by Sadie Sumner
Table of Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Afterword
About the Author
Upcoming
How to make a baby
a novel
Sadie Sumner
Mother media
Contents
Foreword
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Afterword
About the Author
Upcoming
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One
Monica had wanted her mother to die. A paradise duck shot from the air, her plumage dulled and crusted in mud. And here she was, laid out flat on the hospice bed, a starched white sheet pulled tight to her chin, long gray hair spread over the pillow, mouth open, lips sunk over empty gums. Monica sat on the bed.
“I wanted to tell you about the baby.” She took a tube of moisturizer from her bag and cradled Dotty’s cold hand in her warm palm as she massaged the fingers. At the word ‘baby’ Monica half expected her mother to wake up and shout for joy.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Mom, it's not real, it’s a fake baby, a phantom. I can only see it through my blind eye,” she said and touched the black patch she had begun to wear to cover her prosthetic eye. “Do you think I’m going mad?” she whispered. The phantom baby popped into the hand basin, an apparition that appeared at unpredictable times, its face as cherubic as a renaissance painting. Monica squealed as it waved then disappeared.
“Mom, did you see it? It’s stalking me.” She felt panic rising and began a series of calming yoga breaths. She pulled the chair close to the bed and sensed her mother was transforming before her, sinking away from all she’d been. “I’m sorry,” she said. There was a confessional urgency in her voice. “I just kept thinking I’d wake up one morning and be like you. Or you’d suddenly be more like me. I am your daughter, after all. We’re meant to be alike.” She stroked her mother’s china fine skin then took a stack of blue index cards from her bag. They were held together with a rubber band, and each card had a single word scrawled across it. In the dark days when she was barely 20 and on the run from Dotty and her life at the commune, her therapist had explained the technique. Write down each emotion, hold the card to your chest whenever you are overwhelmed. By defining and separating feelings, she would quickly move past them and could throw away the card. In theory.
But Monica kept every card, even as she made new ones. She took off the band, shuffled the pack and suppressed the urge to nudge Dotty awake as she spread them face down on the bed, like tarot cards.
“I made this game up, Mom, but it’s not a game, is it?” Monica desperately wanted a particle, a trace element, just a sliver of Dotty’s energy to linger in the room. But at the same time, she knew she could never have confronted her mother with the truth of her feelings.
Monica closed her eyes and hovered her hand over the cards, before selecting one. When she turned it over the word ‘sad’ was written in marker. She held the card up: “See Mom, each of these cards is the way you made me feel when I was little. So in a way, these are your cards, too.” She turned another over. Helpless. Monica used her fingers to comb out her mother’s hair. “Do you know why you made me feel helpless?” She took a pen from her bag and traced over the letters until the lines were thick and black, and she’d worn a hole through to the white cotton beneath. When she was done she held the card in front of her mother’s face, then flicked the other cards over and poked her finger at each one: Anxiety. Anger. Hurt. Bitterness. “Fuck you,” she whispered, and stalked around the tiny room. At the mirror above the basin, she caught the corner of her reflection, the moment where she could have been Dotty at 40. “Fuck you,” she said to her reflection. “You made me kill my baby.” The moment the words were out Monica deflated, her anger spent. She blinked at herself in the mirror and remembered how young she had been. He was older and the son of one of Dotty’s new lovers. “Sure you can sleep on the sofa,” Dotty had said when he’d knocked at their door one night. She’d handed him a joint and winked at her daughter as if they shared a secret. “Nightie night you two,” Dotty had laughed as she went to bed, hours before her usual time. They sat together on the floor and flipped through Dotty’s box of cassette tapes. It seemed innocent enough, but when Monica considered it years later, she was shocked at her ignorance. She’d grown up in a succession of small, hand-built houses on communes with too thin walls, Dotty often casually naked as she pranced for each new hope, dog-eared copies of The Joy of Sex and Linda Goodman’s Love Signs littering each room long after they were fashionable. Jacob was more experienced; trust me, he’d said, his body quivering like the skin on custard as he leaned towards her. He touched her shoulder, her arm, her hand and then in a fumbled rush like they were drunk, he climbed onto her. She felt his weight now and heard the sound of his jagged breathing. Afterward, Monica could not understand why Dotty was so intent on sex. Eight weeks later she complained of sore breasts, and Dotty had looked at her in shock and asked if they’d used a condom. It dawned on Monica that she was pregnant. And it could only be Jacob. Dotty took her to the clinic the next day, no questions asked, the decision made. They gave her sedatives and injected a local anesthetic, and all she remembered was the sound of the ocean as the tide turned and rushed back to join itself. Monica held the ‘fuck you’ card to her chest. She was infertile. Pelvic Inflammatory Disease. PID. She said the words out loud. The disease felt like the accumulated debris of her wild years. There was no cure. Except to become immune to children. She closed her eyes and the loss of Dotty, the abortion, and her infertility began to knit together. Her child would be 24 years old.
“I’m not sure we allow pets in here,” Dr. Maxwell said.
“Why? Do you think they might harm the patient?” Monica shot back, dry-eyed from beside the bed.
“Do you know how much you sound like her?” Gil said.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the doctor said and held Dotty’s wrist to check for a pulse. “Your mother was certainly different. You can collect her certificate from the front desk.”
He made a show of washing and drying his hands, then told them the room was their
s for an hour and backed out without looking again at Dotty.
“I can’t stand that doctor,” Monica said, “so arrogant.”
“But cute, don’t you think?” Rufus smiled. In the corner, Dog turned a tight circle.
“I want to sing to her,” Gil said.
Rufus clapped his hands. “Remember you performed at our graduation party? That was a great party. I just realized I’ve not heard you sing since then. Weren’t you in a band in high school?”
Gil nodded. “Punk. And screaming.” He tapped his foot. “My poor mother. She was so ashamed of her choirboy in a torn shirt. She tried to lock me in the house the night of the concert,” he grinned. “I don’t remember the last time I picked up a guitar.” He closed his eyes and began with the melody, and the words followed. Ten years married and Monica did not know this side of Gil, and she watched his face with interest while he sang like Dylan. Mama, take this badge off of me, I can’t use it anymore. It's gettin’ dark, too dark to see I feel I'm knockin’ on heaven’s door. Rufus joined in for the chorus as Monica hugged herself. The song petered out, and Gil traced a wrinkle in the crushed fabric of Dotty’s sleeve. “She would have criticized my Dylan, wouldn’t she?” He put his fingers to his lips and touched her cheek.
Monica gripped the metal edge of the hospital bed. She felt a crushing need to be alone, to experience the sense of Dotty’s absence by herself. Gil stiffened when she asked them to leave, but Rufus took his arm and the door hushed shut behind them.
She lay down on the tiny bed, balanced herself with one hand on the cold metal frame and rested her arm across Dotty’s body. The wound felt as fresh as when they sucked the goop from her. She had never mentioned the abortion or the PID to Gil. She had not even mentioned her recent visit to the fertility clinic. And it occurred to her that the fake baby she saw in her blind eye was the one she made with Jacob, returned now to haunt her.
Monica fell asleep next to her mother and was woken by the undertaker. Her hour was up. He smiled as if he’d seen it all before. Monica took her bag and left the room without glancing at Dotty.
Two
Kavitha felt the anger begin deep in her stomach then spread till her fingertips were infused with a tingling desperation to feel the flesh of his neck. The heat invaded her throat, and her mouth hung open like she’d lost her wits. She had yelled at him for the first time in their 22 years of marriage.
Arun stood before her. Rings of sweat discolored his usually immaculate white shirt.
She stepped toward him, and it became a dance as he moved away, behind the settee, just out of her reach. Kavitha picked up the jug, with the ugly misshapen handle.
“Please, no.” He held up his hand, “A gift from my aunt, for our wedding.”
Kavitha carried it to the front door. Neighbors gathered on the covered landing, drawn from their flats by the heat and the argument. She stepped out, and they turned away, pretending they’d not been listening. The aroma of cardamom, cumin, and nutmeg infused the afternoon air. Kavitha balanced the jug on the railing.
Arun stood in the crumbling plaster of their doorway. Kavitha glanced down the four floors to the wilted garden bed and parking area. She did not want to hurt anyone. She dropped the vase. The neighbors crowded the railing. The crash was small, hardly worth the effort and the gang of boys who played cricket at the edge of the car park did not stop their game. Kavitha pushed past Arun into the flat. She hated the jug, so this time it had to be something she valued. Something they had bought together. She selected a large blue and white ceramic elephant they used as a side table and carefully removed the glass from the top. The elephant was heavier than she expected, but she carried it in both arms and hefted it to the railing.
“Kavi, please stop. How will this solve anything?” Arun’s voice was high-pitched, and he looked just as she remembered his father, old and shrunk within himself.
“Of course this will not solve our problem. But this way I will not kill you.”
A few neighbors sniggered, and Kavitha turned on them. “Go away,” she shouted. They went back into their flats but left their doors open.
The elephant fell straight down. It landed in a shatter that echoed through the landings while the boys playing cricket cheered like they’d won a match.
“You should clean that up,” Kavitha said to Arun. She stretched her fingers. Some of the fire in them had dissipated, and she wondered if she would need to drop something else to ease the tightness in her throat. She straightened her skirt and tucked her blouse back in.
“Now, explain it to me again.” She went inside, into their kitchen with the lentils soaking on the counter like it were an ordinary day.
Arun bowed his head, the hair parted smooth with oil specially darkened with dye from beetles, to cover the gray. “I did it. I stole the money.”
They always spoke in English, but the Hindi was thick behind his words, the admission bringing out his true self.
“They will come for me soon.” Arun was not tall, and for a moment he reminded Kavitha of Hanuman, the boy who lost his pride and became a monkey god.
“My chucklee,” Arun’s voice was desperate.
Kavitha took a deep breath. “Do not call me that.” She gazed at the lentils she had poured into the bowl the night before when the world still made sense.
“Did you hear me?” Arun followed her around. “They will come for me soon. Maybe even today.”
Kavitha rinsed the lentils, turned on the gas ring and stirred in nutmeg and cumin and the other spices she had selected and ground.
“I thought you would understand. I did it for the right reason.”
Kavitha looked up from the pan. “There is a right reason for stealing?” her voice rose. “Show me where it is written that stealing is justified? Show me.” She wanted to throw the hot legumes at him. He turned away. The heat from the gas flushed her face, and she ran her spoon through the lentils to draw a mandala. She carved a square with four gates that contained a circle with a center point. With each pass, she smoothed the lentils flat and started again until she created a pattern with a perfect radial balance.
Arun returned, dressed in his best work clothes. Kavitha quickly wiped away the pattern. The desire to hit him rose up. Instead, she pulled the blind to shade them from the sun and set two places at the table, heated the chapatti, and served their lunch.
Arun ate slowly. In less than a day, he had become a stranger to her. She thought about their factory and the women who worked for them, and the American owners who trusted them. And Ria, their daughter who was away at university. But she could not voice any of this, and she sat till the mound of lentils grew cold, and the sun moved past the window.
Kavitha breathed in the last of the aroma of spices and pushed back her chair. Arun had rinsed his plate and placed it on the drying rack without her noticing. Now she heard him open the door and she went after him.
On the landing, his shirt was bright white against the peeling green paint. Kavitha felt a moment of pride for its perfect creases. His trousers looked as new as the day they bought them. He turned and blinked, and she saw he was pale as milk. He stood in front of her and she could smell his hair oil and the deodorant he got from the American supermarket.
“I am leaving,” he said.
“We have to go back to work.” Kavitha heard the traffic that snaked past their building. Normally it was just a backdrop, like the rushing of water. But now the cacophony of horns and screech of brakes and crash of diesel gears pummeled her. She felt like she was standing in the center of the road. Arun held her arms above the elbows for a brief moment then he leaned in and kissed her cheek. He had never touched her in public before, and she gasped and placed her hand over the imprint of his lips. She watched him walk along the landing, past the neighbors who stood in silence beside their doors and past old Mr. Batra, who scratched at the wisps of his beard.
He disappeared into the concrete stairwell. From the railing, Kavitha saw him emerge at the f
ar end of their building and weave through the scooters and past the boys who never stopped playing cricket. He hurried through the stalls that clustered on the roadside selling dosa and every kind of curry. And she saw him disappear into the mess of traffic and children, dogs and rubbish and handcarts.
Kavitha ignored the eyes of the neighbors who knew everything. Inside their flat, she locked the door. Arun had left his keys on the hook above the entrance table. She washed her face and gazed into the mirror and remembered reading that a shock could turn your hair gray. But she was unchanged, and she decided to go back to work. Perhaps Arun would be there and would tell her it was all a mistake, that he had not stolen anything.
The door handle squeaked. Of course, he’d forgotten the keys. She unlocked the door and flung it open. Two men in stained coveralls stood with hands in their pockets. They smelled of sweat and grime. Kavitha looked past them to Mr. Batra, who sat on his stool with his back to the wall. She closed the door without a word. The men banged on it with their fists, so the whole flat shook. Kavitha opened the door and the afternoon heat flooded over her. She stood very still.
“We need to take your car now,” the first man said in Hindi.
The other held out his hand. “It belongs to the company.”
Kavitha took the keys from their hook on the wall and gripped them in her fist.
“You must give them to us now,” the man’s face was shiny with sweat.