Her Mother's Daughter

by Alice Fitzgerald

  I go home and keep myself busy by putting on a wash and getting the dinner. I don’t tell Michael any of the shenanigans, for fear of sounding like a demented fool.

  The next morning in the toilet my period comes and I have a good cry for myself. I had been hopeful for new life. I had been hopeful for a transformation.

  When my period eventually doesn’t come, I wait several weeks before I allow myself to entertain the idea. I make an appointment at the doctor’s and they do a test.

  On my way home, I buy steak and potatoes and wine and have the table set and myself done up for when Michael gets in. I hear the key in the door and his feet brush against the mat. Then there’s the click of the lock and the ring of the keys in the dish. I hide behind the kitchen door and hold my breath and listen to his measured, padded footsteps grow closer as he walks down the carpeted hall and onto the lino floor.

  ‘Where’s the most beautiful girl in the whole of England?’ he calls.

  I hold my breath; keep still. I’m smiling and hot and giddy and my heart is banging loud in my chest.

  He peers round the door and I jump, even though I know that’s exactly what he’ll do. I’m giggling now and step forward towards him and he laughs and says, ‘There she is!’ He kisses me hello. He smells of tarmac and fumes and still has the faint scent of the aftershave he put on this morning. The concoction is strong and makes my head swim.

  ‘Michael,’ I whisper into his chest.

  ‘Yes, my love?’ He is smelling my hair and rubbing my back and I am tingling all over.

  ‘We’re going to have a baby.’ I whisper it because I can barely believe it. I can’t allow myself to get so excited at being blessed like this, but it’s too late. I’m already thinking of names and imagining a little baby Michael and seeing the three of us together, a happy family. My family.

  He pulls away and looks into my eyes. Then he draws me back to him and squeezes me tight. Then, out of nowhere, he jumps up into the air and lets out a loud Yihaa!

  I laugh and he laughs, and I wrap my arms around him.

  ‘How do you feel? Are you okay? Do you need to sit down?’ His face is serious with concern.

  I laugh. ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Sit down anyway. You’re to take it easy.’ He leads me over to the table and I sit down. ‘Are you happy?’ he says after a while.

  I nod. I have no words. How to tell him I am the happiest I have ever been, that I am happier than I ever thought possible?

  The growth of my body is beautiful, at first, but then on some days it is odious, too. One morning, after my bath, I look at myself in the mirror. Every part of me is swollen. I have been taken over by this creature inside of me, like I have been taken over before. My body is not my own, from the neck down, just like all those years ago.

  My tummy is growing and growing, despite me wanting it to stop. Of course there’s the baby, but there’s the cigarette belly, too. Since I’ve stopped smoking I can’t stop eating. I’ve tried playing with the cigarette and pretending, just to keep my hands busy, but it’s no good.

  I wanted to be one of those beautiful, sophisticated pregnant women who are tiny but for their protruding belly. The ones people joke about having swallowed a watermelon.

  There’s nothing glamorous or sophisticated about me. There’s nothing controlled. Once again in my life I find myself looking on at my body, helpless. I stare at my breasts, my tummy, my hips in the mirror; they grow before my eyes. I am sure of it. I’m getting bigger and uglier as this baby grows stronger and more human, as if it’s sucking the goodness out of me.

  There’s a punch or a kick under the skin and it’s as if a little monster is alive within me, trying to break out. Maybe it’s always been there, and has only just woken up.

  I rub this new mound and wonder when we made this living thing. I hope it was one of our nice times together, when I forget myself and allow myself to love and be loved. Other times, I can’t help but remember, and it’s like I’ve been taken over again, and again. Then I pull myself away and busy myself somewhere else in the house, or turn over and pretend to sleep. I remind myself it is different, so different. A world away. A sea apart. Get over yourself, Josephine – cop on, for God’s sake. Forget about it once and for all. But my body cannot forget. It remembers every time my father has laid a hand on me – whether it was a brush of the arm or a slap – every look, every comment. It remembers every Sunday when Uncle Patrick came for lunch and made jokes and winked and everyone laughed, even me. It remembers my mother on the toilet, and it remembers the stabbing pain, in my head, between my legs, and in my chest. My body is beyond my mind and the words I say inside my head. My body, with its crevices and its muscles that seize up, and its curves that grow.

  I put on a dress I bought in the sales and for the rest of the day I feel like a whale. I’m sure everyone is looking at my arse and my legs and my huge chest, and I blush when I have to speak to anyone. I wish the day away, waiting to get in the door so I can change and, when I do, I rip the dress off and put it in the kitchen cupboard to use as rags and put on my dressing gown.

  I work until my legs are swollen and my ankles are stiff. The office where I do the books in the mornings barely acknowledges me when I leave, and I wonder where I went wrong. They did get me a bunch of flowers but it was small and mean, and they got me a voucher for a shop that sells baby clothes. Michael says it was lovely of them, and what else were they going to do? I would have liked tea and cake to send me off. Michael says they were busy wrapping up the quarter.

  The following Friday, Maura, Joyce and Mister Cohen throw a little leaving party for me. There’s chocolate cake and tea and coffee and hot chocolate, and Mister Cohen gives me a card with fifty pounds inside. I hug him and the girls and take the tiny Babygros and bouquet of flowers home. I am full of chocolate cake and gratitude, beaming and not caring about the other office. These are my real friends, bless them. I am also full of nerves and terribly scared of being alone. I imagine Maura and Joyce dolled up to the nines, out on the town tonight, and Michael and myself curled up on the settee, me getting bigger by the minute.

  JOSEPHINE

  9TH JUNE 1987

  When it comes, the pain is like nothing I’ve felt before. It grips me in sharp, electric waves from the inside out.

  I message Michael’s pager, like he told me, and wait for him to call. When he doesn’t, I ring a cab and take my bag and myself off to the hospital. I try to look calm and don’t let on to the cab driver, until a contraction comes and I scream and dig my nails into my thighs and push my knees against his seat.

  ‘Where’s your husband, love?’ he asks.

  ‘Coming,’ I say, ‘he’s coming.’

  ‘Well, something’s definitely coming, that’s for sure,’ he says with a smile.

  I hate Michael for not being here with me.

  I have come too early, they tell me. I can either go home, or walk up and down the corridors to help my waters break. I dare not go home to be there by myself, and be humiliated in front of another driver. I shuffle around the hospital. It stinks of disinfectant and hospital food. I tremble as I walk. They will all know what I’m doing. They see me on my own and are wondering where my husband and my family are. I tremble with nerves and anger, and curse Michael for still not being here.

  Everyone looks sick. Either on their own sickbeds or sick with worry, and the darkness of it all rubs off on me. I soak it up with each baby step. I look for Michael around every corner, but there are only other men, older, younger, darker hair. His face is nowhere to be seen. I will never forgive him for leaving me with all this sickness and our baby, making its way towards the world.

  A trolley comes with a little old lady, her skin loose and empty, and I swear I can smell death.

  Further up the corridor, a wave comes. I hold onto the wall, and close my eyes against the stares of strangers. When the liquid splashes over my feet, I pray it’s all a dream. They take my hands and put me in a wheelchair and
I float along, pretending I’m somewhere else. I’m good at that.

  I open my eyes to a nurse helping me onto a bed. She has small, kind eyes and thin lips, like Granny.

  ‘There you go. I’m just going to take your knickers off,’ she says, and they’re already off by the time she has finished the sentence. ‘Move yourself lower down, love.’ She speaks in a London accent and it seems wrong; she should sound like Granny.

  I shuffle along the length of the bed but she tells me to go further, further, until my bottom is right at the end. She lifts my legs into the stirrups and I want to be sucked up away out of here. I want to die. But I can’t die. I’m not here to die, I remind myself. I’m here to have a baby. This is a good experience, a natural experience. I repeat it to myself, and concentrate on my breathing.

  All I can do is focus on breathing in, breathing out, as they examine me. A male doctor comes in and joins them, and only after he has looked between my legs does he look at my face and introduce himself. I want to roar at them all, to jump up and run down the corridor and out to the park, where I would sit with my legs together on a blanket and read a magazine.

  The tears stream from my eyes without a sound. I count the squares in the ceiling, and listen to them mutter between themselves, the doctor’s hands on me all the while. The image of Daddy with the chisel in my mouth, and me unable to breathe a word, fills my mind.

  The nurse who looks like Granny comes up to my end of the bed and rubs my arm and says everything is okay. ‘Breathe, dear, breathe, try to relax,’ she says, and I wish I had a mother who could be here with me now.

  I close my eyes and run through the fields behind the house. I skip down the road to Granny’s and go in through the back door and kiss her on the cheek. I sit down beside her and eat a biscuit and she rubs my hair. I am in the pub with Bernadette, I’m dancing in the church hall with the girls, twirling around. I’m twirling and twirling. This is what I do. Escape from myself. Run away, down the road, through the fields and the forest and over to the big tree where no one can find me.

  All those hours I spent up in that tree, and all I wanted was for my mother to come and look for me.

  My body clenches into a tight fist and I let out a roar.

  Time moves in waves. In moments of clarity, and clenching and increasing dilation. They tell me my husband has arrived and will they send him in? No, I tell them. He can wait outside. I’m too far gone for him to see me, now. White, sweating, my legs up and open. He can pay for not keeping his word, for doing this to me – for everything.

  ‘Come on, love,’ says the nurse. ‘One more, now make it a good one.’

  I cling to the bed and push and scream but I’m too tired, I can’t do it. ‘Will you get my husband?’ I ask, suddenly sorry for making him stay outside and desperate for him to be here holding my hand.

  They tell me to hurry on and push, push, that we need to get the baby out now. Now, I think. Jesus, the baby is in distress. Oh God. I scream that I want my husband, and one of them hurries away and I’m pushing and in he walks with a plastic hat on his head and a face etched with nerves.

  He comes to my side and holds my hand and I squeeze it and push.

  Then, the sound of a baby crying. My baby crying.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ a voice says (I don’t know whose).

  Michael kisses my face while they clean her. ‘Well done, my darling,’ he says. ‘Josephine, I’m so sorry I didn’t get here earlier. Forgive me.’

  I look at him. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I was at work. I left the pager down and didn’t hear the message.’ He shakes his head. ‘I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  I look away. ‘It was the one thing you had to do.’

  The nurse brings me my baby, crying, and tells me I can hold her and feed her.

  I rub her face and coax her on, gazing at the red wisps on her head and the little fists poking out from beneath the blanket. Her eyes are closed, her eyelids puffy and swollen.

  ‘Hello, beautiful,’ I whisper.

  The nurse smiles. ‘Well done, Mum. Just a few stitches,’ she says. ‘You won’t feel a thing.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, reaching out to touch her arm.

  ‘You’re welcome, my dear.’ She pats my hand.

  I can’t see yet who my little baby looks like, but I know she will have the best parts of both of us. She will have my eyes, and Michael’s pink, full lips. She will have his softness, his way with words and forgivingness, his sense of humour. She’ll have my eyelashes and my auburn hair, my warmth and my way with numbers.

  She’s all mine, I think, mine. My baby. I will watch you grow a centimetre a day, I will feed you when you are hungry, I will shower you with kisses and I will be there for you whenever you need me.

  I vow to love her with all my being and give her everything I never had. My daughter will have it all. I tuck my little finger into her tiny cupped hand.

  She whines like a puppy and we laugh quietly.

  ‘Look what we made,’ I whisper.

  ‘Look what you did,’ whispers Michael. ‘You carried her and gave birth to her.’

  Yes, I think, looking down at her sleeping face. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

  ‘You did, my darling.’ He kisses me on the hand.

  At home, the baby cries. I put her to my chest to feed, but she screams with her mouth wide open.

  Michael comes in and I ask him to get the bedroom ready. I don’t want him to see me and think me helpless and incapable.

  ‘Come on, little baby,’ I whisper. ‘You did it so well in hospital.’

  She cries and I cry with her. I take my breast in my hand and move my nipple back and forth over her lips. I change sides. I get a cushion to prop her up. I squeeze out a drop of milk and wet her lips. I imagine the women stopping me on the street to see my new baby, saying, Oh, isn’t she beautiful? Cooing over her. And are you breastfeeding? they will ask. Yes, I am, I will say. Everyone knows breastfeeding is best for the baby. Aren’t you great? they will say. Aren’t you a fine example to us all, now.

  ‘Come on,’ I whisper. The tears roll down my cheeks. I shake my head. Why would she do it for the nurse and not for me?

  I close my eyes and picture myself walking to the shops with the little baby in the pram and all the ladies stopping me to have a look. They’ll say how great I look, ask how I managed it at all. And I will shake my head and shrug my shoulders. It just fell off, I’ll say. What a marvellous woman, they will say back, and what a beautiful daughter.

  JOSEPHINE

  5TH AUGUST 1987

  Some days, when she sleeps I shower with her in the basket on the floor. Other days, nothing will soothe her and I have her in my arms non-stop. Even when she’s asleep she senses when I put her down, and I have to scoop her up quickly to stop her from screaming. On those days I end up mooching around the house in my dressing gown, the walls closing in on me as the day draws on. On those days, the weight of this tiny, fragile life depending entirely on me is almost too much. I might have a cry.

  It’s better when I shower and dress and get out to the shops, even just to buy a pint of milk or the paper. On a good day I take the pram to the park and have a walk around to stretch my legs. She sleeps contentedly and I breathe in deep.

  I sometimes remember how Mammy would leave Sean to cry for what seemed like hours. I wonder how long it really was. I imagine myself as a baby screaming in the cot, and her lying in the bed, her head against the headboard, listening. I wonder what she thought about in those moments, and if she loved me. I wonder if she scooped me up in her arms as soon as I made a sound, the way I do with Clare; if she went to the toilet with me on her shoulder.

  I can’t bear the sound of Clare’s cries. I couldn’t find it in myself to leave her to cry, like my mother left her children. Michael tells me to. When I jump up and run to her cot, he tells me I should wait longer, that I’ll spoil her. I tell him that I’m her mother. Mother knows best, isn’t that what they say
?

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m trying to help.’

  ‘Well, I could do without your help.’ My tongue is sharp. I am tired from all the waking in the night, from the shushing and rocking, walking around the house, praying for her to sleep. I shouldn’t be so mean to him. It’s not his fault that he has to sleep, to be up for work in the morning. He has to work. And I have to take care of Clare. That’s the way it is. He is only doing his best.

  All I know is that I love Clare so much it hurts. With her gurgles and her button-nose, and her lips that swell after she feeds. Her hiccups that shake through her small, chubby, defenceless body. ‘My darling girl,’ I whisper to her, ‘you can tell me anything in the world, whenever you need to.’

  I am watching her sleep when the doorbell rings. I wasn’t expecting anyone. I look in the basket and Clare is still. I put my hand over her chest and feel the warmth of its rise, followed by the fall. I creep on tiptoes over to the window and look down through the nets. It’s Maura and Joyce. They turn and see me and wave. My heart sinks. I have been wondering when they would come, but now they are here, I wish they had let me know they were coming. I wave back, then tie my dressing gown around my waist and tuck my loose hair behind my ears.

  I take a look in the mirror and open the door to them.

  ‘Hello!’ they say in high sing-song voices.

  ‘Hi, girls! Come in, come in.’ My voice sounds flat after hearing theirs.

  ‘Jesus, you look awful,’ says Maura. ‘You look like you’ve been hit by a bus.’

  ‘Shut up, you!’ says Joyce. She elbows her, thinking I don’t see it, but I do. ‘You look lovely, Josephine. A little tired is all.’

  They are the ones who look lovely, in their skirts and blouses with ties at the neck, all made up.

  Joyce leads the way into the kitchen. She takes out a box of chocolates from her bag and Maura hands me a bunch of flowers. I smell them. ‘They’re lovely,’ I tell them. They’re from the greengrocer’s down the road; I recognize the sticker. I picture them running all the way here, stopping to buy chocolates at the corner shop and the flowers from your man at the greengrocer’s. He would have watched them run off, admiring them from behind. He’s like that.