WHEN JANIE GETS HER BABY, Part II

Read Part I

Dinner is a salad, bread, a twelve egg omelet loaded with peas and spinach and cheese from a goat, of all places, and a bowl of some soup that’s like drinking cold salsa straight from a jar.

Look, no meat, Lester says. You eat eggs, don’t you? You must eat eggs. It’s not like they’re meat. They’re pre-meat.

They’re an abortion is what they are, I say. But thanks for the effort. I’ll make do with the rest.

He glares at me and then breathes deeply. Oh well, he says, tearing into his bread.

You think the cannibals sopped up human blood with bread, Francis? I’m guessing it was some kind of cracker. You’d dip it right into the skull. I’d imagine they ate each other in sandwiches, too.

You have to make sure you get enough protein in you, Carol says to me. I read up on vegetarians. Half of them are nearly dead from malnutrition. I really wished you’d at least eat the eggs.

Hey, I say. How come you’re not all marked up? When Lester beat me up I looked like something in a wax museum. Or did you hand out the beatings?

How would you know if I am or I’m not? Carol says. I gave and took, she says. When I gave I wore a fake mustache and a dildo.

I wish I was there for the crucifixion, Lester says. Though it probably wouldn’t have been that big of a deal. Getting strung on a cross back then was no different than getting a parking ticket is today.

They hung him naked, Carol says. And castrated. What does any man fear most? Emasculation. Being turned into a woman. It’s always been that way. Think about that. Think about that one. A man would rather be dead than be a woman.

Carol’s what you might call a feminist, Lester says.

I wouldn’t be a guy if you paid me a million dollars, Janie says. It’s bad enough having to smell their stink in the bathroom. To be one would have to be even worse.

Of course it would be worse, Lester says. Because you’d end up getting ragged to death by someone just like yourself. Ear fucked on a daily basis. And you’d get cheated on. Your best friend would fuck your girl and she’d move in with him. Nature is nature. He lifts the bowl of soup to his mouth and pours, spilling some down the front of his vest, chunks of tomato and onion glued to his white chest hair.

The eggs look good, but I’m guessing you could make a pretty good looking dish out of ground up fetus too if you wanted, which is sort of what an omelet is. It doesn’t matter what stuff looks like, it just matters what it is, and eggs are death.

This food is so delicious, Janie says. You are such a wonderful cook, Carol.

I’ve learned a few tricks along the way, Carol says.

Turned a few, too, Lester says. Shall we retire to the living room? Nature calls for me, and we’ll retire to the living room. I just love saying that. Retire means something totally different when you don’t have a job. You can retire over and over and never have to work in the first place.

Janie, Carol says. Let me give you the grand tour.

I would love a tour, she says. I live for tours.

I pick around at the fruit, waiting for him to get back.

He takes the couch across from me. You owe me money, I say. Hospital bills, pain and suffering. Blood doesn’t come up out of a carpet without some effort. Even my wood floors are ruined.

We’ll talk about it later, he says.

You almost cut through my liver, Lester. Almost sliced through the damn thing.

I was playing around. I was playing around and then I slipped up. I was different then. We’ll talk.

I’d prefer cash, I say. You got a judgment against you. You gotta pay it.

If I pay anything it’ll because I want to, not because some turd in robes says I have to. Who the fuck elected them?

They don’t give kids away, I say. If they gave them away it’d be different. And I don’t call two hundred stitches slipping up. Spilling a drink is slipping up. Showing up ten minutes late. Calling your buddy’s wife by his girlfriend’s name. That’s a slip up. Forgetting to get milk at the store and only coming home with beer. We spent eight-thousand dollars in fertility treatments, I say. And she shits the kid out. She’s working around the clock at The Food Chain, seven days, and if I’m not on somebody’s roof I’m delivering them a pizza. Eight grand and it ends up in the toilet. Just because it’s small doesn’t mean it’s not a baby, Lester, trust me. We had a shot at a Russian kid but they got the worst problems of all. You’re better off with a crack kid and you don’t want one of them. Only queers will take those kids. The things a desperate person will do.

It was Chernobyl, Lester says. You bring one of those Russian kids into your house it’s like begging for cancer.

Everybody deserves a chance, I say. Every kid. Even the Russians, but we know our limitations. It’s not like they’re tagged and displayed in the window, I say.

Do they give you a discount if you get more than one kid?

They’re people, Lester, I say. Not chocolates. No mixing and matching.

So you want to buy a kid. That’s interesting, because I’m in the market for something living.

Nobody owns a baby, I say. It’s its own thing, a baby is.

Shit, he says. I’ll be right back. I feel like I should just tie a knot in my cock. Stick a cork in the end of it. He struggles up and lumbers away.

Janie comes tiptoeing in. Is it going to happen? she whispers. This house is fucking gorgeous. And Carol is nice, Frank, really nice. I do think Lester’s changed. And for the better.

No secrets, you two, Carol says, gliding in.

I was just saying how I want a baby, Janie says. What it means. You know it’s a baby from the very first day it’s there, even before the doctor tells you. You know you got another person inside you. Maybe not their body but their thoughts. A soul. You feel it. By the end of that day you just take it for a fact that you’re never alone. Only then, three months in, it cuts loose. It just cuts loose. When it cuts loose during an adoption it’s not like you lost something you had. It’s just you never got that thing in the first place.

Lester comes back, a piss stain on the front of his jeans.

Lester, I say. You fucking pissed your pants. You pissed your goddamn pants.

I’m dying, he says. I heard what you said, Janie. Babies aren’t the only things that cut loose. We all cut loose from something, only with me it’s happening one piece at a time. My kidneys, he says.

Bed wetter, I say.

Nice try, he says. The fight’s gone, Francis. It’s gone from me. You got something I want, he says.

I’m not going back with you, Lester, Janie says. If that’s what this is about, forget it.

Not even for a baby? he says? Not for two babies?

She stares at him and then at the floor, never looking at me.

Got you, he says. I have a girl, Janie, and while she might not be as fat as you, she’s perfect for me. I want your kidney, he says, pointing at me. You got two. It’s only right. We’re the same blood type. I gave you blood.

You took more blood than you gave, I say.

I’m being fair here, he says. If I wanted, I could have a tub of ice waiting in the next room and I’d take the goddamn thing out myself. You know goddamn well I could and I may yet still.

It’s more civilized this way, Carol says, her hair looking like a tangle of black snakes.

You’ve got no right to ask Frank for anything, Janie says. Look at you. All your life you’ve been a bully. You’re weak, Lester. For a second there I thought you might have changed. You’re getting exactly what you deserve. Take me instead.

Weak? he says. I got some news for you, sweetie. In this country, in this world, money is the new muscle. Weak I’m not.

Take me? I say, looking at her. What the fuck does ‘take me’ mean?

You know what it means, Lester says. And you know, if I gave you the money to buy a kid, how the hell you gonna pay for it. They eat, the need something to shit into. They want a bike and guns and this asshole will never be able to afford a goddamn thing. You don’t like being poor—you think a kid wants to be poor? Like they don’t know? Ask Francis, he’ll tell you, poor kids know they’re poor.

I need a bath, Janie says.

Hold on, I say. You were willing to have him snap my neck, but I can’t at least consider this? You’re willing to fuck him, to live with him, to let him near a baby. Your baby? She was willing to have you give me another beating, Lester, just for the joy of me trying again to squeeze blood from a stone. I get my neck snapped I’ll end up like that vegetable in Florida, eating out of a hose.

I spoke out of turn, Frank, Janie says. I just want a baby so bad. I need another life to make sense of my own.

Everything’s open to negotiation, Lester says. They should just pull the fucking plug on that Florida broad. I gotta see her face on the TV one more time I might fly down there and do it myself.

That girl in Florida? Janie says. That’s worse than those terrorists, what they’re doing to that girl.

Pick up a big enough rock and all sorts of creatures come crawling out, I say. Take what’s going on right now.

Everybody, she says. What everybody is doing. And we’re doing it to ourselves. Lester. I’m sorry, but me and Frank can’t stick around? she whispers, says it like it’s a question. We’re not for sale? People aren’t for sale?

Everything’s for sale, Carol says.

Pussies, Lester says. Love. Even babies.

He’ll make a fair offer, Carol says. What he owes you plus more.

You won’t have to settle for Chinese, Lester says. Can you really picture some little chink calling you dad? Even the kid wouldn’t believe it. You need white, both of you need white, but especially Francis. Maybe from Kansas. Those are good Americans. Janie’s willing to settle, but Francis, you’d be calling the kid a fucking gook first time he spilled his milk. Then again, they don’t drink milk. I hope you like rice. We’re all going to have to get used to it someday. You’ll have a head start. Someday those chinks’ll be buying our throwaway babies.

You’re wrong, Lester, Janie says. Money can’t buy everything. I don’t think it can anyway.

The hell it can’t, he says. Money buys strength and strength buys what strength wants to buy and what it can’t buy over the counter it hustles out the back door. It takes whether you want to give or not. And at the least, money can rent love for an awfully long spell. Lester points at Janie and says, I can take care of you better than he can. He gives me a kidney, I give you a baby and then what? One more poor piece of white trash in the world, only this white trash is a chink?

He calls me Janie when we fuck, Carol says. I won’t be in the way.

I need a baby, Janie says. I need a baby. You know that’s all I ever wanted. Frank, what should I do?

I love you, Janie, Lester says. Love, not need, like that twerp does, he says, giving me a shove.

Frank, Carol says. What are you thinking?

They’re all staring at me, the three of them. Janie’s got the tears streaming again. The room seems even bigger now than it was when we got here, like we’re floating in space. Janie and Lester standing next to each other, Carol off to the side.

It’d be goddamn crowded to live in our apartment, Janie and me, with a kid too. An apartment is perfect living for one person and even two’s a stretch. A kid needs room to grow, a place to jack-off and smoke weed. A kid needs a place to hide. A place to conspire with his mama against his daddy. But I can almost picture Janie and the kid running through some open field, the field fringed by forests and ponds, the sun pouring down on them.

I’m thirsty and not for water. Beer greases the wheel that spins the thoughts from my head to my mouth. It lends shape to my speech. I make a big show of clearing my throat in preparation to talking, though I’m not quite sure what to say. All I can think is this: even the warm breath of a bill collector on the back of your neck can feel like love when you got nothing else.

Read Part I

by Thomas Bonfiglio