Fauna

by Donna Mazza

  ‘I hate the way they drill into stuff.’ The scent makes me think of my mother.

  ‘She’s not really started yet.’

  I nod.

  ‘You don’t have to speak much if you don’t want to. I can talk to her.’ He pats my arm. Fingernails always oily from working on machines.

  She’s back with water and soon settles into her chair to continue. Asks Isak about his work and if he can get time off from the refinery when the baby comes. He talks about his paternity leave arrangements and then she turns back to me. ‘Feeling a bit better?’ My eyes flick from her magenta glasses to the orange of her hair and I say nothing. There’s a tight belt around my chest.

  ‘Stacey? Are you feeling any better?’ Isak glares at me.

  ‘Yes, sorry. I’m a bit tired.’

  ‘That’s understandable,’ she says. ‘Most pregnant women get tired in the afternoon. Do you have a doctor’s appointment coming up soon?’

  Isak says we do. She nods a lot. My dislike for her is toxic and I burst.

  ‘I’d rather see someone else for counselling next time.’ They both look at me, I barely knew the words were coming when I said them. ‘I’m not comfortable with you, sorry.’ Her cheeks redden a little and Isak frowns. ‘You remind me of my mother.’ Fuck. Why did I say that?

  ‘Your mother is a problem for you?’ She looks at Isak and back to me. We’ll never get out of here now. I feel trapped. Pushing down a panic attack. ‘Sorting things out like this is important. You have big responsibilities to this child, and your other children.’ I breathe deep, try to centre myself, rise above this feeling so we can go.

  ‘We haven’t spoken for a while.’ I sit on my hands like a child. ‘But I’ll call her this week. She’s very busy. I think it’s just the smell of the lemongrass oil makes me think of her.’ Breathe. I look over to Isak.

  ‘Scent will do that.’ She nods vigorously. ‘We can talk it through next time. Attachment and detachment are important for us to work through together.’ It’s not just the scent.

  In the car, Isak is prickly and annoyed with me for raising the issues with my mother. ‘She’s not that bad. There are much worse people around.’ He puts some music on in the car. Ed Sheeran’s old songs, which we used to sing along to when we met. We don’t speak but the mood shifts and we drive to pick the children up from school. I wait in the car. His gaze back at me is long and a little sad.

  6 WEEKS

  LifeBLOOD’s® digital imaging centre is on a busy corner and Isak throws the car into the last parking bay.

  ‘Shit, Isak.’ I hold the car door with stiff fingers to stop from slamming into it. ‘Why so fast?’

  He steams out a rush of breath. ‘You said you’d call your mother. I won’t come to appointments with you if you’re going to lie to them, Stacey.’ He turns in his seat, face red. ‘I can’t do it.’ Tries to soften his tone but I see his anger, ‘I’m worried.’

  I don’t know what to say. I’m worried too.

  ‘Look, I don’t want to look like a fool. She’s your mother and you need to deal with it.’

  I’m shaking inside. ‘Forget about my mother. It’s got nothing to do with her. Just let it go.’

  ‘I’d love to see my mother. I’d give almost anything to; in fact, for me that’s one of the big reasons for doing this in the first place.’

  My hand goes to my abdomen. Instinct.

  ‘That I can go back and pay the money I owe her,’ he continues, ‘and hold my head high.’

  ‘We didn’t need to buy a house.’ He doesn’t mention the baby.

  ‘We did. We did absolutely. You want a childhood for Emmy and Jake where they move all the time? I don’t think so.’ His job is filthy, hard work. I know he hates it but he does it without complaining, day after day. For us. I have no qualifications to do anything. I could look after children, but I have my own. He is the only one who understands me.

  ‘Why did you want this so bad, Stacey?’

  I can’t answer the question, not even in my own head.

  ‘I can’t explain it.’ It was the lost baby and the zoo of brought-back animals. It just infested my thinking while the kids were at school; all that time when I lay in bed in the daytime, holding my empty belly and feeling the loss of the last baby like a small stone. The weight of it is always with me. All those new animals made from old ones and all that is lost. Lost and gone. Rhinoceros and the last specks of sea ice, polar bears and the worlds beneath the sea and great green forests filled with birds and orang-utans with souls in their eyes. I am carrying it now, all that has gone and is going. ‘Maybe it was the mammoth,’ I tell him.

  ‘You aren’t having a baby mammoth.’ He looks at me with that expression he saves for the most stupid of situations.

  ‘I can’t explain it to you. It’s too big; too complex.’

  ‘I know you’ve been depressed, I understand.’ He taps the steering wheel, staring out at the steaming line of cars. Heat slowly fills the silent car. ‘But if you can’t explain it to me, I really don’t think I can come with you right now, Stacey.’

  His disconnect hits me in the chest and I flinch, shrink from him. ‘They’ll ask me why you aren’t there.’

  He is a little teary and I feel it rise in my throat. ‘It’s still our baby,’ these words crack into sharp points. Hot in my eyes.

  He looks at me, flat. ‘It’s not the same as our babies.’ He won’t make eye contact with me, his jaw is hard and I can see his teeth clenched through his cheek. ‘It’s not. They sliced it up and made it into something else.’

  I’ve never seen him so immovable.

  ‘You agreed to it. You signed your consent, too. You read the stupid contract.’ Anger winds up. Blame. ‘I’m relying on you to understand what we are getting into.’ What we’re already into. I willed myself not to understand, just wanted it.

  ‘Fuck—’ Heat ticks outside. ‘I know.’ He picks at the sun-damaged plastic on the steering wheel. ‘You were excited. It is exciting for fuck-sake.’

  ‘You’re scared and I get it. I am too.’ I try to hold back the anxiety; it’s a baby now and I’m not letting it go anywhere. It will be; I want it. ‘We can do it though, Isak. We can be those people who do something amazing that’s never been done before.’

  He takes my hand, damp in my lap, and tries to be calm. ‘Maybe we can.’ He lets out a huff of hot breath. ‘Look, I just need more time to think it through.’

  I sniff back the tears. ‘My appointment is in a few minutes. Please come with me.’

  He stares at me with a hint of iciness. ‘I don’t think you hear me, Stacey. I need a bit of time. I’ll be here when you come out.’

  I throw open the door, my full bladder obstructing smooth movement, and belt the door shut with all my might. The car shakes. I can see his fingers on the steering wheel, tight and red on the cracked black plastic.

  I sit gingerly in the reception area on the edge of my seat, foot tapping. The weight of our conversation makes my breath short. We never usually argue like this.

  ‘Stacey?’ I look up, furtive eye contact. Still caught in the emotion of argument. ‘Come this way, please. Have you had all the water the doctor asked you to drink?’

  I nod silently, collect myself and follow her down the dimmed hallway.

  ‘Have you been to the toilet or is your bladder full?’ She opens the door, LifeBLOOD® Imaging— Private Facility.

  ‘Oh, no. My bladder is quite full.’ An ironed sheet covers a low bed surrounded by various screens and equipment, cords, monitors, things hanging from the ceiling.

  ‘I’ll just get you up on the bed, shoes off and we’ll have a quick look to check your dates.’

  I close my eyes while she sets up the screen, taps on the keyboard and squirts gel on my belly. Try to focus on the baby.

  Four years ago, when we were returning from Isak’s sister’s wedding in South Africa, we had a stopover for two nights in Singapore and took the kids to the 2033 Resurrection Exhib
ition, a travelling zoo from the Smithsonian’s de-extinction program. Three enormous bio-domes were set up in a park—three environments decreasing in temperature. Tropical, temperate and tundra. The biosecurity was rigorous and we laughed at the white paper suits and plastic masks, but I was really overcome by the whole experience. It touched me deeply.

  Briny water, warm damp air and huge fronded foliage created a primal scent. Interpretive signs with images of the dodo, specimens of eggs and models of skeletons and heads collected hundreds of years ago, left to die in European exhibitions as a curiosity. Eaten by sailors and pigs until they were gone. We could see just a peek of feathers, fluffed up and nestling into long sedge grasses. A guide speaking to a group of tourists in Mandarin pointing towards the little ball of feathers.

  Emmy held my hand, quiet with anticipation, through the double doors locking off the tropical air from the temperate bio-dome. Obediently stepping through a sticky antibacterial gel to prevent cross-contamination. Wild viruses. Isak carried Jake, dipped his little sneakers in the sticky tray.

  The second soaring, white dome was cooler than the humidity of Singapore outside and filled with large American trees, a small hillock covered in waving grass. A breeze moved slowly through and a flock of passenger pigeons circled overhead. Photos of Martha, the last of the passenger pigeons in 1914, demonstrated clearly that within two generations the program had successfully renewed the species. The pigeon DNA was just over a hundred years old.

  Hidden in the grass, the heath hens pecked at scattered seed. The wonder of it seemed lost on the children, who dragged us through the crowd, keen to get to the next dome and discover it. But I loosened Emmy’s grip on my hand and lingered, reading the boards and watching the renewed birds. Here now as though they’d never left.

  Isak waited for me, smiling at my passion for the ancient world. ‘You might get to dig up some fossils someday.’ I’d barely started my studies. Just a few weeks into second semester on a dig in the Wicklow mountains and I was already in love with him. We were unstoppable.

  Separated from the birds, but in the same temperate dome, three thylacines lay with their backs turned to us. Isak was telling the children the story of their extinction, the horror of colonial thinking—something dark and alien. Photographs of ‘Benjamin’, the last thylacine in Hobart Zoo and the sad old video of her pacing in her enclosure. ‘Like a hyena,’ he had said to the kids. Her mangy appearance, hanging head and incessant pacing. Nothing like a hyena in nature. The tale that her corpse was thrown out at the local rubbish tip. A preserved foetus in a jar. And something about the need for apex predators in the Tasmanian landscape. Their three stripy backs turned to us, refusing our curiosity.

  The tundra bio-dome shocked our systems, controlled to keep the ground cold from beneath and the air cold from above. The children complained loudly and tourists dashed through, rushing by the greatest wonder of de-extinction, past the signage and video dumbing down detailed processes for the unscientific public, justifying the project—these animals were helping us stave off climate change by stomping down the tundra and activating some processes that hold carbon in the permafrost. Always so much information when the wonder is in the creature standing on soft grass, scattered with snow. Isak and Jake first spotted the young mammoth as we rounded the corner. It was so huge. No tusks yet. Its rich amber wool, its deep dark eyes. So unexpectedly beautiful.

  Isak took the children out to the gift shop and away from the cold but I stayed in the tundra. Shivering, I met its great eye with mine. Wide and wet and dark, I soared into the depth of it, disconnected from myself. There was something of my truth, something I knew of myself living in the beating heart of this great creature. Its grassy smell, the wisps of auburn hair surprisingly sparse on its skin yet it seemed so certain in that cold air. I was lost to its power and immensity. My heart pounded with the thrill of it and, behind in the frosted air, three artificial figures—a Neanderthal family, crouched and waiting to be resurrected. And on the board beside them some hints at the human trial and the name—Dr Jeffrey van Tink, whose children I had au-paired years before in the nice house with the nice garden.

  I still wear the locket Isak bought for me that day. A coiled mammoth hair like a rusted spring, pressed under glass.

  Now in the dim room, the technician measures the millimetres of growth and plots sections of the image on her screen. My uterus and its parts and details. Things I don’t understand and can only see in fragments around her too-close head. The scan is quick.

  ‘We’re all done here, Stacey. Do you have any questions?’ She glances at me.

  There is only one question that can be asked. ‘Is everything okay with the baby?’ And I know she is not the person to give me the answer.

  ‘I’m afraid we’ll have to wait for the radiographer and his team to write a report.’ She taps into the screen, holds up an image of the embryo, curled like the sprout of a fern. My heart jolts a little, unsure if I am seeing normal growth. She flips the screen back out of view. ‘If you go on the website, they will post images of the scan and a copy of the report for you. Have you logged on to our site yet?’ She wipes the gel from my stomach, flipping the loose clothing over me without touching my skin with her gloved hand. I nod, wriggling off the side of the bed.

  ‘And I see you have an appointment with Dr van Tink coming up so you can discuss your concerns with him.’ For a moment, I did hear the beat of life. Fast and definite, as my own.

  In the car Isak sits stiff and avoids my eyes. My insides twist at the sight of his fine hands, hard against the shield of the steering wheel. He measures his words, carefully planned.

  ‘I want to go and see my family for a while before we have the baby.’

  I sink inside.

  ‘The kids are both in school and they can stay here with you.’ He glances at me for a moment, just quickly. ‘I don’t want to disrupt them. I’ll tell them I need to help my mum on the farm.’ He is pale, his lips stretched thin.

  Sick, frantic. ‘Will you come back? This isn’t it, is it?’ Will myself not to cry. ‘I can have an abortion if you want me to.’ Silence between us ripples with emotion. ‘But—’ Our eyes meet for a moment and he shakes his head, obviously annoyed.

  ‘That’s a very loaded way of putting it, Stacey. I just feel like I need to do it now because it will be more difficult when there’s a baby involved.’ He sighs, looks at me with teary eyes. ‘I just need to come to terms with this and I don’t quite know how.’ His voice cracks.

  ‘I need you here.’

  He touches my hand but he is resolved.

  ‘I know it’s a bit weird but it’s just another baby really,’ I try to soothe him.

  He starts the car, calmer now he has cast off his anxiety. I have picked it up, wrapped it around my shoulders like a prickly shawl. ‘You know it isn’t just another baby,’ he says. ‘But you’ll need me more when it’s born than you do now and I can’t see a time ahead of us for a long while when I will be able to go.’ He takes to the road more calmly. ‘I just need a bit of time to think it all through. And you know I miss my family.’

  I buzz with worry, turn to the window with my tears.

  He softens his tone, ‘You’ll be okay for a few weeks, Stacey. The kids are pretty easy when they’re in school.’

  Life is so fragile—little curls of being, tiny bundles of cells, the human heart. The delicate things; the most precious.

  ‘I’ll do it on the cheap, get another credit card. We’ll have money enough soon.’ His need to go settles in. Traffic is slow and we trace the coast back home, air-conditioner audible in the dense space between us. Even though cold air pumps out at me, oxygen feels lacking in the car. I sip from my water bottle, setting my eyes in the middle ground where rooftops fill the horizon in shades of red, brown and grey.

  ‘I always think of us as rock solid.’ My face is tight, breath shallow. Near tears.

  ‘We are.’ He grabs my hand and the car churns onwards, nearing
our exit.

  ‘You didn’t even ask me about the scan.’ Normally he would be in there with me, asking the right questions. Hearing the news firsthand. Perfect father.

  ‘Stop picking at it, Stacey. We are rock solid, I promise. Just give me some space.’ I brush aside tears, loose and silent, and we pull up at the kids’ school a little early. A bronze-winged pigeon skitters quickly from the path of the car. I sigh deeply and we make eye contact, strong and resolute. Neither willing to disrupt the joyful days of our children. He squeezes my hand but I carry that first image alone. He still hasn’t asked about the baby.

  8 WEEKS

  Isak is gone. Only yesterday, but the pit he leaves in my heart feels dark and heavy. I pull into the car park of the LifeBLOOD® offices fifteen minutes early. Sit in silence, sip water. The hum of traffic. Used tissues, burger boxes, a felt pen chewed to pieces, the skin of a banana. Out of control. I gather it together into a paper takeaway bag. Resolve not to feed the kids junk food while their father is away and leave the stuffed bag on the passenger seat. Have a mint, try to relax. They are sure to check my blood pressure so I need to calm down. Emmy drew a little person with a speech bubble saying ‘calm’ for our toilet wall. It has a caption—‘think of a happy memory’. Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth while saying calm. I breathe. Calm. He is in my happy memories. A Silver Princess eucalyptus droops over the car park. Long grey-green leaves hanging vertical. Rampant pink blossoms brighten the fading season. I parked in its meagre shadow.

  The offices are in an old house, converted into consulting rooms and decorated in a classic style with hardwood floors and soft, creamy colours. It exudes order and cleanliness. Calm. Nothing like the public hospital clinic where my other babies were measured and dated. Waiting for hours in a mismatched row of vinyl chairs. And the last time, those blunt words—‘Looks like baby has died.’ They struck so hard; so unexpected. Delivered so carelessly, as though it were an everyday thing. I curled up like a dead embryo too. Dried into that shape.