“It’s not too bad, so far,” I told Howard, wondering why my mother had to dramatize everything.
“I’ll be with you,” Howard promised.
They made him wait downstairs, despite his protests. “We won’t be needing you for a while,” the secretary told him, and she winked at me.
“Good-bye,” I said at the elevator. I wished we had decided in favor of pictures, after all. I would have started right there with a record of his poor face as the elevator doors slid shut and the nurse and I went up.
“Primapara!” she shouted to someone I couldn’t see, as soon as we left the elevator.
Well, that sounds nice, I thought. Like prima donna or prima ballerina. We went swiftly down a corridor past little rooms. Other women looked out at me.
What’s all this? I wondered, everything unlearned in that first bolt of fear.
I had my own room. A Room of One’s Own, I thought. But this certainly wasn’t what Woolf had meant. The minute this was over, the first chance I could get to concentrate, I would start writing again. It was only a biological pause; just so much psychic energy to go around, one thing at a time. I climbed into the high bed like a tired and obedient child.
The new doctors who came to examine me all seemed so short. And they smiled as they dug in and announced their findings. “Two fingers. Three fingers.”
Why didn’t they use some secret medical jargon for what they were doing? It sounded suspiciously like a juvenile sex game to me, as if they were only playing doctor.
It was such a quiet place. There was none of my mother’s famous screaming. Things must have changed, I decided, since her day.
After a while I was shaved, for collaborating with the enemy, I supposed. More silence. Then a shriek! I sat up, alerted, but it was only some horseplay among the nurses. “What’s going on?” I asked someone who came in and went out again without answering. “Hello?”
It was lonely. Where was Howard anyway?
And then he was there. When had he grown that shadowed jowl? And why were his eyes so dark with sympathy?
“It’s nothing,” I said severely. “Stop looking like that.” Lenny had seemed magnificent. Howard only looked mournful and terrified. So this was where his life had led him.
Things didn’t get better. Howard rubbed my back and jerked me from the haven of short dozes with his murmurs, his restlessness. There were noises now from other rooms as well. Voices rose in wails of protest.
But I had my own troubles. The contractions were coming so damn fast. I was thirsty, but water wasn’t permitted—only the rough swipe of the washcloth across my tongue. I caught it with my teeth and tried to suck on it, cheating.
There was no discreet examination sheet in this place. Strangers peered at me in full view. They measured, probed and went away. A nurse pushed a hypodermic into my thigh when I wasn’t looking.
“Hey, what’s that?” I demanded. “I’m not supposed to have anything. This is a natural case, you know.”
“Dr. Kramer is on his way,” she said, evading the issue.
“Taking his own sweet time,” I snarled.
Howard seemed shocked by my rudeness and the abrupt shift of mood.
“This is getting bad,” I told him, but it wasn’t what he wanted to hear. In the distance a Greek chorus warned—too late, too late.
They wheeled me dizzyingly fast to the delivery room. Howard ran alongside like a winded trainer trying to keep up with his fighter. “Almost there,” he said, breathless.
How would he know? It was miles and miles.
Despite everything, they strapped me down. “This is barbaric!” I shouted. “Women in primitive places squat in the fields!”
“Oh God, that bullshit again,” a black nurse said.
“You trapped me into this,” I told Howard. “I’ll never forgive you. Never!”
He was wearing a green surgical mask and now he stood as poised and eager as an outfielder waiting for the long ball.
“Imposter!” I cried.
“Paulette!” Dr. Kramer called. “How is my big girl?”
“Just tell me what to do,” Howard said.
“Why don’t you hold her? There. Lift her a little and support her sternum.”
Sternum, sternum, what were they talking about?
I yowled and Howard said, “My love, I’m here!” His eyes were brilliant with tears.
The whole room shuddered with pain. And I was the center of it, the spotlit star of the universe. Who was trying to be born here anyway—Moby Dick?
Oh, all the good, wise things I had done in my life. I might have done anything and still come to this. In school the teacher rolled down the charts on nutrition. We saw the protein groups, the grain groups. Green leafy vegetables. Lack of vitamin C leads to scurvy.
Liars! The charts ought to show this, the extraordinary violence of birth, worse than mob violence, worse than murder, FUCKING LEADS TO THIS! those charts ought to say.
“A few more pushes and you’ll have your baby,” Dr. Kramer said.
Ah, who wanted a baby? For once in her whole rotten life, my mother was right. “Dr. Kramer! Marvin! Give me gas!” I cried, using his first name for equal footing.
But instead he caught the baby who had shouldered through in the excitement.
And I had forgotten to smile, had greeted my child with the face of a madwoman.
Somewhere else in the room, a nurse pressed Howard’s head down between his knees.
“No pictures. No pictures,” I said.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1988 by Hilma Wolitzer
cover design by Angela Wilcox
978-1-4532-8787-3
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