by Lucy Hay
“What’s his name?” The midwife said.
I had expected to say “I don’t know” or “I’ll think of a name later”, yet staring at my new son in my arms, a name came to me from thin air and I replied: “Alex.”
Mum smiled and said, “Good choice.”
I didn’t want to stay in the hospital. Like many new mothers I became worried at being in a public place, feeling my baby was vulnerable. Mum argued my case with the midwives: I was low risk; I had a big support network at home; I wanted to go home as soon as possible. But the midwives just smiled patronisingly and advised us both we could go “as soon as the doctor did her rounds”. So we ended up sitting on the ward, listening to the cries of new babies and the exhausted sighs of newly delivered mothers, feeling the frustration and envy of women still waiting for labour. Ambling up and down the corridor, bored, I was reminded of the sheep in the nearby farms at lambing times: how the ewes would stamp at us in warning when we came investigating. The women on the ward were just the same: stay away from our babies.
During this time, Mike turned up. The first I became aware of him was raised voices at the nurses’ station. My mother had gone out to ask after the doctor again and run into him, ambling along the corridor looking for me and the baby.
“She doesn’t want to see you.” I heard Mum hiss after the initial outburst. Mike was standing his ground, a bunch of sorry-looking carnations in one hand, a teddy bear with a blue jumper in the other.
I hobbled to the ward doorway, the baby in my arms. I would not go so far as ten steps away from the crib without him. I was surprised at how much I still hurt and how difficult walking was. In my naïve mind, I suppose I had thought that like the mothers I’d seen on television, I would deliver the baby and go bounding on my way.
“Mum.” I said, my tone delivering my message at last, several weeks too late: I will handle this.
Mum regarded me with undisguised irritation. “I’m going for a coffee.” She said to me, then looked at Mike, venom in her eyes. “I’ll be just down this corridor.” She warned.
Mike presented the flowers and teddy awkwardly, words failing him. Instead he fell back on platitudes like, “Well done” and “he’s gorgeous”, as if I had some kind of control over how Alex had turned out. Between us, what had happened on the patio still weighed heavy, yet neither of us had the maturity to address it. I wondered what happened next. Would Mike at least visit the child? What about money? I had none and nor did Mike: he was just a student. Did I have the right to ask him to get further in debt? But what would I do? It had taken two of us to make this child, after all. My mind was spinning. Yet none of this was said. About twenty minutes later, Mike gave me a kiss on the cheek and was gone again, as if he’d never been there. Mum came stalking back in immediately, eyeballing him on the way out. She started her demands the moment the swing doors closed after him: what was happening? Were we still together? What about access? Was he prepared to pay maintenance?
“I don’t know.” I replied, truthfully.
The first few weeks following Alex’s birth passed. There were numerous “likes” on Facebook for my first picture of Alex, but few visitors the same age as me to the house, though Shona arrived, on a weekend home from university. She carried no present for the baby, just a giant litre bottle of vodka for me: “You’re gonna need this!” Typical Shona. A couple of old friends from college arrived with baby clothes and yet more teddies dressed in blue, but I had lost touch beyond social media with most of my peers as they had discovered their exciting new worlds, away from home for the first time. So most of the visitors were my Mum and Dad’s friends, eager to pass comment on the first ever Carmichael boy. Lots of gifts arrived from people I didn’t even know, along with a shower of congratulations. It was very bewildering: would they have been so interested had the child been another girl? But I shoved these uncharitable thoughts to the back of my mind and smiled, sitting next to my mother as she showed off her first grandchild to anyone who spared five minutes, including the postman and even two tourists who had got lost.
Yet real life always has to pick up the thread of normality again and it wasn’t long before mine did, too. Even the twins lost their starry looks when regarding the baby, soon complaining instead he cried too much in the night. Alex was a colicky child and slept only fitfully for an hour here or there. I felt Zombie-like, drifting through my life as if I were watching myself from above. A few weeks into this, Amanda announced she was moving in with Sal and Hannah, permanently. An almighty argument ensued when Hannah was discovered raiding Amanda’s beauty course stuff, which somehow became my fault as well. Breastfeeding proved more difficult than I hoped when Alex was so prone to colic, so despite my mother’s and Sal’s obvious disapproval, I put him on the bottle.
“He won’t be as intelligent.” Sal declared one morning, as if she had a clue what she was on about and infant nutrition was her speciality.
“Well how can he be intelligent anyway, if he’s from my body?” I retorted, tired out from yet another night pacing up and down the bedroom floor with Alex. Sal rolled her eyes at me as usual and went back to her books.
I suppose I thought some great insight would be bestowed upon me on having Alex. Yet I more or less felt the same as I always had, just more pressurised now. The months of my pregnancy had felt like they would last forever, sitting at home in the middle of nowhere. It had been difficult knowing my friends and boyfriend were off living the high life somewhere, whilst I struggled to find enough to fill my days. Now of course Alex filled that void. But so much of motherhood was drudgery, when I had thought naively it came with an automatic sense of fulfilment. Mum had always seemed completely content raising us, despite the other problems she’d had in her life. But all I could see were menial tasks. Nappies. Feeding. Bathing. Cleaning. Washing. A neverending cycle, round and round. The fact I saw no one and had no friends who were going through the same made me feel more isolated than ever. When my sisters came crashing through the doors of the house complaining about school or college and what had happened that day, all I felt was envy.
I loved Alex; of course I did. I would even go so far as to do it all the same again. I honestly didn’t understand the parents I had heard say, “If I knew then, what I know now…” How could they wish their babies had not been born? But at the same time, I just wanted to run away. Life really seemed to be as much of a paradox as Shona had surmised at the tender age of just eleven. And I had no clue what to do about it. So after what seemed like both a million years and five minutes, Alex was sitting up; on solids; then crawling and then walking, taking his first steps on his first birthday. He said his first word: “Mama”, gratifyingly, followed more annoyingly by “Sal”. Each milestone was reached and noted as if it were completely natural: why shouldn’t he? Yet I was still struck by a sense of trepidation for our future and what we should do next, or what options were left open to us.
As time passed, Alex revealed a cheeky personality, believing a fluttering of his long eyelashes would get him out of most scrapes. Which it did, for his succession of Aunties and my parents forgave him just about anything, including spilling red poster paint on the twins’ beds; drawing on the walls and even cutting the hair off the tail of my mother’s favourite sleeping cat. Despite his naughtiness, Alex was a delightful child and didn’t appear to fret about missing out on his father’s influence. Mike had seen him only a handful of times, always in a backstreet café somewhere, for my mother had made it clear he was not welcome in her house. Alex had not taken to Mike, who was a stranger to him. I’d seen confusion and pain in Mike’s eyes as he regarded his son. He didn’t know what to do, or what he was supposed to. I sympathised with him on that, because I felt exactly the same.
Then the world as I knew it came crashing down. It’s hard to remember exactly where it started, though Sal had been baiting me for weeks over Alex. As he grew away from me and began walking and talking, she had cleverly clocked he was my Achille’s Heel. His
growing independence, though welcome and right, was also a source of grief to me (as it was to all mothers, I supposed). Though she bore Alex no ill will herself, Sal had discovered calling his development into question, cunningly disguised as “concerns”, were enough to rile me. And she dug deep, finding as many as she could. Alex was apparently walking with his toes turned inward; he had a lisp; he had a below average vocabulary; he had some signifiers on the autistic spectrum; I had given him food “too early”, so now he was apparently destined for digestive problems and other problems as an adult. Though I tried hard to refrain from engaging with her psychological warfare, one day it just became too much, when she suggested for the umpteenth time Alex’s potential intelligence had been impeded by my apparently “giving up” breastfeeding. There was an argument, swiftly followed by an actual physical scuffle, instigated by me. Sal came off worse, sprawled on the kitchen tiles with a bleeding lip, after I had pushed her off the stool she’d been seated on.
“What have you done?” Mum of course came in now, after the event. Sal, shocked by my outburst – I don’t think I had actually hit her before – started crying. Rage coursed through me at my mother’s words. Not, “What’s happened?” to both of us. Instead, what had I done? As usual, I was cast as the outsider, the potential troublemaker, the cuckoo in the nest. And I was sick of it. I had been the one who had my life turned upside down; I was the one who had never been asked how I felt; I was the one expected to follow my mother’s wishes and to somehow rise above the most strategic and cruel sibling rivalry.
Enough was enough.
I threw Alex’s clothes and mine in a variety of black plastic bags. Mum first shouted and screamed and then pleaded with me, unable to understand the vitriol that was pouring out of me or why it had struck so suddenly on a summery Thursday afternoon. Dad was called and he rushed over, making a botched attempt to make me “see sense” that only aided the conflagration in my veins. The twins watched wide-eyed and Alex wailed at the atmosphere, clinging to my leg and torn between us all. It was terrible. A phone call later and Shona’s Dad had been dispatched to pick Alex and I up: luckily Shona was at home from university for a so-called “reading week” that really meant she went to the local pub every night and got hammered. The original onslaught over, there was a half hour wait where I sat in the front room and listened to my Mother sobbing at the kitchen table. I could see in my mind my Dad putting an arm round her, completely at odds with what was happening as usual. But his confusion reminded me of Mike and only strengthened my resolve.
Finally, a car horn sounded outside: Shona’s Dad was here. I gathered my stuff together – just four paltry plastic bags of it – and loaded Alex into the pushchair. Mum and Dad came to the living room door, making no effort to lift a finger and help. I knew they wouldn’t. Despite my anger, I supposed I would have done the same if it were my child, yet I still felt unable to let go of the anger and resentment that had built up in me for so long. That paradox again.
“Bye.” I said coldly.
“Where are you going?” Mum said quietly.
“Shona’s.” I replied, knowing I should reassure her, but feeling powerful for the first time in years. How sad and mean was I?
“And then?” Dad demanded.
“I don’t know.” I confessed.
I didn’t have to do this, I knew that. I could come back in a few days and a line would be drawn under it. All I would have to do is admit I was wrong and all would be forgotten and life could trudge on as it was. But there was a part of me that demanded my voice was heard, once and for all. I couldn’t live like this any longer. I felt I had outgrown my role as the eldest daughter. I had a new one, as a mother, that I needed to take up properly. There was a part of me that rejoiced I had finally found the courage to walk out the door and grab life at last, instead of forever living in limbo. I had to leave and discover the life I was meant to lead, whatever it was … And whatever that meant.
I struggled out to the car and Shona’s Dad helped me load the bags and the pushchair into the back. He took forever testing Alex’s car seat, enough time for Sal to finally pluck up her nerve and run out the front of the house, undoubtedly against Mum’s wishes.
“Don’t go.” She said, breathlessly.
“I have to.” I said. I willed her to apologise, to admit she was in the wrong too, but it was not forthcoming from her. Sal’s face twisted and for a moment I thought she would cry. Inexplicably, I wanted to throw my arms around her, despite how she had treated me over the years. But the moment was over in a flash and confrontational Sal was back, her lip curled in her everlasting sneer.
“This is typical of you.” She said.
I actually smiled. “No, that’s the point… It isn’t.” I said.
Without another word, I got in the back of the car, next to Alex. As Shona’s Dad turned the key in the ignition, the sound brought Mum and the rest of them to the porch. They all looked so miserable and a part of me ached to be with them. But I knew to go back would be to be lost forever. I raised a hand to wave and like sad reflections of myself, they copied, unable to comprehend what had really happened that day or why I was leaving. Only I did or could. And that’s why I had to go.
Shona’s Dad’s expensive car bombed down the country lanes too fast, but for the first time in ages I felt as if I could breathe properly. I still felt that same trepidation at what would come next, but now I felt a kind of exhilaration, too. I would have to find somewhere to live and who knew what I would do next, especially when it came to a job or my education. But I was no longer in limbo.
My destiny was my own at last.
In my pocket, the tell tale vibration of an incoming call roused me from my thoughts. On the seat next to me, Alex was already asleep, dead to the world, thumb in mouth. I hesitated before answering, feeling sure it would be Mum, trying to call me back to the house by any means necessary, be they threats or emotional blackmail. The call died, but began ringing again immediately. I sighed, finally taking the phone out of my pocket in preparation to answer. My eyes bugged in surprise; it was not Mum after all.
On the LCD flashed the name: MIKE…
MIKE
… And the world shifted. Sound went first, like drop out on a bad radio signal. There was a weird interruption like white noise immediately afterwards, shocking in its suddenness. Imagery flashed past my eyes as swiftly as a city landscape through a train window, yet everything I saw were people I knew, moving their arms jerkily backwards and forwards and nonsensically, like nightclub dancers under strobe lighting. And then: nothing. Only darkness.
“Lizzie?”
Mike’s voice cut through, clear and obvious. My hand appeared in front of me, disembodied, that positive pregnancy tester gripped in my fingers. As if that single image was enough to prompt not only my memory but my physical being, the rest of me appeared, blinking back to existence as if I had never been away. The phone was to my ear and again, I stood in front of the aluminium mirror, shell-shocked. I took a sudden, deep breath like a swimmer breaking the surface of dark water for the first time after a neverending dive into the murky depths.
“Yes.” I whispered, my voice hoarse; it rasped in my throat. I looked around those toilets again, wondering what had prompted such a strong reaction in me. It couldn’t just have been the positive pregnancy test… Could it? I recalled one of my mother’s magazines: there had been a story about a woman whose health had been badly affected by pregnancy and she’d had a brain haemorrhage. But the woman had been both middle-aged and hugely pregnant, her blood pressure had sky rocketed as she approached forty weeks. It couldn’t be that for me; I had been pregnant only a matter of days. Besides, I was only young.
“… I said we’d meet them at seven?” Mike was saying. I realised I had heard nothing prior to that moment. He seemed unusually jovial. That meant only one thing: Mike was planning a night out. It was the only time of the week he was ever truly happy: if he could get drunk or stoned and play pool, life m
ade sense to him. Despair flooded through me at the insight: Mike was my Dad! How could I have not known that until this moment?
“I can’t,” I spluttered. The toilets seemed so small, the dirty walls and their juvenile graffiti felt far too close. Heat worked its way up my neck and down my back. Breath felt like it was catching in my chest: I couldn’t gather enough air.
“Are you alright, hun?” Mike said innocently.
Hun. I’d always hated the way he called me that. It was short for “hunny pie” which to Mike seemed sweet and caring, but to me felt like a pointless, constructed affectation. But he had no point of reference for the silly things people call their loved ones, so had plucked one out of thin air. Mike had no knowledge of real love or family. Instead, his had been a lonely upbringing, sitting in his bedroom listening to music too loud in a bid to draw the attention or at least the wrath of his retired father smoking his pipe downstairs, as Francis listened to the BBC World Service and flicked through pages of The Guardian with yellow fingers.
“I’m fine.” I gasped. I grabbed my bag and stumbled towards the doors of the toilets, pushing it open with my shoulder, phone still to my ear. Fresh air rushed in, almost shocking me back to life, rejuvenating me in an instant. I could breathe again. I could think straight…
… I stopped. Beyond the toilets, the marketplace was deserted. I regarded the big, open car park in surprise. No stalls were in operation; no shoppers congregated. Just rows and rows of cars: battered old bangers mostly, broken up by sparkling Landrovers and Jeeps with bull bars, the type favoured by the Yummy Mummies on the big estates at the back of town. Yet it was Wednesday, market day. Where was everyone?