17. Rani
17
Rani
No, not again. That was the first thought that entered her head. She was not going to go through this again.
The first pregnancy test was clear in the result. So was the second. She was about to turn forty and her body was having the biggest laugh at her expense.
Her first thought was to text Priya. It had been what she had done when she was pregnant with Ali. And when she was weeks away from giving birth to him.
I think I’m going to burst , she had texted Priya back then. She awaited a funny response. You look like a hippo, but you won’t burst , she thought Priya might say. No reply. Two days passed. She counted seven texts from her end but none from Priya’s. She understood her friend would be busy. There were matters that Priya dealt with that Rani could never understand.
But something inside her chest felt strange. She tried to talk about it with Dan. ‘I think something is wrong,’ she said. It immediately alarmed him. He assumed she was talking about the baby inside her belly. ‘No, it’s Priya,’ she tried to reassure him. ‘I haven’t heard from her in a while.’
‘You said she’s usually busy. Have you tried calling her?’
She had not. There was an implicit understanding between the friends that Priya was sometimes in situations where she couldn’t answer the phone. It was best if Rani didn’t try calling her at all. And in any case, Rani justified to herself, weeks would pass where she wouldn’t hear from her friend. Sometimes even months.
But as Rani edged towards her due date, Priya had been more present. She had called, responded to texts with funny messages and even visited her.
Rani scrolled on her phone to see the last message she had received from Priya. A joke; a bad one at that.
What’s the difference between a pregnant woman and a light bulb?
You can unscrew a light bulb.
Rani had replied a few hours later with
When Priya didn’t respond, she added, That was funny – not.
And then, I might be about to become a mum but you’re definitely becoming a dad with those dad jokes.
There was still silence.
The feeling of unease grew. ‘Maybe it’s indigestion,’ Dan suggested. ‘I’ve been reading how all your other organs have been squeezed because of the growing foetus. It’s very common in the late stages of pregnancy.’
‘No, it’s not that,’ Rani said. By then she had become concerned enough to make numerous calls to Priya’s number. They went straight to voicemail.
‘Do you know where she lives? We can visit her,’ he said. She smiled back at him brightly.
‘I don’t, but I can find out.’
She tried by first tracking down their previous housemates on social media. None of them, it seemed, had much of a relationship with Priya. She looked through all the texts and emails they had exchanged, trying to work out where and for whom Priya might have worked. But she left no clues. She stared at the computer screen trying to work out what words she could type into the search engine that would deliver some clues – brothel? Escort? Indian escort? Indian escort Sydney? The results were eye-opening, but not in the way she wanted them to be.
One night as she stayed up late watching TV, something she had increasingly started to do as insomnia had been impacting her viciously, she heard a shuffling in the corridor. She turned around to find Dan standing bleary-eyed, watching her. He wordlessly came over and sat beside her.
‘Not long now,’ he said, and as he did he gently touched her belly, letting his fingers run over the bump. Inside her stomach, their son reacted with an almighty kick. Dan laughed immediately. ‘He knows his dad is here,’ he said, smiling. ‘And he’s telling me that Ammy needs to go to sleep.’
‘Ammy can’t sleep, otherwise she would.’
‘Funny how the body gets you ready for parenthood.’
‘Funny how it’s only the mother impacted.’
Dan turned and gave her a curious look. ‘I’ll be there, right beside you,’ he said. ‘Not like how it is back home. I am happy to change nappies and do whatever you need.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I know you will.’ She let her head rest on his shoulder. ‘I’m worried about Priya.’
Dan let out a sigh. With a gentle voice he asked, ‘Have you wondered whether she doesn’t want to be found?’
It was the one thought she had refused to let enter her head. Yes, there had been times where she and Priya hadn’t been chatting, but the pregnancy had changed that. She was around so much more than before. And if she had wanted to disappear and not be found she wouldn’t have let her final words to Rani be a terrible dad joke. Or, actually, maybe she would. It sounded just like something she would do.
‘I can’t help feeling something is wrong,’ she said, but by then Dan was asleep, his head resting on the back of the couch as breaths like little sighs escaped his lips.
She arrived at her due date with no contact from Priya. Despite this she typed out another text. The time is finally here! Can you believe it? We’ll be meeting our little boy soon. I want you to be there. Will you be there? In the hospital, that is. Ammy has sent recipes from India, she says these will help me and the baby. I know you hate to cook, but for me maybe you will?
It was a long text, another one in a long line of texts, and she hesitated to send it. Maybe Dan was right: it sounded like Priya to want to disappear for a bit. But – and it was the buts that constantly interjected when Rani tried to convince herself that Priya did just leave her without a word – why would she do that?
Rani hit send on the text. A few minutes later her phone rang – an unknown number.
‘Hello.’ It was a man’s voice. ‘Your phone is listed as the emergency contact on Ms Priya Singh’s phone. Are you Ms Singh’s relative?’ As soon as Rani heard this, she started shaking.
Rani couldn’t even answer. Tears were bubbling down her face. She wanted to throw the phone away. She wanted whoever was on the other end to stop talking and pass it on to Priya.
‘Can you please confirm your relationship with Ms Singh?’
‘Who is this?’ Rani blurted.
‘This is Constable Hughes. We were asked to conduct a welfare check on Ms Singh. Can you please confirm your relationship with her?’
‘I’m her friend,’ Rani said.
‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But unfortunately we have found Ms Singh unresponsive.’
Rani stopped hearing much more after that. All she could hear was a sort of white noise. A whooshing, surging sound like waterfalls after heavy rain or maybe waves crashing on rocks. The man kept talking but Rani wasn’t able to make sense of his words. Instead she noticed a feeling of warm wetness drenching her underwear. Her waters had broken.
During her pregnancy she had joined an online forum for mothers who Rani found herself turning to often for help. Anytime she experienced a symptom that she could find no explanation for, or when she needed reassurance that what was happening was normal, Rani turned to them. At first it was about pure physical symptoms, but later it became about emotional ones. It helped her immensely to know she wasn’t the only one who suffered from heartburn, insomnia and a strange feeling of knowing that even though women had given birth since humans existed, when you became pregnant for the first time it felt like you were the only one experiencing it. And then there were women who were on their second or third pregnancies saying how they had forgotten what it was even like to be pregnant. Pregnancy seemed to change your brain. These women told her how when the time came and you were giving birth everything would be too real and unreal at the same time. ‘It’s the drugs,’ a woman once commented. But even those who didn’t use any pain relief insisted that the whole process of labour was a blur.
Rani reminded herself of these comments when she was going through labour. Everything was so surreal. The pain, however, was very real, and in the throes of intense contractions she was jolted back into the birthing suite, with a nurse wearing a blank expression and her husband a worried one. And then when the pain subsided she tried dissociating from the here and now. This was meant to be the happiest moment of her life and all she wanted to do was not be there.
‘Could someone take over the whole labour part?’ she asked, thinking that she was not really saying the words out loud but to herself. The nurse let her blank expression break. She laughed. ‘Oh that’s a good one,’ she said as another searing pain took hold of Rani.
‘For fuck’s sake, get the epidural,’ she heard a voice say and she was sure it was Priya’s. Suddenly she looked around the room. Was she there? Had the words she’d only partially heard on the phone been untrue?
‘Priya,’ she said out loud.
Dan’s face crumpled even more. He came close and squeezed her shoulder.
‘Is she here?’ Rani asked him.
Instead of answering he kissed her forehead.
‘She can have other family members in the suite if she likes,’ the nurse said. Dan shook his head. ‘She just found out her friend died,’ he said, turning to the nurse, speaking as if Rani wasn’t there.
She’s not dead! Rani thought she had screamed. But neither of them turned to look at her, their voices low as they continued to murmur to one another.
Another contraction took hold, this one was so powerful it sent electric shocks down the entirety of her body.
Get the bloody epidural! Priya shouted in her head. Get the epidural!
Rani let out a guttural scream. The nurse and Dan turned to look at her with alarm.
‘Can I check how many centimetres you are?’ the nurse asked, coming over to Rani.
‘No! Just get me the epidural!’ Rani shouted, her voice for some reason sounding like Priya’s.
The relief from the anaesthetic was immediate. Suddenly the whole world seemed to calm down. Dan’s face bore a look of disappointment. ‘I thought you wanted a natural birth,’ he said. ‘You wanted to deliver in the bath. It was part of the birth plan.’
‘Well unless you’ve gone through labour yourself, I don’t think you can tell me what I should and shouldn’t have done,’ Rani replied, hearing Priya’s voice coming out of her mouth.
Once the pain had subsided she felt such immediate relief she wanted to laugh and cry. Thank god for modern medicine , she thought. The pain also gave way to a deep tiredness and she found herself getting drowsy. As she was on the cusp of drifting off to sleep, she saw her friend standing in the corner of the room, her arms folded, wearing a look of I-told-you-so.
‘Yeah, yeah,’ Rani said to her. ‘You were right about the epidural.’ She closed her eyes, falling into deep slumber.
A few hours later the doctor woke her. The machine she was connected to was telling them her contractions were getting closer. It was almost time to push.
And push she did. She pushed so very hard. But the baby wasn’t coming out.
‘You really need to bear down now, give it everything you’ve got,’ the nurse told her. And she thought she did, but the baby wasn’t moving through the birth canal. Suddenly the mood shifted in the suite. There was chatter and looks of alarm going round. More people entered the room.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked Dan. He didn’t know.
‘If the baby doesn’t come out now then there’s a risk he’ll be deprived of oxygen. I think we have no choice but to try forceps,’ the doctor said.
‘Forceps?’ Rani asked, looking around helplessly, but no one was explaining much to her.
The next thing she knew the doctor was aiming a knife at her vagina. ‘I’m going to have to create an incision to allow me to use the forceps and pull the baby out,’ he said.
‘An episiotomy?’ The word came to Rani from the depths of her mind. Some of the women on the forum had used it.
‘Yes,’ the nurse said, though her eyes were focused on what the doctor was doing.
Rani cried, hot tears flooding down her face. ‘Please, try to take a deep breath,’ the doctor said, focusing on the task at hand.
Dan’s face was drawn. She reached for his hand but it was gripping the side of her bed. Suddenly he went very pale. She assumed it was from the sight of the blood behind the sheet that was blocking her view of the horror being inflicted on her lady parts. And then a big scissor-shaped instrument was being handed to the doctor.
‘I’m going to use these forceps and try to guide the baby out,’ the doctor said. He was sweating. It was hot. Suddenly she felt very hot. Her eyes darted around the room. No one was meeting her gaze. She wanted her mother there, her sister, even her father would do. And then she saw her again. Priya, standing in the shadows. She looked directly at Rani. Her eyes seemed to tell her that it would be okay. Everything would be okay.
The next sound she heard was a baby screaming at the top of his lungs. The best sound she’d ever heard. Dan looked at Rani, his eyes full of tears. ‘You did it,’ he said, before turning back to his son.
‘I did it,’ she said looking at where she saw Priya standing in the shadows, except now she was no longer there.
The baby was shown to Rani for a brief cuddle before being whisked away for tests. Dan followed behind them. He didn’t have to say it, she knew his main concern was for his son. She came second. She would always come second. And that was okay. She felt the same.
Shadows started to form around her vision, which she didn’t want to admit was becoming blurry. And then she saw Priya at her bedside.
‘Why’d you do it?’ Rani asked. ‘Why did you choose to leave me?’
‘I wanted to decide when it was time for me to go, rather than the world decide. Do you understand?’
‘The baby would have made you happy,’ Rani said.
‘Nothing would have made me happy,’ Priya said. And then Rani closed her eyes. In the distance she heard a voice say, ‘Doctor, she’s haemorrhaging.’ And then there was silence.
Rani looked at the positive pregnancy tests and wrapped them in multiple layers of toilet paper. She then dumped them in council bins lined up outside her building. She was going to have to think about what her next steps were.
Priya , she thought hard, bet you’re laughing now. What was that you said? ‘If you focus too much on wanting something to happen it will never happen.’ I guess the opposite is also true – I didn’t want this to happen and guess what!
Priya remained silent.
Priya, tell me what to do.
But Priya didn’t work like that. She didn’t appear on demand. Rani knew that, but it didn’t mean she couldn’t try. Priya hadn’t appeared as a vision since that day she gave birth. After that Priya had casually taken residence inside Rani’s brain, dishing out the odd sentence here and there when she felt like it.
Who could she turn to? Her mother or sister were out of the question; they would be overjoyed at the news. Which, seeing as Rani hadn’t even decided what she wanted to do with the pregnancy, was not necessarily the response she was looking for. She thought about Sophie and Meena. It had been weeks since she was in touch with them. The last she’d heard were some texts from Sophie saying she and Todd had made up and were planning to move to the country. The news about the move was disappointing but Rani had long realised that the friendships she made were almost always temporary. That life would get in the way and the person you were hoping to get close to would inevitably drift away. Or in the case of Priya, leave for good. The loss of which never stopped stinging.
But it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep in touch , Sophie had texted. ‘Keep in touch’, Rani knew, was code for ‘See you never’.
Rani didn’t feel as comfortable texting Meena. They hadn’t developed that sense of friendship. If truth be told, Rani found Meena intimidating. She seemed like the sort of woman who had it all figured out and also someone who Rani didn’t want to admit was a little bit scary. Perhaps because of how extroverted and loud she was. She didn’t know if they saw eye to eye on a lot of things, either.
Back at home, Rani watched Ali while biting her fingernails. He was playing with building blocks. He had made a little red bridge and was running a toy car underneath it. How could she be so reckless, she thought. Imagine thinking you couldn’t get pregnant because you were so old and your eggs were dying. They were dying. Recently she’d had a blood test to confirm that she was heading into perimenopause. But clearly it didn’t mean she wasn’t still fertile.
‘Ali, would you like a brother or sister?’ she asked, and as soon as she did she regretted it, because here she was getting her little boy’s hopes up.
‘A friend to play with?’ Ali asked, eyes lit up.
Rani didn’t know what to say. ‘You know, Ali, I think it’s time we found you lots of friends to play with.’
That afternoon she called around some preschools and made appointments to visit. She hesitated before making an appointment with her doctor. That night she told Dan that she was going to place Ali in a preschool – he needed interaction with children his age. The way she spoke, Dan knew there was no getting in the way of Rani. ‘If you think so,’ was all he said.
As she lay in bed that night, Rani turned towards Dan and watched him as he read the latest business book he had picked up. All this reading on the latest business techniques and yet he still hadn’t climbed up the career ladder as expected. Perhaps he was too smart for the business world. Perhaps he needed to be a bit more ruthless.
‘You ever think about moving back to India?’ she asked.
‘Hmm?’ he said, clearly not having heard her.
‘India. Do you want to move back?’ This time she spoke loud and clear.
Dan frowned and shut his book. ‘What’s got into you today?’
‘Nothing. Why?’
‘I don’t know. I sense something is going on.’
‘Because I wanted to send Ali to preschool? It’s about time, Dan.’
‘No, not that. And yes, I knew the time would come eventually. To be honest, I thought having Ali around at home was more for your benefit than his. It would make you feel less lonely.’
So he did pay attention to how she was feeling. That was nice, she supposed.
‘How about that woman you met in the city? What was her name? Sophie? Maybe you should meet her again,’ Dan continued.
‘She’s leaving Sydney. They’re moving to the country,’ Rani said, her voice deflated.
Dan’s face softened. ‘I’m sorry.’
He put the book on the table beside him. He lay his head down on the pillow so it was level with hers. He had a nice face, Rani thought. It was what had drawn her to him in the first place. She looked into his eyes. They were small and brown and didn’t have the long lashes Tariq’s did. As soon as she had made the comparison she got angry with herself. Tariq was the disease she could not shake off.
‘I think you should go home for a visit. It’s been a while since you saw your family. And your mother must be missing you.’
Rani remembered her mother bustling around in their apartment after she had given birth to Ali. They had managed to get her visa expedited so she could come take care of Rani and the newborn baby. Without her there, Rani wasn’t sure if they would have got through it all.
Rani shuddered, remembering the state she was in by the time her mother arrived in Sydney. After the birth Rani had lost a lot of blood and had to spend a week in the hospital. Then at home she found it hard to move around – partly because of the episiotomy and the fact that the blood loss had left her feeling very weak and tired, but mostly because of the heaviness she held in her heart. She loved her son with every fibre of her being, but she also missed her friend so deeply all she could do was cry. A midwife came by to check in on her and found Rani not coping very well.
‘You need to get her some help,’ the midwife told Dan sternly, passing him some pamphlets of organisations to call.
Dan, with a screaming baby in one hand and a wife who had almost died a few weeks ago sitting beside him, had whispered, ‘I know.’ The next thing he did was call Rani’s mother.
There was no way she was going to go through that again, Rani thought. No way she would ever allow herself to feel that wretched. It had taken her many months to feel remotely normal again. Her mother had bustled around the flat like a fairy godmother, feeding the baby and her daughter and allowing Rani to get as much rest as possible. Even Dan managed to regain some of the weight he had lost from the stress. When it came time for her mother to leave, Rani felt herself feeling devastated all over again.
‘You need to be strong, Rani,’ her mother said firmly. ‘Ali needs a healthy ammy so he can grow to be a healthy boy. If not for yourself, do it for him. Be strong.’
And so she did, by doing the only thing she knew that allowed her to cope, which was to dissociate from the situation she was in and numb herself to life.
‘I think I had postpartum depression,’ Rani suddenly blurted to Dan. ‘I told the nurses and doctors I was okay but I don’t think I was okay.’
Dan furrowed his brows.
‘It was a very stressful time when Ali was born,’ he said, stating the obvious.
‘Yeah. I don’t think I ever want to go through that again.’
‘Well, with both our ages I don’t think it’ll happen.’
‘Hmm ...’ she said, turning away from him. She couldn’t keep looking into his eyes.
‘Rani,’ Dan said, his voice soft. ‘I think I went a little mad before. I don’t know what happened but when I saw you like that on the bed with that thing inside of you. It was ... it was such a shock. I think my brain shut down for a bit.’
Rani didn’t respond.
‘You know I’ve been reading and in this country men and women experiment to keep their sex lives active. What you did, I realised, wasn’t so bad. And I had to remind myself, you had a whole life before me. You were even married, and I never asked what you both did together ...’ He groaned. She could feel how unbearable this was for him.
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘We don’t have to talk about it.’
He let out a soft sigh, perhaps from relief, she thought.
‘But I think you should go to India with Ali. It would be good for you and him. Eat some of your mother’s cooking and be with your family. It will make you feel better.’ And with that he turned off the light.
Rani lay blinking in the dark. She appreciated how difficult it would have been for him to open up to her about the whole awkward experience with the vibrator. The very same vibrator that still sat in the box in her cupboard. There was no way she was going to throw it away. It was the only physical reminder she had left of Priya.
Priya’s family had flown in from India after her death and thrown all her belongings into a tip. At any other time, Rani would have gone there to try to salvage some of Priya’s stuff, but with the birth and complications afterwards, that was not possible. The only thing she got was a text message from one of Priya’s brothers saying they were taking Priya’s ashes back to India.
But she doesn’t want to go back home to be judged, Rani wanted to respond. Make sure you treat her with respect and dignity, she also wanted to say. Instead she asked if they had found any letters that Priya may have left as a goodbye.
No , was all Priya’s brother texted back.
Rani often wondered about that. She was sure Priya would have wanted to leave something behind as an explanation. After all, she always had to have the last word. But Rani knew Priya had concealed much from her family. Mostly Rani wanted to know if there was anything she could have done to stop Priya. The guilt that swirled in her stomach at the thought often ended up making her so sick she would go and throw up. Months after she had given birth she wrote about what had happened to her on the online mums’ forum. It was one of the last posts she made there. Most women were sympathetic. They gave her numbers to call and therapists to look up. They felt bad for her having to go through the turmoil of a traumatic birth and having to look after a newborn while nursing the deep grief she felt. And then a woman commented how her brother had also died by suicide, a loss from which she thought she would never recover. ‘Just know,’ the woman wrote, ‘there’s nothing more you could have done. I promise you, you will go down a black hole of wondering what if, but it doesn’t serve you. It was her time and now she is finally at peace.’
It was that, the thought of Priya being at peace, that comforted Rani the most. Wherever her friend was now, Rani hoped, she was sparkling like the star that she always was.
Rani fell asleep thinking of Priya. When she awoke she had a vague memory that she’d dreamt about her, but as the day began to take hold the memory of the dream faded. At one point as she made tea for herself, she was gripped with a fear that the memory of Priya would fade altogether.
And just like that her friend spoke up. Not a chance , she said.