Windfalls

by Jean Hegland

  “I don’t want you to get hurt,” Cerise answered. “But I just—”

  “Anyway,” Melody said, “The spaces were going fast at the alternative school, so I went ahead and enrolled.”

  “You enrolled? Without telling me?”

  “You were busy studying, so I just faked your signature. It’s all taken care of,” she added blithely.

  “Well,” Cerise answered, teetering between her pleasure at Melody’s initiative, her terror of Melody getting hurt, her concern about Melody’s future, and her guilt about not staying more involved, “just make sure you keep your grades up. You have to stay in school, or we’ll run into trouble with our aid.”

  “Don’t worry—you’ll get your money,” Melody promised, the sarcasm of her words almost neutralized by the affection in her voice.

  Then fall semester began, and Cerise was engulfed once again, so immersed in her studies and other responsibilities that she had no choice but to assume that everything was okay with Melody, and to be grateful that Melody’s schedule allowed her to spend so much time watching Travis that Cerise did not have to find a day care for him.

  But late one Friday night in September, when Travis climbed over the permanently lowered railing of his crib to crawl into bed with Cerise, she woke up enough to notice a rim of light outlining the edges of her closed bedroom door. She lay awake beside her sleeping toddler until her irritation with Melody’s carelessness and her worry about the electric bill prodded her to her feet. Crossing the room on tiptoe to avoid waking Travis, she eased the door open so that it wouldn’t creak and then stopped in the little hall, stunned by what the light revealed.

  Melody was standing in front of the stove, her back toward Cerise. At first Cerise assumed she was cooking something, but before she could find her voice to ask what, Melody cocked her wrist and plunged her forearm against the red spiral of the element. A long half-second later she yanked her arm from the burner. Holding out her wrist, she studied the stripe she had branded in her skin as dispassionately as if she were examining a new manicure.

  “Melody!” Cerise gasped, as though she were warning Melody of a danger she had not yet seen for herself.

  Startled, Melody flung herself from the stove. She swung around to face her mother, and Cerise watched the expressions flick across her face, shifting with breathtaking swiftness from satisfaction to shame and then to a kind of animal furtiveness before finally hardening into defiance.

  “What?” Melody asked belligerently. “You scared me.”

  “What are you doing?” Cerise asked.

  “Heating water. Where’s the cocoa mix?”

  “Did you burn yourself?”

  “N—yes. It was an accident. Where’re the Band-Aids?”

  Cerise cried, “Oh, Melody, why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why did you—hurt yourself?”

  “What do you mean?” Melody asked indignantly. “I said it was an accident.”

  “But I saw—”

  “What did you see?”

  But in that second all of Cerise’s faults and lacks as a mother, all the flaws of her love, came bristling round her. Suddenly it seemed she remembered every scolding she had ever given Melody, every shriek of blame. She remembered every time she’d said no, every time she’d made a mistake by saying yes. She remembered every instance of her ignorance, her impatience, her exhaustion, all the million ways she’d failed her daughter. And she felt the shame of what now seemed the largest fault of all, that somehow, without intending it, she had passed on to Melody the need—and even the method—with which to hurt herself. She felt the dare in Melody’s gaze and looked away, unable to meet the hard need in her daughter’s eyes.

  Back on her mattress, she lay awake beside the inert warm heap of Travis. The rim of light that framed the bedroom door had vanished, and for a while she could hear Melody rummaging in the bathroom. Then a thick silence reigned as Cerise stared up at the darkness, trying to imagine what she could do to help her daughter. But just before dawn her plans were lost in a series of sharp-edged dreams, and when Cerise’s alarm rang at five, Melody was already gone.

  All that day, as Cerise studied and shopped for groceries and played with Travis and tried to clean the apartment for the week to come, she wondered what it meant, for Melody to burn herself. Part of her said it was not all that important, that Melody would be fine. After all, Cerise had done the same thing once, and she was no drug addict or outlaw. But another part of her ached with pain both current and remembered—not the sting of blisters on tender skin as much as the hole in her soul those burns were meant to cauterize. She knew she needed to do something for Melody, but she was afraid that anything she did might only make things worse.

  That night, after Travis had gone to bed, Cerise was sitting on the sofa, trying to memorize Piaget’s stages of cognitive development, when she heard Melody’s key in the door. At first she felt the slump of relief she always felt when Melody got home safely, though in the next instant she tensed herself for whatever might go wrong next.

  Even so, she was not prepared when she glanced up from her textbook and caught sight of Melody’s swollen face. “My God,” she gasped. “What happened? Did Tree hit you?”

  “Of course not,” Melody answered staunchly. “Tree wouldn’t hurt a fly. I did it all myself.” Cocking her discolored cheek toward Cerise, she added, “It’ll be perfect, once the swelling goes down. After it heals, the contrast will be way better. I used good inks,” she went on, reciting the colors as though she were ten years old again, naming crayons. “Emperor green, sea blue, Texas blue, and pelican black.”

  Tattooed below Melody’s left eye was a raw blue teardrop outlined in black.

  Inside the tear a miniature earth was suspended, the darker blue waters of the oceans rising out of the pale blueness of the teardrop, the green continents of North and South America minute but recognizable against the seas.

  “I had to do the whole thing backwards,” Melody went on, as Cerise stared in growing horror at the ruin of her daughter’s face. “In the mirror. I thought my arm would fall off.” She laughed. “It hurt so much I couldn’t stop crying, and the tears made my cheek all slippery.”

  The trailer began to spin. Cerise’s whole life was suddenly reduced to that single awful moment in that stifling room. Nothing could ever again be right now that her shining girl—her perfect baby—had trashed her own face.

  “Why?” Cerise said finally. “Why on earth?”

  “Hey!” Melody laughed, “Exactly. Why on earth? Good one, Mom.”

  Ignoring her, Cerise said, “Why did you do it?”

  “Don’t you get it? I’m crying for the earth.”

  “But your face—you’ll never be able to get it off.”

  “That’s the point.”

  “You’ve wrecked your face.”

  “It’s not wrecked. The earth is wrecked.” Melody grinned, and added, “Tree says it’s sexy.”

  “How dare you!” Cerise exploded.

  “Mom, it’s something even you should face,” Melody said primly, “what’s happening to the earth.”

  Savage with the need to hurt the thing that had ruined her daughter, Cerise slapped Melody, hitting her so hard across her tattooed cheek that her head snapped back. Melody gasped and threw both hands against her face as though it were something precious she had to catch before it fell and shattered.

  “What have you done?” Melody asked, clutching her face and rocking with the pain. “What have you done to me?”

  But before Cerise could gather an answer, Melody turned and ran into the night, slamming the door so that the whole trailer shook and Travis woke wailing from his sleep. Dashing into their room, Cerise snatched him up and jammed him on her hip. Shouting Melody’s name, she ran with Travis into the dark road. But although she saw curious faces pressed against the lighted windows of the nearby trailers, she could find no sign of Melody.

  Finally, she had no choice but to r
etreat into the trailer, nurse Travis back to sleep, and hope that Melody would be home by morning, and then, when Melody did not return, to try to live inside the anguish that was Melody’s absence. She made what calls she could, but none of the Lost Children were listed with directory assistance, the secretary at the alternative school said she had no record of a Melody Johnson’s enrollment, and the lady at the mall boutique said she didn’t know a thing about buying airbrushed T-shirts from a girl named Melody.

  Cerise was afraid to call the police and say her daughter had run away for fear it would get Melody in some worse trouble, and she was afraid, too, that if the welfare office learned that Melody was no longer part of her assistance unit, their aid would be reduced. She couldn’t quit her program, couldn’t possibly find a cheaper place to live, couldn’t jeopardize the future for Travis and herself because Melody had run off. So she found a day care that could take Travis on such short notice, and then, worrying and working, she waited for Melody to come back home.

  PUSH , THEY KEPT SAYING—ELIOT AND THE DOCTOR AND THE CHORUS of nurses—push, push, keep pushing. And hour after hour Anna pushed, bearing down with every muscle and sinew, pushing until she shook with the effort. She pushed her way beyond exhaustion, beyond expectation, pushed into the very heart of pain, pushed until it seemed her life would never again be anything but that cruel squeeze and peak and plunge, that awful push.

  “I’ve already done this once,” she’d gasped, back when she could still speak. “Why is it so hard this time?”

  “Maybe this baby’s a little bigger than your last one was,” a nurse answered, slipping a blood-pressure cuff on her arm. “Or it could be positioned differently. Every labor’s unique,” she added, calmly turning her attention to her stethoscope.

  “What—” Anna began, but before she could shape the rest of her question, she was under the waves again, clinging to Eliot’s hand because only Eliot could keep her from slipping forever out of reach.

  Push, they all urged—push.

  Easy for you to say, she thought with a final bitter particle of something resembling humor. But she roused herself and pushed—not because she believed that pushing would change anything, but only because she could think of nothing else to do, only because pushing was inescapable, pushing was life’s one certain thing. Century after century she pushed, pushed with every cell and fiber of herself, pushed as though she were pushing the mountain to Muhammad, as though she were Sisyphus pushing the stone uphill.

  And all the while they yelled, Push, push now, push harder, make this one count. With some last wisp of everyday consciousness, she was aware that a new tension had entered the room, that the doctor’s orders were more clipped than before, that the nurses had given up talking among themselves and were guarding their monitors intently, and she felt nearly gratified that finally they all seemed to realize how dire her situation really was.

  Eons after she’d pushed everything else out of her—shit and spit and pee and hope—she bore down one last time with every muscle she’d ever owned. Shaking so hard that Eliot had to hold her to keep her from falling off the bed, she pushed, and suddenly she felt something give, felt an exquisite near-relief that made her desperate to continue pushing.

  “There’s the head,” someone announced.

  “Stop,” the doctor commanded, harsh as a sergeant. “Stop pushing now.”

  “Pant,” a nurse added quickly. “Pant to keep from pushing.”

  “Stop pushing,” echoed Eliot in Anna’s ear while another nurse darted in next to the doctor at the end of the delivery table. “You’ve got to stop, Anna. They need to clean the baby’s lungs.”

  It made no sense, but even so she tried her best to comply, panting and trembling and moaning while her body ached to continue pushing. The nurse at the end of the table ducked her head between Anna’s legs, and Anna thought she caught a glimpse of her sucking on a length of plastic tubing.

  But before she could try to understand, another contraction swept over her. “I can’t,” Anna gasped. “I can’t not push.”

  “Just—” the doctor answered. But already Anna was bearing down against the thing that filled her past bursting. She pushed, and suddenly it broke free of her burning labia, slithered out of her in a warm delicious gush. The doctor caught it—“a girl!” a nurse announced—while Anna sank back among the pillows on the upraised bed, utterly spent.

  It’s over, she thought. I did it. She closed her eyes and floated in a relief sweet as ecstasy while Eliot bent next to her, rocking her in his arms. “She’s here,” he murmured. “She’s with us. Our baby’s here,” and Anna, far out in her private sea, remembered the reason for all her work.

  “Our baby,” she croaked, opening her eyes and glancing between her sprawled knees to where the doctor held their child.

  But the thing that dangled from the doctor’s gloved hands looked more like a discarded rag doll than a newborn human being. Its wrinkled torso was the dark bruised color of steak, its purple face as expressionless as an idol. It looked inert, as dead as mud. It looked as though it was never meant to live. What’s that? she thought wildly. There’s been a mistake. Where’s my baby?

  She and Eliot had planed to cut the cord together this time, their hands clasped on top of each other’s as they had been when they’d cut their wedding cake. But before Anna could rouse herself to stop him, the doctor had already snipped it as unceremoniously as though it were a chicken neck.

  “We’ll need to suction,” he muttered to the nurse who stood beside him as he rushed the baby to the steel table in the corner of the room. A sudden crowd of people were flinging words around the room, a terse jumble of words that Anna was too spent to follow—deLee, heart rate, now.

  “Can I see her?” she asked thickly.

  “In a minute,” the doctor answered, leaning over the limp creature with his stethoscope.

  “What’s wrong?” Anna begged Eliot, clinging to his hand as though she were having the worst contraction yet.

  “What’s going on?” Eliot asked the room. “Is everything okay?”

  “It should be fine,” a nurse said, tossing the answer over her shoulder as she twisted a suction bulb into the baby’s mouth and gave a deft squeeze. “She aspirated some meconium, and now she just needs a little resuscitation to get her going.”

  Meconium? Anna thought, her brain stunned dumb. Resuscitation? She tried to get her mind to remember those words, felt, in the midst of her growing horror, another stab of failure for not having managed to take a childbirth refresher course before the baby came. But there was no time, a corner of her mind pleaded helplessly. We only got here two weeks ago. I barely managed to find a babysitter for Lucy. Meanwhile, a nurse began to scrub the baby with a towel, rubbing it as though she were shaping dough, seemingly oblivious to the way its tiny limbs flopped against the steel table.

  “Bag her,” the doctor barked.

  Anna heard more words, a flurry of words—oxygen, falling, come on. She watched in helpless agony as they covered the dark face with a tiny mask, watched as a nurse encircled the small torso with her hands and then pressed a quick, insistent rhythm on the blue chest with her paired thumbs.

  “Oh, please,” Anna moaned. The air was suddenly thick and viscous, as though all the oxygen had been sucked from the room. Sharp scraps of thoughts rattled through her mind. It’s my fault, she thought. I spent those days in the darkroom before I knew. I didn’t always want this baby enough. I was too worried about the move. I lifted too many boxes. I didn’t push hard enough. I couldn’t stop pushing for long enough. She thought, This can’t be happening. She thought, I would give anything.

  “I have to help her,” she said, struggling with the twisted sheet, trying to will her body to let her rise.

  “Lie down,” a nurse commanded, pressing her hand against Anna’s shoulder and speaking to her as though she were simple-minded. “You still need to deliver your placenta.”

  Another nurse leaned over Anna. “
She’s in good hands,” she said.

  But I’m her mother, Anna thought. A contraction hit her broadside. “Please,” she whimpered as the placenta spilled out of her like a large warm liver. “Please.”

  More people pushed into the room. They spoke to each other in terse tones, and then whisked the baby away before Anna had a chance to touch her, before she could see whose eyes she had or how much hair.

  “Where are they taking her?” Anna begged one of the nurses who remained.

  “NICU,” the nurse replied.

  “What?” Anna asked, vainly trying to turn the letters into words.

  “Neonatal intensive care,” the nurse said, her voice so full of patience and warmth that Anna instantly hated her. “This happens sometimes. The neonatologist will be back as soon as he can to explain things to you.”

  “What are they doing to her?”

  “They’re just trying to get her lungs cleared, to help her breathe.” The nurse bent over Anna’s abdomen and began to knead her uterus.

  Anna craned her neck to watch the nurse’s hands bear down on her empty, doughy belly. Her uterus cramped as though the nurse were pressing against an open wound, and she grimaced and winced automatically, but at the same time the pain felt remote, a thing apart from her. It felt as though her life were happening to someone else.

  They moved her into another room, helped her to change into a clean gown, helped her to arrange a fresh pad between her legs, asked if she’d like to take a shower. “You’ll feel better after you’ve had a chance to clean up,” the nurse said.

  “I won’t feel better until I have my baby,” Anna answered. Even to her ears, her words sounded desperate and pathetic, her voice so tight she could hardly recognize it as her own.

  “You’ll have your baby as soon as possible,” the nurse answered, and Anna felt the grating of impatience and condescension in her tone. “Right now, the most important thing is to get your daughter stabilized.”

  My daughter, Anna’s mind echoed. The most important thing. Unable to speak, she clutched Eliot’s hand until it seemed the bones of their fingers would be permanently twisted by the tightness of her grip.