Beauty from Ashes

by Alana Terry

  Jake couldn’t understand why I was so upset after that appointment with Dr. Bell. He knew how sick I was of pumping. Who wants to feel like a dairy cow five times a day? So in his mind, getting premade formula and having Medicaid pay for all of it was great news.

  Only it wasn’t. I don’t think it would have been half as bad if it weren’t for his mom and her smug smile. “Maybe something you’re taking doesn’t agree with her,” she’d suggest, and that’s just how she’d say it too. Something you’re taking. Which I’m sure in Patricia’s lingo meant drugs. Which I wasn’t on, by the way, not during the pregnancy or now.

  I think Patricia was secretly thrilled about it all, really. Because now there isn’t a single thing I can do for my child that she can’t do better. She has her nurse’s training to thank, even though that woman hasn’t worked an actual nursing job since Bush was president. The first Bush, I mean, not the second.

  That’s what makes me think about leaving sometimes. I know it’s the deadbeat thing to do, but given my family history, would you have expected me to stick around this long? If Natalie needed me, that would be different. Can you believe I waited sixteen days in the NICU just to see her open her eyes? And you know what? She didn’t even notice me. I was no different to her than any of the nurses in their colorful scrubs. When Jake holds her, I swear something clicks in that injured little brain of hers. She seems comfortable. Even tried to scratch his chin once. When I hold her, she’s completely oblivious. Even Patricia claims Natalie smiled at her. I’m sure she’s lying, because my child doesn’t smile. At anyone. But that doesn’t change the fact that my baby doesn’t even know I’m alive. I hate to say it because it sounds so stinking cruel, but I’m not sure she knows much of anything. Sometimes when Patricia’s busy in the kitchen, I hold Natalie while she’s getting her tube feeding, and I watch. Waiting for something to happen. Even when she’s got her eyes open, she never looks at me. Never. Looks. At. Me. And then she gets fussy, so I put her back on her little wedge, and she finishes her feeding in peace and quiet. What kind of baby doesn’t even want to be held?

  I had such high hopes for myself as a mom. I had it all figured out. I was going to stay at home for the first year or so. Maybe take in an extra kid or two for babysitting. I was going to give Natalie everything I never got at that age — a home, a sense of belonging, affection.

  I remember laying around on bed rest, flipping through those mommy magazines and daydreaming about story time. That’s the one thing the articles always agreed about, even the older ones. Read to your kids from the day they’re born. I had the picture squared away in my brain. Me on the couch, with Natalie nestled up against me. In my imagination, we always read Dr. Seuss because honestly, I didn’t know any other kids books, but I was going to learn. I’d get a library card. Check out books there. And we’d cuddle and read, and it would do wonders for her development. Wonders for our relationship. That was the plan.

  And now look what I’ve got. A kid who doesn’t even recognize me. A kid who can’t make eye contact. A kid who won’t even live to see her first birthday.

  CHAPTER 6

  Natalie came home from Seattle and got put on an apnea monitor. Makes this horrible, piercing siren noise whenever it can’t detect her breathing. Usually it’s false alarms. It hardly wakes me up anymore, especially now that Patricia has moved the air mattress into the nursery. She says it’s because I need to catch up on my sleep, but by the tone in her voice, I know what she means is I’m a lazy, no good baby mommy that her son had the unfortunate opportunity to knock up.

  I’m going to talk to Dr. Bell about it this week, actually. Not Patricia, of course — the apnea monitor. Jake and I already signed one of those DNR forms that says we don’t want heroic measures, you know, when the kid needs CPR or something. The neurologist and the pulmonary specialist were all for it, the lung guy in particular. Since Natalie can’t even swallow her saliva, it’s only a matter of time before all the germs in her mouth make their way into her lungs. So if she doesn’t die from choking, it’ll be the pneumonia that does her in. Jake and I both agreed. We didn’t even fight about it. The way the doctor put it, we knew we were doing the right thing. For Natalie, I mean. That was before we left Seattle, before Patricia moved in. She doesn’t know about the DNR, and frankly it’s none of her business. I shouldn’t feel guilty for signing it, shouldn’t feel like I’m just abandoning Natalie because she’s too hard to take care of. That’s not the kind of mom I am. The kind of mom who ditches an unwanted baby in a bathroom trash can.

  It’s for the best. I know it is. And whenever I start to doubt myself, I remember what that neurologist said, that even if we prolong her life, the chance of Natalie being anything more than a vegetable is ridiculously low. I appreciate the way he didn’t mince words. Didn’t feed us false hope. Just sat us down and gave it to us straight.

  Dr. Bell, the pediatrician here in Orchard Grove, she’s the only one who thinks we should wait, give Natalie more time to develop before making up our minds about the DNR. She’s the one who gave us the apnea monitor, and that’s what I need to talk to her about when we go in to see her Wednesday. Because it’s completely unnecessary if you think about it. Let’s say the monitor goes off, and let’s say it’s a real event, not a false alarm. Then what? We don’t start CPR. That’s the whole point of those forms we signed. We could call the ambulance, but what are they going to do? Stand around singing Kumbaya while they watch her turn blue and then that horrid shade of gray? Think about it for a minute. If your kid’s going to die in the middle of the night, do you want the bells and whistles going off just so you’ll be awake for it? Wouldn’t you rather just get up in the morning after a long night’s rest and find out that ...

  Never mind. I wonder how long that granny lady’s going to keep up her Holy Spirit babble. She’s quoting Scripture now, at least I assume it’s Scripture. I don’t know. Maybe she’s just ad-libbing. The pastor’s standing off to the side with this awkward look on his face that makes me want to chuckle. You can tell he doesn’t know quite what to do. If Grandma Lucy weren’t a relative, I’m sure he would have found a way to seize control of the mic by now. That’s just the kind of man he seems to be, the kind who takes charge. Doesn’t waffle.

  Not like Jake. I swear, that boy can never make up his mind about anything, especially now that Mama’s around to do all his thinking for him. Even in the NICU, Jake’s whole doctor knows best attitude drove me batty. I mean, picture this. Our baby was only three weeks old and just a few hours out of surgery where they put a tube right into her stomach so they didn’t have to feed her through her nose anymore. And my old foster mom Sandy was there for moral support, flew all the way from Boston to Seattle to be with me. So she and I were having lunch together in the cafeteria while Jake stayed with the baby. And right in the middle of our coffee, he texted and said something like, I think she’s in pain. I mean, he was right there, probably all of two feet away from the nurse, and he was texting me about it.

  So I told him to tell somebody Natalie needed pain meds. I didn’t think anything else about it until later in the evening when I went over to see her myself. She didn’t cry (still doesn’t, actually), but she was obviously uncomfortable. Wouldn’t you be if someone sliced a four-inch hole in your abdomen and stitched a tube to the inside of your stomach?

  I told the nurse, “I thought you guys gave her more pain meds,” and she said no, the morphine was giving her problems. Natalie couldn’t keep her oxygen levels up, so she could only have Tylenol.

  Tylenol? I got stronger stuff when I got a tooth pulled.

  “Ok,” I said, “how long has it been since her last dose?” And the nurse looked at her chart and told me five hours. I freaked out. After getting Natalie what she needed, I stormed to Jake and demanded to know why in the world he hadn’t gotten our daughter the pain meds like I told him to. He shrugged and said, “The nurse said she could only have it every six hours.”

  You know what gets m
e totally insane with anger? Not the fact that the doctors were so stupid they put a tiny baby on nothing but Tylenol immediately after a major surgery like that. Doctors are imbeciles. They have no idea how to tell if a baby’s in real pain or not, especially with kids like Natalie who don’t cry.

  No, what gets me the most — I’m fuming now just thinking about it — is the way Jake let them do their thing, didn’t ask a single question. When I called him out on it, he got this annoying whine in his voice and asked, “Well, what did you expect me to do?”

  So I told him exactly what I expected him to do. March to the charge nurse like I did, ask for more effective pain management, and when she didn’t take me seriously, demand to speak to the doctor. Wham bam, fifteen minutes later our baby’s back on morphine. And guess what? Her oxygen levels held just fine.

  Six hours my butt. I wonder how Jake would feel if he ever gets himself fixed down there and all he can take afterwards is a single dose of Tylenol every six hours.

  The really pathetic part is when we had that big argument, it was exactly a year from our very first date.

  Happy anniversary, darling.

  CHAPTER 7

  “I hear a voice of one crying in the wilderness,” Grandma Lucy’s saying. I can’t tell now if she’s preaching or praying or quoting Bible verses from memory or what. She’s got one hand raised up toward the sky like she’s the stinking Statue of Liberty. I still haven’t figured out why she looks familiar to me. “Weeping and great mourning,” she continues, and I surprise myself by actually recognizing the reference. You wouldn’t know it to look at me now, but for a few years in Massachusetts, I was really into youth group and church junk like that.

  It’s kind of funny in a way, and also kind of sad, how into that lifestyle I got during those few years I spent with Sandy. I mean, I wasn’t just the sullen foster kid the pastor’s wife dragged to church on Sundays. I couldn’t wait to go. All my friends were at church, not at that preppy white-kid charter school where nobody like me would even dream of trying to fit in. And it wasn’t like Sundays were the only church days. Youth group on Tuesdays. Bible quiz Thursdays. I still remember that youth pastor with his crazy dreadlocks and corny T-shirts. But you know what? He knew about my past and didn’t judge me. Not once. And he made sure I fit in. I think he must have planned it behind my back, because the very first night I showed up at youth group, three different girls asked for my phone number, and two of them texted me a day or two later.

  It seems so long ago, that time at Sandy’s church. But I loved everything about it. I was so naïve back then, so stinking starved for love. I would do anything to feel like I belonged. Even stand up at that youth retreat and walk up to the front of the aisle, knees shaking, head dizzy like I’d just downed a can of beer on an empty stomach. And I didn’t just stand there at the altar and pray for forgiveness. I actually knelt. Clasped my hands in front of me and sobbed my heart out to the God who promised to wash away all the mistakes of my past.

  Nobody warned me back then about religion, about how you might escape your guilt, but you can’t throw off your DNA no matter how hard you try. And that’s how it worked. I did it all, the spiritual retreats, the abstinence pledges, everything the people at Sandy’s church said I should. I’d forgotten about it until just now, but I even woke up an hour early once a week my whole junior year to attend this before-school Bible study. I was completely sold out. I read this book once, this collection of stories of Christian martyrs, and I remember thinking, I’m going to be just like them when I grow up. I even told Sandy I thought God wanted me to become a missionary.

  It’s hard to say what happened. Halfway through my junior year I started sleeping with Lincoln Grant. (I know what you’re thinking, and yes, that was his real name.) He wasn’t my first but the only one I’d been with since I moved in with Sandy, the only one I’d been with since I walked down that aisle in tears, desperate to sell my soul to God like some affection-starved hooker on her knees begging for acceptance.

  So I was giving into temptation with Lincoln every so often, but I always felt bad afterward. Always asked God to forgive me. Told him I’d try to be stronger next time. I was still reading the Word nearly every day and working hard on the Bible quiz team, and maybe you’d think that makes me a hypocrite, but I just think it makes me a human. I mean, nobody’s perfect, right? And who’s to say the kid who sneaks someone like Lincoln Grant into her foster family’s bedroom window is any worse than the so-called Christian girls who were so eager to spread the juicy gossip once they found out what we were doing?

  Grandma Lucy’s going on and on, and it’s the same basic verse — I remember it from Bible quizzing, remember it because it was so morbid and I never got why they made us memorize it — except she’s saying it differently. I wonder if she’s been reading from the augmented Bible, or whatever that version is where they add so much extra stuff. I wouldn’t know. But it’s a little off from what I recall.

  “The voice of a mother weeping for her child.”

  My hands are clammy, and my heart feels like it did that day at the youth retreat before I walked down the aisle. Jittery, like I’ve had caffeine dumped into my veins. How did she know? She’s never met Natalie. Nobody in this room has except me and Jake.

  “Weeping tears that fall like angel dust before the throne of God.”

  Angel dust? Sounds like something you’d stick under your tongue at a rave. But just when I think that Grandma Lucy’s gone completely off script, there it is again. That feeling in my chest, that flutter. Like this stranger is some kind of psychic who can read my thoughts. Knows exactly what I’ve gone through.

  “Refusing to be comforted,” she says, and all of a sudden, her raised palm is leveled straight at me, like she’s Iron Man aiming her shooting beam or whatever it’s called right at my forehead. “Refusing to be comforted because her children are no more.”

  So there it is. I hate to admit it, but for half a minute there, she almost had me going. Almost had me believing that she was talking directly to me. I’m not superstitious, but when you think about all the things she was saying, that could have been me. Almost. I let out my breath, realizing now how long I’ve been holding it in, and stare at that awful salmon blouse she’s wearing.

  I shut my eyes for a minute. Stupid of me to let her get under my skin like that. Stupid of me to believe that some ancient grandmother who probably hasn’t upgraded her wardrobe since the seventies could actually be talking to me. She’s nothing. Just a batty old woman rambling on because the pastor was stupid enough to hand her the mic.

  A batty old woman who needs to shut up so I can get out of this church and get home to my little girl.

  CHAPTER 8

  But Grandma Lucy doesn’t shut up, much as I want her to. Much as I need her to. She’s going on now about this person in mourning, this person in such need of comfort. I don’t think she means me, but I’m not sure anymore. It wouldn’t make any sense. I’ve never met this woman before. Never talked to her. At least I don’t think I have. But why does it feel like I should recognize her? She was sitting ten rows ahead of me in church all morning, so it’s not like she even had that entire hour and a half to study my body language and come up with clues about me.

  About my family.

  She’s moved on. She’s carrying on about the disciples now. But I’m not paying attention to that. I’m still fixating on the part about refusing to be comforted. Because I’ve been there. I was there four months ago in that delivery room.

  Refusing to be comforted. Back when I memorized that verse in Bible quizzing, it sounded like such a horrible thing this woman did. Like she lost her faith in God and went into hysterics and couldn’t get over herself. That’s what I thought when I was a teenager. I know better now. Not only about the devastation and loss but also the joy of holding a perfect newborn who’s more precious than your own breath. Stroking that skin. That skin! You could spend a hundred grand on coconut oils and still never come cl
ose to matching that silky feel.

  Jake and I sometimes joked about our daughter before she was born. What would she look like? I mean, he’s half-Japanese, half-white, and I’m black, at least partially. So what would that make our kid? When I was pregnant, I fantasized about this beautiful baby with chocolate skin and almond eyes, which sounds really romantic if you think about it. And when she came out she was even more perfect than I could have imagined. So stinking perfect. Dark, even darker than me, which was a surprise. She was tired, but so was I. What do you expect after an eighty-six-hour-long labor? The nurse had just finished weighing her and cleaning her off, and she was all bundled up like she was a little baby-wrap sandwich.

  She wasn’t more than a few minutes old, twenty’s the max. And Jake was there. I was surprised he made it through the entire delivery. I honestly didn’t expect him to stick around past the first couple hours. I asked if he wanted to hold her, but he was too nervous, and I laughed at him. Right in his face. Said something awful like, “What do you think’s gonna happen? She’s just gonna stop breathing?”