Shauna's Great Expectations

by Kathleen Loughnan

  I realise suddenly that that’s what it was always about with Keli. Getting a rise. Getting a kick out of excluding me. I don’t think her behaviour towards me was only about racism. I also don’t think she likes me much now. Maybe she has a grudging admiration for me, as I do for her, but I’m not part of her world, and she’s not part of mine. There’s little risk of us ever becoming friends, but I know now that she was an enemy never worth having either.

  When Keli leaves, Olivia immediately lays into me.

  ‘You were far too nice to her. You should have thrown all that crap back in her face! Who does she think she is sucking up to you now?’

  ‘After a couple of weeks, I’ll never have to see her again. We might as well part on peaceful terms.’

  Olivia folds her arms across her chest and purses her lips into the shape of a cat’s bottom. I know this look. It’s the face she pulls when she’s sulking. I decide to throw a little shade.

  ‘I’m actually thinking of naming the baby Keli.’

  ‘You’re what?’

  ‘It’s a lovely name.’

  She looks so cut up that I nudge her with my foot.

  ‘You are too easy to wind up.’

  Olivia looks thoughtful for a few moments before replying. ‘You will call her Olivia, won’t you?’

  I smile sweetly. ‘Not a chance.’

  29

  THE NIGHT BEFORE my English exam, Olivia pops into my room with a handmade card. On the front is a flying pig shaped from pink lace with a ribbon tail and tiny black buttons for a snout. Inside the card, in Olivia’s tiny, anally neat hand, are the words: You are proof that pigs can fly. Wishing you the best during your challenging time. Olivia xxo.

  ‘Well, this is almost as nice as the card my cousin Andrew made for me with his own two hands,’ I tease.

  Olivia’s mouth draws into an injured fart-shape. ‘What card?’

  ‘Oh, the card with two hundred bucks in it, so I can buy a stroller.’

  Olivia slams to a seated position on the end of my bed, her back to me.

  ‘Where could I have found two hundred bucks, Shauna? Huh? I’m not Keli Street-Hughes,’ she says shrilly. ‘I thought you’d appreciate something with a little care and effort put into it!’

  I reach out my long leg and tickle her side with my toes. Olivia laughs on cue, like an automaton. When she turns around to look at me, her face is a pincushion of smiles, dimples and dental plate.

  ‘I appreciate everything you do, you idiot!’ I mock-abuse her lovingly. ‘Don’t you know that, moron?’

  It’s hard to believe that the rude, spiny girl who I met in the withdrawing room at the beginning of the year is now signing off with kisses and hugs. I know that I am partly responsible for her transformation. I know that I stepped up for this child, and I know that I have it in me to step up for my baby, to be a better parent than my parents were. I have the power to influence others. I know that now.

  My English exam is a breeze. I only get up twice for bladder pressure, and other than that, the time just flies by. My quotations come to mind when called, and none of the questions is a surprise.

  My horror day happens a few days later when I have a three-hour Biology exam in the morning and a three-hour French exam in the afternoon. Jenny’s in the same boat, and we hang out together the whole day, testing each other and discussing approaches to possible questions.

  As soon as French is over, I go to bed and no one wakes me for dinner. I finally stir under my own steam at about 10 p.m. to find that Lou-Anne has left a plate of pork roast on my bedside table that’s now congealed. I eat it anyway, and then go back to sleep without brushing my teeth.

  The next day is my due date. I attend my outpatient appointment with Dr Jacobs and she gives me and Beryl the baby a check-up.

  ‘No signs of labour yet,’ she says.

  ‘Is that a statement or a question?’

  ‘A statement. It’s pretty common for first-time mothers to go past their due date. My daughter came nearly three weeks late.’

  ‘That would be great,’ I say. ‘For me, I mean.’

  ‘It means the baby will be very big, and possibly hard to deliver.’

  ‘I can only think as far as my Maths exam,’ I admit.

  In the meantime, I try to keep my cervix clamped shut. Modern History goes well, even though I have to get up every half hour to wee. Mathematics is my final exam and I cane it, even leaving early so that I can collapse in bed. As I pass out, my final thought is that I might not have made a single mistake in maths, because I answered all the questions and still had time to go back and check every answer.

  Lou-Anne wakes me up for dinner, and when I sit up I feel my whole crotch and upper thighs soak with water. I look down at my sheets and so does Lou-Anne.

  ‘Did you wet your pants?’ she asks with a nervous giggle.

  I shake my head. ‘Too wet to be a wee. I think my waters just broke.’

  ‘Oh my God, Shauna! We’ve got to get you to hospital!’

  She shouts to Bindi to find Miss Maroney, who I’m barely on speaking terms with. She arrives moments later, car keys in hand.

  ‘Let’s go, Shauna,’ she says, offering me her hand.

  ‘I’d prefer it if Bindi drove me,’ I say sourly. Bindi now has her very own fifth-hand, nipple-pink Alfa Romeo since James got a promotion and bought a new car.

  ‘You’re not getting into my car like that,’ says Bindi with a curl of her nostrils. I’m in too much of a panic to make a fuss about it, but I think Bindi loves her car’s upholstery more than she loves me. In the end it’s Miss Maroney who drives me and Lou-Anne to the Royal Hospital for Women. Once we’ve arrived, I call my parents. Mum cries and assures me that they’re ‘on their way’, but if it’s a race from Barraba to Sydney, and from womb to big, wide world, who knows who’ll arrive first?

  In a flash, I’m in the maternity ward on a hospital gurney with Lou-Anne beside me. I get wheeled into an examination room with a midwife to have mine and Beryl’s vital signs taken. Everything is fine, normal. Then the midwife swab-tests the liquid oozing out of me to see if it’s really amniotic fluid. It is, of course, and it means that the baby has to be delivered in the next twenty-four hours because there’s now a greater risk of infection. By hook or by crook, I’m going to be a mum this time tomorrow. If I don’t go into labour naturally then I’ll be induced with drugs to give birth.

  I feel nervous and happy and terrified as Lou-Anne and I settle into one of the birthing suites. There’s a rather confronting pair of stirrups hanging from a bar over the bed, and the walls are slathered in posters detailing birthing positions and massage techniques to reduce the pain.

  ‘You’re life’s about to be over, you know,’ says Lou-Anne darkly. ‘Look at my sister.’ Then she smiles, ‘But in another way it’s just about to begin.’

  For a few hours, nothing happens, other than Bindi, Indu and Olivia’s arrival. They bring soft drinks, chips and cookies, and eat them on my behalf. In spite of my hunger, I’m not allowed to eat, in case I end up needing a general anaesthetic. We hang out nervously, cutting up and fielding dirty looks from midwives who obviously think there should be fewer of us in the room.

  ‘Could I have gone into labour without knowing it?’ I ask Lou-Anne, eventually. As she is the closest person in our group to an expert on childbirth, having witnessed her sister give birth to twins, I keep calling on her knowledge.

  ‘Could you have stuck a besser block up your arse without knowing?’ She shrugs in response to my withering look, and everyone else cracks up. ‘Well, it’s the same question. The baby’s not going to just slide out while you smile, Shauna.’

  Not much longer after her comment, and all of a sudden, the besser block action begins in a way that leaves no doubt. It strikes like an unexpected bowel-nado, uncomfortable but bearable. It lasts for about twenty seconds.

  Olivia gasps, horrified, as my face contorts.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I pant. ‘But can
I have one of those chips?’

  ‘The midwife said no food,’ intervenes Lou-Anne, grabbing the packet from Olivia.

  ‘But Beryl says yes,’ I plead.

  Lou-Anne hands me one very small, very thin chip.

  ‘Thanks for your generosity, Lou-Anne.’

  ‘You’re in for a wild ride,’ she replies. ‘Hopefully they’ll stick a needle in your spine sooner rather than later.’

  An epidural, or an anaesthetic needle in the spine, is something I’ve already discussed with Dr Jacobs. She said that I can have it more or less when I ask for it, though I wonder which is worse: labour pains or a needle in the back?

  A few hours later I’m in no doubt about which would be worse, because I’m in the most savage, agonising physical pain I’ve ever experienced. I’m talking a wheelbarrow load of besser blocks dropping and clanging and bumping around inside me. It’s astounding how painful contractions can be. It’s even more astounding that no one really lets you in on it beforehand. Not even my own mum gave me any clue what to expect.

  Olivia and Bindi start to cry and one of the midwives asks them to leave the room and sit in the waiting area. I’m crying, too.

  I look out the window and it strikes me how dark it is outside. It must be the middle of the night. I hear someone moan, ‘Mummy! Mummy!’, and then I realise that the scared voice is mine. I’m buzzing with pain and fatigue. My eyes close against the bright lights above me, and I can feel Lou-Anne behind me rubbing my back.

  ‘Your mum’s coming,’ she says. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

  ‘I want the epidural,’ I manage to mutter. My lower torso is a rod of pain. It’s all I can think about. From time to time I forget that there’s a baby.

  Indu calls the midwife and I roll onto my back. I feel the midwife put her fingers inside me to check the dilation of my cervix. I don’t even care that there’s a stranger down there prodding me. I stopped caring about that kind of nonsense hours ago, but it feels like years.

  ‘Four centimetres,’ she announces.

  She summons an anaesthetist, whose face I don’t even see. He rolls me over and I can sense him busying himself with my back. I feel a sting on my spine followed by a dull scrape. In a matter of minutes my legs feel warm and I can’t feel the contractions anymore. I smile up at Lou-Anne and Indu. It’s such a relief.

  It’s my friends’ job to keep me awake now, because all I want to do is fall asleep. I drift in and out of twilight, having no idea how much time is passing. When my mum arrives, she holds my hand. I feel so happy that she made it, and I try to tell her so. Then I hear Dr Jacobs’s voice.

  ‘No more people in here,’ she says firmly.

  ‘Can I sleep, please?’ I murmur.

  ‘You’re in active labour now, Shauna. It’s not a good idea.’

  ‘What time is it?’

  No one tells me and it’s not until much later that I appreciate the timeline. I’m in labour until sunrise, which is when Dr Jacobs realises that Beryl’s head is not going to fit through my cervix.

  Her face appears like a ghost’s over mine.

  ‘Shauna, you’re going to need an emergency caesarean.’

  I sob. She reassures me that it’s not all that out of the ordinary, but I can’t fight feelings of exhaustion, failure and doom. Fluorescent lights flash overhead as narrow corridors sweep past. I hear my mum call my name. Then my dad.

  Then I’m being asked to count backwards from a hundred, but I can’t. I see my brother’s face and I’m sure I’m dead. He smiles at me.

  ‘It’ll be all right, kiddo,’ he says.

  Then, nothing.

  30

  I PUT MY hands to my belly, run my fingers over, its looseness, and feel enormously relieved. It sounds horrible, but I don’t even think about the baby, except to compute that she is gone – thank God! – from my battered body. The sorest part of me is my throat, from the oxygen tube I think, but the whole lower part of my body feels like it’s been under the wheels of a bus. I try to move my toes and I can – just.

  The nurses in the recovery ward are so nice. They fuss and check on me, ask me how I’m feeling. After about twenty minutes of slowly regaining my normal mind, I ask about the baby.

  ‘She’s waiting for you in your room,’ one of the young nurses tells me.

  Soon I’m wheeled into a tiny room by an orderly, and at first I think I must be dreaming when I see Nathan O’Brien with a tiny, swaddled baby in his arms. How can it be him? I thought he didn’t want us.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I croak.

  ‘Shauna,’ he says in a shaky voice, as the orderly closes the door behind him. ‘Why wouldn’t you talk to me?’

  It takes me a while to answer. ‘I thought you wouldn’t want her. Or me.’

  He walks to the bed and holds the sleeping baby to my eye-level. She has the most perfect little face, with a tiny nose and a red rosebud of a mouth. I lean over and kiss her plump, pink cheek.

  ‘How could anyone not want her?’ says Nathan. ‘She’s so beautiful.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know whether I could rely on you.’

  I can’t move much, but Nathan lays the sleeping newborn in my arms. I gently hold her against my chest. Oh God, I think, the world can really hurt me now. It occurs to me in that instant, looking down at her face, how much my parents must have loved me and my brother, how completely. I know in my heart that they did the best they could with both of us, and that I will do the best I can with this child. I look from her to her father, bursting with love.

  Finally I screw up the courage to say it. ‘God, I love her, Nathan.’

  ‘I love her, too.’

  My parents come into the room and when they see me with the baby they both start crying. They’re so proud of me, and I’m proud of them, too. My massively tall, bearded father looks like a dashing bushranger with his hair pulled back into a low ponytail. He’s wearing his best slacks and his R.M. Williams boots. My dark-skinned mother with her wildly patterned dress and soft, generous lines is a picture of black femininity.

  ‘Julie’s driving out tomorrow to see you,’ Mum says. ‘She’s bringing Andrew, and the rest of them will come the next day.’

  Everyone clusters around me. When I open my mouth to introduce Nathan to my parents, my voice is feeble and crackling.

  ‘Popping a baby’s not the easiest thing to do, is it?’ says Mum.

  While Dad and Nathan get chatting, Mum turns to me and mouths, ‘He’s so handsome.’

  ‘I know,’ I mouth back.

  We talk for ages in that little room, until Jenny’s aunt Coralie comes in and boots out all my guests.

  ‘Shauna needs rest,’ she says gruffly, not knowing what an understatement that is.

  When everyone’s gone, she turns nice again.

  ‘It’s about time you learned how to breastfeed,’ she says.

  ‘But I’m too tired!’

  ‘Welcome to motherhood, Shauna.’

  I call my baby Olivia Jamie O’Brien, and I hope she turns out like her namesakes. She has my brother’s nose and lips, and in some way, I feel like she’s a little piece of him. Only the best parts.

  Over my five-day stay in hospital, my whole extended family comes to Sydney to visit. My school friends visit multiple days, too – Lou-Anne, Bindi, Indu and Olivia once in a big, noisy group, and then a more subdued visit from just Lou-Anne and Olivia, who are becoming firm friends in my absence. Jenny comes four days out of five. Self-Raising Flour visits once, but stays for three hours, her eyes locked onto my baby’s face.

  ‘This is one delicious little girl, Shauna,’ she says, and I know what she means. Every now and then I get the urge to gobble baby Olivia right up.

  Nathan rents a hotel room in the city and spends time with me in hospital every day, helping me wash and change our daughter. My parents can’t afford to stay in Sydney long, so they go back to Barraba after two nights. It’s Nathan who drives Olivia and me back up north after we’re di
scharged from hospital.

  When we walk out to the hospital car park, I see that Nathan’s exchanged his souped-up aggy ute for an unspeakably dorky Camry.

  ‘It’s my mum’s car,’ he says with embarrassment as he opens the rear door, revealing a brand new baby seat. I hadn’t even thought about that.

  Nathan admits that his parents are still pretty bugged out about what’s happened, but that they’re looking forward to meeting me and the baby. We’ve talked again about what I thought his mum did to me at the Easter Show.

  ‘You’re wrong, Shauna,’ said Nathan, and I could tell he meant it. ‘Mum’s not like that. She was so stressed out that day. She’s always in a filthy mood at cattle shows.’

  I have accepted that I am capable of being wrong, and that I might have been wrong about Nathan’s mother. I feel apprehensive about meeting the O’Briens, but I’m trying to keep an open mind. They want to be involved with the baby, and I think I’m going to let them.

  I sleep most of the way on the drive up the New England Highway to Barraba, waking only once when Olivia wants a feed. When we pull into my parents’ driveway, they’re waiting outside for us. I have never, ever felt so exhausted or so happy to be home.

  Nathan comes in for a cup of tea, but he soon heads back to Kootingal. He plans to come and pick me up the next day so I can meet his parents at their farm, and I’ve agreed.

  ‘Not a bad sort of young bloke,’ admits Dad when Nathan’s gone. I wasn’t sure how things would go between the two of them. Dad’s physical presence can seem pretty frightening.

  ‘He’s got good manners,’ says Mum. ‘He’s well-raised.’

  I realise that after days of having Nathan at my side, I already miss him.

  That night after dinner, I call Jenny.

  ‘I just wanted to thank you,’ I tell her.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘For hooking me up with your aunt and the hospital.’

  ‘It’s a good hospital, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s a super hospital.’ Which is true, but, honestly, that’s not what I really want to thank her for. ‘Jenny . . . look . . .’