The swelling. The body begins to transform itself.
My life a transfigured rose.
You died at Saint Vincent’s, and it is where I shall give birth. I have not walked into that hospital since the night I said goodbye before they took you away to be burned. I have been afraid many times in my life, but I have never been as afraid as that night. And how for a year afterwards I changed all walking routes so as not ever to have to pass that place. A little difficult with Angela there on Greenwich Avenue — still, I could not. Next week is the amnio and I will walk through those doors again. The same entry way — West Twelfth Street. How is it possible that so much sorrow and so much joy, and right up to the last moment, so much hope — can be held by that entryway? Eleven years separate the events. I still miss you. More than I can say.
I do feel a little better understanding that you were probably bathed in those death hormones. And that protection came. This has been a way back to you. We purposely chose Saint Vincent’s. It is what I wanted.
Having conceived her, having kept her this long, I am home free, I tell myself. Foolish to think…
Here then my foolproof test for whether one is pregnant:
The inability to listen to Mozart.
The desire to wear nothing but cashmere.
Uncontrollable cravings for protein. Milk, cheese, beasts, egg-salad sandwiches. Egg-salad sandwiches?
I request that we not have lamb or veal for Christmas dinner. Just not in the mood to eat babies this year.
Emily, my niece, in fatigue moves toward the baby, flings herself on the belly — going back to the place of her making, toward the little one she was not so long ago. Her thumb in her mouth. Something I haven’t seen her do in some time.
Although I love fish, not a morsel of fish since I have become pregnant has passed my lips. Christmas Eve and the traditional seven fish stare at me and I stare back. Is it the body rejecting the sea’s impurities? Some sort of intelligence is at work, I guess. I do not question.
Never have I felt happier. Enjoying immensely my identification with the Virgin. Steve insists if anyone is capable of an Immaculate Conception… I quite like the idea.
Christmas Week.
A fluttering — without doubt. Small bird. A fluttering in the belly — strange motion. Late at night.
This life inside a life — now palpable in another way. Swim. Live.
A Dr. Seuss book to read to the child in utero — a gift. I think the only things I will be able to read to the baby are Gertrude Stein, Dr. Seuss, poetry, Beatrix Potter.
More green eggs and ham please! I request from the bed. Sam I am.
In the doctor’s office today for a routine checkup. Fifth Avenue at Nineteenth Street. These precious days. Dr. Rehrer, very cool, low key, like a friend really. For Manhattan you are not even an old mother, she jokes. It will be fine. But she has been sick intermittently and hard to see. Now I see her partner, Dr. Dennis Matheson, most of the time. Everyone is relaxed over there. Happy to have babies around in every stage of becoming. The most natural thing in the world, he says.
I know that many women get a great dark stripe down their bellies when they are pregnant, and I request one please from Doctor M., but he just smiles. Not everyone, he informs me, gets one. Still, it is possible, of course, I tell him. I don’t think so, he says, shaking his head.
Olivia, Helen’s niece, on receipt of the news, joyously: “I know a beautiful name for a baby! Kalina!”
I think of the birth marked each year at this time. The amniocentesis next week. How can I summon the courage to know what to do if the results show a problem? The occurrence of Down’s syndrome in women over thirty-five. I look at the graph. How it rises and rises every year after that. I must somehow prepare — even though I feel exempt, free from harm. Carrying this charm.
Quickly I walked through the entrance to Saint Vincent’s. Fear not, he said. Fear not. Helen would be with me shortly — she had gone to park the car. Amnio today. It was snowing.
First we were ushered in to see the geneticist. I felt a little nervous, but not too nervous.
We were shown the chromosomes on film, which looked beautiful, translucent. We saw perfect ones, we saw defective ones — all beautiful I thought to myself. The counselor is as reassuring as possible. Sitting there I tried in different perfectly senseless ways to run the odds in my head. When I got home finally to my perfect sanctuary of worry I pored over the pregnancy books looking for hopeful things.
Dr. Mangano, who is, despite his name, Japanese, I think, performs a high-tech sonogram, and makes all kinds of measurements, takes all kinds of pictures. What a gorgeous sight. The spine like a fish bone. The great blossom, the bloom of the heart with its four chambers. Beating. It looks like a small bird in flight. Helen is holding my hand. First the baby is sucking its thumb. Then it seems to be waving. The doctor, as astounded as if this were the first time he was seeing a child in the womb. He stares, riveted. “What a beautiful — ” he says, and then trails off, adjusting the focus.
“What a beautiful what?” we cry out.
“What a beautiful brain!”
Brain! We sigh.
“Look! Look!” he says, completely engrossed. “Would you like to know the sex?” Yes, we say, please, and it seems like for ever before he says he thinks it’s a girl. He thinks it’s a girl. And at this news I begin to weep. Helen holds my hand. And such a pretty face. Look, he says, “she has a mouth like Brigitte Bardot.” We stare incredulously into the shadows. No!
He takes an impossibly long needle that he will insert into my abdomen to get the amniotic fluid. I decide to look away. They will grow a few cells in a dish. Fingers, tiny hands, tiny feet, toes, lungs, bladder, a beautiful brain — we must wait six to ten days for the results. Just a few years ago it was more like a three-week wait. I imagine I’d be a basket case by then. I know in my heart of hearts that it will be fine — just as I knew all along that she was a girl. I buy a red rosary in the hospital gift shop.
We go to have Mexican food on Greenwich Avenue and begin to wait. I am supposed to remain fairly quiet. There is a slight risk of miscarriage as a result of the procedure. But I have seen her, and she has held on so fiercely, so tenaciously for so long. I visit Dixie in the afternoon — for luck.
Before the test there were papers to sign. As with everything there is a slight risk. Helen had been ready to march out of there. But I need to know. I have no idea what I would do. But I need to know.