India in the Morning
by Yona Silverman
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India comes in and wakes us up at 5:15.
“Nooo,” Jonas says. “Please go.” So I make the “shhhh” sign and climb out of bed. I grab a pair of jeans balled up on the floor by my side of the headboard, and a shirt from the drawer.
“What should we do now, bunny?” I ask in the hall, changing as quickly as I can.
India stands near the window, watching me, her thumb in her mouth.
“Please don’t suck your thumb,” I say. I feel vaguely nauseous, and the apartment smells like marijuana.
“Mommy, I am sucking my thumb,” she says, her digit pushed temporarily to the corner of her mouth to allow for speech. “I am sucking my thumb.”
“We’ll go to the playground,” I say. “You’ll watch a little TV, and then I’ll put in the laundry and we’ll go to the playground.”
“And then McDonalds?” she asks. If Jonas knew about this new ritual, he would scream. He would threaten to divorce me, probably, even though he knows India and I eat pizza from restaurants that aren’t kosher.
“Sure,” I say. “And then McDonalds.”
In the kitchen, I put up a pot of coffee to heat, and then I consider whether or not to have a cup. I pour one, in a mug that Ruby got me for Hannukah when she was six and I was ten. “In dog years, I would be dead,” it says. I take a sip, and then pour the rest down the sink. I leave the coffee up for Jonas, and leave out a bagel and cream cheese and an orange too, so that he’ll eat.
India helps me sort through the lights and the darks. We are quiet, except when she has a question.
“This one?” she asks, waving Jonas’s gray sweatshirt over the light pile.
“Uh-uh,” I say. I point to the darks. “Over there.” A large cockroach scuttles across the building’s laundry-room floor.
“Good morning, roachie,” India says. I have a phobia of bugs like these, and I struggle to keep from gasping.
“I don’t know how she escaped all my neuroses,” I said to Jonas once.
“It’s a good thing I’m her father,” he said, but I know that Jonas is afraid of things too.
Licentious Larry is the late night and early morning doorman during the week. I don’t like him, but he isn’t really licentious, and I only call him that because of the alliterative sound.
“Buenos Dias, Miss India,” he says, even though he is the one doorman who is not Hispanic.
“Buenos dias,” India says.
“Give any money to the Yale alumni fund, recently?” he asks me. I shake my head.
“Better start donating if you want her to get in,” he says. “Did you hear that Melissa, in 4B, just got into Harvard Law?”
“No,” I said. “No, I did not.”
“You went to Columbia Law, didn’t you?” he asks. India is kicking her feet against the rubber strip on the bottom of her stroller.
“Yeh,” I say.
“I thought so.” He pauses. “But can you believe it? Double Harvard. Now that’s impressive.”
On the way to the playground India sings a song about Chicken Mumpkin and Chickadee Lorraine.
“Are we visiting gramma and grampa?” she asks.
“Later,” I say. “For dinner.”
Leslie and Eliot are in the park when we get there, and baby Mikey.
“How are you?” Leslie asks. “Are you okay?” I nod.
“I’m good,” I say. In the early morning it is always sort of chilly out, and I can hear the dogs barking in the dog run next door. Mikey starts crying and Leslie looks embarrassed.
“It’s okay,” I say, looking down at my cuticles. “We’re just keeping our fingers crossed.”
“What did the doctor say?”
“Nothing new. Just be careful, keep hoping, remember you carried India to term, everything looks fine, but because of things, we can’t know...”
Leslie nods.
Eliot and India play in the sandbox. I worry, occasionally, that she’ll come across a crack vial or a used condom, though I guess that was more the New York of my childhood than the New York of today, and I have turned out fine despite the grit anyway, I think.
Eventually India gets bored and dirty.
“We’re going to get French fries,” I say. “Do you want to come?”
Eliot cocks his head to the side. I like Eliot. He has a pinched, serious face and loves okra.
“We can come,” he says. “We’re coming.”
“You think you’re the boss, huh?” Leslie says. “We’d love to, but we can’t. Eliot has gymnastics in half an hour.”
“The fat keep getting fatter while the thin keep getting thinner,” I say. Both Eliot and India are tiny, slim children, so the comment is not particularly apt or particularly funny, and neither of us manages a laugh.
“See you tomorrow,” Leslie says.
“Probably,” I say.
McDonalds is almost empty, this early. It is unpopular in our neighborhood, but I love fast food, and India does too.
“One large fries,” I say. I look at the menu. “And a salad, please.”
“No fries,” the cashier woman says.
“What?”
“We got hash browns, but no fries. It’s too early for fries.”
“India, you hear that?” I say. “But we can get hash browns. Like latkes.”
“I want fries,” India says.
“What time do you have fries?” I ask.
“Eleven,” she says. “About eleven.” I look at my watch. It is not yet eight. I could swear we have been here this early before, but I cannot be sure.
“Do you want a bagel now, and fries later?” I ask.
“No. No. I want fries now. I want French fries now,” India screams. When she gets upset, her face contorts. She begins thrashing around in her stroller.
“Thanks,” I say. “We’ll take three hash browns, please.”
India won’t eat hers and won’t stop crying hysterically, so I eat all three in two minutes and then drag the stroller home, and drink a cup of coffee.
There is a note on the kitchen table from Jonas. “To my girls. Thanks for the grub. At shul. See you at your parents at 7. Take it easy.”
***
“I always find it surprising that Jonas’ father was in Vietnam,” my mom says as she loads up the dishwasher. Jonas carried India home from dinner about an hour ago, and I am now here alone. “Whenever it comes up, it surprises me anew.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“It’s so weird,” she says. “When Jonas mentions it.”
Alex walks into the room, stuffed into an old parka of my dad’s.
“I’m walking Ashley now,” he says.
“Make sure to put on her black boots,” my mom says. “The new little fur-lined ones. They’re by her pillow.”
“You got Ashley boots?” I ask.
“The salt was hurting her feet,” my mom says, shrugging. “She was in pain.”
“That’s freakish,” I say. Alex laughs with me.
“So, I’m a freak,” my mom says. “What’s new?”
“Whatever,” Alex says. We both watch him leave the room.
“We’re all getting so old, Grace,” she says. “Alex is going to college, Ruby’s in London, you’re…”
“I know, mommy,” I say, but I don’t know quite how to put my finger on the limbo I’m in.
“Grace, I understand how you feel,” she says, and I nod, even though she doesn’t. She takes my hand, and hers is wet from the dishes. My parents love telling people that they planned our births so that my mom would never have to be pregnant in the summer.
“By Alex, it was to the day,” my father says.
“I don’t want to talk about it, mom,” I say.
“Fine, fine, that’s fine,” she says. She looks at me for a few moments. “You know what, Grace, I’m not sure if I have ever even known another Vietnam veteran. I’ve seen them, of course, but I don’t think we really know any veterans, do we?”
“I don’t know,” I say. Offhand, I cannot think of anyone except for Jonas’ dad.
We have been having this conversation for eight years.
“Elias, do we know any Vietnam veterans? Can you think of one person we know who was in Vietnam?” The living room’s French doors are open. My dad puts down his paper and walks into the kitchen.
“I can’t imagine how a Jewish kid ended up in Vietnam,” he says.
“It’s not about religion, Elias. But, it is morally odd. I was tear-gassed in ’68 and my daughter is married to a vet,” my mom says. “It was a terrible war.”
“He was a telephone repairman,” I say. “He repaired telephones in Saigon, or wherever that was.”
“I would never have gone to Vietnam,” my father says.
“And I’m married to his son,” I say. “Not him. I’m sure Jonas would have skipped out on the war too.”
“You marry the son, you marry the father,” my mom says.
“We really did not know one person who went to that war,” my father says.
“Definitely not back then.”
“Your lottery number was never called,” I say. “If it was, you would have gone. And he never saw one casualty.”
“I would have gone to Canada,” he says. “I would have moved to Israel.”
“You don’t know what you would have done,” I say. “You shouldn’t be so judgmental.”
“But I do love Jonas,” my mom says. “He is great.”
“It wasn’t that hard to get out of going to that war. Not hard at all,” my dad says.
“Jonas is spectacular,” my mother says.
“Who even knew they really drafted Jews?” my father asks. “I thought that was just for show.”
At the door, my mother gives me a hug.
“I love you so much,” she says. “I have faith.”
“Me too, ma,” I say.
“Can I drive you?” my father calls out, behind her. I have not driven on Shabbat for years. I shake my head.
“It will be okay,” she says. She looks down at my belly that is not burgeoning.
“This time it will be okay.”
“We’ll know in a few weeks,” I say.
“I know,” she says. “I already know.”
I walk home, and the walk is short and the air is crisp. I want to believe my mother, but she always knows, and I am not so sure.
***
In our apartment, the lights are dim.
“I think I ruined my shoes,” I say.
“I am in a bad mood,” Jonas calls from the bedroom. I can smell weed at the front door. His jacket is thrown over the couch, his shoes and socks scattered on the living room carpet, his tie slung under the coffee table.
“You can’t smoke on Shabbat,” I say when I get to our bedroom.
“Please, Grace,” he says. He is a hypocrite but he is my hypocrite.
“I thought it was fun,” I say. He takes a hit. “Should I not smoke around you?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “This is not what it’s about.”
“Your parents are nice,” Jonas says, “but they can be pretentious dicks.”
“What?”
“They are literally the most classicist people I know. I mean, your dad is fine, but your mom is like the bourgeois matron of the Upper West Side.”
“My parents?”
“Your mother said, and I’m quoting here, basically, ‘If you’re not going to spend $150 on a haircut, why get your hair cut at all?’”
“She was joking,” I say.
“She was not joking, Grace.”
“Will you unzip me?”
Jonas takes another hit and puts out the joint in a little glass ashtray with embedded colored shells that he keeps on a broken wooden table by his side of the headboard. He sits up and pulls me onto the bed.
“They have a fucking maid.”“
Please unzip me,” I say.
“Do you not agree with me? That your parents are the quintessential limousine liberals?”
“I do,” I say. “But they are the limousine liberals who pay for everything we own, basically.”
My stomach is achy and I am exhausted.
He is wearing a ripped white undershirt and boxers with penguins on them.
“Please unzip me,” I whisper, but he doesn’t move. “Or at least get some new undershirts.”
“I’ll do both,” he whispers.
“Is she sleeping okay?” I ask.
“Admit that they coddle you,” Jonas says. “That they treat you a little like a baby.”
“I like being coddled,” I say. “Ruby is the adult one. I have always been the baby.”
“Your house was very Grace-centric,” he says. I start crying.
“I took India to McDonalds today,” I say. “For French fries. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not a big deal,” he says. “I lit a fire. We all do things wrong.”
“Thank you,” I say.
“Are you feeling okay?” he whispers. He unzips my dress, and I slip out of it, and out of my tights. He runs a finger across my c-section scar.
“I feel fine,” I say.
***
In the morning I wake up before everyone. I feel sick, but I am not sure if this is a good sign, or not. The last two times, I did not feel sick once, but with India I never felt sick either.
I am reading the New York Times Magazine and eating saltines when India pads in wearing the feetie-pajamas that only Jonas has the patience to put on her.
“Did you have fun last night, Indy?”
“Mmmmmm,” she says, and hides her face behind her arm.
We have cereal together, and I dress her in a pale blue dress with little pink roses on it. I brush her hair and she screams at the tangles, but when I am done she looks sweet and beautiful.
At 8:15 I go into the bedroom. Jonas makes slight hissing sounds when he sleeps, and when I poke him he wakes without a start.
“Good morning,” I say.
“Morning,” he says.
“You have twenty-three minutes to get ready for shul,” I tell him. He turns over. “Seriously, Jonas, get up.” India follows me in and jumps on the bed.
“Hi, aba,” she says.
“Hello beautiful,” he says. He sits up and his black hair is all messy, but he does not look bad. I put on a red skirt and a black shirt, and he wears my favorite of his shirts. India sits under our blankets, looking up at us.
“Daddy’s very handsome, right?” she asks, her face solemn.
“Yep,” I say. “He’s the cutest.”
“And I’m the prettiest?” she asks.
“Without a doubt,” Jonas says, winking at me.
“And Mommy’s the nicest?”
“I don’t know about that,” Jonas says. “Mommy’s not that nice, is she?”
“Ha,” I say. “Ha, ha, ha.”
We walk to shul slowly because Jonas does not think India needs to use a stroller anymore, and when we’re with him she doesn’t. When we arrive, Jonas goes around saying hello to his rabbinical school friends. I go sit in the third row next to Leora, whom I have known since grade school.
“My week’s been shit,” I say.
“Mine too,” she says. I watch Jonas carry India around on his shoulders towards us with Micah and his son, Louis. “I got trashed on Thursday night and left my favorite scarf at the house of this guy I never want to talk to again.”
“I’m about to miscarry the third baby in a year,” I say.
Both of us start laughing hysterically, just as the service begins, just as Jonas and Micah sit down beside us, and we cannot stop. Leora puts her arm around my shoulder and we laugh together.
Finally we gain control, and we pray for a while, India sitting next to me, playing with my hair.
“You may not miscarry,” Leora whispers while we are standing for the amidah.
“Shhhhh!” India says. “No talking.”
“You’re right,” I whisper to Leora. She is looking down at her feet, and not smiling. “It’s true. I may not.”
“When can we have cookies?” India says.
“Soon,” I whisper. “It’s time for cookies soon.”
Jonas is still praying, but I sit down, and India sits in my lap and smells fresh and clean and small.
“You’re my baby,” I say. She turns her head and looks up at me.
“I’m not a baby,” she says.
“It’s true,” I say. “You’re not a baby at all.”
Yona Silverman is a senior English major in the College of Arts and Sciences. She served as the 2005 Editor-in-Chief of 34th Street, the University of Pennsylvania’s weekly arts and entertainment magazine. This piece was previously published in Peregrine, the University of Pennsylvania’s Creative Writing Program alumni journal.