Lorna Mott Comes Home

by Diane Johnson

  “We probably should get you to a hospital,” Lorna agreed in what she hoped was a reassuring tone.

  “I’ll go look for Charlotte Bakewell, the Protestant from La Charce who was at the graveyard earlier today,” Armand-Loup said. “She had lunch—I think she’s still around. Maybe she would come along with us as a safety measure. She said she was going to wait for dark, to see the glowing of the saint’s grave.”

  “It glows?” Lorna wondered.

  “Yes, yes, they say. But she’s some kind of midwife. I don’t know certified by whom. The English have midwives because they can’t afford hospitals, I’m told. She was at La Roulette having lunch,” he said. “I’ll go get her and I’ll get my car.”

  Carla said, “I can drive, we have a big SUV.”

  “Armand can lead us,” Lorna said. “Can you walk out to the car?”

  “Sure, yes,” Gilda said, looking relieved to have something to do. She got up, then doubled over slightly with a pain which seemed to Lorna to have come rather soon; had she not been having a contraction an hour ago when Lorna came in? Was something imminent?

  “Maybe we should start?” said Carla. “Our car is right in front.” As they got into it, Armand drew up in his small Peugeot with the priestess, or whatever she was, who clambered out and looked at Gilda with an informed eye. “I’m not sure those are real contractions,” she said. “Yet.”

  Before Gilda’s next pain, Lorna and the midwife had piled into Carla’s rented SUV with Gilda. “I’ll come along with her,” the midwife said, in an authoritative voice, indicating Gilda, who was getting into the front seat with Carla. “Better get in back, dear.” Charlotte Bakewell was English, like many residents of the Drôme region, with a reassuring upper-class accent and an air of competence.

  With everyone studiously preserving calm and optimism, they set off. Armand-Loup drove behind them with Julie in the Peugeot, then pulled around them and led the way. No one mentioned prematurity or danger. Gilda herself did not seem to be suffering horribly, just uttering syllables of “er” and “uff” from time to time. The midwife, Charlotte Bakewell, sitting in back with Gilda, was highly pleased by the adventure, excited that her skills might suddenly be needed by the side of the road.

  Lorna, too, had a moment of amazed, inappropriate happiness at finding herself back in France, hurtling through the stony, morainic landscape, albeit with a groaning pregnant teen and an English midwife, with Armand rattling along before on an errand of mercy. It was an epiphany she’d have to think about later, if it survived: the impression that she belonged here, helping with life as it happened, and not in California brooding about some trivial lecture no one cared about. She belonged with her family—parts of it, Julie, even Ran’s family, even Gilda—for they were all enmeshed, and that was wonderful, living out her days in dear Pont-les-Puits giving her lectures to the visiting foodies if to anyone and letting her hair turn its natural color, whatever that turned out to be by now. Of course she knew this feeling of fulfillment would probably pass.

  The drive seemed endless through the bleak landscape of rocks and gnarled brush, and the general air of desolation oppressed them further with a sense of impending catastrophe. Gilda writhed in increasing discomfort. “Errr, ufff,” she moaned. Charlotte Bakewell coached her: “Breathe, deep breath, try to relax…” Between “ers” and “uffs,” Gilda called her parents again, but there was no connection. She began to pant in a new register, faster.

  “How far is it?” the midwife asked. “With very young women, labor can be short. It can be sudden.” Only a little after this, Gilda screamed and thrashed with especial anguish. The midwife slipped off the seat, knelt on the floor of the SUV, and pressed Gilda into a more or less horizontal position on the seat.

  The baby will be born dead, Lorna thought, foreseeing that the birth was going to happen right then and there, and the baby would probably be too premature to live; but she had no idea what to do. “Carla, pull over.” Carla pulled over on a wide shoulder.

  “She’s precipitating. It’s common with teens,” said the midwife. “Here, let’s get you out of your jeans,” undoing Gilda’s zipper and tugging at the pants legs of baggy jeans Gilda had bought big enough to fit over her belly. The awkward business of peeling them off Gilda’s ivory legs was accomplished between the contractions, which came closer and closer together. They could see, on Gilda’s inner thigh, a discreetly small tattoo that read vincit in cursive.

  “Oh my God,” said Carla, “when did she get that? Her parents will freak out.”

  Soon the poor child made a new sound, animal-like and agonized, and the midwife pushed her naked legs apart. This spasm over, Gilda struggled to sit up to stare at the lower half of her own body. The others at first looked politely away from her silver-furred crotch with something bulging partway out of her vagina. Then Gilda’s new moan started and just as quickly turned to a scream, and suddenly the midwife was dealing with the slippery object that emerged from between Gilda’s legs. They heard Gilda utter a huge exhalation of relief as the awkward, distending object left the birth canal with a whoosh.

  Lorna and Carla from the front seat had twisted around to look, Lorna feeling faint. The birth process had only taken a couple of minutes. As Lorna remembered giving birth, it had taken hours of deep breathing and groaning. Had this appalling experience been what she herself had gone through three times? And every woman on earth? Carla looked shaken, too. Would this put her off motherhood? Thank heavens Julie was in the other car.

  “Is it alive?” Carla asked in a fearful whisper. They were afraid to hear the answer, but Charlotte Bakewell said, “Wait,” and made little slapping sounds against the creature’s tiny back. A small bleat emerged. Lorna handed over her scarf, which the woman used to dab at the baby—living, apparently, though infinitely minuscule; it could have been a ferret or the fetus of a seal. They saw the tiny limbs twitch. Gilda, still scooted up to a sitting position, watched in amazement. Lorna’s ears rang with terror that the little thing would die before they got to Valence, would just start and then run down, like a battery toy when the batteries go.

  “Yes, breathing, but we should drive on, we should get her to whatever facilities they’ll have in Valence,” said Charlotte, swaddling the baby in Lorna’s Hermès scarf. “She’s definitely low birth weight, she can’t be three pounds. She may have trouble breathing.”

  “Babies can live at that weight,” said Gilda. “Usually babies of diabetic mothers are large.” That was the extent of what she’d looked up.

  The midwife carefully put the wrapped baby into her own blouse and inside her bra, to free her hands to press for a minute on Gilda’s stomach. “What’s this?” she asked, encountering the insulin pump stuck to Gilda’s side.

  “Gilda, honey, are you all right?” Lorna said, seeing that the girl was even paler than before, if possible, and her face was wet with sweat.

  “Lie back,” said Charlotte, “there’s the placenta to come.” Carla had already started the car and waved out of the window to Armand-Loup, who was just getting out of his Peugeot, signaling him to get back in and drive. He and Julie had not even had time to comprehend the significance of the last few moments by the side of the road.

  “She’s not bleeding, that’s good,” said Charlotte Bakewell. “You’ll have another cramp now, but it won’t be too bad.” Gilda said nothing, just sagged against the seat, damp and inert.

  They were only ten minutes from Valence, following Armand-Loup, who knew where the hospital was, wending down unfamiliar streets lined by trees pruned to knuckles for winter. The hospital was several stories high, in need of paint, its name written in cursive neon on a small registration building. They drove up to the emergency entrance. By the time they piled out of the car, Gilda had struggled back into her jeans and was trying to walk in with the others, but an orderly appeared with a wheelchair. Lorna took her arm, but it seemed to
her that Gilda walked more steadily than she to the chair and sank into it. The seat of her jeans was wet and stained.

  “Not quite ready to go back to the cotton fields,” Gilda apologized.

  Inside the hospital, the Englishwoman, Charlotte, rushed with the baby into the inner spaces of the emergency room, and a nurse stepped over to push the wheelchair. Carla dabbed anxiously at Gilda’s sweaty forehead. Julie and Armand-Loup stood by the desk, Armand attempting to explain. “This young girl has just given birth, she needs care. There is a baby. It is small and it needs a specialist.” Armand had to say it several times with increasing volume.

  “Oui, monsieur, sit over there. Calmez-vous.”

  “Let me have my telephone, I need to call my parents,” Gilda said. “It was a girl?”

  “Yes,” Lorna said. “Very tiny. Miss—Charlotte—has gone to see what they are doing with her.” The Englishwoman had disappeared somewhere with the impossibly small baby. What if they didn’t have an incubator here, or special equipment?

  “She looked very sturdy, though, I thought,” said Lorna trying to radiate assurance and comfort, feeling dismay.

  “I still think Pomona. I’m not sure about Deiopea. All those vowels,” Gilda said in a weak voice.

  “Just wait, sweet,” said Carla. “First things first.”

  “She needs a name, though,” Gilda said. She was poking at her cell phone. “This works now.” She started to say, “Mommy, the baby is here,” to Amy’s voice mail, but thought better of it until they knew what would happen. Why get them upset? “Just checking in,” she said to the phone. “Everything is fine.” To Lorna she said, “May I see her?”

  “Wait,” said Lorna. A pall of incertitude and fear about the baby overrode her worry for Gilda, who, although said to have delicate health, was seeming improbably stalwart. She was taken away, presumably to a room. Lorna and Armand waited with Julie and Carla on the uncomfortable benches of the waiting room wondering if they should follow. Carla had begun to sob lightly into a Kleenex.

  * * *

  —

  The nurse pushed Gilda’s wheelchair into a dim, bare room, where the window shades were pulled down and an incubator stood glowing in the middle like a television set. There was a chair or two against the wall, and a hard-looking metal bed on wheels next to the incubator. Gilda peered into the incubator.

  Oh, please don’t let me bond, Gilda prayed, looking at the small animal in the incubator; it—she—was wearing a little undershirt. It—she, Pomona—wasn’t cute; she was like some other mammal altogether, rat or chipmunk, she was so small. Gilda thought she fended off the bonding feeling pretty well—she felt curiosity and concern, but not more. It would be interesting to see how she grew. Gilda’s breasts stung a little, but she fended that off as well. She couldn’t seem to develop thoughts, just an empty, ringing in her head.

  Someone came and spoke to her in French, too fast for her to understand, and then, improbably, took the baby out of the incubator, pulled off its little undershirt, and stuffed the naked creature down the front of Gilda’s shirt, a warm, wettish thing against her skin. She understood some words about contact with the peau. Something about a kangaroo, evidently the same word in both languages. Gestures made it clear Gilda was to sit quietly on the chair next to the incubator. She sat obediently, but did try her cell again and again to try to reach her parents but failed to. She felt the baby breathe, could see the barest rhythmic rising of its little back. She was terrified, and she felt weak now, and dizzy. She had given birth less than an hour ago; she had lost track. She wanted to sleep.

  She tried to remember the giving birth part but couldn’t.

  * * *

  —

  In the waiting room, Lorna and Armand were confined to their chairs by their sense of proper hospital conduct, too daunted by the sanctity of hospital precincts to breach them by blustering behind the nurses’ station unasked. Finally, a nurse came in and suggested they go get Gilda some dry clothes. “Nous allons la retenir ce soir.”

  “How can we leave her?” Lorna protested.

  “I’m staying with her,” Carla said.

  “She’s in a hospital. They will look after her,” Armand said, planning to take Lorna and go. “We’ll come tomorrow with clean clothes.”

  Lorna declined. “I have to see if all is well. The poor child gave birth a half hour ago and she was walking around. Maybe she’s fainted or is bleeding,” Lorna protested.

  “Was it a girl?” Armand asked to no one in particular.

  “I’ll be right back. I’m going to check on her. She shouldn’t be alone back there.” She mustered an air of entitlement and walked around the nurses’ station, which no one objected to, and found herself in a corridor with one open door, where Gilda was to be seen sitting up in a hospital bed, clutching her useless cell phone. She brightened at seeing Lorna.

  “I guess I just have to sit like this. Is there any word from my parents?”

  Lorna now saw the tip of the baby’s head nestled under the top of Gilda’s shirt and the bulge of a little body against her chest. She pulled up another of the chairs and sat with the terrified girl and the baby, who was tethered to bottles on stands.

  “How do you feel, Gilda? Shouldn’t you have something—some juice or a sandwich? I’ll try to get something for you. You will have amazing stories to tell, someday, about this surreal experience,” she said, not really expecting Gilda to understand this but trying for a positive tone. She understood that these remarks hardly rose to the enormity of what had happened to the girl.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know where my insulin kit is. Is it in the car we came in? It’s in my backpack.”

  “What do you need?” Lorna had been thinking she would want a comb or lipstick, and that she might be hungry.

  “Some test strips, I guess, and I have some glucose tablets. And maybe I need an insulin cartridge. Maybe a cannula.” Now Lorna saw that Gilda had to deal with some other problem. Had Peggy once mentioned diabetes?

  “I’ll get it. Your parents are on their way.” She would just as soon not encounter Ran and Amy, but felt guilty about feeling relieved that she’d miss them. “I’ll go look for your backpack, and bring it back if it’s in the car. Otherwise we’ll go get you some food.”

  Gilda agreed stoically with everything, but Lorna couldn’t forget her look of abandonment and despair. She was about to say she’d stay with the child, when a man, perhaps a doctor, came in and gruffly told her to leave, looking at his watch. He made broom-sweeping gestures to rid the room of her.

  Gilda said, “It’s okay, Mrs. Dumas, I’ll ask them here for test strips and some orange juice. Jus d’orange?” But Lorna could see she was frightened.

  Lorna and Armand walked to his car, planning to get some food for Gilda; who knew when the hospital would feed her? She’d mentioned orange juice. “They must think the baby is strong enough to be out of the incubator. She wasn’t attached to anything.”

  “No, she was,” Armand said. “There was a tiny tube in her nostril. The machine was next to the bed.”

  “I didn’t see the tube. Do you think that hospital has the necessary—the special things needed?” She had read about essential compounds to clear the lungs, of vitamins injected at birth, silver nitrate, advanced machines that saved the lives of ever-more-premature fetuses.

  “I doubt it,” Armand said. “Well, I don’t know. It looks modern enough.”

  * * *

  —

  In the metal bed with its thin blanket, the dazed Gilda saw more clearly than before that the world is ruthless: when you have a baby, it is all your problem. If you are female. Never mind if it wasn’t even your fault. Never mind if you were tired or going to have a hypoglycemic crash. Her bottom was still soaked, maybe something was leaking out of her, but she didn’t dare shift her position. It could be blood.

>   The baby plastered to her chest was breathing steadily, softly; it was the incubator machine that made the whimpering noise audible. All Gilda could see looking down was the top of its head, with dark fuzz on it, at least it wasn’t silver. She didn’t dare move. No one came. No one had ever not come before, and it was a new feeling, not entirely horrible. It gave her a fortified, adult sense. She passed into a tense, exhausted sleep.

  When she waked, there were noises of clanking carts, and food smells. Had she slept? What was the time? She knew she needed some orange juice, but she was exhausted, too, and felt herself nod off a little again, thinking about how life could change with you having no say about it, you just drifting along in a helpless panic like a stick in a stream.

  She thought about how Virgil’s Deiopea the Beautiful seemed not allowed to have personal feelings, she was just shuffled off to Aeolus, god of the wind, without anyone asking her, her job was just to make him the parent of fine offspring, she had no choice…Or was it that Virgil was too sexist to care about what Deiopea felt? Anyway, it was good not to have named Pomona “Deiopea,” who had no personal volition. She thought about reading book 2 in the eleventh grade.

  She had a terrible headache beginning, really needed food or her glucose tablets, but she was afraid to move with the baby attached; she was frozen there. Nurses and people looked in, and she finally called, “Aidez-moi.” Her French was pretty awful, but when they heard, they came right away, and a nurse said in English that her grandmother was there. How much time had passed? The nurse carefully put the baby back in the incubator. “Une heure à la fois,” she explained. “Une robe,” and helped Gilda change into a new gown in the curtained booth in the corner of the room. Through the curtains Gilda saw that Carla was there, too.