Turn 137 of 233

Call Janet and tell her about Kimo's one-month mark and take him to Jess's shop for a follow up visit. Both Kimo and I haven't showered or performed any form of hygiene. I got him his vaccines though, I'm not an anti-vaxer

Lena calls Janet from the balcony floor. Kimo is on her chest, humming, his fist curled around the strap of the harness. The phone is on speaker because Janet likes to hear the humming — she has said so twice now, and Lena remembers things like that. The call connects on the second ring.

"Mom."

"Lena. How's my grandson."

"He's a month old today. Twenty pounds and change. Dr. Parekh says he's off the charts — literally. She's making him his own growth chart because the standard ones don't fit him."

Janet is quiet. The Janet quiet is different from the Samuel quiet. Samuel's silence is a wall being built. Janet's is a room being filled. She is absorbing the number and finding the place where it lives alongside everything else — the wish, the construction site, the tattoos, the bare feet, the boy named after her husband's father.

"Twenty pounds at a month," Janet says. "Samuel's father was nineteen at birth. This boy is — Lena, he's something."

"He's something," Lena agrees. Kimo shifts against her chest and the humming dips a note lower, like a cello settling into a deeper register.

"I got his vaccines yesterday. The full schedule. I'm not an anti-vaxer, Mom."

"Good," Janet says, and the word comes out sharp and clean, like a nail driven flush. "Good. That's not — Lena, that's not optional. You did right."

"I did right."

The conversation is short after that. Janet asks about feeding — every two hours, sometimes three, the boy eats the way Lena eats, large and deliberate. She asks about sleeping — he sleeps through nail guns and saws and Daryl's profanity but wakes for food. She asks about the humming and Lena holds the phone closer to Kimo's chest and Janet listens and the listening is the kind of listening that has no words attached to it. The call ends with Janet saying "we're proud of you" and the "we" is the "we" that includes Samuel whether Samuel says it or not.

Neither Lena nor Kimo has showered. The boy is a month old and he has never been bathed and he smells like milk and skin and the warm sourness of a baby who lives against his mother's body. Lena's skin is what it has been for months — unwashed, tanned dark, the tribal ink black from ankle to neck, the steel barbells in her nipples and navel catching light, the body hair thick on her calves and thighs and belly and underarms. Her feet are callused and cracked and dark with months of barefoot concrete and dirt. The not-hygiene is a choice. The vaccines are the line — the bright, clear line between freedom and foolishness. Lena knows where the line is. She stepped over one and planted her feet on the other side of the other.

Jess's shop on Tenth Street opens at eight and the chime rings and Jess looks up from the autoclave and sees Kimo and the face does the thing — the guard drops, the softness surfaces, the eyes change. The boy is bigger. The face is rounder. The fists are wider. Jess comes around the counter and reaches for him and the reach is the reach of a woman who held a baby in this shop two weeks ago and has been thinking about it in the quiet hours between clients.

"He grew," Jess says. "Look at him. He's bigger."

"A month old. Twenty pounds."

"Twenty pounds." Jess holds him against her chest and the boy hums and her hands are careful — the same careful hands that hold a tattoo machine for six hours straight, the same steady fingers that inked every line of the tribal suit on Lena's body. The maternal thing is there again, living below the ink and the steel and the sharp eyes.

"He smells like —"

"Milk and me," Lena says. "We don't shower."

"I can tell," Jess says. The voice is not judgmental. It is the voice of a woman who works in a shop that smells like green soap and blood and ink and knows what bodies smell like when they are left to themselves. She shifts Kimo to her shoulder and the boy's fist closes around a strand of her hair and she doesn't pull away.

"He's healthy though."

"Thriving," Lena says. "Dr. Parekh's word."

Jess holds Kimo for ten minutes and the boy sleeps against her shoulder and the shop is quiet and the needle is quiet and the morning light comes through the window and lands on the flash art on the walls. Lena watches from the chair and the watching is the watching of a woman who recognizes something in another woman that the other woman doesn't fully recognize in herself yet. The moment is the moment. Lena takes him back and the harness is warm and the boy is warm and the morning is warm and the structure holds.