Of course it is a girl — still, sometimes one’s instincts let one down. Once I was immensely happy, it was a beautiful winter day in the city, I had just bought a new coat — when the phone rang. I could not have been more shocked. My sister Cathy in the hospital in Florida with a horrendously high fever. No one knows what it is. Toxic shock syndrome — before it had a name. Maybe she will die. I sit in a stupor. She does not die, but I am never the same person after that.
Back to the country. I light church candles that say Santa Teresa.
I stare hour after hour into the Christmas tree. That piney, floating feeling. On the surface I am nervous, but at the center I am calm.
With that kind of fever the palms and the soles of the feet begin to peel. I remember this all of a sudden tonight.
One holds — one tries to hold the heart in abeyance until after the results of the amniocentesis.
Not possible.
I had read a book on how to conceive a girl. It had all made good sense. I believe in books. Once when I was dissatisfied with something about my swimming stroke, I got a book and read again and again the pertinent chapter, and presto it was fixed.
Most of my friends who have waited for children have boys. It comes from being overly attentive, overly conscientious, neurotic, over-anxious in the timing department. Too perfect, too desperate, too something. At any rate, it is possible a boy was never in the cards for me — I cannot conceive (pun intended) of having a boy. Still I am grateful for that book.
Though for a boy Beckett Kenneth was chosen as his name way in advance. Though I never said it out loud. Strange. For Samuel Beckett of course, and for my father.
I cannot lie down now without a cat draped over my belly. They must hear her or feel her heartbeat. They must smell the little varmint. This small beating sweet thing. Coco and then Fauve — they alternate, take turns. Purring and purring. And the baby moves.
I play her over and over in my mind. She is seven inches long. She has teeth. Her heart in flight. She is sucking her thumb. Then she is playing with her feet. Astounding does not begin to describe.
I call back those Italian charms — for what other word is there? Bagno Vignoli — those warm, fizzy, iridescent, luminous waters — a perfect blue-green. Those astounding mineral springs. And all the other charms of that most charmed trip.
The Poor Clares, scurrying through the dark streets.
The Piero de la Francescos.
Saint Francis.
A very quiet New Year’s Eve. A glass of champagne. A tour of the night sky. A dark meditation on the baby’s cells growing under glass. Tears.
The week I waited — from the last days of the dwindling year — waited in fog for the results of the amniocentesis. Descended into water. The mist I could not see my way through.
Still waiting for that last bit of news to be released from the amniotic fluid. Star, rose, snow. A private prayer. And then my litany of Hail Marys. I pray to the Virgin and keep wait as the Kings arrive.
Helen, who has over so many years delivered so much news. Helen brightly calling out over the answering machine: The baby is fine!
Never known such happiness.
I call my parents: She is perfect.
I close my eyes now and see the ferocity of the image on the screen. The will at all costs to live. Without knowledge of what that is. I feel the pure life force, pounding in me.
Having decided to wait until after the amnio to tell most people, more and more now know. How I long already for those days when it was mine — my secret, and the two of us would walk — to class, to readings, in silence, in innocence. Or go for a swim.
I am really beginning to swell now. There really wouldn’t have been much more time for the two of us alone in this, after all — without anyone knowing. Still wanting to preserve what we had together just a moment longer — isn’t that always what I wanted, longed for — one more minute.
The joy now unalloyed. The days pass blissfully. I work on The Bay of Angels a little and dream.
Still on Christmas break. Louis and Louise come for a visit. We go back to their house. I am up here alone. Helen at work in the city. They pamper me. Cook me comforting dinners. We chat by candlelight — these precious nights — until I begin to shut my eyes. Louis walks me to my door. We have started calling each other Hansel and Gretel. We are dwarfed by the forest, a little lost. He takes my arm. He assures me it will be OK. Throws breadcrumbs.
I go back to Saint Vincent’s for a follow-up sonogram. Again measurements of all sorts are made. The length of the arm from the elbow to the wrist — that sort of thing. The heart beating on the screen. It looks like a bird in flight, they say, and it is true. The heart spreading its wings.
The heart like a cat’s paw or a rose opening.
Very happy to imagine having this baby in my neighborhood. After twenty years here — this is the last thing I might have expected… Always believed deep down that I would never have a child.
Once I had planned to marry, believing that it was the only way. The conventions of my mother. Hearing them all too loudly in my head. Get married. Why does everyone always assume that what was right for them would be right for anyone else? No matter how happy they are? I was far too young at any rate. Had not even written Ghost Dance yet. He was the most lovely of men. Helen and I heartbroken, resigned. The life we had. Maybe it is best — if you really want a child… But mine is an intelligence so impossibly oriented toward self-preservation that I cannot go through with it. I did not know this before I took it that far. I did not know. I did not mean to hurt him — or anyone. I wonder where he is today. I know he’s published a few books. I know his father died.
I have not thought of this in twenty years, and yet here it is back tonight. A scene for a film I wrote when I first moved to the city. A woman who is going increasingly mad (but no one can be sure of it until this scene) believes she is nine months pregnant and about to have a baby, but she has no swollen belly whatsoever, no physical manifestation of her pregnancy. It was how I mourned the idea of never having children, I think. I knew I was not going to ever become a writer if I had them then, and I assumed, in those days, that if I waited until after, should I ever actually become a writer, it would be far, far too late. Written in 1978.
On the other hand I wrote a little screenplay — a relief from the sorrow of the novels — in 1993 about a universe of women, and of one woman in particular who is pregnant. The last line: It’s a girl!
I send supplies to her through the placenta. The placenta, as it turns out, performs the functions of the adult lungs, kidneys, intestines, liver, and some of the hormone glands. It combats infections. Within it CO2 leaves the baby’s bloodstream and is exchanged for oxygen brought by the mother’s bloodstream through her lungs across the porous walls of the closed blood vessels. No wonder I can’t breathe. No wonder I am so tired.