< Apart From Love: Chapter 21 >

The Heartbeat

In spite of the light spotting I refused to admit to myself—even for one moment—how terribly worried I really was. Lenny didn’t come back, so all alone in the big bed I felt lost, like I was drowning, and had to hold my breath, somehow, till dawn, and then even longer, till the light of day, till my ten o’clock appointment, because I was so afraid I was gonna get some bad news, I mean, about my little one.

So now I pinch myself, because at long last it’s ten already, and here I am, in a half-darkened office, lying on my back, waiting, like, for a miracle, straining to hear a sound—which isn’t here, isn’t here yet—the sound of my baby’s heartbeat. If something’s wrong then it’s time, time to find out.

With a heavy sigh, a woman in her mid-thirties takes a seat in front of me and types my name, so that now, ‘Anita Kaminsky’ shines above me in large letters on a screen. If not for her red eyes, and them sharply pointed ears, she would seem the perfect clinical type. Her thin mouth is pursed pretty tight, except to let out, kinda under her breath, that she’s sick of all this, and who cares, nobody gives a damn, and really why should they, it’s her life, and her problem is no one else’s business, and to call her Debbie, or better yet, sonographer, and this plastic thing, this gismo which she’s gripping in her hand, is called a probe. With that she begins sliding it around the bottom of my belly.

I hold very still. I don’t barely move under that crisp, starched sheet. It has a fresh smell, and ironed pleats that stay there, like, straight as an arrow, even when it’s spread open, right here over my legs.

Her movement is measured, precise—but all the same, I bet my baby’s squirming inside, because of all that prodding. It tickles me, too. I’m afraid I’m gonna pee in my panties, because that probe thing which is resting here, on my skin, feels kinda wet, kinda cool to the touch. For her, I bet all this is just routine. Me, I have to hold a full bladder, because of them five cups of water I had to drink before coming here, which isn’t easy—but then, then the beat starts!

It sounds faint at first, just like nothing, and all of a sudden it grows awful strong. Now that she’s found it, and it blips loud and clear, the smile can’t hardly be wiped off my face. If not for them red eyes, I would’ve asked her, like, if I was to come back the next day, would she let me listen again.

So-no-graaa-pher, I say under my breath. This word is not only long-winded—I mean, you can drag it out for a long, long time—but also, it goes up and down, like music. And it takes a while to absorb; I have to repeat it in my head, which forces me to focus pretty damn hard. If not for that, and if not for them three witches standing there in the corner squinting at me—perhaps even wishing me ill—I would’ve lost all sense of shame: I would’ve cried and cried, and then cried some more. It’s the most sweet, beautiful sound I’ve ever heard in my entire life!

But never mind me, or how I feel. You can see straight away that the most amazing change is beginning to take place right over there, out of that corner, when all three of them—aunt Hadassa, aunt Frida and aunt Fruma—come forward, like, in one heavy step, which makes the floor bounce right under me. I’ve taken a risk asking them to come here with me, and I hope, I so hope it won’t prove to be no mistake.

I bet they hate me, because from the beginning, from the time I fainted they’ve been hinting that this here pregnancy, it don’t seem to be viable, and it should be aborted, and there’s still time, like, to do it.

Still, there’s no one else to offer a helping hand, no one else to lean on, in case I’m gonna feel dizzy again. From now on, hate don’t really matter no more, because I need them. Above all, survival.

Blip, blip, blip goes the sound, and them three aunts, they pop their round, bulging eyes and lean right over my belly, which is glistening in the dark with that clear gel smear, in which the probe thing is like, splashing around. And aunt Hadassa, she raises her painted eyebrows, and screws up her nose till it’s glued to the screen, like she hasn’t seen nothing like that in her entire life, which I bet, she hasn’t.

Me, I thought I knew what to expect. From the book Lenny gave me I’ve learned that at week twelve, the baby’s fingers would soon begin to open and close. His toes would curl, his eye muscles would clench, and his mouth would make sucking movements. By now his eyes have already moved from the sides of his head to the front, and his ears is like, right there where they should be. I thought I could see all that in my head—but for sure, it isn’t hardly the same as watching the real thing, because the real thing is like, much more confusing.

“See, right here?” says the sonographer.

And I say, “No, what?”

And she points out, “The heartbeat, see? Down here, across the monitor?”

So I turn to the screen, which is as black as night, and fix my eyes on that white worm, which is radiating there, all the way across, with them shining spikes pulsing through it, one blip after another, running off at the right edge and then, coming right back in at the left one.

“Sure,” I say, real bold, like I know what I’m talking about. “The heartbeat.”   

“Yes,” she says, like we have a clear meeting of the minds between us. “This here, that’s what you call a Doppler waveform, see? And it shows the systoles and diastoles in the blood flow velocity.”

“Looks good,” I say.

“For you,” she says, “the important thing is this: Even in the presence of vaginal bleeding, which is what you have, we can depict a visible heartbeat. So obviously, the fetus is viable.”

Here she lets me take a deep breath, and then goes on to say, “It means that the probability of a continued pregnancy is better than 95 percent.”

“Looks good, awful good,” I say again.

And from behind, them three witches mumble, “Nu? Looks good, doesn’t it.” And they turn back to retreat into that corner, from where I can hear still them, whispering, “My, my,” and clicking their tongue from time to time.

Meanwhile the sonographer, she freezes the image and prints a little picture for me, so that later I can show the little worm to my husband. Right this minute I ain’t all that sure I want to do that.

She turns a few knobs, and pushes a few sliders and stuff on her keyboard, which at once messes up what you see, up there on the screen. A pale search light appears in the image. It’s scanning around some dusky nooks and crannies, where silvery, flat layers—some thin, some thick—have sunk down into the dark, just like wet mud. It isn’t barely clear to me that what I see up there is for real. Perhaps the light just flashes there, off the sludge, and what it mirrors back to me is like, false. Something I’ve just dreamed up.

The ray flutters about, slicing, somehow, across them layers of dense, grainy clay of what’s inside me. At first I don’t much mind all that slicing, because it don’t hurt me, and it don’t feel like nothing, really.

With a soft, squelching sound, little specs glitter in the dark fluid. And there—just behind them specs—something moves! Something catches the light and like, wow! For a second there I can swear I see a hand: My baby’s hand waving, then turning to float away.  

This isn’t exactly what I’ve expected, because like, not only is that fluid kinda see-through—but to my surprise, so is the little hand. The second them skinny fingers start moving, you can spot not only the faint outline of flesh on them, but the shine of the bones coming at you, too.

Me, I’m here to protect my baby, to keep him safe from harm; even from the shadow of a harm. So I tell her, “Now, stop that!”

And she points her ears even sharper, saying, “Excuse me?”

So I go, real slow, I say, “You heard me. Turn the damn thing off.”

And them three aunts, they stop whispering amongst themselves. Right away they click their heels, like, awful hard against the floor to rise up, even though you can’t hardly tell if they’re standing at this point, other than the fact that aunt Hadassa says Oy, which is quickly echoed, like, Oy Oy, by aunt Fruma and aunt Frida. Anyhow, they seem eager to find out what it is I’m fussing about.

So I insist, this time much louder, “Stop, stop already! You slicing my baby!”

And the sonographer, she freezes the image, and tries to hold me off, saying, like, “Ultrasound scan only looks like a slice through the flesh, but trust me, it isn’t.”

And in turn I ask, “Is it fake, then?”

“Listen,” she tells me, with a tone that is half-polite, half-tired, half-annoyed, “it’s considered to be a safe, non invasive, accurate and cost-effective investigation in the fetus, and not to worry.”

Here she glances, with some caution, at them aunts, because by now they’ve come awful close to the screen, which is where she, the sonographer, stands, if you can call that standing, because really she’s leaning back ever so slightly, like, away from them.

“None of you fine women should worry in the least,” she says. “As you may already know, ultrasound has become an indispensable obstetric tool, which plays an important role in the care of every pregnant woman. My job is to take some measurements, which reflect the gestational age of the fetus, to arrive at the correct dating of birth—”

“All right,” I cut in, because by now I’ve figured that despite all this rattling, she means well.

Still, I’m glaring at her, like, to stop her from chattering, because anyway she don’t barely make any sense. “Go on, then,” I tell her, “go on with them measurements, but from now on, you better be real careful.”

In reply she mumbles something, making the mistake of thinking that from where I lie, I can’t see her rolling her eyeballs, which seem, somehow, even redder than before. So just to make myself clear I spell things out for her, like, “We don’t want to see no more slicing, you hear?”

She blinks. “I hear you, I do,” she echoes, giving a slight nod to me, which means that at last, we have a clear understanding between us fine women.

The image comes alive, and there is that black bubble again, swimming in in its gravy. She marks an outer edge around it, which at once, brings it so close to you that like, it could almost swallow you.

And in it you can spot, yes, you can suddenly find—gleaming there, in and out from them fuzzy, gnarly shadows—the most beautiful side view of a baby: My little one curled there on his back, like he’s just about to start bouncing around. There, there’s his face! He’s bathed in light, with a round forehead and plump cheek and the cutest little nose you’ve ever seen. And there’s his lips, which is like, gulping for air, the mouth opening, closing on his own little thumb and then, sucking it.

Aunt Hadassa drops her chin in surprise, and in spite of trying her best to contain herself, she gives a shrill little yelp, after which the sonographer tells her, like, Enough! And to leave the office at once, because she, the sonographer, has had it already, up to here! And with a sigh, she warns us that she may quit her job right now, right in the middle of this here session, because God knows how she’s even managed to make it to work this morning. She’s so broken-hearted after last night, which was when—without no warning—her husband got up and left her, because she’d tried and tried but no matter how hard she kept on trying, she couldn’t get pregnant.

By now she’s like, on a roll: She can’t stop herself from talking to me, even though she don’t pay no attention to how I’m twisting on them fresh sheets, and how I’m biting my lips, which I have to do, because I need to pee so bad, I really need to go, like, right now.

But what can I do? She isn’t a sonographer no more, just plain Debbie, who talks and blinks, blinks and talks to no end, telling me how he turned, for just a second, and looked back at her over his shoulder, perhaps waiting for her to beg him to stay—but in sheer despair she cried out, Well? Don’t just stand there—go! Go already! And so, finally, he did.

I can see she’s in pain, and she don’t need no advice from me, because my man isn’t no better anyhow, and who knows what to expect of him now. So I raise myself on my elbow and lean closer and touch her arm to say, like, I’m so, so sorry for you, Debbie. So now she starts sobbing, she’s in tears, which at least stops her from blinking all the time. She says she can’t take it no more, like, looking at them fetuses sucking their stubby little thumbs all day long.

And her parents, she says, they come from the old country, where a divorced woman’s no better than damaged goods, so of course she isn’t gonna to tell them nothing about all this, because like, what will they say? She would much rather talk to a stranger—someone she won’t see no time soon—or just bury it all inside.

Then Debbie wipes her swollen eyes to stare at aunt Hadassa, and to say that this screaming, right in her ears, makes her nervous, because she’s in a delicate state, which you can tell by the sound of her hiccups and from time to time, her sniveling. Her hand, she says, may turn shaky, which is a sign of bad luck, because that would prevent her from taking them measurements, such as the Crown Rump Length around the head, right here on screen, and the Femur Length, and the Abdominal Circumference, all of which requires great focus and like, complete silence around her.

So without a word aunt Hadassa hangs her head, and beats a path of retreat across the floor, like a wise, old general knowing when to admit defeat on the battlefield. Her two sisters march out the door closely behind her, and together they all wait for me outside. I can hear them whispering excitedly to each other.   

When Debbie is finally done getting herself together and taking all them measurements, she tells me to go empty my bladder, which is a lucky thing, because at this point I’m ready to burst, like, before you can even finish saying sonographer.

Then I get out to the waiting room, eager to get out as quick as I can, to find out if Lenny’s come back home. Along the way I’m trying to put my hands in the sleeves of my winter coat and buckle my pink belt around me—only to discover that it don’t fit me no more, because my body, it isn’t barely as slim as I thought it was. Looking down on it, a view comes to me in a flash, which makes me brace myself, like, for danger: Down there on the floor, aiming at me from left, right and center, is the sharp, pointed tips, the tips of three pairs of shoes.

Me, I look up, and can’t barely believe what I see: Aunt Hadassa gives me a smile, as do her sisters. “Wait, don’t just go,” she says, in the most disarming manner. “Stand there!”

Gone is the acid tone in her voice. Gone is that squint of suspicion. Them witches, they look awful friendly this time around. At first I figure that having seen my baby, they simply have no choice but to glow, just because of adoring him—but like, it’s a bit more than that.

“My God, you are fearless!” says aunt Hadassa. “I dare say, you are just like me.”

“No,” I tell her, “I’m tougher.”

“A fighter, is what you are! I mean, you would kill to keep your baby safe.”

To which I say, “You bet I would.”

Then, seeing me feel around my belt, like, to find the next hole in it, Aunt Hadassa offers, “Here, let me help you with that, dear.” And she draws even closer, and wraps herself around me—mushy, droopy flesh flapping like wings under her arms—and clicks my belt into place, so now it hangs nice and loose around my waist. Then she takes a step back, letting me lead the way out, which is when I know that she knows that there’s no way I’m gonna let no one stop me.

No one—I swear—no one can draw this story to a close, by telling me there’s still time, like, to end it.

This is week twelve. My pregnancy’s viable, and it’s not to be aborted. So now, as we walk out, we fine women peer straight into each other’s eyes, knowing that at long last, we have a clear meeting of the minds between us.