She's Having Her Baby

by Lauren Sams

  ‘OK. It’s just … it’s so hard hearing you say that you didn’t want this when I do. When I did.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. I guess I’m scared too, though. I don’t want to end up like Ellie. I can’t.’

  ‘You won’t.’ Nina said it so definitively that I was inclined to believe her.

  We walked out of the hospital in silence and headed towards King Street. ‘Hey, I owe you an ice-cream,’ I said, thinking back to the day at the clinic.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ I said, thinking better of reliving that day. ‘Just let me buy you one. Give the pregnant lady an excuse to OD on gelato, will you?’

  ‘Alright, you’re on.’

  ‘Sure you’re OK?’

  Nina nodded. ‘Yeah, it’ll just take time. It’s so hard to think that I won’t have the things that I wanted. And, I don’t know, it wasn’t like I was asking for anything too crazy, was I? I didn’t want to win a Grammy or anything – I just wanted a husband and some kids,’ said Nina, breathing out. ‘It’s just hard. Do you know I used to wonder how people got divorced? Not how they actually got divorced, but … how they married someone who was so wrong for them. Not that Matt is wrong for me, but … I guess I just thought that we’d be able to get through stuff like this. Aren’t you meant to get through stuff like this?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Nina stopped and sat down on a bus stop bench. ‘I just need a minute.’

  I nodded. I wondered how Nina would cope when I actually had the baby, if she’d be able to weather that particular storm. Selfishly, I hoped she could. I needed her, I needed her to be strong when I couldn’t, because I knew there would be many, many times like that ahead.

  ‘This is shit,’ I said to her.

  ‘Oh yeah, it’s definitely shit.’ She laughed.

  ‘It’s the shittiest.’

  ‘It is the shittiest shit shit shit I can think of.’

  ‘Oh, it’s shittier than that.’

  ‘Yeah, it is.’

  We stopped talking for a while and just sat. I thought of all the folklore of our friendship, the shorthand language we shared and how impossible it would be to replicate that with anyone else. Who else would know what I meant when I talked about GreyBeard Wizard-Man, and wouldn’t find it offensive, and would understand why I didn’t like him? Who else wouldn’t judge me for kind of liking ‘Blurred Lines’ even though it is really anti-feminist and I’d once written an op-ed about its misogynistic lyrics? Who else would wax my legs at eight months pregnant? Who else but Neen could I tell that I was scared silly about having this baby? Who else had been with me, and I with her, through just about everything life had thrown our way?

  ‘Hey … we can talk about your mum any time you like, you know,’ I ventured.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ Nina said quietly. ‘I don’t really …’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said, ‘we don’t have to if you don’t want to.’

  ‘No, no, it’s not that. I, uh, I just can’t really remember her very well.’

  Something caught in my chest and I tried not to let it get the better of me. ‘Oh,’ I said, not knowing how to end the sentence.

  ‘I mean, I remember some things, but … I’ve spent most of my life without her so it’s hard to know what she was like, you know? Jill remembers even less than me, and Dad doesn’t like talking about her around Leanne, so … I don’t have much to go on.’

  ‘She liked swimming.’

  Nina nodded. ‘Yeah, right. I remember that. She took us every week.’

  ‘Every Saturday.’

  ‘How do you remember that?’ Nina looked at me, her head cocked.

  ‘I just do. She liked the Swans, too,’ I said.

  ‘Yeah, she did. Which was weird, cos nobody else in our family liked football. Not even Dad.’

  ‘She had curly hair. Which you, lucky bitch, did not inherit,’ I said, twirling a ringlet of my own curly hair around my index finger.

  ‘Do you know, I barely even saw her with curls? I don’t remember what she looked like with curly hair – she straightened it all the time. I remember going with her to the hairdressers and they would paint this stuff on her hair, with like, a board underneath to make it lay flat. I still remember the smell. It used to sting my eyes.’

  ‘She told me she was going to take me to get my hair straightened one day, when I was old enough, you know.’

  Nina looked across at me, surprised. I started to cry.

  As always, Nina was the one to comfort me. ‘Hey, it’s OK,’ she said, patting my back like an attentive parent. I looked up.

  ‘Doesn’t this upset you?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Talking about your mum.’

  She smiled. ‘Kind of. But … it’s nice, too. You’re right, I never talk about her. It’s nice to know things about her.’

  I shook my head. ‘I don’t know how you got so strong.’

  Nina scoffed. ‘I’m not strong.’

  ‘Yes, you are!’ I protested, sitting up and staring her down. ‘You turn everything bad into something funny, you never cry, you just get on with things. You forgave me, you’re supporting me and you’re being my friend again. My best friend. How many other people would do that? I don’t even know if I would.’

  Nina rolled her eyes. ‘Yes, you would.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not strong like you.’

  ‘George, you just have to decide to be strong. That’s what I did, when Mum died. I thought, “I can let this give me an excuse to be a dick, or I can get over it now and move on with my life.” So that’s what I did.’

  Nina’s eyes were clear and steady. She was the redheaded Buffy Summers of Marrickville, all business.

  ‘But didn’t you ever get upset? Or angry?’

  ‘Yeah, of course. But I just did it when I was alone. I didn’t want to be that fucked-up kid whose mum died. I think that’s a cop-out. Everyone has shitty stuff, George. Some people get it over with earlier than others.’

  ‘Ugh, you’re so smart,’ I said, feeling more and more like the child I was about to have.

  ‘Yes, I’m aware,’ said Neen drily. ‘Are you alright?’

  I bit my lip. I could tell Nina now or I could keep it bottled up forever. I could face the thing that scared me more than anything ever had, or I could wrap it up, put it in a box and compartmentalise it exactly the way a therapist had once taught me not to do.

  ‘Technically? Yeah. But … I’m very – uh – scared.’ I let it just hang there, and hoped Nina would know what I was talking about, so that we could get to the heart of the problem without me actually having to divulge my fears.

  ‘Because of the class? It’ll be OK. Just take the drugs like you’re meant to,’ said Nina, handing me a crumpled tissue from her bag.

  ‘No, not that. I’m scared that … what if … what if I don’t love the baby?’

  Nina raised her eyebrows. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well,’ I started, explaining it to her the best way I’d found of explaining it to myself, ‘what if my heart knows I didn’t want a baby and decides I can’t love it, even though I might want to?’

  Nina put her hand on mine, and I noticed, for the first time, that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  ‘You don’t know that. I’ve read all these articles about women who have been desperate to have kids and then they have them and they want to kill them! Like, for real, actually kill them. They fantasise about dropping them off balconies and throwing them in front of cars. What if I don’t love my baby enough and I end up hurting her?’

  ‘George. Listen to me,’ said Nina, her tone serious. ‘The very fact that you are worried about this tells me that you already love this baby. And,’ she said, pausing for breath, ‘if you feel like you don’t have enough love to begin with, well, I’ll love it enough for both of us until you do.’

  ‘Really?’

  Nina nodded. ‘Really
.’ She squeezed my hand and I squeezed back. I took a few breaths and was suddenly distracted by hunger for approximately the twenty-seventh time that day. Earlier that morning, I’d interrupted my shower to get a sandwich.

  ‘Come on, we’ve got to keep walking,’ I said. ‘Ice-cream is the only thing keeping me upright at this point.’

  We were at the corner of Missenden and King when I saw him. ‘Oh my god. Neen. Oh my god.’

  ‘What? Are you OK? What happened?’ Nina had stopped and placed her hands on my shoulders. She was staring so intently into my eyes I felt like she might jump in.

  ‘No, no, it’s not … it’s Colin. Colin Bennet. Two n’s, one t. The guy.’

  There he was. Gerard Butler, the world’s prettiest accountant, was across the street from us, sipping a coffee and reading the paper.

  ‘Which one?’ Nina’s eyes swooped to follow my gaze.

  ‘Don’t look!’ I hissed.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s twenty metres away on one of the busiest streets in the city. He can’t hear us. Which one?’

  ‘The unbearably good-looking one drinking coffee outside that store,’ I whispered.

  ‘That one?’ Nina shouted, pointing. Lord, please save me from the woman who hasn’t dated in fifteen years.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘Now can you please shut up?’

  ‘Let’s go say hi.’

  I shook my head. ‘No, ice-cream.’

  Nina rolled her eyes and grabbed my elbow. ‘You’re hopeless. Let’s go. This guy is a total dish. If you don’t want him, maybe I do.’

  Suddenly, we were across the road and making our way to Colin’s table.

  ‘Hello!’ said Nina, bright as Crayola.

  Colin looked up and his mouth opened a little in surprise. It was devastatingly cute, mainly because I sensed Colin had no idea exactly how cute it was.

  ‘Georgie?’

  ‘Hi, Colin.’ I smiled but it was hard to hide my embarrassment. I couldn’t believe I’d run off on this guy – this jaw-to-the-floor good-looking guy with a voice that could drop trousers who’d not only not judged me for having a mid-pregnancy glass of shiraz but had actually joined me for one. It took me a second to remember that he’d run off on me.

  ‘How are you? I’ve been trying to contact you, but …’ Colin tossed his hands up, ‘I didn’t think you wanted to see me again.’

  ‘You’ve been trying to contact me?’

  Colin nodded. ‘I did the best I could. I couldn’t remember your last name, but I did find a Georgie who works at Jolie on Twitter.’

  ‘You tried to twitter me?’

  ‘Tweet. I tweeted you.’

  ‘Oh, right.’

  Nina cleared her throat pointedly.

  ‘Oh, Colin, this is Nina. Nina, Colin. Colin, Nina.’ They exchanged smiles before Nina made a lazy excuse about needing to check out the bookstore next door.

  ‘When you didn’t tweet back, I figured you didn’t want to see me again,’ he said.

  I shook my head. ‘No, no, it’s just that … I haven’t been on Twitter since – well, since that day I met you, actually. When I fucked it all up, remember? I figured I’d done enough damage. And I didn’t really want to see all the awful things people were saying about me.’ Word vomit. It was tumbling out and I couldn’t stop it.

  ‘Oh.’ Colin smiled. I could practically feel myself wilt. Remember what he did to you, George! Get a grip. ‘I’m glad that’s the reason.’

  ‘Right. Because it could also have been because you vanished that night, like fucking Batman.’

  He squirmed. Good, he’s squirming. ‘I, uh, I had an emergency. I had to go to the bathroom and by the time I got back, you were gone.’

  ‘Was the emergency that you actually are Batman? Was there trouble with The Penguin?’

  Colin laughed. ‘No, no. I’m diabetic. I’d had two glasses of wine and I shouldn’t have. I only realised it once I got to the bar and started feeling a bit woozy, and then I went to the bathroom to check my blood sugar and then I had to have some insulin and … by the time I got back to the table, you’d left. I didn’t know your number. I’m sorry.’

  I paused. ‘Is this for real?’

  He nodded, pulling a small plastic rectangle from his pocket. It looked like an electronic car key. ‘It’s my glucose meter,’ he said. ‘It’s how I check my blood sugar.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said.

  ‘I’m sorry about that night.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  ‘You look lovely.’ I didn’t, it was a huge lie, but it was so nice to hear. In fact, I looked like I had a beach ball stuffed down my top and bowling balls in my bra. My face had become so puffy that GreyBeard had proudly announced, ‘Now everything is round!’, waving up and down my body like I was the showroom model for gestation. It was all I could do not to throw my weak flat white in his face.

  ‘Oh, thanks,’ I said, rolling my eyes. ‘I don’t really, but thanks.’

  ‘You do, actually.’

  ‘Oh.’ I let the compliment settle.

  ‘So, uh … is that … is Nina the one you were telling me about?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  We continued with the attempt at small talk for a few minutes before I decided to just go for it. Decide to be strong, Nina had said.

  ‘Do you want to go out? On a date?’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘Yes. Are you?’

  Colin nodded. ‘Yes.’

  I smiled, flushed with relief and excitement. A date. With a man. At eight months pregnant. It wasn’t exactly the fairytale, but I could live with that.

  28

  Week 37

  After the debacle that was the calm-birth class (which Nina and I had taken to calling the Calm-Birth Farce), I made quick arrangements to give birth at the hospital’s regular maternity ward. As I was filling in my forms, I asked the nurse how long I could wait before asking for an epidural.

  ‘Honey,’ she said, with a broad Australian accent, ‘if it was me, I’d be ordering one like it was a pizza the minute I felt a contraction. Don’t you worry – you ask for one, you’ll get one straight away.’ She rolled her eyes and shook her head. ‘We’re not like those dream-catchers across the hall.’

  Thank god. These are my people.

  When I told Ellie, she was predictably unsupportive.

  ‘It won’t be as hard as you think it’s going to be,’ she said.

  ‘I think it will be much, much harder than I think it’s going to be, El.’

  ‘Your body was designed to do this, George. You’re a woman.’

  I breathed in, then out, like My Body Knows How had taught me, and tried not to let her get to me. Between Jana and good old Button-Up at the grocery store earlier today, I’d had quite enough of people – women – telling me how I should act and what I should feel during my pregnancy. Ellie had been harassing me for weeks to let her throw me a baby shower, a concept I’d found bamboozling and antiquated, until I’d realised there’d be food. By then, it was too late.

  ‘Agreed. But I refuse to buy into this idea that I’ll be less of a woman if I don’t do this “naturally”.’

  Ellie grimaced. ‘All I’m saying is, give it a go. You might find that you can do it yourself. And won’t you be prouder if you do?’

  ‘I don’t think so, no. This is not a race where I need to finish first. It’s enough that I show up and get across the line.’

  Ellie made an annoyed humph but I tried to let it go. I was going to get the necessary drugs with which to push this baby out. I had a date (one that I felt so confident about – naively so, perhaps – that I’d bought condoms on my way home. Look, you never know). I had plans.

  But I couldn’t deny that our living situation was as taut as my belly skin. Now that I was at home all day, writing the odd freelance story but mainly eating rice crackers (and sneaking as many as I could to Lucas) and reading books I’d borrowed from the library I’d recently rediscovered (quitting
your job had all sorts of perks like that), Ellie and I had a lot more opportunities to argue. This week alone we’d clashed over the federal budget (Ellie had been incensed that there weren’t more provisions for stay-at-home mums, I argued that perhaps stay-at-home mums might be able to find a job, an idea that was unsurprisingly unpopular in the Hughes household), a muffin I’d brought home that Lucas wanted a bite of (‘He’s had enough gluten this week, Georgie!’) and now, my choice to deliver my baby the way I wanted to.

  I had found a place of my own but it wouldn’t be ready for another week. I wondered if our friendship would survive another seven days.

  ‘OK, change of subject,’ I said. ‘Guess who’s going on a date tonight?’

  Ellie looked up from the plate she was washing. ‘Who?’

  I pointed at myself, smiling.

  ‘You’re going on a date?’ she asked, flatly.

  ‘Yep!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? What do you mean, why? Because someone asked me … actually, no, that’s not true, I asked him.’

  Ellie raised her eyebrows and went back to the plate. She nodded briefly but made no further attempt at conversation.

  ‘What?’ I asked.

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Do you disapprove of this?’ I asked witheringly.

  Ellie put the plate down and sighed. ‘Yes. Is that what you’d like me to say, George? Do you want me to be the bad guy again? The one who doesn’t want you to have any fun?’

  ‘No … that’s not how I feel,’ I said, with exactly the tone of someone who did feel that way.

  Ellie laughed. Meanly. ‘I’m the only one who tells it to you like it is. So here it is: you’re having a baby. It’s not the time to date. It’s not the time to rent some shitty, expensive studio apartment in Redfern. It’s not the time to walk out on your job or leave the father of your baby. I mean, fudge, George –’ Ellie never swore anymore ‘– you can’t even drive. What are you going to do if the baby needs to go to hospital?’ She pulled off her plastic gloves and ran her hands through her hair. ‘And why is any of this news to you, George? Why am I the only one telling you this? Everyone else is like, “Oh, it’s ok, you’ll be fine, parenting is so easy, you’ll get the hang of it.”’ She said it in a singsong voice that made me prickle with anger. I sat at the breakfast bar and stared at her, squirming with rage. How dare she talk to me like that? I was doing the best I could. Wasn’t I?