“You’re at four centimeters,” the nurse said. “Is this your first?”
“Yes,” Lily managed.
“Scared?” asked the round-cheeked one.
She nodded. “Very.”
The nurse reached down and patted her free hand. “Well, it’ll be over and you won’t remember a thing and you’ll have a nice healthy baby.”
She began to cry. There was no sob, no convulsion of crying, but the tears streamed down her cheeks, and the nurses said soothing little things, “Hang in there” and “You can do it,” as if she were an athlete in the middle of a competition. They left her for a few moments, and then Sheri came back. Sheri saw that Lily was crying, and she stood close, gingerly wiping the tears from her cheeks with a napkin. Lily took hold of her hand.
Another contraction started, a little hard wave, but then subsided. She braced herself, took her hand away from the other woman, waiting.
Dr. Brauner strolled in. “Hello.”
Sheri stepped back.
“Vee’ll be just a minute here,” he said to her. “Are you zuh coach?”
“She didn’t do Lamaze, Doc,” Sheri said. “I’m with her until her husband gets here.”
“If you vill excuse us,” he said.
Sheri left, and he turned toward Lily, smiling. “You are going to do fine.” He took a rubber glove from a dispenser of them on the small table, snapped it onto his hand, lifted the gown with his other hand, and examined her. “A little vay to go.” He snapped the glove off, moved to a small cylindrical can, stepped on a pedal that opened it, and dropped the glove in.
Another contraction began. It seemed to move across her whole lower body, coming from somewhere near the end of her spine. Dr. Brauner stepped around to face her, and watched it happen. She gripped the sides of the bed, and a cry came out of her. Dr. Brauner said, “Vee are going to gif you a little zumzing for zuh pain. But you haf to go a little longer.”
Lily couldn’t speak. There was just the confusion of the room, the doctor and nurse moving in it, the insistent beeping, and the pain of the contraction, which went on, and on, and wouldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop, wouldn’t stop.
And now, very slowly, it started easing off. The relief made her begin crying again. The doctor was gone, and Sheri had come back into the room. Lily looked at her and heard herself ask where Tyler was.
“They’re on their way, honey.”
In another room, a woman screamed once, a long shriek that trailed off into sobbing.
“Jesus Christ,” Sheri said. “What a place. This’d be the place to encourage people to practice birth control. They should bring high school field trips here.”
“Oh, for God’s sake, Sheri, please shut up.”
The sobbing in the other room had given way to loud gasping and panting. There was quick movement in the hallway. Lily saw the nurses go by the door, pulling a gurney with someone on it, another woman, her face lifted from the pillow and her mouth open on another scream.
Lily lay very still. The pillows behind her felt like stones pressing against her back, and abruptly, as this discomfort made itself known to her, she realized that she had a gigantic thirst. She looked over at Sheri, and attempted to speak. Sheri leaned in. “Tell me, honey.”
“Can I have some water?”
Sheri looked around the room, then stepped out, and Lily was alone. There was just the beeping now, and her own breathing, which was thick with the pain, and with the dryness of her mouth. She did not know how much time passed. She trembled and was cold, and in the next moment felt as if the room was too hot.
Presently, Sheri came back. She had a small terry-cloth rag, which she ran water into, and then put against Lily’s lips. Lily sucked at it, she got almost nothing, and it tasted like the rag.
“That’s what they told me to do,” Sheri said, almost crying. “I’m sorry.”
Lily lay her head back, and closed her eyes.
The next contraction was less terrible, and shorter in duration. It came sometime after she had felt herself drift toward sleep, almost half an hour after the doctor had left them the last time. Sheri reported this, standing by the bed and continually checking her watch. The minutes went by. After another long wait, Dr. Brauner returned. He had a pair of half glasses on. “How are vee progressing?” he said. He bowed at Sheri and gave her a look over the top of the glasses. She stepped out of the room, and then he examined Lily again.
“It ought to be zoon.” He dropped the rubber glove into the cylindrical can, smiled at her, and walked out. She looked at the empty doorway. Sheri didn’t come in. On the wall, the clock kept time; the second hand made several revolutions and she watched it. She lifted herself slightly in the bed, trying to adjust the pillows at her back, where all the pain seemed to be gathering.
Sheri came back in, and Lily saw the look of frustration and upset on her face. “You don’t have to stay.”
“Don’t be silly. Look, you’re not getting rid of me, honey. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Where are they?” said Lily, feeling another contraction start. But it quickly stopped, and was nothing, and she was simply lying here in the long pain and discomfort, the awful pangs in her lower back. She asked for the wet rag again, and put her mouth on it. So little water came.
She closed her eyes, and then opened them again. Her sister-in-law had gone. It was past nine o’clock. The fact appalled her. Had she really been here two hours? Had she been asleep?
Two hours. She closed her eyes once more, and felt the contraction start. It was worse than anything had been before. It took all the other discomforts and pains and made them small, made them nothing, and it kept getting worse, making new and awful increments of itself, one wave that grew stronger and stronger, and she gave forth a shout, opened her mouth and blew the sound of her agony out, pushed it out, crying and shouting, and the pain seemed to fold over itself and expand, she wasn’t even at the top of it yet and she knew it, and a dread rushed through her, a sense of the power of it to break her, even to kill her if it went on—as it went on, and on, and grew still stronger, and stronger yet before it let go, so slightly, and then let her hurtle, in a kind of terrible slow motion, down the precipice of its sharp sides. It ended, and she lay there, sweating, only vaguely aware of Dr. Brauner and a nurse, moving her, pulling her to her side, telling her to lie very still, and putting something hurtful into the middle of her back, and then turning her again, arranging the pillows under her like blocks of hard stone, under the long, throbbing bruise of her body.
The next contraction obliterated everything else. And there was no relief anywhere, and when it subsided, another started, and after a long, leaden hour of exhaustion and anguish, a pressure began, a terrific urge to bear down, to push everything out of herself, to be through with everything. Dr. Brauner was there; Sheri was there; the nurse; then the doctor again. And they were wheeling her down the corridor, everything was going away, and she wanted so badly to go home—desired, with something akin to a sexual ache, to get up from the gurney and walk out of the hospital and be taken home to her own bed. But then she felt only the urge to bear down, and push the baby out, push out from the dreadful hurt in her back; and she was pushing, feeling this tremendous pressure and need, the unbridgeable necessity of groaning the thing out of herself, expelling it, gaining release. She did not know now who was around her; there were several moving shapes, and the doctor’s voice was saying for her not to push yet, not yet, not quite yet. The pain had gone into some zone of completion—it was itself, unabated, but she had borne it so long now that it no longer quite mattered. It was as though it waited, still strong, still fierce, but defeated, too, beaten because she had not been broken by it after all, and it no longer mattered. What mattered now was the urge to push out. She was in the room and the doctor was standing between her legs, and the pressure was so strong it nearly went beyond the pain, into a kind of exquisiteness, and he was saying for her to push now, push, “Like you’re going to zuh ba
throom,” he said. “Come on,” and at last, in one shaking heave of herself, there was release, it was out, the baby was out and she knew it. She had lifted her head, and she let it drop back on the pillow, and then tried to lift it again, then lay back and was gone, was in the Galatierre house, morning, and no one is awake yet, and I’ll get up now and go out, and I’ll try not to wake a soul, because I like the solitary freshness of the early mornings, in this house that is not my house, in my new marriage; and which way will I walk if I walk out today? Somewhere in the sun. Somewhere toward the beautiful river with its gleam of sun, and I am a new wife, in love, oh, happy love, love that is trustworthy and good and here is happiness, a lovely sunny day in the heart
“It’s a girl.” A nurse’s voice.
Lily couldn’t raise herself. The doctor lay the baby on her abdomen, a bloody, blue knot of limbs and head. It looked formless, at first. But then it emitted a cry, and the mouth opened. Lily saw the face, the pressed features, blood-streaked, and the hair, which was black, and surprisingly thick. “My little girl,” she said, crying.
“What’s her name?” asked the doctor.
“Oh,” Lily said. “Mary. I want to call her Mary. Mary.”
6
NIGHT.
The long hours of the rest of the night, and she dreamed that the doctor stood and pushed on her abdomen, producing another hard contraction, and then there was an emptying, a deeper relief. And she saw him bending, concentrating, with a hooked needle and thread, and there was a slight sticking sensation, the needle going in and out of her. She watched the practiced hands of the nurses as the baby was removed from her and taken to a small clear-plastic bassinet, where they washed her and cleared her mouth and throat, and they said she was pinking right up. She was precisely where she should be on all measurements. They took Lily to the recovery room, a big open space with curtains on metal racks in the ceiling, which were pulled around to form a cloth partition. There, after a time, they brought Mary in to her, wrapped in a soft hospital blanket, so that Lily could nurse her. The sensation was so strangely calming, the small clutching mouth. It hurt; she hadn’t expected that to hurt, too, but it did, a small stab of pressure on the nipple. The round-faced nurse said that no one could get over the pretty black hair. Lily gazed down at the face, with its astonishing miniature eyebrows, and the working mouth. The eyes opened. Mary’s eyes, blue as an evening sky. They looked at Lily, and then the unreal membrane of the lids closed over them, the long lashes—lovely, tiny, dark lashes.
“She’s taking right to it,” the nurse said.
Lily read the name tag: “Kathleen Montera, RN.” “Thank you, Ms. Montera.”
The nurse smiled. “We got rushed tonight. This is my friend Kathleen’s uniform blouse. This is her name tag. We live together. My name’s Ann.”
“Thank you, Ann.” Lily wanted to say, “I love you, Ann.” Instead, she just repeated the words: “Thank you.”
“Oh, you’re quite welcome.”
It came to her that the memory of this woman coming from the double doors of the emergency room seemed so far away now—the distant past. It felt like an age. She wanted to say something about it, but held the words back. Mary had begun to build up a cry, had let go of the nipple, and here were her gums, and her little shaking tongue, and the big sound she made. She was here.
Lily said, “Hello, little girl.” She tried to move her to the other breast, but the mouth wouldn’t settle, wouldn’t take it.
“She’s beautiful,” said Ann the nurse.
Lily looked at her, and remembered Sheri, her family. “Is anyone—?” But the nurse had crossed to another part of the room. Another nurse—one she hadn’t seen before—came in and took Mary away. Lily had a moment of realizing that she was alone, and she began to cry quietly, thinking—without wanting to—of Tyler and Dominic, and Buddy Galatierre, the unchanged predicaments of her life, which she must return to now, and with a baby to care for.
In a little while, Ann came to wheel her to her own room. She saw the long corridor again, and went through double doors opening automatically on their approach. And all the while, as she watched the doors sliding by on either side of her, she was thinking, “It’s over. It’s over. It’s done.”
Outside her hospital room, Sheri stood waiting, and here was Tyler, sitting in one of the plastic chairs, elbows resting on knees, hands clasped. When he saw her he came to his feet and ran his hands through his hair.
“Have you seen her?” Lily asked him.
“Not yet.”
“Go look at her.”
“I will.”
“Seven pounds, nine ounces,” the nurse said to him. “Perfect.”
In the room, she lay propped up, and looked at Tyler. “Where’s Nick and Millicent?”
“Downstairs in the cafeteria.”
“I’ll leave you two alone,” Sheri said. She came close and kissed the side of Lily’s face, patted her gently on the shoulder. “’Bye, sweetie. You did a beautiful job.”
Lily reached for her hand and squeezed it. “Thanks,” she said.
Sheri made a dismissive gesture, tears running down her cheeks. She glanced at her half brother, then turned and left the room. Tyler hadn’t moved from where he stood, near the foot of the bed. He seemed confused. It was evident that he had no notion of what might now be expected of him.
“Her name is Mary,” Lily told him.
“That’s fine. That’s good.”
“Come here?”
He moved to her side, and she reached for him. It was a gingerly embrace, as though he were afraid of hurting her. Then he stood back again.
“Where were you?” Lily asked him.
He shifted on his feet slightly, and scratched the back of his neck. “Nowhere.”
“I missed you.”
He said nothing.
She reached and touched his wrist, then let her hand drop back to the bed. The room was so quiet. From somewhere far down the corridor, they could hear a baby crying. A pair of nurses went by the door, and then an orderly pushing a gurney, one wheel of which made an odd squeaking sound. That trailed away.
“I couldn’t do it, Lily. Couldn’t face it. I’m sorry. I couldn’t watch you have another man’s—have that—that baby, I—” He halted. His voice broke. “I love you.”
“What did you tell them?”
He stared.
“Your mother. Your sister. Nick. What did you say to them?”
“I didn’t say anything. They think I’m squeamish. Weak—weak stomach.” Now he couldn’t return her gaze.
“Go,” Lily told him.
“What?”
“Please leave me alone.”
“Lily, I can’t do that.”
“Do it,” she said. “I don’t want you here.”
He didn’t move.
She said, “I’ll scream.”
“Stop this,” he said. “I called your mother. She’s flying down. I’m going to pick her up at the airport at nine o’clock in the morning.”
She turned her head, and closed her eyes.
“She’s so excited for you—she—she said to give you her love.”
“Well, that’s someone’s love.”
“Stop it.”
“I’m very tired now, Tyler.”
“I even called Dominic.”
Without turning, she said, “What did you say?”
“I told him you had the baby.”
“And that’s all?”
“Christ, Lily.”
“What did he say?”
“Oh, you know—how happy they are for us.” His voice broke.
“I have to sleep now,” Lily said.
She felt him come close. His lips brushed her ear, and then he was gone. She waited a long time before she opened her eyes to look at the room again. It was decorated with all the forlorn warmth of institutional places: a picture on the wall of a flower field; cream-colored drapes on the window; a table, a lamp, a dresser, a television suspende
d from metal bars attached to the ceiling. In the blank television screen she saw the room, and herself in it, in the bed. The sight of it sickened her, and she wished for her baby, ached to hold her baby. Perhaps she cried some more, but then a deep miasma settled over her, coming on in a hazy melting, and she resisted it at first, recalling that something was troubling her, something was badly out of balance. She looked at the clock on the wall, and couldn’t read it for the blurring of her sight. Squinting, feeling the tears run out of her eyes, she marked that it was after two o’clock in the morning. The baby had been born before midnight. She murmured the name: “Mary.” Then she let go, still crying softly, drifting off into the thick, eerily delectable drowse that closed everything down, even her sadness.
Periodically, she was awakened by nurses, coming in to take her blood pressure and her temperature. They were different nurses. Their actions seemed almost haphazard, as if Lily were not a person but some element of an experiment they weren’t particularly interested in. She woke each time, but it was all such a fog, and her tiredness allowed her to sink back so that it all became merely the pattern of this sleep.
Until this moment, waking from a dream of Dr. Brauner. It had been the deepest sleep; yet it hadn’t refreshed her at all. She ached, and her heart hurt. She wanted to hold the baby again, just as a part of her wanted nothing of the sort. The conflicting emotions gave her a sense of impending exhaustion, and then she thought of Tyler, her mother arriving, the little house in Yellow Leaf Creek. Everything there was to do, that she lacked the energy or the will to do. She wanted to go home again, not to anyplace in Mississippi, but to Virginia, and her parents’ house as it had been when she was growing up, and people were what they seemed to be, and if you wanted something to change you simply asked for it. She lay there awake, in the waning hours of the night, trembling, dreading the dawn, and the light, the coming day.
PART • 5
Hello to the Cannibals Page 46