The tightness in my abdomen woke me. The wait was over.
In the bathroom downstairs, I filled the tub high with warm water and submerged as much of my body as I could. I cupped water in my hands and poured it slowly over my swelling belly. This thing that I'd watched take shape inside of me for all this time was now leaving. The little death this new life would greet me with was not mournful. It was like saying goodbye to the night as I welcomed the morning sun. I was not sorry for the sun, for it's radiance and warmth, but I saw that my world was changed. I would never have that night back-the quiet, the stillness, the rounded dark of the sky; I had to say goodbye.
There was a deep pain, a pulling like tendons being torn in half, that I labored through on all fours, every two minutes as it came.
I phoned him. "We are going to go soon".
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Three months earlier I visited the facility he'd been in for 22 days. I parked on the side of the gray, rectangular building. It had utilitarian feel, like a small factory where they make nuts and bolts, or some other little, cold, metallic thing that, alone and without purpose, is useless. On the side of the building was a chain-link enclosure with barbed-wire budding from the top. The enclosure was crammed with men, minimally unmuzzled and smoking cigarettes. They were like a kennel full of dogs at an over-crowded pound. Smoking hounds with sad, droopy eyes flapping down to their filters and pit-bulls with cigarettes speared between bared teeth, stopped barking as I came near. I shielded my accessible belly, averting my eyes toward the thick cloud of smoke hanging over them.
I sat across from him in a long room lined with chairs. The counselor pulled a chair between us. "Do you want to tell him your boundaries?" he asked.
Boundaries?... My money... My body...My time... My money... My thoughts... Everything had become a boundary. I wanted to name every thing in existence, item by item, until he understood that as much as he'd taken from me should be off limits to him. "You can't come into the delivery room unless you stay sober," I said.
At the sign-out desk a scrawny, tired woman was arriving to see her son. He'd been brought in last night, she told me, to detox here instead of in jail. She pitied my belly with her eyes, "Congratulations", she smiled. "When are you due?"
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One-hundred and twenty seconds to rest, then the pain pulled me back onto hands and knees, like a kid twisting limbs and calling "Mercy!". He arrived at the house hours after I called him. Muscles contracted. Fear gripped, digging deep, then released, pulsing, beat by beat. Overcome, I surrendered my boundaries on that bathroom floor. I just wanted his hand to hold. I raised my head and yelled to him.
He didn't answer.
I thought he would have been there by my side, desperate as he said he was to be there for the birth. I heard water run in the upstairs bathroom. Maybe he was nervous and sick to his stomach? He was up there a long time and I began feeling desperate and panicked. We would never get to the hospital. I needed help. When was he going to help?
Finally he came downstairs to hug our little girl in his giant, father-of-the-year embrace and calm her fears of seeing Mommy writhing as she was. I kissed her too and we made our way out to the car and left.
With no anesthesia, I felt everything.
When my son was born, I did not cry. I kissed his palms. I cradled him to my chest. I nursed him. I wrapped his little cherub hand around my finger and kissed him more. His father sobbed.
For two days, life was suspended in a tiny room facing west. The television set the walls ablaze with blue, green and white flickering flames. There was no such thing as night, only purpose.The shade stayed closed even as light prismed in through the slit. He slept on a cot under the window. His white T-shirt was tinged gray. It was impossible to rouse him. The tight, white room was strewn with debris; clothes, empty cups, crumpled papers, all littered around his cot. Disgusted, I lifted myself carefully from the hospital bed and shuffled over to clean up his mess. His filthy khaki shorts, the ones I'd washed week after week for ten years, were in a heap by his feet. I picked them up to fold. Their weight was unnerving. My arms ached against their weight, the dread and excitement. Buzzing, I wanted proof to hold in my hand. I wanted the lies to come to a head like a pimple, and burst right there in my hand. I wanted to finally allow myself feel the impact, no matter how grotesque the run-off. And I didn't really want any of that. I tucked the shorts against my flaccid belly and advanced uneasily to the bathroom.
Behind the closed door, my gut flipped in anticipation. From the first deep pocket I pulled a baseball belt, a pack of Newports,and a lighter. I held my breathe. My hand lunged at the second pocket. The room was pulsing with adrenaline. My fingers flicked against something plastic- an open 50-pack of syringes, their orange, plastic caps aligned in 5 imperfect rows. Deeper inside were two loners, their caps swimming loosely beneath them. The missing were discarded in a garage somewhere or maybe in the hospital parking lot. At the bottom of the pocket were two little folds of blue paper. Sweat beaded my lip. My heart beat banged against the bathroom walls so loudly I though the nurse would fly in. I unfolded both little papers, prepared to flush their contents. They had already been emptied.
I wanted to buzz the nurses, show them, call the police, have this dark mass removed from my room. I wanted to run in and pummel him, bruise him, break him. I wanted him to be punished. Rage was flooding my veins. I looked at my hands to see how hard they were shaking but they were perfectly still. I took a deep breath. I didn't want to deal with police or doctors or social workers. I didn't even want to deal with him.
My baby would be waking soon, craving. With precise fingers, I reloaded the pockets, folded the shorts into a perfect, neat square and set them on top of the bedside table. I straightened the room until the only thing out of place was the gray-skinned man sleeping on the floor. I stepped over him and made my way to the other side of the room. My son was folded in a white blanket, his origami arms and legs tucked in under the covering. I scooped him from his pram and sneaked him into my bed. I cuddled him. I kissed his full moon face a hundred times. I sang him a lullaby and pressed my lips against the folds of his fat little arms.
We were leaving the hospital late in the day. I just packed what was mine. The mess he made wasn't my concern anymore. We drove home in my car- Mommy, Daddy and baby boy- the little family on way to their new lives. When we got to my house he helped me unload my car, then he got back into it and drove away. It didn't matter.I didn't need that car. The autumn air was crisp and clean. Fresh. New.I inhaled deeply and let it go. My daughter, my son and I swung on the porch swing. "Hello little baby", she whispered into the delicate, pink shell of his ear. The sun would be setting soon. My world was changed. I held my children close and welcomed the rounded dark. I thanked the night. I said goodbye.
