by Carrie Mac
My phone buzzed. A text from Mom.
Deep breath. It’s all good. I love you. Xoxo
As if she were reading my mind, all the way from Chicago, where it was the middle of the night and halfway to gone altogether.
That was what I was losing. The person who knew me best. The one person who truly got me. The one who knew how bad it could be for me. The one who helped me leave my room when it all got to be too much and all I wanted to do was lie in bed and stare at the wall. She was the one who’d collected me from the hospital that night when the ambulance came. Oh, Maeve. Sometimes it is just so hard, isn’t it?
I wrapped her scarf across my palm. It was almost like she was holding my hand. But no, actually, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like she was holding my hand at all. It was just her scarf, and me, all alone.
You have no idea, I texted back. I love you so much.
And then I was crying. Big, ugly sobs, my shoulders shaking and my nose dripping with snot.
—
Upstairs, the front door banged open and Dad turned down the music. Claire and the twins were home. I grabbed a tissue and blew my nose. I wiped the tears away.
Steady, Maeve.
I could hear Owen crying, and Corbin hollering, and in the background Claire’s singsong voice and Dad’s low, reassuring tones, and then a jumble of footsteps coming down the stairs. The twins burst into the room and tackled me on the bed.
“You’re here!” Corbin pulled at my arm. “Come on. Dad made baby foxes for Gnomenville. Ten of them. They have magic powers.”
“Half of them are King Percival’s.” Owen handed me one of the gnomes Dad had been carving for years. It fit into the palm of my hand.
“A new one?” Sanded and painted, he had a bushy white beard and angry eyes. His arms were crossed.
“The new king.” Owen beamed.
“He won’t be for long,” Corbin growled. “He made me one too. King Wren is plotting an attack. He’ll win, and then he’ll be the king again.”
“He won’t!”
“He will!”
“He won’t!”
“He will!”
“Truce!” I pulled them off the bed. “Truce. Let’s go eat cookies instead. Then you can commence the peace talks.”
“War talks,” Corbin said.
“Peace talks!”
“War talks.”
“Peace talks!”
“Boys! Enough!”
And just like that, I could breathe again.
And just like that, things were a tiny bit less awful.
And just like that, my mind made room for things like little brothers, and warring gnome kingdoms, and cookies. I gave each of them a kiss on the forehead. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for being little and loud and bursting with bright, shiny goodness.
We’re having the babies at home, they told me. It will be a beautiful miracle, Maeve. You will be so glad you were there. I was ten—what did I know?
Me, two midwives, a friend taking pictures, Mrs. Patel in the kitchen stirring a pot of chai, Dad and Claire naked in the water up to their chests in the “birth pool” in the middle of the living room. I huddled on the couch not looking, covering my ears every time Claire screamed. When I did muster the courage to look, I saw Claire’s vagina—blurry but obvious—under the water. Her vagina bulged between her legs, and then a head came out.
That was Corbin, dried off and given to Dad to hold. Claire wanted out of the tub, so the midwives helped her onto the floor, right in front of me. She groaned and rocked back and forth, and then, horror of all horrible things: she shit herself.
“Almost there,” the midwife said.
I made a strangled sound.
“Maeve?” Mrs. Patel came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a tea towel. “Are you okay?”
“One big push, Claire. There’s your baby’s head.” The midwife’s tone suddenly sharpened. “Let’s get this baby out fast. There’s meconium.”
Claire shit herself, and the baby shit himself.
Owen came out, covered in reeking slime. The midwife scrubbed him with a towel. He was blue and limp and tiny.
The room tipped. All I could smell was shit. Everything went blurry, and then black. When I came to, Dad gave me a baby to hold. I’m still not sure who it was. They were both pink and chubby and just fine.
—
Owen was still a lot smaller than Corbin now. After they updated me on the current political situation in Gnomenville over cookies and milk, Owen followed me back to my room, but he stopped at the door.
“What are you doing now?” he said in his raspy old-man voice.
“Not much.” I pulled out my sketchbook and pencils. “Probably drawing. Are you coming in?”
“Mom told us not to barge in like we did when we got home. She says that this is your room, even if it’s hers and Dad’s too, but that it’s yours for now and so we’re not allowed to come in unless we’re invited.”
—
What if he’d stayed blue? And then gray? And then dead and cremated and nothing else at all except grief heaped on grief and one little baby where there were supposed to be two?
Now that Claire was pregnant again, there would be another baby who might die. Another baby who might be born with something wrong. Another baby who could die of SIDS, a fall off the bed, leukemia, a horrible chromosomal mix-up, a bookcase toppling over in an earthquake because Dad hadn’t gotten around to securing them to the walls, even after living there for eight years.
Terrible things happened at home births. Not just blue babies covered in shit that could get in their lungs and cause pneumonia. Babies’ heart rates could drop and the hospital might be too far away. Babies could get stuck. Arrested labor. Stillbirths, failed resuscitations, lawsuits. Grief.
When I looked up home-birth deaths, I found blog after blog by women who’d lost their babies. And they all had pictures of their dead babies. Posed, as if they weren’t dead at all. Tiny fingers, perfect little feet. Soft, downy heads, eyes closed as if they were just sleeping. But the photos were almost always in black and white, so you couldn’t see that the babies were dusky pale. Dead babies in the crook of their mother’s arms. The father beside her, or arms around her, or touching the baby. No one smiled. That was the difference. Or sometimes—very rarely—they did smile. Which was worse.
There were dolls, too. Not like the soft, sweet ones Claire made, but realistic ones, with eyelashes and downy hair. Grieving parents could send in a picture of their dead baby, and a doll maker would make a life-size, weighted baby doll with the exact features of their dead baby. The parents could dress it, hold it, and lay it down in the crib at night.
“Maeve?” Owen was still at the doorway. “Can I sleep with you?”
“Sure,” I said. “Come in and tell me a story about King Percival. I need a distraction.”
“From what?”
From the fact that you almost died, I thought.
From the fact that not only did Dad and Claire want a home birth again, but they didn’t even want a midwife there this time. When they told me in the spring, we were eating poached eggs on toast, which suddenly seemed too disgusting to even look at. Chicken embryos.
Claire beamed at me. How amazing would that be? Just you and the boys. Just family.
Such a trip, Dad said. I’ll catch the baby in my own hands. The way it’s meant to be.
Hospitals, clean beds, doctors: that was the way it was meant to be.
—
Owen fell asleep while he was telling me about King Percival’s plans to storm the Wrens’ kingdom.
Claire popped her head through the curtains. “Can I come in?”
“Sure.”
“Do you want me to carry him upstairs?” She sat on the edge of the bed.
“No, he can stay.”
“Okay,” she said. “Tomorrow I want to hear about your trip, and the last weeks of school. I want you to tell me everything.”
Not everything.
“Claire?”
“Yes?”
“Are you still having a home birth?”
“Maeve—”
“I’m not going to argue with you,” I said. “I just wondered if you were still doing it by yourselves.”
“Well, your father…” She looked a little sad all of a sudden. “He’s been working really hard lately. And I don’t think he can—well, no. I have midwives.”
“Oh.”
“That should make you rest easier,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I just—”
“You just wanted to know how much to worry.”
I nodded.
“Good night, Maeve.” She turned at the doorway, her big belly in profile. “Sleep tight.”
—
Haitian earthquakes and decapitated people and Greyhound buses and dead babies and what it must be like to step in front of a speeding train. Why the train? Why didn’t she kill herself in a different way? Hanging. Overdose. Carbon-monoxide poisoning. Slitting wrists in a bathtub. Jumping off a cliff, or into a river that was too fast and too cold. Why the train? How did she make that choice? Stop. Stop, Maeve. Focus on the distraction: Owen, one slender arm folded above his head, the other clutching Hibou, his eyes fluttering as he dreamt.
Hibou.
French for owl.
Sometimes things sound so much better in another language.
Worry.
Pain.
Fear.
Inquiéter.
Douleur.
Effrayé.
At home in Port Townsend, I woke up to songbirds, the babbling creek, the smells of coffee and woodsmoke.
At Dad’s it was crows shrieking, a garbage truck, the boys upstairs hollering, the low hum of the washing machine, a dog barking, Dad’s heavy footsteps, the door slamming.
Maybe Mom wouldn’t go. Maybe at the last minute she would realize what a dumb old asshole Raymond was, and she’d get on a plane and come home, and then she’d get in her car and come get me, and we could go home and take care of the garden, which was all alone and wondering where we were.
What time is it there? It’s not too late. I love you. I love you. Don’t go!
Maybe she would get the text and that would be the thing she needed to hear. Maybe she would read those words and come back to me.
My phone rang. “Blackbird,” by the Beatles. And there was her picture filling the screen. I’d taken that the past summer, just before Raymond happened. She stood at the garden gate with a huge basket of tomatoes under one arm.
Only it wasn’t her. I could tell right away by the nasally exhale on the other end of the phone.
“Raymond?”
“Your mom is in the shower.”
“Why are you calling me on her phone?”
“To let you know that she’ll call you back. I know you don’t like to worry.”
I tasted bile in my throat. “You didn’t need to call. I’ve waited a lot longer than thirty-five seconds to get a text back from her. Especially lately.”
“All right, then,” he said, his voice chipper. “Just thought I’d let you know.”
“Gee. Thanks.”
He sighed. “Look, Maeve, your mom—”
“Will call me back,” I said as I hung up.
—
When she called back, she said hello and then dropped the phone.
“Sorry,” she said. “Just loading up the car.”
To go.
To the airport.
“How is it? How is everybody?” A car door opening, then closing.
“Is he with you?”
“He’s locking up the house.”
To go.
To the airport.
“Come home, Mom.”
“Six months, Maeve. This is good for you. This is good for everyone.”
“At least let me go home.” I started to cry. “Let me go home. Don’t go.”
“I am going to Haiti, Maeve. Just a sec.” She covered the phone and said something to Raymond. Then she was back and she was saying, “I love you. I love you. I love you. And you cannot stay at home by yourself. You know that.”
“Maybe this time would be different?”
“Six months of different? I love you, Maeve, and I’m going to Haiti, and I need to get off the phone. Raymond says talk to you soon. I love you.”
“I love you too.”
She was gone, and then going even farther away, and I was bawling. I hurt everywhere. It literally hurt to miss her.
I missed her. I missed home. I missed my bedroom. I missed the garden. I missed picking beans and canning tomatoes. I missed sitting on the steps drinking iced tea with dirt under our fingernails. I missed the little fox with the limp, the one I left food out for sometimes. I missed sitting on the old couch on the covered porch, especially when it rained and the rain filled the gutters and spilled over, and I missed the staccato the rain made on the tin roof. Loud and peaceful at the same time. Sometimes I fell asleep out there, wrapped in my quilt, listening to the rain, and Mom would come home from work, or out from making dinner, and she’d wake me up. She’d shake my shoulder and whisper in my ear, Up, up, little one. Even when I wasn’t little anymore.
Maybe terrible things would happen.
In six months, roughly twenty-eight million people would die in the world.
Cancer, murder, speeding trains. Hurricanes, poison, depression, starvation. War, shark attacks, random acts of chaos.
Cholera. The word was as ugly as it sounded. Some people could have it and never know it, but others could lose a liter of bodily fluids in one hour. I’ll be drinking bottled water at the clinic, Mom assured me. Not even ice cubes from the tap. We have treated water at home. Don’t worry, honey.
Maybe she would die in Haiti.
At her Haitian home.
She wasn’t letting me stay home based on one night. The night after what happened with Ruthie. I hadn’t told Mom, and I didn’t intend to either. It was going to be our “test” night, and it had been planned for weeks. If I could do one night, I could try two, and then a week, and then she’d consider letting me stay home while she was in Haiti. I did okay all afternoon, and even through supper. But when it was time to go to bed, the house seemed darker and it was too quiet and my mind kept replaying what had happened in Ruthie’s basement bedroom the day before. When I told 911 that I couldn’t breathe, they sent two ambulances and a fire truck.
I hated thinking about the day at Ruthie’s.
I hated thinking about the day that I spectacularly failed the test.
And this day too. I hated this day.
I hated Raymond for taking her away.
It was all his fault.
Maybe I wished he would die. Maybe it was that bad. A heart attack.
I wished he’d just keel over and die: a stroke, a clot in his lungs, a heart attack. That would be fitting. Dying of a heart attack just as he was falling in love with someone who was neither available nor suitable. Or even appropriate. Served him right.
Maybe not dead, though, because my mom would be so sad.
Maybe just a little heart attack. Just big enough to knock him over and keep him and my mom from going to Haiti.
Not while he was driving to the airport, though, because he might drive off the road and cause an accident with my mother in the car. But maybe as they were checking in. A sudden tightening in the chest, shortness of breath. The airline agent would notice first. Sir? Is something wrong? You look pale. And then my mom. Oh, Raymond, are you okay? Raymond! Somebody call 911!
A trip to the hospital instead of a trip to Haiti.
I could imagine my mother at his bedside, staring at him as he snored in his sleep, thin and sickly in his blue hospital gown, the fluorescent lights buzzing over his bed. She’d sit there and hold his hand and wonder. What had she been thinking? She did not love this man enough to be
his nurse. And then she’d get on a plane, and I’d get on a bus, and we’d meet in Seattle, and Dan would drive us all home. Ta-da! The end.
A heart attack? What a terrible thing to wish on a person.
I took back the heart attack. I hadn’t meant it. Not really. I just wanted Mom to come home. And I wanted her to leave Raymond behind. I didn’t want him—or anyone else—to have a heart attack. I was a bad person, to wish something like that on someone. Even if that someone was Raymond. I was a bad person, to think such bitter, dark thoughts.
Sometimes distraction could take my mind off the worry, but sometimes it made it worse. Especially if it was Claire’s idea. Distraction was Claire’s favorite way of dealing with my varying degrees of weird. You just need to keep moving, Maeve. Move. Move your body and your brain and use up that nervous energy that clatters around in there, messing you up. Try new things! Meet new people! Get out there, honey. You think too much because you have too much time to think. When I was younger, she’d sign me up for things like circus camp, or kayak trips, or marimba lessons. That’s why she tried to teach me how to knit. It’s meditative, she said. You zone out and it’s just the yarn and the needles and you, making something beautiful.
But I did not work that way. I lasted half the week at circus camp. I was so worried about getting hurt that I actually could not move the required muscles it would take to participate. And furthermore, I was sure that one of the other kids was going to fall to their death, so I could only sit on the bench with my hands covering my face, muttering, “I can’t watch. I can’t watch. I can’t watch.” They asked me to leave, and not very nicely, considering I was only eleven. One of the instructors actually said that I was jinxing the whole class. Circus = watching someone fall to their death. Kayaking = drowning. Marimba = failure. Knitting = way too much time to think. Claire didn’t sign me up for that kind of thing anymore, but she was always pushing me: get out, go do something, find a friend.
As if.
Drawing worked, sometimes. Sometimes it could lift me out of myself. Sometimes figuring out the lines and curves and shapes of things around me was enough to stop the noise in my head for a while. But usually when the worrying about something stopped, it was because I’d moved on to worrying about something else.