Aaron wants to tell his mother about my son.
‘I haven’t even told my mother.’
He says, ‘Well, let’s tell her as well. What’s the problem?’
‘No problem, there isn’t a problem.’ I am sarcastic. I do not let him hold my stomach, or even brush against it. Because he performs examinations — that is what he does — when he touches me now his fingers become probes, his fingers tell me he doesn’t trust me. I reject his name suggestions: Gabriel is a stupid name, the other boys would have kicked him to pieces over that name anyway, my son, if he had lived.
I can’t get the sanitary towels out of the house fast enough. So Aaron finds out about the bleeding, about the dark syrup my son sends me. He holds up one of my scented sanitary bags between his fingertips and we both look at the sodden cotton whirling around inside it. For a moment I can see the anger he talked about before. It’s there on his face. Then the flash fades and he is left with a scared face and I am left with a nervous giggle that he doesn’t understand. Aaron wants to know why I didn’t say anything.
Is the baby. . gone?
Have I been to the doctor?
What is the matter with me?
I want to know too, maybe.
Dr Maxwell has big pink cheeks. In her family I bet she is the youngest child, the well-fed child who got morsels from her mother’s fingertips whenever something special was cooking, who had her cheeks pinched into prettiness by tens of doting fingers.
Aaron takes the scare out of the visit to her. The heel of my hand, that part where the veins are most traceable — Aaron kisses me there while she talks about our options. I wade through the ultrasound, through six glasses of water and clear, cartilage-thick gel and the probes, and my son is still there
(or some thing, a small wonderful curl that represents him — he is turned to hide his sex)
and later Dr Maxwell says that my bleeding was just an extra egg, just an extra egg, that sometimes that happens. Throughout the scan Aaron cannot catch his breath for gladness, he cannot see straight for crying — who is he fighting?
I think I am sleeping too much.
My eyes open and I think: daytime. Other times my eyes open and I’m certain it’s night-time. I do not say a lot, because of the leak. If I speak, the leak speaks louder. The water does not want me to be heard. Aaron wants me to know that I am exhausted. But there is no reason for me to be exhausted. I am about to ask him, exhausted from what? but before I can, I am asleep again. It cannot be a good thing to keep falling asleep like this, falling asleep without my choosing or my control. No dreams. But when I manage to fight into waking for long enough, the woman’s song comes back to me so clearly now
(and, yes, she did sing in Habana, she really did — Magalys has lied).
My son is strong, a greater strength of coffee than both Aaron and I. No one will be able to drink right down to the bottom of this boy, if only I let him be born.
Aaron is here again trying to feed me soup, trying to feed me tomato kedgeree, but all I see is bloodied fish. Aaron smiles, he tries to keep me cheerful. I take a long time gathering coherence and then I ask him if he sees anything when he sleeps with his eyes open the way he does. His smile is his answer; it protects him from me and I lose him inside it. I am beginning to understand that at the end of this time there is going to be a need for strength, that as the skin over my stomach pulls tauter my centre descends, and one day I am going to have to push. I don’t know how anyone survives it, the thought or the happening. I will not.
I try to talk about the leak. Aaron says I need to be patient about having it fixed. That leak, it is too cruel, it bypasses me and talks to the other one who is not me. I am not being stupid or petty, and I am not playing the girl card when it happens that I cry and say, ‘Please get that leak stopped.’ Aaron says, ‘Soon, soon, I promise.’
I am trying to make sure that I live. Living is not a thing I can do alongside the leak. I have taken to crawling in my sleep. When I wake, I laugh at the carpet burns pulling at the skin on my knees. I am trying to get away from the woman who walks above me, walks from room to room even as I crawl. The leak
(Cubans are very friendly if their gestures are reciprocated — Miramar has great beaches — don’t forget to check out the Varadero — oh, look what has happened to this Cubana, if nobody told her she was Cuban would she even know? Yet siempre el drama)
the leak is out of proportion and out of control. The leak is tears. And tears are prayers, but I think Mami only says that because she is best at tears.
St Catherine’s: that place with its bell tower and sweet, long-spaced chimes; its trees; the sisters; the way the light there is different. Having someone who knows me a little see that place could be worse than letting someone read a book or hear a song that has worked witchery on me. St Catherine’s is the kind of place that someone could use to suddenly know me a lot better, and against my will. Amy Eleni is driving me up there, because with Amy Eleni I don’t mind so much. I wouldn’t want Aaron to see that place.
Today Amy Eleni is wearing a terrible hat I bought her for Christmas years ago — she calls it that, ‘the Terrible Hat’. It’s a patchwork fleece hat, as ugly as sin, but warm, which I knew she’d like. I sit beside Amy Eleni in the front seat of her car and hold my seat belt a little bit away from me so that I don’t feel so restricted. London slips away and is not missed; trees and sky begin to gently blend, there is more air. Amy Eleni plays Billie Holiday and we listen to her blessing that child that’s got his own. Also, we quote lines from Vertigo. We swap so that neither of us has to be Scottie for longer than is fair; Judy gets all the best lines.
‘That film is cleverer than either of us,’ Amy Eleni says when she runs out of quotes.
‘Yeah,’ I say. I have run out, too.
Things are more serious than Amy Eleni and I realised. We are not equal to this pregnancy thing.
‘So what’s been the matter with you lately? Do you think you’re the first woman ever to get pregnant or something?’
Amy Eleni keeps her eyes on the road, doesn’t waver as I look at her and tell her plainly, ‘It’s the hysteric. You know. Everything’s become absolute. I get this feeling that either I or this baby is going to die.’
(‘OK,’ says Amy Eleni, ‘that’s why we need to get rid of the baby.’ She brakes so hard that the tyres scream and I bounce in my seat, fall forward, and the top of my head is numb, numb because I’ve smashed through the windscreen and the noises my brain makes, the noises, for almost a full second I am blind)
No, I’m fine. My belt, my seat-belt thing. I’m fine. Except Amy Eleni is staring at me, her eyes like rounds of bottle glass. Except I heard Amy Eleni speak, but she did not speak, or it was not she who spoke.
I am beginning to understand something about the hysteric, how sneaky she is, how she can repeat in Mami’s voice, ‘A white girl is never your friend, she works to a different system.’ I can see how my personal hysteric and I could conspire and do something to my son and make it Amy Eleni’s fault. This thing, this mistrust I did not know I had, it could go far, too far. Hysteria has got nothing to do with an empty womb.
‘Calm down! Something ran out across the road. A stray or something. I didn’t hit it,’ Amy Eleni says, starting up again once she is sure that I am all right.
‘Please turn back,’ I whisper.
‘No, I’m taking you to St Catherine’s. You wanted to go.’
Nothing but trees and the cold outside.
‘I’ve changed my mind! I don’t want to be in the car with you!’