by Billie Dale
“I didn’t go.” The oxygen in the room seems in short supply as I gulp to fill my lungs. After an eternity, which is only a few minutes, the pain subsides.
Vivianne drags me downstairs. “Unless you want old Doc Hart to deliver your baby, we need to go now and hope we make it. I’ll call Carrie Lynn on the way,” she says, shoving me out the front door toward her car.
She helps lower me in the passenger seat before running around the hood, slipping behind the wheel, and tearing out of the driveway. Another what I realize is a contraction crawls up my spine, twists around my torso, and pulses through my crotch. I bellow an ear shattering, sobbing howl.
Startled she jerks the wheel. “Shit. Breathe with me, Sammy,” she huffs, hissing air through clenched teeth. Two quick inhales and one longer exhale; I mimic expecting it to help.
Thirty minutes in the two-hour drive to Lexington I decide Lamaze breathing is a fucking joke created to distract soon-to-be moms. Sucking air through your teeth does not stop the alien inside from swinging a sledgehammer to break out of its prison walls. I wiggle and twist but finding comfort is impossible until I put my feet on the dash.
“Yes, if you see us alongside the road, stop. Sammy claims she can help deliver her baby since she took a class, but she also skipped out on birthing lessons and seems to have lost her high IQ.” Vivianne’s voice reaches high enough decibels I worry for the windshield glass. She side-eyes me. “Oh hell, Samantha Lee Gentry, don’t you dare push.” She slaps my thigh. “Carrie, just meet us there.” She tosses the phone in the back seat. “Think of something else and for goodness sake, keep breathing.”
I want to punch her, can I?
It would be a distraction. Right, no, she’s driving. I’ll save it for when we reach the hospital.
The advantages of my doctor not being local became a huge disadvantage, hindering my attendance to those classes she keeps harping on. Plus, I didn’t have a partner. Carrie would’ve attended or Vivianne, hell even Hendrix may have stepped up, but a cloud of depression blew in and I just didn’t want to go.
These last eight weeks my reality steamrolled me, and while the future is unknown, and I swear to be a good mom, the fact is I have no clue how to do it. My own mother is the picture-perfect example of what not to do.
I’m terrified.
There, I said it, but admitting my fear doesn’t make being a single parent any easier. Hendrix being my beard, so to speak, covers the haters but he’s made it clear he wants no actual paternal responsibility, and one day he will meet someone. Then there’s the clock tick ticking the second this baby breathes its first lung full of oxygen. A time bomb of revelations placed in the background by Carrie Lynn. Years from now, but looming all the same: the day I tell Mazric the truth.
I’m going to fuck this kid up. The folly of best intentions and all that. The stress, fear, loneliness, and planning what I can’t predict has chomped away my brilliant brain cells like Ms. Pac-Man munching on white pellets with the ghosts of the future chasing.
My thought train myriad worked. The internal bat swinging continued but getting lost in my head ate up the travel time. Vivianne jumps from the vehicle, racing through the ER doors, where two nurses return seating me in a wheelchair before pushing me to an exam room. The same nurses enter, tug my feet to the stirrups, and display my lady bits to the world. One does some voodoo with her fingers before proclaiming I still have hours before the baby is ready to arrive. Now I want to smack her instead.
Another contraction pulls Satan from hell to laugh at me. “Drugs. I. Want. Lots. Of. Narcotics. NOW!”
“Yes, okay, I’ll see what your doctor wants. Could be a bit, I believe today is his golf day.”
“He better be quick or he’ll be perfecting his stroke with a club hanging from his ass!” I yell, rolling on my side, breathing through the tight grit of my teeth.
The ladies must’ve taken my threats to heart because in a matter of minutes the anesthesiologist, a saintly little man whose name I didn’t give a damn about, arrived. Wham, bam. He bent me like a lawn chair, shoved a needle in my spine—which sounds painful, but didn’t hurt as much as the ring of fire blazing through my vagina—then whew I couldn’t feel anything from the tits down. I offered to kiss him. He winked and said he’d check back on that offer when I wasn’t brewing a human. Normal me would shiver in revulsion because he looked like Danny DeVito but he was the keeper of relief, so meh he’s not so bad.
Curled on my side, with my knees as close to my chest as possible, I drift. My body progresses through the steps but thanks to the spinal block I’m blissfully numb until my doctor pats my thigh announcing it’s time to push.
“Push it out, shove it out, waaaayyy out,” I cheer hazy from my nap. A chuckle in the corner sings through my sleepy delirium. My head lolls to the side. In a cloud of gold glitter and beaming sunshine Hendrix slouches in a chair. His shaggy hair sticks up around his head and his eyes hang heavy with puffy bags underneath.
“Heeennndrriiixxx,” I joyously call. Searing pressure throbs between my legs, storming away all the fluffy clouds fogging my head reminding me there is a person trying to vacate my body. “F-F-F-F-Fuuuuccckkk,” I hiss. “Ahh, right. Let me push this thing out of my body first.”
He laughs, winking to the nurse. My doctor pulls up a chair, situating himself between my raised knees. As I’m wondering when the hell he arrived, he orders me to bear down on the next contraction. Poor Hendrix didn’t step fast enough. His eyes freeze on the mess of my vagina. Blink. Blink. Face ashen, his lids squint shut, and he blind steps forward feeling his way to stand next to my shoulder.
Pushing, grunting, tearing. This kid doesn’t want to leave its warm, wet bubble. I’m over it and begging to go home.
“Come on. One more good, hard push and the head will be out,” the doctor encourages, and I want to gouge out his eyes.
“I can’t,” I cry. “Go get Danny DeVito back. Have him work his magic and then I’ll keep going.”
The nurses snicker but my doctor crinkles his brow. “Samantha it’s too late for anymore injections,” a nurse in pink offers, answering the doctor’s unspoken question.
My abdomen rolls tight, spreading agony from my uterus to my spine. Doc’s hands stretch and dig like he’s a miner who just found gold. Fighting the need pounding between my legs, I clamp my knees shut. Well as much as one can with a watermelon stretching their woman parts. “It’s not a rubber band for crissake. Keep pulling and people will visit my vagina instead of the Grand Canyon,” I seethe through gritted teeth
The room erupts in laughter but I don’t see the humor. While most of the women helping me are kind and understanding, one older lady who has scowled since she entered my room lays her cold ass hands on my stomach and shoves down yelling, “Push.”
Nurse Ratchet’s man hands leave me no choice. I bend like a lawn chair, growling around a hearty insult to the bitchy RN as Doc barks out orders.
My vagina will never be the same. I look to the mirror, seeing a mass of black hair. “Jesus fucking Christ, her head is huge.” I breathe, grunt, and sob. Crying because now my lady garden will have to hide in the bell tower like Quasimodo because the stretched headcheese mess resembles the Elephant Man. Men will look at it and run in fear. My poor va-jay-jay dies a horrible painful death, only knowing the touch of one man.
Her epitaph will read; Here lies Sammy Vee-Jay, the vagina who lost the battle with childbirth.
“Good, good,” the doctor praises, “take a small deep breath,” he watches my body coil, “now one real hard push and we’ll have the shoulders.”
Hendrix rubs a hand down my upper arm, refusing to allow me near his hand after I squeezed too hard on his precious instruments. Damn wimpy man, whining about me breaking his bread and butter. “You’re doing great, Samantha. Come on, almost done.”
“You, your species is the reason for this agony,” I spew.
“Whoa, hold up, I didn’t do,” he waves toward the valley of baby s
lopping down below, “that.”
“You men strut around using your penile firehose to fertilize and make plenty, then you sit back pounding your fist on your chest while we suffer the wrath of Eve’s stupid decision to eat the fracking apple.”
He winks at the laughing nurse. Through my haze of holy shit bringing a human in the world hurts I catch the smirk and smolder. The Hendrix Carmichael signature flirt. Doc frees the linebacker worthy shoulders from me, and with one more half-assed squeeze a pair of tiny slimy legs slip out.
I flop back, panting. “Get a room already.”
Cutesy nurse blushes red, shaking her head apologizing. “It’s all good. He’s not the baby daddy and your vagina is still viable. Beware of the seed.”
She turns a fresh appraising eye to Hendrix as the rest of the room frenzies into activity, cleaning and checking the infant. Pleased with what I created, I’m finished and happy to take a back seat to her.
Movies show the baby placed on Mom’s chest and fa-la-la happy family. They don’t explain how you’re not done pushing yet. No, it’s not all bonding and frolic. The afterbirth must be expelled then baby time begins, but now you’re beyond fatigued. You take one look at the crying tiny gremlin, count fingers and toes, kiss its cottage cheese crusted head, and pass the fuck out.
IF BABY AND MOM ARE healthy, hospitals boot you out the door in twenty-four hours. Every hour a nurse comes in to teach me. My seven-pound baby girl with a head full of black hair, tiny button nose, and eyes too big for her face, looks like her father. Carrie hasn’t stopped staring at her. Vivianne is enamored. Even Hendrix falls under her spell. She’s beautiful and though I just met her, I love her with everything I am.
Breastfeeding is a challenge but my girl is smart. Where I falter, she knows what to do.
The last step before we’re discharged is giving her a name. Over nine months, with five of them aware of the sex, and I never picked one. I guess if I kept her unknown she might not be real. But with the sweet scent of baby shampoo filling my nose from her soft cone-shaped head and her peachy pink hands gripping my fingers, she’s here and she’s mine.
On the paperwork I skip the line for the father’s name and fill in the only name to fit her. Mazilynn Jae Gentry. Maz and Jae from her father, Lynn from her grandmother. We’ll call her Mazzy Jae for short, pronounced Maisy Jay. The nurse encourages Hendrix to add his name to her birth certificate. She’s unable to hide her look of disdain when I explain he’s not the father, and I want the space to stay blank. I fight the urge to tell her where to shove her judgment, because she’s the first of many who will cast opinions on my choices and I’ll be the bigger, better person by keeping my mouth shut.
Forty-Three
One Month and A Whole Lot of Sleepless Nights Later
SAMANTHA
HENDRIX LEFT A FEW days after Mazzy’s birth. Needed at a few meetings in New York, he escaped the insanity. Vivianne flew off to save random sea creatures and flower power a path over the asses of corporate polluting America. No worries. Baby and I would be fine.
Judging by the odor wafting from my body, I’m guessing it’s been many, many days since I showered, but Mazzy hasn’t stopped crying, eating, crapping, and puking so I’ve lost track of the number of times the sun has risen. I mastered the spit shine bath to ensure my nipples stay sanitized, because Lord knows there is forever a set of supping baby lips attached to one.
Mazzy Jae’s super sweet in between her bouts of red-faced demon tantrums. For a second she smiles before releasing her bowels or stomach.
Help. I need help.
I dress her in a pink elephant sleeper, clip a tiny bow in her hair, and load up the diaper bag—doomsday prepper style—because who knows what could go wrong on the five-minute drive to Carrie Lynn’s house. If she looks cute enough Carrie won’t notice the horns holding up her halo.
Her belly’s full, diaper’s dry, and she’s burped so her screaming with screeching owl strength the entire drive makes no sense.
You’re wondering why Carrie isn’t there every day? Weellll...in an asshole fit of postpartum, I kicked her out of the plantation. Begged her to give me a chance to mother my daughter on my own. Her nod and gritted ‘fine’ sealed my fate, granted my wish, and sent me straight to colicky baby hell. Daddy’s no help either, unless Mazzy sprouts spark plugs and a transmission.
She sleeps. A minute before we pulled in the drive her wails cease and her soft lips pucker in a sweet pout. If I could snooze and drive, I’d have the answer to Mazzy’s tyranny. I swear she’s a tiny Hitler with a milk mustache, demanding subservience and my soul. There’re minutes deep in the dark where my ring and necklace burn my skin almost as if they are taunting me with my stubbornness.
Maybe my exhaustion is tipping me into lunacy.
I turn the wheel, feeling the rumble of gravel under my tires, and at the split drive a warmth fills my chest. Both ways lead to home and I’m hoping no matter how much of a dick I’ve been, I’m still welcome.
Behemoth bag on one arm and car seat tugging down the other, I slug up the stairs.
“Look what the cat dragged in,” Carrie calls, pushing open the screen door. Her eyes brighten when they land on the carrier. She steps forward. “Whew.” A hand claps over her nose and mouth. “Come on in then,” muffles from behind her palm as she takes the handle, freeing me of the evened weight. I fall to the side under the burden of the overpacked bag.
She coos at Mazzy, reaching to unstrap her belts. “I wouldn’t do that. Best to let sleeping babies be, especially that baby,” I warn.
“The saying is let sleeping dogs lie,” she corrects.
“Trust me it applies to Mazzy Jae.” I flop on the kitchen chair, comforted by the sweet scent of cake warming the air.
Her back to me she busies herself at the counter. “You look like shit. When’s the last time you showered? The ode de soured wildebeest is burning my eyes.” She slides a cup of coffee in front of me.
“I can’t drink it.” Large tired tears overrun my lids. “And I ran out of clothes, I don’t even know when, since every time I pick her up she opens an orifice and rains body fluids. My last warm, relaxing bath was right before Hendrix and Viv left.” She cocks a brow. “I keep the important bits sanitized.” I stare into the creamy savory cup of caffeine.
“Drink it. A nursing mother can drink three small cups a day without it affecting her production.”
I trust she knows best and don’t hesitate to gulp a hearty swallow, loving the heated path to my belly.
“Care to tell me what happened to your hair? Last I saw you it was down to your butt,” she watches me over the edge of her own cup, tilting her head toward my middle of the night mistake.
Thanks to prenatal vitamins, my inky curling strands grew quick and were softer than they’d ever been, but during one of the many sleep-deprived nights I couldn’t stand it sticking out all over my head, and I think a family of badgers took up residence in the knots. The offensive stink wafting from it kept making me sneeze, so I took a pair of scissors and hacked it off.
I tug on the ends, feeling my uneven jagged cuts I shrug. “Easier to care for.”
“Hmmm,” she hums, “You’ve got a set of luggage under your eyes. Pasty white doesn’t come close to describing the paleness of your skin and you’re a bag of bones. Explain.”
“I eat but Mazilynn’s sucking out all the nutrients. God, Carrie, she won’t stop crying. I’m sorry I asked you to leave us. The last time I slept over fifteen minutes was my hospital stay. I can’t do anything but hold her and plead she settles.”
“Samantha Lee, you might be a genius but you’re still a sixteen-year-old new mom. It takes a village for any woman to adjust. Don’t apologize; you have nothing to be sorry for. I knew my grandbaby would kick your pigheaded ass. Now go on upstairs and shower. Borrow my clothes or grab Maz’s. Incinerate those ‘cause, girl, you reek. Come down when you’re done. While you eat, I’ll even your hair then you’ll go back up and take a n
ap. I assume you’ve got plenty of milk in this bag so me and Miss Mazzy will be fine.”
I swallow my last gulp and gingerly raise from my chair. On tiptoes I shuffle around the table but hesitate at the door, staring at my sleeping baby. She has put me through hell the past few weeks, but her cheeks filled in and she changed from the pruny looking little old man to a gorgeous little girl with long dark lashes and deep blue eyes I’m certain will shade to Mazric’s brown.
“She’s fine honey. A little Granny bonding time will do her good. Go on now.” She waves me away and I exhale my first unstressed chest full of air since the day Mazzy Jae was born.
COLD, WET SLIME NUDGES the hand flopped off the edge of the bed, as the sounds of a pissed off Mazzy Jae prompts my chest to leak, soaking Mazric’s baggy T-shirt with warm breast milk. “Shit,” I mumble through a sleepy haze. My stomach rumbles in hungry displeasure and the moon shines through the window. After a shower and raiding a pair of sweats from Carrie’s room, mixed with a shirt from Mazric’s, I never made it back downstairs. I sat on the bed to catch my breath and collect my scattered thoughts. Now I’m waking up and judging by my engorged breasts’ persistence to feed, I’m guessing I’ve been out for hours.
Mazzy fusses for a minute then quiets. Next to the bed, Princess Glitter Piggle thumps my hand with her snout. “PGP! What are you doing in the house?” I swing my feet to the floor, rubbing a hand over her head, I squint my eyes closed against the onset of dizziness.
“She wouldn’t take no for an answer once she caught your scent,” Daddy calls from the door with a pink squirming bundle lying on his shoulder.
“Hey, you’re up and wet.” Carrie holds up a finger, vanishing from the open door. She returns with my pump, tossing it next to me on the bed. “Empty those bad boys, wash up, and get your buns downstairs to eat.”
