‘What if she grows up really ugly, though?’ I say.
‘You’re joking. Look at that skin.’ Warm, pink, pearly. ‘Look at that hair.’ A fluff of black down. ‘Check out those eyebrows.’ The faintest curved black brushstrokes. ‘You’ve gotta be joking.’
Then we get onto talking about the labour. ‘It’s … it’s rough stuff,’ he says, and I look at him and his eyes are filling up again. He puts his face in my shoulder and mutters, ‘I thought it was never going to end. It was real easy to imagine … that … that she’d get stuck and you’d both die.’ I feel a tear run down inside the neck of my T-shirt.
‘Yeah, well, dying seemed like a pretty good option a couple of times there.’ I’m trying to joke him out of it but I’m a bit wet-eyed myself. He takes a corner of Bella’s cotton blanket and wipes my eyes and nose. ‘Thanks.’
‘That’s okay.’
We both giggle. Then he kisses me with his bruised mouth, which is somehow really, really sexy—it has to stand in for the whole act of , plus a few other things, new things, twenty-four hours’ worth of things between us that can never be unmade, that can never, ever have not happened.
Sunday night and I’m home at Mum’s on the hospital’s early release programme. I’ve given Bella four feeds, and I’m starting to get used to that, even though she doesn’t get proper milk for a day or so yet. Mostly she sleeps, recovering from the shock of arriving—and also that’s when she grows, a nurse told us this morning. So sleep on, little baby, grow!
She’s wrapped in a bunny rug in the Family Heirloom, parked behind my bedroom door. I’m supposed to be resting my poor bruised body while Pug and Mum organise dinner, but I struggle out of bed and sneak over for a private look at her, for the thrill of having her here to look at, instead of inside me, a total mystery. It’s new every time I look at her; every time I find something else to notice. She must be growing so fast, so much going on inside that thin red skin, behind that sleeping face, those two loose fists the size of the ends of my thumbs. Unbelievably small and quiet. This little person who spent eight and a half months inside me. The ghost I saw kicking, just a few centimetres long, on the ultrasound screen, now an air-breathing person with a hardly-used voice, and a fresh-cut mouth hardly a centimetre wide, and grey-blue eyes (mostly crossed when they’re open!). You were the one who made me sit up, jamming your feet under my ribs, who woke me with your stretching and squirming, who pushed your head up against my bladder fifteen times a night! It’s lovely to meet you, finally.
God, this motherhood stuff, it does things to you! I walk out onto the front veranda in the afternoon, lightweight and unbalanced without my lump, without Bella in my arms.
Mum’s sitting in one of the new cane chairs reading an interior decorating magazine. She looks up.
‘She’s asleep,’ I say.
‘Why aren’t you, then?’
‘I’m just seeing what it’s like to be awake while she sleeps. Just for fun, you know.’
‘Strange, I’ll bet.’
‘I don’t know what to do with myself. Yes, I do—put on another load of washing.’
‘You just sit tight there. She’s going to wake up in three minutes, anyway.’
‘Pug at training?’
‘Yep. He’s coming back afterwards, he says, so don’t panic.’
‘Good. I don’t know how I’d’ve got through the last couple of nights without him.’
‘Probably come and thrown Bella in with me! Thank you, Pug.’
‘Thrown is right. That crying, I don’t know, it really gets to me. I hear it and I can feel my heart speed up, and I just—aagh!—go so tense!’
‘Yes, I remember that feeling with you.’ Mum smiles. ‘You just have to remember, it’s not a personal attack on you, not an accusation that you’re not a fit mother.’
‘It sure sounds like it.’
‘It’s the only way she’s got, to communicate. After a while you’ll be able to tell which cries mean you have to get up and run to her, and which you can ignore.’
I grunt, reassured, irritated. So much to learn, too much. And we can’t go about it systematically. Bella holds us to her own weird timetable, screaming demands (for what?), conking out mid-feed, sleeping for hours when we feel fresh and staying awake for hours when we’re exhausted, pooing at all times of the day or night. We’ll never get on top of this baby-care business, we’ll never get it right.
‘It does get better. Truly, it does,’ says Mum.
I clutch the lifebelt of her sympathetic look. ‘Well, I can’t see how anyone’d ever get around to having second children if it stayed this bad.’
‘Exactly, and they do. So hang in there. Try and relax. It’s a period of adjustment.’
I stare across the road at the livid red bougainvillea snaking up the porch opposite. ‘Why don’t you just say: “Well, you brought it on yourself. You asked for it”?’
She laughs gently. ‘I must be nicer than you think.’
Simone de Beauvoir: ‘Babies filled me with horror. The sight of a mother with a child sucking the life from her breast, or women changing soiled diapers—it all filled me with disgust. I had no desire to be drained, to be the slave to such a creature.’
Gifts keep arriving. Almost every second day Pug turns up with something knitted or sewn or bought by one of his relatives. His mum is impossible—she can’t go to the shops without finding something she must get for Bella, some ducks to string across her pram or a couple of singlets with roses embroidered on them, lacy bonnets, bibs, bunny rugs, miniature pillowslips. The woman next door, who I’d never met before, bought Bella a sleepsuit, and someone from Mum’s work, who I remember coming to dinner years ago, sent a gift home with her. I mean, here I was wondering why birth is a covered-up, taboo subject, yet everyone, down to total strangers peering into the pram on the street, actually celebrates with you when you’ve brought a baby into the world. Everyone wants to welcome it. It’s really … sweet, touching. It makes you see a part of people that never shows itself on any other occasion.
The strangest is the evening Dad turns up with a beautifully wrapped box, and holds it out to me as if he’s really not sure whether I’ll take it. Mum, Pug and I are out on the veranda taking turns holding a very awake, alert Bella.
‘It’s something Rick made,’ says Dad. ‘For the baby,’ he adds, thrusting the box at me, almost pleading. Bella doesn’t hate us, yet, does she?
‘Ricky?’ says Mum. ‘Knitting?’ She manages to sound incredulous and neutral—you can hear her damping down the sarcasm.
‘She sewed it.’
Mum’s thinking, Whatever for?
It’s one of those parcels it’s a shame to unwrap. I take off the rosette and stick it on Bella’s forehead while I unwrap the rest. Inside the box I push aside layers of cream tissue paper, to find a nightdress of soft cream cotton, with a collar, a pin-tucked yoke and three pearl buttons down the front. It’s very simple, but about the classiest-looking garment Bella owns.
‘Oh, that’s lovely! Look, Mum, not a bow or a flower or a piece of lace anywhere.’
‘It is nice,’ Mum has to admit. Then she’s biting her lips closed.
I don’t know what to say—it’s a lovely present, but if I’m too nice about it I’ll be betraying Mum. I can’t quite think what Ricky’s trying to say here—is this her brown-nosing, or has she too been bitten by the baby-welcoming bug? I’m stuck there, the nightdress in my hand, not knowing whether I’ve actually accepted it, not knowing whether to laugh or shudder.
Pug comes to the rescue. ‘You’ll have to tell her thanks,’ he says to Dad. ‘Mel and me’ll drop by one time with the baby and say hullo, hey Mel?’
‘O-okay. I suppose.’ I can’t imagine it, though.
Here it is—she’s nearly a week old and every day and night is like a whole lifetime—people coming and going, feeds, burps, nappy changes, cries, sleeps, baths—I look back and all I see is posset cloths and yellowed nappies and milk-stained T-
shirts and pots of pawpaw cream and bottles of surgical spirit and cotton buds, and my huge clumsy hands wavering over Bella, learning to hold her steady in the bath and ignore her screaming for long enough to wash all her linty, sweaty, rash-spotted crevices.
The worst time so far has been when Pug was away at training and Mum hadn’t got back from work, and Bella had this huge poo after having screamed for half an hour. I thought she was dying until I remembered to check her nappy and it was filling, filling with that yellow, sweetish-smelling froth that just goes on and on. I hung onto her while she screamed in my ear, put a tea-towel round her when the stuff started leaking down her legs (but not before it was all over my T-shirt—which was already pretty cheesy—and had blobbed on the loungeroom carpet). I cleaned her up in my room, discovered she had nappy rash, slathered her with cream—then the pooing continued. I stood there watching it go all over the freshly applied cream, all over the nappy, tears running down my face, ridiculously upset when you consider what a tiny thing it was, not exactly a disaster. While I cried and Bella pooed I changed my top, then when she’d finished (it was all over her feet as well, of course) I cleaned her up again, put on a fresh nappy and lifted her onto my shoulder, where she did a huge burp and sicked up milk all over herself, me, the floor and my bedspread.
I never thought I could feel even the tiniest bit angry with my own baby, let alone angrier than I’ve ever been in my life before! I felt like a madwoman, actually shaking, terrified I was going to throw her against the wall. I heard Mum’s voice in my head, saying ‘I did warn you!’ and that made me even wilder—like, why didn’t she make me listen, why didn’t she tell me properly what this was going to be like?
Then I put Bella down really, really carefully on the change table. They say never leave them there, but I went to the bathroom and got a washer, came back, took off my T-shirt, washed myself, sponged the vomit off my shorts and shoes, off the carpet, off the bedspread. Bella was crying all the time, dark red all over, her arms and legs up in the air vibrating. It was like having screws drilled into my skull. When everything was cleaned up I went and got another washer, changed Bella’s clothes and wiped her top half down (not as gently as I could have—I feel terrible when I think of it), put a clean suit on her and finally picked her up again when this gigantic rush of pity swept over me, cancelling out my anger and making me cry. At least she stopped crying when I picked her up. I tidied up all the mess one-handed, carrying her around, back and forth with cloths, out the back to the bin with the nappies, and then she was asleep, worn out with all the trauma, so I put her down in the Family Heirloom. Then I got out of there—went out and perched on the garden bench and read one of Mum’s house magazines and pretended I was childless and fashion-conscious like all the people in the pictures, all the writers of the articles. It took me the whole magazine to stop shaking.
Pug comes out to help me with the pram—he and Mum probably heard Bella half-way down the block. ‘I couldn’t get a word in!’ I’m complaining as we struggle up the stairs, and even I can hear the hysteria in my voice.
‘Gave you a hard time, did she?’ says Mum.
‘I may as well not have gone. This stupid cow in the shop comes up and says “Is she a difficult baby, then?” as if she was some kind of object in a specimen case—I couldn’t hear myself think in there! I didn’t even get to buy what I went for! Just for no reason at all she started this up—’ I wave at the pram, in which Bella’s still screaming.
‘Hungry?’ says Mum, lifting out the Bella-bundle and shushing at it.
‘I fed her heaps, just before we left, remember?’
‘Wet? No. Dirty? No. Couldn’t be cold, on a day like this.’
‘It’s nothing!’ I say. ‘It’s just—she hates me, that’s all. I got her out and rocked her for a while, but she wouldn’t shut up and I couldn’t concentrate, and everyone kept gawping, and smiling, so I thought, “Blow it, I’ll just go home! I can’t stand this.”’ Pug puts a tentative arm around my waist.
Mum jiggles Bella up and down, examining her bright red face, then holds her against her shoulder. ‘Why don’t you two go for a walk?’ she says above the screaming. ‘Get out of earshot for a while.’
‘I don’t want to go for a walk!’ I shout. ‘I want to know what’s wrong with her!’ I shake Pug’s arm off.
‘Probably nothing, sweetheart. Yelling won’t help calm her down, though,’ Mum says calmly.
I take Bella from her, roughly. ‘Don’t you criticise me in front of her!’
Mum’s empty hands stick out in front of her. Pug folds his arms and looks at the floor.
‘She’s mine!’ I go on, my voice shaking. ‘I won’t let you take her over! You think now because we’re here you own us, me, Bella, even Dino! You think you can organise everything the way you want, monopolise everything!’
‘Mel, it’s okay,’ Mum says. ‘Just calm down and Bella will calm down too.’
‘Come on, it’s not your mum’s fault.’ Pug puts his arms out for Bella. I shout past him. ‘You think you know it all! Well, I’m a mother, too, and I have instincts, too, and this is my daughter and I know what’s best for her.’
Mum’s arms drop and her stunned look gives way to something more decisive. ‘All right. Fine. If you know what’s best.’ The words are barely audible. She pushes between me and Pug and goes out onto the front veranda. Bella’s wailing goes on and on in the silence.
I don’t look at Pug. I’m hanging on to Bella just a little too tightly. ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up,’ I hear myself saying. I’m shocked at how nasty I sound.
Pug takes hold of Bella. ‘Give us her,’ he says. I try to pull away. ‘Come on, Mel, don’t be a dickhead. Give us her before you hurt her.’
‘No!’ I growl, trying to step back.
‘Come on! She’s just a little baby.’
‘She’s just a little—fucking—monster!’ I go to pieces. I hand her over. ‘She screams at me, she won’t let me sleep, she’s sucking me to pieces. She’s—always here! I’m sick of her! I’m sick of the sight of her! I’m sick of the sound of her, and I’m stuck with her for eighteen more years!’ I end up nearly screaming.
‘She won’t be a baby all that time,’ Pug says, far too reasonably.
‘It’s all right for you. You can come and go whenever you want. Even if you don’t go,’ I say as he gapes at me, ‘you’ve got the choice. I haven’t got the choice. I haven’t got any choice—I’m just stuck here serving her, feeding, changing, bathing, having a heart attack every time she twitches—’
I slam out into the backyard, knowing the bang of the back door will frighten Bella, hoping savagely that it scares her into silence, hoping it scares her to death. I sit on the old garden bench by the Hill’s Hoist, listening to Bella screaming on, the noise moving away through the house. That’s right—go and suck up to Mum.
Eventually I’m able to hear birds, breeze. Insects zoom and tick in the grass. I stop shaking and hating them all, and turn to crying and hating myself. I’m not finished even twenty minutes later when Pug brings a glass of iced water out to me. He sits with me as I sip and sniff.
‘I don’t know how you can stand me sometimes,’ I get around to saying.
‘I can’t, but if I want to see Bella I’ve got to keep things sweet with you, haven’t I?’
Fresh tears roll out, when I’d just got them under control. ‘Don’t laugh at me!’
‘I’m not!’ He laughs. ‘I’m trying to make you feel better, stupid.’ He puts his arms around me while I sob on. I’ll never be able to stop.
‘She’s gone to sleep, anyway, that monster,’ he says. ‘Your mum’s got her.’
‘So is Mum going to throw me out for being so rude?’
‘No, I think you’re gunna have to put up with her a while longer.’
‘Oh God, I wish she wasn’t so bloody perfect! I sob. ‘I always feel like I’m just slobbing around stuffing things up, and then she comes in and fixes everything, and understan
ds!’
‘It’s a bad time,’ says Pug. ‘Who could think straight on four hours sleep a night? You’re doin’ okay. Everybody falls apart getting used to having a kid around.’
‘You don’t.’ I look up at him accusingly.
He makes a doubtful face. ‘Well, all I can say is, I’m glad my next fight isn’t till January. I wouldn’t last thirty seconds the way I am now.’
‘You seem steady as a rock to me.’
‘I dunno.’ He takes his arms away, sits the way he does at the gym, elbows on knees, one knee and shoulder pressed against mine. ‘You start thinkin’ about all sorts of shit you never thought about before—like schools and shit, you know? And, God!, wars, and bloody rainforests and all that conservation bullshit that used to make me just wanna chuck. Do you do that?’ he asks me.
‘It’s the future. It’s having someone to pass things on to. Heirs. Long-term responsibilities,’ I say glumly.
‘Well, it’s just about sending me nuts, all this thinking. I mean, really heavy stuff. Like everything’s different.’
I nod. ‘Everything. Sometimes I feel like the person I was has just puffed out like a candle. All that’s left is a mess of wanting-to-do-the-right-thing and being-scared-for-Bella. I look at her and I’m just petrified, about all those things you say, about everything, about touching her, even. And I want to give up. It’s too much for me. But I’m not allowed.’
‘Yes, you are. Of course you are. But would you, I mean seriously? Think of someone else taking her on?’
‘Absolutely! Yes. And then, next second, absolutely no. I mean, I get so exhausted, going so far down one minute, and so, so high the next. It’s so violent and extreme—it’s hopeless. It’s probably hormones, but what’s the difference? Biological misery feels the same as “real” misery, hey.’
The Best Thing Page 17
