Escape (18 page)

I was about to swing my legs over the side when I felt his hand like
a clamp on my arm.

'Sorry!' I gasped.

'Where are you going? Stay here, with me.'

His voice was gentle. He turned me on my side and I felt his
hardness against my back. His hands trickled up my blouse, gentle as
running water. He unbuttoned me and his fingers lay still for a moment
in the dip at my waist. He leant over and kissed me there, right in the
hollow.

In that moment I was forgiven. There were only his lips and
his fingers and his warm flesh pushing against mine. It was as if no
argument had ever taken place.

By the time I was six and a half months pregnant, I was huge. I had put
on nearly ten kilos and it took quite some time getting up from the
floor at night. The solid fact of my bulk had convinced me the baby
was not just an idea that, like a dream, or Guido, could vanish when
I woke up one morning. Whenever I arrived somewhere and settled
myself, even if the position was uncomfortable or unsuitable, I was
reluctant to move.

Now the weight of me was alive. I enjoyed being 'with child'. That
cosy expression was my favourite, the preposition emphasising so
neatly the companionable aspect of my state. Being with child meant
that I was no longer alone, even when I was asleep.

At night, if Guido had gone to his room early, I would take off all
my clothes and look at my body. My belly was extraordinary, a great
shiny beach ball, the skin stretched so tight it glowed silver under the
lamplight. I would stand sideways and push my stomach out, watching
the undaunted curves of breast, belly, bottom, thigh. Someone should
paint me, I thought, worship the magic of this female form. I'd run my
hands all over me, like a lover. I imagined Guido doing that, and at
night I lay on my back imagining his hands stroking me.
Pathetic
, said
the voice,
like a teenager
. It had been five weeks since he'd touched me.
I wanted him to hold me, put his head on my belly, feel the kicking
and gurgling and the little thumps right near my hip bones. I wanted
him to examine me like a doctor. He could take my pulse, stroke my
screaming nipples, feel the heat that was agony sometimes under my
ribs.

But the way my body looked seemed to make him feel sick.

Once, just before going to bed, I suddenly flung up my nightie and
said, 'Look, look how round I am!'

He shut his eyes with horror. At least that's how I saw it. A twitch
started under his left eye.

That night I dreamt there was a lake at the foot of my bed.
A lake is
a pool of trapped water
, the voice told me in my dream.

Do you live there? I asked.

No, you do
.

Where?

At the bottom
.

I was on a pebbly shore holding a little boy's hand. It was a
summer afternoon, sweet as watermelon. We were playing hide and
seek and then the dark came down, suddenly as a curtain, and the boy
said, 'It's too late. The witch in the lake is coming.' We could hear her
squelching towards us with eels in her boots and her seaweed hair.
Her eyes were blank like dead starfish. She was groping around, her
head moving from side to side. 'She's blind,' said my little boy but I
could see her sniffing the air. She could smell us, eat us. Nearer, nearer
she came, and we couldn't outrun her. I just stood there, staring. Every
time I tried to move, my feet sank further under the sand.

'A lake is a pool of trapped water,' I told my boy. But he wasn't
listening. He took off his hat and pulled a rabbit out of it. The animal
was dead, its fur smeared with blood. Just as the witch reached us,
stepping on my foot, the little boy threw the rabbit right at her face.

'Run for it!' he cried and when he grabbed my hand my feet came
out of the sand, pop! like the cork coming out of champagne. When
I looked back the witch was devouring the animal. She wasn't even
looking after us.

'It worked!' I told the boy. 'Your trick
worked
.'

I woke up laughing with my mouth wide open, and such a feeling
of victory that I could have bounced out of bed and done ten star
jumps. Well, maybe one. I lay there breathless, looking around the
room, wishing I could tell someone what had happened.

We were married in our back garden by a celebrant with false
eyelashes. She was a slight, wispy blonde, a watercolour figure in need
of an outline. Too much like me. When I saw her in the garden, pale
against the bright sky, I wished someone more solid was marrying us.
She could have been a mirage, twinkling far away on a boiling horizon.
It was hard not to peer at her eyelashes, the only stand-out thing about
her.

Maria said she couldn't stop looking either, that false eyelashes
were so sixties, and didn't it look like she had centipedes on her eyes?
At least she
had
lashes, I said, thinking of my own. Maria laughed –
imagine what a fright your husband would get when you took them
off !

Husband
.

'Do you take this man to have and to hold?' asked the celebrant.

'YES!' I shouted.

It was a shining day. Guido looked like a prince in his bow tie
and silk suit. After the ceremony, when he had to kiss my mother, he
leant forward from the waist, his hands clamped to his sides. He was
as stiff as royalty. When he'd finished smiling at people his mouth
turned down too quickly. He must be nervous, Maria said. Imagine
what it would be like, meeting all these new people, a new world, such
an event and so far from home! She looked a bit nervous herself and
drank far too much wine. Her paisley dress was so low cut that when
she bent down to fix her sling-back, her left breast fell out. Her nipple
was chocolate brown. Maria didn't believe in bras, she said they gave
you cancer. She'd burned hers at a demonstration at Martin Place.

We only invited a few people to our wedding – Maria, Joanna
and her family, my parents, some neighbours. I had wanted to ask
the celebrant to stay for the reception, as she'd been so friendly and
interested in our future plans. She'd even offered to help with Guido's
application for permanent residency. But Guido had advised against
it. 'That one asks too many questions,' he said. 'Is a private thing,
our marriage, and my residency is none of 'er business. She is like a
government spy, always asking about this thing.' Guido stood near the
pool for most of the reception, smoking. 'How long will they stay . . .?'
he asked me in a whisper. 'I want you all to myself.'

The photo I have of me from that day is the only one I've ever
liked. It was taken right after he said that. I am almost bursting out of
my skin, my face so shiny with expectation, like my belly. I am looking
up at my new husband, fluorescent with happiness.

We didn't go away for a honeymoon. I felt too huge and we had
no money. After the wedding we collapsed together onto my bed. It
was such a relief to lie down, my head on Guido's chest. I wanted to
ask him how he felt about being a Husband, was he happy, did he love
me more than moonlight, did he feel strange with this new family, was
he sad about his own, why was he so stiff during the wedding, what
was he going to do with me now that he 'had me all to himself '?

But he was asleep.

'Do you want to show me what you're writing?' I asked every few
days.

'No, not yet. I am still experimenting. I'm reading Leopardi again
from the beginning, Dante, the old masters. I want to create a new
way of seeing. The phoenix is an interesting symbol, more resonant
than angels,
una creatura
rising up from the dead, born again from the
ashes . . .'

'But maybe you want to think aloud, you know, use me as a
sounding board.'

He didn't, so sometimes I wrote my own poems on the typewriter
when I couldn't sleep. I thought if I showed him mine, he might show
me his. But he never commented.

When the certificate of permanent residency came, Guido put it
in his desk drawer. Every now and then I would take it out, when he
wasn't home, and look at it. I liked to look at his printed name. He
was officially real. To me this piece of paper was more like a birth
certificate than anything else; it seemed to cancel out his past, signal a
beginning.

We joined a new library (on the card was printed Mrs Rachel
Leopardi!) with an especially good foreign languages section, and
when Guido borrowed poetry books I took out books on Italy – its
history, art, cooking, culture. I read Italian novels where men threw
their arms around women, cried with love, rage, lust, grief. These men
adored their mothers, sat at the head of huge tables noisy with relatives,
talked and laughed with abandon. In the movies they made love to
their women in fields and ruins, overcome with passion, so Latin and
intense were they. Are you really Italian? I wanted to ask Guido.

'Why aren't you like any of the Italians in the movies?' I did ask.
The question blurted out of my mouth like a burp.

'
Uffa
, Rachel, can you only think in cartoons? Is a cliché, this idea
of the Latin lover. I am NOT a cliché! What is it you want? I married
you, didn't I?'

I was mute.
Struck dumb
, sniggered the voice.

Guido looked hurt. Bewildered. He was sitting at the kitchen
table, looking straight at me. The winter sun shone in through the
window, gilding the fine hairs on his arm.

The baby came late, at nine months and two weeks, in the middle of
the afternoon. When my waters broke the pain took my breath away.
I was standing in the shower, looking at the drops of blood joining up
like dots near my feet, making swirly lines that disappeared into the
hole in the floor.

I wobbled out into the hall, holding a blue towel between my legs.
Guido paled. He said nothing while he went to get the bag I'd packed
as instructed by the hospital, with my nightie and dressing-gown
inside. He put another towel down on the seat in the car.

Guido stayed with me throughout the labour: eighteen hours
and fourteen minutes. He held my hand, breathed with me, paced
the room. In the long pause between contractions we lay on the
bed together, quiet. He giggled a lot, which was unusual and
rather nice. I thought it was the tension until I realised that he
was using the gas they gave me. He liked it much more than I did
and found it hard to give up when the doctor finally came into the
room and said I wasn't going to have this baby naturally, because
it was stuck.

Typical
, said the voice,
you're incapable of doing it the natural way
like a real woman
. I waved brightly at Guido as they wheeled me down
the corridor towards theatre. '
Non morire
,' he whispered. Don't die.

'It's a girl!' the nurse announced. She sounded as surprised as I was.

A
girl
.

I raised my head but I could only see the nurse's busy back. A big
green tent loomed over me, from my waist to my knees. A masked
man was washing his hands at the sink. Guido had gone outside for a
cigarette.

The baby was being wrapped up like a present. A girl. Oh, please,
I thought, please don't let her be like me! I must have drift ed off again,
because when I opened my eyes, there was a warm white bundle on
my chest. From inside there was a noise, perhaps a sneeze, soft and
damp. I laughed and the baby sailed up and down with my breath like
a tiny boat on the ocean.

My baby. She was a spell I fell under. The top of her head, mussed
with coppery fluff , was the softest thing I'd ever touched. She was
so new, but she didn't smell new. Not sharp like car seat covers or
stationery. She smelled a bit musty. Familiar. Her hand was furled
against her cheek, her eyes squeezed shut. But she was not like me.
She was like no one. She was herself. I knew that in the first moment.
Looking at her was like falling into the pillow after the pethidine, going
down, down into layers of impossible soft ness. Her eyes opened wide.
There was the sky blue that would one day change to green. I loved
her immediately, with the force of lightning. It made me feel strong.
Magnificent.

We floated together on that big white bed for three days and
three nights. Kind women padded around chatting, taking our
temperatures, looking after us. Guido visited. My parents came.
I thought of my mother's 'endless fountain of love' and smiled. We
inhabited our own little planet, my baby and I, and I never wanted to
leave it.

Guido didn't mind about the baby being a girl. That first hour,
when he'd come back into the labour ward and leant over me, I'd
smelled smoke on him but something else too, a sour odour. 'Have
you been sick?' I asked.

'No,' he said, annoyed, but I saw him wipe his mouth. His hands
were trembling. He hadn't wanted to pick up the baby but when the
nurse placed her in front of him, he had to take her. At first he held
her away from him, stiffly, the way he'd stood at our wedding. Then
he looked down at his daughter. A smile crept onto his face, slow, like
a sunrise. When he looked up, he was blazing. That smile wasn't an
illusion, tacked on for show. It was metamorphosis.

Whenever he looked at Clara after that, even after she grew up,
there was always the glow of that smile.

I wish our whole married life had kept the atmosphere of that
hospital room. Me feeling strong and confident, knowing that Clara
was herself, untainted by me. Guido blazing with love, trusting. I wish
I had done something to keep us all safe, as we were then. But I didn't
know how. And I ruined it.

The hospital was a big white noisy place, a bit like a hotel, only with
guards. The brisk nurses fenced out the voice with their sensible
advice and kind expressions. Later, the hospital took on the aspect of
a safe house in a wild game park. And it was in the maternity ward that
I met Doreen.

We were learning how to bathe our babies. Doreen had been in
the class before me, and had just finished bathing Saraah. She was
patting her dry as my baby began to howl. No one else's baby was
crying, but my daughter's face was turning scarlet at just the sight of
water. I felt my own redden. I jiggled her and unwrapped the rug and
put her over my shoulder, facing away from the water, but the crying
wouldn't stop. How do you make it stop? I wanted to ask, wishing
there was some button like on the vacuum cleaner or the stereo that
I could press to turn her off .
See, you panic at the first sign of a problem,
said the voice.
Heaven help you
. But there was no heaven. And I
was the mother. I was supposed to fix it. I didn't know how so I did
nothing, standing there paralysed with my stupid feet stuck to the
tiled floor.

'Mine screamed like that for the entire bath, and now look at her,
right as rain,' said Doreen. She was bracing and kind, like a summer
breeze.

That exchange set the tone of our whole relationship. Doreen
was twenty-seven, only two years older than me but she seemed far
more mature. She'd been married in Brisbane and had run away to
Sydney with two hundred dollars in cash, an extension cord and her
diaphragm, which she carried in a sock.

'Bit late for the diaphragm,' she laughed, rolling her eyes. She had
a trumpet of a laugh, decisive. There was nothing pale about her. 'My
husband was a total bastard,' she said. 'At first he came on all sweet and
gentle, you know, couldn't do enough for you. But when we moved in
together he just sat around and smoked dope all the time. Wouldn't
lift a finger.'

'But the baby is his?'

'Yeah. Saraah. Cute name, isn't it?'

'Biblical, like mine. We haven't come up with a name for ours
yet.' I was thinking about telling her what a burden a name could
be, and maybe she should investigate what kind of saintly woman
Sarah was supposed to be in the book of god, but she went on
talking.

'I'm putting two a's in there, Sar
aah
, so it's individual, you know,
more modern.' She tossed her thick bouncy brown hair. 'So anyway,
there's Dale loafing around on the sofa all day and he didn't change
one iota when I got sick after our holiday in Bali. I got this damn
tropical ulcer, really painful, and I couldn't walk for a while. The last
straw was when he said all that pus was the evil coming out in me. He
was probably stoned but I left anyway, wouldn't you?'

No, I thought. I would have believed him.

'It's your turn to bathe her now,' said Doreen.

'But she's still crying.'

The nurse was standing at the bath, gesturing at me. I felt like a
pulled thread, my stomach bunching and twisting as Clara wailed.

'Do you want me to stay while you do it?' said Doreen.

So we bathed the baby and eventually, when she was being
towelled dry, the crying stopped. She was as right as rain. 'Crying
never killed anyone,' said Doreen.

For years afterwards I repeated that sentence of hers to myself.
Doreen had a way of making statements that allowed no space for a
different point of view. I tried to use her tone, with the full stop at the
end louder than the sum of the words.

On the last day in hospital Guido came early, bringing a dress I'd
worn before my belly had swelled. I knew I couldn't get into it yet.
I had thought my stomach would deflate immediately after the birth,
like a pricked balloon. It was depressing the way I still looked eight
months pregnant, the small hill spreading under my gown hardly
dented at all. But I tried to smile at his thoughtfulness, and put the
baby on my mound with my knees up to cover me.

My parents and Joanna Mulgrade were seated around the bed,
discussing the crisis in Nicaragua. Guido sat down on the edge of the
bed. He was gazing at the wall opposite, his eyes unfocused.

'I've been thinking about the baby's name,' I said loudly.

He looked away from the wall, at the baby.

'What about your aunt's name?' I suggested. 'Clara? I think that's
lovely.'

Guido reached out and took the baby's foot in his hand. He
touched each of the tiny toes with his finger, like a blessing. When he
looked up, there was that sunrise smile on his face. '
Sì!
' he said. He
leant over and pinched my cheek. '
Mio amore
.'

But then I had to go and spoil it. A nurse bustled in and said
cheerfully, 'Well, soon you'll be at home with your little one. Going
home today, aren't you?'

I looked at the baby so small and vulnerable, her new navel still
blue and greasy-looking, at Guido's expectant face and the dress he
was holding in his lap. It just didn't seem possible, so soon, to be going
back to that house where there was no one but me to look after her.
She was too perfect, a wonderful, inappropriately expensive gift that I
didn't deserve. She was far too exquisite for someone like me.

'Oh no,' I said, stupid with panic. 'I love it here, I never want to go
home!'

There was a short silence in which my words resonated around
the room. Guido got up and went outside. The sunrise smile had gone.
He left the dress swinging over the back of his empty chair.

At home the baby cried every morning, and then every afternoon from
five until eight. The sound of her cries set me off like a car alarm. Red
waves of scream pooled out from my heart.
Wah, wah, wah!
I wanted
to fast-forward her life like a video until she could talk, until she
could tell me what was the matter. What was I doing wrong? Oh poor
helpless innocent child, why was she born to someone as hopeless as
me?

Guido stopped sleeping in my bed and the baby slept with me
until we got a cot. She was usually exhausted after all that crying and
finally, after a feed, she'd fall asleep by 8.30. This was the best time of
the day. Asleep she didn't seem to be in pain. I could almost fool myself
everything was all right. I'd get into bed beside her and the warmth of
her little body, snuggled into my belly, brought a cosy safety like when
I was pregnant. I could take my time looking at her. There was her tiny
nose, the shells of her fingernails, the smell of the top of her head like
just-baked biscuits. With my arm around her, cuddled-up close, we
made a circle.

But she didn't seem to like sleeping. And when she did, sleep lay
too thinly on her, covering just the top of her little body. She seemed
to be on guard under her closed lids, her eyes springing awake at the
call of a bird, my hushed footsteps on the carpet in her room. She had
caught my anxiety, I was sure, the red scream inside me oozing with
my milk into her veins.

Guido, on the other hand, seemed to be asleep all the time. In his
own room, he slept sometimes until noon unless he was working at
the typewriter. He had moved the desk into the living room because
the sunroom was 'small like a jail and hot like a sauna'. I had to be
very quiet when he was at the desk but it seemed there was always
something noisy or urgent to do, like the vacuuming or walking the
wailing Clara. 'Maybe you should take your work into your bedroom,'
I suggested.

He looked off ended, but he did.

When the cot came I made sure it had wheels and when I put
Clara down for her nap I rocked it back and forth, singing 'Rock-a-Bye-Baby'.
I always choked on that last part. 'When the bough breaks,
the cradle will fall and down will come baby, cradle and all.' What kind
of a rhyme is that?

When I discovered that Doreen lived just two blocks away from
us in St Pauls Street, I prayed to God, thanking Him. I hadn't done that
since sixth class, when Susan Summers chose me for her basketball
team.

Almost every day I rang Doreen, around ten o'clock. I'd have
some news item prepared, like the interview with the prime minister
I'd heard on the radio, and I'd rattle on about that before I got to the
real reason I'd called. I didn't want to sound too anxious, because
Guido said that was bad for the baby. He said if
I
never relaxed, how
could my baby? I began to think of my anxiety as a kind of disease
that could be passed on. When I rang Doreen, though, she would
listen to me and explain how she'd handled a similar problem with
Saraah, and even if I despaired that I would ever be as capable as she
was, just the sound of her voice with its sturdy punctuation silenced
for a while the terrible doubts hovering thick as the dust motes in my
patch of kitchen sun.

When Doreen sat in my kitchen with a cup of tea and said,
'Love makes the world go round,' and told me my baby was 'pretty
as a picture', I felt a deep calming gratitude. She brought centuries
of female companionship with her and gradually, as she talked, the
kitchen would resonate with the quiet, wise authority of women. The
reason clichés
became
clichés, I told Guido when he sniggered at her
after she'd gone, was because they expressed an idea or experience so
completely that there was no need for any other. And anyway, Doreen
was studying to be a nurse, so she should know all about babies and
their health. She'd completed one year of her course and soon she
would go back to finish it.

I wish I could have enjoyed my baby. That's what you're supposed
to do. But I didn't. It wasn't because I didn't love her. It was just that
she was so perfect, with her transparent skin and apricot ears and her
own little heart beating inside her chest. A brand new human being,
clean like a blank slate. How could I be trusted to keep her alive?
Undamaged? Me? I felt like a scar on that perfect skin.