Rachel Weeping (12 page)

chapter 15

When Michelle felt
the baby move for the first time she was walking to the fridge. She had felt ‘bubbles' or murmuring during recent weeks leading up to this moment, but this was the first time she was certain that it wasn't gas. She stopped short and put her hands on her stomach, waiting to see if it would happen again. Rachel was behind her, rinsing dishes, and she was aware of the clang of cutlery in the sink.

By now Michelle was acutely aware that she was sharing her body with someone else, someone with his or her own desires and actions. She had often wondered whether a baby would feel as if it were part of the mother or whether it would feel like a separate entity and, based on her experience thus far, she had concluded that the answer was both. The baby and its movements were not her own, yet she suddenly felt a connection to this child as if it was as intimate a part of her as her own lungs or heart.

She felt it again, a clear movement that lasted this time for about five seconds.

A smile spread across Michelle's face as she tried to process what had just happened. Any resentment she had felt towards the baby evaporated in the instant that she became so suddenly, physically, aware of its presence as a separate being with actions of its own. She gasped in wonder. Her immediate instinct was to tell someone, but the moment passed when she heard Rachel moving in the background.

Quickly leaving the kitchen, she ran through to the study and grabbed her phone to call Chris. As she waited for the call to connect she picked up the picture from her recent ultrasound, where she had put it on the corner of her desk with the till slips from the supermarket. Chris had wanted to put it up on the fridge but Michelle had felt it would be disrespectful to Rachel.

As the call went to voicemail Michelle slipped the ultrasound in her back pocket, deciding that she would put it up on the fridge after all, once Rachel had finished in the kitchen.

 

 

 

‘That's for me,' Anja said, making room for the waiter to set her cappuccino down on the table.

As the waiter was putting the coffee down in front of Chris his phone started ringing, caller ID telling him that it was Michelle. Switching the phone to silent, he thanked the waiter and sat back, taking in the activity at Mandela Square while Anja added sweetener to her cappuccino. A public space filled with restaurants, fountains and a large statue of Nelson Mandela, Mandela Square was a short walk from their office and had become the venue for the lunchtime outings that had become a regular occurrence over the last few weeks. Hannes and other colleagues would occasionally come along but, for the most part, it was usually just the two of them.

‘Who was that?' Anja asked.

‘Michelle,' Chris replied. ‘I'll call her when I get back to the office.'

‘I still don't know how you drink that without milk,' Anja said.

‘I'm not a child that needs sugar in everything,' Chris chuckled.

‘I'm sorry. We're not all on the verge of forty, old man.'

‘Hey, watch it!' Chris protested. ‘I'm still in my thirties.'

‘Barely!'

Chris smiled and let Anja win this round of banter, a duelling of humour that had become the staple of their interaction. As he sipped his coffee, nostalgia for a time when things between him and Michelle had been like this surfaced. He couldn't remember when last –

‘Otherwise? How're things?' Anja interrupted his thoughts.

‘Things are okay,' Chris responded. ‘It's been tough with both of them at home, but I think Michelle is handling it better now than she did in the beginning.'

‘I meant with you.'

Chris paused, somewhat taken aback.

‘Wow. I'm not sure how to answer that,' he said. ‘You're the first person who's asked me that question in a long time.'

 

 

 

 

Having just finished cleaning Michelle's study, Rachel was on her way back to the kitchen to put the utensils away when she looked out of one of the guest room windows into the garden. Michelle was lying on a deckchair beside the pool, the book she was reading resting on her pregnant belly. Her eyes were closed and her face lifted to the late winter sun, her legs stretched out. She looked totally relaxed, lying there by the green pool that Chris hadn't yet managed to get back to its original colour.

Rachel couldn't help thinking how different Michelle's pregnancy was to how hers had been.

By this stage of her pregnancy, she had managed to secure a job with the Jordaans and was working a second job on the weekends for a family who lived two kilometres from them so that she could save up money for after the birth. The Jordaans had graciously told her they had no problem with her keeping Maia in the house while she worked on the proviso that it didn't affect her productivity and, with neither of them being in the house during the day, the arrangement had ended up working out perfectly.

She had given birth to Maia via caesarean section at the Chris Hani Baragwanath state hospital in Soweto, where she spent the night in recovery before taking a taxi back to the Jordaans' house. For a week she tried to learn how to be a mother to her first baby. Her own mother had wanted to come down from Mozambique to be with her but financially it had proven impractical and they were forced to make do with phone calls.

In the kitchen Rachel opened the fridge and took out the milk so that she could make her mid-morning tea. As she was closing it she noticed an odd black and white photograph stuck to the fridge door with a magnet. She put the milk on the counter and then walked back to the fridge and took the picture off the door. She held it up for closer inspection.

It was an ultrasound of the baby.

Rachel stared through the grey haze at the silhouette. She could make out the baby's profile. Nose, hands and feet were all clearly visible. Below the image were words and numbers detailing the progress of the child's growth and development. For some reason she couldn't put the ultrasound back on the fridge. She held it flat against her chest, her heart pounding uncomfortably. Her mouth went dry.

The ultrasound changed things.

A noise on the other side of the house startled Rachel and she shoved the photo into the pocket of her uniform. Then, walking quickly but quietly, she left the kitchen, went out the main entrance and hurried to the domestic quarters. She was practically running by the time she opened the door and bolted inside, her heart beating even harder. She sat down on her bed and took the ultrasound out of her pocket. Immediately she felt herself consumed with hot anger. She scrunched the photograph up in her hand and for a second contemplated tearing it into pieces before reason stepped in and she stopped herself.

She unfolded the damaged picture and smoothed it out as best she could. She reached under the bed and felt around for the red biscuit tin. She took out her passport and placed the ultrasound between two of its pages. Her collection of R100 notes caught her eye. The stash from Michelle's bag had continued to grow over the months and she gave a tight little smile. Then she placed the passport with the ultrasound picture inside it on top of them, pushed the lid onto the tin and slid it back under the bed. Standing up, she dusted off her uniform and returned to the house. A feeling she didn't recognise, something like a mixture of power and guilt, rampaged through her.

The kitchen was empty and she could hear no sound of Michelle. Rachel took the vacuum cleaner out of the cupboard and went through to the lounge to finish her chores for the day.

 

 

 

Chris's heart was pounding as he sprinted on the treadmill, the rush-hour traffic in the gym adding to his sense of urgency. He was one in a line of 20 treadmills that looked down into the Virgin Active indoor swimming pool and the majority of the runners seemed to be racing as if they were about to complete the Comrades Marathon.

He looked down at the red dial as the digits scrolled down: 35 seconds away from his goal of 10 minutes of running. Pumping his arms, he urged himself to continue as he straightened his posture and tried to focus all remaining energy into his legs, the manic speed of the music he was listening to through his headphones blaring into his ears and spurring him on.

One last burst of energy as the dial hit zero and the treadmill slowed to the ‘cool down' speed. Chris inhaled painfully. His current fitness level left him out of breath for a distance and time he would have considered a mere warm-up at university. Sweat poured down his face as he picked up his towel and dabbed the moisture from his skin.

Climbing off the treadmill, he walked to the water fountain and refreshed himself, before taking out his iPhone to update the stats from his run in the Nike app he used to track his progress. He had been running for three weeks now and was slowly building up his stamina. When the app congratulated him on his progress he felt absurdly pleased. His statistics safely logged, the app then asked him if he wanted to share the result of his run on Facebook and he hit ‘
share
', sending his fitness brag into cyberspace. He enjoyed posting the results of his runs online, not only because it motivated him but because it also made him feel good when he saw the ten likes from fellow runners who were approving his commitment to keeping fit.

As Hannes always joked, ‘It doesn't count if it's not on Facebook.'

Walking through the busy gym, Chris was about to make his way down to the showers when his phone vibrated and he looked down to see a new notification. Anja had commented on his recent activity on Facebook.

Getting faster every day! Impressive Boss!

Chris smiled and liked her comment, then staggered down the stairs to the changing rooms.

 

 

 

Michelle closed the door to the garden and put her copy of Khaled Hosseini's
The Kite Runner
on the breakfast table. The warmth from the sun had left her feeling drowsy; in fact it had lulled her to sleep earlier on the wooden deckchair. A late-morning nap on the couch was ruled out when she heard Rachel vacuuming the living room and so she opted to make herself a pot of rooibos instead.

Life had slowed to a crawl for Michelle. She felt as though she was drifting, waiting for the baby to come so that she could continue living again. Her friends had stopped trying to get her to go out with them and, bar the occasional visit from Karlien, she spent most of her time alone at home. Chris had started going to gym again, so he got home later than usual from work, and sometimes he went out to drinks with his friends and came home after she'd gone to bed.

She didn't really care.

These days she would rather be alone in the house by herself than alone in the house with her husband.

Having prepared the teapot, while she waited for the kettle to boil Michelle wandered over to the fridge to get a glass of water. As she sipped, her eyes roved over the various invitations and photographs stuck to the fridge door with magnets. Chris with a paper hat on from a few Christmases ago. She and Karlien at the garden shop with a trolley load of seedlings. A blurry photo of Hugo in his basket. She was about to walk back to the kettle when she stopped, frowning. Something was missing. There was a gap where she had stuck the ultrasound of the baby. She stared at the space, confused. She looked around the kitchen and then down the side of the fridge to see if it had fallen off. Nothing. With some difficulty, she bent over to see if the image might perhaps have fallen and slipped or been scuffed underneath the fridge, but all she could see there was a lot of dust and a 50 cent coin. Using the edge of the counter to help her, Michelle pulled herself up and stood with her hands on her hips, gazing around the room.
Had
she actually put the photo on the fridge, she wondered, or was she going mad? They did say pregnant women lost their brains.

She made her tea and carried it through to the baby's room, where she stood in the doorway looking at the paint tests on the wall, the unassembled crib and the dresser that one of her friends had passed on to her. Chris had said he would paint the walls over the weekend and that together they could assemble the crib once the paint had dried.

They were going for a storybook theme for the room, with pages from some of their favourite children's books framed and hung on the walls. She had already picked out pages from
The Little Prince
,
Winnie The Pooh
and
Where The Wild Things Are
and was waiting for Chris to make his contribution from some of the books he had loved as a child. So enthusiastic at first, he had been the one to encourage her, but now it seemed to be the other way round.

Michelle proceeded to the study and turned on her computer. Out of habit, she began to check her emails. Outside of generic emails from the stores with whom she had accounts and bills that needed to be paid, there was nothing. All of her professional work had been split between her colleagues when she went on unpaid leave and in the beginning there had been lots of emails back and forth. Gradually, though, communication had slowed and then stopped. She realised that in fact she had no idea what was happening at the office and who was looking after her clients. The lack of contact left her feeling aimless, as though she had lost all her skill and value in her career. She amounted to nothing more than a baby-making machine.

Bored, she logged onto Facebook and looked around the timeline that she hadn't visited in about two months. Chris was always on the site but she found it tedious and were it not for the fact that he had set up the account for her, she probably wouldn't even have one.

The notification centre showed 67 notifications and she was about to look through them to pass some time when she noticed Chris's recent activity in her timeline. He had just finished running at the gym, apparently, but while he had registered one of his best times to date, it wasn't the speed that caught Michelle's attention.