And then another quiet moment. Sonia feels weak, spent, shaken. Yet, she can see clearly. She runs to the little bathroom in her room and shit pours out of her, as if she’s had an enema, which she had the first time around, and not the second, because, like now, it just all came out of her. Her head is in her hands, her elbows on her knees, and her head feels cold and clammy. She goes and gets the robe off the floor and wraps it around her for a second. Beatrice comes in. “How’re you doing?” The smile. The real smile, a genuine kindness expressed for a total stranger. The knowing smile that says, you’re going to have a baby.
“I don’t know how you do this.” Sonia voice sounds strange, not deep yet, but almost vibrato. “How can you watch this?”
“I’m not doing anything, you’re the one doing the work here.”
“But how can you stand it?” Tears stream down her face and she moans and stoops over the bed, moving back and forth as another contraction bears down on her. “Damn. Damn it hurts.”
“I can see if it’s not too late for an epidural.”
“No, no I deserve this. I deserve it all.”
“What’s that?” Now Beatrice is on her, rubbing her back and arms, wiping her brow. “You don’t deserve anything. Don’t torture yourself. You’re having a baby.”
“I don’t know if I want this baby. I really don’t,” says Sonia and then a trickling down her leg. Her water broke, all on its own. Slowly, it’s coming down her legs. No big gush. No fountain of water.
“Oh, look. Your water’s broken. And it’s clear. That’s good. But I better get Dr. Lumiere.”
Dr. Lumiere arrives and Sonia sees her for the bitch she is. She’s pissed that Sonia isn’t on the bed with an epidural in her spine. She’s pissed that Sonia is being difficult in general, and perhaps, understandably, she doesn’t want to deliver this baby, this baby whose father isn’t here, whose mother doesn’t live here. She seems, in fact, like a lot of professional women in their fifties — pissed off and ready to retire. Yes, maybe it’s not just Sonia’s baby that’s the problem, but delivering babies in general.
Sonia asks, “How long did you say you’ve been doing this?” as the doctor listens to the baby’s heartbeat.
“A long time.” And the smile again, the curt, professional smile. “Well, things are moving along. How are you feeling?”
“I need some water. I just shit my brains out. I don’t feel so great.”
“The baby’s heartbeat is fine. It’s doing fine.”
Another contraction bears down on Sonia and she rolls over on the bed, away from the other two women and tries to stifle a scream. She doesn’t stifle it. She screams. The doctor walks out and Beatrice comes up to Sonia.
“Oh, you’re a screamer, huh? That’s all right. Just scream if you need to, if it makes you feel better.” Beatrice says this as she rubs Sonia’s spine, the spine that faces her now.
“Yeah, yeah I’m a screamer,” Sonia says, her voice changing now, really changing, deep and breathless. “Oh God. Help me God. Oh God.” And then she stands up, her eyes wild with fear. “It hurts now. It hurts so badly. I don’t want to push this baby out. I don’t want to do it. I’M SCARED. I’M SCARED OF THE PAIN. I’M SCARED THE BABY WON’T BE OK. I’M SCARED OF MEETING THIS BABY.” And then another one hits her and she falls on her hands and knees and rocks back and forth, back and forth.
Beatrice crouches next to her, the constant rubbing of her smooth, soft hands. The creamy skin and sane touch on Sonia’s sweating, crazed body. “Why are you scared? What are scared about? This baby’s going to be fine. All the tests came back fine, right? That’s what’s on the chart, sweetheart. Everything’s going to be fine. You’re doing a great job. You’re almost done. You’re almost done.”
Sonia’s mind hits another clear spot. Suddenly, it sees outside herself. The little bathroom. The table with medical equipment. She looks behind her. There’s the window. And then, in her clearness, she feels bile rise and she rushes for the little bathroom, not quite making it to the toilet, and vomits on the floor, on the clean white tiles of the bathroom floor. There goes her steak and her baked potato. She sees it and it confuses her, as it all seems so long ago. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
“That’s alright, don’t worry. I’ll clean it up,” says Beatrice and she goes out to get a bucket and rags and Sonia is ashamed and grateful and doesn’t want Beatrice to leave her. “Don’t leave me!” She cries as Beatrice heads out the door. “Don’t leave me! I need you!”
And Beatrice says, “I’ll be right back. Don’t worry, I’ll be right back,” and her voice is calm and creamy like her skin, comforting Sonia, and Sonia loves this woman with a power beyond her. She loves Beatrice and sees the glow now, the halo around this nurse, and she feels a moment of euphoria. She’s been blessed! Beatrice is the angel sent from above to shepherd her through this time! Sonia lays herself down on the bed, on her side, and curls up, again, in a fetal position. She pants, but everything is clear now. She’s having a baby. She’s going to push out a baby. And she closes her eyes and takes a deep breath.
Later, when the pushing starts, the top half of Sonia will try and run away from the lower half. With one final burst of energy, she’ll roll over on her hands and knees, from where she was on her back getting ready to push the baby out, and she will try and crawl away from herself. Something she’s been trying to do her whole life, really. But it doesn’t work. Gravity, reality, her body and soul, throws her back on her back, knees splayed, heaving stomach before bulging eyes, and like a volcano splitting the earth’s skin, her daughter comes out.
2
June — eight months earlier
Sonia doesn’t want another baby. She doesn’t want another abortion, either. She’s had two babies and one abortion already. In the darkness of her bedroom bathroom — she’s in too much of a hurry to turn the light on — at the crack of dawn, she struggles to open the plastic wrapper. Her knees tightly together, wiggling her butt around so she doesn’t pee in her underpants (God, she has to pee so badly, the feeling is abnormally intense, as if she just drank a case of beer, a pretty sure sign she’s pregnant), and then — there, she’s got it — she sits and releases a stream of piss onto the white stick. She manages to urinate all over her hand as well as she sits awkwardly scrunched over the toilet. She makes a face in disgust and holds her peed-on hand stiffly. Pee on her hand is not a new thing, as the mother of two small children. Pee, poop, spit-up, saliva-ridden cookie bits. This is her life. Tom is four. Michael is two. He’s still in diapers! He just started talking well, really well, actually, and she’s so relieved to be done with that stage where all they can do is cry to express themselves. Soon the diapers will be gone, too, as long as she doesn’t fuck it up by getting too intense about toilet training, something she learned the hard way from Tom. Her children are little, yes, but she has no babies! And she’s very happy about that. Smug, even. When she’s in the playground and sees another mother with an infant at the breast or in her arms, she thinks, ha, I’m over that. I’m done with all that. Now that both her kids sleep through the night, sit at a table (more or less) and stick their own food into their own mouths, life is much, much better. Now that she isn’t so exhausted anymore, now that she and Dick go to the movies once a week, now that they like each other better than they have since Tom was first born four long, wrinkle-inducing years ago, now that they are fucking again, now, now it’s all going to go away?