This Little Family

by Inès Bayard

  * * *

  —

  When she arrives home Marie puts the dozen or so small bags down on the kitchen counter. She’s bought too much cheese but she couldn’t resist it. As she turns around she notices a pink-and-white box in the middle of the dining room table. She goes over to it. “My darling, to think you still don’t get it…I love you so much.” Laurent appears, startling her. She grabs hold of the box—it’s a pregnancy test. Her hands are shaking, the pressure in her temples hammers behind her brows and feels as if it’s pushing her forehead out of shape. A cold sweat bathes her stomach and neck.

  “I’m not pregnant, I’m about to get my period.” A week now Marie’s been waiting for her body to bleed. She’s always a few days late so she hasn’t fretted. She can feel the disaster drawing closer, the lead wall she’s going to crash into looming. Challenging her.

  “Use it, then, if you’re so sure of yourself. I know what I’m saying, you’re my wife and I know your body. I’ll wait out here.”

  Marie fulminates with anger. How dare he say he knows her body? This man who chose to penetrate her the very day after her rape, delving his great fat fingers deep into her injured vagina and lowering his head toward her crotch while he grabbed her by the hair. She doesn’t want to take this test. Can’t do it. If she does she’ll go crazy. In this liberal society that rewards those who put in enough effort, she should be queen. Raped, soiled, humiliated, abandoned in her own shit, bathed in her attacker’s still-warm semen, she could have put her trust in justice. She chose silence. Her husband’s devastatingly knowing looks aggravate her nausea day by day. Laurent laughs, talks, goes out, drinks, cooks, and sleeps. Incapable of arousing even the tiniest whiff of pleasure in her when lovemaking. Marie thinks she might have a horrible feeling of dishonor if she tells Laurent the truth, but she tries desperately to convince herself that this would be only a small sacrifice in exchange for her freedom. In the end, though, she always resigns herself to the lies, aware she’s betraying herself, destroying herself. Is it abandonment that she so dreads, giving up the emotional and material comfort that she’s grown so attached to over the years, the whole sequence of past happiness and mutual love, or the reckless unhealthy adrenaline produced by secrecy? Maybe it’s for all these reasons at the same time that she now can’t refuse to take the test. She doesn’t shy away from it.

  Marie makes her way along the corridor toward the bathroom. She wants to turn back but she can’t. Laurent watches her from a distance, starts to follow her. She locks the door and opens the box to read the instructions. It’s not very complicated, she just has to pee on the stick and wait for some lines to appear.

  “Okay? Did you do it? Open up, I want to be with you to see the result.” Under this much pressure, Marie could drown herself in the bathtub or slash her wrists with a razor. She has the choice of knowing how this will all end. Her breathing quickens, her heartbeats explode inside her chest, her ice-cold legs wobble on either side of the toilet bowl. She puts the cap on the test and stows it back inside the box. Laurent hammers frantically on the door. She eventually opens up and hands him the box. He takes it, grabbing it from her with an enthusiasm she’s never seen in him before.

  One line. She’s not pregnant, she knew it. Laurent’s disappointed. They can throw the test in the trash, move on to something else. The baby can happen another time. She heads back toward the kitchen but Laurent catches her by the arm. “Wait, wait, it’s not over. Look!” A second, fainter line is appearing alongside the first. That’s impossible, it was negative just a second ago. Very slowly, cruelly, the momentous second line gradually asserts itself until it’s completely visible, establishing a definitive verdict. Two lines. Pregnant. Laurent explodes with happiness in his wife’s arms. Marie doesn’t know what to think. There has been road work on their street for months. She can hear the pneumatic drill breaking up concrete. They’re pouring cement on her head. The heavy gravelly flow of it crushes down on her, immobilizes her, burns her, buries her. She’s suffocating. She smiles at Laurent, bursts into tears, doubles up in pain, throws up, then smiles again, laughs out loud, cries. It’s quite a performance. She already knows she can’t take this. Marie is in no doubt at all: it isn’t her husband’s baby.

  “I have to call my mother! She told me over lunch. I knew it, I can’t tell you how happy I am. Our baby! Call your sister!”

  She nods, hiding her distress. This pregnancy is a disgrace, it goes against nature. Until now, even after her rape, Marie has never really felt evil at work around her. Now there’s a black shadow evolving in her womb, propagating through the nerves of her genitals, infesting her guts with its appalling stench. She collapses on the floor. Laurent’s yelling into his phone in the living room. The chill of the floor tiles stiffens her body where it lies. Her first words are addressed to herself. “Your child will be cursed.”

  I don’t know how but I knew it. I knew it would happen this year, I told your father!” Marie’s mother can’t hide her emotion. The whole family has been invited to lunch. Only her sister’s husband, who’s on a business trip to London, couldn’t be here to celebrate the new pregnancy. Marie still smiles constantly, wanly brushing aside the multicolored sequins that Laurent has scattered over the tablecloth by way of decoration. It’s diabolical. She wonders how she ended up here. This huge joke that everyone believes in, this stupid performance lighting up the faces of her beloved family as she looks at them with her guilty eyes.

  Her father uncorks the second bottle of champagne. “To my baby, who’s now going to have a baby of her own! I want to tell you just how proud your mother and I are of you, of who you are and everything that you and Laurent are about to start building together. We love you and we’ll always be here. Well—you get to do the sleepless nights on your own!” Laughter erupts around the room; long blades slice through the air, sharks carving through water. The excess of happiness is intolerable.

  Marie’s mother keeps weeping in her daughter’s arms and starts describing her experiences of motherhood. Marie doesn’t want to hear this, would like to slap her to get her to shut up. She calls for a bit of quiet, a moment of calm. No one’s listening. It’s hopeless. Marie must open her presents. That’s the least she deserves for carrying her rapist’s child. Baby clothes, two maternity dresses, some crockery, little fleecy blankets, a stroller, and some toys. She still can’t quite get her head around it. She’s pregnant. As the weeks go by, it’ll become really visible. Her stomach will grow, her body will change, and her breasts will fill with milk that she hopes will be so bitter that her baby can’t suckle.

  Roxane has a very special gift for her. Marie tears the wrapping paper off the heavy package that looks at first glance like a book. On the cover Roxane herself has put together a mixture of whimsical stickers and a collage of photos from Marie’s childhood. Marie could almost collapse with pain. Roxane thinks that she’s moved to tears and stands behind her, turning the pages for her. A newborn Marie in her mother’s arms at the hospital. Marie aged six riding a pony. Marie skiing with her father, who’s teaching her to snowplow. Marie at her first teenage party at high school. Marie receiving her diploma at business school. Marie at the mairie in Bois-le-Roi formalizing her union with Laurent. Marie in a swimsuit on her honeymoon in Bali. Marie getting ready for her first day at the bank.

  She gives up. She’s going to tell them now, this can’t go on. Where’s the picture of her rape? Where should they put this latest memory, the only one that can end it all, taint it all, spill its bile over this whole catalogue of perfection? The ideal woman no longer exists. There’s no woman now, no wife, no sister, and no daughter. There’s just the filth, anger, and darkness in her crotch sitting there right in front of them all. These memories are now all fake. Everything’s ruined. “All that’s missing now is the baby.” The baby she won’t allow to live. She can’t. Can she bear to have the eyes of her rapist’s progeny on her every day? The cruelty of watching Lau
rent get a bottle ready every morning for a child she knows isn’t his? That monster is inside her womb.

  Roxane closes the photo album and puts her arms around her sister. Her little boy is crying in his high chair but Marie pretends not to hear her nephew’s wails. “Come on, you need to get some practice!” Roxane says, picking up her son and putting him carefully into her sister’s arms. An indescribable pain cuts across the small of her back. Marie feels as if she’s going to fall apart any minute, breaking up under the pressure here at the foot of the sofa. The child squirms furiously, kicking his cold little feet against Marie’s breasts. He swivels his eyes in every direction, twists his huge head from right to left, unable to settle. He screams, aware that something’s not right. Laurent comes over to help Marie and she hands the baby to him, relieved and a little ashamed. A subtle embarrassment creeps over the family. Roxane smiles and looks away. Her mother averts her eyes. Laurent is a father already, taking the child as if he were his own, petting him, wrapping him up in love and affection, smothering him with attention.

  It’s three o’clock already and someone says, “Let’s leave the mom-to-be to get some rest!” The words slap at Marie’s ears like the ring of an alarm clock that no one’s thought to turn off on vacation. She was just chatting to her father about contracts at work, about her most important client who’s about to sign a millioneuro life insurance policy, and about her plans for a career in a private bank. It was an interesting subject. For a few minutes she’d almost forgotten. The baby has ruined everything all over again. She knows that soon, with her disgusting big belly, it will be impossible to forget her torment for a second. That won’t happen. She’ll have a secret abortion. It’ll just take a bit of organization and discretion. The evening she found out she was pregnant Marie tried to find a solution on the Internet, typing “pregnancy after rape” into the search engine. It didn’t take that much to summarize the situation, just those three words, but it was the first time she succeeded in putting that night into precise terms. France is a tolerant, society-focused country. The Veil law has allowed voluntary terminations since 1975. Before twelve weeks’ gestation any woman can choose to have an abortion, whatever her reasons. Marie will find a doctor and explain the situation. She’ll be protected by medical confidentiality, no one will know. She’ll take the last pill, the one that triggers the evacuation of the fetus, before going to bed in the evening. She’s prepared to suffer alone and in silence for a few hours, and it will all be over in the morning. A miscarriage. It often happens in the early months. The blood-soaked sheets will be reliable evidence of the tragedy. Laurent will be devastated for a few days. They’ll make love again and this time she’ll be pregnant with his child.

  * * *

  —

  Not many people are brave enough to cycle in winter. Laurent wants his wife to protect herself from the cold, gently scolding her to be sure she avoids any risks, tying her scarf around her neck before she leaves for work. Black ice, Parisian drivers in the morning rush—he’s worried for her. Marie spends her time reassuring him, even though she wants the worst to happen: being knocked over by a truck or skidding under a car would be the best thing that could happen to her. Her womb empty at last.

  “I’ll come pick you up from work in the car this evening. Paul’s expecting us in his office at seven. I can’t wait! The first ultrasound, maybe we’ll get to see something…” She thinks he’s pathetic. He kisses her and goes off to work, forgetting his file which is over by the window. Marie sees it but doesn’t say anything, starting to take pleasure in his misfortune. Laurent has insisted that Paul oversee her pregnancy from start to finish. Which is an additional disaster for Marie. It will make everything more difficult to implement, he’ll notice every attempt she makes, and she won’t be able to confide in him like a normal patient. He’s married to her best friend, and she can’t even tell her the truth. The escape route is getting narrower.

  On the way to the bank her cell vibrates: Laurent wants to know if she arrived safely. She won’t reply for thirty minutes, time enough for him to fret. Her phone’s never rung so much: Sophia calls to say she’ll be there this evening for her first appointment with Paul; her sister wants to have lunch with her tomorrow; her mother’s going to make a hearty stew for their visit on Sunday; Laurent’s worried because she didn’t eat enough breakfast. It never stops.

  Hervé is in deeper despair than usual this morning—his wife tried to poison the turtledove last night. He saw the open pack of rat poison under the kitchen sink. Marie has her doubts about his wife’s true intentions…Maybe she’s planning to kill him, not the bird? But she keeps this to herself, doesn’t want to tell him. The day wears on. Her work has now become a pastime, a hobby that keeps her tortured mind occupied while she waits to see what happens next in the tragic saga.

  It’s six thirty when Laurent calls to say he’s waiting outside in the car. Marie hurries out. He’s badly parked, right in the middle of the street with his lights flashing amid a cacophony of car horns and insults. Laurent yells out the window for her to hurry up. In her rush, she knocks into a buggy and the baby howls. “Oh my God, what the hell! You need to look where you’re going, you could have killed him!” Those last words resonate in her. She feels like snatching up the child, taking him from his mother, and hurling him to the ground until his brain spills from his skull. Striking him again and again, hard enough to bury him in the concrete. She apologizes and runs on to the car. Still shocked, she doesn’t kiss her husband but just asks him to pull away quickly.

  * * *

  —

  “Here she is, the mom-to-be! My darling!” Sophia always overdoes things. She literally throws herself at Marie, kissing her ostentatiously, hugging her face up to hers and pressing against her body. Marie realizes she doesn’t like tactile people. The sort who innocently touch a hand, a shoulder, or a thigh as if they don’t know they’re doing it. The smell of disinfectant hanging in the air in the corridor turns her stomach. Paul’s office is in the obstetrics and gynecology department in a wing of the Salpêtrière hospital. Paul is a little older than Laurent, and they met thanks to Sophia and Marie’s long-standing friendship. It was friendship at first sight for the two men, true friends, always there for each other. Marie remembers when Paul and Sophia’s baby was born: she and Laurent arrived in the maternity ward laden with presents and boxes of chocolates, running along the corridors so as not to be the last to see the baby. Now it’s their turn. Marie imagines the worst, plagued by irrational anxieties: What if the ultrasound reveals the rape? What if the fetus doesn’t have Laurent’s face, isn’t the same shape as him, doesn’t move or smile like him? What if Paul finds evidence of the rape when he examines her? She thinks that such a highly reputed gynecologist who’s used to seeing rape victims sometimes several days after the assault couldn’t miss what happened to her. A woman’s body talks, bears witness to the violence it has suffered. She suddenly regrets her irresponsibility—Paul is going to know everything in the first few seconds, he’ll look up and ask everyone to leave the room so he can ask her for some explanations.

  “Come on then, you, onto the chair! Let’s see if Dad did a good job. If it’s a boy I hope he won’t inherit his father’s physique!” They all burst out laughing. The atmosphere is relaxed, lighthearted. Marie hovers in the middle of it all. Surrounded and alone, supported and abandoned by everyone. Maybe this is the right time for them to find out the truth, after all? Marie undresses behind the small screen. She comes out, coyly, takes a few hesitant steps toward Paul, tugging the bottom of her sweater down over the tops of her thighs. Laurent is touched by his wife’s shyness. Marie settles herself on the examination chair, her legs shaking in the stirrups.

  “I’m going to do the scan. Don’t worry, it doesn’t hurt.”

  She feels like an animal, a fat heifer having her parts examined while three prurient strangers look on. Paul inserts the speculum, the cold implement
slides between, presses against, and then painfully widens the walls of her vagina before easing out slowly. She holds her breath for a moment. Paul looks rattled. His face freezes. She can tell the revelation is about to happen, is almost relieved that the truth is finally going to explode in everyone’s face and this masquerade can come to an end.

  The scan begins. Paul picks up a long, round-ended plastic tube covered in slimy gel, and introduces it progressively into her while glancing at the screen set up facing him. He types on his keyboard, concentrating and serious. All at once a wide smile relaxes the muscles of his face.

  “Look, there it is. The fetus is very small at the moment, but you’ll be able to see something in a few weeks.” Marie doesn’t want to look. Paul thinks she hasn’t noticed the screen intended for patients that’s hanging on the right-hand wall. He points it out, almost prepared to turn her head toward it. “Here, look. Take a look, it’s there.” She can make out a large white halo in the middle of which Paul points out what looks like a little black clot. Laurent comes over to his wife’s side. He’s crying. Paul comforts him with a bevy of solid masculine slaps on the shoulder. Marie looks away from the screen. The fetus doesn’t yet have any human characteristics: no head, no feet, and no genitals. But soon it will all appear, it will materialize. There’ll be appointments like this every month.