My hands grip the baby carriage handle so tight, my fingers tingle. I feel my brain float freely within my skull as the elevator descends. The numbers flash as we get lower and lower, and the red of the LED lights flicker behind my eyes, creating sparks that linger, tails of light looking like detached ethereal koi fish kites. One swims in front of me, red scaled, undulating, otherworldly. But when the carp’s mouth opens, it has large hideous sharp white teeth, that glisten with wetness and hunger.
“The fresh air will be good for you,” my husband says as the violent fish kite explodes into a puff of red smoke and disappears. I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection of the metallic elevator door. I look hollow, like a shade from the underworld. Black circles under my eyes. My dark hair, once full of life and curls, lies flat against my face. My body, also once full of meat and juice, is now thin, tired.
“I read that exercise can really help. And maybe you will even see the eagle in the park that everyone’s been talking about.” He continues to stare straight ahead. He doesn’t look at me these days, avoids it as much as he can. Always so much taller than me, he seems more so now, as I am constantly hunched over, over the stroller, over the changing table, hunched over in angst. His hair is combed perfectly, even with the thinning of his once-thick dark mane. He looks distinguished with his grays. I look unkempt.
His wool coat is buttoned all the way up, his cashmere scarf tied in an ascot knot, showing enough for the world to see the designer label. His copycat designer glasses used to frame his handsome and well rested face. Now he just looks weathered, sleep deprived. Afraid.
“It’s cold,” I say. “The baby could get sick.”
“The fresh air will be good for her, too,” he says still looking ahead. I peer down at her. Nineteen weeks today. What a pretty girl. What a good girl. My heart leaps lightly.
Is it the drugs that won’t let me feel joy? Or is this who I am now? I sweep her whisps of dark curls from her eyes. She’s bundled in a pink snowsuit, even though it hasn’t snowed yet. She is swaddled up, maybe a little too much. Can she even move in that one-piece snowsuit?
I touch her forehead to make sure she isn’t burning up. Is she too hot? Can she overheat so much that she could die? Do babies die from heat? Do they get so hot their lungs stop working? Can I kill her with the stupid snowsuit? I didn’t even want the suit, but someone bought it for us, gleeful as I opened the package, and was blinded by the pink and the flowers and fleece. Panic burns through my stomach and shoots into my forehead, in my ears, behind my teeth. I’m lightheaded. I grip the carriage handle tighter, contracting the muscles in my core and pushing my feet hard onto the elevator floor to ground myself so I don’t fall over. I close my eyes. My breathing is sharp, short, stabs of terror like a sword slicing through every organ inside me, bleeding into endless eternal pools. If I open my mouth, will the blood gush out like a hydrant, dousing us and drowning us all? I watch us all wash away in a sea of my guts and gore as—
“Lobby!” My husband calls, the faux cheer in his voice making me tremble. The bell rings and the doors open. The sunlight hits me hard. How can I go outside when we will probably die there?
The doorman nods at us. My husband greets him. The doorman’s eyes crinkle when he looks at me. Is that pity? I stop short at the front door.
“Did you tell him?”
“Tell who, what?”
“The doorman. About me.”
“What? What are you talking about?” My husband’s voice goes up three octaves.
“What happened to me.”
“Jesus Christ! I don’t talk to him about you!” he says, his exasperation palpable through my whole body. “I say hello, good morning, have a good night, there are roaches in the garbage shoot, that’s all I say.” His face is grim again. He pushes the door open. My husband’s hands grip his briefcase tightly. White-knuckled—both of us. I wheel the carriage through the front door.
“Go out, even for ten minutes. Walk in the park—we live down the street for Christ’s sake!” Another dig. How I need to be grateful to him for the life I have. The privilege.
I peer down the street.
Central Park is moving, humming, alive. It has its own lungs; I can see it breathing. My husband starts walking. My feet are locked into the cement. Stuck. It takes him awhile before he realizes I’m not next to him, and when he does, his shoulders slump. He turns back and hurries towards me.
“Did you take your pill this morning?” He’s almost breathless. I am the boulder to his Sisyphus.
“Yes.”
“The doctor said it could take a few weeks before it really starts to work. You must be patient.”
“I’m counting down the minutes,” I say robotically.
“Jesus fucking Christ. Do you want to wind up in the hospital again? Do you want the baby to be without you?”
I look down. Maybe it is better for her to be without me. Who wants a mother whose insides always feel like Jello being sucked down a drain?
“No.” I lie.
“Just get some air and go back upstairs, my mother will be here in an hour to help.”
“Great,” I say. My mother-in-law stares at me with a look of terror and disdain whenever I hold the baby. She doesn’t trust me. Did she ever?
“Bye,” I say and walk away from him towards the park. I don’t dare look back at him or risk burning the whole city to ashes.
I cross the street and enter the park. The sun hides behind the clouds, the light flees, everything becomes dim.
I step onto the path. There are too many people here. Why are there so many people out on such a cold day? I touch the baby’s forehead—it’s cooler, I calm a bit. She isn’t going to overheat and die. Not right now. I exhale puffs of gray vapor from my hot and anxious mouth. I vaguely remember when I used to smoke cigarettes, drink vodka, and dance without care with my girlfriends. How many years ago was that? No, how many lifetimes ago was that? My feet drag, heavy, I stop short.
It’s been a month. Since the incident. Since he found me under the bed, my body ripped to shreds, bleeding and raw from scratching at the bugs, all the bugs that had gotten inside me and were eating their way out of me. The baby had been crying in the bassinet for hours.
Hormones, age, this happens, echoed around me in the ER before I slipped into a quiet dreamless warm darkness.
So many people are milling about: runners, joggers, bicyclists, walkers, people on benches with coffee, newspapers, talking, smiling.
Why are they so calm? Why are their lives so easy?
Don’t they understand that, at any moment, a massive hole in the earth could open up and swallow us all? That our lives are not our own, that the fates are the ones who control us? That the road we think will lead us to happiness is littered with shards of glass and dead bodies and pain?
A wild screech above me makes me I look up. It’s the eagle, circling me. Over and over, it turns, never losing sight of me. For a moment I’m excited to see it, as if glimpsing a celebrity. But then my body reminds me to be afraid.
Maybe the eagle wants to claw my eyes out and eat my liver, or snatch my baby and take her away from me, screaming, while the milk in my breasts pours out onto the sidewalk in sorrow. I clutch the carriage tighter, my teeth clenched.
It screeches again, echoing across the park, down towards the skyscrapers and then back again to me.
I tilt my head and watch it from underneath, its belly, its talons. Everything suddenly becomes quiet, familiar somehow. I let go of the carriage and turn, around and around, my eyes never leaving it. I am dizzy, but I don’t care, I feel like I am part of something that isn’t afraid, something bigger than myself. I don’t care if I fall. And I don’t care if the earth crumbles beneath me. Let it take me again—why should I care? I long for that silent darkness once more.
But then—
“Look OUT!”
I’m pulled hard and I fall to the ground, the breath knocked out of my mouth, my shoulder on fire.
“You fucking idiot!” The bicyclist screams as he rockets past.
My baby is crying. I jump up. Where is she? The carriage has been pulled to safety. A man stands beside it. He calmly walks over to me.
“You almost got killed,” he says, his voice low, hard, reverberating in my chest.
I grab the carriage from him. His skin is old, wrinkled, olive dark. His hair is stark white, long, a bit of a curl to his shoulders. On his craggy face, a matching white beard. I couldn’t say how old he was because his eyes, stark blue, piercing, glowing even in the overcast shadows, seem timeless. His eyes tear through my parka into my esophagus and stare into my heart. My stomach lurches. My legs tingle. I am holding my breath. I look up, the eagle is gone. I turn back to the man. As I lean in to thank him, I realize he smells. Bad, like urine and dirt and a life full of sorrow.
“You must watch where you are going,” he says.
I nod. I try not to stare at him, but I must. I know him. How do I know him? Why is he so familiar? Why did the panic get lost just now? I feel nothing but time standing still. He smiles at me, lips closed.
“Do I know you?” I ask.
“Of course,” he says. Did his lips move? Did I just hear that inside my head?
“Who are you?”
His smile widens, his mouth opens, displaying sharp white canine teeth. His tongue is dark. I hear the eagle screech, but I don’t see it anywhere. He laughs lightly and says, “I am the king of the gods.”
My body shakes.
“You mean…Jesus?” I whisper.
“No, not that one.” His mouth purses in disgust. “Desert men. Shepherds. How do you give your body and soul to a lowly sheep herder and not to a true king?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Something moves in the bushes. The fear burns in my throat.
“Do you have an offering?”
“What?”
He puts his hand out.
“You must make an offering to the god who saved you.”
“Oh?” I fumble through the diaper bag and pull out a cheese sandwich and hand it to him. He snatches it and greedily tears into it. But then, just as quickly, his face turns to regret.
“Cold. Tasteless. Dead. Just Like your shepherd god.” He tosses the rest of the sandwich onto the bench. “You mortals never change. Limited fools. And yet, we are at your mercy.”
He stares at me, and I step backwards, unable to pull from his glance. My wrist vibrates; my watch, a message from my mother-in-law, a frantic text with many question marks.
“I have to go now,” I say.
“Be safe,” he says. A hand slips from the bushes behind him and snatches the rest of the sandwich. The old man leans his head back and closes his eyes unmoving. I maneuver the carriage away from him and quickly scurry out of the park, down the street, back into my building, past the doorman who tries to greet me, into the elevator and up to my apartment, quickly entering and locking the door behind me.
***
After dinner, as my mother-in-law washes the dishes and I lie down alone in my bed, the baby content in her bassinet next to me, I Google Who was the king of the gods?
Zeus. Deus. Immortal. King of the Olympians. The Eagle, the thunderbolt, murdered his own father to rule over the other gods.
Ah, Old school. Anger, vengeance, wrath. All the things we are not allowed to feel anymore. Everyone in this neighborhood sits on a rubber pad and repeats foreign words, so-called mantras, that they paid thousands of dollars for, most probably fake, over and over in their minds, hoping their rage will dissipate into the wind. But the thing is, it never does, it sits in their livers and grows like a cancer, exploding on the check-out kid at Whole Foods when they can’t get their discount to work.
I scroll another page and find a statue of Zeus, a robust old man, virile even, with his flowing white hair and beard.
Looks just like him. I smirk.
Oh. A pang in my chest. Is this part of my…incident? The bottle of pills sits shadowed on the nightstand. Did I even take my pill today? Maybe I need a higher dose? Do I dare tell anyone? My husband walks into the room and scoops up the baby, smiling at her.
“How was it?”
“Okay,” I say.
“I think the fresh air did you good!” he says, a little too enthusiastically.
He wants his wife back. The one who said yes to everything and never made him feel like he had to worry about his decisions, terrible or not. The one who knelt at the altar of his body with her body as an offering for whatever he desired.
“I think I’ll go again tomorrow,” I say.
“Oh, that’s so great!”
He clasps my arm, but not too tight. He lets go. He nuzzles the baby. She coos. He kisses her face. He sacrificed a wife for a daughter. But what did I sacrifice?
***
That night, I dream I’m standing on the rugged crag of a hill, staring down at the crashing waves below. Where is my baby? I think. Is that her at the bottom, smashed to bits? Then, behind me, a colossal black bull slowly stalks, stepping in close. In the cold air, hot breath from his nostrils envelopes me like a veil. He tilts his head, snorts, and leans in, lowering his head and pressing forward. His sharpened horns ever so gently pierce my breasts. I cry out, and when I do, the bull exhales so powerfully that I inhale its breath, fall off the cliff and down to the crashing waves.
I jerk awake. The baby stirs, and I pick her up and put her to my breast. It feels sore from the dream. I wasn’t allowed to give her formula. Only natural, my husband and mother-in-law decreed. It took a while for both of us to get used to it. I still don’t know if I am used to it. She sucks hungrily half asleep. I stare out of the window of the high-rise. It’s foggy today. I can barely see the tops of the trees in the park. And then I hear it: the screech. The eagle. I tap on the window, but it doesn’t hear me. It circles the park, further east from where I was yesterday. A marker. A desire rises inside my chest.
Once the baby is full, I put her back down in her bassinet. My husband’s still in a deep sleep. I sneak into the kitchen and rummage through the freezer beneath packets of breast milk and ice cream to find lamb chops. I toss them into a pan and turn on the broiler, and then search for olive oil, lemons, oregano. What else? Salt…pepper… Do gods like pepper? Maybe some red wine? I open the wine cabinet and find an expensive Cabernet that my husband’s boss sent us when the baby was born. Who sends alcohol to a nursing mother? But I guess the gift really wasn’t for me.
I mix everything together in the pan and then put it in the broiler. I find my old metal coffee flask hidden behind a colander—the one I used to take with me on the subway to work. This startles me.
Work.
When I used to have a purpose.
I have a new one now, I think. I am a mother. That falls short within me. I squeeze my eyes shut to shake off the regret. I see the Bull, its hot breath, its glossy black eyes that beckon me, and I shiver. Today I have a different purpose. I want to help the man in the park who saved me from a broken clavicle, a torn shoulder, and probably a concussion. I pour the rest of the red wine in the coffee flask and seal it up. I hide it in the diaper bag.
I flip the meat over and over as it cooks so the chops crisp on all sides. I remember watching my mother do this, patiently, without angst. I normally don’t cook, can’t sit still long enough, with all my thoughts racing constantly to tend to the meat, to let it transform itself. In my impatience, I would turn the heat all the way up to cook it faster, and it always, always burnt to a crisp.
But not this. This is perfect.
I cut the steaming lamb into cubes, slicing as much off the bone as I can. I search for bread in the fridge but come up empty. My mother-in-law must’ve used the last of it to make me that terrible cheese sandwich. I huff. I tiptoe to the bedroom. Everyone is still asleep. My container of pills stares at me with remind. I pick it up, but the breath of the bull is still fresh inside of me. It makes me feel strong. Happy almost. I open the end table drawer and toss the bottle in. I’ll take that later, I think as I grab my coat and slip on my boots and run down to the elevator.
In the lobby, the doorman nods at me as I rush out. I nod back. How long has it been since I’ve done that?
White snowflakes fall onto the gray streets as I hurry into the bodega and walk the grocery packed labyrinth inside the store. A dirty ginger cat with a sealed crusted eye and shit breath is sitting on the bread pile. I try to move it, and it hisses at me.
“Hey, Kitty, come on!” I say as I firmly nudge it away with my arm. It begrudgingly moves. I find some fresh bread with sesame seeds in a plastic wrap, quickly pay.
Outside in the snow and the gloom, the cold and the wet—I feel it all. I’m alive, I think. Not half dead, trapped in the underworld like I was for the past few months. I am alive. I cry out loud and my voice echoes against the buildings. I laugh, and then hurry back upstairs.
My husband is waiting in the doorway with the baby, terrified.
“Where were you?” he cries, gritting his teeth.
“I had to go to the store. For bread.” I hold up my bag. I push past him and into the kitchen.
My husband scurries behind me but then stops short. His nostrils flare from the tantalizing smell of burning flesh mixed with oil and herbs.
“You cooked?” he asks. He seems slightly aroused.
“Yeah. I thought I’d make us dinner,” I lie. His eyes grow with excitement.
“That’s so great!”
“Go get dressed,” I say. “I’ll walk you out.”
“You’re going to the park again?”
“Yes.”
He hugs me, grinning, and seems to float out of the kitchen. I take the still-warm lamb cubes and roll them into the fresh bread. My mouth waters wanting to taste it, but it’s not for me.
It’s for him.
I save enough for my husband for dinner, cover the meat, and leave it on the counter. I then slip the sandwiches into a Ziplock, look behind me to make sure no one is watching, and then hide them deep in the diaper bag next to the wine flask.
