Queenie didn’t call him to see the baby those first few days. She’d refused to tell him her due date in response to feeling like an afterthought in his neat, well-organised life. I don walka into this situation well well! Queenie thought, chiding herself.
She missed the smell of him, that warm, earthy scent that had a hint of exoticness. She missed the feeling he gave her, the softness of her malleable body beneath his broad, steady hands. Sometimes, she pictured an atlas of their times together rising from his shoulders, that he held that world in his hands during quiet moments. It had been difficult giving birth alone, panicked and half out of her mind.
She’d been in the supermarket when her water broke, clutching a bottle of vegetable oil that fell, missing her feet by an inch. She’d called out, heart racing, mouth dry. The realization she’d be giving birth alone sank into her caving body. Somebody grabbed her arms from behind, pulling her up. She saw him then, in his other life, sitting at a wooden dining table, holding cutlery, covered in birth water.
At the nurse’s station, Queenie held the black phone receiver, the dial tone a new heartbeat. Life-sized worker bees; the nurses flitted to and fro in all directions. And the faint jangle of medical instruments, footsteps and fast instructions seemed like some unlikely symphony a Doctor had concocted. What had she been thinking keeping this baby? How was she going to cope? You should have thought of that, she mumbled internally. Tears ran down her cheeks. The faint ache in her grew. She took a slow breath and looked around, trying to still her trembling body. An eggshell coloured desk sat in the centre, stacked with notes. Next to a watch a silver stethoscope borrowed breaths from a concave chest in the distance, trapping an international calling card, the zip from a polka dot dress, a brass head bearing the memory of a father’s touch, the blueprint of a baby from the blue. A swear jar with the note fu**! was perched in the middle. Queenie resisted the urge to pick up the jar and walk the sterile aisles rattling coins, until the delicate knot of her loose hospital gown came undone.
Earlier, she’d torn the name band from her wrist. She looked up at the whiteboard mounted on the wall, transfixed by the names and hospital numbers scrawled in barely legible orange handwriting, waiting for something to be revealed to her. She felt scared, lonely and miserable. Part of the baby’s blueprint had found its way into her throat, scrunching into a ball. Her eyes swam. She spotted a nurse flying towards her, face pinched. “You left your baby on the bed! You can’t do that. What if she rolled over and fell to the floor? Oh dear, you must be very tired.” The nurse remarked, searching her face worriedly. Queenie looked through the nurse, her mouth curving up in a half smile, half grimace.
Two days later Ella came to pick her up, dressed in a blue dungarees and tortoiseshell glasses. She hopped out of her long suffering Peugeot and half-embraced Queenie, stroking Joy, who was cooing in her mother’s arms. The blistering wind whipped Ella’s bright red quiff, back and forth like an exotic bird.
“Get in!” she ordered, gently kissing Joy on the forehead. “Before we catch our deaths!” She yanked the back passenger door open. Queenie piled in, comforted by the smell of baked goods. A squashed, empty Danish packet lay on the floor by her feet. Ella flicked the engine on. She’d parked in the small, disabled section. She stole a quick glance around, checking the parking attendant hadn’t spotted her.
“She’s gorgeous Queenie! Can’t tell who she looks like yet though.” This she threw over her shoulder, turning the radio on before reversing out of the parking lot.
Queenie adjusted the blanket around Joy as The Rolling Stone’s All Night Long blared from the radio. The car sputtered over the roundabout and into a narrow road. At the lights, a man holding his daughter’s hand bent his head, talking with a patient expression. It triggered the memory of being pushed on a swing by her father all those years ago; the scorching heat, the rhythm of the swing, how she’d nearly slid off a few times, almost falling into her shadow.
She remembered her father in his creased linen outfit, lying to her about being able to control the weather. She remembered how happy she felt because her father was Houdini, could create new weather and told her his brass head set in motion things that couldn’t be revealed in the day. He was a magician who’d disappeared. You woke up one day and he was gone, leaving belongings distorting in the dark. The void left had been so big, she and her mother took turns hurtling their bodies in, filling the spare rooms in the house with all their bad landings.
Joy stretched her tiny hand, reaching for her mother’s breast. Her expression was delicate; Queenie felt the weight of responsibility. What would she learn from a mother who’d already made so many mistakes?
What can I offer you but the disappointment that’s found a home in me?
How can I ever look you in the eye and tell you the truth? She said silently.
The streets shrank and passed in the rear-view mirror. A purple kite above a field became a pigeon chasing its beak. A dog barking leaped into a Ferris wheel of blue sky. An old swing worked its way into the traffic, knocking against bumpers. The girl from the swing wrote something illegible on windscreens, knowing that the man who could make weather will come for her. Queenie saw her baby on the spinning rooftops of terraced houses, crawling down towards cold slip roads. She called out but the baby didn’t turn around. She shuddered in her seat as car horns sounded, one hand under her sleepy-eyed child, the other clinging to an old, frayed swing rope. A wave of nausea hit her. Ella steered the car into a busy roundabout, flanked by a shopping centre and a cinema. Cars zipping by were God’s toys on one of his playgrounds.
Ella changed the radio station, drummed her fingers on the dashboard before hitting the gas. “You should tell him you know. Why isn’t he here?” She nudged her glasses up her nose. A gesture Queenie knew meant she was ready to argue with you.
“Where is it written that he has to know? Lots of women manage on their own.” Queenie rubbed Joy’s head; the car ride seemed to have settled her. She was sleeping peacefully, oblivious to the world and all its cruelties.
“Yes, I know but it’s not ideal is it?” Ella asked. “And you shouldn’t be one of them. You haven’t worked in the shop for months. That’s fine but as far as I know, you don’t have a lot of savings. How are you going to live? He should be able to give you some financial support at least, no matter his circumstances. This wasn’t an immaculate conception!”
“No, this was a mistake!” Queenie said, suddenly weary of it all.
“What? How can you say that?” Ella spat, a red flush crawling up her neck. “You know I can’t have children. I’d give anything to have your-to be in your position. Please don’t talk like that around her; babies are sensitive creatures. They can sense things.”
“Spare me please,” Queenie said tersely. “I’m not one of your charity cases. You have no clue so please shut up!”
The car became quiet, the atmosphere tense. The engine ran on fuel and the argument they’d just had. Ella’s knuckles whitened at the wheel. The flush on her face was a half formed silent island. She flew across another set of lights, throwing a furious glance Queenie’s way. God’s playground and cruelties were connected. Queenie knew this for a fact. The memory of it had been clawing at her for months.
They zipped down the flyover, their silence a patchy sky spilling into the side mirrors. Queenie saw her silhouette in blind spots, clinging to tires, dragged across the streets.
She didn’t know what it meant or what anything meant anymore. She sank back in the seat, rocking her baby. The smell of her own smoke slowly filled her lungs.