Free How to Party With an Infant by Kaui Hart Hemmings Page A

elbow.”
    “Or butt!” Ellie says.
    “Or my mouth. Why can’t you just kiss me on the lips like the other kids?”
    “The other kids don’t kiss you on the lips.”
    “Well, you should.”
    “I should kiss your butt!”
    “Or my belly, or my foot.”
    “A foot is dirty!” Ellie says.
    “So is a butt,” Mele counters.
    “But a butt has clothes on it.”
    “Right,” Mele says. “Anyway, you shouldn’t do it anymore, okay?”
    “But I just want to kiss your butt all the time!”
    Mele thinks about this. “I understand,” she says. “It is something people ought to want to do.”
    It is settled then. Her daughter made a good argument. She often does, and sometimes it makes Mele really proud. Other times she wishes Ellie were one of those dumb kids she sees all the time—malleable and silent.
    “Want to go to the park?” Mele asks. Why did she ask that! She needed to state: We’re going to the park. No choices. Please say yes. She wants to see Henry. She has been telling herself all day that she didn’t want to see Henry—she just wanted to go to the park, like always, but why lie to herself? It’s impossible, and it’s such a better feeling than wanting to see Bobby. Plus, Georgia said she had a story for her.
    “The park!” Ellie says.
    “The park!” Mele says. Everything has been so easy. And yet, there are many more hours left in the day. Mele always pencils in “some kind of conflict” into her mental calendar, so that she’s not disappointed if it comes. It’s expected, a fact of life. It’s right there in the calendar.
    *  *  *
    The Panhandle is not a dreamy playground. The equipment is old and somewhat dangerous. The wooden structure with the slides has a sign on it that says, WASH HANDS. WOOD CONTAINS ARSENIC. Parents are always finding cigarette butts in the dirty, gritty, not-really-sand sand. Georgia once found a Bud Light bottle cap in Gabe’s mouth, Gabe, who just the other day made an unfortunate voyage into the bushes,where he stepped into a pile of shit that (because of the corn) was most likely human. Mele sees Georgia on the bench.
    “Hey,” Mele says, looking around to see who else is here.
    “Hi there,” Georgia says. Her nose is red and she looks like she’s in a sitting savasana—dead man’s pose. Ellie runs to play with Gabe. Mele puts a sweater on over her sweater. Clouds and a chill usually hover above the Panhandle as though it’s an ogre’s castle.
    “Cold,” Georgia says. “I don’t know why we come here.”
    Georgia lives near Dolores Park but likes the playground’s proximity to Ben & Jerry’s and a little organic market where she buys things she can’t afford. She carries her produce in her hands and the crook of her arm, showing off her squash and bitter melons.
    “Here you are,” Georgia says, pulling down her shirt to nurse, not her newborn, who is swaddled in the stroller, but Gabe, her almost three-year-old son.
    “Oh God,” Mele mumbles. It disturbs Mele to see a little boy nurse when he’s able to walk and talk, too. Gabe is tall enough that he could probably stand to nurse if Georgia sat down and leaned over. It’s like she’s the water boy on the sidelines, or that person in a boxing ring that squirts water into the fighter’s mouth. The poor gal seems constantly overwhelmed. Her life is stuffed in the lower compartment of Zoë’s stroller. And three kids, boy. That’s just asking for it. Although, Henry has three kids. Mele recalculates: three kids + no money = asking for it.
    “Is anyone else coming today?” Mele asks. It’s always a bit awkward with just Georgia. They never seem to have a lot to talk about.
    “I think so,” Georgia says. “It’s early.” Gabe wipes his mouth and heads back out to play.
    “George,” Mele says and gestures to Georgia’s huge, hard breast she forgot to fully tuck back in.
    “Oh!” she says, then plucks Zoë out of her stroller. “While it’s out . . .”
    She presses her