situations tolerable

navigating life in my first apartment

My first apartment was on the second floor of my cousin’s house. I moved in with my fiance after living at home until I was 25; I never had the chance to live alone.

The apartment consisted of a tiny kitchen that barely gave me room to maneuver to cook, a living room/dining area, a full bathroom, and one bedroom. It was small but liveable and I painted and decorated like it was my own house and not just some rooms stuffed into someone else’s home. We bought furniture and hung paintings and mirrors and my wedding shower provided us with all the accessories we would ever need. Every piece of decor was my idea — V. didn’t care about those things. He left me to my own devices and I thought I did a pretty good job putting our apartment together.

I got pregnant on my honeymoon or maybe a week after. I went off the pill the week before our wedding — I didn’t know I would immediately get my period in a debilitating way — thinking that my body would need time to reset after being on birth control so long. Oh, how stupid I was. We didn’t use any form of prevention. So there I was, pregnant and horrified at the situation we put ourselves in. A one bedroom apartment was fine for the two of us. But now there would be three, and we’d have to make do.

I craved mashed potatoes and Kool-Aid and made them both in my confined kitchen and developed gestational diabetes because I was an idiot. I chewed ice and got sick at the sight of raw meat. I spent a lot of time on the couch in our apartment, reading parenting magazines and wondering how long we’d survive living as a family in that small space. That V. was rarely home didn’t matter, his specter was always there, filling the spaces where I wanted him to be.

In August I spent three days in our bedroom with my feet up, afraid to move because I had been bleeding and my doctor told me not to get out of bed. I was afraid I was going to lose the baby and I watched tv and stared at the bedroom walls and thought about how I should have painted them something other than eggshell white. The bleeding passed. The baby was ok. I left the bedroom.

In October I had grown uncomfortably large already and one night I sat on the couch, legs sprawled, nursing my terrible heartburn, prepared to watch the World Series until I fell asleep. Then an earthquake happened in San Francisco and I spent the whole night watching CNN on the television that was a wedding gift from my grandparents. I fell asleep at about 1am on the couch and stayed asleep until I heard my husband coming up the stairs at three. He went right to our room. I stayed where I was and went back to watching news of the earthquake.

My belly grew and my desire to be a perfect wife and mother grew with it. We threw a Christmas party that December and I waddled around the house greeting friends and relatives who were crammed into our small but festive space. Some of them sat on the stairs smoking (it was the 80s, we did that) and drinking and some of them sat on my carefully curated furniture and everyone seemed to have a good time. My husband disappeared about an hour into the party and I didn’t question it. He disappeared often enough that no one asked me where he was.

In January we bought a bassinet and put it in a corner in the living room which was now designated as the baby corner. My sisters threw me a shower and the baby corner was stuffed with things we really had no room for but needed nonetheless. We didn’t know if we were having a boy or girl and the baby pile was a mess of mint green and yellow clothes. I set up the corner like it was its own room, with the changing table and bassinet and a small dresser to hold the small clothes and a mobile that played “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

The night of my shower I went to bed alone with yet another case of heartburn and then a plane crashed on Long Island and I watched News 12 until I couldn’t keep my eyes open anymore. I fell asleep and dreamed that I gave birth but couldn’t remember where I left the baby. I woke up with a start and my bedroom suddenly seemed too big for just me. I wandered out to the living room and refolded some onesies while I waited for V. to come home.

February came and I had my last day at work in the library. I came home from work and moved the bassinet into the bedroom and washed the kitchen floor because I heard that induces labor. I started to have real doubts about my ability to parent and about if I wanted to do this at all then had a large scale panic attack when I remembered that there was no turning back, there was no going backward to being just the two of us or just the one of me. The apartment closed in on me. I took a brisk walk up and down the block.

Natalie Rose came the next day. Her birth was traumatic and horrifying and scary and we almost lost her at one point. I was alone for all of it. My sisters and parents were out in the waiting room. V. was somewhere. But not where I needed him. She came out screaming, red faced, in distress. I vowed right there and then that I would do everything in my power to make sure she never cried like that again. I would protect her. I could do this, I told myself.

I came home two days later , full of stitches from an episiotomy and in terrible pain. I held my baby and fed my baby and soothed and burped my baby and I called my cousin every hour to ask questions like will she ever stop screaming and is projectile vomiting normal. I dressed her on the changing table in the small corner of our apartment and I sang the Traveling Wilbury’s “Handle With Care” to her over and over while I paced the living room, the hallway, the kitchen, holding her in my arms and willing her to stop crying. That song was the only thing that helped.

The things we needed to keep a baby happy and healthy took over our living space and felt every day like I was being submerged by motherhood. I opened the windows, even on cold days, because I needed air, I needed to breathe in something besides the smell of formula and diapers. I couldn’t, I wouldn’t take the baby out. It was too cold, too soon, and I stayed in, even after the parade of visitors trickled down to just my sisters and my mother. I stayed in and stared at the walls and folded clothes and prepared bottles and sang “Handle With Care” while I felt increasingly claustrophobic. I moved some stuff into the bedroom. I sat in a rocking chair with my daughter, reading Sylvester and the Magic Pebble to her, crying at the end every time. I cried a lot. So did Natalie. The eggshell white walls closed in on me and I was afraid of breaking, afraid that I would go crazy in this place that was supposed to be a cozy home but was starting to feel more like a prison. V. came and went.

In April we had Natalie’s baptism and at the party my grandmother pulled me aside and said “come live in my house.” She had a finished apartment in her basement with big windows and a spacious kitchen and two bedrooms and a cozy little living room. I said yes. I cried. In May we moved everything we owned -which consisted of some furniture and two carloads of baby stuff — to grandma’s house, where I’d always have someone to keep me company, to feed me occasionally, to watch tv with.

I took one last look around the apartment before I left. Void of furniture, of baby stuff, of the presence of anyone but me, it felt larger. It felt like it should have been enough. But nothing would have been enough there, nothing would have made the eggshell white walls seem less confining. I stood in the living room and hummed “Handle With Care” to myself before closing the door on my first apartment behind me for the last time.