Swinger

When I was eight my father bought a Polaroid Swinger camera. He said it had just been invented. He took our pictures, everyone but my mother, and we were amazed at how the pictures appeared before our eyes.

Around the same time I overheard Didi, my older sister, telling Aunt Mary that our mother was a swinger. I hid in the kitchen closet and spied on them, wondering how my mother was like the camera. Didi told Aunt Mary that this baby was not my father’s, that it was the love child of one of several men that my mother had visited instead of working. Didi had followed her several times after school, had seen her get in different cars with different men. When she called my mother a slut, Aunt Mary called her a bitch and slapped her across the face, and then Didi spoke in a low scary voice I didn’t recognize, like some actress in a scene that changes the whole movie: “You watch. Let’s just see how Dad feels about this baby.”

I thought back to the evenings when my mother came home from work, when she placed her chin on my head in a tired way and always seemed about to tell me something important. I remember there were other smells, cologne and maybe sweat, mingling with her usual smoke and perfume. But if she had something to hide, wouldn’t she wash it off?

I started watching my father carefully. He really didn’t seem happy like he was when my little brother was in Mom’s belly. He didn’t touch or talk to or listen to her belly, at least not when I was around. I took a picture of him with the Swinger, and what appeared from the black was someone different than him, in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

Mom did the stuff she was supposed to do, said the things she was expected to say while expecting, looked at names in a book. But somehow it seemed like an act. Then one day she said, “It’s not moving.”

They took her to the hospital and the baby was delivered. I knew it was too soon, but I thought it would be okay, that my father would accept this child, that birth in itself was a miracle no matter what and you had to rise with it to a plane of forgiveness.

They had left me home with Aunt Mary, and I was furious, kicking furniture and walls until Aunt Mary finally said, “You’re damn right it isn’t right,” and drove me to the hospital.

Didi was the one to tell me, in the waiting room. “The baby is dead. It was born dead. It was a girl.” I was waiting for the slightest hint of satisfaction on her face, because I was ready to slap it like Aunt Mary had, even worse. But she seemed sad, her lip trembling, so I reached out and hugged her and she hugged back.

My father came out, gave me a long look, and picked up the Swinger.

“Can I see the baby?” I asked him, but he said it was probably not a good idea, although he promised to take a picture.

But later he told me it hadn’t come out, that the Swinger was a piece of crap after all, a bad idea, already broken. I wasn’t sure if it was really broken, but I never saw that camera again.

My mother came home the next day, but went right up to her room without saying much. My friend Miranda was allowed to stay over in my room, to distract me and make me forget something I hadn’t even seen. We went through my mother’s coat, looking for clues, and found the photograph. We gasped, and took it upstairs for further study.

I wondered if my father had watched this picture develop before his eyes, and my guess was that he had not, that he was no longer fascinated with the process, that he would no longer stick around to see how anything turned out.

We sat on my bed, crying over this baby girl with the tiny perfect fingers and toes. She was dressed in the outfit she was supposed to come home in, which was the same one I had come home in. They hadn’t bothered to get her her own. Her eyes were closed, and she looked like any other sleeping newborn. What had happened to her?

We didn’t sleep. I had the picture under my pillow. We listened to the voices of my mother and father, rising in anger, falling back. There was a loud thump. Miranda turned on a lamp and started messing with my paints. “This is what guilt does,” she said, pouring red paint into the blue. The colors swirled together but were still separate. Then she mixed them until it was a whole different color. “First it’s two, then it’s something new, that can never be separated again.”

“Hmmm,” I said, trying to understand, wondering how Miranda got to be so wise.

At midnight we heard the front door and then a car door. We watched my father drive slowly down the street.

In the middle of the night I heard singing. I looked out the window and saw my mother in the back yard, sitting on the swing. The moon was full and her face was lit and tilted up. I slid the picture from under my pillow, and gasped when I saw the baby’s eyes open. The moon filled where the eyelids were. I didn’t have time to show Miranda. I ran down the stairs and into the back yard.

I needed her to see, but she just kept squeezing and kissing my face and saying, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” so by the time she was done, by the time I got the picture up to our faces, the eyes were closed.