Tide Pool
____________________
by Morgana BraveRaven
Running down the beach at Grandma's, three girls in silly sun hats. Tide's out. Miles to the water's edge. Everything is so far away when you're a kid. I want to run out to meet the tide. Run and run and run through the heavy salt air. But I stay near the warm shallow pools. Patches of deep green, slippery weed caught in shimmering pools, reflect the hot sun. I dig my feet deep into the wet sand. Spin and jump making one foot print, then another. Jump from print to print, then back. The footprints fill with water. Little pools. Foot pools that become little dips in the sand. I watch the prints fill with water. Soon the tide will wash over them. Wash, wash, wash over. You'll never know they were there at all.
* * *
The girl on the bed, wrapped in a sheet, is me. I can remember, if I pretend it's not me. I see her sitting there. Nurse arrives. Tears, big like balloons, slide down her cheeks. She holds a bundle, soft bundle. Blue flannel. The girl takes the bundle. Unwraps him carefully, gently, not to wake him. Sitting cross-legged, she lies the little bundle in the space between her knees, holds his little hands. Examines the tiny foot that grew backwards. Did that hurt? She caresses it. Little ear, too far down. No matter.
Minutes pass, nurse is back. I wrap him back up, careful, so careful. Hold him close, cuddle, squeeze. My cheek rests on his soft dark curls. Nurse reaches for him. I turn away, but her long spaghetti arms still reach. Latch on to blue flannel. Leave us leave us leave us alone! Another nurse arrives, injects me with sleep, and I float float float to heaven. I'm coming, Joshua, Mommy's coming...
* * *
The doctor's office. A woman. My choice. After my examination I ask her if I will be having an ultra sound.
“What? A healthy young woman like yourself. You don't need an ultra sound.”
“But I just have this feeling that something is wrong with the baby,” I tell her, “I would feel better if we could check and make sure everything is all right.”
“My dear girl, there is nothing wrong with your baby. All women in their first trimester are afraid that something is wrong with the baby. It would be a waste of money to send you for an ultra sound. Trust me, everything's fine. Now you just run home and put your feet up. Relax, there's nothing to worry about.”
“All right,” I say, getting up to leave. Knowing that I don't trust her, knowing that I feel what I feel.
I take my neurotic self home to cry in a warm bubble bath.
* * *
I remember the guilt of the girl on the bed. After the birth, which had been longer than anticipated, she had been confused and tired. Exhausted. She thought she was prepared for the whole event, but you're never ready, even when it's expected. She'd been preparing for a birth and even though she hadn't actually wanted to be pregnant, hadn't actually wanted the baby, she hadn't wanted this either.
The guilt never goes away. Even now as I recall the events in my mind through a filter of passing years, I feel the fresh sting of my guilt, the dull anguish of my regret.
After the birth, nurse said I should sleep.
“You’re too tired to tend to baby,” she said.
“Have a bite of lunch and sleep a while,” she said.
Not knowing what else to do, I ate. Mouth opened, food went in. Mouth closed. Mouth chewed. Food fell lumpishly down throat. I slept. Then I woke.
* * *
A man in a white lab coat is standing over me.
“You're awake,” he says.
“Am I?”
“How are you feeling? Any pain or discomfort?” he asks as he stares at me. “It wasn't your fault, you know. Nothing that you did or ate. Not genetic. These things just happen some times.”
“Yes,” I say, wiping my face, “I understand.” But I don't.
“Is there any chance that you would like to donate the body to research. It might help us figure out the cause of these things,” the white coat babbles on.
“Donate the body?” Body?
“Well,” says Dr. White Coat as he leaves my room, “I'll leave this release form here. You can think about it for a couple of days.”
Donate. Donate? Joshua. I reach out my hand, but it's just so much air.
* * *
I remember the phone ringing. I was 22. It was John. He was working in the oil patch. I'd gotten a message to him.
“What do you want?” he asked through the hollow echo of the line.
“Um, John. Do you remember the last time we tried to work things out?”
“Yeah, so. What about it?”
“I'm, ah...pregnant.”
Silence. Click.
Phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing in my head.
* * *
Grace Hospital. Grace. I sit there, waiting. I've been shuffled around all day, like a lost file. I have to pee so badly. Waiting for the ultra sound. Eight and a half months pregnant, full bladder. After the test they send me out to the hallway again, to wait for the specialist
“Oh, you can go to the bathroom now, if you like,” they say.
No thanks, I'll wait till my bladder is so full that it bursts and floods the halls, and I float out of here.
Waiting for the specialist.
The specialist calls me into his office to show me the ultra sound.
“Here's the baby's head, and here are the fingers.” Ten
“Here are the feet. The toes.” Ten
“That's the heart.” Beat, beat, beat.
“And here is where the kidneys should be, but there are none.”
Ten fingers, ten toes, no kidneys, bub-bye...
“None?” I repeat staring wide-eyed at the wall, trying to penetrate its whiteness. “None,” he confirms.
“Uh hum,” I say, “could they have seen that if I had had an ultra sound at the end of my first trimester?” I ask.
“Yes,” says the specialist.
“Oh,” I say as I become unexpectedly aware of a fly buzzing around my head, and my tongue, which is suddenly half a foot long, darts out of my mouth, snagging the fly. I swallow it and leave the specialist’s office.
* * *
Nurse informs that baby is back from autopsy. He has been taken to the hospital chapel. Minister is waiting. My father arrives with the dress I asked for. He pressed it himself. Sweet. I try to brush my hair. It's so tangled. I become very impatient and rip the brush through my hair. Large chunks of hair float to the ground. I throw the brush at the wall. It lands with an echo on the cold tile floor. Dad puts the dress on the bed beside me but it falls to the floor in a wrinkled heap. I fall down beside it, grabbing the fabric into my hands and squish it in tight fists.
“I hate this dress, Daddy. I hate this dress!” I scream as I pound the dress into the floor. Nurse arrives with a sedative. Daddy holds me tight and rocks me. Cold tiles hold us up, prevent me from slipping. Joshua.
* * *
No one can look at me when they speak to me. They stare at the floor. Pat me on the shoulder when I cry. Tell me the grief will pass. Tell me it's good to cry, to let it all out. They don't even know why I'm crying. They think I cry because the baby died, and yes, that is part of it. But only part.
* * *
Sometimes I pretend that what happened that day at the hospital was a mistake. That my baby lived and another baby died. That there was a terrible mix-up. I imagine that I'm fifty years old and I live in an old Victorian house in the country. I live alone with five cats. I have an enormous flower garden full of roses, giant dahlias, snapdragons. A thick vine of clematis, with purple blooms, climbs the arch over the front gate. I sit rocking in my rocking chair and the doorbell rings. When I open the door a young man is standing there.
“Mom?” he says.
I throw my arms around his neck. He looks just like his father.
“Joshua!”
* * *
I don't know which part of the guilt is worse, the guilt associated with the fact that my son died alone, or the guilt of having practically condoned his death. I don't know.
My son died in the arms of a stranger, or possibly alone in a plexi-glass bassinet. The fact is I don't know where he was when he died. But I know now, as I probably knew then, that I should have been with him. But I slept.
What's worse though, is that I let my son die. Yes, I did. Though in fact, he only had half a chance of surviving more than a few hours or days. The doctors at Grace Hospital insisted that I deliver my son there so that they could administer every possible medical procedure to him. But since my son would be born with only one pea-sized shriveled kidney, what would have been the point of so much invasive medical intervention?
My son would never leave the hospital. Never run around outside in the crisp autumn air. Never build a snowman. Never say mama. Never splash through the waves at the beach, chase crabs through tide pools or leave his foot prints in the sand. What would have been the point? They might have been able to keep him alive for four hours or four days. He needed a kidney, they couldn't give him that.
I delivered him in my small, home town hospital. The same hospital that I had been born in, where all we could do was witness his passage though this world.
* * *
In the chapel it's dim. Candles burn. A little bundle rests on the table, wrapped in white. His whole body is covered, wrapped like a mummy. He's a mummy. No, I'm a mummy. I'm supposed to be a mommy!
“I want to see his face,” I say, reaching towards the bundle. “I want to hold him.”
“Don't unwrap his face,” my father begins, “it's... it’s…just leave him.”
For heaven’s sake just say it! Donated. Dissected. Dead.
I stand silent in front of the bundle. Time is frozen. This is my moment of judgement. I believe this even though I'm not even sure that I believe in God.
Too late to change my feelings about the pregnancy.
Too late to express any amount of love towards the baby.
He only ever felt my resentment, and then I abandoned him.
I never meant for things to happen this way. Never hoped for this.
And now it’s too late.
* * *
Years pass. Eventually people can breathe around me again. I buy booties for other people's babies and turn inside out so no one can see the color of my grief. Last week I went to the eye doctor. I hadn't had my eyes checked since the birth of my daughter four years ago. The doctor flipped the little lens things in front of my eyes.
“Is this better or worse?” he asked.
“Worse.”
Flick, flick. “Better or worse?”
“Better, but I can't read the letters on the bottom of the eye chart.”
Flick, flick. “Better or worse?”
“Better, but I still can't read the...” Flick, flick.
“Better or worse?”
“Better, but...” Flick.
“Well,” he said, “You don't need to change your lenses. This is almost exactly what you have now.”
“But...”
“I wouldn't bother if I were you...”
“But I...”
“Be a waste of money to change the lenses for such a small difference in the prescription.”
“All right,” I said as I left the office.
* * *
I never wanted the baby. This is the most difficult aspect of the guilt. When I found out that I was pregnant I was terrified. Horrified. For reasons that I don't understand any better now than I did then, I chose not to have an abortion. I just couldn't do it. However, I did everything I could think of to induce a miscarriage. Threw myself down a flight of stairs. Punched myself in the stomach until I threw up. But he stayed put.
Everyday that I was pregnant I willed the baby to die and drop out of me. Prayed that it would. And in the end, he did drop out of me. He did die.
Somehow, I killed him.
* * *
It’s very bright in the delivery room, or suite as they like to call it. Nothing sweet about it. Everything is sterile, metal, bright. They keep swabbing me with what feels like ice, as though they know my secret and are punishing me. I know this is a ridiculous thought. I’m sure it’s only disinfectant of some kind. I’m tired, ridiculously tired. I fall asleep between contractions. I fall asleep when they tell me to stop pushing. While I sleep I dream of a little boy with brown hair, lots of it. He’s a sweet little chub-chub. We’re at the beach and I make him put on a silly sun hat, like the one my grandmother used to make me wear. He gives me a bucket full of broken shells. I trade him for my bucket, which has a kidney in it. He takes the bucket and as he does the tide sweeps in and pulls me out to sea. He’s safe on shore. He waves good-bye then runs to meet my mother. She waves too, and shouts something to me...
PUSH!
My eyes fly open and a nurse is shaking me, telling me to push. Last big push and it’s over she tells me. The doctor’s face is hovering somewhere below my knees. He’s pulling, prodding, pulling. Then smiling he announces that it’s a boy! The room is silent as we wait for the first squawk...then we hear it, air into lungs, a cry pierces the sterile air. Then stops. The doctor holds the baby up for me to see. The baby, my son, hangs in the air between the doctor’s hands. His tiny arms and legs stir mechanically, every movement an effort. He looks at me through tiny squinting eyes, draws air into his lungs, and whispers “murderer”. Then his head lolls over his limp body and a last wisp of breath escapes quietly into the silence. Murderer.
PUSH!
My eyes fly open. A nurse is holding my hand.
“Last push,” she says, “then it’s over.”
* * *
The other day I was sorting through some old boxes of stuff. Stuff. We collect it, pack it around for years. We sort it out. Keep some, get rid of the what we don't need. And this is life, really, isn't it? -- sorting through stuff.
I found his birth certificate. Joshua David, born October 12, 1981. Weight, delivered by...and so on. My daughter came into the room and found me crying. We talked about Joshua for a while. I cried a little more. She held a tissue up to my nose.
“Blow, Mom,” she said. “You don't need to worry about it, Mom. I'm still your baby. Rock me like I was a teeny, tiny little baby. Ok, mom?”
She climbed into my lap and started sucking her thumb.
I rocked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Morgana BraveRaven writes exclusively for Sykaro Insights. Please feel welcome to leave your comments and let us know what you thought of 'Tide Pool'.
Janet Legere, Publisher/Editor
Sykaro Insights, in publication since May 10, 2000
Subscribe to Sykaro Insights
=> http://www.sykaroinsights.com
____________________
by Morgana BraveRaven
Running down the beach at Grandma's, three girls in silly sun hats. Tide's out. Miles to the water's edge. Everything is so far away when you're a kid. I want to run out to meet the tide. Run and run and run through the heavy salt air. But I stay near the warm shallow pools. Patches of deep green, slippery weed caught in shimmering pools, reflect the hot sun. I dig my feet deep into the wet sand. Spin and jump making one foot print, then another. Jump from print to print, then back. The footprints fill with water. Little pools. Foot pools that become little dips in the sand. I watch the prints fill with water. Soon the tide will wash over them. Wash, wash, wash over. You'll never know they were there at all.
* * *
The girl on the bed, wrapped in a sheet, is me. I can remember, if I pretend it's not me. I see her sitting there. Nurse arrives. Tears, big like balloons, slide down her cheeks. She holds a bundle, soft bundle. Blue flannel. The girl takes the bundle. Unwraps him carefully, gently, not to wake him. Sitting cross-legged, she lies the little bundle in the space between her knees, holds his little hands. Examines the tiny foot that grew backwards. Did that hurt? She caresses it. Little ear, too far down. No matter.
Minutes pass, nurse is back. I wrap him back up, careful, so careful. Hold him close, cuddle, squeeze. My cheek rests on his soft dark curls. Nurse reaches for him. I turn away, but her long spaghetti arms still reach. Latch on to blue flannel. Leave us leave us leave us alone! Another nurse arrives, injects me with sleep, and I float float float to heaven. I'm coming, Joshua, Mommy's coming...
* * *
The doctor's office. A woman. My choice. After my examination I ask her if I will be having an ultra sound.
“What? A healthy young woman like yourself. You don't need an ultra sound.”
“But I just have this feeling that something is wrong with the baby,” I tell her, “I would feel better if we could check and make sure everything is all right.”
“My dear girl, there is nothing wrong with your baby. All women in their first trimester are afraid that something is wrong with the baby. It would be a waste of money to send you for an ultra sound. Trust me, everything's fine. Now you just run home and put your feet up. Relax, there's nothing to worry about.”
“All right,” I say, getting up to leave. Knowing that I don't trust her, knowing that I feel what I feel.
I take my neurotic self home to cry in a warm bubble bath.
* * *
I remember the guilt of the girl on the bed. After the birth, which had been longer than anticipated, she had been confused and tired. Exhausted. She thought she was prepared for the whole event, but you're never ready, even when it's expected. She'd been preparing for a birth and even though she hadn't actually wanted to be pregnant, hadn't actually wanted the baby, she hadn't wanted this either.
The guilt never goes away. Even now as I recall the events in my mind through a filter of passing years, I feel the fresh sting of my guilt, the dull anguish of my regret.
After the birth, nurse said I should sleep.
“You’re too tired to tend to baby,” she said.
“Have a bite of lunch and sleep a while,” she said.
Not knowing what else to do, I ate. Mouth opened, food went in. Mouth closed. Mouth chewed. Food fell lumpishly down throat. I slept. Then I woke.
* * *
A man in a white lab coat is standing over me.
“You're awake,” he says.
“Am I?”
“How are you feeling? Any pain or discomfort?” he asks as he stares at me. “It wasn't your fault, you know. Nothing that you did or ate. Not genetic. These things just happen some times.”
“Yes,” I say, wiping my face, “I understand.” But I don't.
“Is there any chance that you would like to donate the body to research. It might help us figure out the cause of these things,” the white coat babbles on.
“Donate the body?” Body?
“Well,” says Dr. White Coat as he leaves my room, “I'll leave this release form here. You can think about it for a couple of days.”
Donate. Donate? Joshua. I reach out my hand, but it's just so much air.
* * *
I remember the phone ringing. I was 22. It was John. He was working in the oil patch. I'd gotten a message to him.
“What do you want?” he asked through the hollow echo of the line.
“Um, John. Do you remember the last time we tried to work things out?”
“Yeah, so. What about it?”
“I'm, ah...pregnant.”
Silence. Click.
Phone kept ringing, ringing, ringing in my head.
* * *
Grace Hospital. Grace. I sit there, waiting. I've been shuffled around all day, like a lost file. I have to pee so badly. Waiting for the ultra sound. Eight and a half months pregnant, full bladder. After the test they send me out to the hallway again, to wait for the specialist
“Oh, you can go to the bathroom now, if you like,” they say.
No thanks, I'll wait till my bladder is so full that it bursts and floods the halls, and I float out of here.
Waiting for the specialist.
The specialist calls me into his office to show me the ultra sound.
“Here's the baby's head, and here are the fingers.” Ten
“Here are the feet. The toes.” Ten
“That's the heart.” Beat, beat, beat.
“And here is where the kidneys should be, but there are none.”
Ten fingers, ten toes, no kidneys, bub-bye...
“None?” I repeat staring wide-eyed at the wall, trying to penetrate its whiteness. “None,” he confirms.
“Uh hum,” I say, “could they have seen that if I had had an ultra sound at the end of my first trimester?” I ask.
“Yes,” says the specialist.
“Oh,” I say as I become unexpectedly aware of a fly buzzing around my head, and my tongue, which is suddenly half a foot long, darts out of my mouth, snagging the fly. I swallow it and leave the specialist’s office.
* * *
Nurse informs that baby is back from autopsy. He has been taken to the hospital chapel. Minister is waiting. My father arrives with the dress I asked for. He pressed it himself. Sweet. I try to brush my hair. It's so tangled. I become very impatient and rip the brush through my hair. Large chunks of hair float to the ground. I throw the brush at the wall. It lands with an echo on the cold tile floor. Dad puts the dress on the bed beside me but it falls to the floor in a wrinkled heap. I fall down beside it, grabbing the fabric into my hands and squish it in tight fists.
“I hate this dress, Daddy. I hate this dress!” I scream as I pound the dress into the floor. Nurse arrives with a sedative. Daddy holds me tight and rocks me. Cold tiles hold us up, prevent me from slipping. Joshua.
* * *
No one can look at me when they speak to me. They stare at the floor. Pat me on the shoulder when I cry. Tell me the grief will pass. Tell me it's good to cry, to let it all out. They don't even know why I'm crying. They think I cry because the baby died, and yes, that is part of it. But only part.
* * *
Sometimes I pretend that what happened that day at the hospital was a mistake. That my baby lived and another baby died. That there was a terrible mix-up. I imagine that I'm fifty years old and I live in an old Victorian house in the country. I live alone with five cats. I have an enormous flower garden full of roses, giant dahlias, snapdragons. A thick vine of clematis, with purple blooms, climbs the arch over the front gate. I sit rocking in my rocking chair and the doorbell rings. When I open the door a young man is standing there.
“Mom?” he says.
I throw my arms around his neck. He looks just like his father.
“Joshua!”
* * *
I don't know which part of the guilt is worse, the guilt associated with the fact that my son died alone, or the guilt of having practically condoned his death. I don't know.
My son died in the arms of a stranger, or possibly alone in a plexi-glass bassinet. The fact is I don't know where he was when he died. But I know now, as I probably knew then, that I should have been with him. But I slept.
What's worse though, is that I let my son die. Yes, I did. Though in fact, he only had half a chance of surviving more than a few hours or days. The doctors at Grace Hospital insisted that I deliver my son there so that they could administer every possible medical procedure to him. But since my son would be born with only one pea-sized shriveled kidney, what would have been the point of so much invasive medical intervention?
My son would never leave the hospital. Never run around outside in the crisp autumn air. Never build a snowman. Never say mama. Never splash through the waves at the beach, chase crabs through tide pools or leave his foot prints in the sand. What would have been the point? They might have been able to keep him alive for four hours or four days. He needed a kidney, they couldn't give him that.
I delivered him in my small, home town hospital. The same hospital that I had been born in, where all we could do was witness his passage though this world.
* * *
In the chapel it's dim. Candles burn. A little bundle rests on the table, wrapped in white. His whole body is covered, wrapped like a mummy. He's a mummy. No, I'm a mummy. I'm supposed to be a mommy!
“I want to see his face,” I say, reaching towards the bundle. “I want to hold him.”
“Don't unwrap his face,” my father begins, “it's... it’s…just leave him.”
For heaven’s sake just say it! Donated. Dissected. Dead.
I stand silent in front of the bundle. Time is frozen. This is my moment of judgement. I believe this even though I'm not even sure that I believe in God.
Too late to change my feelings about the pregnancy.
Too late to express any amount of love towards the baby.
He only ever felt my resentment, and then I abandoned him.
I never meant for things to happen this way. Never hoped for this.
And now it’s too late.
* * *
Years pass. Eventually people can breathe around me again. I buy booties for other people's babies and turn inside out so no one can see the color of my grief. Last week I went to the eye doctor. I hadn't had my eyes checked since the birth of my daughter four years ago. The doctor flipped the little lens things in front of my eyes.
“Is this better or worse?” he asked.
“Worse.”
Flick, flick. “Better or worse?”
“Better, but I can't read the letters on the bottom of the eye chart.”
Flick, flick. “Better or worse?”
“Better, but I still can't read the...” Flick, flick.
“Better or worse?”
“Better, but...” Flick.
“Well,” he said, “You don't need to change your lenses. This is almost exactly what you have now.”
“But...”
“I wouldn't bother if I were you...”
“But I...”
“Be a waste of money to change the lenses for such a small difference in the prescription.”
“All right,” I said as I left the office.
* * *
I never wanted the baby. This is the most difficult aspect of the guilt. When I found out that I was pregnant I was terrified. Horrified. For reasons that I don't understand any better now than I did then, I chose not to have an abortion. I just couldn't do it. However, I did everything I could think of to induce a miscarriage. Threw myself down a flight of stairs. Punched myself in the stomach until I threw up. But he stayed put.
Everyday that I was pregnant I willed the baby to die and drop out of me. Prayed that it would. And in the end, he did drop out of me. He did die.
Somehow, I killed him.
* * *
It’s very bright in the delivery room, or suite as they like to call it. Nothing sweet about it. Everything is sterile, metal, bright. They keep swabbing me with what feels like ice, as though they know my secret and are punishing me. I know this is a ridiculous thought. I’m sure it’s only disinfectant of some kind. I’m tired, ridiculously tired. I fall asleep between contractions. I fall asleep when they tell me to stop pushing. While I sleep I dream of a little boy with brown hair, lots of it. He’s a sweet little chub-chub. We’re at the beach and I make him put on a silly sun hat, like the one my grandmother used to make me wear. He gives me a bucket full of broken shells. I trade him for my bucket, which has a kidney in it. He takes the bucket and as he does the tide sweeps in and pulls me out to sea. He’s safe on shore. He waves good-bye then runs to meet my mother. She waves too, and shouts something to me...
PUSH!
My eyes fly open and a nurse is shaking me, telling me to push. Last big push and it’s over she tells me. The doctor’s face is hovering somewhere below my knees. He’s pulling, prodding, pulling. Then smiling he announces that it’s a boy! The room is silent as we wait for the first squawk...then we hear it, air into lungs, a cry pierces the sterile air. Then stops. The doctor holds the baby up for me to see. The baby, my son, hangs in the air between the doctor’s hands. His tiny arms and legs stir mechanically, every movement an effort. He looks at me through tiny squinting eyes, draws air into his lungs, and whispers “murderer”. Then his head lolls over his limp body and a last wisp of breath escapes quietly into the silence. Murderer.
PUSH!
My eyes fly open. A nurse is holding my hand.
“Last push,” she says, “then it’s over.”
* * *
The other day I was sorting through some old boxes of stuff. Stuff. We collect it, pack it around for years. We sort it out. Keep some, get rid of the what we don't need. And this is life, really, isn't it? -- sorting through stuff.
I found his birth certificate. Joshua David, born October 12, 1981. Weight, delivered by...and so on. My daughter came into the room and found me crying. We talked about Joshua for a while. I cried a little more. She held a tissue up to my nose.
“Blow, Mom,” she said. “You don't need to worry about it, Mom. I'm still your baby. Rock me like I was a teeny, tiny little baby. Ok, mom?”
She climbed into my lap and started sucking her thumb.
I rocked.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Morgana BraveRaven writes exclusively for Sykaro Insights. Please feel welcome to leave your comments and let us know what you thought of 'Tide Pool'.
Janet Legere, Publisher/Editor
Sykaro Insights, in publication since May 10, 2000
Subscribe to Sykaro Insights
=> http://www.sykaroinsights.com
