and took pride in his vocabulary.

Lorraine accused Norman of being a bully. During their marriage she said she'd always felt something was wrong. Norman's coolness frustrated her. She claimed he had no passion. She hated his silences, and when his rage finally erupted out of him after seven years of marriage, when he became a threatening figure sitting in his parked car at the end of the block, watching the house, she boasted with self-satisfaction. It was just like him. In the hallway of the courthouse, after the judge had awarded her a generous settlement and custody of the three-year-old Jenny, Norman told Lorraine he could easily crush her in his bare hands.

Norman had suffered a stroke at forty-nine, and what Jenny feared was her seventy-three-year-old father's isolation. Jenny was thirty and had a son of her own when she met her father. Lorraine's absurd death had prompted Jenny to call Norman; she had hung up before he could tell her how to find his apartment. Lorraine had often driven them by his building before her death.

"That's where the devil lives,” she'd say. Lorraine carried a bottle of iodine in the glove compartment, and she would always fling some out the window onto the pavement as they passed by. “Here, honey, you put the cap back on.”

Norman lived downtown, and Jenny had to walk past a long line of homeless and poor waiting for a free midday meal. She felt strange. Instead of looking at Jerrold, as strangers usually did, the people in the line looked at her. Quickly Jenny located her father's name on the directory of the high-rise building. There was a long pause after she pushed the button and then a gravelly sound through the speaker. "Who is it?"

Jenny said her name and the front door buzzed for her to enter. She and Jerrold were inside the building and the elevator door was closing before the front door stopped buzzing.

The elevator shuddered and whined, and Jerrold giggled. Jenny couldn't imagine having to depend on the elevator. The hallways were darker than the elevator, and her father's tiny one-room apartment, darker still.

"Hello," Jenny said when he opened the door. She didn't know what to call him. Norman hardly looked at her; he turned back into the room. "I hope you won't think it rude if I sit down," he said. He lowered himself into a plain, broken-down armchair. "My legs are very weak now."

Jenny pushed Jerrold ahead of her.

"Make yourselves at home. You may sit anywhere you like." Jenny remained standing. In front of her, stray pieces of light got past a thick, vinyl-coated curtain, cracked with age, dark with grime. Jenny felt drawn to the window. She wanted to push aside the broken covering and bathe herself in light. It was stuffy in the room and she wanted air. Jenny clutched Jerrold to her, holding him by his shoulders against her loins.

"What's his name?"

"Jerrold Ralston."

"Jerrold. Jerrold Ralston. Isn't that your mother's name?"

Jenny nodded.

"You didn't marry one of her people, did you?"

"I'm not married."

Her father nodded. "I surmised that." Then, "How old are you, little fellow?"

Jerrold had drifted away from his mother and was picking through the things on the kitchen table. The table was filthy. On the side nearest her father's chair he had his things: cigarettes, lighter, a peanut can overflowing with spare change, a steak knife, the TV guide, a tall plastic cup. On the side away from the wall stood boxes of sugar substitute, a stack of room deodorizers, and two books, a Bible and a dictionary. A great jumble of junk mail and various papers cluttered the little space left over. Everything was food-stained and Jenny saw cockroaches in the piles.

"Jerrold."

"Children are naturally inquisitive. I don't mind." The tone of the last three words made Jenny start. It was a tone she had often heard elderly people use, but that wasn't why it sounded familiar. "He's a handsome boy, Jenny. I wish I'd seen him as a baby."

Jenny's neck tensed. Lorraine had warned her about his cunning, the recriminations.

"Can I offer you some refreshment? Maybe the boy would like a soda."

Jenny saw her father move to get up. His hands gripped the worn armrests—the fabric was gone and beyond the stuffing the wood showed-and she thought the chair might break from the pressure of his weight struggling to rise.

"Where is it? Let me." Jenny opened the refrigerator. On one shelf she saw half a dozen bricks of butter, of varying shades of yellow, and she sniffed for the rancid smell she knew would be there.

"Who cleans up?" she asked.

"A woman comes in three times a week."

Jenny took a cup out of the dish drainer and wished there were a polite way to wash it before offering it to Jerrold.

"Can I pour you a glass?" she asked her father.

"I have my cup if you'll hand me a can. Thank you kindly." Her father's speech was slow and reasonable, each word smoothly enunciated.

Jenny put the soda on the table within his reach and then watched as he opened the can, poured the contents into the tall tumbler, and then dropped the can, empty, into a trash bag at his side. She looked at her father and didn't recognize him. Over the years, Lorraine's hatred for Norman had blotted out any memories Jenny might have had of her father. Jenny could hear Lorraine's screeching voice. He's a dangerous man. And ooooeeee, could that man drink! Jenny studied her father now and almost snorted out loud at her mother's hysteria. In his chair, Norman sat placidly, regarding his daughter and grandson. How could he be capable of torturing anyone? His obvious joy at seeing her embarrassed Jenny, and she avoided looking at his eyes. He wore glasses and his remaining hair had been neatly brushed back. Jenny could smell his aftershave and, noticing that he'd put on dress shoes and a fresh shirt for the visit, she smiled.

"You're looking good," Norman said. He nodded. "I always predicted you'd inherit your mother's good looks. No. I wasn't mistaken."

"She said I got my coloring from you." It's the only favor your father ever did us.

"They used to call me 'Red' as a boy," Norman told Jenny. "I was very fair, very fair. My father used to tease my mother about it." He laughed. "Where'd you steal that white baby?" Norman laughed with pleasure. "Where'd you steal that white baby?"

Jenny felt herself blushing.

"Are you in school yet, Jerrold?"

Jerrold looked up from where he sat at the table, his mouth buried deep in his cup. "I'm five," he said.

"You mind your mother and you will do fine. You go to school and you will do fine. I went to school and I have never regretted it. An education is something that is yours. They can't take it from you. That is something they can't ever take from you."

"How long are we going to stay here?"

Jenny heard exasperation in her son's voice and realized he'd repeated his question several times.

"In a minute, honey." She hadn't yet taken a seat. She hadn't seen her father in almost thirty years. "Jerrold can't sit still for more than five minutes,” she said.

"I understand. I quite understand."

To avoid answering, Jenny took the cup Jerrold had used and washed it in the sink.

"My housekeeper will do that."

"I don't mind. There. Now it's like we were never here at all." Realizing what she'd just said, Jenny nervously came around the table and kissed her father on the cheek. She did it quickly and withdrew before he could respond. She felt his body moving slowly to return her gesture and knew she'd surprised him. For an instant she regretted not having given him a chance to hug her back. The feeling passed and she took Jerrold's hand. "We'll come often," she said.

Jenny left the building in a hurry. They had been there less than a half-hour.

Almost a year passed before Jenny went back to see her father. It pained her to speak with him on the phone. It hardly made sense to ask him what he'd been doing. He went to a day-care program two times a week and the rest of the time he sat in his room. When Jenny tried to tell him about her life, he answered with platitudes. She didn't want them. Over the phone, Norman's slow voice was hard to understand, and after the first few exchanges she would hear her own voice become bored and her mind would wander. She often thought of the possibility that he might live another twenty years. Jenny hated the feelings Norman brought up in her. They seemed ugly and she felt sure he guessed them. Although Norman accepted her careless niceties as sincere and her passive attachment to him as love, he refused to believe the one thing she couldn't pretend Jerrold didn't like his grandfather and refused to speak to Norman on the phone. Norman accused Jenny of lying to him. "You have no right to keep us apart. He is my own flesh and blood."

To this Jenny had no answer, and she began to regard Norman with bitterness.

After a particularly bad phone conversation with him—she had shivered with a mixture of anger and self-hatred the rest of the afternoon—Jenny decided a visit would be easier. Jenny dialed his number from her workplace. "I have some roses I cut from the backyard, and I'd like to bring them to you." He consented and Jenny hung up feeling better.

At his door the next day, Jenny held her breath and then rapped lightly. It was suffocatingly warm in the unlighted hallway, as if a huge furnace were burning nearby. She heard her father's labored shuffling and what she now knew was the habitual inquiry. "Yes. Who is it?"

Jenny stared at the bright orange door in front of her and the faded, stained card hanging from a piece of string from the door's knocker declaring, "I'm doing fine today, thanks," in English, Filipino, Chinese and several other languages she didn't recognize. She avoided looking up to face the tiny peephole in the door. "It's Jenny."

The door opened and Norman moved clumsily backward to let her in. This moment, a fleeting instant of bright light from the window directly behind him caught her off guard. He looked as if he would topple. His awkwardness made Jenny shy. Although she knew better (catching him off balance would be a disaster), Jenny impulsively kissed him on the cheek. She felt his face move against hers into a broad smile.

"Come in. Come in. So good of you to come. You are looking well. I think you have gotten more beautiful. Yes, you are looking well."

"I didn't bring Jerrold because he'd just fidget. And besides, he's in school now." Jenny couldn't help smiling. "A kindergartner."

"That's fine. That's fine. Go ahead and have a seat."

Jenny hesitated. The place looked worse than she remembered, the fabric chairs older and dirtier. Without letting go of the flowers or her purse, Jenny sat down on the edge of a chair.

"Do you bake?"

"Bake?"

"I have some butter I want to give you."

She was sure it was the butter she'd seen the last time, the rancid cakes. "You ought to have given it to your neighbors.”

"I've been saving it because I wanted to give it to someone who would appreciate it. You may move those things aside," he said, referring to what was on the chair. "My housekeeper was to have brought those things to the dry cleaner's." Jenny heard irony in her father's voice. "The first few times they are pleasant enough, and then they get to their thieving. Do you know that over the years I have had nearly twenty-seven hundred dollars stolen? 'Hey, you,' I say, what are you going over there?' Just straightening up, Mr. Maynard. They make busy-like, like they are performing a useful task." He laughed. "I know their ways. I can see them sneaking their hands into my pockets," he said, showing Jenny. "That's how they take my money. See, they got no cause to be over there going through my things. Lies, lies and chicanery."

Jenny offered a few suggestions but mostly listened. It was unfair, his defenselessness, but she couldn’t see any solution. He needed the help, and she was sure the women who came were poorly paid.

The time lengthened and Norman talked happily. He told her about his own mother and his childhood and the years he had spent working his way through college. He had been a welder before his stroke. As he talked, his hands moved. They were big hands, the fingers long and shaped handsomely. He showed her how his left hand had weakened from the paralysis he suffered.

"When I worked down at the shipyards there was this one young fellow who liked to squeeze your hand when he shook it. He saw that I was big and he wanted to feel what my grip was like. I let him have his game." Norman's laugh came from deep inside him. "After that, he'd only offer me his three fingers, just like that."

The way her father's hands, powerful at one time, struggled silently, telling the story, moved Jenny. Like his vocabulary and manners, they were elegant and suggested something to her, something different from the picture Lorraine had always made of him.

"See, these hands were strong enough to kill a man."

Jenny wanted to stop smiling.

"When I was eighteen I decided that I would never strike anyone again, whether in anger or in a fair fight. And I never have. I never have. Some people don't believe that. I could have killed that boy.”

Unsettled, Jenny listened to her father.

"He didn't know what mean was. He was always rubbing up to me, like a cat, making out like we were friends. I told him to get out of my house. You see, I knew which boot he kept his knife in.” Norman laughed as he described the man's attempts to get at the knife.

Jenny moved in her chair. She was afraid her father would start talking about Lorraine. Lorraine had told Jenny that her father would lie about the past. Norman was a man who'd held a knife to another man's throat. A man who'd sat vigil for six weeks with a loaded rifle in his lap waiting for a chance to shoot his wife and her lover dead.

Collage by Inger Johanne Grytting

"You know, I wanted to name you Ruby or Joy, a name that would describe you, but your mother wouldn't allow it."

"Let's not talk about my mother."

"I don't know where your mother is."

The room grew still and Jenny glanced at her watch. She had been there nearly three hours. "I lost track of the time. I'll have to hurry to pick up Jerrold. They scold me if I'm late."

Jenny let herself out of his apartment. It seemed silly that she'd let a year go before coming back. In the courtyard, three old men were warming themselves in the sun.

"You know someone in the building?" one of them asked.

Jenny felt as if she were being flirted with. "Norman Maynard," she said.

"You a social worker?"

Jenny shook her head and smiled. "A good friend," she told them.

The men seemed impressed and their curiosity pleased her.

As Jenny hurried down the street to her car, dozens of thoughts and feelings rushed in and out of her. Maybe her father wasn't the easiest person. But he had dignity and seemed good. He was exact and demanding, but wasn't there something to that? A discerning nature? Norman's stories raced through Jenny's head. He had traveled, he had worked his way through a college education, he had been one of the first black men in the city to hold a Municipal Railway driving position. How had her mother been so wasteful of Norman, so crude and stupid as never to learn what he was about? Jenny saw a green light and stopped in confusion. Maybe she was just being naive. How much of his own solitude had Norman brought upon himself? He had told her he didn't know anyone in the building because no one spoke English. Those men did.

Jenny waited for the elevator. The visits to her father had begun to wear on her. It drained her to sit with him, listening to how his health was worsening, how bad his housekeepers were, how prices were for the rich man, how evil the city had become, how he didn't want to tire her with his negative talk. "If a person thinks negative, his life is negative. If you think positive, your life is positive. You see, the mind is powerful."

She wanted him to stop sending money to the reverend who owned his own television station, and buy himself a proper chair instead

"You see, I have been saved."

Jenny had to keep herself from falling asleep as Norman talked. In the darkened room, it took great concentration to remain attentive. At times, it was as if Norman were speaking a foreign language. She would leave his building and feel as though she’d been interpreting; her brain would ache and she would cry.

But her self-hatred for her own weakness was the worst of it. She felt nothing for Norman, she was only drawn to him. She felt stupid. How could he not see through her? Not perceive her boredom, her strong feelings that they had nothing in common? Months passed without her thinking of him once.

Norman let her into his apartment, and Jenny, seeing how pleased he was to see her, turned defensive. She didn't want to be important in his life, responsible to him.

"I can only stay a short while," she told him, taking a seat.

"I understand. How long have you been back?"

"Back?"

"You told me you were taking Jerrold to see your cousins in San Diego."

"That was months ago." Jenny looked toward the window. Usually she opened the curtain and the window as soon as she arrived.

"Why didn't you call?"

Jenny stared at her father's sharp question. He rarely made demands on her. She had no answer for him and her mood quickly changed. "You haven't called me,” she said

There was a silence. "I don't mean to chastise. I am glad you are here now."

Jenny scowled.

"Your mother," Norman began.

"You shut up about Lorraine," Jenny interrupted. "I don't want to hear you say anything about my mother. I know about your lies."

"What lies? What has that evil woman told you?"

"Don't you call my mother evil. I won't listen to you talking bad about her."

"What's she said? What's she said about me? She's told you the same lies she was always telling me. That woman doesn't know how to say the truth. All she knows are lies." Jenny stood up. "Jenny, you hear me out. That woman's got almost thirty years on me with her lies. She's set my own daughter against me.

"I know about you," Jenny insisted.

"What did she say?"

"Don't you yell at me! Don't you come near me!" Jenny sprang back, pulling the chair between them.

"Come near you? What do you think I'll do? Hit you?" Norman's laugh barked. "No. I don't hit women. I have never struck a woman in my life. God is my witness. She thought I didn't care for her because I wouldn't stop her from seeing other men. She wanted me to strike her. You are just like her," he accused. "I see your game now. You wouldn't be here unless you wanted something. That woman's put every one of her evil thoughts right down inside your head." Jenny grabbed her purse and hurried to get away. "She hasn't changed at all, thinking she's clever. You tell her she's not getting any more of my money if she comes to ask for it herself."

Jenny stopped, her hand on the knob, and spoke without turning back into the room. "Lorraine is dead, Norman. She's been dead three years."

Halfway down the dim hallway, Jenny heard the device attached to his door sigh as the door slowly closed.

Outside, the wind blew hard; Jenny put her hand up against the grit blowing into her eyes and mouth. Lorraine had been right. Norman had always looked down on Lorraine, called her a mindless simpleton. He had never let her forget that he was refined, a gentleman, and she, unlearned. But that was Lorraine. Norman had no right to accuse Jenny of being like Lorraine. Jenny thought about her last words to Norman just now. She would never tell him. Jenny could still see it, Lorraine rushing across the living room to convince her lover that she hadn't abandoned him, hadn't determined to give up drinking and gone to her first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting that very morning. Her high heel had caught in the shag rug and she'd tripped and knocked her head against the coffee table. Her lover, angry and drunk, couldn't realize that Lorraine was dead; he had sat down on the sofa, sobbing self-pityingly about how she had betrayed him.

For two weeks Jenny wouldn't answer her phone. She'd decided never to go back to Norman's. Finally she dialed his number. She could at least be fair to Norman, tell him of her decision.

"Oh, excuse me," Jenny said quickly when she heard a woman's voice, "I must have the wrong number."

"Are you calling for Norman Maynard? He's right here.”

Norman's raspy voice came onto the line.

"Since when do you let your housekeeper answer your phone?" Jenny asked.

"That was Heidi."

Norman claimed that a young woman in the senior day-care program had befriended him and often came to visit. Jenny had always thought Norman had made Heidi up to make her jealous. He told Jenny he thought of Heidi as his own daughter.

"I'd like to come by on Saturday," Jenny said.

"That would be fine. Anytime, anytime. Thank you for calling."

Jenny hung up the phone and wished she'd asked to come over that afternoon. Saturday seemed too long to wait for.

 Jenny entered Norman's apartment briskly and glanced around to make sure she had her father to herself.

"I thought you were angry with me," Norman said.

"Why would I be angry?"

"You were upset the last time you were here.”

"Yes, well, let's forget about that."

Jenny looked around and saw that the table had been cleaned off. She reached out and touched Norman's Bible. The cover had been wiped free and was now smooth. "Who straightened up?" Jenny asked. Norman never let the cleaning women touch the table. They invariably moved things so he couldn't find them, looked at papers they had no business in.

"Heidi. I trust her."

Jenny didn't answer. It gladdened her that the table had already lost some of its neatness. In another week Heidi's work would be gone, the table once more encrusted in filth, littered with food-stained junk mail. When Heidi returned she would see how little her gift mattered. Jenny hoped it would anger Heidi. Heidi's attentions couldn't last. She would quickly learn the limitations of a relationship with Norman. How long would she stand for the extravagant praises? Norman would insist on calling Heidi "daughter." He would sing her goodnesses until he had robbed her of any depth, just as he'd robbed Jenny, and Lorraine before her. He'd take Heidi's personality from her and shape it for his own use. She would become an angel without moods, without desires, without needs. She would come to Norman's dark apartment and sit with him in the gloom, listening to the same stories over and over again, assuring Norman of his identity.

Isolated Man

Jenny stared at her father as he talked. He was telling her again how he'd been mugged, how the manager used a passkey to enter Norman's apartment unannounced, how Norman wanted to move. Jenny sat silent and watched as the light from outside coming through the window slowly diminished. She felt peaceful. The room became darker and darker and Jenny began to rehearse how she would take her leave. Good-byes lengthened into half-hours as Norman thought of things to say to keep her there for one more minute. As she roused herself, Jenny's mind cleared. She had forgotten this was her last visit. Would she say what she had come to say? What right did Norman have, asking her to watch him die? He didn't want to live. How many times could she offer him her sympathy, accept his paranoid complaints and at the same time try to offer some solution to his pain? Did it matter whether his complaints were true?

"I birthed you, you know." The words came out of nowhere. Lorraine had claimed that Norman had been out drinking while she'd been giving birth to Jenny.

Startled, Jenny looked up and saw her father looking at her now with a steady gaze. He had taken something familiar, ordinary words, and changed them into something impossible to explain. In an instant, Jenny could vividly remember how it felt, issuing from her mother's womb into her father's strong hands. So this was how truth came. Jenny had tried to ascertain truth her whole life, but nothing had ever satisfied her. People had endless motivations for describing events the way they wanted you to believe them.

"No, I didn't," Jenny answered. She wouldn't admit anything yet. Maybe she would never say it out loud, that what he had said was true, that she remembered, that she loved him. Jenny went across the room to him and kissed him good-bye. "I have to go now," she said. Her lips touched his skin and she waited as he slowly returned her embrace. "You take care of yourself," she said, pulling away.

"I meant to tell you. The last time you came you forgot about the butter.”

Jenny nodded. "I can't take it now. You remind me next time, she added. Jenny waited until the door shut itself firmly before she let go of the knob.

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