Kalila Read Online Free PDF

smell hangs in hospital air. Before the child was born, I said, And you must buy me roses. A dozen of them bloom with mad abandon in this sterile room.
    Brodie bumps my elbow, hands me the punch. Around us dancers bebop, forty-year-old balding men, trying for cool. An open window. The stuffy air creeps damp under my skin. Outside on the street a truck gears down, rolls by, and we’re wrapped in sudden diesel fumes, eyes smarting in dim and raw fluorescent light. Brodie takes me in his arms. We step into the music. We have ignored the dessert table, with its chocolate-dipped strawberries, its petit fours, its custard tarts.
    Tonight we dance the two-step, side by side, alone.

Your mother is not ten minutes in the house before she tells you the child did not sprout from your genes. Not her Irish genes, anyway.
    She’s scrubbing out the sink that you scrubbed out this morning. Her coat flung over a chair. Your parents stay for days. Our genes are strong, your mother says.
    You look at your face in the hallway mirror. I thought Aunt Betts had a baby born without a chest.
    I don’t know how you deal with this disorganization, your mother says. Will somebody put out the damn dog? He keeps tramping on my feet. His breath is terrible! Where do you keep the teapots? That wasn’t Aunt Betts. That was on your father’s side.
    Right, Joyce, your father says. Blame the Solantzes.
    On the counter, Maggie says. We keep them on the counter.
    You’re not putting green pepper in the chicken? Green pepper gives your father gas.
    You say, Real gas or ideal gas? and when no one gets your physics joke — I’ll get the car out.

    At the hospital, Joyce is put out by the smallness of the scrub room. There is a jar of flowers, daffodils and daisies, sitting on the coffee table in green water, as if someone got mixed up and thought it might be spring. Your father needs help getting the string tied on his gown. He makes jokes about being in a nightie, about the pretty nurses.
    We have to wash up, Dad.
    Larry’s hand rests on the door handle. What are we? Contaminated?
    You herd them in and along the crowded aisles.
    The child’s awake today.
    Say hello to your grandma and grandpa, you say gently to the baby.
    Joyce and Larry stare. The baby closes her eyes.
    They’re so wrinkled! Joyce, eyes flitting everywhere at bodies covered in tape, tubes sticking out of throats. At least yours looks kind of normal.
    They’re the size of goddamn roasting chickens, your father breathes.
    Hi, baby! Joyce shouts through the armholes, jolting the baby, startling nearby nurses. She eyes the tubes and needles. Hi, baby! It’s Granny! How the hell do you get her out?
    You open the isolette lid, arrange the tubes that bind her, hold your child out to your father, whose feet don’t want to move.
    Larry! Joyce says, and Larry’s feet unglue.
    You snap pictures of Larry, arms filled with the tiny lump of blanket. The oxygen tube slips from the baby’s nose onto the floor. Her skin is chafed and raw around her gastrostomy site.
    Joyce rescues Larry. You snap more pictures, hand the camera to Maggie, who shoots photos of you and your father flanking your mother, baby clamped against her. Say pickle! Joyce says into the baby’s face. A family moment.
    Okay, here, Joyce thrusts at you the swath of blanket. Larry needs to keep on schedule for his diabetes. Let’s go home and eat. Goodbye! Goodbye! she sings, flapping her arms inside the isolette. The baby breathes a rattly sigh.
    On your way out, a floor washer causes you to make a detour past the normal nursery. Joyce peers through the window. Look at that Pakistani baby crying.
    Mom, you say wearily, babies don’t cry because of the colour of their skin.
    You step through the sliding doors and into endless winter.

Iris phones from Ottawa. Her concern crackles down the wire. She and Ed drove to the Gatineau Hills this weekend. The colours were