Borrowed Light

by Anna Fienberg

  After that, everything would seem worse than ever. I was a moron as well as a sluttish girl without moral backbone, because all I could do was day dream. I wasn’t even capable of thinking properly. I was a total failure as a human being, and my shoulders slumped and my spine rounded, and I looked like the hunchback of Notre Dame.

  Blankness descended, like being in a mist with earplugs. The world went away for a while.

  But by Tuesday night it would all be over, wouldn’t it? Tim had said it would. He was older than me and probably he’d had experience with this kind of thing before. I bet hundreds of girls would lie down for him anywhere.

  On Tuesday night, I planned to devour a kilo of parsley and a Hershey bar to celebrate. And then I would lie on my bed again.

  WHILE I WAS waiting for Tuesday, I went over to Grandma Ruth’s house. She gives us a key when she is away, so that we can collect her mail and put it in a neat pile on the kitchen table. When Jeremy comes with me he always checks under the bed and in the wardrobes, in case there is a very slim robber hiding there, sucking in his belly.

  I went alone on Sunday, because Jeremy said he was busy. I found him under the house. He sounded a bit angry, and I’m sure he said ‘scumbuggit’ under his breath. He said he was busy doing nothing, like me.

  At Grandma’s I prowled around in the quiet. The lounge and armchairs were all draped in white sheets, to protect them from dust. The blinds were down and only thin tiger stripes of light lay across the carpet. It was almost pitch dark in the corners of the lounge room, and there wasn’t even the whirr of the fridge. This would have been a perfect place for Mum’s seances, I thought.

  I put Friday’s mail on the kitchen table. Then I went into Grandma’s study. She has hundreds of books. You could browse in there for weeks. I found A History of Astronomy and looked up Herschel. There was William and Caroline. Caroline was in the ‘Hidden from History’ section.

  Caroline Herschel was born in Hanover in 1750. She was gifted in music and became a solo performer, but just as she was beginning to achieve some measure of success, she was forced to give up her career and go to England. Her brother, William, required assistance with his scientific work, and a housekeeper as well.

  William was an astronomer. At night Caroline took notes on her brother’s observations, and during the morning she recopied the notes, made calculations and organised the work. In order to accomplish all that was expected of her, she taught herself maths. She also helped in constructing William’s telescopes, making models and grinding and polishing the reflectors. In addition to all this she ran William’s household even after he was married.

  While her brother and his family vacationed during the summers, Herschel did her own astronomical work. She was the first woman to discover a comet, finding eight in all. In 1798 the Royal Astronomical Society published two catalogues of stars she compiled, and in 1825 she completed her own (and her brother’s) work by presenting a star catalogue of 2500 nebulae and clusters to the Royal Society.

  The Society made her an ‘honorary’ member, for women, of course, were not allowed regular membership. The highlight of her life, however, was receiving a small salary from the king. Despite the fact that this was one quarter the money paid to her brother, she had achieved her modest goal of earning her own keep.

  I shut the book and put it in my bag. I was sure Grandma wouldn’t mind if I borrowed it for a while.

  As I stood up to leave, I saw a little grey statue on the bookshelf. I’d never noticed it before, but it had probably always been there because it was scuffed and old-looking. It was a small plump man with an elephant head. He had a ridiculously long trunk. You felt if you looked away for a moment, he’d burst into giggles. He was perched on a wooden stand that was inscribed with gold writing. ‘Ganesha’, it said, ‘the Hindu God of Overcoming Obstacles’.

  I loved that. I laughed aloud in the dark room, with the dust motes dancing along the tiger stripes. I kept looking at Ganesha, and I’d have sworn he was chuckling with me.

  I bet old Caroline Herschel knew about Ganesha. Maybe she prayed to him every night, and he helped her with her obstacles and the vacuuming. I wished I had someone like Ganesha on my side. It was very hard to walk away from him. I wondered if Grandma would mind if I borrowed him for a while, too. She wasn’t using him at the moment, was she? I scooped him up and put him in the bag with Caroline.

  **BIRTHDAY!!!**

  My baby. My baby. My baby was born today. He weighed 3.4 kilograms. Healthy and normal, said the pediatrician. I could have kissed him. ‘Normal’ is the best word in the English language!

  ‘Caroline Herschel Cook?’ said Dr Campbell when he strode into the ward. He peered around. For once I called out with pride, ‘Here I am!’ He held my baby up in the air and tickled him. He wrote down all my baby’s details on that piece of yellow cardboard. Head measurement, weight, results of his blood test. I kept that piece of cardboard on my chest when the nurses took my baby away for rest time. I was supposed to be sleeping, but I couldn’t stop thinking about him. His black hair, thick as wool on the crown of his head. His little furled fists. His bottom, soft and smooth and compact as two apples. I just wanted him back with me, curled under my arm. I missed him after five minutes!

  It is so nice being able to lie here, with people bringing you meals. I don’t even read. I just lie amongst the crisp white sheets in my pretty maternity nightie, and feel clever. Brilliant, in fact! I think this joy is about to explode. I’ve never felt like this. I love my little baby. I LOVE him.

  David is over the moon too. He keeps calling his partner in Johannesburg, telling him how the baby slept, how he fed. He says he can delay his next trip. Such a relief.

  David wants to call the baby Jeremy, after his father, but I’m not very fond of David’s father. He’s cold and distant, and he’s always criticising everything. I see him in David sometimes. Whenever David gets really annoyed about something, he withdraws, just like his father. He makes a judgement and puts it up like a wall that he glowers behind. Takes ages to coax him out of it.

  When we first met, he said he laved how I was so easy to please. I could find beauty in anything, he said, and he had a kind of awe in his voice. I must have been so different from his father.

  I feel like drawing hearts all over the wall, and arrows through it with my name and my baby’s. Only I don’t want to think about names yet. I just want to enjoy him and me without labels for a while. Maybe he will help me to be myself. I don’t have to prove anything any more, I don’t have to talk astronomy with Mother or wear the right clothes and cook the right business meal—at least for a while. I’m a mother, and I’m going to be a damned good one!

  Saturday

  Tonight the baby didn’t feed so well. Seems to be having difficulty latching on. The night nurse said even though sucking is an instinctive behaviour, we mothers need to learn how to offer the nipple. I loved it when she said ‘we’. It encouraged me to keep trying.

  Mother came in to see me today. As soon as she heard there was a problem with feeding, she pounced on it.

  ‘Well you don’t have to breastfeed, Caroline,’ she said. ‘These days women want to get back to work as quickly as possible. Bottles are probably more efficient, and they free you up.’

  ‘I don’t want to be free!’ I said. ‘And I want to breastfeed. I want to give my baby everything.’ I saw her face go all disapproving, with those thick eyebrows of hers knotting in the middle. My heart started to beat fast, I was so agitated. Why is it that as soon as my mother walks into the room all my calm and happiness flies out the window? She looks at me with that cynical smile, and suddenly I feel like some silly actress in a soapie.

  Mother didn’t look at the baby very long. She stroked his cheek for a minute and we both gazed at him together. That was good. But then she looked back at me with that frown and started on about I should organise the house, and where the cot would be and if I had to use bottles, the Milton sterilising kit would be t
he best.

  David came in then, and he and Mother had a long earnest discussion about the advantages of Milton as opposed to the old boiling techniques.

  I just looked back at the baby and tried to block them out. It took me a long time to find the joy and the calm again.

  I DON’T KNOW IF I’ll keep reading these diaries. They make me feel a bit sick. My stomach gets all stirred up. There wasn’t one mention of me in that entry. It was as if this were her first baby! But I know I went to visit her. Dad picked me up after school one afternoon and took me to the hospital. I remember seeing Jeremy for the first time. He was so small. His little nails were like those translucent slivers of shell you find at the beach. I didn’t feel jealous, I just wanted to hold him. I couldn’t wait for my turn.

  Obviously my visit in hospital wasn’t as important as anyone else’s. Not worth mentioning.

  I kept that diary under my pillow over the weekend. I sat on my bed a lot. I thought about my grandmother. How would she react if she knew about me? I could see her face, disapproving like she’d been with my mother. I knew what Mum meant about the eyebrows. ‘You silly girl,’ Grandma Ruth would say, ‘how could you be so stupid when you have all the biological information? Carried away by romance—of all the empty-headed things to do. What about school? What about university? What about all your plans?’ I don’t know if she’d suggest the other thing. About not having the baby. I don’t think Ruth is that modem, for all her science. And if she did think of it, she wouldn’t suggest it because it would mean too much emotion and ambivalence. I love and admire Grandma. But I know that she prefers facts.

  By late Sunday night, I got around to thinking about Mum. What would she say. Really. It was three o’clock in the morning when I gave up. I just didn’t know.

  Jeremy woke up with a nightmare. I tucked him back into bed. Usually he snuggles into me, even when he’s asleep. But he turned away, and pushed his forehead against the wall. I’m worried about Jeremy. He spends so much time alone. But I can’t think about him now. There’s no room since the undertow. Mum should take over. Why doesn’t she ever take over?

  When I thought about telling Mum, I just felt this matted dark dread come over me, like a cloud. It was as if this cloud were her feelings. She seeped into me, and the dark was something intangible, nothing you could chew over, like words. She wouldn’t say it, there’d only be sadness and disappointment. My news would confirm all her sorrowful pictures of the world. I would no longer be a daughter shooting ahead like a green light. She would have to help me bring up the child. I’d be tied to her forever, watching her fumble with my child, the way she had with me. She’d hold the baby at a distance. My child would grow up surrounded by ghosts and crying.

  But I didn’t really know what she’d say, because I didn’t know her well enough.

  There was a gusty southerly wind that Sunday night, and it blew the branches of the mulberry tree against the window. They made a regular tapping noise, like fingers on the glass. It was eerie, as if all the orphans in the world were trying to get in. I went over to the window and watched the bare branches snake in the wind. Rags of cloud raked over the rooftops. There was hardly any moon, just a whisker.

  Maybe, I thought, pressing my face against the window, maybe your background isn’t everything. Maybe you can rise above the wasteland you came from, and light up its darkest corner. Could my little fish do that? I thought about molecular clouds being among the coldest things in the universe. They are made of inhuman things like formaldehyde and carbon monoxide. But they are star-making machines. When stars form, they heat up their bit of icy cloud, brushing it clean and transforming the remaining gas into glowing light.

  I always thought Jeremy would do that. I’m not sure any more. Could anyone, really?

  Tuesday

  Fed left breast 2.20 a.m.

  right 4.50 a.m.

  left 8 a.m. (only 2 minutes, then cried)

  right 10.20 p.m.

  sleep 2¼hrs

  very runny/liquid poo

  why won’t he sleep? Cries on the breast. Does he have wind, colic? Is breast milk drying up? Does anxiety reduce it? Must ask clinic nurse. Clinic nurse says alternate breasts—so they can fill up. But left breast is always empty.

  doesn’t sleep. Desperate.

  I’m scared of the crying. I want him to be happy. Why isn’t he happy? Poor little baby, poor little baby. Why can’t I do it right? What should I do?

  Wed.

  Fed right 2 a.m.

  left 4.30 a.m. very sleepy, sucked only a little. Fell asleep on breast. I couldn’t sleep for fear I’d roll on him.

  House is in a mess. Can’t get dressed to go shopping. Can’t do anything else. David says I should vacuum when he’s asleep. But what if it wakes him? David doesn’t know what it’s like. He doesn’t feel terrible when the baby cries. But I do. He says to let the baby cry. It’s called the control crying method. It teaches the baby control. David is a stranger.

  He seems like a different person. Or he’s so far away I can’t see what he’s made of any more. Straw. He comes home so late at night. He asks, ‘Can I do anything?’ It’s 9 p.m. and I’m trying to sleep. He goes into the kitchen and opens the oven door. I can hear his sigh from the bedroom. Poor Mr Hubbard went to the cupboard. Well, why doesn’t he cook dinner for me sometimes? Why doesn’t he get up in the night? Why doesn’t he help me?

  Yesterday I rang up his office. He came on the phone startled. When he heard that it wasn’t an emergency—well, not one he could understand—he got so impatient. I said I was panicking. All the leaves on the tree outside were going funny colours. I couldn’t see anything properly. He said to go outside again and see what a beautiful day it was. The sun is shining, the leaves are a funny colour because it is autumn, darling. Find the beauty in things, Caroline, you’re always so good at that.

  I wanted to tell him that I’m not his Caroline any more. I’m different Hadn’t he noticed? Don’t call me Caroline because I’m not.

  ‘Listen,’ he said softly, because there were people in the office, ‘listen, you have a beautiful son, who is healthy and normal, you have a husband with a job, you have a lovely home. Doesn’t that make you happy?’

  I put down the phone. I laid my head on the big wooden table. The tears wouldn’t stop, there was an ocean behind my eyes. It poured out, all salty and warm, I saw it wash over the table, trickling into the wood until it was sodden, the table would disintegrate into splinters, sodden splinters lying on the carpet.

  I rang back. I said into the phone, ‘Have mercy, I don’t know why the world is ending. I know I should be grateful. I don’t know why I feel so bad, I don’t know.’

  He said we’d talk about it when he got home. I was asleep by then. I have to sleep whenever I can. It builds up my milk.

  22 May

  STERILISE BOTTLES AND UTENSILS—use Milton

  Instructions on fridge. Mother says cold sterilisation is best. She said I’d be sure to knock over the saucepan and bum someone if I used the boiling method. I didn’t say anything. Maybe she’s right She went out and bought the Milton sterilising unit Showed me how to do it. She bought the milk formula too. Said the baby was starving.

  Maybe she’s right about that too. But he still doesn’t sleep. He still cries and fusses. I know he’s not happy. Even with cold sterilisation and fake milk. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with him.

  When you measure the dried milk formula out, you have to get it exactly right. Mother said to use a knife to scrape the level flat on the spoon.

  I wish I could just lie in bed with the baby sleeping on my chest. I wouldn’t ever get up, only to wee and get glasses of milk. We’d lie together and make a tent with the sheets. But when I do that, just for a while, and take the phone off the hook, I can’t help seeing the little spirals of dust whirl up as a breeze blows in, and the egg I didn’t have for breakfast cementing on the plate. I worry that the utensils won’t be sterilised in time, and the form
ula won’t be made up. If I don’t look after things, who will?

  Tuesday

  Fed 6 a.m.—160 ml

  Baby doesn’t ever drink enough. I have to walk around jiggling him in my arms, showing him the fans, switching the lights on and off while I put the teat in his mouth. This morning I couldn’t stand the cold empty house, so I took him to a cafe. It was only 6.30 a.m! ‘Andiamo’, the cafe’s called. David and I used to go there before we were married. We used to order cappucinos and read the Saturday papers. Sometimes we’d just talk.

  ‘Andiamo, bambino!’ I said in a cheerful way. I do quite a good Italian accent. The baby looked at me as if I were mad, and he laughed. God it was good to see him laugh. I chattered away to him in big loud voice, doing my brilliant Italian accent, and he soaked up my silliness like a little sponge.

  Outside, it was so early that the street lights were still on. The café was full of cigar smoke. Only taxi drivers and truckles were there, munching rolls and sipping scalding coffee. It was freezing. The air was blue in the café and I knew this wasn’t the healthiest place for a baby. But it was so good to see smiling faces—come in, get out of the cold, what a cute little baby, how old is he, look at him smile—and I ordered a cappucino and then I thought I’d lash out (didn’t I deserve it?) and have raisin toast as well.

  I jiggled the baby on my knee as I drank my coffee. I thought of Mother saying I’d knock over the scalding water, and I held the cup far from me. A truckie with a thick blue jumper came over and tickled the baby under the chin. He said, ‘Can I hold him a minute?’ My heart leapt in alarm, but his face was so friendly, with these two big lines around his mouth like commas when he smiled, so I said yes. He held the baby tenderly and talked to him as if he’d known him all his life and threw him up in the air a couple of times just as if he were a sturdy soccer ball. Then he gave him back to me and winked. ‘He’s still in one piece,’ he said. ‘I’ve got two of them at home—twins. Haven’t had a decent meal since they were born.’