I don’t know what to say to make it better, so I say, “Shit, I’m sorry, hun. Here, you’ve got apple pie in your eyebrow,” and I pass her a napkin.
“Fuck,” she says, in that way Londoners do, with the extended “f,” practically spitting out the hard “k.”
I pull back. “I’m sorry, it’s not easy.”
“It’s just…I’m grabbing at sand and it’s running through my fingers. What am I doing this for? Why am I doing everything alone?” Charlie looks up at me and I wish I had an answer for her other than all women do it alone. I don’t know when it started but that’s what everyone expects of us. Even other women who know how hard it is. Especially them.
I look at my tired friend. “OK, well, we’ve got some time,” I say. “That spot by the office threads eyebrows in, like, five minutes. Let’s go to New Look across the street and get you a clean shirt too.”
“Why? Do I look crazy?”
“A little. Let’s get you ready for this meeting. And, listen, you can fix this. You tell Aneela that you’re working your ass off to build a career and you had a bad day because you don’t have enough support. And that your dedication to your career means you’ve left your screaming, crying children in substandard care many times for your job and you’re prepared to do it again, this was just a onetime crisis, and she should know you by now and how hard you work.”
Charlie cracks a sad smile. “That just makes me sound like a bad mother.”
“Yeah. It does. But we’re all bad mothers, Charlie. Kids wouldn’t be such assholes if there were any good mothers. Do you know any kids who aren’t assholes?”
“Aneela’s?” she says, eyebrows raised.
“Good point. They’re amazing. Well, if it makes you feel any better, I know for sure that this baby’s an asshole based on the amount he makes me puke alone, but I’m just a paralegal so…”
Laughing now, Charlie says, “Gigi, what the fuck are you talking about? And you have special sauce on your face.”
“Yeah? Let me tell you, I would take a bath in this shit right now if I could,” I say. Then we both laugh and make our way arm in arm down the street, two bad mothers.
7
blood, milk, shit
A Wednesday in August 2016, 4:30 p.m. London, Grand Euro Star Lodge Hotel, Room 506
I stare at the wall. I stare at the wall because this room has ceiling tiles like the hospital. So I keep my eyes on the wall, on the TV, on the floor, anywhere else but up.
Trigger warning. That’s a thing. Trigger warnings for documentaries and podcasts and articles in women’s magazines. They do it to be kind. They do it to make sure you’re not ambushed by your pain when you’re just trying to take the bus to work. But like most good intentions, they’re obvious and misguided. Because there’s no trigger warning for ceiling tiles. For the color blue. For the sound a sheet makes when it’s whipped off a mattress. I can handle people talking about birth. But please warn me if we’ll be getting into an elevator with bright fluorescent panel lights. Please warn me if there will be ceiling tiles. The kind with little holes.
People say that you don’t remember the pain. You don’t remember the pain of having a baby because if you remembered it, then no one would have more than one child. They say that and then they laugh and sometimes they touch your arm and wink. It’s true—you don’t remember the pain. But you don’t need to. There are so many other things to remember. There is so much more than the pain.
Shit. More wine. Another cigarette, please. As I light up I see the red dot over my emails change again. From 32 to 33. Guess who. It says:
Johnny’s home now from camp. He’s upset because you’re not here. I don’t know what to say. I’m really worried now, panicked actually. Why won’t you speak to me? Please tell me what to do. Anything. Anything you need, anything you want. We’ll sort all of this out later, just please come home…
I don’t read the rest. Anything you want, he says.
I want to sit in a chair and drink coffee that’s hot. I want to cut my toenails. I want to go to the post office and stand on line, alone. I want to go to the supermarket and not worry that in the moment that I look away to find my wallet my children will be stolen. I want to shower for longer than three minutes, sleep for more than three hours. I want to go back to my job just so I can eat lunch at my desk.
I want to go to TK Maxx, and not even a nice one, like Covent Garden, I mean the regular, standard, overstuffed one over here on the high street, and try on the clothes in the dressing room, instead of rummaging through the racks with one hand and rocking the stroller with the other and picking up last season’s ill-fitting batwing tops off the floor and buying them out of desperation to wear something other than your old work shirts. Or just leaving them in a heap somewhere because Johnny’s going to piss himself and we have to leave the store.
I want to have something to say to the mothers at the school gates after “hello.”
I want to not need a drink by eleven and another one by four and another one at seven and another one at eleven.
I want them to stop calling for me, clawing at me, walking on me, sitting on me, leaning on me, punching me, throwing things that I have to pick up, crying for me, dropping shit, spilling shit, needing to be carried, wiped, washed, lifted, moved until my muscles feel like they’re coming off my bones, my scar pulsing, breasts heaving, back breaking and then, Harry, you grasping for me, pawing for me in the bed at night, looking for sex and wanting my body too. And how could you, how could anyone, want this body.
I want to stop screaming at Johnny in the street because I can’t handle my shit. I want to love our baby.
I want to talk to someone besides baristas and supermarket cashiers and the postman. I want someone to say they feel like I do.
I want you to not look at me like that. I want to stop dreaming about my scar tearing open, blood erupting from me and me dying under the operating-room ceiling tiles. You’re not supposed to be able to see yourself die in a dream, but I have. And I want Frankie back.
Got all that, Harry?
I know I’m ranting. That I seem ungrateful. I can’t explain the anger. How exhaustion and anger are the same feeling. I’m angry about being so tired, and the more tired I get, the more enraged. I wonder if I would’ve been different if things had gone right. If Rocky had been born the regular way and I could have pushed all of this out of me. Pushed out the hormones and the blood and the water. Instead I carry it all with me, swirling around inside, trapped. Liquid rage pushing against my organs, covering my heart, filling my ears. I hear the rush of the blood in my veins. All the extra blood I made for him, displaced, unneeded now that he lives outside me.
Harry, do you remember when we found out about him? When I ran out of the cab and into the house and pushed you out of the way of the door so hard that the tea in your hand went flying against the wall and the cup broke? But despite my speed I didn’t make it to the bathroom in time and in the space of fifteen seconds we had a pool of vomit on the antique floor tiles, a huge tea stain on the wall, shattered ceramics everywhere and you said, “Gigi, my God, how much have you had to drink?” and you got all pissy because it was Saturday and you thought I had been out getting wasted when I told you I was working on a case with Charlie but I just sat down and cried and cried and cried. “I’m not drunk, I’m not drunk,” I kept wailing.
“Then what is this?” you said, and you pulled a half-drunk bottle of white wine from my bag.
“It’s Charlie’s, it was Charlie’s,” and I couldn’t explain through my tears that I couldn’t drink my half at dinner so she insisted I take it home.
And you started laughing, “And you expect me to believe that? It’s alright if you’ve had a few, Gigi, let’s get you to bed.”
And I said, “I’m pregnant. I’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregnantI’mpregna
nt.”
And you stopped and looked at me, and left me there, with the vomit and the broken mug and the tea dripping down the wall and you ran out of the house and you came back ten minutes later with three kinds of tests and every ginger product you could find in the store. And we did the tests and you read them and you were so happy. And I was too. And you took care of me that whole night. And in the morning, you and Johnny made me breakfast in bed which was so sweet but impossible for me to eat and when I asked you to go to the gas station and get me some Cheetos instead you said, “Anything you want,” and you kissed me on the forehead. And you made sure there were always Cheetos in the snack cabinet, and then Cool Ranch Doritos when I switched to those at twelve weeks.
Anything you want. I scroll through the rest of the emails: the PTA president about next term’s events; invoice for soccer camp; PizzaExpress voucher; refunds from Gap and H&M for all the cheap clothes I bought that didn’t fit; British Airways autumn offers. Fly to New York for £200.
I put out my cigarette and hit reply, stare at the blinking cursor for a while. Tears want to come. I consider another half-bath. I consider a slice of pizza. I consider another cigarette. I consider my boy, how I miss being the kind of mother I was when it was just him and me. I consider my baby, his blue eyes and dark curls, how his knuckles are still only dimples in his hands, how he reaches out to be held…but I consider him only for a second, because…because…trigger warning.
London, January 2016; Baby, 8 days old
I hold my stomach with both hands. It’s huge and round, as if the baby’s still in there. A big skin-bag stuffed with rubber-fat and flesh and water and blood. My post-baby body. Quick, take a picture and post it. Show everyone my baby bliss, how blessed I am, my Kardashian curves, my Blake Lively breastfeeding-in-a-bikini body, my Jessica Alba after-the-baby abs in People…
Oh, wait. Not me. That’s not me.
The midwives told me that luckily the doctors make the incision on the bikini line. So the good news is that I don’t have to worry about a scar adding to the post-partum, post-natal, post-apocalyptic, post-modern, post-war, post-all-my-hopes-and-dreams stretched-out wasteland of stomach that’s sitting on top of where my body used to be.
Everyone loves a pregnant woman. “Oh, you’re glowing,” they say, until that shit comes out and you’re left like this. And then everyone’s like, “Whoa, dude, well, at least the baby’s cute. Did you always have that beard?”
Ding. A text from home, Sharon:
G you OK? You can’t call people? What happened? How’s the baby?
Me:
Sorry, I’m a f’ing wreck. I’m out of the hospital. This shit is like Afghanistan right now. I’ll call you later. Baby’s OK
Sharon:
OK well luv u. You’ll be OK. Send a picture soon
Me:
OK
But OK is far away.
Where’s Johnny? I can’t remember.
I can’t see my feet if I look down, my stomach’s in the way, so I shuffle over to the mirror to look for the incision. I open my robe and hold my stomach up with one hand, peel off the bandages with the other and there it is, my flesh sewn together with black thread, a freaky smile stitched between my hips.
I catch my eyes in the mirror. Brown and bloodshot. My hair is black with grease. Neglected and unwashed for days, it looks like I cut it myself with a steak knife. Like the heroine always does in movies about crazy women. Then the beautiful actress walks the red carpet with a pixie cut ready to get her Oscar for gaining twenty pounds for the role. So brave.
I keep looking in the mirror. My knees are fat. Did you know you can gain weight in your knees? That shit’s just bone. It’s a bad day when you find out your knees are fat. My tits are terrifying, blue veins under transparent, taut, pale skin, veering off in opposite directions. East-Westers. That’s what Harry would call them. My thighs are giant, formless. Don’t even talk to me about my ass right now. I stopped at full frontal today so I don’t kill myself.
Ding. Danielle’s texting.
What’s your problem, you can’t answer the phone?
Me:
I’m fine. We’re OK
Danielle:
How’s the baby? Is the baby OK?
Me:
He’s fine, he’s good
Danielle:
OK then tell me if you like this dress
Look at this. She texted a picture of her in her wedding dress. She’s getting married at the end of the year. Soon she’s going to start sending ideas for bridesmaid dresses. God help me. The thought of stuffing all of this body into some floor-length satin number makes me cringe. The thought of getting on a plane to go there for her wedding; the thought of getting anywhere beyond the end of today—not for nothin’, Dan, but now is really not the time for this. Whatever, let’s see.
Me:
I love it, you look great
Danielle:
What about my chicken nuggets? Are they bad?
Me:
Your what?
Danielle:
You know, the skin by your armpit, you know when you wear strapless? I like how my cleavage looks but I’m worried about the nuggets in the photos
This girl’s brain’s a nugget.
Me:
If you got chicken nuggets, then I’m a whole f’ing bucket of KFC right now. OK? You look beautiful
Danielle:
LMFAO. K, I love you, talk to you soon. Send a picture already?
Me:
K, luv u
But there’s no pictures. Or maybe Harry took some, proud daddy, but I don’t have any. I can’t tell her what happened. I can’t tell her or Stacy or Sharon because they’ll just feel bad and talk about me and worry and call me every day and they’re too far away to do anything and I can’t right now. I can’t—don’t want to—talk about how it was or tell them now, how this feels, what it’s like. If I use my old voice, then no one has to know.
I go back to bed to sit down and there’s another gush of blood and water between my legs. In the hospital they act like this is no big deal, sitting in bed in a pool of my own blood and piss and pieces of uterus and fuck knows what else. The midwives just look at you like, It’s time to pull your socks up, dear, or one of those phrases they say here when the going gets tough. They work hard, I’m not saying they don’t work their asses off, I’m not saying they didn’t save my life, NHS-universal-health-for-all-isn’t-it-amazing-blah-blah-blah. What I’m saying is that I really need Oprah right now and all they got here is that short lady from the Weakest Link.
Goodbye.
The woman in the bed across from me, her baby was screaming too, but she just held it to her breast, whispered to it, smiled a tired smile. Fell asleep content, baby on her chest, tiny hand wrapped around her finger. The circle of life spinning round and fucking round. I couldn’t stand up to close my curtain and hers was open so I had to sit there and look at her with the love dripping off her like honey.
Seven women in the ward and five of them were at the pinnacle of womanhood and then there was me and the girl next to me. I never saw her face, curtain pulled between us, but I heard what was going on. The man threatening her in whispers; her sister asking if she was safe; her crying because he’d kicked her out of bed and made her sit in pain in a chair while he took a nap. I called the midwife over after a few hours and pointed silently to the curtain so she would intervene. They asked him to leave. When he was gone I heard the girl say, “Thank you,” through the curtain. But I think she was saying that to God. If I knew God like that I might have asked him for help too.
Harry had to leave because dads couldn’t stay at night on the ward. That was better for Johnny anyhow, to wake up and have Harry at home. But tha
t meant it was just me and the baby. Harry left and I hadn’t held the baby yet. It was all him till then. No one noticed that I couldn’t touch my baby, that I couldn’t reach him to hold him if he cried.
And I didn’t want to.
My labor was three days long. I bounced on a ball, held on to a bar, sat in a bath, inhaled frankincense, whatever they wanted me to do, all of it over and over for days. Harry did everything he could, which was almost nothing. He’d stroke my hair, tell me that it would all be alright although I knew he didn’t know if that was true and I could feel the anxiety pulse through his hands. It was the first time he’d ever been powerless, vulnerable, physically afraid. The first time he’d felt what women feel all the time. There we were, scared, in the hands of strangers, and the baby wouldn’t come.
Finally, an epidural. The pain stopped. Just for a minute, though, just a minute of relief. Because then it traveled up my spine and collided with some of the other shit they gave me before and then I was fucked-up. Really fucked-up, outside-my-body fucked-up. Thinking I was dying but unable to say any last words, looking for Johnny, hoping that the last thing I told him was that I loved him.
Then the baby’s heart rate dropped. Then the blood. The terror in Harry’s face. Shaking hands, blurred vision, when the me-outside-myself heard what they were about to do to me. Papers shoved in my hands to sign. They wanted me to write my name on the paper and I couldn’t remember how. Harry’s hand on mine to quickly make the letters. My last moment and all I could think was that if the baby got out that would be good and maybe if there was just a little time then I could get to see his face. Just once.
When I Ran Away Page 13