Kalila (17 page)

Well.

This startling change.

Thank you.

Yes. Good luck.

Two shaking hands. Two shaking heads. A shutting door.

You stare down at a daughter. Skipper sticks his nose around the door. Your arms reach toward her crib and you engulf her, tubes and all, and not a soul to stop you. You gather all those bits of baby right into your arms.

Kalila.

She blows out mucus.

No.

It cannot be put off.

Practical Maggie reaching for the suction hose. You place shaking hands over the baby's cheeks.

Let's get it over with.

Kalila flails against blue-budded sheets. For those brief moments perhaps she thought her hell was over. Maggie shoving tubing down her nostril, green gunk sluffing up the tube. Snake out the hose and snake it in again. Kalila fighting, rasping, wheezing. Skipper begging to be let out the back door. You take over, stuff it in the other nostril, ears closed against the baby's cries. Kalila scrunched-faced, gasping. You unsnake the hose. Draw against you this bundle of exhausted baby.

Abusers that torture and then offer love.

A steady rush of cold oxygen into the baby's face.

Slowly the blueness clears.

Kalila light and startling rests within your arms. You look down into the little face and let go every preconception you ever held about the world. The child's here. Inside you opens a round flat disk, a cold grey stone of peace.

Kalila.

Autumn baby.

Little Kali.

Welcome home.

Outside the bedroom window, the thermometer reads minus twenty-nine.

It's warming.

You look at each other. Breathing history. Breathing cold.

You've weathered one more storm.

You will outstrip the odds.

 

You wake with a start. Lie still in darkness, letting your fears unclutch. They lift, unbuckle themselves, dissolve. Kalila!

You tear across the hall, nearly upending the night nurse, who gives a croaky shriek.

Good Lord! she says, hand to her jiggly breasts. Well, you're up now. I'll gather my things. The room alive with the sluff and sigh of equipment and machines. Kalila sleeps in a little ball of tangled blankets. The night nurse waves her goodbyes, heads out the door. One day. Day one. Maggie still asleep. The mobile circles like a universe of stars, patterning Kalila's blankets, sweeping shadow across her face. You steal close, unzip the oxygen tent.

Maggie appears, sleepy, hair stuck out, grinning ear to ear.

You spend the day cosied within Kalila's bedroom, blankets and pillows spread across the floor. An all-day picnic. Skipper lies half in, half out the bedroom door. You make Maggie a smiley face plate for lunch: bean-sprout-hair, broccoli-ears, cucumber-nose, a cherry-tomato-smile, orange dressing on the side. She breaks out laughing. Her old laugh, big and clean.

You take suctioning in tow. When Kalila dozes, you make love in the cradle of blankets and half-eaten plates. Fall asleep in a tangle of arms. That evening you order ginger beef, rent a video, lug the television into Kalila's room. Saturday Night at the Movies. You have agreed to
My Fair Lady!
Would agree to anything. You pop popcorn. Maggie mixes her favourite — ginger ale and orange juice.

Kalila. Her name a summer song between you.

Maggie drives you crazy singing along as characters burst into “The Rain In Spain,” “I Could Have Danced All Night.” You threaten to join in.

Kalila falls asleep in your arms during “On the Street Where You Live,” but you won't put her in her crib. You circle her bead of belly button, that one scar lacing you all together. She sleeps, her blue-tipped fingers clinging to your hand. Maggie turns up the TV to hear over the chug and rumble of equipment.

At eleven you abandon Kalila to her blue-budded bed and to the night nurse, popcorn trailing the floor from her room to yours. Fairy-tale crumbs to lead you back tomorrow.

You fall into your own bed, exhausted, imprinted with baby, and make love through old familiar paths.

Outside, the wind in song.

Hell's bells! I'm a live whole mom, holding a live whole baby. There follow days of waking, grins plastered to our faces, sprinting to the adjoining bedroom. Kalila waiting, sweet and milky, or sour with morning bowels. Who cares? The baby's here, living the Happy Ever After.

Mom phones. Och, you must feel such heaviness on waking. I'm praying every day. This big responsibility.

Heaviness! I'm a free-flying cloud wisping an azure sky. Life's joyous mystery maps our days.

We shall not all sleep. But we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye
.

Electricity flows, lightning-wild, from my fingers, down my arms, to a baby girl who startles at my touch.

Brodie!

Three days in a row Kalila wakes up smiling. I hold her whenever I want, lie down with her however I want, support her tiny back whatever time I want, and help her do her situps. Mom things. The sun shines through winter glass. We become downright adept at suctioning. A partnership. It doesn't take that long.

You make dinner while Maggie shops and pays the bills. While she clears the dishes, and tidies up the kitchen, you slip into the child's bedroom, draw Kalila on your lap, she stares upside down into your face. At the sound of your voice, she grabs your finger and goes absolutely still.

You move a little worktable into Kalila's room. Spread out your books. Mark labs. Make notes:

Entanglement: the most perplexing phenomenon in the world of quantum mechanics. Two particles may be very far apart, thousands of kilometres. But whatever happens to one of them causes immediate change in the other. You lay aside your notes, and Skipper rises stiffly. You pick Kalila up and, cords stretching, walk her to the window. You stand, all three, looking into the dark awake with moon. Daddy. Daughter. Dog.

Your long strand of lonely life threads into three. You begin to talk, it's true that you talk physics, but still you talk.

Did you know that the first real breakthrough in measuring the distances of the solar system didn't come till 1761?

Did you know that the naked eye can see six thousand stars?

Did you know that it was thanks to a blackout in Los Angeles during the Second World War that allowed the American astrologer Walter Baade to make a detailed study of the Andromeda galaxy? Imagine. A war revealed the stars.

The days skim by. Each day the sky stays lighter longer.

Marigold and her girls come over for twice-weekly visits. No tourist visas necessary. They're free to come and go. Francine and Suzette take turns holding Kalila while the other holds the hose. They trace her tiny shoulders, transfixed, gentle, mystified.

Maggie and Marigold chat about Marigold's French course, about the unusually cold winter. Marigold's eyes fill up with tears. She says that Kalila looks lovely, absolutely lovely. The girls kiss and kiss and kiss their little cousin. You snap pictures, zipping about like a carefree boy.

After nine days the community nurse rings the doorbell. Kalila's growing, she announces, after transferring the baby to her portable scale. She weighs eleven ounces more. Her head is getting bigger. And she's more alert. Of course. She's with her mommy and daddy now. She's home, this little growing daughter.

The woman jots her notes and breezes out, leaving the carefree aura of approaching summer.