The Most Beautiful

by Mayte Garcia

  In May, when I was almost four months along, we flew to New York for a premiere. Jan came with us, and Mama was flying in so we could all get together for her birthday, which also happened to be Mother’s Day. When and I arrived at the Girl 6 after party, the club was thick with cigarette smoke. My husband and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

  I said, “I don’t want to be here.”

  “I don’t want you to be here,” he agreed. “Wait for me in the limo. I’ll say hi to my friend and be out in a minute.”

  I knew he did want to be there, though, so I was surprised when he came out in less than thirty minutes—and not so surprised when he said he was going to drop me at the hotel and go back. But surprised again when he returned to the hotel room fairly early.

  The next morning, he told me, “I’m heading home.”

  “What—now?” I said. “This was supposed to be a family day. It’s Mama’s birthday. She’s expecting you to be there.”

  I was hormonal. Vulnerable. Insecure. Whatever. I didn’t take it well. I got angry and cried. After he left, I lay back down and fell into a deep sleep, dreaming strange, dark dreams. We were staying in the presidential suite at the St. Regis in New York, a place we’d stayed many times, and the foo foo folk had been there to make it feel like home for us, so the windows and the French doors out onto the balcony were sealed shut and covered with foil to keep the room dark enough for sleeping during the day.

  I was jolted awake by a sudden burst of air and light.

  I sat up, instantly wide awake, my heart hammering out of my chest—morning sun in my eyes, cool wind in my face—gradually putting it together that a gust of wind had blown the French doors wide open. Daylight, spring air, and distant traffic noise poured into the dark, silent cocoon. It took me a minute to get my bearings, and then I went out to the balcony and stood there in the midday sun. Below me, Central Park was spread like a bright green blanket. It was a beautiful day. I put my hands on my belly, imagining Amiir’s tiny body inside mine.

  I called Mama to come up to the room with Hena.

  “He left,” I told her. “Come up and we’ll go get something to eat.”

  When she came up, I was sitting on the sofa. We chatted for a while, and then I got up to go get dressed.

  “Mayte.” Her voice was odd. As if she was out of breath. “You’re bleeding.”

  I looked at the back of my robe and saw a red stain. I ran to the bathroom. Blood was running down my legs. There was no pain. No contraction. Only blood and intense fear. I tried to call my husband, but he was still on the airplane. An ambulance met me at the back door and whisked me to the hospital without a siren. They put me immediately into an exam room, and I waited there, crying. The doctor came and did a down there ultrasound, and I didn’t object.

  “The good news is, the baby’s still alive,” he said.

  “What’s happening?” I asked.

  “If the placenta tears away a little, sometimes it can reattach, sometimes not. If it’s a miscarriage, you’ll know within a few days.”

  “Am I okay to go home?”

  “Don’t travel today. See your doctor as soon as you get home.”

  When I finally got my husband on the phone in the studio, he said, “You’ll be okay. You just need rest. You need to come home.”

  The next day, I flew home, and we went immediately to the obstetrician for another ultrasound.

  She said, “I can see where the placenta is starting to tear away.”

  “It’s in God’s hands,” said my husband.

  I squeezed his hand and said, “Exactly.”

  “We should do an amnio to make sure there’s nothing wrong genetically,” she said. “Sometimes the body is trying to release the fetus for a reason.”

  She explained what that meant: long needle, aspiration of fluid, risk of miscarriage.

  He said, “No. We’re not doing that.”

  “The upside is that you know,” she said. “You won’t sit there and worry.”

  “We won’t worry,” he said. “We have faith.”

  I wanted to agree. I hated the idea of the test causing a miscarriage, but I was terrified of everything we didn’t know. My faith wasn’t like his. He had conviction and certainty. I had doubts and questions. I wasn’t sure I could live without the answers.

  When we got home, he got down on his knees and prayed, and I got down on my knees and prayed with him.

  “We have faith,” he said. “We have faith in you. Please, bless this child. He’s in your hands. I have complete faith. You are everything. We give it all into your hands. We know you won’t allow this child to be harmed.”

  We did this every day from that hour forward. His prayers were better than mine. I tried hard to be strong, but sometimes mine went off in the direction of, “Don’t you hurt this man who has this great faith in you. Don’t you take our baby away. We want this child. We prayed for this child. We’ll do anything. We’ll be good.”

  Every night, I rubbed vitamin E oil on my belly, and he moved the heart monitor over it until we could hear the comforting sound of Amiir’s steady heartbeat. We still felt joy every time we heard it. We kept preparing for the baby’s arrival. Weeks went by, and everything seemed to be all right for the moment. I had terrible headaches, and I continued to swell bigger and bigger, but I was basically okay. I stayed quiet, reading and planning, working on video editing with a private instructor who was teaching me. Every night we prayed on our knees. Every day we listened to the baby’s heartbeat. He’d lean in, moving his lips against my belly.

  “Hey, how’s it going?”

  Whenever he came close, the baby would roll over inside me. We’d burst out laughing at every kick and hiccup. Sometimes my stomach would get elongated and taut. We loved when that happened.

  “Look. It’s stretching its legs. See how strong it is?”

  A few more weeks went by. My husband wasn’t going to LA much anymore, and frankly, I preferred to avoid the place as much as possible. Most of the girls he’d slept with—or who’d wanted to sleep with him or thought that sleeping with him would do something for their careers—ended up there. I didn’t want to be bumping into those girls, and LA itself had always intimidated me. He’d bought a house that wasn’t like the pleasant rental houses where I’d first visited him. Maybe because I was pregnant, I was even more sensitive to it.

  “This is a single man’s house,” I said.

  He nodded. “I’m gonna get rid of it.”

  We talked about how our priorities would have to change now that we were parents. I told him I wanted to help support the family. It was important to me, and I was excited to be learning something that could be important to him.

  Back in Minnesota, he made arrangements to unload the house and ultimately sold it to Raquel Welch, which made us both laugh, because he’d always worshiped her and even went through a phase of wearing the fur boots like the ones she wore in The Legend of Walks Far Woman. My Raquel moment—the fur bikini from One Million Years B.C.—seemed very far away now. I was swelling like a beached whale. By September, my back was killing me. I switched from kitten heels to sneakers and followed a strict diet, but my body kept bloating bigger and bigger.

  The OB told us, “These ultrasound measurements are off. It’s possible that we’re seeing a form of dwarfism.”

  My husband and I looked at each other and shrugged.

  “And?” he said.

  “I’m totally fine with that.” I laughed. “That’s the least scary thing you’ve said in months.”

  Of all the possible outcomes that had been offered to us, this was the first one that didn’t terrify me. The OB urged us to reconsider the amnio. “There are other genetic abnormalities that can be life-threatening. We need to be prepared.”

  “No,” my husband said. “We’re leaving it in God’s hands.”

  The next day, I told Mama, “These cramps are kicking my butt. I feel like I’m getting my period.”

 
“Go to the doctor right now,” said Mama. “It sounds like you’re in labor.”

  I grumbled and complained, but with a bit of persuasion, I went. As the OB prepared to examine me, I stopped and said jokingly, “I’m gonna stop wearing underwear when I come in. All you ever do is feel me up.”

  She seemed grateful for the opportunity to laugh. I was dilated two centimeters, which wasn’t that alarming.

  “Braxton-Hicks,” she figured. “No need to worry, but let’s stay in touch and start checking in more often.”

  But suddenly my stomach went taut. I said, “Oh, look! He’s stretching his legs.”

  The doctor looked down at my stomach then looked up at me and said, “No. That’s a contraction.” She hooked me up to a monitor and determined that I was in labor. “We need to stop this. We need to check you into the hospital. You’re the size you should be at nine months, but it’s too early to deliver, and since we didn’t do the amnio, we have no idea what we’re dealing with.”

  “If there’s something wrong,” my husband said, “it’s God’s will. Not because we didn’t prepare.”

  “I told you months ago—there’s something wrong.”

  “I’m taking her home.”

  “Sir, you’re not letting me do my job. She needs to stay in the hospital.”

  I lay there trying to breathe as their voices got angrier and louder. I wasn’t in pain, exactly, but there was a tightness that wouldn’t stop.

  “Let’s go,” he said to me.

  She was right behind him saying, “She can’t go.”

  “She’s free to do whatever she wants!”

  “That’s right. Mayte, this is your body. You don’t have to go.”

  “Please, let’s not—”

  “If you take her,” the OB said to my husband, “she’ll need to sign a release saying that she’s going of her own free will—against my advice—saying that you understand she’s in danger.”

  “I’ll sign,” I said, in tears because I didn’t want to upset my husband who clearly needed me and our unborn child out of that room. He wasn’t used to someone standing up to him like that, and the more disrespected he felt, the more scared I was of the jangling, negative energy swirling around us in that little box of a room.

  I signed, and we left, but in the car, I begged him to take me to another doctor. We went to the closest ER. He waited in the limo so there wouldn’t be a scene. I walked in alone and checked in under the name Marlene Gong and said as little as possible.

  “I’m seven months pregnant. I’m having cramps.”

  They hurried me back and hooked me up to the same machine with the same results. I asked for a second opinion. Another doctor came. I asked for a third opinion. My husband came in. He knew people would see who we were, and it would raise a hassle, but he couldn’t stand waiting out there any longer. He wasn’t happy because they weren’t telling him what he wanted to hear. I wasn’t happy because he wasn’t happy, but the third doctor was a petite red-haired woman who had a better way with him. She seemed to have an instinct about how to deliver information and make recommendations in a way that didn’t make him feel that he didn’t have a voice in all this and his faith wasn’t being disrespected. She didn’t just tell him, “There’s no way she’ll deliver vaginally.” She showed him the measurements and said, “This is why it will have to be a C-section.”

  “The body can do remarkable things.”

  “Yes, but sometimes it needs help.”

  He must have been well and truly terrified by now, because he agreed to have me stay in the hospital on a magnesium drip. I checked into a room under the name Mia Gregory. My husband stayed with me for a long while, singing to Amiir, watching for kicks and hiccups. He put his cheek against my stomach and whispered, “You’ll be okay.” I drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up, Mama was there. Then she left, and I was alone with Amiir and the soft pipping and beeping of the monitor. I stroked my belly and sang to my baby.

  … You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy…

  Days turned to weeks. Weeks stretched to a month. I’d forgotten how hairy my legs could get—not to mention the unmentionable bits that require landscaping. I tried to go take a shower and ended up on all fours in the bathroom. I watched with longing as other mothers checked in, delivered healthy babies, and checked out again. Lying there like a beached whale, I saw on TV that Madonna had a brand-new baby.

  A nurse had to come and help me struggle to my feet. I don’t remember her name. I’ll call her Angela, because she always brought this positive, loving energy into the room. She came in every day and said, “How’s our sunshine?” and then she’d put her stethoscope on my belly and smile when Amiir kicked at the pressure of her hand. Every day, she tried to get me out of bed and into a wheelchair so we could go out and get some air. She tried to coax me into the pool, but she only ever convinced me to leave the room once, and it was such a weird feeling. I didn’t want to do anything but hibernate and sustain the child inside me. I felt fate balanced like a sword on top of my head. I didn’t want to do anything to tip it one way or the other.

  My husband came every day and tried to be supportive, but he was horribly uncomfortable with the idea of me being there week after week. It was actually a relief when he had to go to Japan for a few days. He called me several times a day, and we talked for hours sometimes.

  I told him, “I like this. It’s just like when I was sixteen.”

  He laughed and said, “Yeah.”

  Those hours were an oasis in all this. A reminder of who we were to each other.

  While he was gone, the doctors came and told me that there was an injection they could give me to help the baby’s lungs mature faster.

  “We know your other half won’t approve,” they said, “but it would be safer if you deliver early, and at the rate you’re going, you will most likely deliver prematurely.”

  I felt rotten for doing it without telling my husband. I was crying when I did it, but I did it. He came back, elated with the response to his international promotions for Emancipation, which could now live up to its name. The C-section was scheduled a week later on October 16. Thinking like a protective husband and a seasoned showman, he arranged for a plastic surgeon—someone who’d understand that I was a belly dancer whose life and livelihood were in his hands—to come in and oversee the procedure and close me up afterward.

  The night before the Cesarean, my body roared into full-blown labor. They kept trying to drug it down as I lay in agony, hour after hour. My husband sat beside me, gripping my hand. The only relief was when he stroked my face and put me under, talking softly in my ear. “We’re going to get through this, and everything will be fine. I love you. I’m here for you. Nothing bad is going to happen.”

  I had requested that Angela be the OR nurse. I needed that positive, loving energy. I laughed when she told me, “That man of yours is gonna have scrubs on. I told him, ‘You’re not in charge here, I am.’”

  “No way,” I said.

  “Way,” she assured me.

  They shaved and prepped and carted me in, and I burst out laughing when I saw him in those scrubs with the booties and puffy hat.

  “You look really cute,” I said.

  “I know.” He asked the doctor, “Do all these lights need to be on?”

  “Unfortunately, yes.”

  A burly nurse introduced herself to me and said, “You’re going to hate me.” It was her job to hold me in a headlock while they did the epidural.

  “Tell me when it feels like a sore tooth,” said the doctor.

  I said, “What do you mean—oh! Oh, God. Okay. Yeah.”

  “Do you feel this? This? How about here?”

  “Yes. Yes. I feel everything.”

  “Okay, she’s ready.”

  “I feel it! I feel everything!”

  “You will,” she said. “You’ll feel it, but it won’t hurt.”

  My husband gripped my hand as they cut me open. He
kept his face close to mine, speaking softly, comforting and encouraging me, clowning around like he couldn’t breathe behind the mask until I begged, “Oh, don’t make me laugh.”

  It seemed to take a very long time. There was this weird tugging sensation. Like the unzipping of a dress that’s too tight. There was soft music playing—harps, guitars, spa-type music—but I heard a liquid sound. Suction. The clinking of instruments. I felt them pull the baby out of me.

  “It’s a boy!”

  I don’t know how to describe the look on my husband’s face. Pure joy. Pure love. Pure gratitude. I’d seen his face when he stood in front of a stadium filled with forty-eight thousand screaming fans. I’d seen his face as he scored platinum albums and received the highest awards in his industry. I’d seen him experience the ecstasy of creative genius. None of that compared to the look I saw on his face in this moment, when he became a father.

  And then they held the baby up in the glare of those harsh lights.

  For a suspended second, I saw nothing but my son’s beautiful soul. I heard nothing but his perfect silence. He made no sound. My heart called his name.

  Amiir.

  The pure elation on my husband’s face turned to pure terror.

  On the cold white page of a medical text, Pfeiffer syndrome type 2 is a genetic disorder that causes skeletal and systemic abnormalities. Craniosynostosis is the premature fusing of the bones in the skull, sometimes resulting in “cloverleaf skull,” in which the eyes are located outside the sockets. Brachydactyly is the fusion of bones in the hands and feet, causing a webbed or pawlike appearance. Anal atresia is the absence of an anus, indicating life-threatening abnormalities in the colon and bowels. I learned all this later. I became fluent in a language I didn’t want to speak. But in that first moment, I couldn’t understand what I was seeing. It was as if we were at the center of a whirlpool, and the room around us was turning in on itself, contorting, twisting everything.

  There was only an instant of fear. In the next instant, we became parents. Our love for him embraced everything he was. And then—chaos.