2020-03-16_The_New_Yorker

THENEWYORKER,MARCH16, 2020 77

NIA

It sounds better in Spanish, precario

Prettier. As if it isn’t what it is and there’s that o

My how will the rent get paid? The deadline

Met and who ghosted me first—valley lover

Or that other one.

Delicacy of skin. Quick steps, quick stops

And the direction is what?

There’s no where there and the last shift

Is the one where tongues load a stack of sighs

Bridge tall and mythic.

This day and the next—volcanic shards

Roll toward the door, even if mountains

Are in the far distance—thousands of miles.

How the heart steadily beats as the sirens

Careen and angry men launch their best lives

Ever by taking so many others. It is a miracle

This heart steadily beating even as the next question

Threatens a late spring storm, ground broken

By lightning—the raindrops rhythmic patter

Honors percussionists—those that beat beat beat

Their instrument with a purpose—Nia.

Knowing how one off-beat collapses the genesis

Augurs harsher storms—

Where the purpose becomes precarious.

Where death enters white armed, white throated,

Where the body drops like lightning on rain-moist ground.

—Patricia Spears Jones

on the new parents’ bulletin board. I felt
the temperature rising in my face. For
ten years, I drank coffee. Every morn-
ing, I’d drink it, two cups, black, then go
through the roof and crash by eleven,
with a headache and diarrhea for the
rest of the day. At night, I was so agi-
tated I couldn’t sleep, so exhausted I
wanted to cry, lying there trying to get
some rest.
“I wonder,” I said. “I can’t drink coffee.”
“I drink too much,” she said.
“It took me a long time to quit,” I said.
“I take heart medication,” she said,
“because I have a heart palpitation, and
I shouldn’t drink more than half a cup,
and I still can’t resist those chocolate-

covered espresso beans. And if I eat

too many of them it’s, like, ‘Ugh, I’m

dying!’”

“I know,” I said. We stood there. I

asked when the next feeding would be,

and dumped my gown into the laun-

dry pail and went over to the bulletin

board, but I couldn’t see anything ex-

cept warnings about fluoride and shak-

ing. I walked out. I had nothing to do

for two hours. It was almost 7 A.M.

Luckily, a soda machine sat right there

in the nicu waiting area. I bought a

Coke, what the hell, and stared across

the hall through the windows of the more

intensive intensive care. A man in a blue

blazer sat in a rocking chair by a stack

of machines, with a blanket on his lap.

My eyes blurred and I felt dizzy. A Rus-

sian-sounding family had taken all the

seats in the waiting area, three long-

haired women, a balding man, a teen-

ager with a mustache, and a little kid on

the floor, so I rested there for a moment

by the elevators on what I came to see

was a helicopter-ready baby life-support

gurney, with shiny alloy struts and scream-

ing-yellow waterproof monitors, resus-

citators, and a defibrillator. Holy fuck,

but also thank God. I threw my empty

Coke can in the pail under the gurney

and took the stairs down to the cafete-

ria, in the basement.

Food servers with loose condoms on

their heads stood behind a steam table

draped with garlands of plastic fruit.

Across the cafeteria, a red-faced guy in

a necktie chewed in a trance; a garage

attendant leafed through a heap of news-

papers. At this end of the room, an el-

derly man in a lab coat with the large

head of a New Hampshire politician

avidly drew some kind of diagram for

the young couple across the table. He

seemed to be outlining a jailbreak.

I had two cups of coffee, a stack of

pancakes, bacon, eggs, and a bran muffin.

Two surgeons in their timeless pajamas

wandered by with trays. The coffee made

my feet sweat, and I took off my shoes

and then my socks. Chewing, eating, I

was alive! Then I put them back on and

ran up six flights of stairs.

I opened the door to Kathy’s room

and sat lightly on the edge of her bed,

careful not to crush her injuries. She’d

slipped down a foot or so from where

I’d left her, with the things still on her

bosoms and the TV on in the dark. She

looked washed out, bluish, and greasy.

Her I.V. was beeping.

“She has your mouth,” I said.

“That’s nice.”

“And your long, elegant feet.”

“Aww.” Kathy gazed at me. She was

more relaxed than I’d ever seen her.

The breast-pumping machine huffed

beside her. Yellowish liquid drizzled

into the bottles. It amounted to al-

most nothing.

I asked how she was feeling. She said

the epidural hadn’t worn off yet and she

couldn’t move her legs.

On the table next to her head was

a handwritten list of baby stuff. I wrote

down the brand name of a type of baby