The Golden State

Honey is on her feet and halfway out of the bar before I register her absence, mostly from Cindy’s expression, and I turn to see as she trips and falls over the hummock where the linoleum of the bar ends and the patterned floral wall-to-wall of the restaurant begins. She pops up like a top and begins brushing her hands anxiously the way she does now when she falls down, but I sense immediately through the Irish sunrise that something is different. Unlike with most of her falls she starts yelling, one anguished yell followed by a silence that I know portends real screaming. I lunge for her, knocking the table with my ass and sending the greyhound onto the seat where I’d been sitting. I run across the bar and squat down and try to wrap her up in my arms but she is frantically wiping one hand on my chest and screaming like I’ve never heard. A streak of blood appears on the placket of my white shirt and my stomach becomes a lump of plutonium. I cannot get her to hold her hand still. I see the hostess and Cindy hovering in my peripheral vision, the hostess holding out a napkin which I take without looking at her. “Oh my sweet baby my sweet Honey, show Mama your finger,” but I still cannot get her to hold still and finally have to grip her wrist very hard to see that the fat part of her tiny middle finger, her little grape, has torn open. Her sounds are no longer supported by the scaffolding of crying and are just awful rhythmic shouts. I look up and the hostess points to the corner and the bathroom. I bundle up the baby and smash her hand to my chest and run through the dining room where there are about five tables of people. I stumble on the way and hear the clatter of silverware as a man in a cowboy hat swiftly stands to intervene, but I right myself before he can take my arm and I say “Thank you” and keep running. I shut the door behind me and lock it set Honey on the counter and turn on the faucet. “Amee-amee-amee” she says, which I think is Mommy, and she looks at me with an expression that is equal parts puzzlement and pain, and she cries again and continues to wipe her finger on my chest as blood wells up again and again, and my body tenses as I imagine the flap tearing further through her agitation and I know that if I do not get a hold of myself I will throw myself around this bathroom like a terrible screeching missile and I have to settle and suddenly I do, I am calm, and I say “It’s okay.” “It’s okay, baby.” “It’s okay.” It occurs to me that she has never seen blood in quantity before, never had any kind of bleeding injury, and I see that after she wipes a new red gout onto my shirt she uses her other hand to try and wipe it off. I have to angle her body down and forcibly hold her arm straight to get it under the cold faucet and droplets of blood spatter as she flails. Someone I think is Cindy knocks on the door and says “I’ve got a first aid kit here” and I open the door with one hand on writhing Honey on the counter and take the proffered kit. Cindy muscles in and raises an eyebrow. “Think she needs stitches?” she says, looking at my shirt. “I… think with a cut like this you are supposed to do cold water and then see if the bleeding will stop.” The toilet paper mechanism rattles as I snatch a long trail of toilet paper. “I have this toilet paper,” I tell her moronically. I hold Honey’s arm hard enough there will certainly be a bruise and I endeavor to isolate the wounded finger from its mates, and see that blood continues to well out of the flap. Cindy puts a stabilizing hand on Honey’s shoulder and I twist the toilet paper around the finger in a lumpy, inelegant turban.

I survey the blood on the counter and in the sink and the drops on the floor and point out to myself with the impeccable logic of the drunk and frazzled that there is more blood because I have been drinking and drinking thins the blood, before I remember that it is in fact Honey’s blood, and Honey hasn’t been drinking, only me. “If… if you could just bring me my bag I have some hand sanitizer and some wipes I can use to clean up.” Cindy looks at Honey, who has, thank sweet God above, restored some of her natural composure and is pointing at the little puddles of blood on the counter and saying “Dah! Dah! Dah!” and backs out of the bathroom. The sound of Honey’s cheery normal voice leaves me rubbery, the adrenaline flowing out like blood down the drain of a slaughterhouse. I perch Honey on my hip and hug her and say “What a good, brave girl, what a scary thing, so good and so brave.” She begins crying again but in a more controlled way when I try to look at the toilet paper to see if the blood has soaked through. A bird’s-eye inspection shows a bloom of blood on the inner layers, but none have breached the integrity of the outer layers.