The Song of David(107)

I wondered how many blind mothers there were in the world. I knew there were some, even if there weren’t many. She demanded that I describe every minute detail as she ran her hands over his tiny body and traced his miniature features—his button nose, and his bow-shaped lips, his little ears, and his paper-thin eyelids. His fingers, his toes, the bumps of his spine, the slope of his belly. I’d caught her lovingly exploring him many times since his birth, as if she was determined not to miss a thing. It made me ache for her that she couldn’t see him, that she would never see her son’s face. She would never see my face, for that matter. But Millie was convinced that if she could see, she would know us immediately. Maybe she was right. Maybe she actually saw us better because she took the time to touch us, to feel us, to find us, to know us.

Millie was asleep now, and in the soft moonlight streaming through the window in our room, I could see the pale length of her arm and the dark pool of her hair against the white pillow. She was a worker, my Amelie, very well-named. She’d been true to her word, and had matched me stride for stride and taken care of me easily as much or more than I’d taken care of her.

I sat watching my wife sleep, holding my two-week old son against my chest, my hand on his tiny back, feeling the rise and fall of his little body as he pulled life into his lungs and let it go again. His fat cheek lay against the opening of the V in my shirt, and I could feel that he’d drooled on me, or drizzled. He’d fallen asleep while nursing, and I’d eased him out of Millie’s arms to burp him so that she could rest, and so I could hold him. He ate constantly, and I was convinced it was just because he liked where the milk was coming from. What was it with boys and boobs? He would cry when we forced him to detach, and I had started saying “Mo wants mo’, which had inspired the Mo wants Mo’ slogan I was now going to market with my Tag Team clothing line. Maybe there would even be a kid’s line—Mo & Co or a maternity line, Millie & Mo. I liked that even better.

“Mo always wants mo’, don’t you, big guy?” I whispered, kissing his soft head. He smelled like boobs. In other words, he smelled like heaven. He sounded like heaven too, even when he cried. Millie declared his lusty cry one of her favorite sounds the moment he came into the world, bellowing like his life was over instead of just beginning.

“Daddy wants mo’ too. More, and more, and more,” I murmured, still watching his mother.

I had started making him tapes. I could have moved on to a digital recorder. But the tapes worked for me. I liked how tangible they were. Millie said she was going to take them all and have the contents transferred onto discs, and I said that was just fine. But I kept making the tapes, and I had a big stack of them, a verbal journaling of the last year, the days of my life, the days of our life together. Now I was making them for little Mo.

“David?” Millie asked drowsily. She carefully patted the space beside her.

“I’ve got him. Go back to sleep, Silly Millie.”

I thought she had, she was quiet for so long. We were both tired. Exhausted. The last year had been heaven and hell. Music and misery. It had not been an easy battle, and I still wasn’t cancer free. But I wasn’t losing the battle either. I might lose the war. Eventually, I might lose. But we didn’t think about that.

“Now I’ve got that song stuck in my head,” she said suddenly, startling me. I jerked and Mo stuck out his lips and let out the saddest cry known to man.

Millie and I sighed together, a synchronized, “awwww,” that lifted on the end and conveyed our shared sentiment that he was the cutest thing in the universe. The cry turned into panicked suckling, his little head bobbing over my chest, his mouth wide in search of something I couldn’t help him with, and I had to turn him back over to his mother.

Millie heard me coming and reached for him, snuggling him down next to her, giving him what he always wanted.

“So spoiled,” I whispered, laying down beside them, watching them because they were too beautiful to look away.

“He’s not spoiled, he’s a baby,” Millie whispered, a smile playing around her mouth.

“I wasn’t talking about him. I was talking about me,” I whispered back.

I kissed her softly and she started to sing.

“I love your legs. I love your chest, but this spot here, I love the best,” she crooned.

“Is that the song that’s stuck in your head?” I chuckled quietly.

“Yes,” she complained in a whisper. “And I need a different verse because nothing rhymes with David.”