and tells us the room is ready. We all
troop in. Clare immediately gets down on the floor on her hands and knees.
Charisse starts putting things away, clothes in the closet, toiletries in the
bathroom. Gomez and I stand watching Clare helplessly. She is moaning. We
look at each other. Gomez shrugs.
Charisse says, "Hey Clare, how about a bath? You'll feel better in warm
water."
Clare nods. Charisse makes a motion with her hands at Gomez that means
shoo. Gomez says, "I think I'll go have a smoke," and leaves.
"Should I stay?" I ask Clare.
"Yes! Don't go-stay where I can see you."
"Okay." I walk into the bathroom to run the bathwater. Hospital bathrooms
creep me out. They always smell like cheap soap and diseased flesh. I turn on the
tap, wait for the water to get warm.
"Henry! Are you there?" Clare calls out.
I stick my head back into the room. "I'm here."
"Stay in here," Clare commands, and Charisse takes my place in the bathroom.
Clare makes a sound that I have never heard a human being make before, a deep
despairing groan of agony. What have I done to her? I think of twelve-year-old
Clare laughing and covered with wet sand on a blanket, in her first bikini, at the
beach. Oh, Clare, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. An older black nurse comes in and checks
Clare's cervix.
"Good girl," she coos to Clare. "Six centimeters."
Clare nods, smiles, and then grimaces. She clutches her belly and doubles
over, moaning louder. The nurse and I hold her. Clare gasps for breath, and then
starts to scream. Amit Montague walks in and rushes to her.
"Baby baby baby, hush-" The nurse is giving Dr. Montague a bunch of
information that means nothing to me. Clare is sobbing. I clear my throat. My
voice comes out in a croak. "How about an epidural?"
"Clare?"
Clare nods. People crowd into the room with tubes and needles and machines.
I sit holding Clare's hand, watching her face. She is lying on her side,
whimpering, her face wet with sweat and tears as the anesthesiologist hooks up
an IV and inserts a needle into her spine. Dr. Montague is examining her, and
frowning at the fetal monitor.
"What's wrong?" Clare asks her. "Something's wrong."
"The heartbeat is very fast. She is scared, your little girl. You have to be calm,
Clare, so the baby can be calm, yes?"
"It hurts so much."
"That is because she is big." Amit Montague's voice is quiet, soothing. The
burly walrus-mustachioed anesthesiologist looks at me, bored, over Claire's
body. "But now we are giving you a little cocktail, eh, some narcotics sonic
analgesic, soon you will relax, and the baby will relax, yes?" Clare nods, yes. Dr.
Montague smiles. "And Henry, how are you?"
"Not very relaxed." I try to smile. I could use some of whatever it is they are
giving Clare. I am experiencing slight double vision; I breathe deeply and it goes
away.
"Things are improving: see?" says Dr. Montague. "It is like a cloud that passes
over, the pain goes away, we take it somewhere and leave it by the side of the
road, all by itself, and you and the little one are still here, yes? It is pleasant here,
we will take our time, there is no hurry...." The tension has left Clare's face. Her
eyes are fixed on Dr. Montague. The machines beep. The room is dim. Outside
the sun is rising. Dr. Montague is watching the fetal monitor. "Tell her you are
fine, and she is fine. Sing her a song, yes?"
"Alba, it's okay," Clare says softly. She looks at me. "Say the poem about the
lovers on the carpet."
I blank, and then I remember. I feel self-conscious reciting Rilke in front of all
these people, and so I begin: " Engell: Es ware ein Platz, den wir nicht wissen-"
"Say it in English," Clare interrupts.
"Sorry." I change my position, so that I am sitting by Clare's belly with my
back to Charisse and the nurse and the doctor, I slide my hand under Clare's
button-strained shirt. I can feel the outline of Alba through Clare's hot skin.
"Angel!" I say to Clare, as though we are in our own bed, as though we have
been up all night on less momentous errands,
Angel!: If there were a place that we didn't know of and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here- the bold
exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders
that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning
just on each other, trembling,- and could master all this,
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable soundless dead:
Would these, then, throw down their final,
forever saved-up, forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?
"There," says Dr. Montague, clicking off the monitor. "Everyone is serene."
She beams at us all, and glides out the door, followed by the nurse. I accidentally
catch the eye of the anesthesiologist, whose expression plainly says What kind of a
pussy are you, anyway?
Clare: The sun is coming up and I am lying numb on this strange bed in this pink
room and somewhere in the foreign country that is my uterus Alba is crawling
toward home, or away from home. The pain has left but I know that it has not
gone far, that it is sulking somewhere in a corner or under the bed and it will
jump out when I least expect it. The contractions come and go, remote, muffled
like the peal of bells through fog. Henry lies down next to me. People come and
go. I feel like throwing up, but I don't. Charisse gives me shaved ice out of a
paper cup; it tastes like stale snow. I watch the tubes and the red blinking lights
and I think about Mama. I breathe. Henry watches me. He looks so tense and
unhappy. I start to worry again that he will vanish. "It's okay," I say. He nods. He
strokes my belly. I'm sweating. It's so hot in here. The nurse comes in and checks
on me. Amit checks on me. I am somehow alone with Alba in the midst of
everyone. It's okay, I tell her. You're doing fine, you're not hurting me. Henry gets up
and paces back and forth until I ask him to stop. I feel as though all my organs
are becoming creatures, each with its own agenda, its own train to catch. Alba is
tunneling headfirst into me, a bone and flesh excavator of my flesh and bone, a
deepener of my depths. I imagine her swimming through me, I imagine her
falling into the stillness of a morning pond, water parting at her velocity. I
imagine her face, I want to see her face. I tell the anesthesiologist I want to feel
something. Gradually the numbness recedes and the pain comes back, but it's
different pain now. It's okay pain. Time passes.
Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it's a woman
standing at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth
across a white tablecloth. Amit comes in and says it's time, time to go to the
delivery room. I am shaved and scrubbed and moved onto a gurney and rolled
through hallways. I watch the ceilings of the hallways roll by, and Alba and I are
rolling toward meeting each other, and Henry is walking beside us. In the
delivery room everything is green and white. I smell detergent, it reminds me of
Etta, and I want Etta but she is at Meadowlark, and I look up at Henry who is
wearing surgical scrubs and I think why are we here we should be at home and
then I feel as though Alba is surging, rushing and I push without thinking and we
do this again and again like a game, like a song. Someone says Hey, where'd the
Dad go? I look around but Henry is gone, he is nowhere not here and I think God
damn him, but no, I don't mean it God, but Alba is coming, she is coming and
then I see Henry, he stumbles into my vision, disoriented and naked but here,
he's here! and Amit says Sucre Dieu! and then Ah, she has crowned, and I push and
Alba's head comes out and I put my hand down to touch her head, her delicate
slippery wet velvet head and I push and push and Alba tumbles into Henry's
waiting hands and someone says Oh! and I am empty and released and I hear a
sound like an old vinyl record when you put the needle in the wrong groove and
then Alba yells out and suddenly she is here, someone places her on my belly
and I look down and her face, Alba's face, is so pink and creased and her hair is
so black and her eyes blindly search and her hands reach out and Alba pulls
herself up to my breasts and she pauses, exhausted by the effort, by the sheer fact
of everything.
Henry leans over me and touches her forehead, and says, "Alba."
Later:
Clare: It's the evening of Alba's first day on earth. I'm lying in bed in the hospital
room surrounded by balloons and teddy bears and flowers with Alba in my
arms. Henry is sitting cross-legged on the foot of the bed taking pictures of us.
Alba has just finished nursing and she blows colostrum bubbles from her tiny
lips and then falls asleep, a soft warm bag of skin and fluid against my
nightgown. Henry finishes the roll of film and unloads the camera.
"Hey," I say, suddenly remembering. "Where did you go? In the delivery
room?"
Henry laughs. "You know, I was hoping you hadn't noticed that. I thought
maybe you were so preoccupied-"
"Where were you?"
"I was wandering around my old elementary school in the middle of the
night."
"For how long?" I ask.
"Oh, god. Hours. It was beginning to get light when I left. It was winter and
they had the heat turned way down. How long was I gone?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe five minutes?"
Henry shakes his head. "I was frantic. I mean, I had just abandoned you, and
there I was just drifting around uselessly through the hallways of Francis
Parker.... It was so...I felt so.." Henry smiles. "But it turned out okay, hmm?"
I laugh. "'All's well that ends well."
"'Thou speakest wiser than thou art ware of.'" There is a quiet knock on the
door; Henry says, "Come in!" and Richard steps into the room and then stops,
hesitant. Henry turns and says, "Dad-" and then stop