The Assembler of Parts: A Novel Read Free Page A

His head hung down like a shamed child’s. Without looking at either of us, he whispered, “Yes,” and released Mother’s hand.
    I hung on to the other with four fingers.
    In the newborn period the mouth is dry as baked clay, unless made moist from the plucking of teeth or the sucking of teat. By that moment in my mother’s room the thin roots ripped away had ceased their bloody seep and again my mouth was all sand and talc. It is a circumstance, I think, well intended by the Assembler whose aim is to fix us with a constant thirst, to pucker us always for the wet sweet weep of mother’s milk. She put me to her breast. My mouth seemed me, all of me, more than me, as I tried to latch on to the milk nubbin she cradled me against. But at my first attempt, my lips closed before my tongue had settled. I squirmed and sucked but managed not a drop. She gently pulled me off and brought me back, but my tongue would not stop its useless flick, and my lips lost the way to a perfect seal. Away again and a pat on the back. A third attempt came so very close—a drop of colostrum before my tongue lost its way. My mouth seemed me, all of me, more than me—it was all thumbs.
    We switched sides and tried again. This time, it was a piece of cake. I nursed her to sleep on this second sweet breast. Her heart tapped me kindly to keep me awake all the while I sucked. She awoke to find my black eyes studying her face. Such a beautiful face, my mother’s. She smiled.
    I left my droopy-eyed mother a little while later after I had mastered her other breast and had lain warm and content with my cheek on her chest. The nurse entered the room and watched me watch my mother’s slow breathful rise. She took me up and placed me in the bassinet, leaving my mother content to rest after her labors.
    In the nursery I was reintroduced to the rectal thermometer. Not to be outdone, my infant bowel presented the world its first stool. Meconium, as sticky and greeny-black as that dark name suggests. My nurse withdrew her slender probe and said, “Well, aren’t you the best little one!” Something inside me deep as the roots of the rose knew I was. I slept well that night in the silent nursery.
    There were more tests and examinations in the next days. Many more. I helped the lady cardiologist listen to my heart. I held still and tried not to breathe too fast as she positioned her cold stethoscope and colder hand on my chest. She had words for all the sounds of the heart. They fell from her lips to my eyes and to my mouth, and they were so hard they hurt: aortic, mitral, systole, diastole, shunt, murmur. I tried to help her hold the metal disc of her stethoscope, but she moved my hands away. Her quick touch was like ice. Then she wiped her hands on her nursery outer gown. It stung to see her do that. But so ardent was she for the sounds of my heart, so much did her eyes register nothing, for her ears were her full self as she stood with black tubes in her face and caught my noises and dropped them back out of her slack mouth, that I forgave her wiping and tried not to breathe. She was the first to hear the sounds of my true heart, its leaky swirl and swish, and was true enough herself to whisper them to me. So I rolled my fingers into bird fists and lay on my back. I waited for the shape of words from her lips to fall at me. My hands unfurled like flowers to catch them. I knew not then the fruit of those sad blossoms. It was a good thing, really, not to know.
    The pictures she later took with her echo machine told the story of my sounds without words. The holes not given to my ears had somehow been mounted in my heart. Ventricular septal defect, atrial septal defect. The Assembler napping on the job again, not quite finished with the knit of tissue to quarter my heart to chambers, upper, lower, left, right.
    The tally grew: two thumbs, twelve bones, one kidney, and two holes in the lace of the heart.
    The news she gave my mother, though, was excellent. The