The Wisdom of the Doulas

My old mentor said we earn our dough the second day. I'm beginning to see what she meant. Yesterday the Gottwald baby was a beautiful, if slightly puckered, dream angel, fresh-pulled from his amniotic pleasure dome. Yesterday the Gottwalds were the stunned and grateful progenitors of a mewling miracle. We even did a group hug.

Today the Gottwalds are the smug bastards they've probably always been, and the Gottwald baby, well, he might only be two days old, but I can already tell he's going to be a miserable little prick. Stay in this gig long enough, you can predict these things. I don't mention any of this to the Gottwalds. It's not my place. I'm no Nostradamus. I'm the doulo. Or doula, if you want to get technical, tick me off.

"What does doula mean anyway?" Mr. Gottwald asked during my interview. This was a month before Mrs. Gottwald's water broke.

"It's a Greek word for slave," I told him, "but don't get any ideas. My rates are pretty steep."

"I'm glad you agree," said Mr. Gottwald.

"Perhaps you might outline your services," said Mrs. Gottwald.

"Perhaps I might."

"Like examples," said Mr. Gottwald.

"Examples," I said, glanced about their gleaming loft, felt my hand closing on the ultra lights in my coat. "Okay if I smoke in here?"

"Is that a joke?" said Mr. Gottwald.

"Absolutely," I said. "Or maybe even a test."

"Examples," said Mr. Gottwald.

"Examples," I said, gave them examples: how I'd explain proper latch-on techniques for breast-feeding, proper swaddling techniques for, yes, swaddling. I also mentioned how I'd keep their four-year-old, Ezekial, company, make sure everybody got rest, how I'd order up some pizza if we all wanted pizza. My mentor, Fanny Hitchens, always stressed the importance of pizza. Pizza, even just the idea of pizza, binds people together in their common love of pizza.

"Breast-feeding?" said Mr. Gottwald. "You?"

"Tell me, Mitch," said Mrs. Gottwald, "are there many doulas like yourself?"

"You mean doulos?" I said.

"Yes," said Mrs. Gottwald, and she might as well have had the words grave misgivings about hiring a male doula stenciled on her forehead. Call it what you will. Reverse sexism. Substitute racism. It's all the same. But different.

"I'm the only man certified in the city, though I hear there's a kid training with a friend of my old mentor, or sensei, if you will."

"Sensei?" said Mr. Gottwald. "Do you study the martial arts?"

"Never did, no. I guess I just like those movies."

"Oh," said Mr. Gottwald, nodded to a corner of the loft. A pair of glistening mahogany nunchakus and assorted throwing stars dangled from pegs in the brick.

"Just likes the movies," he muttered.

The Gottwalds traded a look I'd seen before, especially growing up, the one where it's almost as though I'm not in the room, and I knew then they'd decided against hiring me, vetoed the dude with the yellow teeth and the ratty (vintage) buckskin jacket who wanted to make a positive and tremendous impact on their birth experience. People crave something else during this precious time, big soft dykes overgentle with envy or else those angular breeding machines in pastel-colored sack dresses. But I knew something the Gottwalds didn't. It was a very busy season. Maybe my name sat at the bottom of their list, but they'd call their way down to it. They wouldn't be sorry, either. These uptight success types with their antique Ataris and sarcastic sneakers make me sick, but it's not about them. It's not even about the baby. It's about the job.

The Gottwald baby is only a few days old, just a tiny blind worm of boy, but it's obvious he's going to be dealing Ritalin in clubs or else become a Promise Keeper by the time he's 17. The Gottwalds are that annoying, especially while I'm trying to demonstrate proper swaddling techniques. So folding is not my forte.

"You're choking him," says Mrs. Gottwald.

"They like it tight," I say. "Womb-y."

"You're crushing him!"

I peel the blanket away. Baby Gottwald is gasping.

"Okay," I say, "you've seen how it's done. Now it's your turn."

"Gee, thanks," says Mrs. Gottwald.

To think that yesterday not only did we do a group hug but later, while the baby slept, I gave them all shoulder rubs, even Ezekial. We ate gourmet lasagna, and Mrs. Gottwald said, "I can't believe we almost went through this without you, Mitch. This is so much better than the last time. Do you remember when we came home with Zekey, hon?"

"A goddamn nightmare," said Mr. Gottwald. "Hooray for the doula."

"Doulo," I said.

"Gentle now, big fella," said Mr. Gottwald.

Big fella has always been a trigger for me, not least of all because I go 255 or 260 on a good day, most of it solid flab, but I forgave him. There was such high gladness in Mr. Gottwald's eyes, not to mention the pillowy shimmer of his wife, all that evolutionary love dope coursing through her, I felt us all cocooned in some invincible sweetness.

But that was yesterday.

Today Mr. Gottwald paces the loft, fiddles with the earpiece in his ear. He's been talking to his office non-stop since the hospital. Apparently the man is a crucial component of the pharmaceutical industry's advertising efforts. Apparently we'd all be covered in leeches and spooning up mercury if he took a day of paternity leave. Ezekial sobs quietly on the carpet, hovers over a toy cheese board, tugs apart some Velcroed wedges of fake Manchego. We may need to have a chat.

Mrs. Gottwald lies in bed with her newborn, the swaddling blanket bunched at her feet. She shivers with fever. Clogged milk ducts would be my guess. She's also having bowel trouble, and I may have to administer an enema. I'm beginning to believe the mister could use a good flush too.

The baby cries, sleeps, cries, sleeps, cries, then doesn't cry or sleep, curls up against Mrs. Gottwald. Here on the leather sofa where I'm drinking Gatorade, catching the American League highlights, I can just make out his pinched little mug. I'm wondering if I can sneak out for another smoke before he goes off again.

"Mitch," says Mr. Gottwald and steps in front of the TV, blocks a particularly insightful slugging-percentage graphic.

"Yes, sir."

"The baby is crying."

"Good call."

Mrs. Gottwald's trying to tuck the baby under her breast like they teach in those birth classes, the socalled football grip.

"Fumble!" I say, stride over, remote in hand, but I guess nobody's in the mood for sports jokes. Baby Gottwald wails louder, lunges for his mother's breast, gums the cracked flesh. His lips slide on a film of milk and spit.

"Oh, sheesh," says Mrs. Gottwald. "It hurts."

"It's like a keg he can't quite tap," I say.

"Oh, is that what it's like?" says Mr. Gottwald.

"It really hurts," says Mrs. Gottwald. "It wasn't like this with Zekey."

"Work the hurt," I say.

"What the hell does that mean?" says Mr. Gottwald.

"It means whatever helps it mean something," I say.

"You're an idiot," says Mrs. Gottwald.

"It's okay," I say.

"No, it's not," says Mrs. Gottwald.

Nobody's born a doula. Or maybe the early doulas, those slaves, maybe they were born doulas. I'm no historian. It's the future I care about. The future of the families I assist in these first fragile and hugely awesome hours. The future of my bank account, too.

It's true I just sort of fell into this work while stalking my ex-girlfriend, but once I came under the tutelage of Fanny Hitchens, the former doula to the stars, I knew I'd found my calling, even though the calls never came. It was tough going, but Fanny encouraged me, even from that (continued on page 142)Doulas(continued from page 86) very first day I slipped into her lactation and newborn-care class at the church. My ex-girlfriend's new goon of a boyfriend, Richie, a Special Forces interrogator and one of the few troops I actually don't support, had shown up at my AA meeting across the hall, and I needed someplace to hide. When I blundered into the room, Fanny Hitchens didn't even blink, just told me to join the others, the swollen ladies and their sullen men, on the rubber wrestling mats. Soon enough the tricks of the miracle-of-life trade had me hooked. Later Fanny told me I could be a pioneer. I loved Fanny. If she hadn't been in her late 80s and rotted through with cancer, I would have married her. Also, she rejected my proposal. But we did make love a few times, and it was sensational. You can lubricate practically anything.

Fanny hoped I'd become a birth doulo, and I was happy to oblige. Childbirth is a beautiful thing. Even all the poop and gunk that slides out of a woman during childbirth is beautiful. The plastic bag under the woman's butt to catch the poop and gunk is beautiful too. But I was a birth-doulo bust. I couldn't fend for women and their families in the hospitals. I couldn't stand up to the godlike doctors. They all reminded me of my older sister Tina. Tina's not a doctor, in fact she's a lawyer whose specialty is suing doctors, but she's godlike, at least to me, and godlike in that cruel, capricious Greek way, too, even when we were growing up. One minute she'd buy me peanut brittle, and the next minute she wouldn't, tell me she'd just bought me peanut brittle. Mixed messages can damage a child.

Anyway, I decided to do the postpartum thing, which is grueling in its own right. Nobody wants to hear this, but bringing home a newborn is not all cuddles and fluff. It's more like a boat crashing into a dock. And I'm the skipper, yanking on the wheel, trying to steer this heap to safety. But the boat's already crashed.

So now I'm guiding Baby Gottwald's little fish mouth back toward his mother's thick burgundy nipple. It's true the words thick burgundy nipple excite me, but it's also a fact that latching on can be a monumental bitch. I'm supposed to be agenda-free on the subject of breastfeeding, but I have an agenda. Who doesn't have an agenda? You open your eyes in the morning and you have an agenda, Fanny Hitchens used to say. Her agenda then was not to die a virgin.

"Ow!" says Mrs. Gottwald. "It hurts! It hurts worse than before!"

"I know, but we've got to do this. We've got get this latch-on on."

The baby is doing beaver gnaws. Mrs. Gottwald clutches her chest.

"I can't," she says now. "It hurts too much!"

"Come on!" I say. "Don't quit!"

"No!"

"Come on, honey!"

"No, no. It hurts. I can't. Stop!"

"No stopping!" I shout at Mrs. Gottwald. "No stopping!"

"Get some!" I shout at the baby.

Tears stream down Mrs. Gottwald's cheeks. Blood streaks down her breast. The baby is screaming. Little Ezekial is screaming, waving his Manchego. Mrs. Gottwald is screaming. Mr. Gottwald is speaking in low, lawyerly tongues, something about something being actionable, but I ignore him.

"Get some!" I shout again, and then, I'll be damned, Baby Gottwald latches on. Soon he's slurping away in peace. Mrs. Gottwald sinks back against the headboard. I stroke her damp hair with the cool, curved edge of the remote control.

"That's it, sweetie, you did good. Look at Baby Gottwald."

"He has a name."

"Don't worry about it, honey. Just be proud. You're doing a really good thing."

And I start to tell her why this is such a good thing, how the antibodies in the breast milk are crucial for the development of a top-shelf baby, and besides, I continue, think of the alternative, think of somebody like me, kept days after birth in a sleek, antiseptic hospital designed for maximum alienation of mother from child. There were no doulas then, no midwives, no lactation consultants, at least not in our neck of the woods, which weren't woods, but so what? My mother, I tell Mrs. Gottwald, she did the best she could, which consisted of being a drugged-up cow and nodding listlessly at anything her cruel and capricious godlike doctor told her, including the completely unfounded notion that she couldn't produce milk, not to mention the sage advice she not visit with me, a light-shocked babe desperate to bond, until she'd fully recuperated from the so-called ordeal of labor, which I don't think she ever truly accomplished or else maybe she wouldn't have left my father for an insurance executive slash cowboy poet named Vance and moved to Montana. I don't blame my mother, I tell Mrs. Gottwald. I blame the patriarchy that indoctrinated women into the idea that they were second-class citizens, foolish, feckless whore slash Madonna complexes, only good for being barefoot and so forth. But we know better now, I tell her, the steady progress of Progress is truly fucking stupendous, whereupon I feel Mr. Gottwald's hand on the collar of my shirt as he tugs me away from his wife and into the kitchen area. Eze-kial follows with a wheel of Camembert, some kind of polymer.

"Listen," says Mr. Gottwald, plucks his earpiece out of his ear, "I just want to say----"

"Don't thank me," I tell him. "Your wife is the brave one here."

"No, listen," he says, a little sterner, and I can see now how he commands so many people with such a dinky electronic device. "I think it would be a good idea if you left now. I think we can handle the rest on our own. How much do we owe you?"

"You owe me the dignity of doing my job," I say. "This may take weeks, and I'm not going anywhere. I admit I have failed to establish the nurturing environment this family needs to thrive during the oh-so-delicate newborn phase. But I'm going to turn shit around."

I take out my cell phone. The oligarchs cut service a few weeks ago, but I start dialing anyway.

"What's your basic take on anchovies?" I say.

"Excuse me?"

"What about filberts?" says Ezekial.

"You can't put filberts on a pizza," I say.

"Filberts are nuts," says Mr. Gottwald.

"You can't have nuts, period, young man."

"Crazy, all this, right?" I say to Ezekial after his father has left.

"I hate pizza."

"You hate pizza? Wow, they really must have done a number on you."

"Which number?"

"Listen, Z-Man," I tell him. "You need to be strong for your baby brother. No more whining. Look alive. When you were a child you acted as a child. You played with toy cheese. But now is the time to put the toy cheese in the box marked childish. Capisce?"

Ezekial regards his Camembert, lays it gently on the kitchen floor, which is made of a hard, bright material similar to the Camembert.

"Good boy," I say. "Now go get some pizza money from your dad."

I still need to order the pie. There's a phone here on the wall next to the Sub-Zero refrigerator. I'm not paranoid, but I do prefer a landline when ordering pizza. Choice of topping is too much of a tell. When I'm done I check my messages at home.

There's one from Tina. She's flown to Montana--there's something wrong with our mother. She leaves some numbers, which I dutifully erase. There's one from somebody in what sounds like a very large room full of people calling other people. "Hello? Hello?" he says and hangs up. These people call often.

The last message is from Monica Bolonik at the Doula Foundation. She says it's urgent. She's not my boss, but she's got power over my continuing certification. It's no secret I've been jousting a bit with the regional leadership. Seems there have been complaints. Seems without Fanny Hitchens in your corner, being a pioneer in the doula community isn't so appreciated. Monica is what in a more primitive stage of my emotional development I would have called a ballbuster. But I'm not like that now. I'm not perfect, but I'm not the guy who once wrote, "Vice Principal Avery has thorns in her cunt" on the senior lockers, either. Not anymore.

I call Monica back.

"Mitchell," says Monica.

"I'm on the job," I say.

"I know. A certain Mr. Gottwald informed me."

"It's going really well here."

"That's not how he put it, Mitchell."

"It's Mitch," I say. "My mother calls me Mitchell."

"You don't like your mother, do you, Mitchell?"

"Was there anything else?"

"We're reviewing your certification. You are tainting the name of our organization."

"I'm a damn good doulo," I say.

"It's hard enough to gain acceptance in society without your insanity. And there's no such thing as a doulo."

"Then who might you be talking to?" I say, notice now that Ezekial has wandered back into the kitchen area. He nibbles on a neon-green brioche.

"Tell her how well things are going," I say.

Ezekial leans into the mouthpiece. "They did a number on me," he says.

I've had a lot of jobs. Substitute gym teacher, line cook at a rib joint, mail boy at my late father's accounting firm. I was even in the movie business for a while, spent a few years as the guy with the walkie-talkie who lurks around the trailers, tells you to cross to the other side of the street.

But I'm long past reinvention. I'm practically middle-aged, deep into cell degeneration or worse, relocation. I remember my Uncle Don had these weird patches of hair right under his shoulder blades. They made me want to puke. Guess who's got them now? Guess who pops his lats in the mirror and wants to puke?

Point is, it's going to take a hell of a lot more than Monica Bolonik to dedoulo me. We're talking acres of paperwork.

•

I'm teaching Mr. Gottwald how to change his baby's diapers.

"Wipe front to back," I say.

"Thanks for that," he says. "This is my second kid. And I happen to be potty trained myself. I can't believe you talked me into letting you stay."

I did talk him into letting me stay. Maybe it was the promise of another shoulder rub. Maybe it's the fact that Mrs. Gottwald's still running a fever and Ezekial's nanny, due back today, called in sick. The guy is feeling overwhelmed.

"You're feeling overwhelmed," I say.

Mr. Gottwald lifts the baby and crosses the loft to some wide windows that overlook a cobblestone lane, starts humming a lullaby I soon recognize, an ancient power ballad. The baby's wails turn to burpy moans. Soon he's nearing sleep. Good going, G.

We're about the same age, I realize, maybe not that different after all, probably got drunk at the same kinds of high school deck parties, pumped our fists at the same dumb arena shows, parked behind the Burger King and watched some version of unattainable beauty hand sacks of french fries into people's cars. So he went to college, business school, and I stayed parked behind the Burger King. So he got rich, got married, sired a child he sings to about roses and thorns, and I bounced around, took a chance at city life, fell into some jams. We're still the same ordinary joes, at least now, here, both of us just trying to cope with this wondrous and horrible and confusing moment.

"That song!" I shout, "I know that song!"

The baby jerks awake, bawls.

"Sonofabitch!" says Mr. Gottwald, and I notice his lower lip has acquired a severe spasm.

I've seen worse. I'm seeing worse right now, namely Baby Gottwald.

Picture a red onion with a mouth that isn't even a mouth but more some kind of incredibly loud air horn used by Satan to signal his minions to mop up all the infernal poop and gunk that spills forth from his fiery pangendered holes as he gives birth to every evil in the world. It's a lot to picture, I know, and some of it isn't a picture at all, but you get the idea.

"We're all going to die here," says Mr. Gottwald.

"You've got to relax," I say. "It's a process."

"You've got to be the worst fucking doula in the world."

"Doulo," I say.

•

I'm washing dishes, folding up the pizza box, when Mr. Gottwald comes in and hands me his phone. It's Monica Bolonik. I'm decertified. I guess it doesn't require that much paperwork. If I remain on the Gottwald premises, Monica warns me, she will call the police. On the other hand, she may call the police.

"You have no jurisdiction," I say, but the line is already dead.

"I guess that's good-bye," says Mr. Gottwald.

"Good-bye? Because of a lousy piece of paper? Did a piece of paper educate you on newborn care? Did a piece of paper keep all the balls of nurturing in the air?"

"Balls of nurturing?"

"Gentle now, big fella."

"What say we call it even," says Mr. Gottwald. "What say you just leave and I don't press charges."

It's hard to hear him because of Baby Gottwald, who hasn't really stopped wailing since I woke him a few hours ago, but I think I get the gist. I get a better sense of the gist when Mr. Gottwald leaves the kitchen area and comes back with a few throwing stars jutting from his knuckles.

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves," I say.

"You came highly recommended. That woman Fanny Hitchens sent us a fabulous letter."

Thing is, I'm touched by this because I wrote the letter and I guess I really nailed it, even got Fanny's signature right, which is pretty famous and appears on the jacket of her book.

"Why don't you put that ninja crap away," I say. "Press what charges?"

"Endangering the life of a child, for starters."

"A child who, by his very definition, is endangered," I say.

"I'm sorry," says Mr. Gottwald. "Excuse me?"

"This life," I say, and my arm does this kind of grand sweepy thing I'm not quite able to control, "this thing we so blithely and with a detestable dearth of gravitas call life, it's not all cuddles and fluff, you know. It's also, methinks, a boat. And so we must ask ourselves, Who's got the helm? Where's the skipper? Doth a proper pilot dwell upon this heap?"

"What the fuck are you----"

"Here comes the dock! Look out, man!"

I Frisbee the pizza box at Mr. Gottwald, bolt. Mr. Gottwald and a squealing Ezekial scramble after me, but I'm already there at the corner rack, the nunchakus up in full fiercesome bolo over my head. I slide-step to Mrs. Gottwald, who shrieks, shields the baby. Mr. Gottwald assumes a poignant fighting stance, throwing star cocked.

"Barry, don't!" cries Mrs. Gottwald. "You'll hit Prague!"

"Yes, Barry, don't," I say. "Prague?"

"That's the baby's name."

"Prague?"

"We love the city. Now step away from my wife."

I lift Mrs. Gottwald's swollen breast from her nightgown.

"This is going to hurt," I say, "but we've got to clear those ducts."

I lean down, suck hard. Mrs. Gottwald stiffens. My arm is going dead, and I begin to sense the nunchakus, our invincible cocoon of buzzing wood, slowing down, but in a moment it doesn't matter, nothing matters. The milk is sweet, drips thick in my mouth as Mrs. Gottwald's hind ducts open and all that deep cream starts to flow and I am suddenly every tiny helpless thing that ever wanted nothing but to survive another hour in this foolish, feckless universe. I am one particular tiny helpless thing, too, namely Mitch, mewling newbie Mitchell Malley, latched onto his lovely and exhausted mother, the mother of his alternate-reality dreams, the mother who will welcome wounded dugs, exult in throb and split, the mother who will spurn the antiseptic credos of the medical-Madonna complex, who will love her little Mitchell creature no matter what fate forces him to become, who will cherish his butter-colored teeth and ratty (vintage) buckskin jacket.

I guess it's probably a good thing my actual non-alternate reality mother's not around to witness this. How could she, though? She's in Montana with Vance and Tina. She's on life support, if I heard my sister's message right, though a part of me is still convincing the rest of me I didn't hear the message right.

Everybody thinks I hate my mother, that all of my so-called shenanigans can be traced back to some primal trauma, but honestly, I'm the only one who ever called them shenanigans. The judges and the court-ordered psychiatrists used other words. And though I'm not exactly a rabid Vance fan, I love my mother. Like I said, she did the best she could. That's what I'm trying to do too, as I raise my lips from Mrs. Gottwald's nipple and press Baby Gottwald's mouth there. The hungry worm starts feeding and Mrs. Gottwald groans sweetly, and I get to work on the other breast.

"Zekey," whispers Mr. Gottwald, "911."

"Did it," says the boy in a faraway voice.

When Fanny was dying in her apartment uptown, I sat with her most days and nights. I'd hold her birdlike hand--not that her hand looked like a bird, it looked more like a very old and sick hand--but I'd hold it as she whispered the wisdom of the doulas to me one last time.

"Mother the mother," she said. "Mother the father. Mother the room."

"Nurture," she said. "Nurture, nurture, nurture. Plus nature."

"And remember, don't spring for the pizza."

Okay, that last one was mine, but what I'm trying to say is all I ever wanted was to carry on Fanny's legacy, be part of a loving continuum.

There's a thud in the pillar near my head. A dull metal star quivers in the wood. Now comes the sound of many men in non-nurturing boots. I can see them from the corner of my eye, padded black turtlenecks, batons. One stomps over, jabbing at the air with a weird-looking gun. He seems very judgmental.

My story won't end here. I'll start my own foundation, certify myself. The American League got a late start, but doesn't it win its share of All-Star games? No more forged letters from Fanny, either. I'll find the families that need me, appreciate my craft. I'll start with my building, with Paula the Crack-head down the hall. There's no question she's knocked up, and I'd wager she could stand for a little doulo-style tenderness. Trust might be an issue, but we'll build toward trust. I'll pay for a hand job, take things from there.

Out the window the evening is strangely bright, and I wonder if the gods aren't having a festival of capricious cruelty in the sky, which for some reason I picture including a hot buffet, maybe because I can almost smell one, but then I notice some trucks parked down the block, big floodlights, reflectors rigged for a night shoot. Men and women with walkie-talkies mill around a food cart.

There but for the grace of God, and Fanny Hitchens, mill I.

Now the man with the weird-looking gun is shouting some official speech about the electrical nature of his weapon, which he vows to fire if I don't drop the nunchakus.

"Be advised," he adds.

"Be advised?" I say. "You've got it backward, buddy. I'm the doulo! I advise!"

I don't drop the nunchakus. I whip them at his gun. They miss, skitter across the loft.

So fighting is not my forte.

So I never found my forte.

"Zap this fuck!" calls one of the turtlenecks, maybe the turtleneck team leader.

The volts eel up my spine, out my arms and legs, and as I'm going under I can see my fist pumping in the air, pumping once, twice, until finally it flops into a gentle caress of absolutely nothing.

I call it the Doulo Salute.

It's mine, too.

Nobody's Born A Doula. It's True I Just Sort Of Fell Into This Work While Stalking My Ex-Girlfriend.

Bringing home a newborn is not all cuddles and fluff. It's more like a boat crashing into a dock.