Nothing Untoward: Stories from "The Pumpkin Pie Show"

Cheek

contents

introduction

childcare

mama bird

diaper genie

rugrats

throwing golem

family photos

daycare

undertow

birds and the bees

ascending the stairway

bridesmaid

late bloomer

gladiatorum

condo lothario

cul-de-sac descending

v.d.

sixteen again

commencement

part one: staph infection

part two: early release

part three: keynote speaker

love stories

fillings

overbite

birdfeeder

president of the fan club

oldsmobile

the interstate and on

the battle of belle isle

ghost stories

b-side

split ends

diary debris

cropduster

buffet of the damned

mouth-to-mouth

reward money

hobo sterno

soft targets

grand marshal

party favors

pixels

giving head

the suitors’ ward

uss nursing home

suicide bomber

acknowledgments

about the author

introduction

Celebrating its second decade of performances, The Pumpkin Pie Show is a literary fist in the face. Part storytelling session, part boxing match, part shamanistic ritual, The Pumpkin Pie Show has established itself as an all-points artistic hodgepodge of theater and literature. We pick and choose the essentials of both mediums, channeling their rocking properties in order to create a more intimate relationship between performer and audience. Certain basic rules that we’ve set up for all our shows are: No sets. No costumes. Nothing beyond the text and the performance itself. Our goal is to strip away those elements that we find extraneous to the tale being told, conjuring up an atmosphere of creating something out of nothing, as well as focusing on that ethereal connective tissue between the one telling the story and the one listening. Packed with enough emotional intensity to feel like a rock concert rather than just a storyteller spinning a yarn, The Pumpkin Pie Show is pure bedtime stories for adults.

The stories you find here were originally presented in part of the long-running storytelling session The Pumpkin Pie Show. The name had popped up in a few zines I’d stapled together in high school, but it wasn’t until October 31, 1996, at the North Carolina School of the Arts that I put together an actual show under the Pumpkin Pie moniker.

Our first performance in New York City would be a year later for the First Annual New York International Fringe Festival. We were a trio of scrappy Virginia kids who didn’t have the forethought to secure a couch to crash on. Our venue owner took pity on us and let us stay in his theater after he closed up shop for the night, as long as we promised not to burn the place down. From there on out, the black boxes of the Big Apple were our home.

Think of The Pumpkin Pie Show as bedtime tales for big kids. Think of it as campfire-style yarns with a little punk rock thrown in.

The show’s goal has always been to foster an intensely intimate relationship between the performers and audience, which meant doing away with the fourth wall that divided one from the other. To achieve the hyperkinetic level of catharsis these characters demanded, direct address was the only way to go. We want to see the whites of our audience’s eyes—while they could stare into the abyss of these characters’ murky souls.

Read these stories out loud. Or read them to yourself. They are meant to work both on the page and onstage. Each story is a glass jar containing another rare character, safely sealed inside . . . until you twist off the top and release them. All they want is a captive audience. Someone willing to listen to them tell their side of the story.

Clay McLeod Chapman

Childcare

mama bird

Shelly’s at that age where she’ll put just about anything into her mouth.

Case in point—just the other day, we were in our backyard. Remember when the temperature finally hit the sixties? Not a cloud in the sky? That day. Seemed like a perfect opportunity to let her loose. Explore the great wide open of our own backyard. Lord knows I needed to escape the house, get some fresh air. Shelly’s off and crawling across our lawn, tugging up clumps of grass by the fistful, while I just collapsed into one of the deck chairs along our back patio and promptly passed out.

Naptime for Mommy . . .

I couldn’t have dozed for more than a minute.

Two minutes, absolute tops.

I open my eyes—and there’s Shelly, sweet lil’ Shelly, sitting upright all on her own. Her lips peel back to flash me that gummy grin of hers. Total Kodak moment. Her tulip dress scrunches up around her waist just a bit, baring her knees. She’s peppered in grass, head to toe, a few stray blades skewering her corn-silk hair.

There’s this sliver of pink wriggling against her lips.

At first, I think she’s sticking her tongue out at me. But her tongue seems to be struggling. Resisting the rest of her.

Is that a worm . . . ?

No—this is segmented, whatever it is.

Elbowed.

I rush right over—and sure enough, there are shards of eggshell scattered in her lap. All around her feet.

Shelly’s gumming a baby robin, freshly hatched.

I see the nest now, perched in the birch just above her head. The infinitesimal peeps of this chick’s siblings chirp out for their fallen family member—while the contours of my daughter’s cheek keep shifting, ballooning out as that newborn bird butts its head up against the inside of her mouth, struggling blindly to find a way out. One of its featherless wings has wrestled free from her lips, scissoring against her button nose like an undercooked buffalo wing fighting back its attacker.

Shelly Anne Lassiter, I shout. Get that thing out of your mouth this instant!

I have to dig my finger in. There’s just no other way. Cupping the back of Shelly’s head with one hand, I push my pointer through her lips and try to scoop that robin out from her jaws. I can feel the crunch of the hatchling’s toothpick skeleton against my skin as Shelly only bites down harder. Biting me now. Her own mother. Felt like a mousetrap made of Bubble Yum and bone snapping against my knuckle.

I yank my hand back—intact, thankfully. Cupped in my palm is whatever’s left of that robin, nothing but a knot of pink limbs tangling into one another now. This crumpled mess of wet origami. Poor thing hadn’t even opened its eyes yet, a pummeled sheath of purple skin still sealing them off. One of the eyeballs had popped, dribbling from the lid. I’m getting ophthalmic jelly all over my hands now.

Splendid.

Shelly starts waaaailing because I’ve taken her food away. All the blood in her peanut-shaped body boils up into her head, flushing her cheeks beet red. A slender tendril of drool snakes down her chin as she just keeps howling and howling, a piece of eggshell still clinging to the contorted corner of her lower lip.

Shelly just doesn’t understand. Just doesn’t get it. One simple rib, one stray splinter of bone could bury itself in the back of her throat and cause her to choke, and that would be that, now, wouldn’t it?

That’s why mama birds have to chew their babies’ food first, I tried to explain before popping the robin into my own mouth, mincing it down into a pretty sufficient pre-masticated pâté for her. Na wopen wie, hon, wo mwawa can weed oo . . .

Whenever we do this, I like to pretend I’m a frozen-yogurt machine. Who needs cups when you can lean your head over and pump a dollop of soft-serve straight into your kid’s mouth? Just a little game we play. Isn’t it more fun that way?

Lunch is served . . .

Shelly’s not like other children. She lost twenty percent of her birth weight the week after she was born. Twenty percent. All we brought home from the hospital was this shriveled infant. Some freeze-dried baby with all of her body fat wizened away. Skin and bone. I expected some nurse to slip me a set of instructions: Just add water and—POOF! Your baby’s back up to her normal body weight once more!

She had the thinnest limbs you’ve ever seen. Her ribs pressed against her chest with every breath. I was afraid I was going to break her if I held her too tight.

Not that I told any of the other mothers that.

I joined the local Stroller Patrol. You know—one of those mommy groups. Just to get out of the house for a while. I needed to see if I was the only one losing sleep. This mafia of mothers from the neighborhood all flock to the local coffee shop, gridlocking the entire café with their SUV baby buggies. Lattes in hand, they all whip out their boobs and breast-feed en masse as if to take part in some massive celestial lactating ceremony. I would simply sit there and listen to the earth goddesses fawn all over their babies—My little snowflake latches right onto the nipple, my darling angel is already in the seventy-second percentile on the weight index . . .

Once they realized I hadn’t joined in on the ritual, hadn’t unholstered my mammary glands for all to see, I’d had to bashfully confess I just wasn’t feeling plucky enough to let my kid feed in public quite yet.

I don’t think my breasts are ready for their grand unveiling right now . . .

Which was true.

Partially true.

Shelly wouldn’t nurse at first. Wouldn’t latch on properly. It wasn’t for a lack of trying on her part. She tackled mama’s ta-tas head-on. I’d find bite marks along my breasts, bruised black and blue. My nipples were gnawed raw until they bled.

Henry, my darling husband—he thought we should bottle-feed her. But, I’m sorry, what baby books had he been reading, exactly? What keyword searches had he done at three in the morning to lead him to this lil’ epiphany?

Oh—that’s right. None. Not a goddamn one.

Don’t think I hadn’t noticed the stack of parenting guides all piled up on his nightstand table with all the appropriate chapters already marked off with a fine feathering of Post-it notes, all the important paragraphs already highlighted for him in bright, blinding Big Bird yellow—by me—unread, collecting dust, for months now.

Maybe we should just bottle-feed her, hon . . .

Formula would be forfeiting. I’m supposed to be Shelly’s food source. Not some prepackaged powder. Not some protein shake made by some company.

Me.

I wasn’t giving up on my body just yet.

I asked if the Paxil would affect my breast milk. Dirty the dairy, if you will. My doctor promised me nursing mothers only pass on the tiniest trace amounts of their antidepressants to their babies. So low, he swore, it’s virtually impossible to detect.

Good enough for me.

Sign Mommy up, please . . .

I told him I was having difficulty sleeping.

Which was true.

Mostly true.

I had just found a wing that afternoon. A housefly’s wing. Musca domestica—translucent, webbed in veins. Pasted to Shelly’s lower lip.

Now how did that get there?

Shelly had been napping in her crib—still asleep, thank God—so I flexed my pinkie to try and gingerly swipe it away from her mouth, praying she wouldn’t wake.

The motion tugged her lip back just a bit.

There. Right there.

Buried below the gumline. A black fragment floating in saliva.

Is that a . . . fly’s leg?

So it began with small things. Bugs, mainly. An ant’s thorax would dribble out from her mouth. She’d cough up the husk of a grasshopper. One afternoon, a ladybug landed on Shelly’s forehead, scuttling down her nose. I was about to flick it away—but instead, I just watched. I was curious to see what might happen. What Shelly might do. I watched that ladybug enter Shelly’s open mouth. Watched it descend into the darkness of that three-month old gummy grotto. Watched Shelly’s lips slowly seal themselves around the red metallic button of its body and swallow that ladybug whole.

Gulp.

Gone.

Shelly’s crib was quickly becoming a burial ground for insect debris she couldn’t swallow properly, as she hocked up all the antennas and pincers that got caught in her throat.

But Shelly was gaining weight now! Her ribs sank below a soft padding of buttery baby fat. Her cheeks puffed up, perfectly pink.

My little snowflake.

My baby girl.

Teething had been tough. Her gums grew very tender, very early on. As early as four months old. Shelly cried herself silly through the night, just wailing away in pain. Henry, darling Henry—he could sleep through his own murder without waking up once, so guess who was left to tend to Shelly whenever she got fussy at 3 a.m.?

Bring on the benzocaine!

Our pediatrician suggested I rub a finger slathered up with the stuff along her gums to help massage the soreness away. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’ve borrowed a bit of Shelly’s prescription for myself now and then, polishing off the tips of my nipples with a little smidge of ointment. Just to take the edge off. A little dab on my temples until my skull was feeling comfortably numb. Then I’d slip my index finger in Shelly’s mouth and slide it along that rubbery ridge, just as the good doctor instructed, seeing if I could feel any teeth budding up from below.

All the baby books say the first tooth to usually erupt from the gums is one of the lower central incisors, so I was a bit taken aback by the bony rim along her upper gumline. Hadn’t really expected to cut myself on it, either, but—surprise.

This didn’t look like the kind of incisors I’d seen budding up from the mouths of all the other babies at my mommies’ group. The further it emerged from her gums, the more that tooth tapered off to a fine point. Nothing but this slender cone of sharpened bone.

Sure looks like a beak to this mama bird . . .

Prozac is a slower-moving molecule, my doctor explained. It lingers in the mother’s bloodstream for weeks. It’ll slip into her milk. There’s a risk of developing elevated levels of the antidepressant in her baby’s blood, if she’s not careful . . . That’s why he preferred Paxil over Prozac. We don’t want to hurt the baby, now—do we?

I told him the Paxil wasn’t working for me anymore. I’d lost my appetite. Lost sleep. Days’ worth of sleep. I was afraid of harming the baby. I was beginning to feel a particular resentment toward my husband, who hardly ever lifted a finger to help. All very Googleable symptoms for mothers suffering from postpartum depression.

Which were all true.

Mostly true.

Shelly just wouldn’t touch the food I’d make for her. None of the blended vegetables. The mashed bananas. I couldn’t get her to eat anything.

So let’s say a cricket just so happened to hop into the blender while I was about to press puree—you couldn’t fault me for turning a blind eye now, could you?

The fact of the matter is—bugs weren’t enough. Not anymore. Shelly was only growing larger and that meant her diet needed to move up the food chain.

The mice hadn’t been all that bad. Much better than grubs. Once you get over the crunch, it’s all downhill from there. An amuse-bouche from our own basement. I tried frying them up at first, but nope-nope—Shelly prefers her meals à la tartare.

The food processor blends them into a pretty pink puree. Nice and warm.

What flavor will it be today, honey? Mouse mousse? Hamster frappé? The choice is all yours . . .

I hadn’t realized my prescription had run out until my doctor called. Turns out we even missed Shelly’s four-month checkup, which is a big no-no. Now we’re behind on our vaccinations and there’s a bad flu bug going around—but to be completely honest, I was more worried about our pediatrician poking around Shelly’s feathers.

I’d gotten a few e-mails from some of the mothers. Just checking in, see how you two are doing . . . Truth is, we don’t leave the house that often anymore.

I left Shelly at home with Henry for one last visit to the mommy group. Bid them and their babies adieu. While I was with them, watching them all breast-feed, I wanted to ask:

How far would you go to feed your little snowflakes?

Would you catch their food in a nonlethal mousetrap?

Would you head to the pet store and pick up whatever draws the least amount of attention your way?

If you were really in a pinch and needed to whip something up quick, would you chew their food first and regurgitate it back into their mouth?

What would you do, moms?

I would do anything for my baby girl.

Anything.

I found Henry still in bed. Shelly was squatting just next to his head. From the looks of it, she had pecked out his eyeball. She was tugging on the optic nerve as if to uproot an earthworm, that slender red tendril elongating itself between Shelly’s beak and Henry’s hollow socket. The nerve snapped—oopsie daisy!—the sudden release in tension sending her tumbling onto her back.

We keep Henry in the baby room now.

What’s left of him.

Shelly sleeps with me in our bed. I flipped the box spring over. Filled it full of pillows. I padded it out by plucking the stuffing from the couch cushions.

Our own little nest.

Pickings are getting pretty slim in the house now that Henry’s starting to spoil. I’ll gorge myself on as much as I can stomach before swooping back into bed. Shelly will tilt her head back as soon as I lower mine, my lips hovering just above hers. Nearly kissing each other. She opens her mouth wide as I pump my neck up and down, bringing her meal back up and funneling it into her mouth.

That’s it, hon. Be a good girl and swallow it all down . . .

Swallow.

diaper genie

As a father, you think you’re prepared for anything. Fevers. Stomach bugs. The worst your baby’s body has got to offer.

Then you see it, actually see that snail shell caked in crud, and you realize—No, there are worse things in this world than an upset tummy. Much, much worse.

Poo in the hoo-ha.

Nothing scarier. Taking that moist towelette and wiping away the fecal matter from the folds of my infant daughter’s unmentionables is by far, above and beyond, the most horrendous thing I never expected—never dreamed—I’d find myself doing.

For those first few months after Tammy was born, I avoided changing her diaper at all costs. You couldn’t pay me to do it. That’s a real shitty thing to say, I know. I mean, we really could’ve used the money. But I dodged every dump, I shirked every turd. As soon as that oaky aroma wafted up from her PJs . . . Oh, I immediately realized there was an emergency e-mail I needed to reply to, or Oh, the kitchen trash needed taking out, toot suite, stranding my wife with diaper detail.

Again.

I know, I know. Father of the Year here. But I bet you ten bucks I’m not the first daddy to duck a dirty diaper. And for all you gentlemen out there who’ve never had to attend to an infant’s shit—to you, my good unsullied sirs, I say:

Just you wait . . .

The moment you’re faced with your first diaper on your own, alone, there’s no going back. You don’t get to be grossed out anymore. You don’t get to be disgusted.

You’ve got a job to do. So you do it.

And you doo-doo it.

And slowly, surely, over time, you’re not so grossed out by it anymore. You barely even notice the smell. Because these are your daughter’s turds we’re talking about here. This is your kid’s shit—and you come to love it, in its own pungent way.

You got to. You just got to.

But yes, Your Honor, full confession—for those first few months, I simply went on autopilot whenever I wiped. Can you blame me? I didn’t even look down most times. I couldn’t. I’d just lift up Tammy’s legs, yank off the old diaper, wipe, wipe, wipe, strap on a fresh one—and there you have it. Good to go.

Next.

Sometimes I think Tammy can manipulate her movements. Bend her bowels to blow at her own will, just to mess with me. I showed up to a job interview with a sludgy smudge on my shirtsleeve, all on account of some spur-of-the-moment diaper change just as I was rushing out the door. I hadn’t even noticed until halfway through my interview. This pimple-faced manager started sniffing intermittently, taking a whiff in between questions about my team-building skills. He picked up on this errant odor my nose just couldn’t anymore. My nostrils had burnt out long ago.

Had one of us stepped in dog doo? Did I just cut one in mid-interview and now I’m playing it off like I can’t smell it?

. . . Or is that yellow blemish on my cuff a splotch of my daughter’s diarrhea?

Ding ding ding.

Didn’t get that job.

We’re living in a world of shit, my friends. Some of us have just been wading through it for so long, we don’t even smell it anymore . . .

My wife blew through her maternity leave. Six weeks. That’s it. That meant I was on daddy detail during the day while Mommy went back to work.

Could’ve sworn Tammy was saving up her dumps until after Mom had left for the day, leaving me to clean her up. Sure seemed to me she never pooped after business hours. Even her crap got to clock in and clock out.

Was I the only who didn’t have a job around here?

I was about to toss out this particular pair of Pampers when I glanced down and noticed something . . . peculiar. I’m surprised I even spotted it, it was so slight. A trick of the light. It looked as if there was an indentation running through the poo.

So I leaned over and took a closer look.

Of the three pebbles rolling around the absorbent reservoir of my daughter’s diaper, each turd looked like someone had taken a stick and scratched a picture