Whiplash

by Tracey Farren

Lennie looks at Chantal. Chantal nods.

  He shows us. ‘Here’s the umbilical cord. Here’s the pelvic casement. Now if we go in closer …’

  A floating little willie.

  I laugh and laugh like a mad chick. I get them all laughing like a willie’s the funniest thing in the world. Which it is.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Annie asks.

  ‘I was so sure it was a girl. I was so, so sure.’

  On the way down the corridor, I tell Annie only, ‘I got it wrong.

  My girl’s still coming.’

  A boy for Chantal and Lennie. They’re gonna call him Luke. Luke sounds like lake. Maybe he’ll have blue eyes.

  Dumi comes for supper. It’s like he’s proud it’s a boy, I swear. Hugs Lennie like he’s done something brilliant.

  ‘Give me something to slaughter, man.’

  Chantal gives him her biggest carving knife, tells him to carve up the chicken.

  Dumi’s so sweet, he buys a cot. Comes in one day behind a huge, heavy box. Puts it down at Chantal’s feet.

  ‘I’ve come to swap. The baby and the cot for the girl.’

  He grips me round the thighs. Lifts me straight up, careful of my belly. Makes like he’s walking out. We all laugh like mad and I go so red you’d think he hung me upside down.

  I’ll try shut up about Dumi. But I just wanna tell you, Ma, he’s got beautiful. He’s got a fine moustache and thick, curly lashes. His teeth are flippin ivory, I swear. So bloody perfect they look false. He’s got silky eyebrows for a Zulu. He’s still got those dead naughty dimples that come out of nowhere. Even when he’s shy and he’s trying not to smile. He’s damn noisy, though. He talks a helluva lot. But he knows how to listen. He waits till I know what I’m tryna say. He waits quietly till he gets it, then his eyebrows go up and his eyes go all glad cause he understands. Okay, he must have some faults. I think, maybe, he’s a bit of a coward. He doesn’t take you straight on. He doesn’t wanna fight, so he works with you, goes with you. Like his imaginary falcons. No punishment. Only rewards.

  And his body? I don’t wanna think about it. It’s nice, that’s all I can say. It’s hard in there, Ma. His chest. His legs are long. He’s got that man’s apple shaped bum. I don’t wanna think about it though. I can‘t think about bodies yet.

  Me and Chantal go try turn the baby. The nurse has got curly black hair with grey threads. She’s light brown with sticky mascara. Hands like a man, lots of light marks from missing rings. I swear I know her. I dunno where from.

  It’s the same doctor who did the scan, the fit little raver. He lies me flat, puts his hands on my belly. Pushes like he’s tryna turn the hands of a clock. Tryna force the baby to do a flip. But the baby pushes back, bloody stubborn. Tells him, Stuff off.

  He feels inside me with his gloves. I clench my fists, tense up. Chantal strokes my wrist, on the inside, where it’s sensitive. The kid refuses flat. The doctor gets all flustered, a bad loser. Says natural birth’s too dangerous for us. He goes out, peeling off his gloves. Says, all sulky, ‘I’ll book you for a caesar right now.’

  ‘Oh no-o.’ I’m gonna miss Egypt.

  I know it’s sel fish, Ma. I know it seems a bit sick. It’s just what happens to your head when you’re tryna survive. You know, once you’ve gone and given your baby away.

  I think, shit. Five days in Cairo. My first time on a plane. All down the drain. I hide in Chantal’s dark eyes, pray, Please no.

  The nurse says softly, ‘Quickly, get onto your hands and knees.’

  Something in her voice makes me hurry up. I go up like a dog, my belly hanging. She rubs her hands together to warm them up. I watch the light marks on her fingers, feel her soft False Bay breath on my back. ‘Relax.’ She starts humming a slow song I know from somewhere. Rubs my sides, then my tummy. Round and round in big circles. ‘I don’t know why these men always insist on lying you on your back.’

  Chantal’s shocked, same as me. We stare at the nurse. Does this chick know me?

  ‘Because there’s so much more space when you’re up like this.’

  I giggle. Man, she’s not talking about my past.

  She gets her palms on the baby, massages hard. The baby digs in. So she eases up, sings the song she was humming. It’s that Porcelain song that asks, Have I got the moon in my womb? I can’t help smiling, on my knees like a dog. She smiles back, says, ‘Do you like the Red Hot Chili Peppers?’ I nod. She sings some more, strokes. Breathes, ‘Relax,’ on my back one more time. Then she grips the baby hard and swings it, no bloody nonsense.

  The baby bulges, kicks. Coils tight through no space. There’s a huge, slippery twist inside my belly.

  Then it twitches, taps a few times. Relaxes.

  Someone’s coming. Chili Peppers flips me quickly onto my back. Grins as Raver comes through the door. We’re all happy as anything, no need to fake it. She lies nicely to the doctor, ‘You did it. You persuaded the baby. It decided to turn.’

  All I remember after that is every time I laugh, I wanna wee. Chantal and Lennie jump up, help me out of my lounge chair. People bring presents. Nappies, baby clothes, flippin teething rings. Chantal opens them carefully, pulls the sticky tape off the wrapping paper. Lines two shelves in the room I’m sleeping in. She tries to pack the baby stuff away but Josie and Sharonne take it all out. Go, ‘Aahh cute,’ over and over.

  On the twentieth of October I wake up at three in the morning with period pain. I’m shit, shit scared, cause it’s my first time, so I go into Chantal and Lennie’s room. They’re fitted together, fast asleep. The cot’s already up in their room.

  Sheez, am I sorry I woke them.

  Chantal’s got a bag packed next to the bed. Her shoes all ready at the door, no lies. In the Mini she gives me a piece of fudge that she made. Asks me if I’m thirsty. Lennie’s jaw’s so tight you could play the violin on it. We speed along the sea. It’s so dark the white foam looks like soft cloth.

  We get to the hospital way before it even gets sore. But they let me stay the next day cause the baby’s blood is different to mine. Chantal tells the night nurse, ‘We can’t risk any tearing.’

  Chantal and Lennie show everyone the contract that says they’re gonna be the parents. Lennie’s brother’s lawyer wrote up a whole adoption agreement that we all signed, like a hundred times. I’ve got three months to change my mind, but I know I won’t. I can visit the kid anytime, so I’ll be like an auntie, but I’ve got no legal rights. It’s a trust thing.

  The adoption makes the hospital staff all mushy. They let Chantal and Lennie stay with me the whole time.

  Next night at seven, they break my water. I don’t wanna see what they put inside, but it feels like a long, long needle with a hook. Then it gets horrible.

  Lennie holds me under my armpits, stays at my head. He’s terrified of what’s happening between my legs. Chantal would pull the baby out herself if she could, but she stays with me, asks me, ‘What can I do for you? What can I do?’

  And guess who comes on duty? The Chili Peppers nurse who turned the kid. Sheez, I’m so freaked out, she feels like my long lost mother. When she says, ‘Wait, don’t push. I don’t want you to tear,’ I trust her timing. I let go the muscles there at my fanny, there in my womb. Just when they wanna burst, blow through my body. Shoot the baby out like a cannon. That’s when I fight with my mind. Isolate. Let go all those clever muscles, number one, number two, number three. I say to Chantal, ‘Rub my legs, rub my legs,’ and she rubs my legs, kneads them. I think of her hands, the way they make dough. The pain screams a shattering song. Flames burn me everywhere.

  ‘Rub my back, rub my back!’ and Chantal rubs my back with deep, warm strokes. I put my mind there, on my back, on the strong, warm muscles that wanna fly.

  Sheez. Kill me. It’ll be easier. To die would be terribly nice.

  Then, during one of those breaks when some flippin God whips the pain away, Chili Peppers, I hate her, says ‘Okay, now’s your time.’

  I must flippin
push full throttle, during the lull. I must make ripping pain when I’ve got none. It goes on like this.

  Lennie sweats a river, his sweat dripping into my eyes.

  Chantal rubs my legs, rubs my back like she’s gonna rub me into fine flippin powder. Her face as white as her own raw pastry.

  Me, I know when it’s time for the trick. I know when it’s time to separate. The pain waves have crashed, the baby’s relaxed, right at the mouth. Chili Peppers says ‘Now!’ and I dance for my life. Dance that kid out of the womb. Just like in class, I tuck in my pelvis, whip all three lots of muscle together. Shove them hard against my spine. Squeeze for my life, snap the baby away. Oh my God! The pain!

  I cry, ‘Mommy, Mommy,’ in my brain.

  The baby’s surprised, shoots for the light.

  Chili Pepper’s ready, arms out. She catches him. Chantal whimpers, a mother dog. Lennie staggers, made of rags. I sit up a bit. It runs red between my legs, like the abortion I saw. But this little boy’s gonna live. He’s covered in this buttery stuff, but underneath I can see caramel skin, the same as Lennie.

  Thank God for Hanif, is all I can think.

  Thank you, Hanif.

  Chili Peppers hangs him upside down. The little bugger screams blue murder.

  I guessed right about his eyes. A blue eyed Luke. Brown skin, blue eyes. Come to remind us we’re all made of God.

  He was already doing it in my belly.

  They hold him up for me to see.

  Even then, when he was just born, when he couldn’t even see, I looked in his eyes and saw God.

  Chantal and Lennie kiss me all over my face. Then they lean over me, block the light. The doctor comes in to cut the cord. I can hear blood, everything sounds wet. Sounds like someone’s sawing through rubber tube. Now and then I see red rubber gloves. I feel the blood pour out of me. A whole nine months of it. Chantal and Lennie are shining, I swear. They’re like Joseph and Mary. And I’m the angel who took twenty seven years to bring him to them.

  The nurse spikes my arm.

  ‘We give this shot to rhesus mothers so next time you fall pregnant, the rhesus factor won’t cause any trouble.’

  She asks me how I’m feeling, sticks another needle in a vein, says there’s light morphine in the drip. Asks me again, ‘How’re you feeling?’

  Sheez, a drip drip and I’m scary happy, eezy breezy, better than codeine. My voice is high, like a child’s. ‘Fine, so fine.’

  ‘Not sad?’

  I forget to answer her. She tucks the white sheets under my chin.

  ‘My next baby will be a girl.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I’ll look after her nicely.’

  It makes perfect sense to me, what I say. She has to understand.

  ‘Maybe I’ll call her Madeleine. That means mother. Or maybe Chantal. Maybe Phyllis … but Phyllis is … I dunno.’

  Her man’s hands smooth the sheet on my shins.

  ‘When I have my little girl I’ll be a mother.’

  I hook it all together, high as a kite. ‘Which means Tess.’

  Madeleine and Dumi sneak in from the waiting room. Chili Peppers tells them I was a perfect lady. I hardly screamed, I didn’t swear once.

  ‘Tess is like this,’ says Madeleine.

  I listen to them talking. They look so beautiful.

  ‘I’ve done it once,’ Chili Peppers says. ‘And I punched the doctor, I was in so much pain.’

  Dumi laughs through warm, smooth wood.

  Chili Peppers boasts, ‘I had a beautiful boy.’ She holds a hand higher than herself. ‘He’s big now.’

  That’s when I get it. Another flippin miracle. Chili Peppers is Musica’s mom. She’s the nurse in the photo on the fridge. With her hands out, ready to catch.

  They give me pills to dry my milk up.

  In the morning I sit with Chantal at the nursery, watch her hold Luke to her big, bare boobs. She feeds him with a bottle of baby milk.

  ‘Skin against skin’, Chili Peppers says. ‘The baby needs to feel skin.’ Lennie brings Chantal juice from the machine, like she’s really making her own milk. He buys me chips and Rolos, those chocolates with the toffee inside. Those babies in the nursery, those little birds without feathers, make me feel a bit sick. The morphine’s worn off and those baby birds scare me. I’m not ready to be a mother. I’m not.

  We stick to our plan. I go home that day. Dumi picks me up, takes me to fetch my stuff from Chantal’s. Takes me back to my flat. I cry when I see False Bay Holiday. It must be the hormones. It’s peeling worse than ever. It smells like boiling bones. But there’s a shiny black kid in the tightest pigtails chucking a tennis ball at the wall. Josie’s on my balcony washing something in a bucket. She squeezes it out and looks up at the sky. The cleanest white birds park on the gutter, facing the first, soft wind from the south.

  Dumi gets it all wrong. He thinks I hate it. ‘How many cows to get you out of here?’

  God, I freeze up. I act deaf, but the breeze plays my feathers, I swear. This thrill of possibility runs under my skin. I see his hand coming for mine, but I quickly get busy, wipe my face dry. Stuff it up.

  The bugger remembers the cow project.

  I swear you’ve never seen such a party for coming home with nothing. It’s just me, bleeding and tender. Phyllis, Nora, Madeleine’s whole flippin family. Bonita and the girls. Annie and Darryl. All asking, ‘How’re you feeling?’

  I’m flippin hung over from the morphine, but they bring me Coke and fish cakes, I swear. They know what I like. Dumi goes to Blu Bottle and buys some champagne. Marie and Henrique come drink with us. Josie’s so clever she’s drawn me a picture of a pyramid. I dunno how, but she knows I need to look forwards straight away. Little men in g-strings carrying concrete blocks, lines of them marching up to the pyramid. It says, Good luck for Kyerow.

  When people ask me, ‘How’re you doing?’ I act casual. I don’t say there’s a big baby missing. I say life’s a breeze after childbirth. Everything’s flippin fun compared to it. They stare at my nice, flat tummy. Check my empty arms for an invisible kid. But Sharonne and Josie stay nice and close. I dunno what gets into Josie. She gets on my knee like she’s small. And Noel doesn’t leave me alone. He’s picking up his big sister’s sickness, cause he brings me bright things. He brings me a flat fishing swivel. A flat one rand coin. A flat safety pin.

  I skell him out, ‘No, man Noel. It’s dangerous.’

  The little bugger’s sticking things on the railway line, letting the train crush them flat, make them pretty.

  It’s hard for me to talk about Luke. It’s weird, Mom, I don’t want him. But I miss him in my stomach. I wanna cry sometimes from the deep space that aches there. It’s like they took out my insides, but I’m still alive. I’m walking around strong but I’m thinking, Put it back. Put it back.

  Bonita knows, I dunno how. She keeps asking me about it. I tell her, ‘It’s fine, it’s fine.’ But one day I tell her straight, in front of the girls. ‘It’s like a big, dry space. All I can do is pray it fills up.’ Josie’s funny, she kind of gets it. She says, ‘It’s like when the doctor pulled out my back tooth and I got a dry pocket.’

  ‘Dry socket,’ Bonita mutters.

  ‘I had to wash it out with salt water.’

  That’s what I do. I go swim in the sea. The girls just watch me, cause the sea’s still cold. But I go straight in, let it float me, chuck me around. Let the cold shrink that space in my belly. Stroke me, hold me cold. Ag, you know what I mean, Ma. You love the sea, too. It’s got more life than even the world. Just like the soul Phyllis talks about.

  It’s noisy at the beach. The demolition bulldozers roar. The echo of hammers jolts the sky. They’re gutting the old buildings, Bonita’s old block, the old Empire. Pulling out their insides, tryna save their grand old faces.

  After two weeks, Dumi takes me to see Luke at home. I think Dumi believes me that I’m fine, cause he’s all relaxed, like he’s sure I’m over it. But I’m all watery in
my legs again, teardrops fall in the pit of my stomach, there where Luke grew.

  I can’t even smile when we go in. Lennie misses my cheek and kisses my nose by mistake. He stands calm with his hands on his hips, but his eyes strain like he’s tryna read tiny print. Dumi’s not stupid. He fusses over the baby, gives me lots of time to go close. But I hang back too long, so Chantal elbows her way in. She’s one of those chicks who knows what’s right, you know? She puts Luke on my lap. She stands big, over me. Breathing all jerky. She opens the blanket, so he wakes up all cross. I start crying when I see those blue eyes. I can’t help it. Cause now he’s a fat little person who can see. Now he’s got smooth little cheeks and little black lashes. God, he smells precious, like perfume and powder and cream. He goes still, like he knows I’m crying. Pinches his fingers tight in his fists. He stares straight past my face, full of clear, blue love. I look behind me but there’s no one. Dumi laughs, ‘It’s his ancestors.’

  But I know it’s me. I know he remembers me. I don’t say it, though, all I say is, ‘He’s beautiful.’

  ‘He’s the best boy in the world,’ Lennie says.

  Then Luke rolls his eyes like he’s flippin concussed. I wrap him up again, all clumsy. He yawns with his curvy little mouth. His tiny lids a hundred times too heavy. Lennie can’t take it, he hurries into the kitchen, ‘Where’s the shortbread, you said?’

  Chantal squeaks, ‘In the plastic, under the butter.’

  ‘I can’t find it.’

  She sounds desperate, ‘It’s a green plastic.’

  I look up, catch her terror. ‘It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘It’s okay.’

  Those guys, they’re a family. Mommy, Daddy, Baby. Shortbread. You know, like in a beautiful painting. It’s perfect, it’s finished. Whose gonna go rub out a whole bit? Only a flippin evil person.

  I won’t change my mind.

  But I won’t feel it deep. Not yet.

  I know I’m hiding away. I know I’m covering up. I don’t wanna feel properly what I lost. I can’t yet, Ma. The hole will swallow me up.

  Dumi turns out to be a Jesus freak. But he keeps it to himself till he gets to church. Geez, he invites me one Sunday. Mom, he’s different this oke. He really doesn’t care what people think. He sings louder than everyone. I flippin fall in love with his voice. Just his voice, okay.