What We Have (10 page)

Instead of postpartum depression, I felt a kind of euphoria. I called my parents, Julie, Sara, my in-laws in South Africa, I called Annie. I was tenderhearted and exhilarated by the newness of it all, Sacha’s fingernails with their perfect plum translucence, her miniature perfection. The whole world glowing in each tiny eye. Each visitor, each flower, each present was dazzling to me. I peeled the petals off the mauve roses sent by my in-laws and glued them one by one into Baby’s First Book given to us by our neighbors; I recorded headlines from the day of her birth (SOVIET UNION DISSOLVES); I noted the weather (fifty-three degrees, rainy).

On the second day, there was a knock on the door. I was expecting our pediatrician. “Come in,” I called, holding Sacha and gazing tenderly at her tiny face.

It wasn’t the pediatrician. It was Julie, holding the biggest stuffed bear I’d ever seen.

“Hey, Mellie,” she said.

Tears sprang to my eyes—hormones, joy—and then to hers, and we both sobbed, and we tried to hug each other without squashing Sacha between us, and she told me how sorry she was that she hadn’t been there for me these past few months, and we cried together about Emily, and I told her I was happy for them about Portland, honestly, I really was, I’d been selfish before, but now—We hung on to each other and kept crying until Sacha was sopping wet. Sacha was a mitzvah, a charm, a catalyst, things would be OK, Julie would be OK, they were “trying” again, she told me, blowing her nose. She rubbed Sacha like a talisman. “Wish us luck, little one,” she whispered.

The bear took up the whole corner. I named him Pepys, and even though he had slightly creepy eyes, I loved him.

 

MY PARENTS ARRIVED FROM DETROIT
just as we were being told by an obstetrical resident that Sacha had jaundice and might not be able to come home with us right away. The resident delivered this news with perfect calm. It was not uncommon with babies born “a bit early,” he told us. He explained this like he thought it would cheer me up. He didn’t look much older than my undergraduates.

Right in the middle of this, my mother came in without knocking, holding a pink flowering begonia in front of her like a shield.

I tried to pull myself up into a sitting position, squinting at the resident. I had negotiated this visit with my parents—I hadn’t wanted them to come until we were home, settled, and knew enough about what we were doing that I wouldn’t feel completely self-conscious and awkward. They wanted to come
right away
. The compromise was, they won. They were staying with Julie and Jon, and we agreed they’d
just
come to the hospital, say hello, and meet the baby. They’d come back for another (short) visit the next day, then go back to Detroit. They’d be back for a “real” visit over Christmas, in a few weeks.

Short as their visit was, I wanted it to go well. At the very least, I wanted to have washed my hair, to be nursing without visible pain, to be giving off an aura of maternal calm. This wasn’t how I’d planned for them to see me: I had dried breast milk all over me, my hair was unbrushed, and I had a blistering headache.

But for once, I couldn’t focus on what they thought. I was too busy trying to understand what the resident was telling us.

“It’s just a matter of days, maybe a week,” he said, as if he were talking about a library book that needed to be held back behind the counter for rebinding. Sacha needed light therapy, and the standard procedure was to stretch her out in a special nursery and beam a light at her. A bilirubin light, it’s called. I pictured a butterfly drying on a rack.

My father leapt on this. Breaking medical issues around my father is like throwing raw meat to a wolf. He started barraging the resident with questions and throwing around medical jargon before Jacques and I could even respond.

Jacques, hero of the hour, took my father gently aside. “No worries, Dale,” he said, not looking yet at me. “We’ll get good advice and figure this out.”

I waited for my mother to leap in with plans of her own, advice, suggestions.

Another surprise: a new side of my mother came out. She didn’t say a word about jaundice. Instead, she set the begonia down, out of the way, came over to pat me on the shoulder a little—she was never big on hugging—and leaned in to scoop Sacha out of the Lucite bassinette beside me.

“Hello, Sachabelle,” she said, apparently immune to the chatter of the resident behind us. She seemed completely unfazed, eyes only for Sacha.

She nudged me over a little with her hip, sank down onto the bed next to me, and proceeded to reintroduce me to the perfection of Sacha’s face. “Look,” she said admiringly, “at those eyelashes! Look at those dimples! Look—” Sacha was grabbing tightly onto my mother’s pinky, her fingers squeezing tightly. “Look how
strong
she is!”

Temporarily, I stopped trying to read the signs the resident must be giving to suggest which option was better: leaving Sacha in the hospital for three days of light treatment, or bringing her home and hooking her up to what he called a “bilirubin blanket.” Over my mother’s shoulder, I got caught up in readmiring Sacha. I had to admit she looked good. The jaundice made her look a little suntanned, like she’d just been to the beach. My panic subsided. I heard, tacitly or not, the subliminal message in my mother’s voice:
She’s going to be fine. I’m a mother, I know about things like this, and you have nothing to worry about
.

Another surprise: Jacques was already speaking up. “We’ll bring her home,” he told the resident, without a shred of hesitation. No “later,” no “one step at a time,” no “let’s wait and see.” I looked at him, considering. He had a whole new sound in his voice.

It was really something, this parenthood business. It was changing all of us, and Sacha had only been around for four days.

WHEN IT WAS TIME TO
leave the hospital, I was in tears. It was like leaving summer camp, I wanted everyone’s autograph, I wanted to stay forever. What would happen to our little Lucite box? Where would our system go? Every part of my body seemed to be leaking. Jessie, my favorite nurse, brought a stack of forms to sign with my breakfast tray and she and I hugged, rocking back and forth, while I reminded her she was the one who taught us the underdoggie, she was the one who brought me prunes when I couldn’t go to the bathroom, she was the one who gave Sacha her first bath. Why couldn’t she leave the hospital and come home with us? Sacha needed us both, two mothers!

I reminded her I knew pretty much nothing about babies.

Sacha was swaddled in three waffle-weave blankets stamped COLUMBIA HOSPITAL FOR WOMEN, most of the N rubbed off. Her face looked wizened and pathetically grave. Jacques was trying to get the car (24 Hours or More) out of hock. I rode downstairs in a wheelchair, holding Sacha on my lap—barely five pounds now, her newborn diaper big as a kilt on her, and outside a winter gale was raging.

What kind of world were we bringing her into?

“Just take her home and love her,” Jessie said.

And we did.

COMING HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL,
I wanted my mother. I wanted her to be standing outside our back door, arms stretched out, ready to take Sacha from me. I wanted her to be in the kitchen, whipping up something fragrant and soothing for dinner. I wanted her to be everywhere, putting things away, getting things settled.

Instead—just like I’d insisted—she and my father were back in Detroit, waiting anxiously for us to call and say it was OK for them to come back.

There were six steps up to the brick porch outside our kitchen. I winched myself up the iron railing like it was a tow lift, my abdomen torched with pain. Jacques was behind me, holding Sacha in the car seat that detached and became a carrier. It took four hands just to get her inside the door.

Inside, our house overwhelmed me. Bacchus, leaping forward with unrestrained joy. The twins from next door had been walking him, but he still had a week’s worth of pent-up energy to share. Stacks of unopened mail on the table. How were we going to manage on our own? The dining room table was piled with baby equipment: monitors, diapers, changing pads, cotton balls. I looked around, disoriented. I hadn’t planned on feeling so tired.

“I know it’s probably hard to climb stairs,” Jacques said, looking like he’d just won the lottery, “but I have something to show you up in Sacha’s room. Can you make it?”

I took a deep breath. There were thirty-seven stairs between me and the third floor. But I could see from Jacques’s face this was important.

We took our time. Bacchus went first, tail flicking like a metronome. Then Jacques, holding Sacha. Then me, tugging on the banister, trying to hide each wince. “I’m fine!” I huffed disingenuously, as I fell farther and farther behind.

Finally, we made it to the top floor. I inched my way along the corridor, while Jacques nudged open the door to Sacha’s room.

I let my breath out, half in pain, half in wonder.

My parents had only been in DC for two days, but while my mother was here and I was in the hospital, she and Jacques had whirled into action, taking over my incomplete to-do list. Everything was ready. They’d set up the changing table, complete with its stack of wipes. They’d arranged miniature onesies in tiny piles on the fresh white shelves.

My eye roved approvingly. Then I turned and saw it. The crib from Baby World. White, simple, perfect—just the one I’d coveted. It was all set up, with a note hanging from it tied with an enormous pink ribbon.
“Welcome home, Mellie and Sacha-la. Love, Bomma and Boppa.”

They’d driven out to Virginia with Jacques to get it. While I was in the hospital learning how to breastfeed, Jacques had assembled the crib, using the cordless screwdriver Valerie had given us, and my mother had arranged the bedding: waterproof sheet first, soft flannel next, an adroitly folded cotton diaper where Sacha’s face would lie, all starched and sweet-smelling and cocoonlike. I stood against the door jamb, still panting a little, and looked around at the room with its rocking glider for nursing and the blue-and-yellow border and the fan-shaped window, and I looked back at the crib, and I burst into tears. Bacchus, panting decorously beneath the rocker, watched me with soft wet eyes.

“Your mom wanted to get the crib,” Jacques said apologetically. “I felt bad, having to put you off like that. But she wanted to surprise you.”

I thought about how convinced I’d been that she didn’t care, that she didn’t want to be out here with us. And all the while, she’d been crib shopping long distance.

Now I wanted to call her and tell her I’d changed my mind.
Come back! Come and help us! Move in, stay forever!

But we’d made a plan, they’d bought their tickets to come back over Christmas, and I tried my hardest to be brave when I called her later, raving about Sacha’s room. Thanking her for the crib.

“Are you guys all right?” she asked. “You’re sure you don’t want me to come out sooner and help for a little while?”

I was sure, I told her. I swallowed, hard. Hopefully the days between now and Christmas would fly by.

 

HELP
WAS ALL I THOUGHT
about now. Time was suddenly carved in two: time with help, and time without.

Julie came over and helped, but she had to get back to the Justice Department. She was working overtime, trying to save money before she and Jon moved. Lori was busy working on a story, our neighbors were busy, Annie was busy, the world was going on and people were living their lives, and we came home and it suddenly felt like every minute of every day had become a challenge.

We needed help. We needed a baby nurse, I explained to Jacques, for so many reasons. Because I’d had a C-section, and because we were brand-new parents and didn’t know how to do anything, like making the bassinette comfortable, or cutting Sacha’s nails, or washing Sacha’s hair, or diagnosing or curing diaper rash, or figuring out how the baby monitor worked, or deciding whether the used-up chemical heating pads counted as toxic or could be thrown out with ordinary trash. Not to mention cooking dinner while holding Sacha, talking on the phone while holding Sacha, holding Sacha while she was crying, keeping Sacha from crying interminably every day from three o’clock until midnight, or figuring out how to sleep in two-hour increments. On our own, we couldn’t tell the difference between normal cries and cries that meant something was wrong.