by Dawn French
He’d thought they’d been very careful with contraception. He wasn’t a huge fan of condoms, but she insisted so he obliged. He was aware she was also on the pill, so he reckoned that wearing the condom was the least he could do, considering she was putting chemicals into her body. They were covered, he thought, so it wasn’t discussed much. In fact, she didn’t stay the night with him for several months after they met. She wanted to know him, to trust him. After all, he would be her very first lover. She wasn’t prim, but it mattered very much to her that it mattered to him, that it was to do with love, not lust. They waited. He didn’t mind. He wanted her very much but it was daunting, because it was also the first time for him. He didn’t tell her that until it was over. He reckoned she wouldn’t know because she had nothing to compare it with … which, for him, was a giant relief. He needn’t have worried. Hope and Quiet Isaac fumbled their way through that first time with extreme tenderness, and both were glad it was the other, and no one else.
Once that first time had happened, they had fallen into an easy intimacy and made love often. Sometimes they were both so very tired that sleep nabbed them before they could, and when they woke up they couldn’t believe they’d missed out. Hope could only imagine that it must have been in this kind of fuggy stupor of fatigue that the sex happened carelessly, without any protection, and this must have coincided with her also forgetting her pill. Shocked as they were to discover her pregnancy, and worried as they were about telling their two families, nothing could dampen their excitement. It wasn’t planned, far from it, but it was still undeniably wonderful. They had no idea how they were going to manage a baby, let alone afford one, but they knew for sure, right from the positive pregnancy test, that they would do it somehow, together. They talked endlessly about how their lives would change.
‘I won’t go home when I get my degree,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll find work here in London.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, so sure. Maybe we will get married? That way I will be able to stay. And we will be together, so we should get married anyway, if you want to …?’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes. I’m sure. Maybe before the baby comes.’
‘Really? So soon? Are you sure?’
‘Yes. Maybe you should meet my parents first? And I should meet yours?’
‘Before the baby? Or after? Are you sure?’
‘Maybe we should move to Bristol? Then you could be near your mum?’
‘Yes! Are you sure?’
‘Yes, or we could stay in London. The pay is better here …’
‘Yes … Oh, I want this so much, Isaac, I didn’t know how much ’til now.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
But that was then, and this is now.
In Anna and Julius’s room, the tension was palpable. A change was happening. Anna’s face was altering. She locked her gaze on to Julius and followed him wherever he moved to in the small room. He was shuffling about quite a bit; he took and made phone calls from anxious family and friends; he looked out of the window at the dark city; he looked out of the door into the corridor; he opened every drawer and cupboard; he scrutinized all the machinery in the room. Anna knew he was restless and bored. Patiently waiting wasn’t Julius’s strong suit. Neither was tenderness or compassion, or any of the virtues Anna could’ve sorely done with at that moment. Julius’s strong suit was Julius, and this birth stuff didn’t concern him directly, so his being here was chiefly duty. And show.
Even the phone calls at this late hour annoyed him. Why couldn’t people wait to hear from him when he had something definite to say? It wouldn’t be long, by the look of things.
The look of Anna, the way she looked right now, and the way she was looking at him, were unusual to say the least. She was clearly zoning out into some world of her own pain whilst her gaze was firmly clamped on him. It made him uncomfortable. He could ordinarily escape her if she became too focused or dwelt on difficult subjects or pinned him down in any way, but even selfish Julius knew it would be wrong to escape at this particular moment. He was expected to be here, so that was that. Did he want to be trapped in this fuggy room with his irrefutable duty? No, he didn’t. Given a free rein, he would go and do something else, almost anything else, and come back for the big finish. Anna’s eyes told him everything about how much of a mistake that would be, especially now as she started to enter the serious stage of labour. He could see that she was trying to cope with the huge unlocking that was happening inside her. She was trying to stay in control.
Anna had had no idea it would be like this. She was on the edge of panic. Some of the contractions felt like a jackhammer was trying to break out of her. Some felt like waves of searing hurt ebbing and flowing through her. As the baby started to move down, she felt sure she would tear apart and the sound she could hear in her ears was herself screaming although she knew she wasn’t. She was grunting and moaning. The screaming was inside her head, very loudly inside her head. She wasn’t screaming simply to herald this new baby’s arrival, she was screaming about everything …
About Julius’s avoidance of her.
About his endless crass infidelities.
About his smug entitlement.
About how this baby now meant they were joined forever. God.
About all the faking.
About the toxic marriage.
About her own weakness in not leaving.
About all her lost opportunities.
About all the ‘I told you so’s’ from her family and friends that she hadn’t cared to hear.
Somehow the pushing and the pain and the clamour gave her a massive sense of relief. This, at least, was real. She couldn’t at that moment distinguish anything else that was. Certainly not Julius. He was a big fat fake, but this wasn’t. This was truly happening, gulping her up and spitting her out to deal with it. A raw, real thing was happening. Right now.
She pushed. She tore. She sobbed.
She pushed again. She gasped for air because she’d forgotten to breathe.
One last gut-wrenching, eye-bulging effort, and the baby was out. The midwife immediately placed the sticky brown bundle of arms and legs on to her mother’s pale skin, high up above her breasts, near Anna’s neck. Her eyes were tightly closed and her hands tightly clasped below her chin; there was a furrowed expression on her little face. Florence was here at last. Furious, but here.
Anna looked up to see where Julius was. She couldn’t see him anywhere. Seriously? Had he really left the room at this critical moment …? Sarah indicated to Anna to look in the corner of the room. There he was. Big proud Julius the father, the seed-giver, the root, the origin, the man, was crumpled in a heap on the floor. He had fainted.
Sarah looked Anna squarely in the eyes and, with her assured Irish breeziness, she said, ‘Well, you’ve got yourself a proper soppy bollock of an eejit there, haven’t cha?’
Anna had to agree, but here, with her wriggly little new daughter on her chest, skin to skin, brown to white, she had someone else to concentrate on. Florence was immediately an astonishing bright light and she utterly eclipsed Julius from the very first moment.
He mattered oh so much less all of a sudden.
Florence was all.
Instantly.
All.
The circumstances of her birth were not Florence’s fault. All she did was come to be. She couldn’t know that she’d been born into such a volatile situation. All she knew was that there was a big close-up moony-pink sweaty face looking at her, making satisfying cooing noises and laughing. She knew that she was warm, and she knew that EVERYTHING was different. The light, the noise, the air on her, around her. It unnerved her a bit and she made a screechy noise which hurt her tiny throat, which made her make more of the screechy noise, which hurt her throat … Something tugged her belly …
Sarah tried to physically haul the dopey Julius up, so that he could welcome his little daughter. ‘C’mon, mister m
an, let’s have you upright, eh?’
‘Umm, yeah.’ Julius stretched and yawned. ‘Could do with a cuppa.’
‘Could ya? Perhaps after you’ve acknowledged the miracle that’s happened over here …?’ She nudged him towards the mother and infant on the bed.
Anna and Florence.
Julius peered at the baby, finally realizing what had happened. For him, what had happened was that he had missed the photo/film opportunity of his first child’s birth, dammit.
What had actually happened was a wonder: a beautiful and unique girl was born …
For her, for Florence, what happened was that a large brown face came too close to her … and then disappeared out of view to the side … as Julius fainted again. This time, it wasn’t the gore that overwhelmed him, it was the thudding realization of the huge responsibility.
(Soppy bollock.)
Hope is too lost in the business of birth to notice a miniscule, hardly perceptible change in Fatu’s otherwise calm demeanour.
Her body was shaking now, and she was doing all she could to control her breathing and bring this baby into the world with the least possible stress. To do that, Hope had to take herself inside for now, into her own huge interior where she could centre her thoughts and be elsewhere from the pain. She wanted to be in charge at this critical moment, she wanted to drive it. She was whispering little comforting mantras to herself.
‘Let her have my strong back.
‘Let her have his crazy beautiful eyes.
‘Let her have my sister’s curls …’
And on …
She was imbuing the little life with all the good stuff. She was making wishes. She was cherishing a future …
But the ever-alert Quiet Isaac was hyper-present. He watched every move Fatu made with the vigilance of a hawk. He searched every flicker of expression on her face for a clue. He felt it in the deepest place he had, he knew something had changed: it was no longer going along the same path, this labour …
He saw the worry in Fatu’s eyes when they met his briefly … a stinging, still pause … and then, from that alarming moment on, everything that happened was a blur, a chaotic jumble.
Hope snapped out of her deep focus very quickly when the tempo of the room changed. The volume, the light, the whole atmosphere altered. It was suddenly urgent. Hope felt her teeth tighten. What was wrong?
The calm was gone.
The panic was palpable. However controlled they were all pretending to be, she felt it rising in her; she knew she’d caught it.
What? What? What was it?
Please let them all return to the moment before when it was right. Not this. This is wrong.
‘What’s happening?’ Hope gasped. A question she really didn’t want the answer to. Her eyes darted between Fatu and Isaac, and she knew there was fear. Slices of it.
‘I’m just going to call in the consultant and one of the senior midwives. Nothing to fret about. I just think Baby is a bit … worried …’
With that, Fatu pressed a button by the bed. Very quickly the room was fuller of people. Sarah had left Anna and Julius’s room and raced down the corridor. The words were a jumble to Hope; she heard snatches of hurried sentences, as everyone was talking to each other, but no one was really addressing her …
Bleeding heavily
No movement
Heartbeat faint
Placental abruption
Acute hypoxia
Stress on baby
No oxygen
Forceps
Ventouse
Quiet Isaac was right at her side and gently slipped his hand around hers as the tension increased.
‘Isaac … what’s going on? Please …’
‘Don’t you worry, darlin’. I’m here. I’m here. I’m goin’ nowhere …’ He was aware that he was reassuring himself as much as he was comforting her.
Hope couldn’t see the ever-expanding pool of blood on the bed between her legs. He could, and he started to breathe very deeply to steady his shock. The consultant swept in and was quickly gowned-up by the other nurses as they apprised him of the situation.
The situation …
Which was clearly getting worse by the minute. The words were being repeated again, but now louder and faster, so that he could take instant decisive action.
Abruption
Hypoxia
Zero heartbeat
The consultant took hold of the forceps and skilfully manoeuvred them inside Hope, explaining what he was doing all the time, but not once looking her in the eye. He couldn’t. No time. He had to concentrate. Hope’s heart was beating fast. She was in hell. For the first time, she felt like an animal. The tugging below, the stroking and patting above by Isaac, with everyone focused on the unseen baby and how to get it out quickly: it all felt overwhelmingly savage, bestial. She was still pushing and breathing hard when she looked to Isaac for any sign of comfort, and she saw that he had tears rolling down his face. Fear tears.
Quiet Isaac saw that she had noticed, and he quickly wiped his face dry and attempted a pathetic smile. He found himself suddenly noticing all the small things in the room. He was mentally pinching himself to stay strong. He focused on the top window blind, then the tap in the sink, then Hope’s cross around her neck, which was now dipping into a tiny pool of sweat gathering there in the bowl of her throbbing throat.
And in that appalling, gut-wrenching instant when he couldn’t meet her gaze, Hope knew.
Like a switch flicking, she shifted immediately from physical pain to mental pain, which was a jump from a puddle into Niagara Falls. The doctor was still tugging away at her, but Hope knew it was too late. That baby had climbed out of Hope’s heart and was gone.
By the time the dead infant was delivered and the consultant turned off the monitor and quietly confirmed, ‘I’m afraid this little one hasn’t made it. I’m so very sorry, folks,’ Hope had pulled up a drawbridge. No one from across the moat was coming into her grief. Even the lifeless child placed in her arms didn’t stir her. She was numb.
The room went completely quiet to honour the awful moment. No one spoke. There were no words big enough. This should have been the cue for whoops and cooing and crying for joy and happy kisses. Instead, it was a breathless room for a breathless baby.
Time stopped for a few brief, respectful, hushed minutes.
Hope handed the little bundle of lifeless limbs wrapped in a white hospital blanket over to Quiet Isaac, who took it so tenderly.
‘It’s a girl,’ said Fatu. ‘What will you call her?’
Hope looked at her, astonished and bewildered. ‘Call her …?’
‘Yes. It’s good to give her a name. You’ll be glad you did. She’s still your daughter, even though … she wasn’t here long.’
‘I was going to call her Minnie. If she was a girl …’ said Hope, in a daze. Her brain couldn’t make sense of anything that was happening.
‘She is a girl,’ said Fatu, ‘she is.’
‘OK,’ said Hope, agreeing just to get this strange moment over and done with. ‘OK, then she is Minnie …’
‘Yes. Minnie. Good. That’s good,’ chimed in Sarah, who had rushed in to help. She smiled at Hope, and Hope’s face smiled back, although nothing in her body had directed her to do so. It was habit. Manners.
She mirrored Sarah’s smile and felt a tiny infinitesimal drop of comfort. Throughout all of this muffled interaction where women were helping a woman, Quiet Isaac stared down at his tiny dead daughter. Her little face was relaxed, her eyes tight shut; she seemed to be sleeping a deep deep sleep. Born sleeping. He couldn’t believe how beautiful and perfect she was. Still warm. Nutty brown with lots of black black hair. He was jolted into the horrendous realization of it all, the terrible truth, by the piercing cry of a newborn – by Florence – somewhere up the corridor.
Quiet Isaac couldn’t be quiet any more. He pulled his lifeless daughter tight to his chest, threw his head back and howled. His pain was as big and loud as a who
le wide world of sorrow. He was helpless to save his daughter, helpless to remove Hope’s anguish, and helpless to stop the torrent of sadness that flooded out of him. Here she was. A real baby. His own flesh and blood. In his arms. A miracle. Everything about her was right, except … except … she wasn’t there.
Eighteen Years Later
Eyes shut, nose pinched tightly, Minnie was counting in her head underwater. She’d done this in the bath ever since she was small. She was eighteen now, but she was still no better at it.
Twenty-one elephant.
Twenty-two elephant.
Seconds are elephants. Or Mississippis. Or Minnie Moos.
Could she get past thirty for the first time ever?
Feel like a pearl diver?
Feel like she’s flying?
Yes, nearly, twenty-eight elephant …
Gah! No, she had to sit up and surrender.
Why was she so rubbish at it?
She’d always felt as if she had less lung power than her friends. She ran out of breath before them if she did any exercise, especially dancing, which she loved. She managed one song, then she had to make excuses, sit down and watch instead. No fun whatsoever.
Minnie gulped the lovely air as she lumbered herself awkwardly into a semi-upright sitting position in the small bath. Her body was so unfamiliar now that she was six and a half months pregnant. She was amazed at how quickly her belly had grown. The first few months had been relatively uneventful physically, besides some nausea and a constant feeling of tiredness. She was tempted to believe she wasn’t even pregnant at times. Then it started, a gradual swelling until this huge and remarkably defined lump settled on the front of her.
Everything, everything, everything seemed to be happening fast. It was all so different now.
She let her head rest back on the hard rim of the bath, and she could feel the coolness of it on the back of her skull, even through all the thick, wet curls.
