< Apart From Love: Chapter 6 >

A Promise, Aborted

Lenny would buy him a brand new tricycle, and teach him how to set his little feet on top of them pedals, and push, push harder, even harder—yes! Just so! And again: Go on, push, until—oh boy! With great joy, my husband would clap his hands, because here—for the first time—you could detect a move, a slight move ahead.

And then, a few years down the road, he would surprise our child with a large, shining bicycle, and adjust the training wheels as time goes by, until they wasn’t needed no more; at which point, Lenny would remove them, and hold them in his hands, like, to weigh them for a moment, and try to wipe the rust, and wish that time would like, slow down, just a little, because it’s hard, so hard for the old heart to let go.

Yes, Lenny needs a son: Someone to need him, trust him, and make him trust himself again.  

I turn the page over, only to find some of them words much too long—but I read them anyway and like, I enunciate them, as slowly and as clearly as I can; because it’s gonna make him proud of me, and make me worthy of him.

The book says that just four weeks after conception, basic facial features will begin to appear, including passageways, I repeat, passageways that will make up the inner ear, and arches that will contribute, contribute, I say aloud, to the jaw. And it says that the baby may now be a quarter of an inch long, which sounds like they’re talking about some lizard, or maybe a fish.

But the book don’t say nothing about what I’m really worried about, which is: How to be become a ma—and at the same time, how to be totally different from my ma.  

Me, I often wonder about that, because it’s kinda hard to know the right thing to do, even with the best of intentions, when all you have before you is nothing; nothing but a life cursed by violence, and by misery, and by a long list of mistakes.

Like the time when I was fourteen, and ma called me a bitch, for no better reason than me telling her that, like, I had missed my period. I wasn’t sure if she called me that because I was pregnant—or because she didn’t want to hear it.

At any rate, ma pondered the situation; this was what she called it back then, a situation. And she gave me a smack across my face when she figured it was Johnny's baby, which was real bad, not only because he was already married—but because he was also dating her at the time. And if there was one thing she hated, it was the idea of sharing.

After the blow I could feel blood in my mouth; and when I touched it with my tongue, one of my teeth felt kinda loose, and after a while it started to rock back and forth.

Once she simmered down, ma said, “There’s still time. It’s not too late.”

And she took me to that clinic, where she had just joined the cleaning staff; and they did her a personal favor, so that instead of paying a full charge, she could put in some extra hours, like, for a few months. And there, they took care of the situation, but not of the tooth; and so I ended up losing it.

Me, I’m awful lucky that you can’t tell it’s missing—unless I’m having real good fun and busting out laughing, which sometimes makes me forget to keep my mouth shut. But right now I have to bite my lips; either that or dig my nails, like, deep into the flesh of my hand, so that them cramps, they’re gonna stop, or at least fade away, kinda. So I close the book, reach over to the bedside lamp, and click its knob.

And at once, the place has changed. All these fancy pieces of furniture, and this entire bedroom, in which I don’t really belong, with its walls—those here around me and those over there, beyond the threshold, out in a corridor—all of these things wasn’t solid no more. In a blink, they’ve lost their bright, yellow sides as well as their opposite, dark sides.

There are no contrasts anymore; so that now, you can’t define no objects as, say, a four poster bed, or a coat hanger in a corner, or a wooden headboard, part of which is reflected there, in that mirror. And instead, the whole space has become kinda fluid, like a gray, smoky swamp, given to the wild storm in my head, in which a shard here, a shard there are kinda floating, in a total muddle.

And I ain’t even sure if these shards are, like, in the shape of things that have already taken place, or the shape of things yet to come; but somehow I know that from now on—no matter what happens—I ain’t alone: There’s new life in me.

I touch myself under the blanket, brushing my fingers real slow, from the navel up to the crease right here, under my chest, which is where I can feel the change: My breasts are so much firmer than before, and my nipples, they’ve gotten so much larger, like a drop turning into a ripple.

I let my hand hover over the place where I imagine my baby, and picture in my head how them things, them passageways are beginning to form, connecting like, by magic, from here to there, forging little nerves in all the right places inside this tiny creature, all quarter inch of him.

The two of us feel this bond, this warmth right here, coming across the thin gap between the skin of my belly and the skin of the palm of my hand. And so we’re happy; and then I stop to breathe—I gasp—I breathe deeper, deeper, so I can take it, take the pain.

Which in a flash, brings back to me that which I want to forget: It’s the memory of that clinic, where they took care of the situation; a memory of how I came to, in that horrible place, and found myself lying there, flat on my back, feeling wounded.

Immobile, I stared for a long while at some blurry sort of a border, which gave a cold, metallic shine, not getting at first that it came from the rail, the side rail of the bed, which was raised, like, well above the level of my head. So even without thinking—or knowing where I was—I felt like an animal, trapped.

Trying to come out of this state of paralysis, I started to notice a slight noise, because the coil springs was creaking under me, which sounded almost like a sigh. There was mist in my head, and I tried to clear it, tried to focus.

The bed was like, real high, so even if I could somehow gather my strength and take hold of the rail, even if I could lower the thing and then, swing my legs right there, over the edge—still, I wasn’t sure if my feet could reach down, all the way to the floor.

All the while, there was a sound, a sharp sound breaking through to me. Someone out there, someone beyond my field of vision was screaming, screaming real wild, like a kid scared out of her wits, crying for help with no clear words, and without ever stopping.

The ceiling loomed large over my head, and the floor was white and shiny, and a smell rose from it, a pungent smell of some cleaning detergent. Me, I looked around me and now I could see that the room had several other hospital beds, all of which seemed as shaky, and as high as the one in which I was trapped; perhaps because they was set, somehow, on wheels.

I could make out white outlines of bodies on white sheets. Some stretched flat on their backs; others, like, curled in the shape of a question mark. Them women, I gathered, they was just like me; having a situation, and letting someone take care of it for them, and trying to forget, and heal from that which, as ma said, had to be done.

All of them seemed to be caged, much like me. Their faces was washed out, their expressions—numb. They was just knocked, like, out of their senses. Looking at them I became kinda curious; I asked myself, who was the one screaming, because they all seemed to be so sleepy, so eerily quiet, even though from time to time you could see a head turning, or a hand changing position.

And me, I even became angry, madly angry at that unseen woman, whose voice pierced me. She raved and roared, arousing something in my heart which was so annoying, so alarming, so crazed even—until at last I thought, Enough! Just shut up! Why isn’t nothing being done here; I mean like, anything to silence her! Slap the madwoman! Restrain her! Strap her in a straightjacket! This is a clinic, after all! Tie her up, so she can’t stir up trouble no more!  

And on that note, all of a sudden it came to me: Somehow I knew, right then, that she was no other; no one else but me.

And still unable to stop myself from wailing, I began to listen; I mean, really listen to my own voice. I tried to split, to take apart the different notes flying—with such force, such anguish—out of my vocal cords.

I could hear different breaths, different speech sounds, coming out of my throat; some was like, open, some—partially obstructed. Finally I made a complete sense of it all. It was then that at last, I got it.

“Ma,” I heard me raving, on and on and on, “Ma, take me, take me from here, take me, ma, please! Take me before it is too late!”

Little by little I regained control over myself. And the voice—my voice—which by now was like, hoarse from shouting, became softer and softer still, until, at last, it faded away.

I laid there exhausted, trying to catch my breath, asking myself, When would she come? When would she take me back, take me home?

And me, I knew right then that I won’t never be quite the same. This was the day that changed me. From now on, my life would be measured not by the stretch of my years, my fourteen years—but by the depth of this experience. So I asked myself, What could I recollect, what would I remember out of it?

With some effort I recalled being led into the operation room, trembling a little in that skimpy paper gown, being told to mount the bed, and like, feeling them fingers—so cold on my outstretched arm—as the nurse tried, several times, to find my vein. But then, after that I couldn’t recall nothing; nothing but that screaming, that earsplitting screaming in my head. Thank God that was over.

I went back in my head, searching for an earlier moment, the moment I stopped in front of the entrance door, shedding tears, even kicking the stairs and pounding the wall with my fist, refusing to go into that clinic. I recalled arguing with ma, pleading with her to let me go, let me turn back, because it was a school day, and I shouldn’t miss it, really.

But she insisted that what I shouldn’t miss was my future, because it was no good for me to repeat her mistakes; and if did better in school, and scored better grades, especially in math, and learned, at long last, how to subtract my age from hers, I would know just exactly what she meant.

At any rate, keeping the baby was out of the question, because it would, like, screw up my entire life. After all, she said, I was still a little girl myself, and despite thinking myself a woman I knew nothing, really, absolutely not a thing about parenting; and what’s more, I didn’t have no partner, no man with whom I could share the burden. And by burden she meant, raising a child; which made me feel awkward, and like a burden myself.

At last I found myself having to obey her; because like, part of me figured that she meant well, and that she was right, too; and anyway, as everyone says, ma knows best—even though she went on dating Johnny for a whole month after that.

But the other part of me recoiled in fear at the thought of entering that door. I didn’t want no procedure; because I wanted so bad to hold on to the baby. In spite of everything ma had just said, I believed I was, like, destined to have him, and me, I could see, yes, I could just picture what lied ahead:

My little one would gurgle and coo right here, in my arms. I would be brushing my lips over his scalp—ever so gentle—careful not to touch nowhere close to the tender spot, there at the top. I could almost feel the fine fuzz of his hair, real soft, tickling my cheek.

In my head I could kiss, I could almost swallow his tiny fingers. They would wrap around my finger, their nails so pink, so incredibly clear. And the little hands, they would stroke my hair or like, search for my breast. Then I would touch the nipple to my baby’s lips, and watch him latch on and suck, suck, swallow, breathe; suck, suck, swallow, breathe.

All the while his eyes would be fixed on me, curious to see, to separate my features out of that blurry chaos, that first, misty sight of lights and of shadows. And so I promised myself: I would give him that which I never got. I would be such a good mama, like no mama ever was! I would keep him safe right here, close to my heart.

The loss of this hope; that was the thing that was so painful. I couldn’t hold it back, my grief. It came like, rushing, bursting out of me as I was lying there—even before I awoke, before I took full control of my body, or regained my spirit. It came out with every breath, every roar as it blasted off, soaring into the air above me. The roar of a wounded tigress.

This was the Anita whose voice I heard, for the first time in my life, that day twelve years ago.

Because who the hell cares? Who cares, really, if ‘there’s still time,’ and who cares if ‘it’s not too late,’ when your arms are empty. Who cares about the future, when your destiny is lost, and your promise—aborted, and by God, there’s no way, no way no more to undo the damage.

A girl, a wild girl with green, kittenish eyes, that’s how most people see me in their head, how they choose to fancy me. But then, who’re they to decide? Can they hear what’s inside, in my head? Me, I know different. There’s a voice, there’s a roar of a tigress in me, like, a fierce mama tigress, ready to leap into action and do anything, anything to protect her cub.

Beware, because this, you see, is the Anita I am today.