Marguerite (part eight)

It was a small baby. She could hardly believe it took three days and nights of sweat and groaning and finally, yes, calling out in spite of herself. Her mind blotted out the last hours, leaving only a vague sense of embarrassment and humiliation.

The fragility of the child, too, the tiny fingers and arms so easily snapped, like bird bones, was unattractive. Still at times her hand reached down as if all by itself to touch and caress the tightly wrapped bundle plumped down at her side for nursing at exact four hour intervals and she fumbled to pull away the swaddling cloth, to see the child inside. The tall nurse with her hair pulled back into a firmly attached white cap rebuked her sternly. No nonsense here; there was work to be done! The need for comfort and soothing is insatiable. You'd be doing the child no favors fostering such expectations.

The high-walled, high-bedded hothouse, warmly moist with the smell of mothers' milk, bleeding wombs, spit-up, baby poo, and talcum powder, reminded her of a chicken coop.

But when she got back home, the bundle didn't settle like they said it would. Hours before feeding time, it was already squalling, then fell asleep halfway through! Exasperated, she wrestled the white flounced bassinet up the staircase to the second floor, tucked the blanket in against the cold, and returned to her work. Perfect! You could hardly hear it from here!

There is a white dot. I lie on my back inside it. White walls rise on either side of me and above my head. A noise has been going on that now is silent. The cessation is a clear cleaving of time into sound, no-sound. I remember a hollow echo lingering in an open place. The air is thin and clear and cool. There is an absence. I try again to lift my head but it is too big and too heavy. I am empty. I am nothing. Only the dot remains.

When my father came in from the barn, the hoarse sporadic cries were still coming from the unfurnished rooms at the top of the stairs. He sat down at the kitchen table and picked up his knife and fork, she told me, angling her chin with a little half-smile and a one-shouldered shrug. How 1920’s! I thought.

“Llew said, 'Feed the baby!’” Her green eyes searched my face briefly. I didn’t let her know where I was hiding.

She'd tied the scrap of pink ribbon to a safety pin, she said, attached it to a card and spelled out "Valentine” in tiny red hearts. Inside she wrote, ”I’m pinning my hopes on you!”

He cried, she said.

I don’t know where she got the paper, you know, for the Valentine. We didn’t have paper in the house, only the other sides of old envelopes and letters and we didn’t get much mail! I drew the alphabet on the insides of cereal boxes with a pencil my dad sharpened with his pocket knife, and in the fine dry dirt at the back steps with a stick, and on the blackboard, blackboard, blackboard until the chalk ran out.

One time Mamma brought me a tablet with nothing on the pages, only empty lines! I held it in both hands, looking up at her with her shopping hat on in disbelief. Was it all for me? My heart opened out onto the white pages.

It’s early in the morning and Daddy comes back in the house. I’m still eating my toast and drinking my milk. He says wipe your face off; I’ve got a surprise! And he picks me up from my stool and carries me out the back door and down the steps because they are too tall for me to walk down. If I sit, I can go down by myself. There at the bottom of the steps, tied to the water pipe is a tiny pink lamb. It’s too little to hardly stand up and its back legs are all shaky and it’s crying very loud. It wants its mamma so much! It’s scary, such a big wanting!

Daddy holds the lamb and takes my hand to pet it. Its fur is very skinny. He says what it needs is some milk. It can have my milk! No, it has to suck like it does on its mamma. We’ll have to have a bottle!

Mamma has been standing in the doorway at the top of the steps. She is not glad to see the lamb. She goes inside to find a bottle left over from when I was a baby and warms the milk. My daddy helps me hold the bottle up to the lamb’s mouth. It hits the nipple hard with its head and knocks me over backwards. I cry from the sharp stones. The lamb cries, too. It’s all very noisy! I have to hold up the bottle again and not cry any more because the lamb is still hungry! This time the milk goes in and it's not so rambunctious. I hold the bottle up with both arms stuck far out in case it butts again.

Daddy says now it will be my job to feed the lamb. It has to be fed a lot of times all day while he is out in the field. I never had a job before! Mamma looks at him from under her eyebrows.

I went down myself the next time, holding up the bottle in one hand while I bumped my bottom down from step to step with my eye on the lamb the whole time. From the last step, I offered the nipple and the lamb butted it out of my hand. I picked up the bottle from the mud and held it out to him again, staying as far away from him as possible. He got the nipple this time. It was hard to hold the bottle up high enough so the milk could run down to him. Then bang! He would butt me again and I would fall over and have to get myself up and get the bottle and start all over again. After a few days, the lamb went away. I didn’t ask where it was. It didn’t have any name.

I liked the lamb a little bit because it was small like me and needed someone to help it. Only it was very strong and it wouldn’t listen!!

We didn’t have any animals in the house. There was probably a dog and some cats in the barn but I was too little to go there except once when I went there by myself and fell through the hole where you put the hay down to the cows and landed on some hay in front of the big bull. I don’t remember falling, only the big eyes on the bull’s face. He was standing still with his nose right down at me! Somebody grabbed me up quick from behind and carried me up to the house under one arm. Then I was standing by myself down on the floor and Daddy was holding onto Mamma, making white marks with his fingers on her shoulders, talking hard to her face.

“You have to look after her, Charlie.” The words drop one by one like pennies on a table top. Her eyes are flat like the green edge of pond water.

You know what it’s like. There’s nothing to be done or not to do. It’s the youness of you. Your presence, your body, your being, the fact of your existence is in itself obscene. The face you turn to looks away, lip curled, shoulder raised... Or were you the one to shrink, recoil, shudder, gag, narrow your averted eyes to slits of green? Either way, you’ll understand there’s no help for it.

I was new to the job and inexperienced. And so, I thought, it must be possible stay small enough and quiet... Too big, too loud, too hungry, too wet, smelly, dirty, skinny, too running around, too talking...Stop! I told myself, and it will be all right and she won’t be startled any more or interrupted, or attacked or wounded or claimed on and brought back from wherever it is she goes to.

I follow her at a distance as she goes from room to room. Knowing already not to touch her, or talk to her, or look in her direction, I chatter to my doll, dress and undress her, ending up as if by accident in the same room as my mother. I prop up my blackboard just inside the door and draw big letters. I can see her out of the corner of my eye. She has to say that's good.

I know she’s trying to get away but I can’t help it. I have to be able to see her.

Don’t ask; don’t look. Move slowly as if nobody’s there, as if you are totally inside your play. That’s how it comes. She can’t stop you from waiting.

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