28. Zelda
ZELDA
The first contraction I take seriously arrives while I am looking for a matching sock.
I stand beside the dresser with a yellow infant sock in each hand, one pale and one bright. I am annoyed at the interruption. Then I put both hands on the dresser and wait.
Six weeks since we built the crib. Forty weeks of carrying him. I have spent the last few days telling anyone who asks that I am ready.
When the tightness eases, I look at the socks.
“Not quite,” I tell the room.
I call Hedy. She answers with her mouth full.
“I think it’s happening.”
She swallows so loudly I hear it. “Now?”
“That is usually what people mean.”
“I’m coming.”
“You can finish breakfast.”
She has already hung up.
We call the hospital and follow the plan for when to come in. At first there is plenty of time between contractions. Hedy makes toast. I eat three bites, then decide the smell is unbearable and make her take it away.
“Five minutes ago you wanted it.”
“I was a different woman.”
She eats the rest standing at the sink.
I send Jeremiah a message while I can still type easily.
I think labor has started. Hedy’s with me. I’ll tell you when I want you to come.
I have my phone. Tell me if you need anything brought.
I read it twice, then put the phone in my bag. When I look up, Hedy is moving my shoes out of the doorway.
I follow her down the hall, one hand against the wall. We turn at the window and come back past the baby’s room. The crib is waiting. Jeremiah brought the arcade photograph after our supper, and it stands on the shelf where I can see it from the kitchen.
In the picture I have no idea about any of this. I am leaning against him because he turned toward me just before the flash.
Another contraction comes. I stop looking at the photograph.
By the time we leave, I don’t want Hedy to talk while the pain is there. She asks a question in the car and I hold up my hand. She stops. When it passes, I can’t remember what she asked.
“Never mind,” she says.
At the hospital, the room has an ugly chair and a clock above the door. I keep looking at the clock until I begin to hate it. The minute hand barely moves. I have done so much between its movements that I want someone to take it down.
Hedy pulls the chair nearer.
“Your hand,” I say.
She gives it to me. I grip until my fingers ache. Her other hand touches my shoulder, and suddenly I can’t stand that at all.
“Not there.”
She lifts it away.
“Sorry,” I say.
“You’re allowed.”
I don’t have room to ask what I’m allowed. The next one is coming. I put my forehead against her arm and close my eyes.
For a while I want to stand. Then I want to lie down.
I ask for help, for relief, for water, then push the cup away because I have to breathe.
Somebody speaks to me and I answer too sharply.
Hedy doesn’t make the face people make when they think a pregnant woman is being difficult.
She holds the cup where I can reach it later.
“Am I making sense?” I ask her once.
“You just told me the chair was ugly.”
“It is.”
“Your judgment remains sound.”
I laugh, and the laugh turns into something else halfway through. I catch her wrist.
“Stay.”
“I’m here.”
I know she is. I need her to keep saying it.
Later she says she has eaten a sandwich. I tell her not to mention food again. Then I ask what kind.
“You banned it.”
“I’m making an exception.”
She describes something with too much mustard. I accuse her of buying it so I wouldn’t want any. She is defending herself when the next contraction takes the words away.
Afterward she is still there, still holding the cup. I can’t remember whether I won the argument.
Between pains, I see Jeremiah’s hand on my stomach in the laundromat. The way he laughed when Otto kicked him. I want that hand now. I want to turn and find him looking at me as if he can make this easier.
I turn toward the ugly chair. Hedy has taken off her cardigan. There is a red mark on her wrist where I have been holding it.
“Did I do that?”
“It’s nothing.”
I rub it with my thumb. Then I need her hand again, and she gives it to me.
The last part leaves no space for the clock or the chair. I hear an instruction and try. Somebody tells me I am doing well, and I want to ask how they can know when I am so tired I don’t know where to put the next breath.
“I can’t.”
Hedy comes nearer. “Look at me.”
I don’t want to. I look anyway.
“There you are,” she says.
Another instruction. Another effort. Her face changes before anyone tells me why.
“Zelda.”
I hear her crying. For one frightened second I think something is wrong. Then someone says my baby is here, and the room moves around me.
He is put against my chest, hot and slippery and heavier than the little hats ever made me imagine. My hands hover because I am afraid to get it wrong.
“Hold him,” someone says gently.
I put a palm over his back. He is solid beneath it. Real skin, a moving shoulder. His cry comes out short and furious, right against me.
“Oh.”
That is all I can say.
The blanket comes over us. I try to see his face and can only see dark hair and one ear folded almost flat. I move my head. He moves his, objecting to something with another sharp little sound.
“Oh, you,” I whisper.
My hand is shaking on his back. I spread my fingers to cover more of him, as if that will help me understand how much of him there is.
I have spent months imagining a baby. Sometimes he was wearing the green hat. Sometimes he was a pair of feet pushing at my ribs. This one is warm against my chest and angry, and I do not know him yet.
I want to know everything.
“Hello.” My voice is very small. “Hello, Otto.”
His mouth opens. I see the little dark space inside it and begin to cry so hard I can’t get his name out again.
Hedy puts her face beside mine. Her cheek is wet too.
“You did it.”
I look at her, bewildered. Then back at him. I can’t make the hours that came before belong to this moment. They are over there somewhere. He is here.
One hand works its way out from under the blanket. The fingers are folded tight. I touch a knuckle with the edge of my finger.
“Look,” I tell Hedy, as if she could possibly be looking anywhere else.
She laughs through her tears.
People are still caring for us. I answer a question and forget the answer because Otto turns his cheek against my skin. I say his name again. It sounds different now that there is someone here to hear it.
After a while his furious noises become smaller. One is so indignant that Hedy has to wipe her face before she can speak.
I touch the edge of his ear. “He’ll need a book.”
The laugh hurts. I do it anyway.
Hedy offers to take a photograph. I nod. In it my hair is stuck to my forehead and most of Otto is hidden under the blanket. She shows me, apologizing that she didn’t get his whole face.
“No. Keep it.”
“Do you want me to send it?”
“To me. Nobody else yet.”
I need a little longer before there are people looking at this room who aren’t in it.
When the staff have checked him and he is back with me, I open the blanket enough to look at a foot. The heel is wrinkled. I put my finger beside it, then ask Hedy to take that picture too.
“Jeremiah?” she asks quietly.
I look at the little foot. He should see this. I want to see his face when he sees our son.
“Tell him Otto’s here. He can come now.”
Hedy reaches for her phone.
“Ask him to wait at the desk until we’re ready.”
“I will.”
I tuck the blanket around Otto. Hedy reads the message back to me, and I hear his name in her voice.
“Otto,” I tell him again.
He has gone to sleep. He doesn’t care how often I say it. I try once more anyway.