Happy People Live Here

by C. Sean McGee

9B

  The Mother had hardly the courage or the strength necessary to be here and yet, she could hardly bring herself to being anywhere else. It was as if she had made her home, inside of a twisted and burned out wreck, and though she knew there had been an accident and that there was no way that anyone could have possibly survived, still, she could never bring herself to looking in the mirrors, just to be sure.

  Holding onto the small colored butterfly, she, with her free hand, re-arranged the colored diapers into a neat stack in the laundry, placing them neat and ordered so that the little tags were all sticking out and she could read Callum’s name.

  She thought it was a bit mad at first, having so many. She had gone through a faze, just before Callum was born, where she bought scores of them, and then scores of scores, so much that it became a habit, something she had to nip in the bud, just because there was not enough space to keep them all, not in the tiny apartment.

  It didn’t seem so mad now though, sitting on her red stool and sipping a cup of coffee, letting herself drift as she stared aimless at the pile of diapers, watching the letters of her son’s name meld and merge into a black smear across the landscape of spotted cows and leopards prints, fluorescent greens and striped zebras and big white bones and pirate skulls, with her favorite on top, the black diaper, the one covered in big white moustaches, the curly kind, like of old fashioned adventurers and aristocrats. She didn’t much like those types of people, but the moustaches looked cute, printed on a baby’s bum.

  She even thought of making them herself. A lot of the women were like this, in the groups that she was a part of. They all thought the same way, and they inspired others to think the same way too, that they could do anything. And they could you know. Not because they had no choice, but because it was their choice.

  And everything about Callum’s birth was about choice. It was about her having the courage to fight for what she wanted and to do what was right, not what was easier or cheaper or what some doctor told her to do just because what she wanted scared the pants off of them. It was about choice. It was about her choosing to say no. It was about her choosing to get up and walk out. It was about her shutting out her family and her old friends when all they could say was ‘you’re crazy’ and ‘don’t you know how dangerous that is’.

  The scar on The Mother’s belly still stuck out, much more than she would like and more than her doctor promised it would. Korine’s birth was about choice, it was about how little she had and how insignificant she was, as just a woman, and worse still, as just a worried mother, besieged by their climatic emotions, like a tempering child, shouting for more when they’ve gobbled the last one and the packet is empty and bare on their laps, or a victim of a violent robbery, unable to hold their bladder as hurled abuse and orders graze the inside of their ear while the muzzle of a gun scrapes against the back of their neck.

  She had wanted a natural birth, something that was becoming more and more uncommon where she lived. She wanted it in the same way and with the same amount of mutinous drive as she did, when she was a girl, to leave school, and to leave home and her mother, and to live by herself in the city so she didn’t have to be under anybody’s thumb and like she always wanted, one day to teach or sing in a band or just sit around all day, smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee.

  And pregnant with her first child, she thought it would be something romantic and epic, yet at the same time, something flowery, with lots of bunny rabbits and doctors, whose voices sounded like cotton candy. She was hoping for a pregnancy etched in the brightly spun virtue of Disney, but in the end, her script was the love child of Monty Python and Edgar Allen Poe, absurdity fashioned in a veil of horror.

  There were the countless doctors who looked just like doctors and sounded just like doctors but, in fact, were merely idiots with coats and diplomas. And it was true that many times along the way, out of naïve assumption, The Mother, and The Father cut themselves time and time again, on Occam’s razor; hearing hooves and assuming horses, as opposed to an industry of asses.

  The Mother had had a thousand concerns, fed by the thousand books and articles she had read, scripted like the book of revelations, for her uterus. What were worse though were the condescending winks and nods from her doctors, as if every thought in her head was unfounded. And they knew this because all of those things, they were the flower of archaic medicine; one they had no intention of practicing.

  During an appointment, days before Korine was born, The Mother sat alone as her obstetrician got up from her table and arranged the bed and the stirrups for The Mother to do her then weekly evaluation. She struggled to get off her seat but with some straining and some awkward bending of her knees, she managed to get herself onto her feet and shuffle over to the table.

  “Just hop up here and put your feet in the stirrups,” said The Obstetrician. “I’ll be right back. I just have to get your records.”

  The Obstetrician left the room and The Mother climbed onto the bed and rested her feet in the two metal stirrups. On the roof, there was a picture of a child holding a balloon. The child was sitting on green grass and the sun was shining in the blue sky.

  The Mother rubbed her belly and hummed to her daughter.

  “So how do you feel? Looks like that baby might drop out at any second” asked The Obstetrician, walking back into the room with a file in her hands.

  “Tired,” said The Mother stretching out a worn and hospitable smile.

  “You’re almost there now. Let’s listen to the baby’s heart rate and just make sure there are no problems.”

  The Mother closed her eyes as The Obstetrician ran a host of instruments across her belly. The sound of her child’s heart beating echoed in The Mother’s ears. With her shut eyes, she imagined that the child was in her arms and breathing as it was on the monitor, in nervous anticipation for the nipple it was reaching for with its tiny massaging hands.

  So it was excited breaths.

  And not the other kind.

  “I can’t wait,” said The Mother, “to have the home birth. No drugs. No nothing.”

  The Obstetrician’s eyes opened wide.

  Her face e whitened.

  And her hands froze.

  The probe slipped, just a little.

  And the sound of a beating heart stopped.

  “That’s great,” said The Obstetrician.

  “I’ve been planning so much for this. I want my baby to come into the world in the most natural and peaceful environment. Without intervention. Without the coldness of a hospital you know? I mean, a hospital is no place for giving birth. It’s a place to negotiate with death, not to welcome life. I want the tranquility of my own room. My family around me. My husband in the pool with me. However long it takes.”

  The Obstetrician smiled genuinely.

  “You are so brave you know. Good on you” she said, looking at her agenda worryingly.

  The woman opened her eyes.

  “What do you mean?” she said.

  “No don’t get me wrong. I think it’s great what you’re doing. It’s really brave. I admire that. You’re a real warrior you know?”

  The Mother’s breathing became racy and shallow.

  “I couldn’t do it you know? All the risks. I don’t think I could, you know, for the sake of tradition, put my life in so much danger. I just don’t have the same courage as you. And the baby too. God, you must be so damn brave. I do admire that. To be able to say, just, to hell with the risks, you know? That’s just fantastic. And at home too? Wow. I couldn’t do it. Just the thought of something going wrong and not being near a hospital. I couldn’t. But that’s great. You should be proud of yourself.”

  It was The Mother’s turn now, to turn white.

  “That’s odd?” said The Obstetrician.

  “What? What is it? Is there a problem?”

  The Obstetrician turned to the screen beside her and moved the probe around for an image of the fetus inside The Mother’s womb. It took her only a seco
nd or two of pushing and shoving the side of The Mother’s belly until the image on the screen, which of a tiny fetus, turned to face the screen.

  “Oh dear,” said The Obstetrician.

  “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  The Obstetrician let the silence hold. She prodded on all sides of The Mother’s belly, causing her to squint and grimace with the uncomfortable pain.

  “Oh dear,” said The Obstetrician again, this time her face fraught with worry.

  “Is there a problem? Is something wrong?”

  “It’s the cord,” said The Obstetrician. “It’s around the baby’s throat. If we don’t intervene now, the baby will die in utero.”

  “Oh my god,” said The Mother, her hands shaking. “What do we do?”

  “Cesarean section. It’s the only way I can guarantee the life of your child. If we wait, the child will choke.”

  The Obstetrician paused for a second.

  The Mother held her breath.

  Everything she had built appeared was so fragile and was now crumbling before her and she looked at the screen and she could see, the infant with something lopped around its neck. And she looked to the empty seat beside her, where The Father should have been right now.

  The Mother wore the look of a child who had lost its favorite toy. She wanted The Obstetrician to say that everything would be ok, that this was just a natural thing and that a quick poke and a shove could move the cord from around her child’s neck; that she could have the homebirth that she wanted.

  But seeing that image.

  The cord around the child’s neck.

  How could she take that risk?

  “Ok,” she said, verging on hysterics. “When? Now?” she shouted desperate to save her daughter’s life, wanting to reach inside of herself and undo the strangling coil with her own hands.

  The Obstetrician laid the probe down on the table beside her. She took The Mother’s hands and squeezed tightly. “Don’t worry?” she said, “We’ll save your baby’s life. Thank god for modern medicine.”

  The Obstetrician looked The Mother longingly in the eyes, the same way her mother did whenever she was a sick and there was nothing her mother could do except to grip her hand and to shush her feverish panting, and to tell her that everything was going to be ok.

  The Mother looked once more at the screen, at the image of the infant breathing lighter than it should and with three turns of a cord, noosed around its throat.

  “When can we do the C-Section?” pleaded The Mother.

  The Obstetrician smiled secretively. She looked at her agenda once more.

  “Thursday afternoon at four thirty five pm,” she said.

  “Why not now? She’s going to die. We have to do something” pleaded The Mother as The Obstetrician wiped the jelly off of her stomach and helped her off the bed and back onto her swollen feet.

  “She’ll be fine. Her heartbeat is fast, but it’s stable. You just go home and put your feet up and try not to think about it too much. Get your nails done, spoil yourself.”

  “But I…”

  “Ok then mummy, so I’ll see you on Thursday. Don’t worry; everything is going to be ok. And here’s a coupon for fifteen percent of your parking.”

  The Mother left the office, wiping her tears and sobbing, but confident that medicine was going to save her baby’s life. As she stood in the doorway, her hand pressed to her belly, behind her, The Obstetrician picked the probe off of the floor and put it back in its place by the ultrasound machine. The fetus was still swimming around on the screen, caught in an unfortunate bind.

  The Obstetrician then turned to the VCR that was hidden behind the ultrasound machine and ejected the video. The image of the strangling child vanished and The Obstetrician put the video back in her drawer marked ‘Do Not Open’. She then took the power cord for the ultrasound machine and plugged it back into the wall.

  The green light went green.

  The many colored lights all gleamed.

  The buzzers buzzed.

  The machine beeped.

  The Mother went to her car.

  And The Obstetrician, well she welcomed her next patient.

  Korine’s birth was about choice. It was about how little of it that she had. It was about how she lay on a hospital bed, staring at a green cover while her stomach was sliced and slashed. It was about how she had been lied to. It was about how scared she felt, thinking her daughter was about to die. And it was about how raped and violated she felt, having been lied to, having been forced against her will through absolute fear, to have her choice, not taken from her, but to have had her willingly give it away.

  And now, every time her hand brushed the scar just below her belly button, her stomach would sink and she would get the feeling that someone was behind her or stalking, just in the shadows beside her, ready to take from her, her will and her choice and her rights as a mother and a woman.

  And when she was stressed or without sleep like she was this morning, the scar would bump up more than usual and it would turn pink. She’d know this if she ever had the courage to lift her shirt and see it for herself.

  Callum’s birth was about choice. And it was about vindication too, though this never came up. He was born at home, in a small swimming pool in their bedroom, where they now kept the yellow dresser, the one where the colored diapers were always so neatly stacked, so she could read her son’s name, like the spines on her favorite books, as she lay on the mattress rubbing her belly.

  Callum’s birth was about choice.

  It was beautiful.

  And it was without fear.

  And it was without violence.

  And how she felt about Callum was so different to how she felt about Korine. And how she felt about Korine was merely how she felt about herself, now that Callum was gone. And now that all she had was a pile of colored diapers, a small colored butterfly and a red and itchy scar, just below her belly button.