Dinah. My Dinah. Arnie wanted a girl so badly. He hung pink and blue cords from the ceiling light in the maid’s room, which was to be the baby’s room. He’d turn the tassels to see which would end up toward him, the pink or the blue. When pink, he was excited; when blue, sad. Yes, children, in those days doctors couldn’t tell the baby’s sex in advance.
I didn’t get a small round belly. I had a yard-long belly stretched out way in front of me. I wore my old camel-hair coat all winter; the button on the coat was pulled so far that the frayed thread stretched across my stomach. From the back one could see nothing; from the side I was formidable. I went to the unemployment insurance office one morning with my belly and coat. There was a Hispanic man who sent the people in line who arrived at his post even two minutes before the time printed on their cards back to the end of the line. It was a cold, gray winter day. Maybe five hundred people were lined up, maybe fifteen lines with fifty or so people shuffling forward. Everybody switched with the person behind them as they approached the counter so they wouldn’t be sent to the back of the line again and wait another hour. I reached the man a couple of minutes early, but I needed to get home. I had been carrying my belly in line for forty-five minutes, and yes, he told me to go to the back of the line. Suddenly I became La Pasionaria. My voice boomed: “I’m sick of being treated like shit! Who the fuck do you think you are? I’m not going to the end of any line. I’m pregnant, damn it. You take care of me right now. What’s your name? I’m reporting you for cruelty.” Rah rah rah.
Suddenly I had a revolution on my hands, and I was leading it. The place was in an uproar. People were crowding out of lines. Screaming at the guy: “Yeah! Yeah!”
“Petty power,” I yelled at him. “Petty power, that’s what you are!”
I had an army behind me. All the civil servants were scared. I was trying to think where to go with this when a warm arm came around my shoulder and a kind voice said, in a very “there, there” tone of voice, “I’m the supervisor. What’s the problem, dear?” He sounded like my childhood doctor, Dr. Berkowitz.
I pointed at my enemy. “He’s sending people . . .” My voice cracked, hot tears poured down my face. La Pasionaria shrank back into a pregnant, sobbing lady.
“Yes, yes,” the supervisor said as he led me to a cot in one of the offices. “Lie down. You can rest. I’ll take care of everything.”
I didn’t want to rest, but I had to. I was so ashamed of my blubbering, I couldn’t face my followers. Finally I crept out.
A month later, January 25, Arnie took me to Mount Sinai, sat around for a while, then left. I didn’t blame him. It was such a kind of boring anticlimax to wait, wait in white rooms. The day before, the newspapers had printed the Pope’s opinion on childbirth. “It’s a cinch,” he said in Italian. “Women drop babies in the field; it’s the most natural act in the world.” An hour later I was lying one leg hither, one leg thither, begging for anesthesia, screaming, “Fuck the Pope, put me out, fuck the Pope.” When I came out of it, they brought my baby to me. Red-faced, dark-haired, her head came to a point, her mouth stretched from ear to ear. She looked like Edward G. Robinson. I’d been going to call her Darya after my Grandmother Dora, but it was too fancy a name for that little face. “Dinah, I’ll call you,” and Dinah it was.
Tommy and Mikey sent cards across Central Park to Mount Sinai. Sweet little-boy cards. Eva slept over. Everybody wanted a baby in the house. The baby was big, I was small, so for months I carried around an inflatable ring cushion to sit on. My mother and father were exploding with joy. Arnie let them visit once a week. Early on Arnie had agreed to one feeding of Dinah when she woke up screaming at one or two in the morning. I wasn’t breast-feeding, so it was all formula, heating bottles from the fridge and putting the nipple into her greedy mouth. When Dinah wailed, it was a cartoon wail. A big black hole, with a surprisingly loud noise coming out of her little red face. On one of those two a.m. feedings, the wails didn’t stop. I made my way from the bedroom to the baby’s room. Dinah was red with rage. So was Arnie. They were both screaming. I took her from him quietly. We didn’t exchange a word. He went to bed. From then on, I took all the feedings.
Nothing, nothing could get between Dinah and me. She was a strong, funny baby. Even when I could feel myself sinking in my marriage to Arnie, she delighted me. She made me laugh. Fra Heflin had her little girl Mady at the same time I had Dinah, so Fra and I had each other, and the two babies visited in the building and in Central Park.
Dinah screamed her way out of her room into a crib in my room. She screamed out of her crib into her carriage, with me rocking her all night, then out of her carriage onto my bed, and finally from lying next to me to lying on top of my chest. When I couldn’t breathe anymore, I put her back in her crib, next to my bed, and shut the door to my bedroom. In the hall, encouraging me to stay outside and let her cry it out, were my three stepchildren. It was a hot night; the sweat was pouring down. As the hours passed and Dinah’s screams grew hoarse, the boys and Eva kept me from turning the knob on my bedroom door and picking up my furious baby. So hoarseness turned into laryngitis. I entered the bedroom. Dinah was still standing, red-faced, tear-strewn, indomitable, wide-open mouth still going Wha! But soundlessly. I lay her down in her crib, patted her back, sang to her, and she crashed. She slept in her crib in my room from then on.
As the tension between Arnie and me continued, Dinah was a great fun outlet for Tommy and Mikey; they had a funny baby sister to play with. Eva was conflicted. Dinah was yet another reason why her father wasn’t paying any attention to her. Eva would cry at night. I would sit on her bed. She wanted her daddy, not me. Arnie didn’t like tears, needy tears; he’d had enough of them. Eva was fifteen, a difficult age, and she was slightly overweight. Three strikes.