Kalila (20 page)

Authors: Rosemary Nixon

On the third morning I walk into that hospital room, Kalila isn't there. An empty hole looms where her isolette sat. Donald squints against the world. A kind nurse deposits me in a chair. She's gone for tests is all, Mrs. Solantz, there now â laughing â Honey, she's only gone for tests.

All sadness flaps out the window as if it had a pair of wings. I am left strangely rattled, but in a lovely sort of way. Donald opens his eyes, nose whistling, and stares at the empty spot.

You can try to die in here.

Donald's eyes shift vacantly toward my voice.

But you're not going to. This is a hospital. And it's equipped to save.

It's past noon when Kalila returns, asleep on the ride. An hour passes. Wind wheels against the building. I sit by the window. Snow devils. A scarlet running shoe tossed against the snow. An overturned shopping cart. Lines of streaking cars. An agitated orderly is elbowing me aside. The tests are good.

What?

They're going to operate.

The baby already hurtling out of sight.

Go back to the hotel. We'll call you when it's over. You have the best heart surgeon in Western Canada. Get yourself something to eat.

Two little sausages frying in a pan, Donald says to the empty square of floor. One went pop, the other went BAM!

Cold slices my neck. Minus twenty-eight degrees and dropping. I leap from the taxi, race through the hotel's reception area, sprays of snow clumps draining on the carpet. I jab the elevator button. Take the stairs two at a time, hurl myself into the room.

Brodie! They're doing it! Now! They're fixing her now! She's in! I am laughing, crying, falling off a cliff, the pages of the book no longer stuck. Our lives at last are lurching out of stall.

I flop against the headboard. Whew. Pick up the Gideon Bible from the dresser's top drawer. Hold in my hands my mother's faith. I crack it open. I Kings.

Then came there two women that were harlots unto the king and stood before him. And the one woman said, I and this woman dwell in one house, and I was delivered of a child with her in the house
.

And it came to pass the third day after that I was delivered, that this woman was delivered also â¦ And this woman's child died in the night because she overlaid it. And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while thine handmaid slept, and laid it in her bosom, and laid her dead child in my bosom. And when I rose in the morning to give my child suck, behold, it was dead; but when I had considered it in the morning, behold, it was not my son which I did bear. And the other woman said, Nay, the living is my son, and the dead is thy son
.

Thus they spake before the king â¦ And the king said, Bring me a sword. And they brought a sword before the king. And the king said, Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one, and half to the other. Then spake the woman whose the living child was unto the king, for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O Lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. But the other said, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then the King answered and said, Give the first the living child, and in no wise slay it, for she is the mother thereof
.

Unmother. Mother.

I have kept my child whole.

I lift the receiver. Picture my mother, in the quiet of her bedroom, feeling for the phone.

That quiet calm. Hello?

Mom? She's in the operation. Mom. The baby's finally strong.

And my mother, awakened to her darkened world, feels her bedroom flood with prism colour, birdsong.

Maggie. Och yea. You don't know how I've prayed.

Ask anything in My name
.

Desire spurts like anger. You have to want enough.

I slide the space between the hours. The slipping lights of cars. My body aches as if I'd run for miles. Love happens to you. There's nothing you can do. You fall headlong, chaotic, buckling. Your childhood dislodged, life a lost and found. Film looping years, moments, a tumbling slide show.

The phone rings, three sounding notes.

Hello?

Mrs. Solantz.

Watson. Laughing â Yes, it's â Mrs. Solantz. The words sail toward me. The operation's over.

Oh. Thank God.

Your baby's attached to a support system.

Sure.

â¦ blood circulating through a machine â heart patched â

Yup.

â isn't breathing on her own â surgeon's concern â blood tainted â

There is light. There are voices. Someone says words. More words.

Words say themselves:

We can't hold her. She's gone.

A sound like water

Wind in the eaves

Snow shower sliding from a spruce

An open bracelet

She merges with the storm.

Hell of a night, the taxi driver says.

University Hospital, please. My chest corroded calcium, scraped inside of a kettle.

Somewhere a telephone wire hums, one beautiful clear tone.

You sick? Yea, goddamn nurses strike. Hell of a night to â Good luck! the driver shouts against my closing door.

Mrs. Solantz.

The surgeon walks the light-filled corridor to meet me.

I try to make this moment last.

I try to hold the future out.

The future hurtles toward me.

â fixed her heart. It was the lungs â

Notes rests sharps flats.

Tenuto.

Kick of wind.

A body chopped by air.

We stand in an empty corridor.

His eyes are hazel.

I see he hasn't slept in days.

He jolts awake. Reaches for the phone.

The dog makes three small yips from its closed mouth.

He breathes the silence.

They stand, a man, a woman, connected by a wire, trying to contain this knowledge, trying to keep it small.

Light waves stab, deflect around him. The world rockets away. The night is a tight hem. Outside, the wind, the hills, the dirt, the rocks, the trees. The ice.

The galaxy.

A needlework of stars.

She rises

scattering, plunging mist

absence, presence

Ne me quitte pas.