Watching Edie

by Camilla Way

  I look at her beginning to stir in her car seat on the kitchen table and I’m paralysed by indecision, unable to remember what I’m supposed to do with her, how I am to begin. In the hospital, because of her difficult birth, she was regularly taken away and monitored, only given back to me when it was time to feed. It seems incredible, mind-boggling that they have entrusted me with her, that they deem me capable of keeping this creature alive and free from harm.

  But the minutes pass, and then the hours and the days. We fall into a sort of nightmarish routine, she and I, tinged by lack of sleep and the feeling that I’m only seconds away from losing my mind. Through the constant, exhausting panic I manage somehow to change her and feed her when I need to; I sleep, fitfully, when she does, but when she’s fed and changed and still she cries, wanting something else, something that I can’t give, I can only lie and listen to her, waiting for it to stop.

  I try hard to breastfeed her at first, but with every passing day it seems to get more difficult. She roots endlessly, painfully at me and when at last she latches on it seems to take an age before she’s satisfied. Afterwards she sleeps fitfully, waking far too soon, demanding food again. I cradle her small head, horribly fragile and alien in my hands, while her neck lolls uncomfortably, and she cries and cries and cries.

  The health visitor, a small, very pale girl named Lucy comes the following Tuesday. I don’t tell her that I fantasize about running away and never coming back, that every day the feeling of dread gets worse and worse, that most days I don’t get dressed or washed. Instead, Lucy sits on my sofa and drinks my tea and weighs and measures Maya and checks my scar and talks about how the traffic’s bad today and where she’s going on holiday and insists on calling me ‘Mum’. I listen to her in a kind of stupor, watching her efficient white hands as they dart to and fro like mice.

  ‘How’s the feeding going, Mum?’ she asks. ‘Any problems there?’

  I look away, it already having been drummed into me on the maternity ward how dimly I’d be viewed if I didn’t feed her myself.

  ‘OK,’ I mumble, though clearly not very convincingly, because her eyes narrow and she immediately pounces on my words.

  ‘Would you like to feed her now, Mum, so I can check her latch?’

  I shake my head. ‘She’s fast asleep and I don’t want to wake her. It’s fine, honestly.’ The truth is I don’t want her to see how bad I am at this. The softly smiling, dreamy-eyed women in the breastfeeding leaflets pressed on me at the hospital, those loving mothers with their contented, suckling infants who seem to be everywhere suddenly, are such a far cry from my reality that I can’t bear for her to see it. I don’t tell her about the tin of formula I bought in desperation only this morning, the blessed relief of feeding Maya from a bottle, not having to have her gnawing at me or listen to her ear-splitting frustration.

  Little by little I slide, deeper and deeper each day. ‘I’m going to go and stay at my mum’s for a while,’ I tell Lucy the next time she comes. Harassed and overworked, she gratefully signs me off, with a vague promise to phone in a few weeks’ time. When Uncle Geoff next visits I see that he has no idea that when he leaves I’ll sink exhausted to the floor, my face a mess of snot and tears, while Maya wails alone from across the room. Gradually I stop replying to his texts, or answering his calls.

  I’m so tired that I have begun to see things that aren’t there: from the corner of my eye black spiders scuttle across the ceiling; objects roll silently along the floor. Exhaustion has left me with a permanent sense of seasickness, of the ground being always unsteady beneath my feet. It isn’t often that I leave the flat, but it’s on a day that I’m forced out to the corner shop to buy more nappies that I see my new neighbours again. As I queue I spy the two lads from the window, walking across the street, their heads bent, their hoods all but obscuring their faces, their dog strutting leadless and collarless in front of them.

  Maya, who had slept peacefully the entire way there and back, waits until we’ve returned to my building and I’m standing in the communal entrance, trying to muster the energy to carry both her and the buggy back up the four flights of stairs, when she wakes and begins to cry, loudly and unceasingly.

  It’s like a thousand crows are cawing in my head, scratching and pecking to get out. I lean against the banister and close my eyes, summoning every ounce of strength I have not to leave again by the front door, to walk away without her and never come back. I don’t know how long I stand like this before I realize that I’m being watched and I look up to see the woman staring at me from her open doorway. I start guiltily, but before I can say anything she comes over to Maya’s buggy and, without looking at me, takes the handles. ‘Grab the other end,’ she tells me.

  I do as she says and, at her nod, begin the climb. On the way up I steal glances at her, the small face with its hard bright eyes and fine lines, the red hair and map of tattoos on her scrawny arms, the thick gold rings on her knuckles, but we don’t speak – even Maya has lapsed into vague half-hearted grumblings now – and it’s not until we reach the top that I thank her. She has started back down the stairs when I hurriedly say, ‘I’m Edie, by the way,’ and at first I think she’s not going to respond, but at the last moment she turns and smiles briefly. ‘Monica,’ she replies, then disappears from view. I stand and stare after her and, though I can’t explain why, I’m oddly comforted by the thought of this tough-looking stranger living her life only a few floors below, a glimpse of shore lights from the midst of a dark and choppy sea.

  A few weeks later, passing a church hall in the pouring rain I notice a sign for a mother and baby group. I pause, glancing down at Maya who, for once, is lying quietly beneath her rain cover. I’m soaked, yet I can’t quite bear to return to my cramped, messy flat. On impulse I open the door and peer in. The hall is large and packed with women sitting around drinking tea and eating biscuits, while in the centre what seems like hundreds of toddlers stampede through a sea of brightly coloured plastic toys. The noise is overwhelming. I’m about to back away when a woman in her sixties, wearing a vicar’s collar, strides towards me. ‘Are you coming in?’ she says briskly. ‘That’s right, in you come. Close the door behind you, we don’t want any escapees, do we?’ Dazedly I do as she says. ‘Pushchairs over there, that’s the way, well done.’

  Obediently I lift Maya from her buggy and park it with all the others then edge into the hall, looking around myself uncertainly. I notice a small group of women in the corner, balancing babies on their knees. I make my way over to them and, finding a seat, shift Maya in my arms, hoping desperately that she’ll keep quiet for a while longer. Out of the corner of my eye I watch the other mothers, noticing enviously how relaxed they seem, their children slung casually over their shoulders or being jiggled on knees, the women paying little attention to them as they chat amongst themselves.

  Eventually one of them turns to me and smiles. ‘Hi,’ she says and nods at Maya. ‘Oh, isn’t she lovely. How old?’

  ‘Six weeks,’ I tell her. ‘Yours?’

  ‘Eight months now.’

  I hesitate, then blurt, ‘Does it get easier? It’s just, she just … she never stops crying. Do you know what I mean? I don’t know. I suppose they’re all like that, are they? Is yours? Does yours cry all the time too?’

  The woman tilts her head sympathetically and blinks. ‘No, he’s a cheery little thing, this one. So easy! Always smiling.’ She pauses then says, ‘I think it’s because my husband and I are such laid-back people, you know?’ she gives a self-congratulatory smirk, and adds, ‘maybe you need to try and chill out a bit? Babies sense it if you’re stressed. Have you tried yoga?’

  I shake my head and murmur faintly that I’ll give it a go, and she turns back to her friend just as Maya opens her mouth and lets out a piercing shriek. As quickly as I can I gather up my things and leave.

  The sky clears as I reach the park at the top of my road and I sink gratefully on to a wet bench, Maya asleep now in her buggy next to me. The pa
rk has a panoramic view of London but I close my eyes to it, exhaustion carrying me to the edges of consciousness. I don’t know how long I doze before I wake with a start, sensing a shadow fall in front of me, another presence near. I shield my eyes and look into a face that takes me a couple of moments to recognize as the man who sold me the cot before. I notice his peroxide tufts have gone, his black hair now closely cropped.

  ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Edie, right?’ He stands by Maya’s pram, smiling down at me. ‘James. I sold you the cot. I thought it was you!’ His son is a few feet away, poking at the grass with a stick.

  I nod, conscious suddenly of my hair sticking greasily to my face, and the fact that I’d picked up the nearest clothes from the floor before braving what seemed like this monumental expedition. I realize I can’t remember the last time I washed. ‘All right?’ I say.

  ‘She’s a beauty.’ He’s looking into the pram now, and I do my best to arrange my features into the expected smile. ‘Thanks,’ I say.

  ‘How’re you doing?’ he asks. ‘Everything going all right, is it?’ and I’m horrified when my eyes fill with tears. I look down, willing myself to stop.

  A silence falls while he tactfully glances away. ‘It’s hard, isn’t it, doing it by yourself,’ he says after a while, then adds, ‘Me and Stan’s mum split not long after he was born.’

  I nod, staring at my hands.

  ‘It gets easier,’ he says. ‘It sounds like bullshit, but it’s true, it really does.’

  I’m too embarrassed to meet his gaze; using every ounce of strength I have to keep the tidal wave of hopelessness at bay. At last to my relief he takes his son’s hand, and begins to move off. ‘Well, better go,’ he says, ‘lunch and so on.’ I nod, swallowing hard. ‘Take care,’ he adds, and, with a final sympathetic smile, he goes.

  It’s at this moment that Maya wakes and starts to cry again. Any willpower I had managed to muster until that point entirely deserts me, and burying my head in my hands I give in to the tears. It’s the endlessness of it all I can’t stand: the awful knowledge that this is going to go on and on and on, except every day I will be that little bit more tired, that little bit less able to bear it. Maya continues to scream and yet the thought of picking her up is entirely beyond me; I am too exhausted to even lift my head.

  And then, my face still buried in my hands, I feel the bench beside me sag with a sudden weight, the warmth from the sun that had been shining on my right side vanishes and a familiar, oniony smell fills my nostrils. A thick arm rests upon my shoulders. I look up to find Heather sitting beside me. ‘There, there,’ she says gently. ‘Shush now.’

  I don’t think about how or why she found me, or what this means. Something inside me breaks at the sight of the old, familiar face, and I drop my head on to her shoulder and feel myself sink into her large, soft body. After a long time, she pats me on the back, gets up and, taking the handle of the buggy, holds a hand out to me as if I were a small child. ‘Let’s get you both home, shall we?’ she says. ‘And have a nice cup of tea.’

  This is how Heather comes back into my life. This is how it begins.

  PART TWO

  Before

  Sometimes when I’m feeling sad there’s this thing I do to make myself feel better. I choose a memory from a time when I was really happy and I dive into it, leaving the world far behind; all its sights and sounds dissolving until the memory is all around me, more real and warm and colourful than the life I’d just been living.

  Because it’s Sunday we have all been to church, Mum, Dad and I. We were late so the pews were almost full and I had to sit across the aisle from my parents. The service went the same as usual with the same old prayers and hymns. But then, during the Lord’s Prayer, as I bent my head with everyone else and began to say the words, I felt the strangest sensation, like a cold pressure on the back of my neck. I continued on with the prayer … as we forgive those that trespass against us, and lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil … the feeling grew stronger until at last I turned and there, amongst all the bowed, murmuring heads, was my mother, sitting bolt upright, her lips silent, her eyes fastened on me. And the expression on her face made my heart stop, actually stop for a long, dizzying moment.

  A second later she looked away and I went back to my prayer. My heartbeat returned, hammering against my ribs, my body trembled. The prayer ended and in its place was the rustling, shuffling throat-clearing sound of the congregation preparing to sing the next hymn. But I wasn’t amongst them any longer. I had left the sick, sad, desperate feeling far behind and the next thing I knew I was five and Lydia was two and we were playing together in our old room back in Wales.

  My mother had gone out and my father was in another room. I was absorbed in my dolls so it was some time before I looked up to discover that Lydia was surrounded by the empty pots of poster paint I’d been playing with before. Her face and hands, her clothes, the carpet surrounding her was covered in multicolour streaks. I gasped as she grinned back at me, pleased with herself. Mum would be home any minute and she’d be furious: it was my fault the paints were left where Lydia could get to them. But just at that moment Lydia threw her head back and began to laugh and I realized suddenly I didn’t really care. I went to her and put my arms round her and squeezed her tightly and laughed and laughed too, and love, I felt such love.

  After

  I can’t seem to get myself started. I think about getting up, getting on with it, but the hours and days pass and still I don’t move. Between waking and sleeping, memories gather and retreat. Sometimes Maya’s cry pierces the murky sadness that’s seeped into every part of me, leaving me listless and bedridden, without energy or purpose. Occasionally I’ll surface long enough to hear Heather’s soothing response, before I sink once again, pulled back deeper and deeper by the cold dead fingers of the past.

  I drift.

  I’m in the street where I used to live with Mum. Above our row of pebble-dashed semis the sky is heavy with unshed rain yet somewhere behind it the sun still shines, infusing the world with a strange metallic light, the trees copper against an iron sky. A rainbow arches over the string of front yards with their washing lines and wheelie bins and abandoned toys and bits of junk, and somewhere out of sight the motorway roars on, like the blood rushing in your ears.

  I walk on towards the Pembroke Estate and I marvel that before we met I never knew that Connor was there; all the time existing in the world, up there breathing, sleeping, feeling, being, without me knowing it, with no idea the world contained him. I feel a brief, sharp thrill of terror at the thought that I could easily never have met him at all, that my life might somehow have continued without him in it.

  I awake to darkness. For some moments I’m lost between past and present, unable to anchor myself in either. I hear a car passing far below, voices drifting from the pavement to my window. And then the sound of snoring coming from the corner of the room. Heather. She is here, in my flat, bringing with her the past, and as I begin to remember, make sense of it, another sound infiltrates the midnight peace; a scratchy squawking that builds quickly to a full-throated wail coming from somewhere in the shadows. I hold my breath, anxiety giving way to relief when Heather stirs and reaches for the baby, staggering away with her to the kitchen. Soon there is the sound of bottles, a boiling kettle, low murmuring, Maya quietens and I drift.

  I don’t know how long ago it was that she found us in the park. I remember begging her to stay, telling her I had no one else to help me, and her promising that she would. The days seep into one another; Heather brings sandwiches or soup to my bed, occasionally she’ll run me a bath and lead me gently to it, but mainly she leaves me to sleep, and stare, and remember. The hours slide by, light and shadows creeping across the ceiling, and I hear her leaving and returning again with Maya.

  Sometimes during the endless hours I think about the two of us back then, how lonely and lost I’d felt when I first moved to Fremton. How with Heather it was as if, for the first
time in my life, I could be myself, could tell her anything and she would still think I was great. It had been the most comforting friendship I had ever had. And then I think about how, slowly, everything had changed, and the horror of that final night comes rushing towards me like an express train and I curl up into a ball, my eyes tight shut, my hands over my ears trying desperately to block the memories out. I don’t know why she has come to help me now, after all this time, after all that happened then, and I don’t really care. I only know that I’m unfit to look after my daughter, that I’m no good for her, and that Heather is all I have.

  Only once during these long, dark weeks do I leave the flat. I wake early, damp with sweat, my heart racing and my skin burning. Maya and Heather sleep soundly on the other side of the room while my chest tightens and tightens as though held in a vice, the sound of their breathing growing louder and louder until I think I might go mad from it. Ten minutes pass, then another and another. The ceiling seems to be getting steadily lower, the walls closer, and panic courses through me until I can bear it no longer. I need to get out, get out, and I scrabble about for my clothes, pull them on and leave at a run.

  But the relief to be away from my flat is replaced by a terror of the wide-open sky and the buildings that seem to loom and leer over me. A motorbike’s sudden roar makes me cry out in fright. I look wildly around me and on impulse set off in the direction of my GP, not knowing what I want from her, only that this horror is unbearable, that I need to make it stop.

  The receptionist eyes me suspiciously when she opens up the surgery and I ask her for an appointment. ‘Is it an emergency?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, I mean – I think so, I don’t know.’ Tears fill my eyes as she sighs and peers at her computer.

  ‘We have a cancelation in forty-five minutes,’ she tells me grudgingly.