Mimi narrowed her eyes and squinted past Sarah, toward the nurse who’d just walked through the door. “What is SHE doing here?” she demanded. Her voice was its standard two or three decibels too loud for the room. “I was told nobody was allowed!”
Becky bit her lip. Maybe lying had been a mistake.
The nurse glanced at the chart, then at Sarah. “She’s Becky’s doula,” she said.
“Well, that’s my son, who is a surgeon in this hospital, and that,” she said, gesturing toward Becky’s abdomen, “is my grandchild.”
And what am I? Becky thought. Tupperware?
Mimi extended her trembling finger toward Sarah. “If SHE gets to stay, then I do, too!”
Andrew sat up in the bed. “Mom?”
“Mimi,” Becky whispered, “Andrew and I really wanted our privacy for this.”
“Oh, don’t worry! You won’t even notice I’m here!” She kicked the birth ball into the corner, sat down on the rocking chair, and pulled a video recorder out of her purse. “Smile pretty,” Mimi said, flicking on the overhead lights and pointing the lens at her daughter-in-law. “Oh, dear. You could use a little lipstick.”
“Mimi, I do not want lipstick! Please turn the light off, and . . . oh, God,” Becky groaned as another contraction started up.
“Well, there’s no need to be dramatic,” Mimi announced and moved closer with the camera, speaking into its recorder. “Hah there, this is me, Mimi, your grandmother, and we’re in the hospital on Saturday morning . . .”
“MiMIIIIIII!”
“Okay, Mom,” Andrew said. He grabbed his mother’s elbow with one hand, her handbag with the other, and began propelling her toward the door. “Let’s go sit in the waiting room.”
“What?” Mimi shrieked. “Why? I have every right to be here, Andrew. This is MY grandbaby, and I don’t understand why you’d want some . . . some doo-doo or whatever she is in there with you while your own mother gets left in the cold . . .”
The door blessedly swung closed behind them. Sarah raised her eyebrows. “Don’t even ask,” Becky panted. The contractions went on and on, unspooling over the hours. Andrew and Sarah took turns walking with her, rubbing her feet and her back until the sun came up, and then they started spacing out, dwindling to one every five minutes . . . then one every seven . . . then one every ten.
Dr. Mendlow’s normally cheerful face was grave, his high forehead wrinkled as he finished his exam.
“Still three centimeters,” he said. Andrew held one of her hands, and Sarah held the other. Becky started to cry.
“That’s the bad news,” the doctor continued. “The good news is, the heartbeat still sounds strong. But for whatever reason—and it might be the size of the baby, which, as you know, we’ve been keeping an eye on—the baby’s head is just not descending enough to get the cervix to really dilate.” He sat down on the edge of Becky’s bed. “We could try some Pitocin to see if that’ll start the contractions again.”
“Or?” Becky asked.
“Or we could have a C-section. Which, given that we’re right up against forty-two weeks, and given what we suspect about the size of this baby’s head, is what I’d recommend.”
“Let’s do it,” Becky said instantly. Andrew looked shocked.
“Becky, are you sure?”
“I don’t want Pitocin,” she said. She gathered her damp curls off her cheeks. “Because then the contractions will kill me, and I’ll need an epidural anyhow, and I could still wind up needing a C-section after all that, so I might as well get one now. Let’s do it.”
“Why don’t you take some time to talk about it,” said Dr. Mendlow.
“We don’t need any time,” said Becky. “I just want a C-section. Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!”
It wound up taking two hours. Because Becky refused an IV earlier that night, they hooked one up to get her hydrated. The anesthesiologist’s arrival didn’t improve things. He introduced himself as Dr. Bergeron, and he looked like a dissolute French poet, skinny and pale, with long hair and a goatee, the kind of guy who made his own absinthe on weekends and might have a body or two stashed in his basement. There was a splatter of blood on the cuff of his scrubs. “Do you think he’s on heroin?” Becky whispered to Andrew, who took a long look at the doctor before shaking his head.
Then she was in the operating room, with a half dozen new faces introducing themselves—Dr. Marcus, one of the residents . . . Carrie, the nurse-anesthesiologist . . . I’m Janet, and I’ll be assisting Dr. Mendlow. Why did the doctors get last names and the nurses just first ones? Becky wondered. One of the nurses helped her to sit up and drape herself over Carrie’s shoulders while the goth-looking anesthesiologist swabbed her back with something icy. “You’ll feel a little pinch, then some burning,” he said. She could smell rubbing alcohol, and the room suddenly seemed too bright, too cold, and her entire body was shivering.
“I’ve never had surgery before,” she tried to tell Carrie. “Not even a broken bone!” Carrie eased her back down onto the table.
“Hi, Becky.” Finally, Andrew was there, gowned and be-hatted, with a surgical mask on inside out. It made Becky laugh as they lifted a sheet at her waist level. He must be so nervous, she thought, to get that wrong.
“Hey, hon,” said Dr. Mendlow. Becky couldn’t see his face, but his eyes were warm and reassuring over his mask.
“You okay?” Andrew whispered, and she nodded, feeling tears sliding down her cheeks and pooling in her ears.
“Just a little scared,” she whispered. “Hey, if I can feel them cutting, you’ll make them stop, right?”
“Time of incision, 10:48.”
Incision? “They started already?” Becky asked.
Andrew nodded. She could see the action reflected in his glasses. There was a lot of red. She closed her eyes. “Is the baby out yet?”
Laughter. “Not yet,” said Dr. Mendlow. “You’re going to feel a lot of pressure.”
She squeezed her eyes shut. Baby, she thought, hang in there, baby. “Suction,” called Dr. Mendlow. “Ooh, she’s wedged in there tight.”
And then she heard someone say, “Oh, there she is!” and there was a scream—not a little, puny baby scream, either, but a gusting, furious What are you DOING to me? kind of scream.
“Look up,” said Dr. Mendlow. “There’s your baby!”
And there she was, her skin the pink of the inside of a seashell, in a coat of blood and white vernix, eyes squinched shut, head perfectly bald, tongue vibrating as she wailed.
“What’s her name, Mom?” one the nurses asked.
Mom, Becky thought wonderingly. “Ava,” she said. “Ava Rae.”
“Dad, you want to come over here?”
Andrew slipped away from her side. She watched as he went over to the scales and to the table where they wiped Ava’s flailing arms and legs, weighed her, wrapped her in a blanket, and pulled a striped cap over her head. “She’s perfect, Becky,” he said, and he was crying, too. “She’s perfect.”
The next few hours were a blur. Becky remembered Dr. Mendlow asking Andrew if he wanted to look at her uterus and ovaries—“See, right here, very healthy!”—and thinking that he sounded like a used-car salesman trying to talk a customer into making a purchase. She remembered Andrew telling her that their mothers were outside and that a nurse had wheeled Ava by to show them. She remembered being pushed into Recovery, which was nothing more than a curtained-off section of the labor and delivery floor. She remembered lying on the too-narrow gurney, shivering from her head to her feet. Every so often she’d run her hands over her belly, reaching for the hard rise of her stomach, feeling instead something that felt like a warm, deflated inner tube. And her toes . . . she could see them for the first time in weeks. “Hi, guys!” she said and tried to wiggle them. It didn’t work. Becky wondered whether that was something to worry about.
Another nurse bustled into her curtained cubicle, bearing a bundle wrapped in a blue-and-pink-striped blanket. “Bab
y’s here!” she announced. And there was Ava, with a perfectly round pink face and one of her ears sticking out at a funny angle from underneath her cap.
“Hi,” Becky said, running one finger along her cheek. “Hi, baby!”
They let her hold the baby for a minute. Becky pressed her against her chest. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said. She offered the baby her breast, but Ava wasn’t interested . . . she just blinked and looked around, looking somewhere between thoughtful and disgruntled, like someone who’s fallen asleep reading a really great book and is still trying to figure out which world they’re in, the real one or the one they imagined while they read. “Sweetheart,” Becky whispered, before the nurse whisked the baby away.
Andrew sat down on a wheeled stool and scooted himself up by Becky’s head. “You are amazing,” he said and kissed her forehead.
“I know!” Becky said. “But I can’t stop shivering!”
“It’s the anesthesia. It’ll stop. Do you want me to get you a blanket?”
“No. No. Stay with me.” Becky closed her eyes, imagining that somewhere not too far away she could hear Mimi elbowing her way past Becky’s mother and screaming. Give her to me! Let me hold her! She’s my grandbaby! Mine! MINE! She sighed, thinking that her father would have put a stop to Mimi’s nonsense, if he’d been around. He would have been so happy . . .
She wiped her eyes. “You okay?” Andrew asked.
Becky nodded. “You should stay with the baby,” she said.
“Are you sure? Our moms are both out there and Sarah’s sleeping in the waiting room.”
“Then you should definitely go,” said Becky, unable to shake the image of Mimi snatching up the little blanket-wrapped bundle and making a break for it.
Andrew kissed her again and left the cubicle, and Becky was alone, without even a machine’s beep to keep her company. “I’m a mother,” she whispered. Somehow it didn’t feel quite real. She waited for the feeling she’d imagined, that rush of pure bliss and unmitigated, unconditional love for everyone in all the world to wash over her. It didn’t seem to have kicked in yet. Why had Ava screamed so much when they’d pulled her out? Why hadn’t she been interested in nursing? Why did she only weigh eight pounds four ounces when the doctors thought she’d be closer to ten pounds? Was there something wrong with Ava? Something they weren’t telling her?
A nurse came in wheeling a clear bag attached to a pole. “Your morphine pump!” she announced.
“Woo hoo!” said Becky. Not that anything hurt yet, but she wasn’t interested in exploring the possibility that at some point after the surgery, something would. The nurse handed Becky a button and explained that she could press it once every ten minutes for an extra dose. “Do you have a stopwatch?” Becky asked. The nurse laughed, gave her some ice chips, and pulled her curtain shut.
“I’m a mother,” she whispered again. She waited to feel changed, transformed, turned inside-out, and rendered completely different. So far she didn’t. She conjured up a picture of her mean Aunt Joan, who’d showed up at her tenth birthday party and pulled her aside before the cake and presents to hiss that she didn’t need such a big slice of cake and wouldn’t she like an apple instead, and waited for the magic of maternity to wash her mental slate clean. Nope. Nothing doing. She found that she still hated Aunt Joan . . . which meant that motherhood would leave her unchanged. She’d be herself, basically, only with less sleep and a new scar. Oh, dear. Becky hit the morphine button hopefully, figuring that if she couldn’t have emotional tranquillity, she could at least have narcotics.
As if the sigh had summoned her, the nurse reappeared.
“Your room should be ready soon,” she said. “Do you want a little more morphine? Dr. Mendlow left orders saying you could have more.”
“Sure,” she said, figuring, why not? It couldn’t hurt. She hit her button again as the nurse injected something into her IV bag. She wasn’t shivering anymore. She felt pleasantly warm all over, like she was lying on a beach. And she could finally wiggle her toes! “Check me out,” she told the nurse and pointed toward her toes. “I’m a mother!”
“Yes, you are,” the nurse said, patting her shoulder. Becky closed her eyes, and when she opened them again, she was floating through the halls, giggling, and Andrew was hovering above her, looking concerned.
“How much morphine did they give you?” he asked.
“Press my button, press my button!” Becky said.
Instead of pressing her button, he looked over her head at the nurse. “How much morphine has she had?”
Becky started to laugh even harder, even though she could feel a vague but disturbing pulling sensation at the base of her belly. Where they’d taken the baby. “Hey, I had a baby!”
“That’s right,” said Andrew, with a big, worried-looking smile.
“Ava,” Becky told the nurse, as they wheeled her into her room and eased her, still giggling, onto the bed. “Her name is Ava. Isn’t that a beautiful name?”
“Here she is!” said the nurse, as she came through the door pushing a wheeled table with a plastic rectangle on top. And inside of the rectangle, wrapped in fresh blankets, in a little striped blue-and-pink cap and an electronic bracelet around one tiny ankle, was Ava. She wasn’t screaming anymore but blinking and peering around.
Becky held out her arm, still dangling with the IV tube. “Baby,” she instructed. Andrew scooped the baby up from her little nest and handed her to Becky. “Baby,” Becky whispered to Ava.
“Baby,” Andrew whispered to his wife.
“Press my button,” Becky whispered back.
“I think you’ve had enough morphine.”
“I’m trying to stay on top of the pain,” Becky explained. “Press it, press it, press it!”
“Okay, already,” he said, as Edith walked into the room, eyes brimming.
“Oh . . . oh, Becky!” Edith said, bursting into tears as she took in the sight of Becky with the baby in her arms. “Oh, Becky . . . she’s so beautiful . . . I just wish your father . . .”
“I know,” Becky said, feeling her own eyes well up. “I miss him, too.”
Edith blew her nose as Ava opened her mouth and started to cry. Andrew and Becky looked at each other.
“Oh, shit,” Becky said. “Take the baby, take the baby!”
“You’ve got her,” he said, in a manner that she supposed was meant to be encouraging.
“I’m high!” Becky protested. “I can’t have the baby! You take her! Oh, God, she’s crying. Call a nurse!”
“It’s okay,” he said, laughing a little. “It’s okay.” He tucked the baby back against her chest. “Shhh, shhh,” he said. Ava stopped crying and looked up at them, her eyes no color and every color at once.
“Hello, gorgeous,” Becky whispered. Ava batted her wispy eyelashes and yawned. Becky stared at her until, finally, they both fell asleep.
“Hahyahhhh.”
Becky cracked one eyelid open. The hospital room was a blur—the morphine, she supposed—and was silent except for Andrew’s snoring and that horrible noise of her mother-in-law.
“Hahyahhhh.”
There was her mother-in-law, Mimi Breslow Levy Rabinowitz Anderson Klein, flanked by two of her friends, teeny-tiny women in cashmere sweater sets and low-rise jeans exposing their sixtysomething hip bones. Mutton dressed as lamb, Becky thought, eyeing the wrinkled cup of her mother-in-law’s navel. The three of them were lined up over Ava’s bassinet. Mimi’s head was dangling inches from the baby’s, so close that their noses were practically touching.
“Hah, Anna Banana,” Mimi said, inching her face forward.
Oh, Becky thought. Oh, no. Anna had been Mimi’s mother’s name. Becky knew that Andrew had told his mother that they were planning on naming their baby after her. But Andrew certainly must have told his mother that they’d named the baby Ava, not Anna. And even if he hadn’t, Ava’s name was written plain as day on the pink three-by-five note card taped to her bassinet.
; “Sweet little Anna,” Mimi crooned to her friends. “And just look what I bought her!” She reached into her purse with her free hand and pulled out a miniature pink tank top with the word hottie spelled out in sequins on the front. “Isn’t it adorable?” she asked, as her friends cooed their approval. Becky wondered if the outfit came with a matching G-string. And the purchase-separately pimp. “Let’s see how it looks!” one of Mimi’s friends said.
Mimi lifted the baby out of her bassinet, appearing not to notice as her head flopped forward, and began pulling on the tank top. “Hey,” Becky tried to say, but her throat was so dry that the words came out as a whisper. She stared at Andrew, willing him to wake up and put a stop to this, as Mimi inched her hand underneath the bassinet and stealthily removed one of the bottles of formula the night nurse had left there. Becky waited until Mimi had almost maneuvered the nipple into her baby’s mouth. Then she pushed herself up until she was upright, gritting her teeth at the pain, not even noticing as the sheet one of the nurses had laid on top of her slipped off her chest.
“What are you doing?” she asked. Mimi jumped at the sound of her daughter-in-law’s raspy voice. The bottle flew out of her hand.
One of Mimi’s lady friends stared at Becky. “Oh, dear, she hasn’t got a stitch on underneath that gown,” she said.
“What are you doing?” Becky asked again, pointing at the bassinet with the hand that didn’t have the IV needle.
“I . . . she . . .”
Andrew rolled over on his cot.
“Excuse me! She was hungry!” Mimi said shrilly. “I was just going to . . .”
“I’m breast-feeding,” Becky said, pointing at the note card that announced to all the world that AVA ROTHSTEIN-RABINOWITZ IS A BREAST-FED GIRL! “If she’s hungry, just give her to me.”
Mimi grabbed the baby under the armpits with less care than she would have shown to a ten-pound sack of flour and handed her over.
“And her name is Ava,” Becky said.
Mimi’s eyebrows drew down, and her freshly lipsticked mouth folded in on itself. She turned toward her son, who was still lying on his cot. “What? WHY? She was supposed to be named after my mother! This was supposed to be my honor!”
Little Earthquakes Page 16