Now I realise that maybe she was trying to give herself hope, hope that really it was only a matter of time until she found what she was looking for. What she was searching so desperately for.
“Your baby has a well-developed nose,” she reported confidently. “At this stage we can tell if a baby has Down Syndrome by the shape of its nose.”
My baby had a pointy nose, just like mine. I could see it on the screen. To be honest, it was the only thing I saw clearly, the nose I mean. The pounding heart I never did really recognise.
“A pointy nose is a good sign. When we see flat noses we are often in trouble. Anyway, all fine there.”
Something about Mary had changed – her manner – she appeared to be a little less frosty, as if she was trying to built up confidence between us. Previously, she seemed only interested in the baby, but now she seemed keen to include me in the proceedings.
“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I replied. “My mum had a Down Syndrome sister. Her name was Yvonne. It would break your heart to watch her. Yvonne had an eating disorder, and so all the presses in my granny’s house had locks so that she couldn’t get at the food. My granny would put elastic bands on the packets of biscuits and crackers so that Yvonne couldn’t open them. With Down’s, you see, she would never be able to open the biscuits.”
Mary appeared to be listening intently to me ranting on about something that I knew very little about. But she didn’t interrupt me.
“I thought that very cruel, to tease someone like that,” I rattled on. “It was like they were taking advantage of her, kind of fooling her. Well, it served them right, because then she would throw one of her epic tantrums – that was her revenge. And what was worse they’d given her a horrible name – imagine being called Yvonne – it even looks ugly on paper, and sounds worse when you pronounce it. Even to this day, I’m not that keen on biscuits.”
“I see, I see, that is terrible, isn’t it? Well, Afric, you don’t have to worry about that – your baby is fine on that front.”
Mary continued to race up and down the baby, moving from head to limb to heart but all the time returning to the head. She was scanning like crazy, though the list on the screen didn’t seem to increase in proportion to the activity around my stomach.
“Afric, there might be a problem with the foot, with the left one. Look there – do you see how it is turned in? That in itself is nothing to worry about, nothing at all – it could be the way that it’s lying in the womb.” Mary dug the hand-piece of the ultrasound machine deep into my stomach and twisted it so that it dug into my bladder. “No,” she said, “I still can’t get the angle that I need to see the back of the head. Do you know if your baby is a boy or a girl?”
“No,” I replied. “We said we’d wait until it was born.”
This reply didn’t seem to suit Mary.
“Why don’t you walk around, have a glass of cold water? That might move your baby into a better position, and then I can get a better view of the back of the head.”
“Okay,” I said.
“Are you in any rush?” she asked me politely.
“No, not at all,” I responded.
Mary excused herself from the room. I pulled down my black woollen top, zipped up my jeans and headed off for a walk . . . just around the room. I walked to one cream wall, turned around when I got there and then walked back to the wall on the opposite side of the room, from where I had started. In no time at all, I had a kind of a system going. I felt like a school kid who had been given an exercise to do while the teacher had left the classroom to use the bathroom. I decided it was best to keep walking around in case she came into the room and caught me not walking and scolded me. After all, we were getting on much better now, Mary and I, and I didn’t want that to change . . .
Gently she opened the door and returned to her seat by the screen, the smaller screen.
“Right, pop up there again, Afric, and we’ll have another look.” Her right hand invited me to climb up onto the examination table.
So there I lay on the flat on my back, with my belly button peering up at the white ceiling while Mary searched desperately for something that she would never find. The way she spoke of it, I expected that the missing item might turn up somewhere daft like in the stomach or the liver. All the time she searched only for that one thing.
Determined, she repeatedly and desperately tried to get the right angle. She moved her petite body, craned her neck and twisted her head in a vain attempt to get the baby into the correct position. All she needed was the right position so that she could scan the back of the head. Again she moved quickly from one end of the baby’s tiny body to another. She viciously dug the rounded metal scanner into my skin, without apology. Again she returned to the head, time and time again, each time a little more disappointed than the last. By now she was struggling to disguise her frustration.
Then she did get the baby’s head in the correct position.
Mary was of course going to tell me that she had made a big mistake. She would say that she was having a bad day, that it was there all the time. I thought she might tell me that maybe she should have left work and gone home early, because that morning she had a terrible argument with her husband and was upset, and that she could not think clearly.
She might then say that it was the way that the baby was lying that made it very difficult to find the thing she was looking for. All she needed to say was: ‘Your baby is perfect.’ Then I would get off her examination table, and she could go home to her husband. Then we would both be happy. I would swear to never tell anyone about her mistake – it could be our secret. She just needed to say that everything was okay. But no. Time after time she took measurements of the skull, from every possible angle, top to bottom, side to side, side to bottom, top to side, front to back, back to front. By now I was starting to get very frustrated. How many bloody times did she need to measure the same item? Methodically, she repeated the exercise time and time again.
Now, it was just Mary and the blob on the screen. I had been excluded once again.
“I’ve seen enough, thanks, Afric,” she muttered at last in a hushed tone. “I’m afraid your baby has an . . .” Then she spoke those two dread words: “Absent cerebellum.”
She then committed them to paper.
Our report was just a single page. It was a light-green A4 sheet. It said that our baby had an absent cerebellum and had congenital talipes – that was the problem with the foot. There were other things too, but they were not as important.
Funny how one day you have never heard of the word cerebellum and within seconds it becomes the only focus of your life. Those blasted words absent cerebellum were now part of our future. It would be long time, if ever, that they would leave my mind.
She didn’t find our baby’s brain in its liver or stomach, and she never did put cerebellum up on the top right-hand corner of the screen, with the other words. And look proudly at it. Without those two words, her list was incomplete and superfluous.
She glanced at the second-last finger of my left hand. The evidence of a wedding ring seemed to be a relief to her.
“Afric, are you married – or do you have a partner?” she enquired tenderly.
“Yes, yes, I’m married to Luke, but he’s in China at the moment,” I replied cautiously.
“Do you want me to call someone for you – a friend maybe or relation? Is there someone that you would like to talk to now?” She seemed persistent again in the same way that she had been determined in trying to find the nonexistent cerebellum.
And what the hell was I going to say to them, I wondered. Would I say: ‘Look here, this lady called Mary has spent the last two fucking hours looking for my baby’s cerebellum. Do you have any bloody idea where it is, cos she clearly hasn’t a bleedin’ clue and this is meant to be her job? Is it any wonder that this country is the way it is? No doubt she’s paid a friggin’ fortune and she can’t even scan my child. Any chance you can call her and give her a clue
as to where the hell she might find it, because now she is pissing me right off?’
“Thanks but Luke’s the one I’d like to talk to and he’s in a different time zone, so I couldn’t call him now – no, not Luke, not now . . .” My voice petered out
Why would I need to call anyone? Sure it was just the cerebellum that she couldn’t find – by the next time I came back she would have found it. She had said it herself: it was probably the way that the baby was lying.
“Thanks, Mary, I’ll call him later,” I said.
Softly she wiped the cold slimy fluid from my stomach. She handed me the light-green piece of the paper, folded in two, and on it were the words absent cerebellum. She suggested that I talk to someone. She asked me if I was busy in the afternoon. I told her not really – that I didn’t think so – so she said she would make an emergency afternoon appointment – a specialist consultant in that area would see me.
But I didn’t know what the area of medicine for an absent cerebellum was.
“Afric, you will need to think about what you’re going to call your baby, and you may need to decide soon. Would you like me to tell you if it’s a girl or a boy?”
What was this woman on about? I had over three months to decide what to call the child – what was her hurry? It was a decision for Luke and me, one that we had intended to make together. Luke was particularly excited about choosing the name.
“Would this afternoon be okay, to hear, to find out?” I asked in a low voice, afraid I had answered incorrectly.
“Yes, this afternoon would be grand. It’s just something that you might want to start thinking about.” She smiled and helped me down from the table.
Then she turned off all the screens; she must have seen enough for a while.
She walked me out into the corridor.
“Go home – relax for a few hours – and then come back about four thirty – don’t get too distressed. It will all be all right in the end.” This time there was no encouraging smile.
I thanked her, nodded and got into the glass lift that would take me to the ground floor.
She was right – in the end it would be all right.
I got into Luke’s big car. I’d always hated that car. Why did he need something so bloody big, for just the two of us? I turned the key in the ignition. I punched in Coliemore Road and a lady with a slight American twang told me it was twenty-two minutes to my destination.
“Afric,” I said, “you need to keep it together for just twenty-two more minutes – concentrate.” I hoped the sound of my own voice would soothe me. “Just keep the car on the left-hand side, inside the white line.”
I switched on the radio very low, just so I was not alone.
The song sounded familiar. I knew it well but couldn’t remember its title . . . what the hell was it? I had picked it up halfway through a verse. It sounded like Mick Jagger. Yes, I was pretty sure it was the Stones . . .
Suddenly a commercial break cut into the song and I clicked off the radio in disgust.
I looked down at my bloated belly. It spilled out over the seat belt like a man’s oversized beer belly. Flesh peered out between the buttons of my shirt. I touched my stomach, just below the belly button; it was very firm and still.
I placed my hands in the ten-to-two position on the steering wheel, and I drove in the direction of home.
“Baby, you’re going to have to tell me if you’re sick. If you’re sick your mum needs to know. How is your mum going to know what is wrong, unless you tell her? Is there something wrong, baby? I know that Mary thinks you’re missing a cerebellum or something like that, but don’t worry, baby. I’m sure it’s not that important and that they’ll find it anyway. They will, of course, find it and then you’ll be okay – they just need to look harder for it. Do you know what I’m going to do? Do you know what I do when your dad loses stuff all the time? What I do is I pray to Saint Anthony. Saint Anthony is this fella – he lives up in the sky. Now for you to see him you need to look up, tilt your head up, stare out through my belly-button and up towards the sky, past the clouds and above the stars and into heaven. It’s a different place from here – the people float around there all the time, cos they can’t walk. Well, Saint Anthony, he lives there. And we’re going to ask him to find that bloody cerebellum of yours cos Mary can’t. Sure, can’t he see everything from up there? That fella will find it, no bother! He doesn’t need a scanner or any of that equipment – he just opens his eyes and he finds things.”
She spoke again, the lady with the twang: ‘Fifteen minutes to your destination.’
“So, baby, you are not to listen to Mary. Don’t worry, it will be fine. Of course we’ll find it and then we’ll just put it back where it’s supposed to be at the back of your head.”
I stopped at the traffic lights as they turned from red to flashing amber. I reached into my handbag and my fingertips touched the rough corners of the folded-over paper. Slowly I opened the paper, but the words were still there. ‘Absent cerebellum’ it still said on the page. The words should have dissolved by now – they should have been eaten up by the paper. But they hadn’t gone away because they were now our fate and they would never disappear. Those two new words I had just learnt were to become part of my new vocabulary.
I addressed my bump. “Mary is a silly silly woman not to find that thing at the back of your head. Do you know, baby, Mary needs to go to Specsavers – I’d say that she needs glasses. So the ad would start with a middle-aged lady, in a dark room, sitting down at a scanning machine. She is racing up and down a little baby’s body, desperately looking for a baby’s cerebellum, but she can’t find it because she can’t see it. Then she is transformed and the next day she comes into work, with very flashy purple glasses, and she scans the same baby, and then she finds the cerebellum, right there, where it should be at the back of the head. Wouldn’t that be a brilliant ad for Specsavers? And the tagline would be: ‘The future is safe with Specsavers.’ Yes, baby, she needs to go to Specsavers before we see her again. Isn’t that a great idea for a commercial? I should call Specsavers and suggest that they use Mary for their next one.”
I folded the green piece of paper that held my daughter’s destiny and tucked it safely into my pink-and-cream handbag.
‘You have reached your destination,’ the lady chirped at me.
I’d been so busy chatting to the baby that I hadn’t noticed that we were home.
I climbed up the grey granite steps; they felt steeper than usual. I opened the large bright-yellow door and went up the threadbare stairs to our apartment.
I poured myself a small chilled glass of white wine. I sat down at the desk in our bedroom that looks out at the white-and-grey lighthouse which is perched at the end of Howth’s lush green headland.
Dublin Bay was still. There were no coloured boats on the water to cheer up the gloomy-looking sea.
Slowly, I opened my laptop, the red-and-black one. And onto the page I typed two words: absent cerebellum.
I looked from the screen to the lighthouse and then towards my phone. It read: Luke calling. I pushed the black rectangular button with the green line on it.
“Afric, Luke here.”
I always wondered why he announced it was him at the end of the phone. Couldn’t I see his name on the screen?
“Hi there, how are you doing?” I replied.
“Good, honey – more importantly, how are things with you two? How are you feeling?”
“Things are grand, absolutely grand,” I lied. Well, in theory everything would be fine – in the afternoon.
“So tell me how the scan was? What could you see?” he continued enthusiastically.
There was a lag on his words so they were slightly delayed before they arrived to me.
“Okay, all seemed okay, but at this stage, at just over twenty-three weeks, it’s hard to say. Well, they never know really until the baby is born, do they? But at a glance they seem to think everything is okay.”
There
was no need to tell him that there was something missing that they could not find. They would find it at four thirty, so there was no point in worrying him now. He was in China and there was nothing he could do. It wasn’t like he could find it from there.
I clenched my hand and dug my nails hard into the palm. I sat upright on the black office chair. I focused on keeping my voice steady. I stared out to sea, directly ahead at twelve o’clock at the outline of the lighthouse. The sea was a charcoal grey; it had just started to rain. I focused on exchanging information, which was all I had to do: to provide him with the minimum necessary information with as little emotion as possible. I was just providing information, I told myself.
“How are you feeling though? Are you still tired in the evenings or is it better now? Is your back better?”
All these bloody questions, I thought. Why today couldn’t we have one of the Yes-No conversations that we normally engaged in?
“It’s better, thanks – those pains seemed to have stopped altogether,” I replied. “So what is your news? Anything strange from your end?” Then, in an attempt to cut short the phone call, I continued: “Luke, Luke, it’s really hard to hear you, the line isn’t great!”
“Babes, I can hear you perfectly – it must be your side. Afric? Afric? I can hear you perfectly – do you want me to skype you instead?”
“No, no,” I responded just a little too quickly. “I was just heading out the door for a swim before you called. It’s been a long day and I’m hoping a dip will relax me.”
“Okay, babes. Afric, don’t overdo it with the swimming, especially when you have the precious cargo on board. It’s good that all went well with the scan, isn’t it? I’m starting to get really excited about us having a baby. It’s great, isn’t it?”
“Yes, Luke, it is, it is.” I held the phone away from my mouth. I swallowed hard and looked out onto Dublin Bay. The lighthouse was only barely visible in the distance. Dark rainclouds obscured my vision.
Ruby's Tuesday Page 4
