The Decision: Lizzie's Story (8 page)

Then Mike was there for an extended visit over the Easter Holidays and Mum insisted Amanda move in with the twins in their bedroom for the duration, much to my sisters’ chagrin. The baby’s birth was imminent and I felt the size of a house. This did not seem to dampen Mike’s ardour for me, as if he was stamping his claim back on me, after losing out to my family for so long. And even though sex was the last
thing on my mind, I felt grateful Mike did not find me disgustingly unattractive, nor see the “whale” Sal did, which she cruelly muttered under her breath whenever Mum was out of earshot. But Mike’s desire for authority on what he could not control did not end there, as he began to badger me about the child’s name.

“I think… Dylan.” He said one evening.

Irritation coursed through me: yet again, someone was deciding things for me! We were out on the patio and it was a pleasant and unusually warm April evening. Mum had told the others to give us some space and had warned them to stay off the patio on pain of death. Even so, Hannah could be seen watching us from her upstairs bedroom window, her face pressed against the glass in what she thought was a comical pose.

“I don’t like it.” I said out of sheer badness, even though I knew full well I had circled that particular name in the book Mum had given me.

“Okay,” Mike said measuredly, “What about Jonathan?”

“Boring.” I declared and meant it, this time.

“You’re choosing his name, then.” He said, deadpan. It was not a question.

“I’m carrying him. I have to give birth.” I said testily. “Think of it like my reward. It’s only fair.”

A shadow passed between us at that moment and the balance of power shifted to Mike as he regarded me, grinding his teeth together. “The baby should have my surname, then.” He said.

I had never considered the idea before that moment. I had figured the child would be a Carmichael. Same as me, same as my sisters. Mike had not revealed whether he would ever support me or the baby financially, never mind commit to us or even live with us. As far as I was concerned, now was not the time for stakes to be
claimed in the name of machismo. So intent on trying to regain control of my own life from him or my mother, I was incapable of seeing his point of view.

“No.” I spluttered.

“It’s only fair.” Mike echoed.

“We’re not married, though.” I said, bewildered.

“So?” Mike said, infuriatingly. How many times had I listened to him give that ridiculously childish retort to his own father?

“The baby’s having my surname.” I asserted.

The shadow that had passed between us the previous moment now seemed to leap out of Mike, enveloping us both. A bitter argument ensued and Mike kicked one of the patio chairs over. It fell onto the concrete with a metallic clatter that brought my Mother running. Not seeing her in the kitchen doorway, Mike grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him, his thumb and forefinger dug in my flesh, painful as I tried to struggle out of his grasp as he repeated his demand:
the baby would have his surname.

“What do you think you’re doing?” My mother’s voice was low and dangerous.

But Mike did not know my mother and merely let go of my arm. “Just a minor disagreement.” He said obliviously.

My mother smiled, but I knew what was coming next. I had seen that smile dozens of times before. It had no humour attached to it whatsoever. If sharks were able to smile, they would look just like her.

“You’re a bully, Michael.” My mother declared.

The colour drained from Mike’s face as I felt mine flush red. I was handling this! She couldn’t interfere, not again. But though I opened my mouth to speak, no
sound came out. Mike just stood there, awkward, his face puzzled: he literally had no idea what my mother was talking about.

“Look, I don’t know what you thought you saw…?” Mike said.

“Silly boy,” My mother interrupted. “I had your number the first time I met you. You’re worse than a spoilt five year old.”

“Mum…” I began. But a look from her silenced me and rage burned inside me. Mike was my boyfriend. I didn’t need her protection.
I’m a big girl now!

My father appeared from the kitchen, ignorant as usual to the atmosphere. My mother turned to him, whilst keeping her iron gaze on Mike. “Dan, do us a favour and take Michael home to his father’s, will you? Keys are on the hook.” She said.

“I thought Mike was staying until…” Dad started, then stopped as he clocked Mum’s dark expression. He was finally catching up. “… Of course.”

I watched Mike slam his stuff into bags, barely able to look at me, not saying a word, despite my garbled protestations that we should go downstairs and try and talk it through with my parents. I felt a kind of guilt, yet wasn’t sure why. Mike had manhandled me, I hadn’t asked for it. But I hadn’t asked for Mum to step in either! I was pulled both ways: on one side, a matriarch too sure of herself to ever ask what I wanted or needed. On the other, an immature teenage boy who believed a test of love was whether I defied that matriarch for him. Yet this didn’t have to be about sides. Why couldn’t everyone just meet me in the middle?!

So Mike stalked off with my father to the car, my mother insisting I stay back with her. “I know you don’t understand now,” she said, “But I would be a bad mother if I let him do that.”

“And you thought I would just let him?” I wanted to retort, though my voice betrayed me once again, drying up in my mouth. What would I have said or done, had
my mother not put her foot down? I knew what Mike had done was wrong. I wasn’t a small child who needed to be told how men should treat women. He had hurt me for daring to oppose him! But instead of trusting me to make that call, my mother had rushed in as the self-appointed cavalry, just like she always did. She had taken my power away from me when I needed to make a stand. Perhaps I would have sent Mike back to his father’s myself, even? Now we would never know.

A couple more weeks passed and Mike’s texts and phone calls dwindled away to nothing under the weight of my mother’s disapproval. She told my sisters what had happened and it was taken as read I would never see Mike again. If I did, Sal and Amanda advised me, I was weak and pathetic, even if I just heard out his apology. Never mind the fact Sal had never been kissed and the sum total of Amanda’s experience involved a few drunken bunk-ups behind the youth centre in town with Billy Thompson, an apprentice car mechanic from my year at college. Though I had little sympathy for Mike himself, I wondered how much my baby’s future was being shaped against my will. I deserved to be able to make my own decisions for my own life and my own child, without the pressure of my family, however well meaning.

About a week after the baby’s due date, I woke in the middle of the night to red hot pain and a large damp patch on the sheets. It lasted just a few moments, but took my breath away. I couldn’t even cry out. I knew immediately it was labour. I had been frightened before that moment, but now a dreadful sense of inevitability set in: there was no turning back now. I had to go through this. Despite the sense of trepidation, a part of me felt excitement. I would meet my baby at last! It was only then the panic set in: he still didn’t have a name! What was I going to call him?

Amanda woke groggily to find me repacking my case for the hospital, checking and re-checking the babygros, nappies and other equipment in there. Immediately she sat up, as if on a spring: “Are you in labour?” She said excitedly.

I nodded and she ran out of the bedroom, yelling. Before long my sisters were crowded around me, my sleepy-eyed mother putting clothes on over her pyjamas. My Dad had been staying for the last few days “just in case” and I was grateful for it now: Hannah and the twins looked more scared than me, their eyes wide. Even Sal and Amanda seemed sympathetic and suddenly I sensed there was something momentous at work here: I was about to become a mother. A new life was on the way. Whilst I had known this all along, I had not felt it before.

Contractions started to come in earnest in the car and I discovered there is nothing more painful in the world than traversing a roundabout when in labour. Mum kept saying stupid things like “Breathe!” and I shouted a few swear words at her I could never have got away with at any other time. When contractions were just four minutes apart, Mum was convinced I’d have the child in the car, but once we got to the hospital a midwife confirmed I was only a few centimetres dilated. I felt crushed by the lack of progress. I had felt sure I would deliver in just a few hours. Instead the labour was long and gruelling. About ten hours in, I was asking for all the drugs available, despite having written in my birth plan I’d wanted only gas and air.

“You’re doing really well,” Mum said and again, I was struck by the fact it was a ridiculous thing to say. I was only doing what I had to! But the sheer effort stopped me from yelling at her this time. It was as if a more primeval “me” had replaced the more civilised side of my persona. I could only concentrate on delivering this baby.

Finally, over twenty hours after my waters first broke, I delivered a healthy little boy. He was smaller than I expected, even though the midwife said he was a good size, “A little bruiser” she said, with a strong Scottish accent. The baby had huge eyes and even the same mole on his chin as Mike. When I first saw him, I couldn’t stop crying and Mum burst into tears as well. The midwife regarded us both proudly and took a picture on the disposable camera Mum had remembered to slip into her handbag.

“What’s his name?” The midwife said.

I had expected to say “I don’t know” or “I’ll think of a name later”, yet staring at my new son in my arms, a name came to me from thin air and I replied: “Alex.”

Mum smiled and said, “Good choice.”

I didn’t want to stay in the hospital. Like many new mothers I became worried at being in a public place, feeling my baby was vulnerable. Mum argued my case with the midwives: I was low risk; I had a big support network at home; I wanted to go home as soon as possible. But the midwives just smiled patronisingly and advised us both we could go “as soon as the doctor did her rounds”. So we ended up sitting on the ward, listening to the cries of new babies and the exhausted sighs of newly delivered mothers, feeling the frustration and envy of women still waiting for labour. Ambling up and down the corridor, bored, I was reminded of the sheep in the nearby farms at lambing times: how the ewes would stamp at us in warning when we came investigating. The women on the ward were just the same:
stay away from our babies
.

During this time, Mike turned up. The first I became aware of him was raised voices at the nurses’ station. My mother had gone out to ask after the doctor again and run into him, ambling along the corridor looking for me and the baby.

“She doesn’t want to see you.” I heard Mum hiss after the initial outburst. Mike was standing his ground, a bunch of sorry-looking carnations in one hand, a teddy bear with a blue jumper in the other.

I hobbled to the ward doorway, the baby in my arms. I would not go so far as ten steps away from the crib without him. I was surprised at how much I still hurt and how difficult walking was. In my naïve mind, I suppose I had thought that like the mothers I’d seen on television, I would deliver the baby and go bounding on my way.

“Mum.” I said, my tone delivering my message at last, several weeks too late:
I will handle this.

Mum regarded me with undisguised irritation. “I’m going for a coffee.” She said to me, then looked at Mike, venom in her eyes. “I’ll be just down this corridor.” She warned.

Mike presented the flowers and teddy awkwardly, words failing him. Instead he fell back on platitudes like, “Well done” and “he’s gorgeous”, as if I had some kind of control over how Alex had turned out. Between us, what had happened on the patio still weighed heavy, yet neither of us had the maturity to address it. I wondered what happened next. Would Mike at least visit the child? What about money? I had none and nor did Mike: he was just a student. Did I have the right to ask him to get further in debt? But what would I do? It had taken two of us to make this child, after all. My mind was spinning. Yet none of this was said. About twenty minutes later, Mike gave me a kiss on the cheek and was gone again, as if he’d never been there. Mum came stalking back in immediately, eyeballing him on the way out. She started her demands the moment the swing doors closed after him:
what was happening? Were we still together? What about access? Was he prepared to pay maintenance?

“I don’t know.” I replied, truthfully.

The first few weeks following Alex’s birth passed. There were numerous “likes” on Facebook for my first picture of Alex, but few visitors the same age as me to the house, though Shona arrived, on a weekend home from university. She carried no present for the baby, just a giant litre bottle of vodka for me: “You’re gonna need this!” Typical Shona. A couple of old friends from college arrived with baby clothes and yet more teddies dressed in blue, but I had lost touch beyond social media with most of my peers as they had discovered their exciting new worlds, away from home for the first time. So most of the visitors were my Mum and Dad’s friends, eager to pass comment on the first ever Carmichael boy. Lots of gifts arrived from people I didn’t even know, along with a shower of congratulations. It was very bewildering: would they have been so interested had the child been another girl? But I shoved these uncharitable thoughts to the back of my mind and smiled, sitting next to my mother as she showed off her first grandchild to anyone who spared five minutes, including the postman and even two tourists who had got lost.

Yet real life always has to pick up the thread of normality again and it wasn’t long before mine did, too. Even the twins lost their starry looks when regarding the baby, soon complaining instead he cried too much in the night. Alex was a colicky child and slept only fitfully for an hour here or there. I felt Zombie-like, drifting through my life as if I were watching myself from above. A few weeks into this, Amanda announced she was moving in with Sal and Hannah, permanently. An almighty argument ensued when Hannah was discovered raiding Amanda’s beauty course stuff, which somehow became my fault as well. Breastfeeding proved more difficult than I hoped when Alex was so prone to colic, so despite my mother’s and Sal’s obvious disapproval, I put him on the bottle.