Flat on my back, I was trying to tell the doctor, please, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe, but I didn’t have the breath to say it. The half of me behind the blue curtain was being pulled and pushed around the table. Prodded like a tough piece of meat that wouldn’t yield to the knife.
Harry brought him over, and his face—his face, his happiness. Harry thought that now that it was over I must be OK. He said, “You did it!” But I was counting ceiling tiles to keep breathing. I had to keep count and I couldn’t speak because I had no voice. They cut it out when they cut out the baby. Harry kept trying to show him to me, near my head at my left shoulder. I turned to the right. So that I didn’t have to see all the blue. Blue scrubs, blue rubber gloves, blue walls, blue for a baby boy, wrapped in white? Was he? I don’t remember what he looked like. The ceiling tiles were all I could manage. 52.
Later we were in a room smashed into a corner. Harry wedged into a chair holding the baby. Midwives coming in and out, looking, checking, asking questions that only Harry answered. I heard myself talking sometimes, words coming from somewhere, echoes in the back of my throat. I’d stopped rocking by then but if I closed my eyes I still felt the motion. No one noticed; my body was emptied out now and the baby was more important.
Harry was gone before I could say, Don’t leave me. On the ward everyone was in love except for me and that poor girl behind the curtain next to me. Milk and swollen breasts and whispered phone calls to new grandparents—the sounds of happiness everywhere. But I was drowning. The waves had taken me under and no one had seen.
The baby didn’t know that I couldn’t reach him in the little cot by my bed because of the catheter digging in, my mountain stomach and paralyzed legs pinning me to the bed. My arms couldn’t reach to pick him up and then over the side of his cot. I had to try to shift myself closer to him, pushing up on my fists to move over, but there were too many tubes and wires, and the hole in my middle—all my strength had fallen through it. There was also the terror of what I would find under the long rectangular bandages. Some future agony waiting for me.
He had a wild monkey cry, not the sweet hiccup sound of newborn babies. His screeching wail, his angry animal call, conveyed his rage that he had ended up with such a useless mother. I gave him a pacifier to stop the screaming. A midwife scolded me: “That’ll interfere with the feeding, you should know that.” There are lots of things I should have known.
They made me express colostrum by hand. They watched me squeeze the gold out of my breasts into a syringe to feed it to him. Because I hadn’t done enough, hadn’t been through enough. Please, I’m soaking wet, please could I have a different gown? Please can you change the sheets? I can’t move with the catheter, please, please can you help me. In a minute, dear, fill the syringe, Baby needs it.
I tried to sleep but when I closed my eyes there was just the rocking and my own screams, the room swinging like a pendulum. Finally, when the sun came up the midwife put him in my arms. I thought, maybe, it’s a new day, I’ll love him now, I’ll hold him and I’ll love him and yesterday is over and now there is today. But—nothing. He could have been a loaf of bread.
The doorbell’s ringing. “Babe, the midwife’s here.” Harry’s calling from downstairs. He calls me Babe, always has, since New York. I thought it was cute back then with his accent and everything.
That was a long time ago.
“Babe?” I cover up as much as I can so Harry doesn’t see Jabba-belly in its full glory. “Are you alright, darling?” He’s standing in the doorway holding the baby, looking at me, worrying. He’s so good, this man, such a goddam good man. And when I see him being so good I just want to stab him in his worried face. “The midwife’s here, can I help you get dressed?” God, I wish I had a knife.
“No, I’m fine. Where’s Johnny?” I say, trying to roll onto my side.
“He’s with my mother, remember? Let me help you, the midwife’s waiting downstairs.” He puts the baby down in the mini crib next to the bed and reaches for the covers but I stop him.
“Nah, just give me that nightgown from last night.” He picks the nightgown up off the floor, and in the daylight I can see the huge pink stain.
“You can’t wear this, Babe.”
“I don’t give a shit, give it to me.”
“Well, I do. You can’t see the midwife like this, let me help you.”
“Don’t look at me. Just deal with the baby. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
“I want to look at you. Please…” He tries to hug me. I swear to God, if I had the strength, I would tear his balls off. “Get off me. Deal with the baby. I’ll be ready in a minute.”
Harry’s getting angry now in his subtle English way. I don’t think he knew that anger was an actual emotion until he lived in New York. It was one of those things he only ever saw in American movies when he was growing up, like basketball and cheerleaders and frat parties.
“He needs you. Do you want to try to take him?” He holds the baby out to me.
He needs you. If he would just get mad and yell back, then I wouldn’t want to punch him so much. I know it’s irrational, unfair, to be mad at Harry. It’s not his fault. But it’s not my fault either and he’s the one who’s here so…
So anyway, fucking Harry, you think I don’t know what the baby needs? When I was on the table and they cut me open I saw him go up, up above us, lit by the fluorescent lights up against the ceiling tiles, before he started breathing. I saw him hovering in the lights, deciding whether to stay or go. Whether to take his chances with me. I know what he needs, I’m the only one who knows, but I also can’t walk or shit or sleep. I know he needs me, and Johnny and Harry, they all need me.
“Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, can I be of any assistance at all?” The midwife’s voice carries up the stairs. Fuck. It’s show time.
“Get dressed, I’ll go and get her.” Harry looks at me with his hurt face and goes off to pretend that we’re OK and give some excuses about why I didn’t answer the door with my hair done in my pre-baby jeans, a cake baking in the oven. I pull on the stained nightgown. I slide over on the bed to the side of the crib. He’s lying there, sleeping, swaddled up, like Baby Jesus. He’s a quiet breather. Scares the shit out of me.
She’s at the bedroom door now. “Hello, Mrs. Harrison, I’m Katie/Kate/Sarah/Sara, I’m the Community Midwife.” She stands at the door of the bedroom holding her bag. Community Midwife. They send one to your house. Maybe if they had let me see a doctor or something, or maybe the same midwife instead of twelve different ones in nine months, maybe all this wouldn’t have happened. And now there are health visitors and community whatever-the-hells walking through my house every other day asking me my name for the twentieth time, asking me to repeat my history again and again. I tried to go with it and do what they do here. I tried not to be that American one who complained. But look at me now.
“And how are Mum and Baby today?” She bounces into the room ready to save the day. I look to see who I’m dealing with. White, young, bosomy, stuffed into a floral dress that she tells everyone is “vintage” but really is just cheap and too tight. She’s never had a baby, probably never had a real boyfriend yet. An accent from some other part of England with words that end on a higher note than they started. Definitely not middle-class, but it had the small town kicked out of it by years spent in London and a university degree.
“Uh, Mrs. Harrison? How are you today?” Katie/Sarah asks again, moving herself into my line of vision.
“Oh. We’re OK. He’s sleeping now. Can you check me first before you do him?”
“Of course. Let’s have a look at you, then, while we have a few minutes of quiet before Baby wakes. Please lie down on your back.”
“That’s how I got into this mess.”
“Yes. Now lie down if you will, please.” Not even a smile.
“Sure,” I say, trying to shift onto my back. The numbness is starting to go in places. I feel things, but they’re muffled. Almost sound more than feeling. Like listening to the neighbors talking through the walls in my old apartment.
“Now, Mum, how are you feeling in yourself?” she asks. Doctors, midwives, nurses, they always ask this but I don’t know what it means. “In myself.” Am I angry? Alcoholic? Obese? Paranoid? Check, check, check, check. Thanks for asking.
“I’m OK, I guess.”
She looks at me, head to one side. “Are you feeling unwell?”
Oh, I don’t know, it’s so hard to say. I thought I was dying a week ago when they tore this kid out of me and I kind of hate this baby, but I’m considering a change of career and cutting out sugar. “No, I’m fine. I’m just very tired,” and I can’t hold the baby.
“Alright, if you could pull down the waistband of your knickers and let me have a look at the incision. Do you have any pain?” I pull the nightgown up, conscious that my stomach is exposed. Knickers—I always liked that word. Naughty but nice.
“Yeah, there’s pain. It’s coming through.” She peels the bandage off. “Now, hmm, I can’t quite see the incision clearly. Would you mind if I just move your apron so I can get a better view?”
My what?
Apron.
Did she just say “Apron”?
Yes, Apron.
Apron.
An apron. A skin-and-fat apron. Rolls of fat and dead flesh, rubber, jelly, fat, fat-apron.
She picks Jabba the Apron up off the incision. I hear the fat peeling off the raw cut and the stiches. The slurp of skin pulled off the wound. Velcro made of skin.
“That looks fine. Just keep taking everything as prescribed and the pain should subside. Feeling will come back over the next few weeks.”
I say, “OK, great,” wanting to cry but not having the energy, wondering if I could use my Apron to wipe my tears if I did cry, and then an old memory of my grandma putting her kitchen scissors in her apron pocket.
She asks me some other questions and the bandages go back on but all I can think about is my Apron. “Shall we have a look at Baby?” They always call him “Baby.” As if the only name I could come up with for him was “Baby.”
“He has a name,” I say. But I can’t remember it. I can only remember Johnny. Where is Johnny? I can’t remember and I can’t remember the baby’s name. I’m about to say “Paul” but Harry says “Alistair.”
When-did-Dickhead-come-back-in-the-room-and-now-he’s-speaking-for-me-and-sorry-if-I-can’t-remember-the-baby’s-name-for-a-minute-and-excuse-me-but-what-the-hell-is-Alistair is what my eyes are saying to Harry.
He sees my look and corrects, quickly, “But we’re calling him, um…Rocky. My wife insisted because he was such a fighter on his way out. Alistair is just a family name, my middle name, in fact.”
Now I remember. When they were wheeling me to the operating room I said, “Call him Rocky.”
But every time Harry says his name he says, “Um…Rocky.” With that British “um…” that means he’s embarrassed about it but pretending he isn’t.
I don’t care how British he’s going to be about it, we’re sticking with Rocky because Alistair is not an option. I know, I get it, it’s a nice name here, it’s an old name. It’s cute in this context of sweet little kids with British accents who all think they’re going to Hogwarts when they turn eleven. But I can’t take Alistair home. Alistair wouldn’t survive a day in New York City. They’re not even going to let Alistair off the plane at JFK. They’re going to be like, “Sorry, dude, you got to take that shit back to England, you’re not gonna make it here.” And what do I say when I go home to Staten Island? I might as well be saying, Hi, guys, this is my son, his name is Kick-my-ass. C’mon now, obviously I can’t call him Alistair. I can’t even say it right.
The midwife brings me back to the moment. “Rocky, is it? What a strong name,” she says, but she’s too young to even know it’s a movie so whatever, Sara/Katie/Kate, just get out of my house.
She has to weigh him, prick his foot and check the cord. Harry reaches for him in the little cot and takes him out because he knows better than to expect me to do it. He tries to cover for me. He holds the baby and takes the swaddle off, comforting him, like he’s father of the year. Dick.
There’s forms and questions, the red book with the carbon pages for keeping his notes for the rest of his childhood because it’s 1965 here in the UK. I’m trying to look like I’m paying attention but I don’t hear a word. The baby’s screaming his howler-monkey yell. He’s looking for me. I’m sorry, buddy.
“Is Baby feeding well?” the midwife asks and Harry has to answer because I don’t know.
“His name’s Rocky,” I mutter under my breath.
“Yes, he’s doing fine,” Harry says.
“Mum, are you breastfeeding?” Here we go.
“No, I’m not.”
“Are you finding it difficult? Sometimes when a birth has been traumatic both Mum and Baby can take great comfort from skin-to-skin contact and establishing a bond through breastfeeding. We can support you if—”
“No, thanks.”
“It can be difficult for mums to establish feeding at first, especially after an emergency C-section, but we do encourage you to try because—”
I cut her off: “I said no.”
She sits down on the bed to get closer to me and I think about picking up Apron and throwing it at her. “Can I ask why you don’t want to try the breast?”
Try the breast. Makes me think of sitting in a restaurant, two breasts on a plate, parsley garnish on the side.
I don’t want to try, Sara, because I don’t want to touch him. Because I don’t want anyone to touch me. Because I got him out alive and that was all I could do. And no one thinks that’s enough. Now you want me to get my tits out and feed him too? With what? What’s my milk made of? Anesthetic? Paracetamol, stool softener, Clexane for blood clots, iron supplements, adrenaline, cortisol. Caffeine to wake up and alcohol to sleep. Pure mother’s milk. There’s not much I can do for him but I can at least not make him drink poison.
I don’t say any of that because the tears have started. My rage melting into water and when I close my eyes there are the ceiling tiles and the fluorescent lights blistering under my eyelids.
“My wife has tried, Katie,” Harry intervenes. “She’s been through a great deal and she’s done the best she can. She managed to give him colostrum in hospital. Didn’t you, darling? And she is, quite frankly, exhausted. I’m sure you’ve seen that many times before in your [pause] experience. So we’re using formula for now. We’ve written down all his feeding times and how much he’s taken. There’s been a bit of spitting up but um…Rocky seems happy enough.” Harry picks up a notebook and taps the cover.
“We shall certainly seek professional help should we need to. You’ve no need to worry about us but we are [pause] very grateful for your concern and all your help and support today.”
I look at him and she looks at him and she looks at me and I look at her. We all know Lord Grantham just said the opposite of everything he means. In the politest way possible he just told her to back the fuck off and lied to her face because there’s nothing in that notebook. Part of her knows he’s lying but she’s not going to call him on it because she and Harry understand each other. They’re British and this is how they do confrontation. By not doing it, really politely.
He’s defending me and protecting her because he sees I’m about to lose it and this girl, she doesn’t deserve it. He’s trying his best, standing up for me, but it’s how he’s done it that makes me worry. When he channels his inner middle-class-private-school-impeccably-mannered-Tory-voter and his accent goes aristocrat, I get it—I know he’s just using it to control the situation. He
doesn’t do it often, it’s not who he is. But it still makes me wonder if Harry ever would’ve married me if I was from my family but we were from here. Would he have ever married me if I was the daughter of a bus driver from Croydon and I talked like Eliza Doolittle and he had met me here instead of in New York, where no one cares what his accent means or where he went to school?
I get a free pass because I’m American and I’m white and I’m his wife and no one has to know where me and Johnny are really from. No one questions it. They think I’m like Harry, just the New York version, because he wouldn’t be with me otherwise, would he. Would he? No one knows where I’m from except Harry. No one here knows me except Harry. Not even Johnny.
Sara/Kate/Katie is feisty, though. So although Harry doesn’t say that since we left the hospital I haven’t touched the baby; that he’s done the feeding and changing round the clock; that when his paternity leave ends he’s scared shitless of what’s going to happen when he has to leave me here alone with two kids, she’s picked it up, she knows.
She looks at me and says, “Gigi,” so deliberately I want to scratch her eyes out, “you’ve done very well. C-section is very difficult. If you feel you need some extra support, then I’ll leave a brochure here for the breastfeeding cafe around the corner and for the local borough’s counselling services. They have excellent counsellors available if you’d like to talk to someone.”
I’m about to say something but Harry cuts me off and says, “Katie, thank you so much, for everything.”
Then she says, “Can I make you both a cup of tea before I go?” These people with their fucking tea, yes, you know what, yes, tea is what I’ve been missing all along, you’re so right, what I need right now is a goddam cup of motherfucking—
Harry catches my eye. “Thank you, Katie, that would be lovely, but my wife prefers coffee. You know how Americans love a coffee.” And he picks up the baby and ushers her out of the room.
She leaves and before he follows her out he stops at the door, holding Rocky close. “We all just want you to be OK. She just wanted to help,” he says, with trepidation because he knows he’s risked a flying rage or a wave of tears.
When I Ran Away Page 14