I haven’t eaten since 7 p.m. last night – a supper interrupted five times, congealed and tepid by the time I shovelled it in – and my God, it’s nearly four in the afternoon now and so I have to eat, I have to eat, if only I can manage to cook these eggs, and as people always say: ‘I don’t know where the hours have gone.’ But in this case I know who’s stolen them, and as I try again to fish the fragment of shell out I hear her start up once more; that piercing shriek, so perfectly pitched, an ear-split of sound that reminds me that my time is not my own any more, that it never will be again.
I push my hands to my ears, go to the fridge for the butter, try to ignore her, because after all, just a few minutes won’t kill her, will it? And I have to eat, too – ‘It’s not all about you and your milk, you know, and if I don’t get any food, then I won’t have any milk for you, anyway’ – and I am weak with hunger, with exhaustion, with a strange kind of misery that they told me would float by on day four, but it’s not day four yet, and there’s no floating, only drowning, which means I’m failing already.
I give up with the pan and decide to microwave the eggs instead – Jack would tell me it’s sacrilege but he’s not here, so his opinion means nothing – and as I think of him I am surprised by how angry I am with Jack for not being here, for leaving me all alone, because he’s not the one who’s had no time to eat or wash or . . .
In goes the butter now, then a splash of milk, even though I know aficionados would tell me I’m breaking the rules; sacrilege again, never doing things properly. Short cuts, half-measures. Tut, tut, tut. I whisk the sickly yellow mixture with a fork – shell and all – then shove it in the microwave, but her shrieks grow louder as I slam the door shut. I’m coming, I call to her in my head, just wait a second! My brain is sluggish as I press the buttons – is it two minutes or three for scrambled eggs? I go for three and rush upstairs, but as soon as she sees me she stops crying, gives a yawn and falls asleep, her lips twisting into a half-smile that makes her look evil, somehow, if such a thing were possible.
Just testing, her features seem to be saying. You belong to me now. And you thought it was the other way round!
The microwave pings, another sound so shrill and demanding I want to hit my head against the bedroom wall, but I don’t, of course I don’t, because I’m a mother now and that would be incredibly irresponsible and childish, and it’s not all about you any more, Helena, and so instead I go back downstairs, answering the microwave’s call like the compliant creature I am, and as I walk I feel the warm gloop sloshing about in my knickers, reminding me of another thing to attend to, another thing that Jack can’t help with, even if he was here, but he’s not – and anyway, who cares about the state of my knickers, about the state of me? First I must eat.
I yank open the microwave door to find a lump of bouncy rubber, inedible even to the ravenous, and I find myself mindlessly lifting the bowl above my head and smashing it on the floor because, like everything else right now, it feels like a test, a test of patience, a test of competence and I’m so angry at failing all these tests that I can’t bear it.
*
So much to do.
So much.
I haven’t slept now for eighty-five hours. I know this because I have been keeping track because some part of me is so amazed, so impressed with myself, that I’m pretty sure I’m going to write to the Guinness Book of Records when I get a minute and ask them to include me, because surely I’m the first new mother to survive on so little sleep, and I mean, who knew it was possible really, to still be alive when you haven’t slept for three and a half days and that everything they ever told you about needing sleep was a lie, a strange lie, that you’d die without it, what nonsense, apart from babies, of course, babies need sleep, because they need to grow, but this baby doesn’t seem to want to sleep, which is strange when she is so small, so very small . . .
She is small but she won’t eat and when I put her against my nipple she just turns and squirms away and goes red with frustration and disgust, her fingernails so sharp for someone so small scratching and scraping at my vein-filled breasts until the skin is cracked and raw and it hurts both physically and emotionally to pull my T-shirt back down over them, to give up on the whole endeavour and to give her a bottle instead, which she slurps at greedily in her impatience to get to it, letting the milk run down over her chin where it settles in the folds of her neck.
I have made so much milk for the baby that I am now pumping it into a little bottle, just like the midwife told me – ‘Freeze it for the future! Liquid gold!’ – just like a cow, except I don’t feel like a cow at all, instead I feel like a creature from outer space, a hideous creature that’s bleeding heavily and passing clots as big as plums and leaking milk when I bend over and has a stomach like a stress ball – I can push it in and it holds its shape before slowly pushing back out.
Jack is talking to me right now but all I can see are his lips moving – there is no sound coming out of them – and I smile and tell him that everything’s OK, that I’ve got a handle on it all, that he doesn’t need to worry, that of course he can nip out again if he needs to, that the baby and I will be just fine because, like the midwife said, I am superhuman, because I survived a three-day labour, because I gave birth without any painkillers, without anything, and because my third-degree tear is healing already, I can tell it’s healing because I can sit down now, and even though it smells, that’s OK, it’s to be expected, everyone says so.
Can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.
Or something.
Eggs, I was making eggs.
So much to do.
My mother is here too, I think, somewhere in the background, trying to stop the baby crying because that’s the one thing that isn’t going so well, the baby keeps crying, and especially when I pick her up, but that’s because she was stuck for so long in my birth canal, I think, and she’s recovering from the trauma of being born but it’ll be fine eventually, I looked it up, and Dr Google said I just need to take her to a cranial osteopath, like they suggest on Mumsnet, and she just needs to drink some of this milk that I can’t stop squirting, rather than vomiting it all up, and she needs to get some rest because, after all, she’s a baby, and babies should sleep all the time, shouldn’t they, they shouldn’t be crying all the time like this.
Maybe it’s my mother that the baby hates.
My mother thinks that it’s absurd that the baby doesn’t have a name yet but what she doesn’t understand is that there’s been no time at all to think of such things, because I’ve had so much to learn, not just the bleeding and the pain when I sit down and the bruising on my body and the never-ending milk but learning how to dress this tiny scrap of a thing and how often to feed her and how often to wind her and what to do about the smell coming from her tummy button, which doesn’t seem to be healing despite what all the midwives say.
Jack is still talking to me and his face has changed expression so I squint to listen to him because I’m scared he might be angry with me, even though I am trying my best, whereas he has done nothing but sit by me and answer text messages from people congratulating him on the birth of his daughter when I was the one who did it, but anyway he’s saying something now about the baby crying, and me having to go and pick it up or he’ll call my mother again, which means that she’s obviously not here, after all, and that I’ve got confused.
I tell him it’s OK and that of course I’ll go and get the baby, because I’ve got this, and he doesn’t need to worry, and then I push past him and ignore the way he is looking at me as though he doesn’t recognize me any more, even though I suppose he doesn’t recognize me because I do look different, what with my stained pyjamas and the fact I haven’t washed my hair since that horrible shower in that tiled cell, but how can I wash my hair when there’s so much to do here with the baby?
I pick her up and I tell her to be quiet, that she is a lucky baby because she has a superhuman supermum who is never going to leave her, a
nd I repeat this bit very carefully because I don’t want to be like my mum, and so I tell my baby, ‘I will never leave you,’ and, ‘I love you,’ and, ‘It’s going to be OK,’ but you have to stop crying now because your brain needs to grow because sleep is the most important thing for you – not for me, I am OK, I’m going to get in the Guinness Book of Records, but for you – and did you know that babies are born three months before they should be because humans’ birth canals are too narrow and it means they have to be born before they’re neurologically ready to cope with life and the only way they can get neurologically ready is if they sleep?
There must be something wrong with her, even though everyone keeps telling me she’s beautiful and perfect and amazing, that’s what they’ve all written in the cards cluttering the floor of the fireplace, which keep falling over in the draught when Jack opens the living-room door, and they make me itch with irritation but why am I worrying about them when the baby won’t sleep?
I look back up at Jack and he is wearing his coat and he has his bag slung over his arm and then I remember the reason that he is so worried is because he’s going out again – ‘Just for the afternoon, I promise, just for an essential meeting’ – and I was cross last time he left me alone with the baby, my lovely baby who is five days old now, or is it four, I can’t remember, and doesn’t have a name yet but it doesn’t matter because I love her, and what do names mean anyway, they’re just affectations and they’re not feelings, and nothing will sum up the way I feel about her, unless I call her Loved, but that would be ridiculous and everyone would think I had lost my mind.
Jack is kissing me and then he kisses the baby and I notice in his eyes that he doesn’t want to go at all, he doesn’t want to leave her any more than I want him to leave. But what doesn’t make sense is this ache in my ribcage that tells me that I want to go to work today and that I am envious of him because he has had a reason to get showered and dressed and put on aftershave and open his computer and check his emails but I don’t have any reason to do any of these things. Not any more, because now my job is to be here with this tiny baby and try to keep her alive . . . and until she sleeps and eats I’m not even doing that right.
*
The next thing I know, I am waking up and I am on the sofa, but I can’t remember how I got here or how I fell asleep, and I’m cross with myself because goddammit I was going to get the Guinness World Record and now it looks as though I have scuppered my plan.
It takes a while for my thoughts to untangle themselves, but then it comes back to me in a rush: I am here, alone, except I’m not alone and I’ll never be alone again because I have a baby now, and there’s no taking her back even if I wanted to, which I kind of do, but that’s not right, is it? Not allowed to say things like that, Helena, how absolutely shocking. And she has a birthmark in between her non-existent eyebrows, but other than that she is absolutely perfect, the most perfect baby you ever did see, as all the cards in the fireplace keep telling me, even though they’re all messy because they keep falling over and people keep shoving them back up without any thought or care as to how they are arranged.
I turn the television on, wait for the screen to come to life, and when it does it is filled with pictures of David Bowie, and for a while I don’t understand, and as I wonder what’s going on and if it’s his birthday or something, I listen to a woman with too much make-up on waving her arms around saying something about his eighteen-month battle with cancer, and it takes me a while before I understand what she means, that he has ‘lost that battle’, if indeed you can call it a battle when it’s not your fault that you lose, it’s not that you didn’t fight hard enough or weren’t strong enough but that it was simply your time to go, and if you get hit by a car, people don’t say you lost your battle with the road, or walking, do they?
Either way, it doesn’t matter, all that matters is that he has died, and this fills me with a hollow feeling that I can’t explain, and I think back to my teenage years, to the time my dad brought out his records – ‘Enough of your teeny-bopper pop nonsense, listen to something groundbreaking for a change’ – and we tried to make sense of ‘Starman’, and my dad said not to read too much into it, but that Bowie was trying to tell me that I’d never be alone, that there’d always be someone up there, looking down, taking care of me.
I’m alone now, though.
No, that’s not right. I’m not alone. I’ll never be alone again.
I clamber off the sofa and go to find the baby because, the truth is, I can’t remember where she is or where I put her before I fell asleep and there’s something strange going on in the back of my mind, an instruction or something, from someone – the midwife, or my mother. But I haven’t seen my mother so that can’t be it, I must be confused, I must be getting muddled up, perhaps instead it is Jack who has asked me to do something with the baby, but I have failed him because I’ve already forgotten what it is.
I go through to the nursery and of course the baby is in there, in her cot, where she’s supposed to be, because I am superhuman supermum – no pain relief for me! Except she’s not supposed to be here in this cot on her own without me being in the room because the health visitor said she must be in the room with me at all times until she’s six months old because she can’t yet regulate her own breathing and she needs to be close to me in order not to die from cot death.
And then I remember that now it’s not called cot death any more, it’s called sudden infant death syndrome, and I have to poke my baby to make sure she hasn’t succumbed but it’s OK because she gives a mewing sound like a kitten and I pick her up and then it’s there again, that voice, telling me that this baby is special, that she doesn’t need a name because she is too important, that no name would ever be worthy of her and that scares me because it means that I, too, am inadequate and I, too, can’t live up to her.
*
Later I am loading the washing machine with tiny Babygros and muslin cloths, all covered in vomit and milk that she has rejected, when I hear my phone buzz and I pick it up, thinking of course it’s going to be Jack telling me what time he will be home, but instead it’s not him, it’s someone else entirely, someone I don’t want to see, someone I never want to see again.
Someone who took my trust and obliterated it, someone who targeted me at my most vulnerable, someone who put profit before kindness, before everything.
I look again at her message and I don’t understand what she’s saying, or how she knows where I am, but apparently she has a gift for me, for me and the baby, and she wants to bring it over, and she thinks this afternoon would be a good time and she’s on her way over and Jack has said it’s OK.
And then I realize, I realize it all.
She thinks it’s David’s baby and she’s going to tell Jack, and she’s going to ruin everything and there’s nothing I can do about it even though she’s already taken my job and my self-esteem and my livelihood and chucked me on the stay-at-home-mum rubbish heap to rot because she doesn’t want anything to do with me any more because she has used me, used me up, got what she wanted and got rid, and she’s won, in the epic battle of good versus evil she’s won, she’s beaten me, she’s the cancer and I’m David Bowie, and now I’m stuck here and I’m doubting myself and I’m wondering whose baby this is, and thinking perhaps I did sleep with him, after all, even though I was sure I didn’t, and maybe that’s why I can’t name her, because she’s not worthy, because she’s the Devil’s child and it’s only a matter of time before Jack finds out and everything will be over once and for all.
*
I am calmer now. It has taken a while. I had to put the baby downstairs in the utility room, turn the washing machine on to drown out her noise and shut the door, and then I came upstairs and now I’m having a bath, finally washing my hair, and everything is OK because I can’t hear her crying.
She can’t get me in here. I’m safe.
I have been focusing on my breathing, counting to ten, deep breaths in and out,
in and out, in and out. Someone told me to do that when I was upset a long time ago. I’m staring at the pictures on the ceiling of the bathroom. I never noticed them before, but they are swirling around in circles, mixing colours and drawing me in, like an abstract painting being completed before my eyes.
I know what I have to do now. It’s simple. I should have thought of it before.
My phone is balanced on the side of the bath and I check the time. It’s exactly six o’clock, and now I need to move. I push my phone into the water and watch it bob about before it sinks, leaving a trail of bubbles behind so delicate that looking at them hurts my eyes.
I climb out of the bath and pull on my nightdress. There is no time for shoes, and somehow shoes don’t seem right for what is about to happen.
I count the steps down to the ground floor. It has bothered me since we moved in that there are eleven of them, such an odd number, eleven, both literally and figuratively. But now I am happy because I have realized that it’s the 11th, and it’s all meant to be, it’s all working out perfectly. This is God’s plan, except I don’t believe in God, so it must be someone else’s plan, and I know it sounds crazy but I’m sure David Bowie has something to do with it all, that he’s watching and waiting, and he’s going to make sure everything’s OK.
It’s darker than I expected it to be downstairs. I turned all the lights off earlier, and it’s January, so of course it’s dark outside already. I tiptoe to the utility room, and push the door open. It creaks and the light from upstairs filters down through the hallway, casting a glow on what’s inside. The washing-machine light blinks at me. And there she is, the baby.
David’s baby.
He is going to blow our minds.
She’s not asleep, but for once she’s not crying. She looks up at me with those foggy eyes – eyes that can’t see anything and don’t know anything. Her arms are twitching, her hands outstretched, fingers opening and closing in some kind of reflex, an unknowing experiment, trying to work out what they can do, who they can hurt. I know from my research on these reflexes that if I make a loud sound she will startle, her whole body will jerk and her arms will fling outwards and back in again, and then she’ll cry.
The Rival Page 24