Trying to look courageous, I threw back my shoulders and said strongly, «We've got to go past them. Come on.» I had no idea what I was talking about, but I sensed this was the response they wanted. I walked to Felina and climbed her _paw_ and leg up to her sleek, angled head. I loved that head already, and her yellow wolf eyes both sharp and kind.
When I was growing up, there were three giant cement lions in front of our town library. All of us kids would climb up and over them and never come down until we were either exhausted or their stone coldness had passed into us. I remember loving those lions both for their solidness and size. They were as dependable and permanent as our parents. When I grew older I missed them and my feelings for them.
The Ronduan animals were as large as those lions. But here giant animals spoke and moved and when you climbed on to their backs, their body heat was tropical, often intense. But I felt no fear of them. From the beginning, they were as trustworthy and familiar as the library lions so many years before.
To give us all courage as we moved toward the plains, I began to sing the song of the wooden mice who went to war. I don't know why I remembered it, I didn't even know where it came from, but I certainly knew every word of the song. The others joined in (Pepsi humming after he had listened a while), and we moved a little less apprehensively toward the machines.
«There she is! She's coming round!»
For the first time since the dreams of Rondua began, I woke without really wanting to. I was afraid of what was about to happen to us over there, but also excited and curious. After the gorgeousness and hubbub of this new phase of the Yasmuda dream, waking to my white hospital room – even the new wonder of little Mae – was even at that fortunate time a bit of a letdown.
And then there was so much pain! Mae had decided to enter the world feet-first. Consequently, with all the pushing and pulling and turning they did before she actually made the scene, a good part of my lower innards was a disaster area.
Some time later, the doctor said he had had to put fifty stitches in me just to repair the damage. For days afterward I walked around bowlegged and slow and _very_ carefully, reminding myself of those pictures of astronauts on the moon, walking through weightlessness. Except that those guys got to bounce from here to there in big cartoony leaps. Whenever I stepped wrongly, every pain bell in my system went off with a jangle.
Needless to say I wasn't at my best, but Danny treated me marvelously. He brought flowers and candy and a pair of green velvet bedroom slippers so ugly that they made me cry for love of him.
In between all this, I would hobble slowly down the hall to see the baby. I'd hobble back to my room a few minutes later, astounded that she was still there. She actually existed and was ours!
A cloud over all of this nice sky was remembering one night in bed that the last time I had been in a hospital was when I had had the abortion. I looked at the black ceiling above me and said a prayer for everyone – Mae, Danny, the dead child, myself, my parents. Saying the prayer didn't make me feel any better, but the words alone were soothing company and they helped me to sleep. I remember dreaming that night of magicians with giant hands making babies appear and disappear like the coins in Danny's tricks.
I didn't dream of Rondua again until a few days after Mae and I went home. That's where it all began.
It began. Yes, _it_ began on one of those mornings when everyone you pass on the street seems to be wearing nice cologne.
October is a temperamental month in New York. It can be as courtly as Fred Astaire or as surly and mean as a summons server. It was on its best behavior the first week we were back, but then it turned. I spent hour after quiet hour by the window in a rocking chair, feeding Mae, watching the first hard rains fall.
You can lose yourself watching rain as easily as you can watching a fire. Both are deliberate yet whimsical, completely engrossing in no time at all.
After Danny left for work, I would cart Mae and a white blanket over to the window in the living room, plop us down in the chair with the blanket over both of us, and settle in for my daily ration of rain watching. She would slurp her breakfast while I watched the silvery-blue, wet windows lighten as the day came to earth. The rain swept and blew back and forth angrily, but I liked it and felt protected by it.
One morning the clouds cracked open and the sun slipped through like a big yellow egg yolk. It decided to stay around for a while too. By that time I had fallen into such a state of sitting and gazing that the gleam and bright snap of vellow everywhere made me sit right straight up – as if someone had clapped their hands behind my head.
I bustled around the apartment getting ready and had us out on the glistening street in no time. Mae wore a peach-colored suit and appeared very pleased by the change of surroundings.
«Hi, Mrs. James. Strange weather, huh?»
Alvin Williams came out of the door behind me and started talking before I'd even turned round. His voice sounded friendly enough, but when I turned to look at him there was no expression on his face. He might just as well have been looking at a door.
«Hi, Alvin! Where's Loopy?»
«He's a pain sometimes. I wanted to go out by myself and look at these clouds. Will you look at those colors! It's like they're having a fistfight or something up there, huh?»
I liked that image and smiled at him without looking at the sky. I knew what he was talking about, but Alvin Williams with his dirty glasses and Buddy Holly haircut didn't seem the kind of fellow who would come up with images like that.
«Well, Alvin, this is an historic day for us. This is the first time Mae lames here has ever gone for a walk.»
He smiled and looked into the carriage. «Is that right? Well, congratulations. You and Mr. James should have champagne or something tonight to celebrate.»
We chatted for a few more minutes, but then he became sort of nervous and said he had to go. That was okay with me, because I wanted to get moving.
«So now! Welcome to 90th Street, Mae. There's the market where I shop for us. Over there is the bookstore your Daddy likes. . . .»
I gave her the quick guided tour of our neighborhood and besides Alvin, everybody _did_ smell of good cologne.
It still hurt me to walk much, so I stopped after fifteen minutes in front of Marinucci's Ice Cream Emporium – a favorite watering hole of the James family. I went in and ordered coffee and checked to see if Mae was still tucked up tight in the right places.
A waitress I had never seen before brought the coffee to my table and didn't even peek at the baby.
«Cretin.» I picked up the cup and made a face at her retreating back. The cup wasn't hot and the coffee was barely warm when I sipped it.
I clunked it back down on the table and looked out of the window. I hate lukewarm coffee. It has to be hot, _hot_; almost enough to burn your tongue. The waitress was reading a magazine at the counter and I was about to call her over and complain when I looked at the mug. Steam swirled up from it and carried the good smell of fresh ground coffee in it.
Huh? I touched it to be sure. _Hot_. Hormones? It must have been hormones, or my body, or something inside readjusting or calibrating after the shock of the birth. Or else I had become so stoned looking out of the window at gray and blue rain that I'd grown dull or wobbly or even just _off_ about certain things; things like heat and time and memory.
Shrugging it off, I picked up the cup and blew over it to cool it. It was _so_ hot I could barely keep my finger crooked through the ceramic hole. Hey Danny, guess what happened to me today? I shook my head, knowing I wouldn't tell him about this because it would make me look very silly.