by Anna Gavalda
I kick some imaginary tin cans.
I hate mobile phones, I hate Sagan, I hate Baudelaire and all those charlatans.
I hate my pride.
Pregnant
THEY’RE NUTS, THESE women who want a baby. Nuts.
They barely even find out they’re pregnant before they open wide the floodgates: of love, love, love.
They never close them again afterwards.
They’re nuts.
She’s like the rest of them. She thinks she’s pregnant. She supposes. She imagines. She isn’t sure-sure yet but almost.
She waits a few more days. To see.
She knows that a Predictor pharmacy test costs nine euros. She remembers from the first baby.
She says to herself: I’ll wait two more days and I’ll do the test.
Of course she doesn’t wait. She says to herself: What’s nine euros when maybe, just maybe, I’m pregnant? What’s nine euros when in two minutes I could know?
Nine euros finally to throw open the floodgates because back there it’s beginning to cave, it’s boiling, it’s swirling and it’s making her a little sick to her stomach.
She runs to the pharmacy. Not her usual pharmacy, one more discreet where no one knows her. She assumes a detached air, a pregnancy test please, but her heart’s already thumping.
She goes back to the house. She waits. She prolongs the exquisite agony. The test is there, in her bag on the table in the entryway, and as for her, she’s a bit restless. She remains master of the situation. She folds laundry. She goes to the nursery to pick up her child. She chats with the other mothers. She laughs. She’s in a good mood.
She makes the tea. She butters slices of bread. She really gets into it. She licks the spoon from the jam. She can’t stop kissing her child. Everywhere. On the neck. On the cheeks. On the head.
He says stop, Mum, you’re annoying me.
She gets him settled in front of a box of LEGO and she lingers a little while, still getting in his way.
She goes downstairs. She tries to ignore her bag but she can’t. She stops. She picks up the test.
She loses patience with the packaging. She tears off the wrapper with her teeth. She’ll read the instructions in a minute. She pees on the gadget. She puts its top back on, the way you cap a ballpoint pen. She holds it in her hand and it’s all warm.
She sets it down somewhere.
She reads the instructions. You must wait four minutes and check the test windows. If both windows are pink, madame, your urine is full of hCG (human chorionic gonadotropin); if the two windows are pink, madame, you are pregnant.
Four minutes is such a long time. She drinks a cup of tea while she waits.
She sets the kitchen timer for a soft-boiled egg. Four minutes … there.
She doesn’t fiddle with the test. She burns her lips on her tea.
She looks at the cracks in the kitchen and she wonders what on earth she’s going to manage to make for dinner.
She doesn’t wait the four minutes, anyway there’s no reason to. You can already read the result. She’s pregnant.
She knew it.
She flings the test to the very bottom of the rubbish bin. She arranges other empty packages on top to cover it completely. For the moment, it’s her secret.
She feels better.
She breathes in deeply, she takes in air. She knew it.
It was just to be sure. That’s that, the floodgates are open. Now she can think about other things.
She’ll never think about anything else again.
Look at any pregnant woman: You think that she’s crossing the street or that she’s working or even that she’s talking to you. Wrong. She’s thinking about her baby.
She’ll never admit it but not one minute goes by in those nine months that she’s not thinking about her baby.
Okay so she listens to you, but she doesn’t really hear you. She nods her head but in truth, she couldn’t care less.
She imagines it. Five millimetres: a grain of wheat. A centimetre: a pasta shell. Five centimetres: this rubber sitting on the desk. Twenty centimetres and four and a half months: her hand wide open.
There’s nothing there. You can’t see anything and yet she touches her belly often.
But no, it’s not her belly that she touches, it’s him. Exactly as she runs her fingers through the hair of the older one. Just the same.
She told her husband. She’d dreamed up a whole host of imaginative ways to announce the news.
Various settings, tones of voice, sound-the-trumpets … or then again not.
She told him one evening, in the dark, when their legs were intertwined but just for sleeping. She told him: I’m pregnant, and he kissed her ear. So much the better, he answered.
She told her other child too. You know there’s a baby in Mummy’s tummy. A little brother or a little sister like Pierre’s mummy. And you’ll be able to push the baby’s pushchair, like Pierre.
He lifted her sweater and he said: Where is he? He’s not there, the baby?
She scoured her bookshelves to find Nine Months to Motherhood by Laurence Pernoud. The book’s a little worn – it served her sister-in-law and a girlfriend in the meantime.
Right away, she goes to the photos in the middle to look at them all over again.
The chapter is called ‘Images of life before birth’, from ‘The ovum surrounded by spermatozoids’ to ‘Six months: he sucks his thumb.’
She scrutinises the itty-bitty hands, so transparent that you can see the blood vessels, and then the eyebrows – in some shots, you can already see the eyebrows.
Next she goes straight to the chapter ‘When will I give birth?’ There’s a table that gives the estimated date of birth. (‘Numbers in black: date of the first day of period. Numbers in colour: probable date of delivery.’)
That gives us a baby on 29 November. What’s 29 November? She raises her eyes and grabs hold of the post office calendar hanging next to the microwave … 29 November … Saint Saturninus.
Saturninus, now there’s a name for you! she says to herself, smiling.
She sets the book down haphazardly. It’s not likely she’ll open it again. Because for the rest (how should you eat? backache, pregnancy-related breakouts, stretch marks, sexual relations, will your child be normal? how should you prepare for delivery? the truth about the pain, etc.), all that, she scoffs at a little, or rather, it doesn’t interest her. She’s confident.
In the afternoons she’s asleep on her feet, and she eats huge Russian pickles at every meal.
Before the end of the third month comes the first compulsory visit to the gynaecologist. For the blood tests, the social security papers, the declaration of pregnancy to send to her employer.
She goes during her lunch hour. She’s more emotional than she seems.
She sees the same doctor who brought her first child into the world.
They talk a little about this and that: and your husband, the job? and your work, it’s coming along? and your children, school? and that other school, do you think?
Next to the examining table is the ultrasound. She settles in. The screen is still dark but she can’t stop looking at it.
First and foremost, he has her listen to the beating of the invisible heart.
The sound is set fairly loud, and it resonates throughout the whole room:
boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom
What an idiot, she already has tears in her eyes.
And then he shows her the baby.
A tiny little fellow who moves his arms and his legs. Ten centimetres and forty-five grams. His spinal column is clearly visible, you could even count the vertebrae.
Her mouth must be wide open, but she doesn’t say a thing.
The doctor makes jokes. He says: ha, I was sure of it, that shuts up even the biggest chatterboxes.
While she gets dressed, he puts together a little file with photos that came out of the machine. And a little later, when she’s in her car, before she st
arts the engine, she’ll spend a long time looking at these photos and while she’s learning them by heart, you won’t hear the sound of her breathing.
Weeks have passed and her belly has got bigger. Her breasts, too. Now, she wears a 36C. Unthinkable.
She went to a maternity shop to buy clothes that fit. She splurged. She chose a very pretty and rather expensive dress for her cousin’s wedding in late August. A linen dress with little mother-of-pearl buttons all the way down. She hesitated for a long time because she’s not sure she’ll ever have another child. And then, obviously, it’s a bit pricey. …
She mulls it over in the fitting room, she gets bogged down in calculations. When she comes back out, with the dress in her arms and hesitation on her face, the saleswoman says: go ahead, treat yourself! Okay, so you won’t be able to wear it for long, but what a pleasure! … Besides, a pregnant woman should always have her way. She says it in a joking tone but all the same, she’s a good saleswoman.
She thinks of that once she’s in the street with the big impractical bag in her hand. She really has to pee. As usual.
Plus, it’s an important wedding for her because her son is the ring bearer. It’s stupid but it makes her really happy.
Another topic of infinite deliberations is the sex of the baby.
Should they, yes or no, ask whether it’s a girl or a boy?
The fifth month is coming up and with it the second ultrasound, the one that tells all.
At work, she has a lot of irritating problems to solve and decisions to make every other minute.
She makes them. That’s what she’s paid for.
But this … she doesn’t know.
For the first one, she’d wanted to know, it’s true. But this time, she really couldn’t care less if it’s a girl or a boy. Really.
All right, she won’t ask.
‘You’re sure?’ said the doctor. She doesn’t know anymore. ‘Listen, I won’t say anything and we’ll see if you can see anything for yourself.’
He moves the transducer slowly over her gel-covered belly. Sometimes he stops, he takes measurements, he comments, sometimes he moves it quickly, smiling. Finally he says: okay, you can get back up.
‘Well?’ he asks.
She says that she has an inkling but she isn’t sure. ‘And what’s your inkling?’ Well … she thought she saw evidence of a little boy, didn’t she? …
‘Ah, I don’t know,’ he answers, making a teasing face. She wants to grab him by the shirt and shake him so that he’ll tell, but no. It’s a surprise.
In summer, a huge belly, it keeps you warm. Not to mention the nights. You sleep so badly, no position is comfortable. But fine.
The date of the wedding is approaching. Tension mounts in the family. She offers to take care of the bouquets. It’s the perfect job for a cetaceous creature like her. They’ll put her right in the middle of things, the boys will bring her whatever she needs and she’ll make it all as beautiful as can be.
While she waits she runs to shoe shops looking for closed-toe white sandals. The bride wants to see them all wearing the same shoes. How practical. Impossible to find white sandals at the end of August. ‘But madame, we’re getting ready for back-to-school now.’ Finally she finds something not very attractive and one size too big.
She looks at her big little boy posing proudly in front of the mirrors at the shop, with his wooden sword jammed into one of the belt loops of his Bermuda shorts, and his new shoes. For him they’re intergalactic boots with laser buckles, beyond a shadow of a doubt. She thinks he’s adorable with his hideous sandals.
Suddenly, she receives a good kick in the stomach. A kick from the inside.
She’s felt jerks, jolts, and things inside but there, for the first time, it’s plain and clear.
‘… Madame? Madame? … Will that be all? …’
‘Yes, yes of course, excuse me.’
‘It’s no problem, madame. You want a balloon, sweetie?’
On Sundays her husband potters around the house. He’s fixing up a little bedroom in the space they used for a laundry room. Often, he asks his brother to lend him a hand. She’s bought some beer and she’s always scolding the little one so that he doesn’t get underfoot.
Before going to bed she sometimes flips through decorating magazines to find ideas. Anyway, there’s no rush.
They don’t talk about the name because they don’t really agree, and since they know very well that she’ll have the last word … what’s the point?
*
On Thursday, 20 August, she has to go to the six-monthly check-up. What a drag.
It’s not very good timing, what with the wedding preparations. Especially since the bridal couple went to Rungis that same morning and brought back mountains of flowers. They requisitioned both bathtubs and the plastic kiddie pool for the occasion.
About two in the afternoon, she puts down her shears, she takes off her apron, and she tells them that the little one’s sleeping in the yellow bedroom. If he wakes up before she gets back, could you give him a snack? No, no, she won’t forget to pick up bread, superglue, and raffia.
After taking a shower, she slides her big belly behind the wheel of her car.
She clicks on the radio and tells herself that in the end, it’s not so bad, this break, because a bunch of women sitting around a table with their hands busy, they’ll soon be telling a lot of stories. Big ones and little ones, too.
In the waiting room, there are already two other ladies. The big game in these cases is always to try to guess by the shape of their bellies what month they’re in.
She reads a Paris Match from the time of Moses, when Johnny Hallyday was still with Adeline.
When she goes in, it’s a handshake, you’re doing all right? Yes, thanks, and you? She puts down her bag and sits. He plunks her name into the computer. He knows now how many weeks of gestation she’s at and everything that follows.
Then she gets undressed. He rolls out some paper on the table while she weighs herself and then he’s going to take her blood pressure. He’s going to do a quick ‘check-up’ ultrasound to see the heart. Once the examination’s over, he’ll go back to his computer to add a few things.
Gynaecologists have a trick of their own. When the woman has propped her heels in the stirrups, they ask a multitude of questions out of the blue so that she’ll forget, if only for a moment, about being in such an immodest position.
Sometimes it works, a little bit, more often not.
In this case, he asks her if she’s felt it move; she begins to answer that before yes but now less often, but she doesn’t finish her sentence because she sees clearly that he’s not listening. Apparently he’s already understood. He fiddles with the buttons of the machine to put her off the scent but he’s already understood.
He places the monitor in another position but his movements are so brusque and his face is so old all of a sudden. She lifts herself on her forearms and she’s understood too but she says: What’s going on?
He tells her ‘Go and get dressed’ as if he hadn’t heard her and she asks again: What’s going on? He answers: there’s a problem, the foetus is no longer alive.
She gets dressed.
When she comes back to sit down, she’s silent and her face doesn’t show anything. He types a bunch of stuff on his keyboard and at the same time he makes some phone calls.
He tells her: ‘We’re about to spend some not-much-fun moments together.’
At the moment, she doesn’t know what to make of a statement like that.
By ‘some not-much-fun moments’, maybe he meant the thousands of blood tests that would leave her arm a mess, or the ultrasound the next day, the images on the screen and all the measurements to understand what he would never understand. Unless ‘not-much-fun’ was the emergency delivery on Sunday night with the on-call doctor mildly annoyed to be woken up again.
Yes, that must be it, ‘some not-much-fun moments’, that must be giving birth in pain and without ana
esthetic because it’s too late. To be in so much pain that you throw up all over yourself instead of pushing like they tell you to. To see your husband powerless and so awkward as he caresses your hand and finally to push it out, this dead thing.
Then again, ‘some not-very-fun moments’ is to be stretched out the next day in the maternity ward with an empty belly and the sound of a crying baby in the room next door.
The only thing that she won’t be able to figure out is why he said ‘we are about to spend some not-very-fun moments …’
For now, he continues to fill out her file, and in between clicks he talks about having the foetus dissected and analysed in Paris at the I-don’t-know-what centre but she stopped listening to him some time ago.
He tells her, ‘I admire your composure.’ She doesn’t answer.
She goes out by the little door at the back because she doesn’t want to walk through the waiting room again.
She’ll cry for a long time in her car but there’s one thing she’s sure of, she won’t spoil the wedding. For the sake of the others, her grief can surely wait two days.
And that Saturday, she put on her linen dress with the little mother-of-pearl buttons.
She dressed her little boy and took his picture because she knows all too well that a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit like that won’t last long.
Before going to the church they stopped at the clinic so that she could take, under close supervision, one of those awful pills that force all babies out, wanted or not.
*
She threw rice at the newlyweds and she walked down the well-raked gravel paths with a glass of champagne in her hand.
She raised her eyebrows when she saw her Little Lord Fauntleroy drinking cola straight from the bottle and she worried about the bouquets. She made small talk since this was the time and the place for it.
And the other woman came up just like that, out of nowhere, a ravishing young woman she didn’t know, from the groom’s side, no doubt.
In an act of total spontaneity, she placed her hands flat on her belly and said: ‘May I? … They say it brings luck. …’
What did you want her to do? She tried to smile at her, of course.
