Jesus, babies are materialistic little buggers.
The dog rushes out to greet me and follows me back and forth during the three trips it takes between the house and car to get everything inside. Where are Dee and the baby? I don’t want to call out—if the baby’s fallen asleep, it’s an absolute miracle—so I tiptoe to the door of Dee’s room and peer in through the crack.
Dee is sitting on her bed with the baby clutched to her chest. Tears stream down her cheeks.
“Dee?” I whisper. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” She gets up wearily, wiping the tears away, before passing the baby to me. He wakes immediately and begins mewling, and I watch as Dee heads for the bathroom, where she closes herself in.
“Dee?” I call but she’s already started running bathwater, which probably drowns me and the baby out. God, to think Ma called me the drama queen. I roll my eyes at Dee’s theatrics. Keeping the baby for one night rather than handing it in to the authorities is hardly something to blubber over.
I turn my attention to the poor mite, who is clearly crazed with hunger. There are a lot of instructions for sterilizing the bottles and teats, which are mostly helpful, but I’m also grateful for all my years of secretly watching TV shows and movies that featured babies. I always considered it my guilty pleasure, but it’s amazing how much you can learn about burping, feeding, and changing nappies by watching someone else do it.
I’m trying to do everything one-handed as I hold the little guy against my chest, but it’s almost impossible and I give up and put him down on the couch. The bassinet will need to be properly set up before he can use it, so I put together a makeshift nest by placing the baby between four pillows arranged in a square. He’s so tiny that he barely moves even while he’s bringing the place down with his screaming.
“Watch the baby,” I instruct the dog, who dutifully sits down next to him.
“Almost done. Your food is almost ready,” I croon from the kitchen. The baby’s face is scrunched up in fury and his pouty lips are pulled back from his gums. I hope that the sound of my voice is doing something to soothe him, even though all signs point to the opposite.
The dog licks the baby’s hand and his crying goes down a few decibels.
“Good dog.”
When I’ve finally mixed the formula in the bottle and let it cool to the right temperature, checking it on my inner arm to be sure, I rush it over to the baby and pick him up. Holding him in the crook of my arm, I put the bottle to his lips and squirt a drop of liquid onto them.
The baby’s lips immediately close over the teat as he snuffles and begins sucking with such zeal that I’m scared he’ll choke. “Slow down, little fella. Take it easy. There’s plenty more where that came from.” He’s clearly skeptical because he keeps taking great big gulps. Most of the formula pours from his mouth, down his chubby cheeks and into the multiple little fat rolls of his neck.
We finally get into a steady rhythm and his cries die away. His face is like that of a wise old man and a cherub combined, like he knows the answers to life’s mysteries, but also enjoys hanging out on clouds with harps to balance out all that heavy stuff. As he sucks, the creases in his brow smooth and his eyes close. He’s blissed out and I did that. I made that happen. I wish so much that Vince were here to be a part of this. That he could see how luminous the little tyke is and how well we fit together.
I didn’t need a head doctor, Vince. This is all I needed. Just this.
I swallow back an unexpected rush of emotion that takes me back to all those times I visited parks and sat on benches, not even attempting to disguise my mission by hiding behind a newspaper or a book. I can only imagine the raw hunger that must have been written on my face as I stared longingly at babies in prams and toddlers running around on sturdy legs.
I’d look at the crook of my arm and wonder what it was for if not to hold a baby. My breasts, which stirred men into a frenzy of lust at night, felt ornamental and frivolous during the day. What was the point of them if not to nourish a child? When I started having fantasies about walking past a pram, picking a baby up, and just carrying on walking, I knew it was time to stop going to parks to torture myself.
It’s funny how our dreams change over time, how lofty they are at the beginning and how quickly we’re prepared to lower our expectations when it becomes clear we’ve been aiming too high. I’d first dreamed of beautiful babies that looked like the perfect combination of me and whatever man I was with at the time: blue eyes, red hair, freckles; green eyes, blond hair, dimples. Now, all these years and disappointments later, this baby who looks nothing like me feels like an embarrassment of riches, too much to dare hope for.
The dog whines suddenly, pulling me from my reverie, and I’m grateful to have the distraction from old memories that should no longer have the power to wound. It’s sitting staring at us and I’m just wondering if it’s a boy or a girl (since my penis sensor apparently doesn’t extend to dogs) when it cocks its leg open and flashes me. She’s a girl. I laugh as she opens her leg even wider and starts licking herself.
“Quite the Jezebel, aren’t you?” And just like that, she’s named.
When the baby has finally finished the bottle, I lift him and hold him over my shoulder to burp him. After only a few pats, he gives the most satisfying belch and then vomits down my back. “Charming. Thanks for that.”
I put him back down on the couch and he’s asleep almost immediately. I kiss his forehead, which smells of milk and impossible dreams that finally come true. A hiccupping sob from the bathroom brings me back to reality. I know the sound is amplified by the tiles and bathwater, but it’s still alarming. Good grief, it seems I have two babies I need to look after.
Knocking on the bathroom door, I call out, “Dee?”
“Go away.”
She sounds like she has a cold, so I can only imagine the amount of crying she’s done. This can’t be about not turning the baby in last night. Something else must be wrong. “Are you okay?”
“Leave me alone.”
Thinking back to my own misadventures a few weeks ago, I know the bathroom is a good place to make bad decisions. I had no intention of going through with my staged suicide attempt, but I have absolutely no idea what’s going through my sister’s head. She’s more a stranger to me now than she ever was.
“I’m coming in, okay?” She says something but I can’t make out what it is. The handle turns in my hand. At least she didn’t lock herself in.
“What the hell are you doing?” Dee is in the process of climbing out of the bath, one foot on the bath mat and the other still in the water. Her face is a picture of dismay.
“Just checking you’re okay. Sounds like the world is ending in here.”
“God, Ruth,” she mutters as she tries reaching for the towel draped over the toilet lid, but it’s too late. I’ve already seen what she doesn’t want me to see.
My sister has jagged white stretch marks that crisscross her stomach and breasts. My breath catches. I know those marks. They’re rites of passage I’ve coveted all my life. It doesn’t seem possible and yet it has to be. “Who . . . when . . .” I have so many questions but I’m not able to get any of them out in a way that makes sense.
Dee yanks the towel and wraps it around herself as though it’s armor that can protect her.
“You’re a mother?” I ask. She doesn’t answer but her face crumples in response. “Oh my God, you are. You had a baby.”
“Yes,” she whispers. “Daniel.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Delilah
11 May 1994
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
It was Father Thomas who discovered my pregnancy and sounded the alarm when I was seven months along. I’d managed to hide it from myself for five of them, refusing to believe that my period drying up and my stomach and breasts swelling could mea
n I was carrying a child. Instead, I saw the symptoms as a physical manifestation of my guilt.
Hiding it from the rest of the nuns wasn’t easy, but also not as difficult as it should have been; a convent, after all, is more focused on the soul than the body. We wore loose habits and were encouraged to always keep our eyes directed at the floor so that nothing could distract us from our communion with God. No one ever saw me naked except for the novice, Sister Marguerite, who helped me change from my street clothes into my convent garb on the day I arrived. While her eyes had lingered on my body, and it looked like she wanted to say something, she kept quiet about whatever suspicions she may have had.
The day my secret was discovered, I was in Father Thomas’s office because it was a visiting Sunday and my parents, so busy on the farm, were unable to come out and see me. Since he was the priest who’d recruited me to the faith, the one who’d overseen my conversion to Catholicism, the Reverend Mother considered him a friend of the family.
“Ah, Sister Mary Teresa,” he said as I entered his office, calling me by my new name, the one I’d chosen for myself when I’d been received as a novice. “It’s good to see you.” He held his arms out to me as he walked around his desk, but I pretended not to see the gesture, just as I had the past three months, as I hurried to sit down before he could embrace me.
“Good evening, Father.” I sank into the chair a moment before he reached me. Another close call.
He dropped his hands to the sides of the chair and swooped down to give me a chaste peck on the temple instead. Even that, I recoiled from. “How are you, my child?”
“I’m well, Father.”
As he returned to his spot behind the desk, I chattered nervously about my week, what I was learning in Latin class, and the general goings-on in the convent. Where I’d once felt safe in his presence, I no longer did. It was just a matter of time before my true nature was discovered and I was kicked out, which was exactly what I deserved.
A half an hour passed in this way, Father Thomas asking me questions and me answering to the best of my ability. His opinion of me had always mattered greatly—how could it not when I’d been so desperately in love with him—and so I was careful not to do or say anything that might make him think less of me. When it was time for me to leave, he rose and walked around to my side of the desk.
The pregnancy made me awkward and slow, and so I’d only just managed to leverage myself out of the chair when he reached me. Before I could turn, he stepped forward and enveloped me in a hug. I will never forget the expression on his face, the way it changed from one of affection to confusion and then horror, when he realized what my swollen belly pressed against him meant. I still burn with shame to recall it.
There were accusations and recriminations from all sides, and the fact that I wouldn’t reveal the name of the father only made it worse. The scandal was so big that not even the convent rules about silence could contain it. The other nuns’ whispers followed me everywhere I went.
“How old is she?”
“Only seventeen. Still a child herself.”
“Well, what did everyone expect? She’s only been a Catholic for a few years.”
“I heard she grew up as part of the Dutch Reformed Church. Barbaric people.”
One or two of the younger nuns looked at me with something akin to sympathy, and Sister Marguerite reached out one day to quickly squeeze my hand, but the rest of the sisters turned against me completely, comforting Father Thomas and the Reverend Mother.
“Don’t be too hard on yourselves for not seeing the Jezebel she is.”
“Her own mother took her for the virginity test just before she joined the convent.”
“Who could expect her to use her last week of freedom to rid herself of her virtue?”
It was Father Thomas who suggested to the Reverend Mother that while they had no choice but to excommunicate me, they should keep the baby and raise it in the convent. “This child deserves a chance at a good life. Let us not punish it for its mother’s sins,” he said. “She has let us down terribly, and no one feels more disappointed in her behavior and deceit than I, but surely this innocent child should not suffer for that?”
The Reverend Mother was moved enough by his mercy to agree to such an unusual arrangement.
The birth was a difficult one. I was in labor for close to forty-six hours. Two older nuns served as my midwives and seemed to rejoice in each second of my agony.
“This is God’s punishment for your sin,” the one reminded me as I panted through a haze of pain.
“You’re lucky Father Thomas is saving your baby from the fate of the orphanage.”
“Can you imagine the stigma of a fallen nun as a mother hanging over the poor child? Can you imagine the terrible shame?”
The pain gouged a chasm between me and the baby as the minutes stretched into hours, each contraction bringing it closer to the world but taking it farther from me. When the baby was finally born, I was left so weak that it felt as though it had drained all the life out of me.
“It’s a boy,” I was told.
“Praise the Lord. Less likely that he will have his mother’s weak character.”
“Yes, indeed. He will be raised by true women of God and instilled with Father Thomas’s moral fiber.”
“Please,” I whispered. “Please can I hold him?”
“I think not.”
“Please. Just for a moment. To say goodbye.”
“Give her the child.” It was the Reverend Mother, who’d come to check on my progress.
She was a kind woman, a true Christian, and I was grateful for her timely intervention. I don’t remember if I thanked her for her mercy. All I remember was my son’s face as he was reluctantly handed across to me. It was contracted into a rictus of disapproval, as though he too found our predicament distasteful.
“Forgive me, my son. Forgive me for what I am about to do,” I whispered into the tiny helix of his ear as I stroked his silky hair. I was crying freely by then, my tears spilling over onto his perfect face.
“Would you like to name him?” the Reverend Mother asked. “Before you have to leave?”
I nodded, grateful that abandonment wasn’t the only legacy I’d be leaving my son with. “I’d like to call him Daniel.”
“‘God is my judge.’ It’s a good name.”
I chose it exactly for its meaning. Having been judged harshly by both myself and the church, I never wanted Daniel to be accountable to anyone but God.
The Reverend Mother held out her arms for him. “It’s time, my dear.”
My grip around Daniel tightened. “Just a moment more, please.”
I leaned down to kiss him on his forehead, anointing him not with oil, but with a mother’s love that I hoped would protect him from the worst that life might throw at him. Of course, it hadn’t, but then I’d been thinking of sadness and despair, not bullets fired from close range.
What a cruel twist of fate that the first time I saw my son was just after I’d given him life, and the next was almost thirty-nine years later when he was fighting so hard to cling to it. I could never have foreseen that, nor that it would be Father Thomas—the very man I’d so desperately loved and who’d cast me out—who’d be the priest praying at my son’s bedside, standing between us once again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Ruth
11 May 1994
Verdriet, Magaliesburg, South Africa
The baby is asleep between us on the couch as Dee stammers her way through the story. She’s gotten back into her pajamas even though it’s almost midday and she pulls her ratty old gown tightly around herself.
She’s too thin, but then she’s always been lean whereas I’m voluptuous.
Voluptuous.
The word conjures an image like a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat: Dee in her wedding d
ress during her novice reception ceremony. How stupid I was. She wasn’t fat, she was pregnant.
The thought enrages me, as does the knowledge that she gave the child up. “Why didn’t you just leave the convent and come home with the baby?”
“You say it like it would have been the easiest thing in the world. It was 1955, Ruth. Unwed Catholic mothers weren’t allowed to keep their babies then. Their little ‘bastards’ were sent to orphanages, and those who weren’t lucky enough to be adopted were raised in terrible conditions.” She gazes off, eyes unfocused, and then startles me with a humorless laugh. “And could you imagine what that would have done to Ma? My leaving to become a nun and coming back unmarried with a baby when I was eighteen? God, it would have killed her.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Letting them keep Daniel and raise him was the best solution for everyone. I did what was best for him.”
Jezebel suddenly gets up from where she’s lying on the floor and pads over to the baby to nuzzle his face. He squints and looks like he’s going to wake up. “Jezebel, no!” Dee flinches as though I’ve slapped her. “What? I don’t want her waking him.”
“You’ve named the dog Jezebel?”
“Yes, so what? Does it offend your sensibilities? It’s just a funny name.” I don’t let her get a word in. I’m not in a mood for a lecture about respecting the Bible, not today of all days when my holier-than-thou sister has been revealed to be nothing but a hypocrite. “So, how did you get the church to not tell Ma and Da?”
She sighs. “They agreed to keep it quiet if I left without a fuss and took up the position with the aid organization they’d found for me. They didn’t want the scandal and were happy to spare the family one in the process.”
“But, Jesus . . . Going to work in orphanages after you’d just given up your own child?” I want to ask how hardened you have to be to be able to do that—to be around all those motherless babies after just abandoning your own—and not have a complete breakdown.
If You Want to Make God Laugh Page 9