Voice Lessons

by Cara Mentzel

  Dee took Mom and me across the street and treated us to mani-pedis in massage chairs. We reminisced about bra shopping together back on Long Island, in a small custom-bra shop in Huntington. All the while, unbeknownst to us, a tow truck lugged my car with a trunk full of tuxes, dresses, and even the wedding rings, from the parking lot behind the diner to a lot forty minutes south of town. Three manicures and one rude awakening later, I prayed, Please, God, don’t let anything else go wrong in front of my sister.

  After a late-night drive to the tow yard, and a couple of early-morning hours of hair and makeup, I arrived at the wedding venue, a grassy area like a golfing green set atop a La Jolla cliff. There was an eager wind. The ocean below beat on the shore and could be heard beneath the harp and cello’s Pachelbel’s Canon. I stood above the green at the top of a steep stone staircase so narrow I had to descend the stairs alone. Each step had its own character: some were cement, some had pebbles, others had moss-covered rocks that were kind enough to fix themselves off to the side. Some were so thin they barely fit the length of my foot, others too bumpy to fully set down my heels. I looked out over sixty-some guests seated in white folding chairs, including my grandmother, aunts, uncles, cousins, closest friends, and Taye. In a line at the far end stood the ceremony officiator, my sister, and Jon with his family. At the bottom of the stairs my mother and father waited to link arms with me, or catch me—whichever the moment called for.

  I grazed the railing with one hand for reassurance, and held my bouquet in the other. I confirmed the placement of each foot on each step. I trembled and tried to steady my nerves with a strong smile. I glanced down at the steps, up at the guests, down at the steps, up at the guests, until I reached the bottom and joined Mom and Dad.

  I looked straight ahead. Waiting at the altar were both my groom and my sister, the unfortunate victim of a sea-foam dress and a curling iron. I walked toward them, toward his faith in us and her doubt in our future. I wanted what came next for me, to be a mother, to be a wife. I wanted Dee to believe I was up to the task and to be happy for me. I wanted her approval the way I always had. But I was pregnant. I was a big girl making big choices. I convinced myself that her approval wasn’t important to me any longer.

  At 3 A.M., two weeks past my due date, a series of modest contractions drew me out of a deep sleep and I started to regret the Kraft Mac & Cheese I’d eaten for dinner. It had been a nostalgic craving, a hankering for the nurturing quality of my childhood, but when the contractions became more frequent it occurred to me that a nutritious dinner would have been more sensible; I’d need sustenance. I tapped Jon on the shoulder a couple of times.

  “Hey … hey. Call Molly.”

  “Really? You sure?” he asked.

  “I think so. The contractions are little, but they’re coming fast.”

  Molly was our midwife. I was having a home birth.

  Having a home birth was important to me. I didn’t feel safe in a hospital. To me, hospitals were places people went to when they were sick or hurt, and I was neither. I didn’t like the stories I’d heard about nurses who encouraged epidurals, unnecessary C-sections, the overuse of Pitocin to progress labor, forceps, or vacuum extraction. I was committed to natural childbirth. Birth was the first official experience my child and I would share and I was insistent we do it as a team. If he (or she—I didn’t know the gender) couldn’t be numb, then I wouldn’t be numb either. The birth was my first chance to do right by my child and keep him safe. Forceps would never touch his defenseless skull.

  Dee didn’t like the home birth idea. She was all about the what-ifs. “What if something goes wrong?” “What if you need a C-section?” “What if the baby’s not breathing?” I tried to reassure her that those things were unlikely and that if there was any indication of a problem, either during the pregnancy or during the birth, I would reassess the situation. But my assurances didn’t sway her. When we talked on the phone there was tension between us, the kind that would knot in my belly when the line sat quiet a few seconds too long. Dee seemed angry, but never said it outright, and maybe that’s because hidden beneath her anger was what she really wanted to say: “Please let me keep you safe.” And what she kept hearing me say was, “No.”

  Since my graduation, my fascination with the brain and my spiritual beliefs led me to a study in an alternative health modality called craniosacral therapy. This therapy incorporated a study of central nervous system anatomy and physiology, as well as more esoteric energy-healing techniques. My interest in a holistic approach to health could be measured in the length of my hugs—hippie hugs. Each time I pulled someone close I took a cleansing sigh that said, I am fully present with you, and then held them a few uncomfortable seconds longer than necessary.

  When I became pregnant, my interest in craniosacral therapy grew because I often wondered about the inherent intelligence directing the development of my child. Every one of his cells knew where to go and what it was destined to become: part of the brain, heart, digestive system or lungs, part of an eyelash or a fingernail. I had a stethoscope with extra-long tubing and loved to fall asleep to the swish-swish-swish of my baby’s bitty heart. During those times, I felt the presence of something sacred working beyond my understanding, and often beyond my consciousness. I trusted that presence. If it could safely build a baby, it could safely birth one.

  On the phone with Jon, Molly asked how far apart my contractions were and suddenly Jon and I felt like idiots—we couldn’t remember how to count contractions. From the end of one to the beginning of the next? The beginning of one to the beginning of the next? Molly clarified, from the peak of one to the peak of the next. But my contractions seemed never to end. There were slight periods of time when they were less prominent, but they never completely stopped.

  I labored in my bedroom. Jon and I had moved to a new apartment and were living in a small one-bedroom a little bit farther inland. Our bedroom was just big enough to fit a queen-size futon that we kept open and used for our bed. Our sliding closet doors were mirrored and there was a window on the wall opposite them. When I went into labor, Jon turned the lights on and prepped the bed as Molly had instructed at our home visit a couple of weeks earlier. He layered the bed in Chux absorbent pads. (Chux compete with laxatives for the least-sexy item at the drugstore. They’re mini-blankets, usually two feet by three feet in size, made of sanitary-napkin material, and used primarily for nighttime incontinence.) Jon covered the Chux with old flannel sheets we’d cleaned well and packed in an extra-large Ziploc bag, where they had been waiting for the labor. Then he set the pillows and blankets back up for me and turned off the lights.

  Molly wasn’t the only one coming to the birth. She had a sister, Judy, who would be joining her. Judy was a nurse-midwife and worked in a nearby hospital. My friend Anne, a doula, was also coming. And Mom would be there, too. She had flown to San Diego a few days before my due date and we were starting to worry that she’d have to return home before I went into labor. Dee was in Los Angeles and had planned to make the two-and-a-half-hour drive down to San Diego when the time came.

  At first, the contractions were like menstrual cramps, but soon my lower back was so tight I felt as if I’d been arched in a backbend for hours. I had a sharp, short-lived pain that spiked from my cervix up through my center and took my breath away. At one point, I felt a sudden widening of my pelvis, not so much painful as startling, and I had the strange urge to move out of the way, out of my baby’s way. But of course, I couldn’t; I was his way. The feeling scared me and when it was over only mild contractions returned. After a while, I worried that my fear had caused my labor to slow and I was mad at myself for being afraid. I wanted to be brave and strong. I remembered a clip from a video Jon and I had watched in our birthing class. An aboriginal woman went into labor while gathering some kind of grain in a field. She kept working and then, without a fuss, simply squatted down and popped her baby out. She caught her own baby! She held him like a football and set him in a sling. Wi
thin minutes she was gathering grain again. I don’t see how this could have been true, but that’s how I remembered it at the time, and I wanted to be Cara, the Incredible Squatting Tribal Woman.

  After the scary contraction, the hardest part of the labor wasn’t pain but exhaustion. I was desperate for a fifteen-minute respite, enough to sink my head into a pillow, refuel, and then awaken ready to rally again. But that was a gift rarely bestowed to a mother during natural childbirth and I knew it. I also knew that labor, especially with a first child, could take a while and I didn’t want to wake Mom and Dee so early in the A.M. I waited a little and then had Anne call Mom, who then called Dee. Mom had spent the night at a nearby hotel and I remember the relief I felt when I heard her gentle knock on my bedroom door and then saw her face.

  By eleven o’clock I was fully dilated. Molly gave me permission to push and my dampened spirit was revived. Being able to push meant that I could take control over the labor and no longer had to wait for some magical contraction—which might or might not come. There was light at the end of my baby’s tunnel and I was more than ready to take him to it.

  Jon sat in the bed against the wall with his knees apart and I lay within the curve of his body, baring down, pushing, his steady slow breathing like a metronome, setting the pace, keeping me calm. Push.

  “You’re doing great,” Judy said and held a hand up in the air, pressing the tip of her thumb and forefinger together, forming a diamondlike shape between them.

  “We can see this much of the baby’s head,” she added, which was a whole lot less than I thought it was and I wanted to slap the smile off her face.

  An hour passed.

  Dee was still on the highway when my baby’s crowning head sent a burning sensation across my bottom. The Ring of Fire, it was called. A term I’d learned from a book I’d read so often during my pregnancy that more pages were earmarked than were not. Prior to pregnancy I understood the Ring of Fire as a reference to tectonic plates and a series of volcanoes in the Pacific Ocean. But, spread-eagle in the final stage of labor, it struck me as an appropriate term for crowning, as my entire perineal region was burning with the heat of a hundred active volcanoes. Anne took a wet, warm washcloth out of a Crock-Pot and firmly pressed it against my perineum. The pain disappeared. Another push, another washcloth. Until I pushed one final time and the baby’s head was out. One more push and, slick and quick, out came the rest of him. All at once the birth was over.

  Jon slowly scooched out from behind me to cut the cord, and Mom, her face flush and wet with tears, rearranged the pillows for me. She kissed me on the forehead and with another round of tears told me she was proud of me.

  “You did such a good job,” she said. “You’re already a great mom.”

  Then Anne set my child in my arms. A boy, Avery. His bare body lay against mine. In my body I had held him closer than I ever would again, and yet I had been desperate to have him in my arms. And then I did. I took in every detail of him. His face was rosy, hot pink like the bottoms of his wrinkly feet, and the rest of him was a milky white. He had a silver widow’s peak and tiny fingers with tissue-paper fingernails. He was warm and fragile and lanky and all I could think was that he was the bravest and tiniest person I’d ever met. I was proud of him. He’d ventured from the secure confines of my womb to the open air of his new world and that journey took guts. He started to cry, a tight rattle of a cry, and I leaned my face close to his. I could feel the moist warmth of his breath on my lips, his heartbeat against my chest, his sticky fingers fumbling against my breast. Love was tangible. Love could be held and I held it then.

  But something was wrong.

  “Cara, I need you to push again,” Molly said.

  “What? Why?” I could see Molly between my parted knees. She had bulgy eyes on a good day; just then they scared me.

  “The afterbirth isn’t coming. You may be bleeding internally.” I felt Molly’s hand reach inside me and I noticed a circle of blood spreading out from under me. I ignored the blood. I wanted to stay in my peaceful love bubble with Avery. Then I felt a rough tug in my abdomen. Is she pulling on the umbilical cord inside me? Anne drew the pad out from under me and set two more in its place. More blood. A new circle growing quickly at its borders became impossible to ignore. I saw Mom off in the corner. Frozen.

  “Cara, push. Push hard.” Molly was nearly shouting. I wanted to be done pushing. I wanted nothing more than to hold Avery. Hadn’t I worked hard enough?

  I whispered into Avery’s ear, “Daddy’s gonna hold you. I’ll be right back,” and I kissed him on the point of his widow’s peak. Then I pushed, but I was light-headed and each time I pushed I felt more light-headed.

  “Call 911,” Molly ordered, then Judy interrupted.

  “No need. Pass me my bag, I have Pitocin in my bag.”

  After that, the voices in the room grew distant, like conch shells were pressed against my ears. My eyes were fixed on Avery in Jon’s arms when the room started to disappear, first around the edges, then the remaining hole in the middle, until everything went dark.

  The room was bright when I came to. Someone had drawn the blinds. Molly was shoving a pile of bloody Chux into a trash bag when Dee walked into the room. She’d arrived at the apartment during the hemorrhaging and had been told to wait in the living room. Dee looked at the blood, then at me.

  “Hi, Mommy,” she said with a smile, referring to me.

  “Hi,” I replied, so happy to see her. She walked over to Jon and took a look at my swaddled bundle of baby. “Oh my god, Cara,” she said softly. “He’s perfect. He’s so perfect,” and I couldn’t have agreed with her more.

  Anne held a straw to my lips and I sipped some juice. Mom sat next to me, unwrapping a protein bar for me. When I finished the juice, Judy fussed with the tube of an IV and then inserted the catheter into my arm and taped it in place. She held it steady as Jon came up next to her and placed Avery back in my arms. Avery was crying and his rosy cheeks were redder than before. I held him tightly, tilted my head down into the heat of his cries. I blew gently onto his forehead and then slowly whispered, “Welcome, my love.” I took a deep breath. I wanted to inhale the very essence of him and at the same time draw any fear out of his little body. “I’m here,” I told him, “and everything’s okay.”

  When Avery settled, I offered him to Dee. Ever so gently she pulled him toward her heart. Dee had written a song that year to her unconceived, future child; “Reach,” she’d titled it. I’d listened to the song repeatedly on an early release of her album, and when I saw Avery in her arms it was her alliteration that I heard: “Bathing beauty ballad of bliss you were born.” Dee looked in Avery’s slate eyes and in an instant became a doting aunt. Maybe her love for him left no room in her mind to think she’d been right and I’d been wrong, that having a baby at home wasn’t safe (an opinion I continued to disagree with). Maybe his innocence against her chest made it impossible for her to feel angry, or worried. Maybe. But I was euphoric. I didn’t think about what she felt or didn’t feel. I thought only of my child. I was a mother. I had what I wanted: my baby, my beginning.

  Lesson 6

  HOW TO SING A DUET

  Avery was a cherub, complete with apple cheeks and porcelain skin. His dark eyes had turned blue and he had a tuft of blond hair growing down his forehead. When he giggled, little spit bubbles formed in the corners of his mouth. When he nursed, he liked to stop mid-suckle to flash me a gummy grin.

  Avery was still under a year old when Dee came to visit us again. She’d been dropped by Hollywood Records while working on her second album, and before her first album, Still I Can’t Be Still, had even been released. Sales for Still I Can’t Be Still were low and Dee was devastated. We all were.

  Jon, Avery, and I were living in yet another rental apartment in San Diego. It was larger than the previous ones, a two-bedroom with a substantial living room, but the place was old, the tradeoff for larger square footage. Avery had his own room, but it was more o
f a storage closet where we kept his crib and clothing because he mostly slept in bed with Jon and me. The apartment was a perpetual rental that had seen many families and roommates. The walls and cabinetry had endured too many coats of paint and the cheap carpet was probably steam-cleaned after each tenant instead of replaced. Still, the residence had large east- and west-facing windows so it was filled with light and was home for us.

  It was naptime. Dee had just finished reading Moo, Baa, La La La, one of my favorite baby books, to Avery. He was sucking and drooling on the board book’s chunky corner when I lifted him up from her lap and carried him into my bedroom.

  I set him down on the bed and his pudgy legs floated into the air where the soles of his feet met the palms of my hands. The noon light shone through the mini-blinds and landed on his face in stripes. I unsnapped his onesie and kissed his belly as he giggled. Then I started to sing to him as I always did at naptime—leaning over him, face-to-face, where we looked at each other like there wasn’t another being in the world as perfect as the one our eyes were fixed on.

  “Bum, ba, dee, duh, bum, ba, dee, duh, why are there so many, songs about rainbows,” I sang to him like my breath was as easy as a breeze, each note sending him toward his dreams. My throat was open, nothing more than a channel for my love.

  Sometimes when I sang to Avery, a voice emerged I didn’t know I had. A pretty voice. That day, partway through the lullaby, I realized Dee might be within earshot. I wondered if she could hear me and what she’d think. Immediately, my throat began to constrict. I tried to pretend she wasn’t near so that my voice wouldn’t change, and Avery’s gaze was helpful. He was still looking at me and listening. I continued our song with an awareness of Dee trailing behind each note. Avery’s lids closed and opened again, “… the lovers, the dreamers and me.” I sang through the next verse until his eyes remained shut, then kissed the delicious dimple on his chin before I pulled on the door, leaving it the slightest bit ajar.