Michelle Bitting

Pepe Is Having Puppies

~ Los Angeles, 1937 

I was checking on Pepe in the pantry again. Her whimpers were less often now, but sharper, more intense, when the doorbell rang. Pepe had tangled the bedding in her caged area that Mother and I set up with blankets, her water dish, and some meat scraps in case her labor went on and she felt hungry. The vet said we should line it with old towels and newspapers. It gets pretty messy, he said. Mother and I nodded like we both knew what he was talking about. I wanted to prove that I could manage big matters like birth, life, death. I’m sure we can handle it! I said. Mother smiled and shot me her wiser side-eye. Joanie, it’s a whole n’other ball game when the babies come… Her voice trailed off, and I lifted Pepe, wrapping her in the plaid blanket we’d brought and hustled the three of us out of there. Mother’s eyes were wide and watery. She was falling into one of her mysterious funks, her sad spells, and I wasn’t in the mood for an awkward scene in Dr. Condello’s office.

In the pantry, Pepe kept pawing at the paper and old bed sheets, turning herself around in circles like she does when she’s getting ready to poop outside, making sure there aren’t any snakes. It’s primal, it’s instinct, Father explained once when we were walking Pepe in the canyon. The doorbell rang again. Coming Richard! I hollered across the house. I was relieved when Pepe finally quit her spinning and settled down, coiling her head around towards her hips and tail like a nautilus. She stared up at me, forlornly. I’ll be back in a bit to check on you, Girl, I whispered, nuzzling her neck. She smelled fecund, gamey. I kissed the soft fur behind her ears and ran to get the door. 

When I saw Richard in his skipper’s cap, lava-red Christmas sweater with green reindeer leaping through ornaments every which way across it, a bottle of Mum’s in one hand and in the other, a small gold wrapped box, size of a grapefruit and tied with a black velvet bow—I knew something big was going to happen this evening, and it wasn’t just Pepe delivering her brood. There was a flushed and animated quality to Richard. Like when he’d come to dinner and talk loudly and at length to Mother about his plans for work and ideas for us, for our future, he’d add, looking up from his soup at me, sheepish but hopeful. Or when he’d get excited showing me his favorite schooners on our walks winding through the marina. Or the couple times we fooled around up at Lake Arrowhead or picnicking in Temescal Canyon Park, though always discreetly, his cheeks crimson and glistening, his hand up my blouse as we lay next to each other, but on our sides slightly, so our touching body parts were hidden and, to anyone strolling by, it looked like we were admiring the pine tree tops, watching for birds or the occasional prop plane passing overhead.

Richard didn’t push himself on me, not in any alarming way. He knew better, but it was clear he wanted all of me, including marriage. He’d driven across the country with his brothers and uncle, fleeing the nowhere land of Clay County, Florida, the dusty towns where everyone was hard up, hit by the Depression wrecking ball, some even forced to eat Spanish Moss and everyone cursing the fruit fly infestation. He’d been selling newspapers outside his father’s grocery store and saved up. He was only fifteen when he pitched his twenty dollars in for gas alongside his brothers, the deal being that jobs were opening up in California—Los Angeles—and a place called Long Beach they’d heard about where the aviation business was booming.     If he wanted a new life, a solid job, he’d have to pitch in some dough and do a portion of the driving. None of the boys had money for motel rooms—they’d take turns driving and sleeping in the car on the road. Richard was desperate to get away from his father who drank and bullied him, his brothers, and his mother, though she had some serious fire in her and could hold her own well enough, Richard reassured me when I asked, concerned. She wouldn’t be there for long either, he added. No, Adelaide was feisty and a fighter. According to Richard, a bohemian artsy sort. She tried to get her boys interested in movies and museums, but they weren’t like their caftan & Bakelite bead toting, en-plein-air-painting-in-the-park-on-Sundays matriarch. I imagined Adelaide getting along with Mother and Father if she ever made it to California.

Happy New Year, Doll! Richard gushed when I opened the door. I couldn’t help throwing myself at him, my whole body heaved up into his arms. I wanted this to be the way it was everyday—him coming home after overtime at the Long Beach plant, the long ride back along the coast in his car or his work mates’ cars, depending on whose turn it was with the pool they formed to save money. Me, here, like tonight, with a fire going—the roast beef, turkey, and potato mash aromas filling the house. I was tired of living with Mother who was always kept late at the studios. She and Father had split long ago, and now both their careers were non-stop busy; they went from one picture to the next with only a week of vacation in between if they were lucky and they weren’t expected on set at the start of shooting whatever film came next. Sometimes Mother and I would get away to Lake Arrowhead or Father would scoot us down to Palm Springs. But nothing was regular or cohesive—the mirror of our enviable thespian family had fractured long ago. Mother and Father had tried so hard to coach and groom me to be like them, but I was not like or one of them, really. What a waste… I heard Father telling Mother when they thought I wasn’t listening. He loved me, I knew, but so much money lost to years of acting, dance, photos, voice, violin lessons. If we were a pack, I couldn’t quite perform the family tricks. I was the odd, untalented dog out.

I gave Richard another squeeze and smooch on the cheek, carefully set his package on the fireplace mantel and excused myself to put the bubbly, as Father always called it, in the icebox. The roasts crackled in the oven and potatoes gurgled in the pot. Rosemary and warm beef and turkey fat scents swirled through the kitchen. I swooned, thinking of Richard’s hands, Pepe’s bulging, milky teats, how good our supper of meat and buttery mash would taste, topped by the maple pumpkin pie I’d baked that morning. I didn’t want to worry about Pepe who whimpered softly while I lit candles and set our table for two. I thought of the day she came trotting down Cherokee Avenue in Hollywood when we first arrived here from the East coast, when Mother landed the big role in the film version of Three Live Ghosts, a play she’d starred in on Broadway when I was seven years old.  Pepe was just a puppy, alone and abandoned on the street behind Musso & Frank Grill, and we snuck her into our apartment, waiting days to see if anyone posted signs or claimed her before buying a collar and calling her our own. Mother insisted on naming her Pepe after the lovelorn lead character in the novel Doña Perfecta that she was obsessed with, I think because of her roots in Spain, being born there, her father the diplomat, the possibility of landing the part of the controlling matriarch Doña if the script came through and her agent could get her a reading.

Life may have been looking up for us those early days in Hollywood with Mother’s new film success, still, there was the fact of my half-sister Marjorie she’d left years before back in Britain with her first husband, a lord apparently, with the last name Pasley. Mother rarely spoke of Marjorie, and never to me directly, but I heard her on the telephone with Grandma Effie. Marjorie lived with Effie in the decade after Mother left to be on stage in London and then eventually New York and Chicago where she and Father acted in hundreds of plays. It was all tragic sounding with Lord Pasley dying when Marjorie was only eight and then Marjorie herself taken by the Spanish flu in 1918, the year after I was born here in New York. Mother says people only called it “Spanish” because that’s where it was first reported. I don’t think Mother will ever get over Marjorie dying while living apart from her like that. And to make matters worse, there was my little brother David who never left St. Giles, the hospital on Long Island where they sent babies and children suffering from polio. I barely remember David—he was three years younger and just a toddler when he contracted the dreaded disease. I do remember Father tearing up while buttoning my white rabbit fur coat. It’s time to go say goodbye to David he said, and when we got to the hospital, David wasn’t moving in his bed. On his once chubby legs that looked like bones or twigs now, there were metal braces. His head and arms didn’t move—he stared at the ceiling through half-shut eyes. His chest wrapped up in heavy blankets made his face weirdly tiny. He barely breathed and the room smelled like Lysol and vomit. I wanted to touch his hand, but Father said No! and held me back in the doorway. David passed away that night while Mother was performing at Greenwich Village Theater in the stage production of Three Live Ghosts, a show that made her famous across town. So, once again, she’d failed to be there for her child in their final terrible hours.  She was easily moved to tears and a bit of a depressive anyway, but when anything reminded her of her gone lost daughter and son, she’d shut herself up in the darkest room of the house and you could hear her muffled sobs for hours.

This is a red-letter evening, Doll, isn’t it? Richard laughed when he saw Pepe in her pen with her swollen belly. He hugged me close and kissed the top of my head. Pepe was panting but I swear she smiled up at us in her doggie delirium, her eyes tired and wild in anticipation of the approaching litter. I tidied up her pen a bit, rolling up the soiled paper and laying down fresh leaves. Richard busied himself with basting the turkey and stirring the roiling potatoes. He was always helpful in the kitchen. I do love that about him. Father hated cooking and always expected Mother to make the meals happen even though she worked harder than he did. Shall I whip the cream, Doll? I heard Richard call out. He must have guessed seeing the pumpkin pie I’d left to cool on the sink. Yes! I answered. I imagined him letting me lick the beaters, his fingers, and I started to sweat a little. I could feel my taffeta skirt sticking to the back of my thighs.

Later when dinner was almost ready, we sat down by the fire, roaring at that point because Richard wanted it toasty. So my Joanie’s slender fingers are nice and warm, he said, cuddling close enough for me to detect a minty, alcohol aroma. His dark hair was slick with pomade that glinted and sparked in the firelight. Peppermint Schnapps! I shrieked, without thinking. I realized what the ruddy sheen and jolliness, his ear-to-ear Cheshire Cat grin was about—nips of booze Richard must have enjoyed on the bus ride here. He never wasted gas money if he could help it. Oh, give me a splash, Richard! I tittered. We were sipping hot cocoa in holiday mugs from Grandmother Effie’s estate that Mother inherited when Effie passed. That was a terrible day, Mother getting the telegram. Not that they were close, not really at all. But I think there was a special connection, Effie’s care for Marjorie, and the sheer mysterious affinity theater people hold between them.

I doubt Mother would have been pleased to walk in and find me on the rug feeding Richard pecan balls, slipping the buttery white confections between his lips, sipping cocoa spiked with schnapps from a flask he’d pulled out of his coat, that he then tossed, along with any decorum over Mother’s favorite chintz chair. I like this better than champagne! I flustered while Richard released another pearl button from its eye in my white satin blouse. I felt giddy, euphoric. Plus, it reminds me of Father and holiday time, I added. I wish I hadn’t thought of Horace right now, wherever he was. Probably partying it up with Elinor Ince at the Château Élysée or Errol Flynn’s ranch house of iniquity in the hills. Oh listen, Doll, Richard said, his voice growing husky, dense, low, like he had eaten something rich with cream that was clotted in his chest and needed to be coughed up. I’m crazy about you, Joanie, you know that—

I was about to let Richard free another button, let him slide his fingers along my clavicle, his tips finding their way to my nipples and the pleasant prickly sensation flooding them right now, not unlike the little burn of schnapps on the back of my throat, waking up the flesh. I was thinking about how a light smack with my best horse hair brush on the back of my thighs and buttocks did the trick when I felt like overeating in my late teen years, and when I needed to think by myself about Basil, lock my door and crawl under the covers without my panties on—make myself feel better—a few bristly taps to my pubic area got the kettle simmering. I’d never told a soul, certainly not Mother or Richard; they’d think I was shamefully off. Not just the rough stimulation rituals, but my obsession with Basil who was not only a distant cousin but twenty years my senior. But that was ages ago. This crazy quilt of thoughts swirled through me when a howl from the kitchen pierced my reverie and the dream-bulb of liquor-laced delights Richard and I were suspended inside right now. Our private snow globe, like one of Mother’s Victorian Christmas tree ornaments of winter landscapes with icicle draped cottages tucked cozily inside a fragile ball of glass. Pepe! Oh, hell, Richard, Pepe’s having her puppies–I almost forgot!

We stumbled into the pantry and sure enough, the first matted loaf of slick dark fur was just emerging like a giant hairy poop between her hind parts, though only halfway at first. Jesus, will you look at that! I gasped. Richard was chuckling, rubbing my neck and shoulders, saying Don’t worry, Joanie, they know what to do. Pepe kept trying to squat and was panting hard, so I moved her water dish closer. She looked at me, lapped a few sips, made a sharp, yipping noise and the pup fell out of her, Pepe still panting but all toothy grin like she was smiling, proud of herself. It was all about tending to her first pup now when another one started crowning between her haunches. Streams of blood came in bright squirts, and Pepe licked the pups clean of placenta and bit their umbilical cords, one after another, until she had four nursing babies safely tucked into the soft bank of her underside, the little mewing brood that sounded like a hive of delirious bees sucking at her belly that still pulsed with labored breathing. I thought I might be sick, but I was also transfixed, like we were in some alternate realm and time had stopped, its ethereal gold dust abuzz and orbiting the primal, embryonic air around us.

Richard was on a stool stroking my head while I knelt by Pepe, rearranging her bedclothes, wadding up soiled paper and towels. Richard was waiting patiently for it all to be over, I figured, so we could resume where we’d left off by the fire. One pup came out stillborn, and the sight of its diminished frozen form, and how Pepe immediately turned away, rejecting it, her motherly attention set on her thriving brood, made me wince, and I started to weep, maybe from the sight of the dead runt, maybe from the Schnapps, maybe the rush of remembering the disappointments with Basil, Mother and Father, my lost siblings, our broken-home Christmas that was all I’d known since they split when I was so young. I’d pushed it all down to not feel so broken up, heart-stung, shattered. There, there, Doll, don’t be blue–it’s Christmas–and look at those pups, all that life! Richard leaned down to hug my head, and with his peppermint breathy mouth kissed the top of my scalp that was sweating from the booze and birthing frenzy. I’m sorry, it’s just so hot in here. What should we do with the dead one? I sniffed, trying hard not to cry because I was sure that soon I wouldn’t be able to stop the flood. But Richard was a beat ahead, reaching into the pen to wrap the stiff pup in newspaper. I ran to the kitchen. And this, wrap her in this! I said, handing him one of Mother’s embroidered tea towels to make a shroud. I didn’t know the sex, but I sensed she was female. Wait, let me hold her first, I said to Richard before he took the tiny bundle to dispose of out back. I didn’t want to know where, I was just thankful he was there to do it, take care of what felt too difficult for me. Shhhh… I whispered to the lump he’d placed in my palms. The chalk-white cloth with tiny pink musk roses embroidered along the edges was now stained dark brown and yellow from the afterbirth still caked to the creature. You’re okay, little one, I said, you’ll be okay, and I handed it back to Richard who looked at me with a quiet confidence, a strength, and just then I yearned for that power to hold me, to contain me forever, to make me whole—more than anything else in the world.