Learning to Be a Panda

My pregnancy tracking app sends alerts every morning, guiding me through what I’m supposed to be experiencing. Now’s about the time to stop wearing high heels, it says. I frown and rub my too-soft feet. These days, I’m hardly wearing any shoes at all.

Right about now, says the app, your colleagues should be noticing your growing bump. I pry open my laptop and stare at the day’s schedule of Zoom calls. No colleague has seen me in person for months. Try to meet other expecting mothers, it offers. Your baby shower’s an important opportunity to expand and deepen your “village” — and to show off your cute maternity outfits!

I pull on my face mask and latex gloves and walk with my husband to the hospital. For most couples, seeing your baby’s ultrasound is an emotional, once-in-a-lifetime experience. At the entrance, a security guard points a plastic gun to our foreheads. With our temperatures benign we make our way inside, but the guard stops my husband. “Sir, no visitors allowed,” he says. I nod, cringing with disappointment, and try to kiss my husband through our masks.

Afterward, on the sidewalk, people cross the street when they see me. I do the same, a common courtesy now, all of us engaged in six-feet-diameter dances. Nobody looks at each other except to monitor one another’s encroachment and to ensure that our masks cover both the nose and mouth.

How to Deal with Strangers Who Want to Touch Your Belly. This notification is actually an extensive guide. It tallies the many warnings — that unwelcome people will approach you in restaurants, on the subway, at the office, at the gym. They will comment on your huge body and your sex life and will downright rub their hands on your torso. Often they will be men. Often they will stare. And very often they will violate your personal space.

Try faking morning sickness, says the app. If you say you might vomit, people won’t want to touch you.

But out here, in my neighborhood, nobody wants to touch me. I can’t imagine a time when they will ever want to touch me. Instead, they walk with caution — inward and self-protective. It’s as if everyone is a little pregnant right now.

________

I call my parents, and we discuss how our respective state governments are flattening — and not flattening — our curves. My mother’s voice breaks. “What if we won’t meet your baby until she’s no longer a baby?”

“I’m scared,” I say. “I don’t want to have this baby without you.”

“All I want,” says my father, “is to be with my pregnant daughter. To help her when this baby comes. It’s a joyful event. It’s a family event.”

I hang up the phone and crawl into bed, which suddenly seems too large for just the two of us. Outside, the streets are silent — no cars and no people venture past the curfew. I return to my guide and its last word of advice: If all else fails, says my app, just tell the whole world to back off. Don’t let those people come near you.

Gee, I think. What was that like, back when people came near me?

I try to fall asleep. But my own strange thoughts bounce inside my head. Am I some antifeminist pervert who longs for randoms on the street to come near?

No.

But also: sort of?

In a pandemic, sort-of-yes.

One day, when I’m six months pregnant, my husband and I go for a hike. Tall pines loom around us like castle walls. We see almost no other hikers, but as we summit a small peak we encounter an old man. He’s wiping his brow and resting his backpack at his feet.

He turns and stares at us. I feel his gaze on my protruding, sweaty belly. He pulls down his face mask and yells to my husband. “Yo, man — what are you doing, taking your woman up here...