Had she drunk enough water? She’d had that coffee. But coffee, she remembered, was a stimulant, perhaps not the best choice. She stood up and walked into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of water. Her belly was soft. Her backache couldn’t be the result of the low chairs for the shiva because she hadn’t sat in them. She made the blessing and sipped the water. She went back out into the living room with the glass and looked at the seven-day candle on the bureau that had been lit for the soul of her mother-in-law. It was flickering in the slight breeze from the window. To think that a life could be lost so easily. Where did the soul go when it left the body? Of course, it went to God, but where was that, exactly? And how did it free itself? She opened the top drawer of the bureau, took out a partially used candle that she lit from the yahrzeit licht, and then carried it carefully into her bedroom. She dripped some wax onto the plate and stuck the candle to the porcelain. The room filled with shadows. Flickering mercurial light shone in the windows and in the mirrors. She looked at her watch. It was 3:27. Somehow, over an hour had passed since Tzila Ruchel left. Yidel would be home after 5:00.
As she was putting her watch back onto the bedside cabinet, her belly began to tighten and she bent over and moaned. It was not the lighter contractions that she’d been half aware of experiencing earlier in the evening. This one meant business. It gripped her around the waist and dug its fingers deeply into her spine and it did not let go. Surie broke out in a sweat. She twisted and sweated and gritted her teeth. It was an awkward position, bent over the cabinet, and after the contraction was over, she’d have to move. She swung her hips from side to side, her eyes on the watch face. A minute, a minute and a half. But that couldn’t be right. Such long contractions happened late in the delivery, not at the beginning. “No,” she growled, biting at her lips. “Not now. This is the wrong time. Not now.”
SIXTEEN
That first contraction unnerved her. For many minutes afterward, all she heard was the dripping underneath the skylight. Below her own rotting floorboards, the rain had reached down into Tzila Ruchel’s apartment. Her daughter’s ceiling, at that corner, was stained and black, and when it rained heavily, in the spring and the autumn, drops fell from Tzila Ruchel’s ceiling and made her floor as black as Surie’s, despite the pots she placed under the drips. The damage even reached down to Dead Onyu’s apartment. And to the basement.
After the second contraction, some men walked by outside, their footsteps echoing between the buildings as they made their way home from saying the tikkun for Shavios. But none of them sounded like Yidel, who walked with a particular heavy step and then a slight rasp of the other foot, not exactly a limp. It might have been some imbalance related to his deafness, because he hadn’t limped as a younger man.
Just as the third contraction was loosening, she felt a twist below her ribs, some kind of deep interior movement, followed by something resembling a pop, and then the sensation of moisture between her legs. There was an unnatural silence; all of the sounds of the city momentarily stilled and then began to roar and buzz and whistle and whine and hum and tick and drip again.
* * *
Because of the holiday, she was not allowed to touch the phone to call the midwife until she was certain that labor was under way. The contractions were irregular. How would she know if it was false labor? Would she commit a sin by calling if the labor fizzled out? If Yidel had been home, he would have been sent to ask the rabbi if they might use the telephone on the holy day. He would have roused one of his buddies from the emergency medical crew. Instead, she told herself that when the contractions were five minutes apart, she would call the midwife herself. It was too far to walk to the synagogue, and anyway, no women would be there at four in the morning. Even if she somehow managed to get there, she wouldn’t be heard over the voices of the thousands of men. She wanted to have Yidel nearby, but he didn’t come and he didn’t come, and eventually, she let the wanting go.
When Lipa first came home with his green glasses, Dead Onyu put out her hands and kissed his forehead and told him he was her favorite grandchild. The old woman could still see then.
It was raining harder. It drummed on the old roof and fell spattering on the floor beneath the skylight. There would be puddles in the cellar. What did the water carry down to the basement with it, first from her apartment, then from Tzila Ruchel’s, then from Dead Onyu’s?
What would all the grandmothers think when she passed by with new babies? No one would believe they were hers. The birth would be almost as miraculous as that of Sarah, wife of Avraham. She wasn’t as old as the matriarch, but she was carrying twins!
Surie walked back and forth from her bed to the bathroom. Sometimes the contractions caught her in the hallway and she leaned against the wall and held in her voice so that Tzila Ruchel, downstairs, would not hear. And sometimes the pains came when she was in the bathroom and she pulled against the towel rail and crouched and her eyes squeezed shut, sweat rolling down her face. It seemed, within a very short amount of time, she no longer remembered what she had been thinking during a contraction. Now the crushing was all darkness and bright lights inside her eyelids, pulsing vermilion streaks and yellow explosions. She knocked over the glass of water on the bedside table and kicked the broken glass under her bed. “Mazal tov,” she muttered. Each time she came back to her room, she forgot and again stood in the puddle and tracked it out into the hallway, where she stepped in the mashed bananas and tracked that back into her room. It was too late to roll down her stockings or find her abandoned slippers. It was too late to go downstairs for Tzila Ruchel, even had she wanted to, for she could manage only a few steps on the tips of her toes and those with difficulty. But was this real labor yet? She wasn’t sure.
In between the contractions, she leaned against whatever was there, trembling.
* * *
She had forgotten to switch the laundry from the washer to the dryer. Yesterday. Or the day before yesterday? She hated the smell of mildew.
* * *
She had never asked her mother what her own birth had been like. Easy or hard? There was no one left to ask.
* * *
Mamme, Mamme!
* * *
Sometimes she fell asleep for a minute or two and woke up when an urgent tingle formed in her spine. She thought she should time the contractions, but she couldn’t find her watch. She thought that it might be the moment to call the midwife and then forgot.
She sat on the toilet and felt some relief, but then, as her belly tightened, she rose up, away from the pain, and began to whimper. Years earlier Val had told her that when a contraction came, she should say, “Yes!” instead of crying, “No!” but now she cried, “No! No no no no!” Her denials fused together and came out as an ugly bellow.
She was not strong enough to endure labor.
Though middle-aged women came into the clinic for IVF treatment and it was technically possible to help them conceive, pregnancy for the old was a form of torture. No one would go through it if they knew what it would do to their body. It was hard enough to climb the stairs.
Her feet were swollen and numb. There was a high-pitched buzzing in her ears. Her knees felt as though razors had been inserted between the bones. She wanted to kill Yidel.
She leaned forward on the toilet and felt between her legs. In the darkness, she could not tell whether what she felt was blood or some other fluid, so she stood up and edged over to the window and held her hand up against the frosted glass. There was not enough light in the bathroom to see anything. Surely she was far enough along in the labor that the regular laws of the holidays would not apply? Could she switch on the bedside lamp? She would have to wait for Yidel. Where was he? As usual, not home. As usual, in the synagogue. Why was he never home when she needed him? She could die, broken open on the linoleum, and he would still be out with his buddies, singing songs, smoking, eating cake.
That wasn’t fair. She knew it wasn’t. He was a good man. But at the next contraction, s
he screamed his name. She was sure she had never been so angry. She bit down on his name and shook it, grinding her teeth, biting her lips.
Before the next contraction came, she began the movements necessary to kneel on the floor. She was desperate to arch her back. She was halfway down when the contraction leapt upon her. She fought against the pain as if it were a tiger. An urgent bellow of nos boiled out of her throat. It was the loudest sound she had ever made. It didn’t stop. She roared and roared. Some new sensation gripped her, utterly alien and yet deeply familiar, a sliding and twisting, a burning heat that rose up from her legs and accelerated through her spine. She held her breath and began to push against this thing, and she roared again. Balanced there, halfway between the toilet and the floor, one foot raised, she closed her eyes and bore down, blinded by a thousand brilliant lights bursting in her eyes. The only relief for such a fierce burning was pushing, so she pushed again. She’d call the midwife soon. Everything would be fine.
Outside the door of the bathroom, she heard her granddaughter Miryam Chiena yelling, “Bubbie? Bubbie? Are you all right?” The handle turned and the door shook in its frame. She lunged across the room and leaned against the door, keeping it closed with the full weight of her body, taking a deep breath and holding it throughout the next contraction, a weak one.
“I’m good,” she croaked when she was released. “Miryam Chiena, darling, go downstairs.”
“What is all the noise?”
“Something is stuck,” Surie said, and she made an ugly wet sound with her mouth and her lips, something she’d done as a child and giggled about, to hint at the personal nature of the sticking. “Leave me alone, little lamb.” She just had time to lean over and flush the toilet before she again had to close her eyes and hold her breath, willing Miryam Chiena downstairs and back into bed with her last moment of control.
“Good night, Bubbie. I’m glad you’re all right. I’ll tell Mommy you have a tummy upset.”
The child’s footsteps receded down the hallway. Surie’s lips were bleeding from biting her mouth shut.
“Open your eyes and see your baby being born.” That is what her midwife had told her. But it wasn’t time for that yet. Surely not. Still, Surie got both feet underneath her and gripped the edge of the toilet seat, squatting, and she panted. She was still wearing her stockings. She should unbutton them from the garter belt.
It was happening too fast. It was wrong. It had never been like this.
Those thoughts were buried underneath the avalanche of the next contraction.
“No!” she cried, but then, shakily, she changed it to, “Yes!” A yes like a crowbar forcing a lock. She opened her eyes and knew something was wrong. She couldn’t be ready for delivery. Surely this was just Braxton Hicks? She hadn’t even called Val. The doctor had said a hundred times that she had to be in the hospital, supervised. It was too dangerous. How big were the twins? She’d been afraid to eat. At seven months, he’d said they probably weighed less than two pounds each, a fifth of the weight of her other children at the same age. It was her fault they were so small.
She did not see the infant’s scalp with its creamy vernix and wet strands of hair. Neither did she see a little bottom, squeezed dark purple. There wasn’t enough light. Instead, she felt a strange fluid-filled membrane bulging from her, something like a water balloon. Her heart fluttered. A watermelon had grown from a tiny seed tossed carelessly into her waiting field, and now it had rolled perilously downhill, faster and faster. And with the next push, the sac twisted, there was muffled flailing, a soft movement, and the thing slid out farther, and with another push, she caught it.
The sun must have been coming up, because there was a pale blue rectangle at the window. Perhaps it was five thirty? Her mother’s clock had rung, but how many times? She didn’t know. She was still filled with the unbearable urge to push.
They were born seconds apart, their cauls still intact. Their hair glittered and danced like falling snow inside iridescent, filmy globes that bulged as the babies moved. She laid them on her warm belly and watched as the early morning sun was refracted through their identical amniotic sacs, forming rainbows on the tiles beside her. She could see they were tired, and she was, too. They were swimming the longest distance now, and as their sacs collapsed, she heard a faint cry, a dying note played by a bow not perfectly aligned with the violin.
SEVENTEEN
Shortly after the delivery of the placentas, Yidel came home. At the sound of his footsteps on the stairs, she hauled herself upright and pulled her nightgown down to cover her legs. It was still possible, perhaps, that she could get away with saying nothing.
“Are you up?” Yidel said. “I stayed behind a little to help clean up.”
He waited, as he always waited, outside the bathroom door, and he chattered on about what each man had said, and what the Rebbe had said, while she said nothing, crawling around quietly wiping the floor and the toilet and herself. The bathroom slowly filled with bright light from the south-facing window. The space reverted to being a bathroom. “Would you like some tea?” he asked. “I am not quite ready to go to sleep. Full of adrenaline, I think. And I have something for you.”
He always brought her a little square of pound cake from shil. It would be dry and crumbling, wrapped in a piece of brown paper towel. He would put it in her hand and she would want, as always, to kiss his dear cheek.
She leaned against the door. How had she ever kept anything from him? And why? All those stupid reasons in her head. What about her heart? “Yes,” she said. “I’m coming.” She asked him to wait a moment, that she wasn’t quite ready, and he said he would get water from the urn and make tea. He said he would be in the kitchen, and it was almost as if that part of him that understood silent language knew she wanted to speak to him about something specific. And why shouldn’t he know? He was her husband. They had been married for forty years.
Outside, the sun rose and rose and the tiny scraps of white clouds fell apart and became absorbed by the blue, blue sky. In the tree of heaven outside the bathroom window, goldfinches chaffed one another and flew from branch to branch, swaying on the very finest twigs, their scant weight barely enough to bow the tips. On the fire escape, Dead Onyu’s Swiss chard and romaine lettuce and radishes continued to grow in buckets, unaware that she was gone.
When Surie shuffled into the kitchen, Yidel stood up as he always did, from respect, and she bowed her head.
“Aha!” he said gleefully. “I see I’m not the only person with a present today! What do you have there?” he asked of the shopping bag she held in front of her. “Is it a pie?”
“Let’s drink that tea,” she said.
How many times had they sat and drunk tea in the early morning hours when the light was blue, and always Yidel had taken out the tattered Tzeina U’Reina and read one of the stories to her, and always he had said, “These stories are as good as the best food.”
But this time, when he sat down, he didn’t take out the old leather-bound book and he didn’t rifle through the pages looking for a favorite story to tell. There was only the table between them with its laminated cover and the ironstone teapot and the crumbling square of cake and the two glasses. There was the little bowl of sugar cubes because they both still preferred to drink tea sucked through sugar held in the teeth rather than stirred into the liquid. There was the spotlessly clean kitchen, and Surie, bent over, her scarf falling sideways so that the small dark prickles of her shaven head showed at the neck. She looked and felt ill. Couldn’t he see? And there was the plastic bag on the table. The terrible guilt of it.
Yidel pulled his chair round to her side and reached for her hand, but she pulled away. “You can’t,” she said. A bleeding woman may not touch her husband and he may not touch her.
“What’s happened?” he asked, puzzled, two lines appearing between his brows. It had been years since she had bled.
“I tried to tell you,” she said. “But you didn’t have your hearing aids
in.” Was she really going to blame him? “It came on suddenly, and before I could call for help, it was over.”
“Is it the cancer?” he whispered, because years earlier there had been that scare with cancer, but they had gotten through it. The cancer might always be his greatest fear.
“No, no,” she said, and tears welled up in her eyes and she brushed them away angrily, because his voice was so tender and it would not be tender when he knew. She would force herself to tell the truth to him because unless she ripped down every lie between them, they would never be able to go back to the way they had been.
He looked her over carefully. Her scarf was covered in dark brown fingerprints. Small blood vessels had broken in her face and in her eyes. She was panting and shaking as if she had a terrible fever. There was blood under her fingernails. Though he was an EMT and had seen her like this many times, his brain was slow to connect the dots.
“Should I call an ambulance?” he said haltingly, after a moment.
“It’s too late,” she said. “It’s over already. All I need is to lie down and go to sleep. I can take care of myself.”
He stood as if he were going to help her rise, and then, puzzled and afraid, he said, “What’s over?” and she gestured toward the plastic bag, but when he pulled the bag toward him and began to open it, she smacked his hand away.
“No,” she said. “Don’t look at them.”
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