Martha stared out the window, thinking about Cinderella. If they had a real fireplace in their house, like Angie and Doug, she could curl up on the hearth at night with a blanket and put breakfast on the table with her hair done up in a kerchief and soot on the end of her nose.
It was no surprise to her that she didn’t like the hospital.
She didn’t like the big fake Christmas tree in the entrance hall or the tinny version of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” that drifted through the halls.
She didn’t like the people. In the elevator, two doctors talked openly about their patients like a banker might talk about money or a grocer about lettuce.
Sick people wandered the halls, some pushing metal poles with clear plastic bags hung on them. Sick people huddled outside, beyond the protected no-smoking area, sucking on cigarettes. (Cancer sticks, Dad called them.) Visitors slumped on benches, looked aimlessly at all the useless stuff in the gift shop or clutched ugly flowers on their way to someone’s room.
She didn’t like the way the place smelled.
Everything in the hospital felt clean but not clean. Otherwise, why would there be all those bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere? Martha squeezed some into her hands before she got onto the elevator and again when she got off. She wasn’t taking any chances.
The maternity ward was different from the rest of the hospital. There, life began. No one was sick. And everyone was happy.
Everyone except Martha.
Martha knew that she had been in a maternity ward once before. Most people had, after all. And Mom had told her the story, like, a million times. Mom and Dad had been so happy. Linda had been so glad to have a wonderful home for her baby. Martha had been such a beautiful baby.
Martha had seen pictures, and she knew that the last bit was an out-and-out lie.
She was pretty sure that other parts of the story were lies too.
Her bag felt heavy on her shoulder. It held that hastily wrapped present. She had been so sure about the present when she had woken up with the brilliant idea on Christmas Eve. She felt much less sure now. She wasn’t even sure that she wanted to give any of them any presents at all. Still, she had brought the package along. Dad had not appeared to notice.
Dad had stopped outside a door.
“Here we are!” he said and let Martha step past him into the room.
There was only one bed in the room. The head of the bed was raised, and Mom was half sitting up. Her head was tilted to the side against the pillow, and she was asleep with her mouth open. The blanket only came up to her waist. Martha averted her eyes from the stains on the nightgown. She knew they had to do with feeding the baby, and she didn’t like them. Dad walked past her and leaned over to her mom, one hand laid gently on her shoulder. Martha went and stared out the window at the parking lot.
“Martha?” Mom’s voice said.
Martha turned, and there was her mother smiling at her. She had pulled the sheet up over her chest, smoothed out her hair and closed her mouth.
Gulping back her relief, Martha crossed the room in a moment. She leaned across the bed to hug her mother and was surprised when Mom shrank away. Dad’s hands on Martha’s arms pulled her back.
“Not like that,” he said from behind her. “Your mom’s a bit delicate at the moment. She has stitches in her tummy.”
Mom reached up and grasped her shoulders. “I’m fine up at the top,” she said. “Give me a kiss.”
But Martha was afraid now. She had only ever had stitches once, in a finger. She kissed her mother on the cheek without touching her anywhere else.
Mom didn’t seem to notice.
It felt awkward just standing there, so Martha reached for the package she had set down by the door. She had to get Dad to hold the bag while she wiggled it out.
“What’s that?” Mom said.
Martha didn’t say anything. She just put the parcel on Mom’s legs, well away from her stomach.
Both parents looked at her. She nodded toward it. Didn’t they know what to do with a present? Dad stepped forward and untied the ribbon. Moments later, the stack of books was revealed. They looked kind of old and uninteresting, Martha thought. Still, an impulse made her reach into her pocket for her new camera.
Mom reached for When We Were Very Young. “My favorite,” she said and opened it. She found Martha’s inscription right away.
Martha had written For all four of us. To share. Merry Christmas. She had put the year at the top so they would always remember this was the baby’s first Christmas.
Mom smiled, and Martha snapped a picture. She noticed that Mom’s eyes were wet.
“Why did we ever put this away, Martha?” Mom said. “I know just which one I want to read first.” Several more long moments passed before she put the book aside and looked up at them. “I think it’s time,” she said then. “Help me into the wheelchair, Peter, and let’s go see her. Martha, you can watch through the window. Can you lend us your camera?”
Step by step, Martha followed them down the hall and stationed herself outside a big picture window that looked into a room filled with machines, the Intensive Care Nursery. The ICN. She had to search for a moment to identify the isolettes, the small clear boxes, at counter height, with tubes running in and out. One of them looked empty, but in the other two she could make out what must be babies.
Dad and Mom appeared in the room, looking strange in gowns and masks. He wheeled her up to one of the isolettes and whipped out the camera. For the next ten minutes, Martha watched through the glass, alone. She watched Mom struggle to her feet and the two of them gaze at the small creature in the glass box. Martha couldn’t help but think of Snow White. After a while, she saw them step back and look around, obviously upset by something. A nurse came. Mom sat back down and the nurse took the baby from the isolette and placed her in Mom’s arms. From where she stood, Martha could hear the baby’s cries, muted by glass, and she could see the tension in Mom’s body.
Martha didn’t notice that Dad had left Mom’s side until he showed up at hers.
“She doesn’t seem so tiny when she cries,” he said, and Martha swam suddenly back into herself. “And five pounds isn’t bad at thirty-five weeks,” he added. “Look. I made a video for you.”
In the video, Adrienne was sleeping. Martha stared. She had not expected five pounds to look quite so tiny. Premature: a preemie, they called her. Dad had zoomed right in on her face and Martha could see her mouth smacking a little and her eyelids twitching as she slept. Her face was pink, pink, pink. Then the picture zoomed out. Adrienne was wearing a tiny pale pink cap and a white sleeper covered in pink bunnies and yellow chicks, so only her face and her hands showed—two teeny-tiny, scrunched-up hands. Clear plastic tubes ran into her nose.
Over Martha’s shoulder, Dad gazed adoringly at the screen. “She’s waking up now,” he said.
Martha stared as the baby’s face went from pink, pink, pink to red, red, red. Her mouth opened wide, and her eyes squeezed tight shut. Her cheeks looked like little red apples, and Martha thought of Snow White once again, though she was pretty sure Snow White would cry much more prettily.
She was amazed at the sound that such a small creature could make, faint though it was filtered through the little camera.
“Look at them now,” Dad said, and Martha raised her eyes from the camera to the window.
In the nursery, Mom was holding the baby close. The baby had to be sleeping, because Mom looked so peaceful.
“They might rest together for a while,” Dad said. “We’ll leave them to it. Let’s go see what we can find to eat. ”
The cafeteria was thoroughly decorated for the season. Dad got gingerbread boys and hot chocolate for both of them, and they sat near a window overlooking the street. Martha watched the video again while she nibbled at her cookie. Several questions bubbled up inside her, but she let them drift away unasked. Wasn’t it awful to be cut open to get the baby out? Was Mom going to heal up all right? Was the baby goin
g to be okay? At last Martha thought of a question she felt safe enough to ask. “When can I see her properly?” she asked. “The baby…Adrienne, I mean.”
“Soon, I hope,” Dad said.
And Martha found that she hoped so too.
As it turned out, three days passed before things changed, before Adrienne was breathing mostly on her own. She was still in the special nursery and still in an isolette with a breathing tube, but she was getting stronger by the hour, the nurses said. They could make an exception and allow Martha in, because the other preemie had gone home.
For a long moment Martha hovered in the nursery doorway before she followed Mom—on her own two feet now—and Dad into the room. She had never worn a mask and gown and gloves before. She felt awkward and alien, not like herself at all.
Adrienne was asleep. Martha stood and watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall. That chest contained lungs, she thought, and a heart. So small.
“Would you like to hold her?” Mom said.
Martha was not at all sure about that, but Dad guided her to the big beige plastic-covered chair. She tried to settle herself inside and out, but before she had a chance to stop her own heart from racing, the nurse was handing her the baby, putting Adrienne right into Martha’s arms.
“Support her head,” Dad said.
As he said it, Martha felt the head wobble, all floppy on Adrienne’s skinny neck as it kind of slid off Martha’s arm. She put her other hand under it, but that was awkward, and she didn’t like it, a whole head with a brain inside and everything, almost fitting right into her hand like a softball. The baby squirmed, and her eyes opened. The blanket she was wrapped in came loose, and her arms and legs flailed. Then her eyes screwed up and her mouth opened, and the quiet was shattered. Any trace of wonder that remained in Martha was wiped away by that terrible screaming. What was wrong? Had she hurt her somehow?
“Please, Dad. Take her,” Martha said.
The nurse did not come this time, and it seemed to take Dad forever to get Adrienne quiet and back into her isolette. By the end of it, Martha was exhausted. She longed to go home, to her nice quiet bed and her book.
“I got a picture,” Dad said when all was quiet again, “before the screaming.”
Martha looked at it in the car on the way home. Dad had caught her cupping Adrienne’s head in her hand, before the slipping blanket and the flailing limbs. Martha was surprised at the beauty of Adrienne’s face and by the hint of a smile on her own.
Maybe having a baby sister would not be a complete disaster after all.
CHAPTER 14
Home
The next week passed in a blur. Adrienne came home halfway through it, and home did not feel like home anymore.
First of all, baby stuff was spread absolutely everywhere. Second, Mom was exhausted. So was Dad. There were no proper meals. Angie had offered to come over every Friday to clean the house. That was good, because otherwise, the filth would have piled up forever. The thing of it was, Angie expected Martha to help.
And in between, Martha had to load gunky dishes into the dishwasher, turn it on when it was full, and put all the dishes away when it was done, chipping off dried-on guck with her thumbnail. She was tired of canned soup and baked beans and neon orange macaroni and cheese. She tried to make herself a grilled cheese sandwich one day, and Dad came running into the kitchen thinking the house was on fire. First he shouted at her. Then he told her in his pretend-calm voice that nine was too young to use the stove all by herself.
She was lucky they let her use the microwave. Otherwise, she would probably starve.
The first time Angie came over, she brought Chance.
It was obvious that he didn’t want to come. It was equally obvious that all the adults had talked. They had planned. Martha and Chance were supposed to make up.
Martha led Chance into the tv room and put on a movie. They sat at opposite ends of the couch and stared at the screen.
It was a funny movie. About halfway through, they both laughed at the same moment. Martha turned her head and found Chance looking right at her.
“So now we both have babies in the house,” Chance said.
Martha hesitated. Then she said, “Yeah.”
And silence fell between them again.
“I kind of lost it when you were at my house,” Chance said in the middle of a car chase.
Martha hesitated again. She guessed that was supposed to be an apology. And, in that moment, she found that she wanted to put the bad feelings behind her. Chance might be a bit strange. He might struggle at school in lots of way. But he was kind of interesting. He cared about stuff like butterflies and fish. She wondered what he thought about crows.
“That’s okay,” she said at last. “I know what it’s like to be invaded.” And she nodded toward the baby stuff all over the floor.
When the movie was finished, they went into the kitchen to find some lunch.
The holidays were almost over, and Mom still seemed so different. Her face was pale and extra wrinkly, and she had dark poochy bags under her eyes. Her stomach still stuck out under her grubby oversized T-shirt, even though Adrienne had been out of that stomach for almost two weeks now. She had to push herself up out of chairs with her arms—sometimes Dad or Martha helped—and she walked kind of like an old person, biting back groans once in a while. But she also seemed more relaxed in a funny way. She wasn’t always “getting things done” now. She sat with the baby and let mornings and afternoons and evenings slide by. She talked and she listened. Martha read aloud from her Christmas present to them and from Angie’s Christmas present to her, and Mom let her go on for ages.
Sometimes Martha would hold Adrienne while Mom read to them instead. Martha loved that even more, now that she knew how to keep Adrienne’s head from wobbling. She would listen while something big and warm filled her chest as she gazed down at that tiny perfect face.
It was turning out to be kind of all right, this baby thing.
On the last night before school started again, Martha remembered Linda’s present. She brought the bag down to the living room, where Mom was stretched out on the couch and Dad was sitting with Adrienne in the big chair.
Martha sat down on the carpet. She reached into the bag and pulled out a small square object wrapped in green tissue. “Linda gave me this when I saw her,” she said in response to their surprised looks. “I forgot all about it.”
Mom struggled into a sitting position. “I wondered about that,” she said. “I figured she must have changed her mind about giving it to you.”
Martha felt a little twist in the region of her heart. She set the small package down. Mom already knew all about it.
“Open it, honey,” Mom said. “She just checked with me to be sure it was all right with us. She wants to be part of your life, but she doesn’t want to interfere.”
Martha sat perfectly still and tried to absorb what Mom had just told her. It made Linda seem different. More thoughtful. More caring. Less desperate. She picked up the parcel and tore off the paper.
Inside was a jewelry box, an old-fashioned one, black and velvety, the kind that snaps open and shut. It took her a moment to bring herself to open it. Please, please, please let me like what’s inside, she said to herself. And when at last the box lay open in her palm, she found that she did.
It held earrings, one pair. A single pearl dangled from each thin gold shepherd’s hook. Looking closely, she could see that one of the pearls was worn down a bit. She looked up at her mom.
“Linda’s mother gave them to her not long before she died. Linda was only eight at the time, and she wore them all the time for years. That’s why they are so worn. She wanted you to have something that connects you to your mother and your grandmother in your birth family. I told her I thought you would love them.” Mom paused and gazed at Martha. She took a breath. “You don’t have to wear them though.”
“Oh, I want to,” Martha said, “definitely!” And she got up and went to th
e bathroom to put them on.
CHAPTER 15
School Again
It felt good to go back to school after the Christmas break. Doug and Chance showed up on foot at Martha’s house at eight thirty that first day. Chance and Martha were to walk together for now, since Mom had to stay with the baby and Dad was going into work late, so as to be home with the baby too.
Here was one more proof, Martha had tried to tell herself. Now that they had their own baby, they didn’t need her anymore. It felt great to discover that she didn’t believe a word of it.
Showing up with Chance chattering away at her was a bit embarrassing, but if anyone could pull it off, she could. She sent off her brightest beams of confidence as they entered the school.
They turned into the hallway outside their own classroom and stopped. An enormous sturgeon covered the wall, all the way from their door to the next. The fish gleamed with silver paint mixed in with the brownish gray. The one eye they could see looked out at them a little sadly, as if the creature wished that it could twitch its tail and trade the dry echoing hallway for the muddy depths of the Fraser River.
“We did good,” Chance said. And he beamed.
Martha had never approved of beaming. She didn’t approve of the expression “did good” either.
But she looked into his beaming face. Her own cheekbones pulled up toward her eyes. Chance stared. He beamed some more. And Martha knew, without a mirror to look into, with no one to consult, that she was beaming right back.
“Yeah,” she said. “We did.”
Martha straightened her shoulders. She had been waiting all morning for Preeti to separate herself from the others. Many months ago, Mom had suggested that Martha call the girls to explain why she had rushed them out of the house. Martha had refused. Well, over the last eight months, her own stubbornness had tired her right out.
Somebody's Girl (Orca Young Readers) Page 9