Lögberg-Heimskringla - 11.12.1992, Síða 23

Lögberg-Heimskringla • Föstudagur 11. desember 1992 • 23
By Kristie Peterson
When the doctor tells me I am
pregnant, I cry. I had known
it, known it had to be, but still,
her words make it real, and I cover my
face with my hands and cry. I can’ t
stop. She is kind, leaves me alone. Half
an hour later am still crying. A nurse
pokes her head in to see if I’m all right.
They probably need the examining room
for someone else.
I cry a lot that first month, lying on
my back on the couch. I can’t believe
how sick I feel, how quickly it comes on
me. I can’t raise my head enough to sit
up. I can’t eat anything at all. I lose five
pounds the first month. I am angiy with
my body for being so helpless. It will not
obey me at all. It doesn’t throw up,
thank goodness. It just won’t move. I am
dizzy all the time, and even the thought
of food is unbearable, makes my stom-
ach heave.
I lie on the couch. The cat lies on my
chest. She has picked up fleas. For a
month I lie on the couch and watch the
fleas jumping. There is a curious fascina-
tion in this. I try to catch them, spend
hours tracking them, my fingers hover-
ing over one or another, but I’m not fast
enough to kill them. Even a flea can out-
wit this body I am caged in.
By the end of August I am suddenly
able to sit up, even walk, though shakily.
And I can eat a little, if it’s fried potatoes
and eggs. I eat eggs and potatoes for two
weeks, and I gain back a little weight.
Mostly in my breasts. I have only been
pregnant six weeks and already none of
my blouses will button across my chest
anymore. Most of my clothes I hang in
the back of my closet. I wonder if I will
ever wear them again and how to keep
moths from nesting in them.
I bend over to pick up the soap in the
shower one day and something brushes
my knee. I scream. It takes me a
moment to realize that it’s my own
breast that has molested me. I am aston-
ished. This is not a body I recognize. I
have stepped into an alien body in an
alien world. I am out of place, a stranger
in a constantly changing landscape, liv-
ing in a kaleidoscope. Like a tourist, I
keep a travel diary: eight weeks, 115
pounds, the first leaves have fallen from
the lilac tree.
I begin to think about the baby I am
carrying. My baby. I talk to her. I’m sure
she’s a girl. I sing lullabies to her in the
shower. I read baby books, looking for
reassurance that she will not have
Down’s Syndrome, spina bifida, phenyl-
ketonuria. Anxiously I drink a quart of
milk a day and swallow vitamin pills.
I am glad when my belly grows large
enough to look definitely pregnant and
one body.
When the pains finally begin, I am not
ready. It has taken me nine months to get
used to this new body. How can I move
into another in a matter of hours?
I don’t recognize them at first. I wake
at six o’clock, uncomfortable. I shift my
bulk, try to go back to sleep. But by
lunch there is no more doubt. The pains
are not yet very close together, but they
are regular and strong. My belly rises up
in a tight iron ball, holds, then sinks into
softness again. I am having to pause and
breathe through them. Other-wise life
goes on as usual. My two aunts drop in
for tea. I sit on the couch crocheting.
How are you, they ask. Fine, I say, I’m in
labour. They don’t stay long, don’t even
wait for the tea.
By evening the pains are only a few
minutes apart. The midwife arrives. She
ur two featured authors, Lesley Peterson and Kristie
Peterson, are sisters. Both have studied creative
writing with David Arnason and both teach at
Sisler High School. Leslie has recently had a book ofpoems
.11..
not just thick. I feel beautiful. When I
shop for maternity clothes, I buy
sweaters and T-shirts with ribbing
around the hips, none of these sloppy
smocks for me. My sister-in-law disap-
proves, says that style outlines your fig-
ure, makes your condition so obvious.
So what, I say, there is no way to
camoflage it even if I wanted to. And I
don’t. Now that it is more or less func-
tional again, I like my new body. It’s
sexy. Elegant. Assertive. I lie in bed at
night looking at my growing belly and
marvel. The baby is moving now, and as
she twists she pulls me out of shape. My
belly swings to the left, then to the right,
and I laugh to see it.
I grow quickly, gain forty pounds. All
of it out in front of me. The weight
doesn’t trouble me until the last two
weeks. Then I notice how much it is
slowing me down. I proceed at a stately
pace. I am an entire royal procession in
Csso)
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walks me around the block, stopping for
every contraction. I want only to lie
down, the pain is tiring. By midnight I
am living in the rhythm of the contrac-
tions. I am intensely aware of everything
around me, though I cannot respond. I
am too caught up in the need to stay with
my body.
The night goes on, pain after pain, in
silence. You will have your baby by
morning, whispers the midwife. But it
doesn’t matter. I’m afraid to have this
baby anyway and all I want you to tell me
is that the pain is going to end. I fight to
keep my resolves: to make no noise, to
take no anesthetic, to survive. By eight
o’clock I want to die. I am desperate. I
have not cried out, not once, but I have
never felt such terror. The pain is worse
than I had imagined. I am no longer
aware of anyone around me. I want to
say for God’s sake grab a forceps, cut me
open, I don’t care anymore only help me,
put an end to this. But I can’t speak, I
haven’t time, the pain is all I know.
Shortly after ten o’clock it ends. It’s a
boy someone says and I think you’re jok-
ing, it can’t be, but they’re not joking, I
have a son. I’m not prepared. The baby I
was carrying and singing to and talking
to was a girl, how can this baby be mine?
I haven’t pictured him at all. They show
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him to me. He looks like no one. He’s a
stranger. I feel cold. The midwife brings
him to me and lays him beside me. Smell
your baby, she says, before we wash him
up. Every baby has his own smell and
you won’t get this chance again.
Obediently I move my head slightly and
sniff his damp hair. He smells of blood.
He smells of life.
After I sleep, they show me how to
nurse him and change him and bathe
him. All these things I do conscientious-
ly, day after day, but there is a fear grow-
ing cold in my slack belly. This isn’t the
way it’s supposed to be. Shouldn’t I be
radiantly happy? Aren’t these first days
of motherhood the most precious of my
life? But I don’t even know who this
baby is. I don’t know where he came
from. I’m bewildered. Exhausted. And I
haven’t been retumed to my own body.
Instead, I have woken up to find myself
suddenly in the body of an old woman.
There is dignity in a pregnant belly, none
at all in a slack and wrinkled one that
sags from my thickened waist and sways
when I move. I refuse to go into the
bathroom without my robe. The mirror
frightens me. I don’t know who the
woman in it is. I cry a lot.
Spring comes, bringing a dull grey
world. The snow is gone, but the trees
are still bare and the street is littered
with last year’s dead leaves.
One night the final episode of
M*A*S*H is aired. A big event. I watch
it as I nurse the baby. I’ve finally got the
hang of that, though my nipples are still
so raw that it is dangerous to speak to
me during the first minute of a feeding. I
might hit someone. Hawkeye is in a psy-
chiatric hospital. He has a memory too
horrible to bear. Slowly it comes out, as I
nurse my son. A busload of people is
hiding from the enemy. Hawkeye is one
of them. And a woman. And a baby. The
baby makes soft gurgling sounds.
Hawkeye is afraid that the enemy will
hear. He is angry with the woman for
having the baby. Then there is no more
noise. He looks. The woman has smoth-
ered her baby so it cannot cry.
But I cty. For weeks afterwards I rock
my baby and cry. I cannot shake the
pain of this death. Suddenly this child,
this one small son is the only important
thing in all this ugly world. He must be
safe. He must be happy. I am tormented
if only his lower lip trembles. It flutters
like the wings of a butterfly pinned to a
specimen board. I cannot bear it. I go for
long walks through the cold, grey streets.
It rains every day. On the lilac, the first
fragile buds are opening.
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