Bury This by Andrea Portes Page A

of secrets and shames and holes. A panic body. A fear vessel. A hurt-me cast.
    But the nine months of calm drug, the three hours of love drug, well . . . suddenly the body was not any of these shames and holes and embarrassments. The body was a fucking miracle. How did it do that? Where did that milk come from? How did it know to keep going? How did it know to change when the baby changed? Grow when the baby grew? Give the baby just what it needed, when it needed it? The right milk, the right chemistry? Each day, each week, each month, every month, after baby was born? Grow with baby? Change with baby? Shut off when baby was done? Only enough for baby? Unattainable, a mystery still, for science. All those lab technicians in white coats cannot do what one breast does without thinking.
    Ha!
    Why did I hate this thing again? The “weaker” sex. The “rotten walls.” The “feminine” vessel. Ha! What a laugh. Thinking, more than once, a joke but not a joke . . . if men had babies we’d be extinct. Dotsy went from frantic panic lush to calm love drug cherub without transition. Without awareness. Without strife. An accidental transformation. But a saving one. Nevertheless.
    And then, with little Elizabeth baby girl whoop whooping in Mercy General Hospital, in the ER, poked and prodded with tubes and pipes . . . Dotsy knew, knew in every cell of her veins . . . if the baby goes, I go, too. Where the baby ends, I end, too.
    Bury me with her. Bury me under the ground and I will hold her through eternity. I will wrap myself around her and kick off fate, protect her through the tides and the rapture and the infinite beyond. I will slip down deep under the dirt and carry her home.
    You cannot take her away from me. You cannot bury my baby. Bury me, oh Lord. Bury me.
    The panic of not knowing, the panic of not being able to fix it, the panic of helplessness. Fear. Worry. Screaming, pulverizing terror. Those days in August 1956. Those not-know days. Those stab-your-heart days. Dotsy spent mornings in Mercy General Emergency. Nights in Mercy General Ward. The Lt. Colonel begging her to come home. Sleep. You must rest. Please.
    Sleep!
    As if it were possible. No sleep. I’ll sleep when she sleeps. I’ll sleep when she sleeps forever. You won’t be able to wake me up then. Just try.
    And that final night, the end night, the night they all knew she was going, it was over.
    Dotsy had ducked out, around the block to a place called Dreamers, a far cry from the Downbeat Club on 52nd. A shit-basket watering hole full of bloats. An end-your-life hole. A give-up.
    In this place, knowing she would have to end her life tomorrow, tear her skin off, what would she do, how would she do it,knowing she would have to burrow down into the boot hill dirt, the cemetery bed. Dotsy had proceeded to get shit-faced.
    The panic button pushed, the terror gears grinding, the dizzying abyss had, after nine months of bliss and then three, caught up with her. Here it was again, say a greeting now to your old friend panic. Your lifelong friend. The one you trust. You thought you’d gotten away, didn’t you? With that nine months, and that baby girl, and that magic body, chest of gold? You’d thought it was over, this spinning cycle of fear? Well, drink up, Dotsy. It’s gonna be a long life.
    â€œI’ll have another.”
    Gulp.
    â€œI’ll have another.”
    Throw it back.
    â€œI’ll have another.”
    â€™Til the stool starts somehow not to hold and the mirror-glass wall of bottles starts to spin like a merry-go-round and suddenly, blissfully, thankfully, the panic-head flies up and Dorothy Krause, the Lt. Colonel’s wife, sways woozy off the bar stool onto the floor. The white-and-black checker tiles get to spin, too, and suddenly all the world is a white-and-black tornado and there are voices, yes, there are—but they are far away, up and above this spinning carnival ride, another