by Mary Razzell
20
THE ROOM was a mess. Helen had left her clothes everywhere: a girdle tossed on the armchair, a pair of nylon stockings draped across the lampshade. Orange face powder trailed across the dresser top, and one towel hanging from the rod beside the small hand basin was smeared with lipstick, rouge and mascara.
I had to clear the bed of her day’s shopping. The boxes, bags and tissue wrappings were all in a jumble. Picking up the whole lot carefully, I moved them to the coffee table.
When I had done everything I could to postpone taking the capsules—brushing my hair, washing my face, cleaning my teeth—I took the package out of my purse. I opened it.
Eight capsules. They were brown, the size and shape of cod liver oil capsules.
A small piece of paper with typewritten instructions on it was included.
Take 2 capsules and repeat in 4 hours. If necessary, repeat procedure in 8 hours. If patient becomes unconscious with weak pulse and clammy skin, seek medical aid immediately.
I let the brown capsules roll out into my palm. They were smooth, cylindrical—poisonous.
My hand trembled when I filled a glass with water, and I had to force myself to swallow one capsule, then another.
I got into bed, pulled the covers up to my chin, and waited for them to work.
But I was too tired to stay awake. Nothing was happening. I didn’t feel any different. I switched off the bedside lamp.
* * *
Deep, painful cramps woke me, almost throwing me from the bed. For a moment I wasn’t sure where I was. The rosy glow from the neon sign outside the window lit up the room. Then the events of the day came back to me.
There was no sign of Helen. The cramps increased. I doubled over with them. Then a wave of nausea sent me flying to the door, where I fumbled with the lock before rushing down the hall to the bathroom. I made it just in time before I was violently ill.
Perspiration sheeted my face, and my whole body trembled. My knees buckled under my weight. I sat on the edge of the cold bathtub, praying the nausea would pass. I retched again until all I brought up was green bile.
The cramping increased until I thought I couldn’t bear it. Deep grinding pain. Diarrhea. But although it seemed that everything had torn loose inside me, there was no bleeding. No miscarriage.
I crept back down the hallway and into the room. Helen had come in sometime when I was in the bathroom and was lying—in her slip, her mouth open—across the bed. Her clothes lay in a tangle on the floor, and a smell of garlic and beer rose from her like a small cloud.
I eased myself into the armchair and laid my head back. The clock across the street showed three. It had been at least four hours since I’d taken the two capsules. Could I possibly take two more? Maybe now that there wasn’t anything to vomit, the medicine would work.
I found my purse, took out two more capsules and filled the drinking glass at the sink. Then I let myself out of the room and eased the door shut.
Waiting until I was in the bathroom before I swallowed the capsules, I had to fold my arms tightly across my stomach and walk back and forth to will the medicine to stay down. I walked like that for about twenty minutes.
It was going to be all right. I didn’t even feel sick anymore. I decided to go back to the room and try to get some sleep.
The window in the hallway near the fire escape was open, and a cool summer breeze lifted the grimy net curtains. I knelt down and rested my arms on the sill. Night sounds came from behind me: faint snores, rustlings, murmurs. And from the street below came the sound of light traffic, the beep of a horn, breaking bottles, voices raised in anger, the long drawn-out wail of a protesting cat, a siren in the distance.
I got as far as the door of the room before the second dose hit. This time it was a purge that went on and on. Only water came from my bowel. Only a blood-tinged mucus from my stomach.
Oh, let it be over! Let it stop!
Finally I lay in the tub, too weak to move and use the toilet.
When at last it was all over, I wadded my filthy nightgown into the waste basket, ran both taps and sluiced myself down as best I could. Wrapping the bathmat around me like a sarong, I dragged myself back down the hall and into the room.
Helen slept on. A bubbly little snore came from the bed. Daylight outlined the window, and the clock showed six. My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. My lips were cracked.
The pills were not going to work. All they had done was leave me with a raging thirst and exhausted beyond anything I’d ever imagined. And I was still pregnant.
As I dressed in the half-light, bits of the past week stuck in my mind. Silly, unrelated things, yet they replayed themselves as if of momentous importance. That note in Mrs. Williams’ book: “It is you who has grown distant...distant...distant...” “My own flesh and blood.” “The best of families.” “After all’s said and done...done...”
I had to have something to drink. Not water—the very thought made the metallic taste in my mouth grow brassier.
Tea. That’s what I wanted. I took one last look around the room to be sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. With a loud groan, Helen turned over in her sleep.
The hotel coffee shop was open. Even before I got through the lobby I could hear the clatter of dishes and smell the toast and coffee. I took the first empty stool I saw and sat down with relief.
Oatmeal porridge, large bowl, 15¢, I read on the menu. When the waitress came to take my order, pencil poised over her order pad, I pointed to that item.
“And tea,” I added, my dry lips sticking together painfully.
There was enough oatmeal in the bowl to feed three people. I had to eat it very slowly because my stomach felt cavernous and dark brown. After a few minutes I put down the spoon and waited, just to see how it settled.
I still felt weak and dazed and had trouble thinking clearly. There was an odd tingling sensation around my mouth and in my fingers. My skin itched all over.
I knew I had a room somewhere in Vancouver, but the harder I tried to remember where it was, the more its location escaped me.
I closed my eyes. I felt light-headed, as if I might float away.
At least the porridge was staying down. My stomach felt as tight and full as a small pup’s.
This must be a dream.
Colors were vivid against my eyelids. Green woods, purple mountains, sapphire sea. And sounds echoed and re-echoed in my head. I could hear a robin’s evening song, the shrieking of the gulls, the heavy thump of Helga’s inboard motorboat, the gentle slap-slap of waves against its bow.
“Are you all right?” It was the waitress. She sounded concerned.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure...” Her face blurred before me. I caught my breath.
“You want I should call you a cab?”
I nodded.
“You look real bad, honey. If I was you, I’d go right home and go to bed.”
“Yes.” That sounded like a good idea.
Then somehow a taxi was there and the waitress was helping me in.
“Where to?” asked the driver.
“Tell him where you live, honey.”
“At...I have to catch the Union boat...the Union pier, please.”
I leaned back then in the seat. I was going home.
I felt drowsy, but just before going to sleep, my whole body jerked, as if suddenly charged by electricity.
I sensed myself shifting into a lower gear. Then I slept.
21
I WAS AWAKENED by someone shaking me gently by the shoulder. I stared into the face of a man I had never seen before.
“You’re here. Union pier.” I half fell out of the car.
“That’s fifty cents.” His voice stopped me as I turned to go.
After paying him, I stood blinking in the bright sunshine. Several ships were moored farther down the pier from where I stood at a taxi stand. I recognized the bright orange funnels and black-and-white hulls as being the Union steamship colors. A smell of hot ta
r mingled with the salt in the air.
I ached. My lower back ached and my legs felt heavy. I had a sense of something about to happen—a teetery feeling.
Without thinking too much about what I was doing, I went inside the waiting room to buy a ticket. As I stood in line, I thought I saw Nels round the corner of the waiting room, but when I looked again, he was gone.
I gave my ticket to the purser and went up the gangplank of the Lady Rose. Standing at the rail, I watched the ropes being cast off. Bells from the wheelhouse signaled the engine room. The engines reversed. As if in a dream, I watched the jade green water stir into white, swirling froth.
The Lady Rose was swarming with holiday-makers. Dressed in bright shorts and wearing sunhats, noses covered with white zinc ointment, they ate popcorn and fed the seagulls that followed us out under the Lion’s Gate Bridge.
Starting with the upper deck, I covered the entire ship looking for Nels. I peered into groups of people until they stood back in alarm. But I couldn’t find him.
My back ached more and more, the pain spreading around to the front and causing me to grunt when it hit. I walked back and forth on the deck. That helped. When I went to the bathroom, an hour’s sail out of Vancouver, I saw a trickle of blood behind me in the toilet.
I stared at it, unable to believe what I saw.
It was true. I was bleeding. I found a dime to put in the Kotex machine. Then I went out on deck to look for Nels again.
Nels wasn’t on the boat anywhere.
Did he know I was pregnant? Did I tell him? I couldn’t remember.
By the time the Lady Rose docked at the Landing, I was beyond caring. The cramps were strong and regular. There was a sensation of a string being stretched across inside me, and every cramp pulled it tighter, thinner.
It was going to break soon. And I wanted to be off the boat and alone when it did.
When the Lady Rose pulled into the Landing, I could hardly stand up straight. I moved quickly into the crowd of passengers hurrying to get off. I had to take short steps, my knees clenched together. I stayed in the crowd until we were off the pier. Then I headed for the beach trail.
I went up along the bank as far as I could, nearly as far as the meadow where my brothers went to ride Big Red. Leaving the main trail, I followed a path, almost hidden by small alders, right down to the creek.
There was a little clearing near the water, circled with dark, lacy cedars. Birds sang in the forest all around me. A woodpecker hammered directly overhead. There were patches of sunlight and cool shade.
I spent the rest of the afternoon passing clots of blood and resting on the soft mossy ground, and always in the background was the soothing sound of water running over stones. A warm berry smell rose from blackberry vines that ran along moss-covered logs.
Once a brown rabbit popped out of the low bushes, stared for a minute, then hopped away. Small pieces of shredded cone drifted down from a tall fir. Looking up, I saw a squirrel sitting on his haunches, black eyes shining bright.
Then a rapid series of fierce contractions brought me up from lying on my back to a squatting position, and I strained and cried out until I passed—what?
I looked down. And saw there the beginning form of a baby boy.
It lay, a pale bud on the green moss. It was a child with tiny ears, eyes closed with miniature eyelids, a nose, a long back curled on itself, a little boy penis.
I wiped the blood from the tiny body, then splashed water from the creek on it.
And wept.
And bled until I knew I had to stop it somehow. Reaching into the ice-cold water of the creek, I took several stones that had been worn flat and smooth by the running water. Putting my legs up to rest on a log, I laid the cold heavy stones on myself, low, where the cramps were. One more strong contraction, and the afterbirth slipped out. It looked like a pink sponge.
After that the bleeding seemed to stop. I replaced the stones with colder ones from the creek.
I kept the baby near me. He rested like a pale blossom on the emerald moss. I didn’t know what I was going to do with him, his body. If I buried him here, he would be dug up by animals. Eaten.
I traced the tiny spine with my finger.
By now the sun was disappearing below the tree tops, and the woods with their sweet berry smell cooled and moistened.
After burying the afterbirth in some soft earth beneath a rotting cedar stump, I wrapped the tiny body in burdock leaves and took it with me.
I found myself following the path down the side of the creek and passing under the bridge that divided Helga’s place from ours. Birds were calling out their last songs of the day as my feet kept taking me along, right down to the edge of the ocean.
It was almost sunset, and the beach was deserted. There was Helga’s boat tied up to the float. Before I knew it, I had climbed in it, untied the rope and cast off. I rowed out toward Keats Island. When I was halfway there, I pulled the oars and let the boat drift.
The world was golden all around me from the last glow of sunset, and the ocean lay, a sheet of gold, as far as I could see. There wasn’t a hint of breeze to mar the surface. It was almost like being in a dream. The hazy blue mountains hung like shrouds over me. Not a sound anywhere.
Rummaging under the stern seat, I found a discarded waxed bread wrapper—perhaps from a lunch Helga had packed for herself—and a broken fishing line, complete with small lead weights. I placed the baby in the wrapper, tied it securely with the fishing line and weights, and let it over the side of the boat.
I let the line slip through my fingers until it reached the water, then sank beneath the surface. The boat rocked with the tiniest of movements.
I watched the package dip, spin for an instant, sink rapidly and disappear down in the deep black water. I let the line go.
Nothing moved on the water. Or below. I sat and watched the sun begin its curve behind the spiky tops of the trees on the headland, saw its red orb halve, quarter, slip over the edge of the world.
I stayed out on the water until night had blotted out everything but the faint outlines of the shore and orange coal oil lights from cottage windows.
Finally I rowed back to the land, the oars cutting flashes of phosphorescence in the night water.
Helga was there on the float when I got back. She helped me tie up the boat, and then she helped me out. I felt weak and dizzy. I tried to speak, to apologize for taking her boat, but all I did was cry.
All the time Helga was saying, “Is okay, is okay,” in a soothing voice as we walked up the float, along the beach trail and to her house.
I have a faint recollection of her putting a soft, loose nightgown over my head, of drinking an eggnog, of being tucked into bed. Her eyes were steadfast in the lamplight when she blew it out.
I slept—a deep sleep like a stone being pushed over a cliff, but once the deep stage had passed, I began to dream fitfully. The dreams were images of Nels: Nels laughing, Nels talking...I was trying to reach him, but although I walked and walked, I could never get any closer. He faded back, out of my reach. Then came a kaleidoscope of changing colors: branches, moss, sky, water and a bud-baby that swam before my eyes, glistening with streaks of blood that wouldn’t wipe off, seemed even to spread.
I woke crying. The nightgown and the bed were soaked with perspiration. Helga was there in an instant, and she dried me off with a towel, gave me a fresh nightgown, changed the sheets, and poured me a drink of something that tasted of...herbs? I didn’t like it.
“No,” Helga insisted, refusing to take the glass from my outstretched hand. “Is good for you. Drink.”
I drank it down but only to please her. But I found I couldn’t go back to sleep. My legs were cramped with pain. What I wanted to do was walk.
We walked, Helga and I, side by side, she with an old jacket over her shoulders and I wearing one of her heavy woolen sweaters. Her hand was ready whenever I stumbled.
The night was cool and dark. Now and then I heard small skitte
rings in the night stillness—an animal or perhaps a bird. Along the trails, as far as the beach and up the creek, Helga and I walked until I was exhausted and glad to go back, drop into the bed and there, finally, sleep without dreaming.
* * *
In the morning I couldn’t seem to waken. I didn’t want to. But when Helga said, “Breakfast, come,” I had to get up, bleary-eyed and dull, and follow her into the kitchen. She took my breakfast from the warming-shelf above the stove and set the plate before me.
I wasn’t hungry. I wasn’t anything. I wanted not to bother, or be bothered, or made to care.
Helga sat beside me at the table and buttered my toast.
“Eat,” she said.
It was only the sight of her hard brown hand lying at rest on the spotless cross-stitch tablecloth and that look of hers that was like love—but simple, without hurt—that made me pick up my knife and fork.
It was grief that was overwhelming me. I hadn’t expected it. I thought I would only feel relief.
A boy. Somehow I had thought it would be a girl. All along it seemed—because it was a problem and not want-ed—that it had to be a girl.
Helga made me go back to bed for an hour and again, after lunch, another hour’s rest. In between resting and eating, I sat outside in the shade of the house. From where I sat, comfortable in a wicker armchair, I could watch Helga weeding in the garden. She used a hoe and worked with a quick chopping motion. She seemed to like padding barefoot in the soft brown soil. Sometimes I could hear her singing to herself in Norwegian.
Hours passed. I slept, I ate, I sat outside in the summer sun. The day ended, passed into another. I lost all sense of time. I only knew that I felt stronger and that Helga was there. She never asked me any questions, and I never told her anything.
Thursday came and with it the realization that I had to get back to work. Helga walked with me to the end of the beach trail to catch the boat, and we stayed there until the very last minute, to avoid being seen by anyone I knew. I was glad to see Mr. Percy go up the wharf before the boat was ready to pull out. When the Lady Rose did blow her whistle, I hugged Helga—staying for a moment close to her brown spareness—then ran from the gangplank.