Fauna

by Donna Mazza

  Through my dress he presses around, feeling her outline in me. He traverses the boundary and works down, careful and firm, approaching my pubic bone. Lifts my dress and gently places the cold ring of a stethoscope under my navel. Smiles.

  ‘Strong heartbeat there. Want to hear it, Isak?’ He pops the dark buttons from his ears and places them around Isak’s head, mindless of the strange intimacy. Hunched down under my dress they listen, eyes fixed on a middle space somewhere lost in the beat, beat, beat. The rhythm of her life in creation. It is as if I have gone. The burn of laksa rises in my throat.

  ‘It’s quick.’ Isak’s voice is light.

  ‘No quicker than your other children’s will have been in utero.’

  ‘You really think she’s going to fit in with the other kids?’

  ‘It’s up to you two to make that happen, Isak.’ He folds down my dress, pats my knee. ‘We don’t expect her appearance to be so outside the norm that she won’t be accepted by others as part of your family. We want her to be brought up by you just as if she was one of your own.’

  ‘She is one of our own,’ says Isak and I know that he is committed. I know because he will defend her as his own.

  Jeff smiles wryly. ‘She’s also our research, Isak. This is a joint project, we are partners in this.’

  Isak stiffens and looks at me, holds my gaze. We read about this—the study of her growing up. When she grows up, if all goes well. She will have a good life and any medical trials done on her will not put her life at risk.

  ‘She is precious to all of us,’ Jeff says.

  I am still on the examination table. There is a long silence and Jeff is the one to break away.

  He dips his head. ‘It’s not too late if you want to terminate.’

  The statement sucks my breath out.

  ‘You need to be certain of this, that you can raise her with your family.’

  ‘You don’t normally terminate this late,’ says Isak.

  ‘Well she might survive as a prem baby.’ Jeff cleans his hands with antibacterial gel. ‘Someone else might raise her.’ The smell is acrid and I want to get out of here. ‘Stacey, what are your thoughts? It’s a courageous thing you are doing. You are bearing this—not alone, mind you—but it’s your body we are discussing.’

  But it’s not. I am ours: I am hers, theirs, Isak’s. ‘It’s done, Jeff. She is real now and we are already doing this.’

  He smiles, his shimmery eyes locked on mine in awe, satisfied as a glutton. I liked him once, but this child has changed what I see.

  24 WEEKS

  Pressure is tight in my abdomen from my full bladder and the ever-growing mound of the baby. I went shopping with Emmy, bought maternity jeans and a buoyant, blousing top that she picked for me. Too colourful. Excited to be shopping for new clothes instead of second-hand ones, she wanted to buy baby clothes but settled on a bunny-rug and some bibs. She is victorious over Jake—a sister will be all hers. She bursts with it onto the world of schoolteachers and friends who coo and fuss over me. I am a voodoo doll, constructed of blood and falsehood. Bound tight with scraps of flesh, grown in a Petri dish. Button eyes. I smile and thank them for their well wishes, lie to them about getting to swimming lessons in a hurry. Lie to them more. They offer help with kids. Stick me with pins.

  Jason, the new radiographer, calls me in and begins once again the ritual. The laying out, the bearing of flesh, the squelching of gel and the cold. He presses hard into my belly, round and round. Clears his throat to break the silence.

  ‘She’s getting bigger.’

  I can’t think of words to respond with so I smile weakly at him.

  ‘I’m just measuring the placenta.’ He clicks and taps on the keyboard.

  It is dark and terrestrial. A great, temporary organ which grows again and again with each child. A thing of magic, rubbed on the face of witches. I saw Emmy’s in a kidney dish but I had no urge to feast on its nutrients.

  ‘Do you think it’s the same?’

  ‘The placenta?’

  ‘Yes, do you think it’s human?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s something to ask the doctor next week.’

  ‘Interesting thought though, isn’t it? That thing there might not be human. That massive organ there like a parasite or something.’

  His eyes shift sideways, wary of transgression, breaking a taboo.

  Sometimes, the cells of the foetus cross the barrier into the mother. Parts of the baby transfer through the placenta, leaching out into the mother’s body, creating anew parts of her tissue, installing the code of her unborn baby into her heart and her brain. She is no longer herself as she once was. She is a chimera, parts of her forever altered with the DNA of her children, human or not. I am not me any longer. I can feel her writing herself into my bloodstream. Ancient codes uttered in the pulse of our being. Homo neanderthalensis tracing back into the world through our cells.

  25 WEEKS

  My unity with her engulfs me. Isak and I walk on the beach in silence before our appointment. The blast of late winter storms has driven mounds of dark, ribbony seaweed onto the beach and our steps sink into the stinking heaps of it. It is tangled with white, elliptical cuttlefish cores and wrangles of kelp. Sandy pieces of sea sponge and tubular forms wrenched from the sea floor. Amid this mass glisten cans from Asian grocery stores, packages with Chinese script. A worn length of wood, crafted once by hand, bears the holes of many years in the churn of the ocean. Detritus of fishing expeditions. The hard corpse of a broad fish patterned like honeycomb. Isak bends to pick something from amid the mass.

  ‘Batman.’ He holds a small plastic bat wing. ‘All this stuff will rot away but Batman survives.’ He laughs. He would like to live closer to the coast.

  ‘There must be something symbolic about that.’ Though I have no idea what. Wind blows at his hair.

  ‘We need to be superheroes, Stacey. That’s a lesson for us from this. All the stuff around us seems like a big tangled mess but we’ll survive it. It’s all going to fade away into the past and Batman, here, he’ll still be sitting on the sand watching the clouds roll by.’

  ‘I love it when you’re philosophical.’

  ‘I’m a high-vis poet but you don’t give me any credit.’

  It’s true. I have lost my generosity, especially with him. I hold so much inside.

  ‘This baby—’

  ‘You’re very self-absorbed when you’re pregnant.’

  Strange that he chooses that word.

  ‘I feel like I’ve been absorbed.’

  He checks the time. Doesn’t respond to my disappearance.

  ‘Come on, Batman, it’s that time.’

  The usual tests of blood and wee with the large-glasses woman seem even more distant and in a few moments we are in Jeff’s office. The plastic uterus is in pieces on his desk, veined plastic and ovaries, the false sinew of the vagina muscles heaped beside his keyboard. No leaching placenta cells visible on the pile.

  He is a little formal in his greeting and I feel the hangover of our last appointment.

  ‘I am worried about the birth,’ Isak surprises me with this. Why didn’t he share this with me?

  ‘How about you, Stacey, how do you feel about it?’ He clears his throat, defrosts a little.

  I pause. ‘The others were okay. I try not to think about it.’

  He clicks through his ultrasound images.

  ‘Don’t they have bigger heads?’ Isak asks.

  I feel the force of it, pressing into my pelvis. Her head.

  ‘You mean she has a bigger head.’ I see my wings spread. I am her shelter.

  Jeff smiles at my response. ‘Well if you look here.’ He points to the measurements on the screen. ‘Her cranium is much like the shape your other children’s will have been. Their heads grew into a round shape, like a soccer ball, in their first year and hers won’t. Her head will stay that shape, we think. Like an egg, or a football.’ He flicks to another screen, turns to Isak. ‘We aren’t c
ompletely sure, but I can assure you that the brain of a newborn baby and our girl here are both four hundred cubic centimetres. Her face, though, has more robust bones than your other children so we’ll have to monitor the birth closely and intervene if we need to.’

  I never want to focus on the horrors of birth. It just happens, plots its own course. No amount of anticipation will prepare me.

  ‘What does that mean exactly? Can I still be there?’ He is anxious, a shrillness in his voice.

  ‘Yes, of course. And I will be right there, don’t worry. There is no way I will let anything happen to either of them. If she’s in the right position, her chin will be tucked into her chest and the shape of her face won’t impact on the birth.’ Jeff smiles over at me, nods reassuringly.

  ‘Have you done this before? Has someone given birth? I see on your website there was a phase one of this,’ Isak pursues.

  ‘Phase one was a different kind of clinical trial. There were no live births.’ He stands from his chair. ‘Now don’t worry. Everything will be fine. Take her somewhere nice for dinner while you have some time without a baby.’

  ‘Yeah, thanks for the advice.’ Isak takes my hand and draws me away from the doctor and his plastic uterus.

  In the car, the warmth makes me sleepy.

  ‘I’m sorry, Stace. You have every reason to be self-absorbed.’ He holds my knee as he drives.

  ‘It’s okay. Don’t worry. Thanks for asking about the birth.’ I have been afraid to ask the questions.

  ‘Not sure you want to know too much though, love. Don’t think it will help on the day.’ He has been there each time, each moment of labour for the other children. Unique in their own ways.

  ‘Birth is about surrender, Isak. You can’t know what will happen—not for any birth.’ Deep inside, though, I know this is different. There is reason to worry; reason to ask. I try not to think of the mechanics of it. The visceral tear of memory.

  28 WEEKS

  Isak is missing my appointment today, keeping a little time in credit at work in case he needs it later. I walked the kids into school this morning, stopped to watch the honeyeaters sucking the pollen out of grevillea flowers. Spattered with rain. The moment so sweet. Jake’s teacher wanted to ask about the due date but I rushed away, eager to see Emmy’s artworks up in the school hall. She has held back on the glitter, fashioned a colourful elephant patterned with Hindi swirls. My bladder is hard and we sit in the classroom for a moment while she shows me her maths book. The tenderness of her efforts with fractions, not quite right. So close. I wonder how many more of these days will be so simple and so sweet. I have had a little cramping, but kept it quiet. They will find out why soon enough. It can’t be a problem or the PregCam™ would know.

  I am back in the imaging centre with Jason in a blue shirt. Another scan.

  ‘Yes I do have a full bladder, yes I do need to go but I haven’t.’

  ‘Well hello to you too.’ He laughs. ‘Come on, let’s go check on this bub then maybe you should take yourself out for a nice lunch. You sound like it’s getting to you.’

  ‘That’s an understatement.’ My gait has changed, the heavy front of me causing me to lean back and counterbalance it. Some days my lower back is very sore.

  He gives me a bedside-manner smile. I sigh and follow him to the same room. He sets me up on the bed, gels my belly and looks me in the eye.

  ‘You know, I realise that this must be a very difficult experience. It is absolutely not normal to be having a Neanderthal child, no matter how much they tell us to pretend like it is.’ He looks in my eyes and touches my hand. I am surprised, pull my hand back.

  ‘Sorry, Stacey, I’m speaking out of turn. They record these sessions but I haven’t switched the webcam on yet.’ He slows down a little, turning the lights around on their long stems.

  ‘They record this too, not just the scan?’

  He nods, eyes wide.

  ‘I like you. I just want you to know we are under surveillance in here. You should know this stuff.’

  I am shocked, but pleased. ‘We’d better get started or they’ll start to wonder.’

  ‘Jason.’ His finger hovers over the keyboard, waiting to start. He looks over to me. Warm eyes piercing into mine.

  ‘Before you start. Will they record the birth?’

  He flicks on the webcam.

  ‘Absolutely, no doubt about it. Now, here we go. Oh, look, there she is! She’s turned over.’ He runs the cursor over the shape of the nose—just like the other kids. He measures her. She is small. Complete. Big, dark eyes, I imagine. A little well rises up. Baby. My baby.

  ‘Looks like she’s moving down towards the birth position, Stacey. They have an EDD down here of thirty-two weeks but it looks like she’s getting herself ready. Might be a bit early.’

  A little charge inside—a thrill. Fear.

  He looks at me. ‘You’ll be fine and she will be too. Don’t worry. Look at her, she’s gorgeous. Preemie babies at this age are …’ His phone rings. ‘Normal’ he might have said, or ‘usually fine’. I know he has broken protocol and wonder if he’s in trouble.

  ‘Yes, yes. Yes, I’ll ask her.’ He nods at the phone. ‘They want to know if you’ve had any of the normal signs of labour.’ Serious.

  ‘Um … cramps a bit, but only mild ones the last couple of days. I thought they were just expanding pains or Braxton Hicks.’ My face is hot, anxious.

  ‘Just as a precaution, they want you to go down to the hospital and book in. They are sending a taxi.’ They’re panicking and now I am too.

  ‘But I need to go home, get my things. I have to pick up the kids from school. It might be the last time I can do it for a while. They’ll be expecting me.’

  ‘Calm down, Stacey, calm down.’ He holds his hand over the phone as if they can be blocked out. ‘Don’t stress, love, it’s only a precaution.’ He gets up from his seat and moves away a step or two.

  ‘Please, can I call Isak?’ I want to cry. ‘Is it really this fucking urgent?’ Jason listens to the phone, looking away from me. Quietly hangs up.

  ‘Okay, now just take it easy, Stacey. We can slow things down a bit. No panic. They’ve asked me to go with you to your place, pack a few things and take you to the hospital. It’s not urgent but they want to monitor you. You might be there for the rest of your pregnancy, so we can take some time to get you organised and comfortable.’

  I shake inside, my throat filled and hard.

  ‘They don’t want you to lose her. You understand that, don’t you, Stacey?’

  ‘Yes, I don’t want to lose her either.’ Sniff, close my eyes.

  ‘Now, I’m going to get someone to organise my appointments. Take a moment and give Isak a call.’

  In the dim light, the frozen image of her knee on the screen glows across my face. I tap Isak’s name and the phone rings.

  ‘Everything okay?’ Tight panic in his voice. I tell him the story knowing he is already rearranging our children and his work hours in his thoughts.

  In the silence after the call I feel her fluttering, reminding me of my full bladder. We share this urgency. Pressure bearing down like rock. Amid the tangle of my intestines and organs her purpose prevails. She will walk this earth, I know it.

  The door opens and Jason appears with a wheelchair.

  29 WEEKS

  I didn’t even know this was a hospital. Low and leafy on the banks of the river, it is tucked behind houses and a car park. It is a transplant clinic, not a hospital, according to the signage. Birds call, various trills and squawks rising above the hum of healthcare and gadgetry. The décor is soft, earth toned. Inspiring verses embossed into the cement walls. Our body is a machine for living. It is organised for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyse it by encumbering it with remedies—Leo Tolstoy. It wraps around the corner. I have read it over and over, annoyed by the break between ‘go’ and ‘on’. Puzzled by its endorsement of
no remedy. Secular words meant as the wisdom of ages, which seem comforting but aren’t. Comfort, perhaps, when a transplant doesn’t work.

  I am instructed to stay in bed, avoid long walks around the hallways. Each day they take me in the wheelchair out into a garden overlooking the river and each day I sit and stare at the moored boats and large houses stacked like cubes ascending up the banks. I stare and feel her there. Insects in the breeze, a flutter of wings. The sun of spring is gentle for a short season and I have time to watch it pass. Its days burst and wane, blossom and pollination. I am having a baby and yet I am paralysed and encumbered with the waiting. Each day measured by pulses. Each day scanned and tested.

  In the afternoons Isak comes with the children, brings flowers or chocolate, fruit, things to read or wear. I wait for them but when they come I am tired suddenly and they have complaints and homework and are hungry. The room is close, despite its size. Emmy likes the private bathroom, the hospital-grade soap and wears the latex gloves down to the cafeteria. Isak pushes the wheelchair and we sit overlooking the river. Glass intervening between us and the insects. There are tall mounds of ice-cream bathed in luminous sauces. Creamy coffee for Isak. He apologises for his indulgence. I tell him I don’t care. I feel like I’m watching them through a screen, smile at their stories, voices masked by a whisper in my ears. Constant, it takes me into the womb, where I am held, transfixed.

  I am not sure what they tell me, not sure what they say, have no memory of our conversations. They laugh and talk between them as if I am present. Perhaps it seems as though I am. I feel the warm press of their faces against mine. Their blessed smell of coconut shampoo and coloured pencils. They wheel me back to my room, park me up in the band of sunshine from the window. I cry when they leave. Finally notice the pictures they have drawn for me. The effort of crayon and glitter. Jake’s script embossed hard into the paper. Backwards letters. The gush of love.

  He returns one evening alone, looking tired. I know he has driven almost an hour home through traffic, left the children with someone and come back here. He has brought two takeaway containers of laksa. I smile for him because I know he deserves me to, try to rise from the pulse of the machine.