“Hey, can I get some kettle corn? I’ve never had it,” I asked.
“It’s nasty.” He didn’t even slow down.
I planted my feet. “What’s nasty about it?”
He stopped and came back to me. “Grace, can we do this and go?”
“Why are you being so mean?”
He sighed and went over to the concession. I stood a few feet away and listened to his protracted conversation with the teenage boy running the stand. It seemed that they shared a high-school English teacher. Ty could not believe Mrs. Zawicki was still teaching, she was about ninety when he had her. He asked the boy if she still pulled people’s hair if they looked at other people’s test papers. She did.
“You cheated on your English tests?” I asked as he handed me the bag of corn.
“Accidentally. You can’t help if you’re looking around the room and you see something.”
He marched on and I followed slowly, tasting the corn. It was weirdly sweet. I nibbled a couple of pieces before discreetly dropping the bag in a trash can along the walkway.
A staircase built into the hillside made our winding ascent and descent marvelously easy, even for an overly pregnant woman in a sundress and blue Keds.
At the top of the stairs I heard the water. Our water. We came down on the opposite side from where we had trespassed, but there it was, now thickly surrounded with vegetation, roaring from recent rains, and sparkling in the June sunlight.
Our rock, the rock I’d stood on, was on the other side. Over here I couldn’t reach the fall to touch it, but I got close enough to feel the cool spray. I opened my hands to it and closed my eyes.
Bliss—the heat of the sun on my face, the mist, the breeze. I swayed a little and felt Ty take hold of my elbow.
“I’m all right,” I said.
He squeezed my arm gently. “I know.”
Something skimmed my face and I opened my eyes. A blue dragonfly—lacy, lazy, iridescent—hovered inches away. I laughed, and a warm river rushed down my bare legs. My shoes were soaked.
“Hey,” I said to Ty, “I think my water just broke.”
I have never seen his brow so furrowed.
“We have time! I haven’t even had a contraction since before we left your mom and dad’s.”
Then I had a contraction. Considerably stronger than the ones I’d been having since last night. I grabbed Ty’s arm, surprised and a little freaked out. “Oh! Ohhhhh.”
He held on to me. When the contraction passed, he said, “Okay, let’s go.”
“Not yet.”
“Grace.”
“We have plenty of time. I want to stay here awhile. Is there a blanket in the car?”
“No!”
He walked me back through the park. Pretty much yelling at me the whole way, though the yelling was more in the content than in the actual volume of his voice. He couldn’t believe he let me talk him into this, he couldn’t believe I’d been having contractions and didn’t tell him, was I expecting him to deliver this baby in the woods and gnaw through the umbilical cord like a wild animal, how could I be this irresponsible, and so on.
“You’d use your pocketknife, of course. Gnawing would be nasty and unnecessary.”
He didn’t smile even a little.
“I don’t think this is it. I’ve been having contractions since we went to bed last night, but they’re still really far apart.”
“How far?”
“A half hour? Let’s just start driving, I’ll probably only have two or three more before we’re back home.”
He shook his head but did not slow down. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Oh wait, maybe I can.”
We had to stop in the parking lot for another contraction. It went on a long time, such a strong squeeze that I squatted and grabbed the bumper of a nearby car to try to take some of the pressure off my lower back. “Whoa. Wow. Ouch!”
“Shit!” Ty said. “That was less than five minutes since the last one! I’m taking you to the hospital in Stroudsburg.”
We got to the car and he buckled me in. He sprayed gravel pulling out of the parking lot. “Ty,” I said through gritted teeth. The squeeze was coming on again. “Take me to the house first, I have to use the bathroom.”
“Hell no!”
“Ty, I have to go!”
I had two more heavy-duty contractions before we got there. It was quiet when we went inside. Jean and Nathan must have gone back to work. Ty helped me climb the stairs.
Turned out I didn’t need to poop, it just felt like it. I stayed there on the toilet; it felt better than standing.
The bathroom window was open and the lace curtain moved gently, stirred by warm, fresh country air. I breathed deeply, knowing somehow that it would strengthen me for the next round of intense pressure.
“Are you okay?” Ty asked from the hall.
“I think so.”
He peeked in. “Can we go now?”
“No. Ohhhhh ohhh OH!” I could not suppress the escalating moan.
Ty came in and knelt in front of me. I leaned on him through the contraction. When it finally let up, he pushed my hair out of my face and looked me urgently in the eyes. “Grace, we need to get to the hospital.”
I shook my head.
He stood and pulled me off the toilet. Tried to pull up my undies.
I shoved his hands away. “No. I want to have the baby here.”
“Grace!” I thought the top of his head was going to blow.
“It will be okay, I know it will.”
“No!”
“Yes! It’s not that complicated. I’ve been reading about home birth. We can do it. It’s a natural process.”
“Oh, fuck,” he moaned. “Fuck. You are going to kill me.”
“Call your mom. Ask her to call her friend.” Another squeeze was starting. I squatted and held on to the edge of the bathtub.
“What friend?”
“The midwife.”
He went out to the hall. I heard him talking. He came back in, not looking so good, and sat on the edge of the tub. “She didn’t pick up. I had to leave a message on her cell. My dad said she left the store a while ago, but he’s gonna try to call Clarie, too.”
“Okay, thank you.”
“Shit, Grace! Shit! Why didn’t I just keep driving?”
“Everything will be fine. Run me a bath.”
While Ty was filling the tub, I got on my hands and knees and rocked. Anything, to try to shift the unbelievable pressure in my lower back. He helped me get naked and get in the bath, which felt amazing. Everything felt more manageable. What had been increasingly scary pain seemed to become simply a force, in the warm water.
Ty pulled off his T-shirt and knelt beside the tub. A nearly overwhelming squeeze made me grab his hands.
“Breathe, baby.” He looked worried.
When the force finally passed, I kissed his hand. “It will be okay. I love you.”
“I love you.” He leaned in and kissed me, long and warm.
The next contraction made me yell. For once, I was louder than Ty! This huge, relentless thing, this energy taking over my body, made these big noises come out of me.
He urged me again to do the breathing. He puffed away, demonstrating. I tried. But instead I made this loud HO-HO-HO sound. It seemed to help.
I got on my hands and knees in the water and HO-HO-HO-ed through what seemed like endless cycles of waxing and waning intensity. The HO-HO-HO-ing also seemed to help Ty. The stark terror on his face gradually receded and he now looked guiltily, painfully amused.
“Go-HO ahead and laugh! I know-HO I sound funny!”
He completely lost it.
“HO! HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!”
He lay on the bathroom floor, eyes streaming. Seeing him laugh has always been contagious for me. I couldn’t believe I was laughing in the middle of these incredibly intense sensations.
“I’m not laughing at you,” he said, whooping it up.
“I know-HO! Oh! HO!
HO! Oh. OH!” Something major was happening. “I need to—”
He reappeared on his knees at the side of the tub. “What?”
“PUSH!”
“Oh fuck! Are you sure it’s time?”
“I HAVE TO!”
I braced my feet on either side of the faucet and Ty felt inside me. His eyes got wide. “Grace, I’m touching the top of his head!”
“Oh! Ho-HOOOOO!” I pushed, mightily. I reached down and felt myself opening. The need to push subsided and I collapsed on my elbows. I tried to breathe and regroup.
Ty leaned in for a look. “Grace, I can see him,” he said, in a shaky, awestruck voice. “He has dark hair.”
“Of course he does,” I moaned.
I could feel the baby moving through me now, coming out of me, feel the insane, burning stretch. “Ty, I’m tearing!”
He was rubbing me, tugging, helping the crowning head squeeze through the tight band of flesh. “Grace, you’re not. You’re not. You’re doing great.”
“I can feel it!”
“You’re not tearing, I swear.”
There was nothing to do but hope it would end soon. I was certain I was going to be disfigured for life.
Ty cradled the baby’s head as it came out. “Grace! Look at his face!”
Yeah, yeah, plenty of time for that later. I needed my vagina back. Now. I pushed.
“Hold on, stop! The cord—”
“What?”
Ty pulled the umbilical cord over the baby’s head and out of the way, and then I didn’t have to push anymore, he rotated on his own and rushed out of me.
He slipped through Ty’s hands, and I will never forget him floating there for a moment, arms and legs spread-eagled, like a wrinkly, naked little astronaut still attached to the mother ship.
Jake’s water world.
Ty scooped the baby up and he blinked, taking us in. Totally unimpressed.
“Jacob!” I gasped. “You’re here!”
Ty was crying. He laid this strange, incredibly solid little person on my belly and I held him with both hands. His skin was so hot! And purplish white. The umbilical cord was pulsing. We felt it with our fingertips and looked at each other like what a weird dream.
Ty laid a towel over the baby and I tucked it around him and held him to my breast. He was so calm! He lay there blinking and we watched, fascinated, as he gradually noticed the nipple under his cheek. He rubbed his mouth over it thoughtfully, intrigued. He was clearly trying to figure out the situation, as if there was a vague memory lurking on the edge of his brain. Then the light suddenly came on—we saw it happen. He chomped down on me and noisily, ferociously sucked. The intense tugging made me gasp.
Ty laughed. “All right, that’s my boy.”
We watched him nurse and uncovered him and softly touched him and looked at all of his little moving parts.
“Ty?” Jean’s voice, coming up the stairs.
“In the bathroom!”
She came to the doorway and saw me and Jake in the bath and Ty beside us, and she burst into tears and laughter. She came in and knelt and hugged Ty and kissed me and touched the baby’s head. “Oh!” she said. “Look what you did! Look!” She crawled to the door. “Clarie, they’re up here!”
Clarie, a smiling, quiet woman in khaki shorts and sandals, came in and opened up a bag of midwife things and totally took over. She clamped the umbilical cord and gave Ty a pair of scissors to cut it; then she wrapped Jake in a clean towel and Ty held him while she examined me.
“You didn’t even tear,” she said. “That’s great!”
“Next time, you’ll believe me,” Ty said.
“Could we not talk about next time, just yet?”
Clarie massaged my belly. More contractions, and pretty soon the placenta popped right out. She held it up and examined it. It looked like a big, bloody, blobby brain. Very sci-fi.
“Damn,” Ty said. “That makes me think of—what was that movie, where the little dude busted out of the guy’s stomach?”
“Alien,” I said. Great minds.
Jean helped me clean up and get into one of Nathan’s big, soft old T-shirts and into the bed in Ty’s room. She had made it up with fresh, soft sheets and layered it with clean towels. It was heaven to lie down. I was sore, exhausted, emptied out.
“Hello?” Nathan, downstairs.
Ty and Jean took the baby down to him for a few minutes. Then my husband brought my son back to me and laid him in the crook of my arm, and we slept.
supercollider
While I was asleep Ty called Julia, Dan, Beck, and Bogue. He called Peg, in California, and left a message for Ed, who might still be in Croatia. He called Dave.
The baby dozed beside us while we had dinner in bed. Huge steaks with baked potatoes. Grilled veggies. Chocolate cake. I ate all my steak and large portions of everything else. On top of all that, since my milk hadn’t come in yet and there was no chance of intoxicating the baby, I drank a beer.
It was a bit much after the day’s exertion; I spent the hour after dinner burping. A lot. Fortunately, the guy I married thinks that kind of thing is funny, especially coming out of a girl. Turns out it was a major form of entertainment and competition when he was a kid. The baby slept on, unperturbed.
Jean came and took away our dinner trays and Ty settled in next to me. He handed me a small, familiar box. “Think you might wear these now?”
I lifted the lid. The pink diamond earrings. “I remember these!”
“When you wouldn’t take them I left them here with my mom for safekeeping. Remember, our wedding night I told you I had something for you?”
“I’d rather have them now.”
He helped me put them on. “You did so good, Gracie. I think I was more scared than you were.”
“Yeah, I think so, too.”
“Usually it’s the other way around.”
“I know.”
“What happened?”
“I stopped thinking. I think.”
“It was awesome. And funny!”
“Hilarious! Certainly the most I’ve ever laughed while pushing a football-sized person out of my vagina.”
He looked a little concerned, but patted my hip. “Hey, don’t worry about that, you know they say that everything will tighten back up.”
“I know you hope so.”
“Fun as it was, next time, for my mental health, we will have some sort of professional there with us.”
“Again, can we talk about next time a little later?”
We uncovered our sleeping child. How to describe the newborn wonder of him?
He had thick, fine, angel-soft auburn hair that stood straight up from his head in the most touchingly comical way. We cupped his warm little tummy with the palms of our hands, encircled his arms with our fingers, kissed his tiny toes. We watched him breathe. He had a rosebud mouth that screwed up in the funniest way in his sleep. He was miniature, living perfection.
Ty looked at me. “Jacob?”
“Jacob Graham Wilkie.”
“Jake.” He smiled. “Yeah.”
How strange, at first, waking to a fussing baby every couple of hours. He was in the bed between us, and the first few times we both sat up and Ty helped me figure out the best way to hold him. I wondered how long it would be until my milk came in and Jake would get fed. Soon, probably, given his ferociously determined sucking.
At the 4:29 wake-up I said to Ty, who had groaned but not yet mobilized, “I’m going to try this lying down.” I turned on my side and pulled Jake close and gave him the bed-side boob. It worked great, except that my nipples were starting to feel just a wee bit abused.
I fell back asleep and woke in daylight to find Beck leaning over me, studying my sleeping baby. Actually watching him like a hawk.
“Hey,” Beck said quietly, when she saw that I was awake. “Did it hurt?”
“Um, yes. But I don’t know if I’d call it pain, exactly.”
She sat beside me on the edge of the bed
. “What then?”
“It was more like . . . an undertow. Did you ever get caught in one, in the ocean?”
“Yeah, down the shore a couple years ago.”
“You can’t fight it, you know? It’s too big.”
“Mom said you named him Jake.”
“Jacob Graham Wilkie.”
“Jacob.” She reached across me and cupped his head gently. “Sweet little Jakey. No one is ever going to fuck with you while I’m around.”
Nathan and Jean went out and bought diapers, clothes, a stroller, and a car seat for Jake, and that morning we drove back to the city, straight to our pediatrician’s office. She looked him over thoroughly and confirmed what we already knew: Our son was in perfect newborn health.
When we got home, I called and made an appointment with my doctor for the next day. Then, for the fifth time since dawn, I nursed my son. He fell asleep, and Ty took him from me carefully and put him in his crib in the bedroom. I waddled to the bathroom and had a long, warm soak. Sitting on my sore bum in the car for two hours had been brutal.
After the bath I pulled on one of my now-baggy sundresses and reclined on the couch with bags of frozen peas on my breasts.
In the books and magazines, they warn you that nursing a baby is going to take a little getting used to. They say it will make you sore for a couple of weeks. They don’t tell you that you will feel like someone has been industriously scrubbing your nipples with heavy-grade sand-paper and then spritzing them with salty lemon juice.
And that you will wish for morphine. Or heroin. Or coma.
Ty sat down in the armchair and picked up his guitar and contentedly strummed a little ditty. His nipples were not aflame.
“Ty.”
He stopped playing.
“Would you go down to the drugstore and get me some nipple cream?”
He made a mildly cringey face. “Couldn’t I buy you some tampons, instead?”
I started to cry.
He put the guitar down and stood up. “Grace! I’m going! What brand do you want?”
“How the hell do I know?” I bawled. “Buy everything!”
While he was out I called my mom and filled her in on all the minutiae and gruesome details that Ty had left out. She was fascinated and amazed that we had birthed him at home, by ourselves, and no one was deformed by the experience. We agreed that tomorrow morning she would come and stay with us a few days.
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