Heads of the Colored People(27)
October 26: Breastfeeding, Part Two: Baby Vampirism: Let Them Suck the Life Out of You If You Want
November 2: Elimination Anticipation
November 9: Solutions for Accidental Elimination
November 16: Cold Bath, No Colic
Among the links listed under “Resources” were websites from which readers could purchase tiny underwear made specially for children under age one, imported infant toilet seats, colorless handmade wooden toys, and links to her fruitarian lifestyle pages and family vlogs, respectively.
This stuff could really work, Mike thought, but they needed Inedia, Bucolic, or whatever the child’s name would be, and Ryan. Lisbeth on her own was insufferable.
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In the Walmart parking lot, Ryan removed the sticker from the pineapple and stuck it, once he got it off his finger, inside his pocket. He unzipped the thick plastic that held the sleeping bag and handed it to Inedia. He separated the cardboard from the clamshell Polly Pocket case and handed the trash to his daughter. “Throw all this away over there.” When she returned from the trash can, a few cars away from theirs, he was stepping on the bag, grinding in a little oil with the toe of his boot. “Jump on,” he directed Inedia. She followed, trying to rub the bag with the dirt on the bottom of her scuffed Crocs. They would wash and dry the bag when they got home, to make the stains look set.
“Kinda fun, isn’t it?”
Inedia nodded.
When the bag was sufficiently stained, Ryan rolled it up and secured the roll with the two blue elastic straps attached to the bag. He tucked it in the back seat of the car, next to Inedia’s booster seat, and signaled to make the left turn toward home, but made a sharp right instead. In the rearview mirror, he saw Inedia clutching her new toy awkwardly, as if she didn’t know what to do with such a sophisticated object—in contrast to the monochrome wooden toys Lisbeth gave her—with so many tiny pieces.
“You hungry?”
Inedia smiled for the first time that day. “Yes.”
Inedia had been a small baby, her cheeks and the spaces around her eyes thin and bluish even now under her glasses. She was only two weeks early, but because Lisbeth was so thin, the doctor said, the baby did not have much to work with. They stayed in the hospital while they fed mother and child with an IV. Lisbeth had protested that she was “not malnourished, you imbeciles,” and that the IV “had better be supplied by plant-based sources,” or she might sue. After two weeks, they let her out, and a week later they let Inedia leave, but not before Dr. Sun warned that he would call child services if Inedia did not gain weight by her six-week checkup. At seven, Inedia still sat in a booster seat, partly because of the laws in California, and partly because she could never catch up to other kids in height any better than Ryan or Lisbeth could maintain weight.
He parked at McDonald’s and went around to help Inedia out of the back seat.
“We’re going to eat here?”
“We’re going to eat here.”
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Mike held his hand to one temple as Lisbeth went on and on about how she’d come to realize that the blog market was all about getting people to argue. She was right that the television series would work the same way if the cable network picked it up. The blog’s popularity seemed only to reassure Lisbeth of her expertise. Over a lunch of cold tomato-and-tomato sandwiches, she rehearsed for Mike, who had let the crew take thirty, her plans to self-publish an e-book that would “get my work out there to more people.”
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, tilting her head from side to side, “but it has nothing to do with the profit.” She looked at him. “We don’t usually eat nuts—cashews aren’t even technically raw because of the extraction process—but Ryan thought you’d like something more substantial.” She handed him a plate.
Mike spread a thin layer of the cashew cheese over a slice of tomato and tried not to look up at Lisbeth. The vapors from the durian gas had given him something like a buzz.
“And how do you make enough to live here anyway?”
“Oh, our parents helped us a bit. Ryan’s family—before his parents died—were capitalists, but they never made any real money. Mine—well, my mom; my dad’s dead, too—is still a capitalist. I don’t have a problem with taking the money or the profits from the blog because we’re redistributing it into sustainability. The produce we buy sends the money right back into the hands of the local grower. We sell the composted material to some of the neighbors and one farmer. We’re not wasteful people.”
Mike was only half listening. The nut cheese wasn’t too bad if you didn’t eat too much of it at once.
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“Won’t Liz be angry if we’re late?” Inedia asked, licking a bit of mustard from a corner of her mouth and pushing her glasses back onto her thin nose.
After a long pause, Ryan said, “What would you say if we didn’t go home, if you and me just”—he looked out the window—“didn’t go home?”
Inedia shrugged. “Could I have warm food?”
“Sometimes.” He wasn’t sure if she could transition to cooked food effectively or how this particular meal would sit or if she could tolerate any cooked food at all. Lisbeth said you needed special enzymes or something to go back. If he brought Inedia home with an upset stomach today, Lisbeth would be suspicious. And if she found out about the burger, she might make them do another cleanse.