This is Fine! Everything's Fine!
By Tracie Renee Amirante Padal
(i)
Monday again: I work the last of the diaper cream from the tube and onto Tate’s red bottom and loose half my hair from the plastic clip with the effort. There’s no time to scrape it back again because all the littles not stuck to my hip are in the kitchen, calling for breakfast, and when I get there and open the fridge, I finally remember what I forgot to buy yesterday: the milk. That’s run out too.
I tell myself it’s fine, I have done this before, I can do this again, I can make this work. I say all the things that bubbly lady in the MeTube video (Manifest Your True Self! In Just 10 Minutes a Day!) promised would transform my life and make me a better me. When I’m done, I don’t feel transformed—just the same crumpled tired of wrinkled clothes left in the washer overnight, the tired of cut roses wilting in a vase. But I do what needs doing anyway.
I give Tate my right breast, which is less sore than my left.
I shake dry cereal into three bowls and slide them across the table to Blake and Mae and Sage. I pretend not to hear their complaints.
I catch the toast before it burns but not the kettle before it shrieks. I cut the toast into triangles and spread the butter evenly, to all the edges, but I forget to remove the crusts until Blake glares. And I forget my tea until it’s cold in the cup.
I step around the laundry heaped at the basement door and make a list for the store: new crayons for Jade, new socks for Blake, the little packets of trail mix my husband keeps in his briefcase. I rub coconut oil on my nipples when I get my breast back and strap Tate in the bouncer, but I forget his binky until he cries. Blake and Jade dump uneaten cereal back in the box, but I forget to close the box until Mae spills it. When I shoo her tiny hands away from the rainbow-colored corn puffs that mingle now with dust on the floor I’ve forgotten to sweep, she feels warm in a not-good way. And when I pick her up, she burrows into my neck, smears green snot across my collarbone. In the bouncer, Tate sneezes. At the front door, Blake jams unsocked feet into never-untied sneakers and declares himself THE WINNER while Jade bursts into tears because IT WASN’T A RACE and THAT’S UNFAIR and she can’t even find her shoes.
I think of that GIF that’s always popping up in Mom’s Clubs posts on socials, the one with the dog sitting blank-eyed and sipping coffee while everything flames around him, the one captioned, This is fine! Everything’s fine!
Then I drink the cold tea in one gulp and tell myself that’s fine too. Just like I did yesterday. Just like I'll do tomorrow.
(ii)
I pack lunches for Jade and Blake, wrestle Mae and Tate into the stroller, slog everyone to the corner where the bus stops and the neighbor waits with her two children, whose names I’ve forgotten. Again.
Jade and Blake and the neighbor’s children clamber onto the bus, and its doors shudder shut.
They wave at us—at me, swaying with the stroller; at Tate, halfway to a restless dream; at Mae, sucking her thumb despite everything I’ve tried to make her stop; at the other mother, whose hair is smoothed into a perfect ponytail—and we wave back, rooted in place as the bus pulls away, runs away, disappears.
The other mother presses her palms together and bows her head slightly, which could mean hello or goodbye. Maybe both.
We go home, Tate and Mae and I, and we’re the kind of alone that happens together. Just like yesterday. And tomorrow.
(iii)
I asked my mother once how she did it—the children, the laundry, the endless shopping lists—and she said I don’t know, Bohdie, you just get used to it.
The books say it will get better. Perhaps when the baby sleeps through the night. Or nursing ends. Definitely after the terrible twos! Or the threenage years. Surely when all the children are in school! Or moved out. Maybe not tomorrow but next week! Next life, my neighbor joked once. Maybe it wasn’t a joke? Maybe she’s right.
The search bar on my phone has about 503,000 suggestions. Have I tried yoga? Meditation? The Tuesday morning playgroup across town? Rice cereal in the night bottle? No sugar, no dairy, no wheat? No coffee? More coffee? Elderberry juice for immune support, lavender oil for sleep?
Today I sweep the kitchen floor and eat crusts cut from the children’s toast, leaning over the sink so that there are no more crumbs to sweep. I wash the dishes, stack them neatly in the cupboard, then wait. For Tate to wake, and Mae’s fever to break. For the next minute, the next hour, the next tingle of need. Just like yesterday. And tomorrow.
(iv)
Tate wakes, but Mae’s eyes stay glassy.
I tuck the shopping list into my coat pocket but forget my coat. And the snacks for the stroller. But we still make the bus.
I sing the list in my head, so many times it becomes one long word like a sigh: trailmixdiapercreammilkcrayonssockschildrensmotrin.
Socks are on sale. Trail mix is two-for-one. I get generic crayons and the cheapest milk but splurge on the good diaper cream that’s never discounted, the cherry-flavored medicine that probably won’t get spit back into my face.
We wait for the bus again, but this one points toward home. Toward yesterday. And tomorrow.
(v)
I let Mae nap as long as she wants and prepare to regret it later.
I let Tate nurse as long as he wants and prepare to regret this later too. I am the kind of tired that aches deep in the bone; the tired of dormant bulbs buried under January snow; the tired of petals folding shut at dusk. He falls asleep cleaved to parts of me that are tender as germinating seeds, his small face lazing milk-drunk on the pillow of dry-suckled breast, and that is when the itch begins.
From hip to shoulder on both sides of my body, I am on fire.
(vi)
But it’s fine.
I text the neighbor (Kuan, mom of Kai and Min—it's there in my contacts) that we’re having a day <shock emoji!> <laughing/crying emoji!> and can she please walk Sage and Blake home from the bus stop later. She says yes, that’s fine <ugh emoji> <care emoji>.
We nod to one other through the front window: Mae in my left arm, Tate in my right; each of her hands busy with a child of her own. Jade and Blake stampede inside, flinging sweatshirts and shoes through the hall. They’re the kind of loud that has simmered all day. My body is fire and my head pounds and I am tired in ways I did not know possible but I smile.
They don’t smile back.
They look at me and don’t smile but stop shouting mid-shout although I do not ask them to, I do not say a word.
“What are you now, Mama?” Blake asks, at last.
I don’t understand. I was tired yesterday; I am tired today. Today my body is fire and my head pounds, but I’m not different. I haven’t changed. I rock Tate with one hand and tidy shoes with the other while another hand rubs jam off Jade’s cheek and the last adjusts the compress on Mae’s head and that’s when I get it. I look down and understand.
I’ve two arms, two hands—on each side.
(vii)
It is odd. And shocking.
But not entirely unwelcome.
My head pounds and pounds and then the pounding stops.
The itch burns and burns and then the burning stops.
I ache to sleep and sleep but the arms, even the ones I thought were my own, do not.
The sun dims and sets and now there is so much to do—and more of me to do it.
One hand calls my mother; two prep snacks; the fourth scrubs an old grease stain by the stove.
My mother says I sound different. “Did you go to yoga today, Bohdie? You sound less tense.”
The new arms are long, limber, always reaching. A kind of yoga, perhaps. I tell her yes.
“Good,” she says. “You’ll wish you’d started long ago.”
All four arms turn toward her voice, the way roses track the sun.
(viii)
I change into an old stained shirt of my husband’s, one that should be cut for rags but is big enough to swallow my body. Beneath its bulk, I wind the two extra arms around my waist and check the mirror. I look round, lumpy, tired—but no different from yesterday. Not odd. Not shocking. He’s home at the usual time but sees nothing amiss.
He does not notice the arms.
Nor the laundry I’ve put away, the carpets I’ve vacuumed, the dishes I’ve washed, Tate’s erupting tooth, Jade’s new crayons, Blake’s new socks, the sweat still beading on Mae’s forehead.
The arms do not mind that he does not notice. But they do not tire.
They stay up all night: tidying, scrubbing, folding, rocking. One takes Mae’s temperature, one checks Tate’s diaper, one pours medicine, one props me up when I nod off.
There is always so much to do.
(ix)
In the morning, after breakfast and the bus, I itch again.
There are four new arms by noon.
(x)
Mae’s fever breaks, and the days—yesterday, today, tomorrow—bleed together.
The arms double each morning. By Friday, they are hard to count. By Saturday, they are hard to hide. On Sunday, I stop trying.
My husband looks at me and smiles. “I like this new look,” he says, kissing the back of my newest hand. Another reaches out to brush dandruff from the collar of his shirt. Is it my hand? I am not sure. I do not recognize myself anymore.
“Thank you,” he says. The hand, whosever it is, straightens his collar and drops to my side. I suppose it is mine then? I can feel its heat now, pulsing against my thigh.
(xi)
One week ends; another begins.
There are packed lunches for Jade and Blake, a stroller for Mae and Tate, a bus.
On the corner where the school bus stops, Kuan sandwiches one palm against the other and bows deeply, says I am blessed. Like Avaloketishvara.
I blink. I do not feel blessed. Have I met this Avaloketishvara? I think not.
She tries again. “Guanyin?”
I smile the smile of someone who should understand but doesn’t.
“Cundi?”
I keep smiling.
“The Buddhist boddhisattva,” she says at last, as if that explains everything. “The manifestation of compassion, with a thousand arms to help all in need?”
I nod but not because it is any clearer, only because the itching has begun again. All I want is home.
“See you tomorrow!” She waves with her one free hand, the one not holding her tea.
“Tomorrow,” I repeat, and all the hands wave back together.
(xii)
One arm plays with Tate.
One plays with Mae.
One washes dishes.
One prepares a stew.
I try to count them but lose track. I don’t think there are a thousand.
Yet.
(xiii)
I call my mother and tell her I can’t go on like this.
She says, “Oh honey, you don’t even know how many parents are thinking that right now.”
I tell my mother, “But I mean it.”
She says, “You’ll find a way, Bohdie. We all do.”
And then we hang up because she is late for the 6PM yoga class at the Y, and the arms must dish out stew.
I set the phone down, try to shake a fist at it, but the arms do not feel anger so the anger sits in my stomach, festering all night the way windfall apples rot slowly beneath a tree.
(xiv)
I know something’s wrong when the itch does not wait for daylight. It’s Thursday. No, Friday—but early, too early, just after Tate’s 2AM feeding. This itch does not care. It’s impatient. Hungry.
It’s the sting of a wasp in a wound already tender. And fire, like before. But also something more: a crushing twist in my gut that recalls those weeks before birth when the baby would turn. And it’s not my sides that itch now, but the dimpled husk of my womb.
I shrug off my tank top, flatten myself on the bathroom tile because I don’t want to wake anyone, and the itch is fire and the floor is cool. Somehow I contain the scream.
This birth is strange. This hand is a fist like a tight bud, a fist that bobs on an arm, an arm that lengthens to stretch up through the knot of my belly button. All of it is sickly green like a strange flower’s stem, unfurling slow—but not to grow. Not to follow the sun. Not to wave. This fist shakes out its fingers, then folds its fingers down, one by one, but for the long middle digit that jabs up in a proud and pointed salute.
This arm’s not like the rest.
And I think I am glad there’s only one.
(xv)
When Friday begins in earnest, the green arm sleeps; the others do what needs doing. One bounces Tate.
One butters Blake’s toast.
One straightens Mae’s bib.
One tightens Jade’s braids.
The rest dust and mop, sort and sweep and text. <grinning face with sweat emoji>
I don’t know how the fly gets in, only that suddenly it’s in the kitchen. <face with raised eyebrow emoji>
The not-green arms stop dusting, mopping, sorting, sweeping, texting. They open windows, fan the fly toward freedom.
The green arm waits until the fly lands on a crust of toast—then the green arm fists, strikes out, slams down, flattens the crust and the fly together, flicks the fly to the trash fast and recoils back toward the round warmth of my gut.
The not-green arms softly shut the windows, and shiver.
There are no goosebumps; they are not cold.
(xvi)
When the butcher knife goes missing on Friday—or is it Saturday? It must be Saturday, because my husband doesn’t wear a tie—my first thought isn’t, No!
My first thought is, Yes.
(xvii)
My mother calls with a story she’s told before, about the roses in her garden and how the weeds keep coming back.
“Nobody thought dandelions were weeds way back when, Bohdie,” she says. “The pilgrims farmed ‘em.”
“Funny,” I say, but neither of us laugh.
We hang up, because she’s late for Sunday night Drum Circle Therapy and the arms think a garden’s an excellent idea. Even the green arm is oddly giddy.
(xviii)
The arms don’t care that there are deep circles beneath my eyes, that it’s after dusk, and the kind of cold particular to spring nights. They want a garden. The green arm lazes, heavy against my belly, while the others apologize to the grass. They clear rocks, turn soil, spread mulch, nestle seeds, let the hose run until the air smells of damp earth. I forget about the missing knife until suddenly the green arm twists.
The blade glints in the moonlight.
The not-green arms are fast, but the green arm is faster.
The not-green arms are thick but the knife is sharp.
The not-green arms do not resist. Or fight. Or make a sound when they fall. I think the garden is happy to have them.
I think of my mother and her garden, her roses. Her dandelions, regarded as flowers so much longer than we’ve called them weeds.
The green arm does not hesitate: it severs itself last.
(xix)
Monday again. I bleed from not-quite-one-thousand wounds I have no hands to clean or bandage but the sky brightens and the blood is already slowing, already clotting; the wounds are already scabbing over and something in the garden is trying to grow.
I take a deep breath and fill the kettle because it’s fine. Everything is fine!
It’s another day, a new day, a day just like yesterday. And tomorrow.
My sides itch. But I’m getting used to it.
Tracie Renee Amirante Padal is a librarian, a Publishers Weekly book reviewer, and a poet who lives and dreams in suburban Chicago and writes for all ages. On the poetry side of things, she's a Best of the Net nominee and a three-time winner of Outrider Press’ Grand Prize in Poetry. Her words (for grown-ups) appear in The Eunoia Review, Prairie Home Magazine, and East on Central; her words (for kids) appear in The Dirigible Balloon and Little Thoughts Press. Please talk to her about running, dogs, books, crossword puzzles, and the joy of freshly sharpened pencils.