16. Bonnie
BONNIE
At four in the morning, I wake because I cannot get comfortable. By five, I am standing at the kitchen counter, watching the clock on the stove while a cramp draws across my belly.
I have four days until my due date. I was counting on them for no sensible reason. The bag is packed. The crib is ready. I still feel caught doing something I have not studied enough for.
Cleo answers before the phone finishes its second ring.
“I think it’s starting,” I say.
“Have you called the hospital?”
“I’m doing that next.”
She tells me she will come over after she calls the sitter. I speak to the maternity unit, answer their questions, and follow the nurse’s advice while I wait. I make toast. I eat half of it. The next contraction makes me set the plate down and lean forward over the counter.
When Cleo arrives, she has damp hair and a sweatshirt on inside out. I point at the seam because it is easier than saying I am afraid.
“I’ll fix it in a minute,” she says. “Have you eaten?”
“Half a piece of toast. Don’t make me look at the rest.”
She moves the plate, then sits beside me at the table. We stay at the cottage for a while, timing the contractions and talking in the spaces between them. Her son is with his sitter. The morning feeding is covered. Mercy has no idea I am about to become somebody’s mother.
By the time the hospital tells us to come in, I have stopped making jokes about the sweatshirt.
The drive is short and uncomfortable. I keep one hand against the door and watch a delivery truck turn slowly in front of us. Cleo leaves enough room and does not swear, which is how I know she is making an effort.
At the hospital, a nurse asks who is with me.
“Cleo. My friend.”
“And she’s staying?”
“Yes.”
The nurse puts it down without looking past us for a husband. I nearly thank her for that alone.
A nurse fastens a band around my wrist with REDFERN, B.
printed on it. The monitor strap goes across my belly, cold enough to make me flinch.
I walk with Cleo along the short length of the room.
I lean over the raised bed while she presses against my lower back where the nurse shows her.
When I need her to stop touching me, I tell her sharply. She stops.
“Sorry,” I say when the contraction eases.
“I heard you.”
She gives me a sip of water. I take it and then ask her to put it down because the smell of the plastic cup bothers me. Nothing she brought smells right. The hospital gown scratches my shoulder. I am furious with the room for having a clock that keeps moving so slowly.
At some point the nurse asks about pain relief again. I tell her I want an epidural. I thought I might manage without one; now I am tired of being brave for an audience that is not asking me to be.
They sit me on the edge of the bed, curled over a pillow, my chin on my chest. Cleo crouches in front of me and puts her forehead against mine.
“Don’t move,” somebody says behind me, and a contraction comes up anyway.
I hold still through it, breathing Cleo’s toothpaste, while a cold swab and then a deep ache go into my back.
Then warmth runs down my legs, the left one first, and the next contraction arrives from a long way off. I cry from relief and embarrassment.
“I thought I’d do better.”
The nurse adjusts the blanket. “You’re doing labor. You can have help.”
I nod, too tired to argue with a sentence that simple.
Cleo sits in the chair beside me and takes off her sweatshirt.
Under it she is wearing the faded shirt from a horse sale we went to before I married Gage.
We slept in the truck because the motel lost our reservation.
I bought a saddle I could barely afford and ate gas-station crackers for the drive home.
“You still have that?” I ask.
She looks down. “It’s good for painting.”
“You wore it to my wedding breakfast.”
“You called me at six and said you’d decided.”
I laugh once and then cry again. She reaches for a tissue, but I shake my head because I want to tell her the memory while I still can.
“He said we could wait and do it properly. Then he asked if properly meant more people telling us where to stand.”
Cleo remembers. She was there when we ate eggs afterward. I had watched Gage across that table and thought I would always be able to tell him anything.
“I wish he hadn’t made me leave,” I say.
She holds the tissue until I take it. “I know.”
My phone is in the bag beside her chair. I know I could ask for it. For a moment I can almost hear him answering, startled and happy, calling me Bon. I want to hear that so badly that I turn toward the bag.
Then I think of telling him I am afraid.
He says he has stopped talking to her. I believe he has stopped. I cannot make the rest of me catch up while I am lying here.
“Will you stay close?” I ask Cleo.
She moves her chair until I can reach her hand.
Then the nurse comes back, and I ask what happens next.
The afternoon goes slowly. A new nurse rolls me onto my left side with a pillow between my knees, and her hands are pressure and nothing else.
Cleo eats a sandwich in the corner when I tell her I cannot stand listening to her stomach.
She tries to open the wrapper quietly and fails so completely that I start laughing.
“Just eat it.”
“I was being considerate.”
“You’re taking fifteen minutes to unwrap bread.”
She eats. I close my eyes for a while.
When it is time to push, I am frightened all over again. The doctor explains what she wants me to do. A nurse helps support me. Cleo stands close enough that I can hold her wrist, and I tell her she cannot leave.
“I’m here,” she says.
I rest between pushes. The work is harder than I imagined, even with the pain relief, and I become convinced I am doing it wrong. The doctor tells me the baby is moving down. I ask if she is all right, and the answer lets me begin again.
I lose track of how many times I push. My hair is wet at the back of my neck. Cleo wipes my forehead with a cloth and tells me about the first time we loaded a stubborn pony together. She stops when I tell her I do not want to hear about a pony.
“Fair,” she says, and I love her so much I cannot speak.
The doctor asks me to ease off, to breathe as she shows me. I follow her voice. The pressure keeps building, and for a moment I am certain I cannot do any more.
Then the room changes because my daughter is in it.
They put her against my chest, warm and slippery, with a cry so indignant that I start laughing before I understand I am also sobbing. A nurse dries her and helps cover us. I keep saying hello. I have practiced a hundred things I might say, and hello is the only one that arrives.
Her mouth opens. Her little face is swollen and unfamiliar. I study it with a concentration I have never given anything in my life.
“Hi, Cricket,” I whisper.
Cricket is the nickname I used alone in the cottage, from all the restless little movements that kept me awake when I wanted her to know I was talking to her. Now she is here, and it fits the small person protesting against my skin.
Cleo is crying beside the bed. I laugh at her, and she laughs back without trying to wipe her face.
“You should see her,” I say, though she is looking straight at the baby.
“I do.”
I touch the tiny foot that has been wedged beneath my ribs. Her toes spread against my finger. The doctor is still working between my knees and telling me what she is doing. I hear enough to answer. The rest of my attention belongs to the weight on my chest.
When the nurse helps me offer the first feed, I discover that having wanted this for months does not mean I know how to do it. Cricket searches and fusses. I need help positioning her. I ask the same question twice, and the nurse answers twice.
“We can keep working on it,” she says.
I kiss the top of my daughter’s head. “You and me both.”
Cleo takes a photograph when I ask her to. She shows it to me before saving it. My hair is plastered across my forehead. I look exhausted. Cricket is mostly blanket and one furious little cheek.
“Keep it,” I say.
Later, while the nurse is helping me and Cricket rests in the bassinet beside the bed, Cleo calls her son’s sitter and asks for him. She tells him the baby came. I hear his small voice asking whether she liked the tractor.
“Tell him I kept it for her,” I say.
The room grows quiet after the next check. I am sore and hungry and too excited to sleep. Cleo brings my bag close enough that I can reach the side pocket. I take out the tractor and put it on the table.
Gage has missed this day. I chose who could be in this room, and the fact still hurts.
Then Cricket stirs, and for once the ache about him does not take everything else with it. My daughter is here. I was here for all of it.
I ask the nurse to help me lift her again. Cricket settles against me with her mouth searching at my shirt, and Cleo pulls her chair closer and passes me the water.