THREATS. They are everywhere. I stopped slipping ice cubes into Bobby’s mouth after Mara told me not to. (“But they melt,” I’d protested. “Not before you’re dead,” she replied.) She instructed me how to cut hot dogs, which Bobby would be eating in a few months. In half lengthwise, then in smaller pieces. The number one cause of accidental death in children between the ages of one and two is from hot dogs. Lethal. Everything around me has become a danger. Nothing is immune. The obvious ones—fish bones, muggers, Alar—are not of much concern. Now it is electric outlets, cotton balls, mobiles over cribs. A million ways to choke or suffocate present themselves, things I’d never contemplated before.
The night before Bobby was born I had taken a baby safety class. I sat, huge, already in labor, though I didn’t know it at the time, amidst terrified couples holding hands. “What do you do if your child is plugged into an electric outlet?” Mrs. Volkan had droned on in her Austrian accent. “What do you do if your baby is on fire?” For the latter you throw a blanket over him and beat down the flames. For the former, get a broom and sweep him away.
Even though Bobby has a few months before he begins to crawl, I baby-proof everything. Plastic plugs into sockets, latches on doors. I move the Drāno (I’ve heard terrible stories) and the Ajax to the top shelf. People—perfect strangers—regale me with stories of what happens if you drink Joy. I look at the boxes of jewels I keep around the house for repair. The worst-case scenarios present themselves. Bobby pulling himself up to swallow a diamond. A gold band. I move these to top drawers. I study the apartment. Corners of tables become enemies. I tape them smooth. I hide the plastic bags. The bars of the crib can choke. A mobile, the kind with plastic animals that go around, can kill. There are a million stories of the horrible deaths of children, not from violence, but from the basic tools of living. The world is full of weapons. We all suddenly are under siege.
And this is only what happens at home. It says nothing of the world outside, where random violence, disease, the fortuitous abound. An unemployed actor, walking by a building under construction, is struck dead by a steel beam. A child asleep in his bed in the projects is shot by a stray bullet. Pictures of missing children take on new meaning. These are not the faces of the abused, the neglected, the ignored. This is a child who was taken to a circus or went camping with his dad, never to be seen again.
In the supermarket one day I leave Bobby in the carriage with the checkout girl. I know her well and I am too tired to carry the baby as I shop. When I return, the manager scolds me. “If her back was turned, you know how easy it would be for someone to walk out of here with that kid?” Though I resist them, I read the stories of the things that can happen. A wind blows in the window of a cafeteria where children eat sandwiches and sip chocolate milk; a dozen of them are crushed. A man puts his pregnant lover on a plane from England, and everyone, including many college students returning home for Christmas, are blown away. One mother writes to the New York Times that her life is over. A father holds a hospital staff at bay with a gun while he pulls the plug on his fifteen-month-old son who has lived as a vegetable since swallowing a balloon. A balloon.
Anything becomes possible. The world is a threat. The ingredients on packages. (What is sodium chloride? What is BHT?) What are the additives? What do they spray the plants with? Will my son have bone cancer in two decades because of what I’m feeding him now? Will he get on the wrong plane? Stories that were other people’s problems now become mine. I weep as I read of a school bus that bursts into flames. And then there are drugs. And of course war. He could be drafted. I find myself praying as I never have for peace.
There are other cities, countries, where we could live. But Los Angeles had 137 days of ozone alert last year, and it has over two thousand gangs. DC has the most murders, but New York has more random crimes. There are street children in Seattle, ghetto crimes in Chicago. San Francisco seemed a nice place to live until the expressway collapsed.
I ponder how to protect this child. What can I do to keep him safe? I find myself, night after night, weighing the odds.