Page 2 of Statistically Speaking
It is enough. And it is happening. Head, shoulders, tiny body, slithering into this small room in this busy hospital, like she’s in a rush now. She’s rushing out of me and into her own life—into a world that I hope treats her well.
I feel disconnected from my own body as she arrives, burdened with a sense of physical relief and emotional dread. I stare at the curtains, at the stripes, repeated patterns of threedifferent shades of green. I read somewhere once that green is supposed to be calming. It is not—at least not in this situation.
I blink rapidly as the midwife pulls my baby up and into her solid hands. I wonder how many babies she has delivered with those hands, how many women she has helped. I find that I don’t really care, about that or about anything. I am done, I am trembling, I am slick with sweat. It has even caught in my eyelashes, is dripping from my brows. The skin of my face feels sore and stretched over my bones.
I look at the clock on the off-white wall. It is just past midnight on October 3. It is her birthday. She took her sweet time and arrived ten days after she was scheduled to. But she is here, this brand-new thing, this fresh creature, this tiny human. This life waiting to unfold. She is here, and she has been born to the sound of Kelis singing about her milkshake. That doesn’t seem right, somehow—but it is done, and I can only hope that she hasn’t absorbed it. That she won’t grow up to have a weird yearning to lie on tables in diners.
The midwife—she’s called Siobhan, I suddenly remember—is cooing and chatting as she cuts the cord, starts to check the baby over. It only takes minutes, but it is enough time for me to lose whatever magic was keeping me upright and present.
I collapse backward, my head banging against the steel of the bed frame. I don’t even feel it. I am suddenly bone-deep cold, shivering, in shock. If I’d just finished a marathon, someone would wrap me in a foil sheet and give me a Mars bar.
“Here she is—absolutely perfect! Eight pounds, two ounces, and a lovely length—she’s going to be a tall one!” says Siobhan, bringing the tiny form, wrapped in a blanket, towardme. I see one pudgy arm sticking out, fist clenched in bright red fury. Like she’s already angry at the world.
“I don’t want to hold her!” I say quickly, holding my hands up to ward them away, wishing I could run—not even a marathon, just out of this room. Away from here, away from now.
I cannot run, though. I cannot move. I am trapped, my body still pulsating, my mind spiraling as she approaches.
“It’s okay, Gemma,” says Geoff with a G. He has stood up, is peering into that blanket, smiling at what he sees.
“You should see her. You should hold her. You’ll regret it if you don’t.” I glare at him, filled with anger—with a bright red fury of my own. I have so many regrets already; what harm could one more possibly do me?
I don’t have the energy to argue, though, and I accept the bundle that is passed to me. Part of me knows he is right. That even if this hurts, I must do it, or wake up every single day for the rest of my life wishing I’d been brave enough.
I have held babies before. Some of my foster families also took in tiny ones like this. I have changed nappies and warmed bottles, and wondered what all the fuss is about. Babies are noisy and messy and not very good conversationalists and I never understood why people are so keen on them.
This, though, is different. This is my baby. This is a baby who has lived inside my body for more than nine months. This is a little girl with red hair and a red face, and she is at once a stranger and someone I have known for all of eternity. She is new and she is old and she is everything all at the same time.
She nestles into me, her face turning sideways, rooting and snuffling, one finger flipping up as though she was born knowing how to be rude. She has a bad attitude, I decide, as I peel back the covers and gaze at her face. I like people with a bad attitude.
“Perfect, Gemma,” says Siobhan, hovering by my side. “Look at that. Look at what you did, you brave girl. Ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes.”
The midwife is patronizing me, which I can’t blame her for. It’s hard to argue a case for your maturity and wisdom when you’ve just given birth to a baby you conceived while you were still in school.
But she is also mistaken, at least about one of those things. The baby might be perfect, but I am not brave. I am not brave at all. I ignore her, lost now in more important things. Like counting those ten tiny fingers, those ten tiny toes, and drinking in that angry, red face. I stroke my baby’s hair, damp and gooey still, and she blinks her eyes open and stares up at me. Her eyes are wide and a dark shade that could be either blue or gray, but I know they’ll probably change anyway over the next few months. I saw it in one of the books Geoff gave me.
I won’t be in her life by then. It is strange to think that I will not be around to see what color eyes she has. It is one of the many things I will never know. The way she looks at me, though, is enough for now.
The way she looks at me, it feels like she understands it all. Like she knows all the stuff, the good and the bad and the boring. It is the stare of someone who sees right through you, who cuts through the bullshit, who knows everything that has ever happened in the universe ever. Minutes old and already the wisest being I’ve met.
Geoff is blathering. Siobhan is chattering. Kelis has been replaced by Christina Aguilera. None of it matters. It is all surplus to requirements. All that matters is me and my baby—this beautiful-ugly, young-old scrap of a person lying on my chest.
It is me and her and it is the magic. It is the rainbows and the unicorns and the perfect. It is the everything—the anti-lonely, the anti-weird, the anti-fear. It is the best I have ever felt in my life, and it is the worst I have ever felt in my life.
She is perfect, the most beautiful human I have ever seen. I cannot believe she came from me. She is perfect, and now I am going to give her away. I am going to let her be taken out of my arms, out of this room, passed on to strangers. Her real life starts as soon as she is away from me, in a better reality. One where she will be loved and cherished and well fed and well cared for. Where she will have a good home, and people who love her, and an education, and opportunity.
Where she won’t have me.
I kiss her red face, and smell her red hair, and try to imprint every detail of this moment, of this creation, into my memory.
“I love you, Baby,” I murmur. I don’t want to give her a name. That is for her new family to do. The family that Geoff with a G found and vetted and worked with. The family that will give her the life I can’t. The family that will give her the awesome world she deserves. To me, she will always be just Baby.
“It’s not too late, you know,” says Geoff quietly. “Nothing is settled, nothing is definite. You have weeks to decide before anything gets signed. You could keep her until then, see how you feel. We can find ways to help you—you don’t have to rush into this.”
I don’t meet his eyes—my eyes are on my baby, soaking in her wondrousness—but I manage a smile for him. He means well, and I no longer wish to damage his face.
He means well, but he and I both know what that help would look like. I might find a foster family that would take ina teenager and a newborn. I might find a place in an independent living unit. I might even be able to find my own place, if I were very special and very lucky and the Gods of Forgotten Children smiled upon me. There would be assessments and key workers and reports and visits and a grinding sense of benign scrutiny. Every move, every mistake, every choice I made, would be watched.
I’ve lived in and out of this system for a lot of my life, and I know how it feels to always be watched. Sometimes the system works—I have met good people, had foster parents who helped me, found some stability. Sometimes it doesn’t work, and the less said about that the better. But none of it is what I want for this little girl—she shouldn’t have to settle for second best, for anything less than perfect.
