Authors: Jacqueline Briskin
Maybe the adrenal rush of undiluted joy depleted Honora. At the height of the lunch confusion, as she stood at the counter calling, “One BLT, one Special,” the skin of her head stretched taut as a drum. Sounds reverberated against her ears. Her head seemed to pull away from her body. Then she was toppling
into darkness.
She came to almost immediately.
In a disjointed way she was aware that the head fry cook, an enormous Sicilian, had lifted her. From the mobile vantage point of his naked, black haired arms, she was aware of curious eyes and knowing little smirks. She must have passed out again. The next thing she was coughing at the sharp ammonia under her nose. She lay on the narrow cot in the waitresses’ lounge with the manager looming over her.
“Honora?”
“Give me a couple of minutes,” Honora whispered. Attempting to sit, she made futile, dog-paddling movements with her hands.
“Don’t move.”
“I have to get back to my station . . . .”
“Kersten and Mary Lu have taken over.” Black eyebrows drew together reproachfully. “How could you have done this to me?
“What?” Honora whispered.
“You know exactly what I mean.”
Honora closed her eyes. Even if she weren’t pregnant, she would have admitted she was—she would have confessed to murder, that’s how weak and demoralized she was.
“Letting me go to the trouble of breaking you in, probably getting me in Dutch with the supervisor.”
The manager’s heels rang sharply on the linoleum.
I won’t be working anymore
, Honora thought, and once again numbers began darting in her head. She had $102.53 in her bank account.
The $50 rent was due next week. Without her free meals, she would have to buy food. And if Curt wasn’t home before her due date she would need money for the hospital: Hollywood Presbyterian’s cheapest rate was $25 for four in a room, plus $5 for the the baby, and the minimum maternal stay was five days. $150. How would she get it? One thing was certain. She couldn’t let Curt’s child be born in one of those homes for unwed mothers that Gideon had proposed.
“Tell me how I’m meant to feel?” Vi asked. “You drive close to a thousand miles, scared stiff all the way, to beg a few bucks from some no-good, and when I talk a loan, you climb onto your high horse.”
“It’s different,” Honora sighed.
That same afternoon, the Murphy bed was down, and she lay stretched out in Curt’s maroon bathrobe. She had just turned down Vi’s offer of a three-hundred-dollar loan.
“You know me, just an American lowlife. Explain the finer points.”
“Gideon’s one of the family.”
“That’s what you call a guy who’s tossed you out on your can?”
“You’re a friend, Vi. I can’t borrow from you.”
Vi sat on the bed, sagging the springs. “You
ain’t got much choice, kid,” she said quietly. “And your hubby’s good for it, so what the hell. It’s settled.”
Honora reached out and gripped Vi’s red, beringed hand.
* * *
Honora tried to return to her old regimen without success. The daily two miles was out—her legs were too swollen, and anyway, she was panting by the time she reached the mailbox at the corner. She prepared herself balanced meals—vegetable or fruit, a protein, a starch—but after a few bites she was full, and if she forced down the food she vomited. Yet Dr. Capwell touched the balance of his scales several pounds higher. “You’re only at the beginning of your eighth month, and you’ve put on twenty-nine and three quarter pounds.” He frowned as he scribbled on his card. “You must cut down.”
“But I’ve been having trouble eating.”
“A prepartum woman metabolizes the food she eats in a more economical manner.”
The wedding band cut into her finger: she eased it off with soap, carefully storing it in the top drawer of the walk-in closet. Her sleep was disturbed by the need to pee or by the baby kicking at her chest, yet conversely, two minutes after she opened a book, she dozed.
“You sure seem dragged out,” Vi would say.
“I’m sleeping for two.”
Or Vi would inspect her worriedly, then say, “You sure don’t look good.”
“I’ve stopped wearing pancake, that’s all.”
“Well, you’re seeing a doctor, so I guess
it’s okay.”
* * *
In the pre-dawn hours of April 28, Honora awoke with the sensation that a large brick rather than an infant inhabited her stomach.
As she got out of bed, a liquid that was not urine warmed her thighs. Standing there, the tepid wetness gluing her legs to the loose flannel nightgown that she’d bought at the Junior League Thrift Shop, she realized that this must be what the pamphlet referred to as the “breaking of the water,” one of the pamphlet’s signals to call her physician.
The baby wasn’t due for nearly six weeks!
When the leaking stopped, she washed the rug and herself, then dressed. Giving herself points for remaining calm, she dialed the number taped above her phone, getting Dr. Capwell’s exchange. “If you’ll spell your name and repeat your number,” a contralto voice told her, “the doctor will return your call as soon as possible.”
Honora made the bed and swung it up into the wall. She unpacked Curt’s small Mark Cross bag to make sure she had the necessities. New red toothbrush, new tube of toothpaste, Jergen’s lotion and Mum. Two never-worn shortie nightgowns bought on sale. Two diapers, safety pins, a minute cotton shirt and a tiny yellow silk jacket embroidered with white rabbits that Vi had bought when they shopped together for the minimum layette.
She sat timing the cramps on her watch, consumed with worry about the baby’s
prematurity.
After a dark, endless hour, she dialed the exchange again. “This is Mrs. Ivory. I put in a call to Dr. Capwell before three and he hasn’t called back. I’d like to know if your service was able to contact him,” she said politely.
“I gave him your message myself,” replied the same contralto.
“Will you please try again? Tell him the pains are seven minutes now.”
There was a silence so long that she jumped when the woman finally came back on the line. “Doctor says to go back to bed and call him at the office first thing tomorrow morning.”
Honora knew that the average duration of first labor is between sixteen and eighteen hours—
hence there is no need for the first-time father’s proverbial panic at the onset of labor
—but she felt she would go crazy alone in the silent apartment. To distract herself she scrubbed and scoured the bathroom and kitchen. It was getting light outside and the pains were coming every five minutes with a strength that made her gasp and rippled sweat between her swollen breats.
She called Vi. “Young Ivory seems to be putting in a very early appearance.”
“Hang in there, kid. Be right over.”
Vi arrived in less then ten minutes, black frills of her nightgown showing below her Kelly green coat.
“Is this doctor of yours meeting us at the hospital?”
“I tried to get him twice. The message was
to call back when his office opens.”
“Jesus Christ! Gimme the number.”
Vi screamed into the phone. Finally, Dr. Capwell was on the line. More screaming on Vi’s part. Honora was in the midst of a pain when Vi slammed down the receiver. “Pardon my French, but you gotta real turd for a doctor. Well, he’s calling over to there. So let’s get the show on the road.”
At Hollywood Presbyterian, as the stout young OB nurse wheeled her away, Vi shouted, “You keep up the good work, kid, and I’ll pace the floor.”
Honora was dry-shaved with a blunt blade, given an enema, and taken to a labor room with two other groaning women and their pale husbands. Honora bit blood in her lips to keep from screaming, and a sympathetic nurse said, “You’re ready for a shot, but we have no orders from your doctor.”
Her cries were skittering down the brightly lit corridor by the time Dr. Capwell arrived. He ordered scopolamine, or twilight sleep, an amnesiac that blocks the memory. Later her only recollection of the birth would be of a blazing, shadowless operating room and a masculine voice shouting furiously, “You’re killing her and the baby! If it’s the last thing I do in medicine, Capwell, I’ll see you dropped from this hospital, you fucking butcher.”
* * *
She opened her eyes on sunlight.
Her mouth was dry and when she tried to swallow, she felt as if she had a strep throat.
Her stomach hurt, a dull, throbbing ache that was like an infected cut, totally different from the tearing intensity of labor pains. Uncertain whether the baby had been born, she made the effort of lifting her hand. Bandages swathed around her flat stomach.
The door was closed, but she could hear a faraway ripple of feminine laughter. And a strange, punctuated sound that was a cross between buzzing and an insistent bell. Still sedated, it took her about a minute to identify the sound as an infant’s wail.
She groped around, finding a black ovoid with a button safety-pinned to her pillow.
She pressed down.
A motherly, gray-haired nurse rustled in. “Ahh, so you’re awake, Mrs. Ivory.”
“I want to see my baby.” Honora whispered hoarsely.
The nurse moved about the bed, straightening the already taut sheets. “The infants are being taken back to the nursery, dear.”
“Why can’t I see my baby?” Honora was too weak to stop her tears.
“Now, now. Doctor’s making his rounds. Let me go find him.”
In a couple of minutes a youngish man opened the door, the stethoscope around his neck clicking against a button of his unfastened white coat as he came over to her barred bed. Despite the speed with which he moved, there was a reassuring, almost phlegmatic calm to the long, Lincolnesque face.
“I’m Doctor Taupin, the chief obstetrical
resident,” he said. “How are you feeling? If that incision hurts, I can order something for the pain.”
“Incision? Did I have a cesarean?”
Dr. Taupin blinked and pulled a chair to the bed. “Can you remember anything?”
“Just that I was making an awful fuss,” she mumbled apologetically.
“You were having a difficult time,” he said, his face carefully composed, his voice expressionless.
“Then there was a bright light and shouting.”
He nodded. “The baby was a breech—it was lying crosswise rather than in the right position with the head down. There were complications.” He paused. “While you were in the delivery room, I was called in.”
“The baby?”
He reached between the bars to grip her hand. “I did everything I could, but the baby was born dead.”
“Dead?” She could hear the ridiculous quaver in her voice. “But in the labor room, the intern listened and said he could hear a good, strong heart.”
He shook his head. “The complications I told you about, Mrs. Ivory, the breech delivery. I’m sorry, so very sorry.” He didn’t sound sorry, he sounded angry.
A birch tree outside dappled the sunlight on the opposite wall with moving shadows.
“Mrs. Ivory,” Dr. Taupin’s fingers warmed her icy flesh. “Death is the most difficult reality to accept, and there’s no way to soften it. But
at least we saved you.”
“What was it?”
“A little boy.”
“Was anything wrong with him?”
“Nothing.”
“I mean, was he deformed?”
“He was perfect.”
“I had to work, I wore a tight girdle.”
“Nothing you did hurt the child, none of this was your fault.” Again that veiled anger.
“He was premature.”
“No, full term.”
“But Dr. Capwell said my due date was—”
“He made a miscalculation.”
So Gideon was right. Conceived before marriage.
The infants were being returned to the nursery, and she heard the peculiar, thin wailing sound. Her breasts began to ache, and she lifted her hand under the sheet, feeling the moisture that seeped through her hospital gown.
Dr. Taupin saw the gesture. “Mrs. Ivory—okay if I call you Honora?”
“Yes.”
“Honora, my opinion is you’ll feel a lot better if you’re off this floor.”
She nodded.
“It helps to cry,” he said.
Cry? Desolation and guilt had stripped away the superficial layers of her psyche, the dreaminess people remarked on, the innocence and blind spots, leaving her naked to the truth. She had placed herself in the hands of a medical ignoramus, she hadn’t told Curt about his child,
she had handed her father the bank account necessary to see her through her confinement, she had flubbed all down the line. And her baby—Curt’s son—was dead.
She was wheeled to another private room. During the afternoon visiting hours, Vi bore in a pile of glossy magazines and bunch of red roses. Her small, bloodshot eyes were wet.
Honora thanked her in a flat voice.
“I’m sorry, kid, so sorry.”
“You’ve been wonderful, Vi,” Honora said.
Vi blew her nose. “What a stinking break.”
“Are you paying for the private room?”
“That’s the last thing you need to worry about.”
“You’ve been wonderful,” Honora repeated. The soreness of her throat and the numbness in her mind made conversation impossible.
Vi brushed a wisp of hair from Honora’s forehead and clasped her hand. “Kid, listen, I’ll buzz along. What you need is sleep.”
Honora nodded, and her eyes closed with an all-encompassing exhaustion.
When she awoke it was night and the room was heavily shadowed, yet she sensed that somebody was here with her. She stirred to look around and the incision throbbed sharply.
“Darling?” A chair scraped against the linoleum. “You awake?”
“Curt,” she said. She felt no surprise that he was here, standing over her bed.
He grasped the bars, bending to press his cheek to hers. She could smell toothpaste and weariness.
“Have you seen Vi?”
“Yes. There was a note in the apartment to go to the Pig’n’Whistle.”
“It was a boy,” she whispered.
“I know, love, I know,” he said. “We’ll talk about it later.”
“I should’ve gone to a proper obstetrician.”
“Sweet, you were in a strange city in a strange country, and this guy came recommended.”
“In the back of my mind I knew all along he was no good, but I’d paid his whole fee and I couldn’t afford any more bills.”