Go to Sleep (8 page)

All my life I’ve heard women – my Mum, Faye, the teenage mums from The Gordon – speak about the agony of childbirth. But until I became pregnant I’d never really picked it apart. ‘It’s murder, but you soon forget’ was one gem of hand-me-down wisdom; that wonderfully perfumed ‘you’ with all its promise of mothers’ union, of belonging. And I fantasised. Even as I sat there in the NCT classes, I fantasised; listening to the course leader reel off the different options of pain relief as though she were reeling off the specials on a lunchtime menu, I would not allow myself to dwell on the reality. The pain.
Or to respond to that looming and devastating finale that would smash wide open all those months of feverish fantasising.

Throughout my pregnancy the Truth sat in exile, banished to the loneliest peripheries of my consciousness. Occasionally, in the dead still of the night, it would steal up on me unbidden and yank me from my slumber, delivering a cattle prod to the chest that would force me wide awake, flummoxed by this dreadful equation, namely: how can it be possible for this hillock of weight, a mass so immense that it knocks me off balance, be compressed and parcelled through that slender tunnel? What will it
feel
like? How will I withstand the burning and tearing of this transgression – this obscene violation? The thought would have me clenching my thighs reflexively, groaning and sucking at air. But I could always surpass myself; always conjure ever more lurid and morbid eventualities. What if my baby becomes stuck? How, oh how, will its head get through? And what if its brain is starved of oxygen? Would it be, you know . . .
normal
? Might it be . . . damaged? Deformed? How would I feel? Disappointed? Cheated? Would I love it as much? As though sensing the threat of rejection, my Bean would squirm and thrash against the walls of its cell. But with daylight came calm and clarity. I would touch my sleeping Bean and be able to push these fears far, far away. Somehow I’d get through.

But I’m thinking now that all these women, the aunts,
friends, second- and third-time mothers, must be part of some sisterly conspiracy to safeguard the human race because had I known anything of this barbarity, had they even hinted at its brutality, then I would never have gone near this. Yes, my perfect little man, breaking my heart again and again as you continue in your pitiful struggle to draw succour – you might not be here right now, had I had any inkling. It’s murder but you soon forget. How can you forget something like
that
– a pain so violent one would willingly accept death as an alternative?

Right up until my contractions I’d wanted to own that pain, or so I thought. I’d wanted to feel and breathe every pulse of it, I’d wanted it served neat. Why? Because this was the labour of my firstborn; because I was me. Rachel: tough, independent, feisty. Fuck, but I
hated
being called
feisty
! I wasn’t. I was foolish. Above all, I thought I wanted to feel the inflections of childbirth because for all I knew, I knew nothing of real life. I certainly did not know pain. Until now I’d thought pain was the moment they sat me down to tell me Mum was dying. Finding out they’d known for months; Mum even longer. Losing my father, too – losing him to his grief was pain. Losing him to Jan, pain all over again. And losing Ruben. Thoughts of Ruben always cut me deep. But pain is none of these things. Real pain is childbirth. And I have come through it.

* * *

Joe – Joseph Ishmael Massey – will not stop crying, has not stopped crying since we were wheeled on to the ward. When was that? This morning? Most of the babies looked half drugged, blissed out, their mothers snoring passionately, everyone dead to the world. Joe wakes the entire ward, his cries shrill enough to drill through to even the deepest of sleepers. Later, when his fury finally wore him out, the snoring chorus struck up again and I was finally able to slip away, slip under, the midwifes set about their rounds, rousing the mothers I’d slept for fifteen minutes; being dragged out of it was worse than being made to stay awake. More pain. Dull, deadly pain, the sleepless suck of bruised eyeballs and tired-out mind. Overshadowing the blind swell of love I should feel for my baby is a horrible stagnant nimbus that threatens to envelop and suffocate us both.

Across the other side of the ward a young black girl sleeps. She is so beautiful, her eyelashes grazing her cheekbones as she rests. Her baby is sick. It is delivered to her at feeding times, then taken away. In between she recuperates, she sleeps. Oh, how I would do anything, give anything to be able to sleep. Somewhere along the jagged course of this morning I feel her standing over me, watching us. I could barely force open my eyes but I knew she was there, touching Joe.

I sit up and try to feed. The silence of the ward slays me. Those other babies, they’re barely hours old and already
they’re sleeping through. How can that be? Joe fusses and thrashes. Beyond the veils of fatigue I’m aware of a puzzle of discomfort, niggling, needling me everywhere. My nipples are stinging raw from his puckering, helpless mouth seeking and probing, the slurp of his little lips followed by a piteous whimper of sorrow then a howl each time he comes up dry. It’s suck, slurp, whimper, howl, suck, slurp, whimper, howl, his slit, puffy eyes somehow pleading with me,
please
feed me – and I just can’t take it any more.

For his sake, I buzz the midwife and ask her for a ‘topup’ – a slug of formula to supplement my meagre drizzle of milk.

‘We don’t really recommend it,’ she begins.

Across the ward the black girl eyes me, coldly.

‘I know you don’t,’ I plead, barely able to hold my eyelids open against the weight of exhaustion. I feel useless. Inadequate. The one woman on the ward who is always the exception, always asking for something else. I know this is what they think. ‘Please,
please
look at my baby . . . he’s
starving
, look at him! It’s not fair on him.’

She snorts as though to say ‘you mean it’s not fair on
you’
, and she huffs away. Another myth lanced – the jovial, worldly, reassuring midwife. They all hate me. They hate my baby. Grudgingly, she returns with the sleep-inducing stodge, administered through a tiny cup with no teat so that he won’t then reject the bluntness of the
real thing. The midwife tuts and shakes her head as she bustles away.

‘How
dare
you judge us, you bitch!’ I shriek. I can feel my eyes popping out of their sockets, bulging with fatigue. I am so angry. She doesn’t even turn around. ‘You fucking turned us away! You sent me out on to the streets to have my baby. D’you wonder I’m fucking up?’

She just ignores me. Everyone keeps their heads down. There is a long drone of silence and after a while I start to wonder if I’m even here at all. Joe slurps and guzzles, enthusiastically draining his formula.

Belly full, hunger slaked, Joe sleeps. He is at peace, but I’m now too wired to join him, too irked by the injustices I’ve suffered, the staff and the other mothers on the ward always looking over, taking note, passing comment. I think about getting up, going for a shower while I’ve the chance, but I can barely raise a finger. I’m drunk with fatigue, drifting in and out of this grainy half-life, yet hyper alert to Joe’s every inflection; each little shudder, snort and bleat prodding me to remain alert, reminding me of who I am now.

A woman appears by my side. She’s different, she’s smiling. She’s
nice
. How Mum and I used to hoot over ‘nice’. How delirious I am with gratitude now nice has come to my bedside.

‘Hello, Mum!’

She’s almost fanatic in her enthusiasm. Even to me, as punch-drunk as I am, her smile seems manic.

‘Name?’ she says. She has a clipboard. That smile again. ‘Don’t you even stir, darling – I can get all that from this –’ She lifts my notes from the end of the bed, diligently scribbles on her form. ‘Okay, Rachel. Email address?’

On autopilot, I give it.

‘Father’s occupation?’ she asks.

‘Erm, he’s a professor, a professor of Tropical Medicine.’

She lets out a low whistle, gives one approving nod of the head.

‘And he didn’t let you go private, hey?’

Belatedly it dawns on me what she’s asking.

‘Oh,
Joe’s
daddy. Right.’

On cue, he wakes – his baleful, fitful sobbing piercing through the doldrums of the ward like a mosquito’s whine in the dead of night; drill, drill, dry staccato drill.

I try to ignore him. ‘Sorry, I thought you were asking me what my father . . .’

Joe cries louder, his tiny larynx rattling with rage. Clipboard Woman looks panicked.

‘Never mind that, hon.’ She places the clipboard with a half-filled form under my nose. I can see my name and home address, a bit more scribble and a perforated line at the bottom where she’s marked a big, looping X. ‘Just sign here for your starter pack, and I’m out of your hair.’

‘Starter pack?’

She smiles, and this time it’s nasty, impatient. Her head moves from side to side as she speaks, but her hair remains frozen in place.

‘Your nappies, wipes, buds, shampoos, all your creams and cotton wool balls . . . everything you’re going to need in that first week, all here.’ She leans down and produces a transparent sack, full of baby stuff. ‘There’s even something for Mum in there!’ She attempts a wink.

I must be staring back as though no one were there. She holds the pen an inch from my chin. Joe howls, his furious little face screwed up fist-small, crimson with rage. ‘Just your paw-mark honey,’ she says, ‘then I’m gone.’

I sign and, in spite of Joe’s insistent cries, I’m gone too. I don’t know what just happened here. I’m nowhere.

*

And now in no time at all, the light outside is falling and the dinner plates are being cleared away – my tray is untouched, my appetite deadened by the dread lack of sleep. I am nothing. Nothingness. What can they do, if I just fall away, here? They’ll have to feed Joe themselves, somehow. I’m going, so ready to let go now, slide deeply and heavily into sleep’s layered veils. I slip beneath the covers, my eyelids drooping slowly. So gorgeous is the numbness of complete surrender I smile at the thought of it and, in the blink of a heartbeat, I’m fast, fast asleep.

Seconds later I’m dragged back to consciousness by the clamour of visitors. I try to drift back down but a nagging
presence at the foot of the bed pulls me up and out. I prise open an eye, scoping around for clues. A beaming face gradually flickers into focus. Dad. And Jan. Have they nothing better to do? I squeeze my fists tight beneath the covers, quelling the urge to lash out. Instead, I burst into tears but manage to turn my fit into laughter. Dad’s crying too, now.

‘Hello, Mummy!’ he smiles. ‘You’re back with us now, I see. We’ve already been twice but you were well and truly out of it.’

Jan comes closer, proffers flowers, a huge gay sprawl of blooms. I do them proud, smell them, hold them away from myself so I can properly appreciate them.

‘Gorgeous. Thank you. And thank you for, you know . . .’

Helping me
?
Guiding me through the most petrifying moments of my life?
I can’t bring myself to say it.

She wrinkles her nose in an ‘it was nothing’ kind of way, looks across at Dad. He pushes a little digital video camera across the bed.

‘From us both.’ He leans in to me, kisses me on my head. ‘I want you to record each and every beat of his—’

‘It’s Joe, Dad,’ I interrupt. ‘He’s Joe.’

A nervous smile comes over him. He’s happy I’ve preserved Mum’s spirit by using her father’s name and yet he’s desperate for Jan to be a part of this, for her not to be excluded. He pulls her in, close.

‘That’s lovely, isn’t it, Jan? Joe.’

‘Yes. He’s just gorgeous, Rachel. He is so, so beautiful. You have every right to be proud.’

Every right? What does she mean by that? Does she think I’m ashamed of him? Dad sees my face, quickly intervenes.

‘Just film
everything
will you, Rachel? I mean it, darling. This time, these moments . . . it’s so magical, yet it’s all over
so
quickly.’

Jan nods solemnly. What does
she
know! Why is she even here? I cannot control this maddening will to be slighted by them. No matter what they do, it will be wrong. What I need, what I crave more than any other thing is rest. Every fibre of my psyche is screaming out for it. I have been awake for over sixty hours and without sleep – real, deep, restorative sleep – I just do not see how I’ll survive.

Jan seems to read my lowering mood. She goes to get coffee. I watch her to the end of the ward, a wounded hunch to her shoulders and for a second I am shot through with guilt. She has tried and tried to reach me. I have only ever held her at polite arm’s length. Once we get out of here, Joe and I, I am going to make a sincere effort to take down the walls I have built. But now, I’m too tired. Dad hovers over the little Perspex cot filming the suddenly docile Joe. Joe seems to know him. His tiny mouth trills and coos. I watch Dad carefully, willing him to love my baby, to pick him up, to hold him close; but the love’s not there. Dad, for all he’s become, for all that
he is, is still in shock at his daughter’s brown baby, and he knows I know this. I caught him before he could adjust himself.

He got to the flat just as the paramedics were wheeling us out. Dad took one look at the flailing baby on my chest and I could see the panic in his eyes. He was quick to correct himself, stoop down and take Joe’s hand, coo at his beauty – but one’s first and instant gut reaction is always the tell. And Dad’s reaction was: Shit! The baby’s black.

Dad and I have done our usual thing – nothing. Throughout the whole pregnancy, we have never talked about the baby’s father. I would have
explained
, would have been honest, if he’d come out and asked but he ducked the issue. Ever since I can recall, Dad has circumnavigated the tough-love part of parenthood. He dodged the bullet of conflict and its subsequent fallout by not prying, being ‘cool’, giving me time and space. But he wasn’t cool. He was a coward. I still flinch when something sparks a flashback, a memory crashes in unbidden to bring back some of the things I shrieked in temper; the awful things I said to Mum. Dad never made me say sorry. And she was gone before I had the chance to do it of my own volition.