Everything Is Perfect When You're a Liar (28 page)

The ability to give myself enemas has continued to come in handy. I had my third child in August 2008, and the week I was due I gave myself several enemas at home to prevent the feared “shit while I push the baby out” every pregnant woman (and her partner) dreads throughout the final days of her gestation.

For those reasons and many more, nurse, I'd like to thank you. Whatever your reasons may have been, I am a better person for having given myself an enema while high on morphine, for unknown reasons, for undiagnosed pain, in the filthy washroom of a hospital, on my birthday.

Yours,

Kelly Oxford

MY
ZOO

Kids are animals.

“Juice!” eighteen-month-old Henry yells from his car seat as I buckle him in. “Juice! JUICE!
JUICE!
” And he happily hands me a piece of snot, like it's payment for all the things I've given him.

They grow up so fast,
people say. Not because children actually grow up fast, but because we mentally block out most of this nonstop shit show.

“Mommmmmyyyy?” whines three-and-a-half-year-old Sal. “Mommy? Can we go to McDonald's?”

“Juice!” Henry is fucking relentless, straining the neck and head that are so uncertainly attached to his little body, struggling to liberate himself from his car seat. His eyes are bugging out and his mouth is pulled all crazy as he peers into my bag.

“CRACKER! CRACKERS!
CRACKERS!!
”

I pass him the crackers and juice box, then bend down and wipe his snot onto the driveway.

“McDonald's, Mom? I would really love a nugget,” Sal says, smiling sweetly.

“We're going to the zoo,” I reply, thinking about how much I love McDonald's and how I've slowed way down because I don't want the kids to turn into those fat babies on
Maury
.

“Okay, wait a minute,” Sal says. “Do we have chicken at home?”

“Yes.”

“And fries?”

“Yes.”

“And apple juice?”

“Yes.”

Sal claps her little hands together. “Okay, well, when we get back home, let's BAKE-IT-UP-BUDDY!!! GIVE ME A SMACKERINO!” She leans forward for a high-five, like she's my drinking buddy or some kind of embarrassing uncle.

I pull away from the curb, thinking about how much easier that would have been if I'd been alone. I would have basically just gotten into my car and left. I wouldn't have Henry's snot on my hand. I wouldn't have had to stop to plan dinner or dole out any snacks.

An empty apple juice container flies onto the passenger seat.

“APPLE JUICE!!” yells Henry from his car seat. “MORE!”

“Henry, I'll get you apple juice when I'm not driving. At the zoo. And no throwing in the car. I'll totally crash and we will all die because you were thirsty for boxed juice. That's embarrassing. Frankly, I'd be totally pissed off if I died because of that.”

I see Sal turn to her brother in his car seat. “What color is apple juice, Henry?”

“RED!” he shouts, sticking his tiny legs out straight. Henry shouts at everything.

Sal shakes her head and puts her hands on her hips. “Hen-
ry
! Apple juice is yellow!”

Henry looks back at her and shouts, “RED!!!”

“OH NO!!! HENRY, MY LITTLE BROTHER—ARE YOU COLOR BLIND? Apple juice is yellow!” Her hands fly to her cheeks, sick with fraudulent concern.

“Sal,” I say. “Calm down. He isn't color blind.”

Henry shouts: “RED RED RED!!!!!!”

Sal composes herself, looking for all the world like the mother of a child who's been stricken with cancer. She presses on, trying to make a firm diagnosis. “Okay, so what color is the train Daddy takes?”

Henry screams at the top of his lungs, his chin still tilted forward, lips jutted out like a little hound dog baby: “PUUUUUURPLLLLE!!!!”

“Henry!” It's exactly one minute into our day trip, and I'm trying not to lose my shit. “Stop shouting please!”

Sal gasps to herself and whispers sadly, “
You are color blind
, Henry.”

“PUUUURPLEPUUUURPLEPUUUURPLE.”

“MOM, HENRY IS COLOR BLIND!”

“JUICE MOMMA JUICE JUUUUUICE!!”

“YOU GUYS!” My eyes flash to the rearview mirror, then back to the road.

That's when I see the police officer standing in the street in front of me. I look at my speedometer; I'm doing three times the speed limit in a school zone.
Crap.
That's another thing that wouldn't have happened if I'd been driving alone.

I pull over and roll down my window, hoping the kids will still be screaming so he will hear my misery. Only now, of course, they've suddenly gone completely silent.

“I can't believe I just did that,” I say to the officer, passing him my license and registration.

“MOM, ARE YOU GETTING ARRESTED?!” Sal shouts from the backseat. Henry stares at the uniformed officer, like he's a Catholic looking at Jesus Christ himself.

“You were doing almost seventy in a school zone, ma'am.” He looks pointedly into the car at my kids.

“The crazy thing is I drive through this school zone twice a day, at least. And I
never
speed through it.” I'm lying. Of course I speed through it, but usually not much over the limit. The children's park is far off the road and behind a giant fence. Kids need to learn how to cross the street. I'm providing a public service. I take the ticket from the cop and smile a phony smile. “Thank you so much. I've really learned a lesson today.” I take the white ticket from the officer and reach back to put it in my bag.

Henry points to it: “BLUE!”

Sal looks at me, sadly shaking her ringlet-covered head. “Can glasses fix color blindness?”

I pull into the zoo parking lot just as the sun comes out from behind the clouds and a swan flies over the river.

“YAY!! We're here!!!” Sal cheers.

“LOOK! We got a great parking spot,” I cheer. Neither of them cares; kids don't give a shit about good parking until you're halfway across the lot and one of them can't walk anymore because their “legs is dead.” Maybe I had to get that ticket, I think, in order to score this amazing parking spot.

I get out of the car and walk around to Henry's door. I open it up, unbuckle him, and then, when I reach behind him to pull him out of the seat, I feel it.

Oh God.

I look him in the eyes. He looks me in the eyes.

“Henry?”

“Poop,” he chirps. “POOOOOOOOP!!!”

He shit. It's exploded out of his diaper and gone up his back and all over the car seat behind him. It must have
just
happened, because I hadn't smelled anything. Today, I notice, Henry's shit actually smells kind of good, and I recall that he didn't eat meat yesterday, only strawberries and raspberries. Which explains how he's managed to shit in his pants like that.

Sal would have NEVER shit in her seat when she was his age. Henry fucking hates me! He shit in that seat to spite me. I pull my hand out; three of my fingers on my right hand are covered in shit. Shit studded with tiny strawberry and raspberry seeds.

“MOM!” Sal takes off her seat belt and scoots across the backseat. “Mom, you aren't supposed to touch poop, remember?!” She tries to get a good look at my shit fingers. Henry looks guiltily at my hand, then suddenly starts to point and shout at my fingers: “BROWN!”

Sal's bottom lip tucks under her top teeth. Her eyes go wide, and she claps her hands together. “Buddy! You aren't color blind!” And the weight of the world is off her big-sister shoulders.

Then the second bad thing happens: I realize I don't have the diaper bag.

“Sal, pass me that napkin on the floor.” I'm scrambling. What can I wash my hand with? I have nothing!
It's just shit,
I tell myself.
It's just fruit that has passed through his body. It's all organic and natural.

“That is so
grossss
!” Sal says, eyeing the raspberry seed stuck to the tip of my index finger.

“I know.” I am almost dry heaving.

Henry starts to squirm in his seat. I'm worried he'll fall out, and the shit will go everywhere. “APPLE JUICE!!!” he wriggles and shouts.

I wipe the chunks of crap off my fingers with the napkin until they're vaguely clean, then stuff the crappy napkin into a paper lunch bag on the floor. “Sal, pass me another napkin.” She passes me another one. I say a quiet prayer that I have a wad of napkins from the McDonald's drive-through in my purse. Fat
Maury
babies be damned—this is a sign that God approves of fast food.

I try to spit into the only napkin in the car, but I'm totally dry from panic. I put the napkin in front of Sal's face. “Sal, spit into this. You have more spit than me.” She obediently spits into the napkin and I use it to wipe off my shit fingers again, tiny seeds and all. I put the napkin in the bag. I buckle Henry back up, trying not to use my right hand at all. “APPLE JUICE!!!” he shouts, right in my face. What is this kid trying to do to me? He shits in his seat, and I'm convinced he's done it on purpose because I haven't given him his second apple juice.

“Sal.” I turn to her. “We have to go home. I'm sorry. There is poop everywhere. And even if I had the diaper bag, I couldn't leave the car seat all poopy like this in the car while we're at the zoo.”

At first Sal looks sad, but then she assesses the situation rationally. “Yeah, this is bad. You need to clean up this poop, lady!”

I pick up the bag with the shitty napkin and throw it into a nearby garbage bin. I smell the fingers on my right hand. Terribly shitty. With my left hand, I grab a box of apple juice for Henry. His terrorist tactics have paid off. I use my left hand to poke the straw into the box, and as I pass it to him I say, “You really deserved to have me do that with my right hand.”

I turn to Sal, who's waiting patiently in her car seat. “Sal? You want a juice?” I ask.

“Not until you wash your hands.”

As I drive home—clean hand on the steering wheel, shit hand on the passenger seat—I lament the day as it now stretches out before me. I will have to strip Henry down, scrape shit off his seat and his clothing, wash him, wash everything his shit touched, and make lunch.

I slow down as we pass the police officer who had given me a ticket in the school zone. We are going the wrong way for him to get us, but still. Coming toward us, in his line of fire, is a woman in a minivan. She's speeding and yelling at her children in the backseat. He's totally just tagged her. I suddenly feel a horrible glee . . . pure joy. It isn't just me! I'm not the only one in this mess called Motherhood.

I look in my rearview mirror and watch her getting waved over. I'm elated. I slow down and watch as the police officer walks over to her window. Fifteen seconds later, still reveling in my happiness, I glance back again. He waves to her and she drives off.

SHE. DRIVES. OFF.

“WHHHHHHAAAT?!?!” I shout, slamming on my brakes as I watch the speeding minivan lady in my rearview mirror DEFINITELY leaving without getting ticketed. THIRTY MINUTES AGO, I WAS THAT SAME LADY, AND I GOT A TICKET. WHY WASN'T I WAVED OFF?!?!

I try to calm myself down, but I can't. I pull over.

“Mom, why are you stopping here?” Sal asks.

“I need to think, Sal. I CAN'T THINK AND DRIVE!!” I take a few deep breaths, and those deep breaths bring forth a great realization. I realize that I will never let this day go. I will be angry about it forever. I will be angry about the two-hundred-dollar ticket and the shit on my right hand forever.

If I don't do something about it RIGHT NOW.

I make a U-turn, pull up to the police officer—doing exactly the speed limit—and open my window.

“Hi.” I'm smiling. “I just saw that.”

He approaches the car. “I'm sorry?” he asks.

I look at his badge. “Officer Morton? I saw you NOT give that woman a ticket. You waved her away.”

He realizes what I'm getting at and thinks he knows where I'm headed, but he doesn't.

“I want you to take my ticket back,” I say, holding it out the window with my left hand. “It's not fair that she got off, and I got a ticket.”

He laughs. “I can't do that.”

“Then why did you let that other lady off, and not me?”

“She said she wasn't paying attention because her kids screamed and scared her.”

My mouth drops open, and I make one of those choking/clearing-your-throat sounds. “When is that NOT happening in a car with children?! If that excuse is valid, you will NEVER ticket someone with kids in the car. When I drove past you, my son, Henry, was yelling for apple juice, and my daughter, Sal, was borderline suicidal because she thought her brother was color blind, so I WASN‘T PAYING ATTENTION when you caught me speeding!! I just didn't try to use all that as an excuse.”

“Sorry, I've already written the ticket.”

I take another deep breath, then sit there quietly, trying to compose myself.

“You gonna get arrested now, Mom?” Sal asks.

I look at my shit hand on the passenger seat and decide: I'm not going to give up. I
can't
give up. Not now. Not with this shit hand.

“Ma'am,” Officer Morton says, crossing his arms lightly. “You can contest the ticket in court. The date is on there, but right now I'll have to ask that you move along.”

That's it. I've had it. Speech time. “Today was going to be a great day. I was taking the kids to the zoo. I LOVE THE ZOO. You know why I'm not at the zoo right now? Because I got to the zoo and I went to take my son out of his car seat and I stuck my hand in his shit! He shit his pants and it went everywhere. I-HAVE-SHIT-ON-MY-HAND!!!!!”

Officer Morton stopped smiling and looked at my left hand on the wheel.