Nine Lives (7 page)

“Come on in!” I say, putting on my fakest smile. “I just got back from therapy. Great timing!”

“Is your mother here?” a woman I haven’t met before asks.

“No, she’s out,” I say, wiping the sweat from my forehead. “I just walked home from therapy. No clue where she is.”

“Oh. How far of a walk is that?”

“Oh, I’m not sure. No big deal. I’m used to walking. Mom’s busy,” I say, exaggerating heavy breathing and taking the urine sample cup from her. “I’ll be right back with this.”

She follows me to the bathroom door.

As I pee in the cup, I try not to giggle. I’m not allowed to be home alone on probation. I have to be with a “responsible adult” at all times. I can hear the JPO officer scribbling on her clipboard from behind the door. Who’s in trouble now, Mom?

Chapter Eight

Be Fruitful

Hope

I don’t even know where to start. My heart is shattered in a million pieces. I knew this could happen, but I didn’t think it could happen to me. To us. I’ve managed to have five kids, back to back, with very little issues. Sure, there’s always the usual morning sickness and tiredness. But even my labors are easy. Or were. Until now. David and I just returned from an appointment. We hoped we were going in to learn the sex of our latest addition. We were excited. Secretly, we were hoping for a boy. Our plan was to name him Brandon Thomas. If it was a girl, we’d name her Josephine. We didn’t have a middle name for her yet. But it doesn’t matter now.

I remember it like a movie, not like a normal memory. It can’t be me lying there. They have it wrong or something. The machine was broken or the doctor needs a new glasses prescription. It still doesn’t feel quite real. I want to believe this is happening to someone else. Not me. Not us. Not to our family. I wonder, more than ever, if this is how Mom feels. I can see why she’s struggling with her faith. The sad part is I still have so much faith that I don’t really believe them. Two doctors, three technicians. They could be missing something, I tell myself, knowing I’m lying. I sit here, waiting for contractions to stop. All I can think about is that my body is now a tomb. I close my eyes and try to remember. Maybe there’s something I missed. Maybe this is just a nightmare.

David was held up at work. He’d agreed to meet me. He never misses my appointments, so I wasn’t worried. I knew he’d be along soon. I was disappointed when they spread the cold blue gel over my stomach. I wanted them to wait, but they had other appointments. I wasn’t even alarmed, at first, when the technician couldn’t hear a heartbeat. I’d worried it would be too soon to tell the sex, and they’ve had trouble finding heartbeats on my babies before. I was focused on where David could be and if he was going to miss it. I was arguing with myself over whether or not I should find out the sex of our unborn child without him there even though I knew it was probably too early to tell. I was disappointed, but not angry. It’s hard for me to ever be angry with David. He’s just such a good man.

***

I close my eyes and I’m right there, back on that exam table. Only now, I know.

“Hmmm. Let me try another angle,” she says, adjusting the monitor so she can take a closer look.

I’m grateful. The longer it takes her to find the heartbeat, the better the chance David will be here in time to learn that I was right—it is a boy—and he should never make a ten-dollar bet he doesn’t intend to keep. “Sounds good. Do you need me to move?”

She doesn’t hear me. She’s pushing the ultrasound wand into my stomach, hard. Harder than usual. I tell myself she must be new. I don’t remember seeing her with my other kids. I repeat myself. “Do you need me to move?”

She looks up from the screen and at my stomach. She doesn’t look in my eyes, but this doesn’t occur to me until later. “Oh, no, no. You’re fine just like that. I just need a second to…”

I watch her move away from me, taking the magic “what sex is your baby?” wand away from me and placing it on a paper towel on the exam table. “I’ll be right back,” she says.

I look at my watch. It’s 2:31 p.m. My appointment was at two. I can’t imagine what is keeping David. I’m tempted to get up and grab my purse from the plastic stool at my feet. I decide it’s not a good idea, given that I’m covered in goopy gel. I’m getting irritated now, wondering why they let new technicians do their jobs alone if they are this clueless, and if David has uncharacteristically forgotten. My thoughts are interrupted when the technician returns with the doctor. Neither look at me. The doctor stares at a clipboard and the technician moves toward the plastic stool by my purse. I wish I could get to my phone.

“Hello, Hope. Good to see you,” Dr. Kimball says, barely looking up. “Lorraine is having some trouble getting a good view of this little guy so I’m going to take a look, if that’s okay with you?”

I tell myself I was right. “Little guy” could only mean a boy. I’m excited. “That’s great with me,” I say, too enthusiastically. I’m glad Dr. Kimball knows me, and that I’m not a single mother or doing this on my own. It’s embarrassing, not having David with me. I want to scream, “I’m a married woman, remember?” I put my left hand over my chest, just in case the rings on my finger will remind him. In case he forgot. He sees a lot of patients. He delivered two of my babies in three years’ time. It’s silly and I know it. Most women probably come in here alone. I bet half of them aren’t married and I’m sure the doctor doesn’t care. He’s interested in the babies, not the mothers’ love lives. I need to stop thinking like Mom.

He wastes no time putting on purple plastic gloves. They remind me of Laina, who used to love purple. I try not to think about her. Today is a happy day. I wish Mom could be here. God, I hate Laina. I’ll never forget the first time Mom was able to come to one of my appointments and see the baby. That was special. I used to go to her appointments too, until that one time. I never went again after that. I don’t think of that either. I can’t. Correction. Today is a happy day, if only David would get here.

More gel, twenty minutes of fumbling, and the late arrival of David brings news I can’t bear to think or speak more about. Our baby has passed and he was, indeed, a boy. They can’t tell us why. “These things just happen” and “we’re so very sorry.” Another hour. Grief pamphlets. A handmade handkerchief donated by the ladies at the local senior center for mothers like me. It reads:

Another angel has found its wings.

I want to throw it in the trash. Fuck angels. Fuck God.

***

Another hour, who cares? We’re home. I tune David out as he reads the instructions and goes over the plan. Our children play in another room, laughing and singing. I want to hit them. I want to yell at them for daring to be happy—to be children—on a day like today. I want to hug them. I want to hold them for being children—my children—on a day like today. I feel honored to be their mother. But more than anything? I need my own mother.

David feeds the kids as I dial Mom’s number. I get no answer. I try the landline. Nothing. She’s probably chasing Laina and Faith around town. I try not to be angry and fail. I want to get on a plane and see her. She will know what to do. There was, after all, that one time she lost a child of her own. I wish I’d known what to say to her then. I was a kid. I just sat there, like an idiot, licking the tears from my cheeks. David won’t stop staring at me. We can’t talk. We have to pretend everything is okay for the children’s sake. I take a shower and cry.

They offered to do a procedure. They could get this baby right out of me, they said. But yes, there were risks—minimal—to my fertility. We don’t believe in doing anything that would impact our fertility. I’m not ready to give up. I still believe he’s in there alive and well, just shy. If I pray enough, if I do the right things, God will bring him back to me. I’m angry with myself for thinking evil thoughts about my sisters. I’m angry with myself for being hurt that Mom isn’t around. She is only doing her job and raising her children, something I should be doing this very moment. But I can’t leave the bed. If I move, the bleeding could start. I have to pee. But I don’t. I won’t for as long as I can hold it. I’m afraid of what I might find.

“Within forty-eight hours you will begin having contractions and your body will do what comes natural,” Dr. Kimball said. “I’m going to prescribe you some medication that will help with pain and sleeping.” I wasn’t listening. Thank God David was. I still don’t know why he was late and don’t care to ask. Knowing might just make the day more real and right now I need it to be a nightmare, not my reality. Thinking about this, “what comes natural,” makes me want to scream. It’s not natural to deliver a dead baby alone in your home. This doesn’t happen to me! And medication to help with pain? I don’t do drugs nor will I put drugs in my baby’s body. I want a new doctor.

I make a mental list of everything I could have done to prevent this. If I hadn’t had that glass of wine the night Dad was convicted. I don’t think I was even pregnant then, but maybe it stayed in my blood. I could have gotten more sleep. I could have been more appreciative of the gift God had given us. Honestly, there’s a tiny part of me that’s always resented the concept of “be fruitful and multiply.” I could have been less angry. There was that day, early on, where I yelled at David because men weren’t the ones to carry babies and had no clue what morning sickness was. I waited too long to make my first prenatal appointment. I forgot to take my vitamins three, no four, times. I wasn’t patient with the kids. I didn’t pack David’s lunch last week because I got distracted by Mom. God is punishing me. Finally, mercifully, I fall asleep.

***

I wake to Mom’s return phone call. I have no idea what David’s done with the children. He must have taken them out so I can get rest. He is a saint. I’m afraid to go to the bathroom. I rub sleep from my swollen eyes as she tries to help me.

“…happens. It was just God’s will. You have to believe there’s a better plan, hon,” she says.

I want to act like Laina and tell her God doesn’t exist. He can’t. Not if my child is dead. I don’t have the heart. I want to tell her, not for the first time in my life, to shove her God up her ass. I spare her. She’s only trying to help. “I know, but that doesn’t make it feel any better.”

She pauses. I can hear the pain in her voice but it doesn’t rattle. “I know,” she whispers.

I hold the phone to my ear, wishing I was more awake and still irritated that she wasn’t there to take my call last night. I want to check on the kids and pretend this isn’t happening. I try to change the subject, but she’s not having it.

“…you remember when this happened to me? You were there. At the ultrasound. You were young. But do you remember?”

I wasn’t that young. I was twelve. I remember it like it happened to me. I also remember the whispers and her being in bed for three solid weeks. I remember wishing I could go to school like a normal kid so I could forget. For a month, I got up early and made breakfast for my younger siblings. I did my best to homeschool everyone, but we all fell behind. I remember being angry that she wouldn’t snap out of it and secretly hoping she wouldn’t have more kids so I could stop raising them and be a kid myself. “I remember, Mom.” I wonder if I’m making the wrong choices now, for my own kids. When did I turn into my mother? Is it okay to be just like her? Laina and Faith said this would happen. Do I care what Laina and Faith think of me? Of anything?

“So you know it’s nothing you did? You know this happens? You know this runs in our family, right?”

“I know.”

“I don’t want you to think it’s something you did wrong, Hope. This is simply God’s will.”

If she brings up God one more time, I may hang up on her. I can hear David in the other room with the children. He sounds as frustrated as I feel, and I bet he wishes he’d gone to work.

“Listen, Mom, I can’t really talk. I need to deal with David and the kids.”

“Are they going to have you wait and deliver on your own? Do you want me to fly out there and help with the kids?”

I feel grateful for her offer. “You have your hands full. Can you even leave with Laina on probation? I can handle this myself. But thanks.”

“I’m sure I could get permission from her JPO—probation officer—Hope. This is a family emergency.”

“I’m fine, Mom, really. Has everything been okay there? How is everyone?” I shouldn’t have asked. I want to hang up. But I can’t. I feel too bad for her. I get the feeling she feels the same about me, and this phone call. The dance of mothers and daughters; fierce love and loyalty layered in obligation, expectation, and generations of dues.

“It’s a disaster. Every other day is a visit from a new state worker. Every time they come, I’m scrubbing floors and doing dishes all morning. I wish I could just show up at their houses whenever I felt like it. It’s horrible, Hope. We never have peace. I could wring your sisters’ necks,” Mom says.

I think of last night’s dishes, sure to be piled in my sink. I can’t remember what we fed the kids. “I don’t think they are there to judge your housekeeping. I wouldn’t worry about it.”

I finally get her to let me go. David and the kids have made more of a mess in the kitchen. They are making pancakes. I plaster a smile on my face like a fancy dress for Easter. I tell myself to keep it there. I cringe as pancake mix hits the walls. I tell myself, at least cleaning it up later will give me a distraction.

Instead, I’m distracted by a call from Laina. Panic grips me. I answer because I worry something’s wrong with Mary or Jeremiah, even Mom, who I just hung up with. Laina hasn’t called me in three years. I don’t even say hello. “Is everything okay?”

Her voice is shaky. I’m sure someone else must be dead. “I’m—I’m fine. I’m just calling to say I’m so…are you okay?”

Her question startles me. It hadn’t occurred to me that Mom would have put out a bulletin alert to my entire family and Laina would have been the first to receive it, being stuck at home. I tell myself to do the godly thing. I want to scream, thank her for all the stress she’s put us through, blame her. “I’m fine, thanks for calling, Laina.”