ADOPTION
Nell Sullivan
She could not have known it was going to hurt so much. Neither the descriptive diagrams in the books she’d read nor the breathing techniques learned at the classes had adequately prepared her. If anything they had misled her, cajoled her into believing the procedure was perfectly straight forward, the various stages of labour mechanically following a set formula. It was Nuala, her Lamaze teacher who in her nasally voice had told her it was completely natural and like the proverbial lamb to the slaughter she had believed her.
There was nothing natural about childbirth, thought Cara. It was utterly barbaric, that searing pain that had pushed her so far over the edge that she felt she had no choice other than to be taken over by this being who grated her insides as he battled his way mercilessly into the world.
In the beginning she had braced herself against the waves of pain, allowing herself to go with the rhythm that they dictated. But after what seemed to be an eternity of agony that had drained her own life force she had started to retreat. Exhaustion had crawled into every cell of her body forcing her to cry out through her crusted dry lips that she couldn’t go on. Surrender was clearly her only option.
The midwife, a stout woman in her fifties was the rock that Cara had clung to in those final hours. Margaret, solid in name and nature had tried to ease her pain, to coax her to continue pushing beyond endurance. The anesthetist was not available at weekends so pain relief had either been pethadine or gas and air. Cara had tried both. In the beginning the gas and air had taken the edge off her pain but then it had made her sick and she had thrown off the mask in despair. A shot of pethadine scrambled her brain but the pain still managed to seep through to every other part of her body but as that drug wore off and her brain had come out of the fog Cara decided she had enough. She wanted to feel in control, in charge of her own pain. From then on it came in waves that she rode stoically and silently. Hail Mary full of Grace please let me survive this. Jesus Christ no wonder women died during childbirth, they must have died from the shock of the pain. Please God don’t let me die. "I’m being punished," thought Cara. I’m being punished for having Stevie’s child.
The doctor shouted at her to push one more time but she just lay there pupils dilated and staring, sweat trickling down her brow. If she died now she couldn’t have cared less. This was her end, impossible to go beyond it. Dr Leahy, a pale anemic looking man in his thirties threw his eyes up to heaven and placed her weary legs in stirrups. Cara had gone beyond caring who saw her like this, she just wanted the pain to be over. Not for once did she think about her baby struggling to be born. Pain had made her focus only on herself, had forced her to turn into her own world to find the strength to go on.
After being suctioned her baby slithered effortlessly from her. "It’s a boy," said the doctor disinterestedly. A healthy boy." The midwife placed him upon her tender abdomen before whisking him off to be accessed and weighed. Cara stole a cursory glance at him and closed her eyes. The battle was over but the wounds still needed stitching. Dr Leahy gave her some sort of injection to numb her and without feeling the need for small talk began the procedure of putting her back together again.
Back in the ward Cara watched the peeling paint on the wall and wished with what ever strength she had left that she could escape from this dismal hospital and be on her own. By nature she was a private person, not one given to aimless chatter. Consolatory exchanges were fine for people who needed them but not her. Sometimes there were people who hardly noticed her monosyllabic replies, like now for instance.
"Sure there’s nothing like it is there. Nobody can prepare you for all that love you feel for your baby. Is it your first? The first is always the most traumatic but also the most special, although they’re all special in their own way. I’ve had my fourth girl, no boy yet so I may go again. You must be pleased having a boy first. I think it’s good for a man to have a son. Now take my Jack…."
Cara felt strangely assaulted by the lady’s talk. If only people could keep their thoughts to themselves instead of injecting them into her space. Cara thought the woman had to have a screw loose somewhere, having four children and contemplating a fifth. She had felt none of the emotions she mentioned. Instead she had felt nothing other than the profound relief that she herself was still alive after her brutal ordeal.
She concentrated instead on the money .There was a lot she could do with £30,000 right now. She’d be able to put down a deposit on an apartment on the right side of town and maybe treat herself to a holiday in the sun, get her hair bleached, buy some decent clothes. Cara closed her eyes and thought about the money. She deserved it.
She would never have gone through with the pregnancy only for Monica. Meeting Monica through a mutual friend of theirs at a coffee morning in aid of Romanian orphans turned out to be one of those chance meetings that somehow weaves their way into ones destiny, altering it inexorably from its futuristic pedestal. Monica she discovered, over a cup of frothy coffee had gone over to Romania to help distribute aid to some of the many disadvantaged orphanages and described in detail the appalling conditions that these poor children were forced to live in. Cara listened curiously to what she had to say but second hand experiences always failed to move her, experiences separate from her however horrific. She warmed to Monica, liked the feisty way she had gone about challenging the authorities to instigate some very rudimentary changes to make the lives of these children a little more bearable.
Monica had no children of her own not from choice but from the burden of biology. Having a brush with cancer in her late teens and undergoing the grilling treatment of chemotherapy had rendered her sterile. She smiled through her intimate exchange saying she was lucky to be alive but there were times she positively ached for a child of her own.
Months later she bumped into Monica in a shopping arcade on a busy Saturday morning in late July. The arcade thronged with heaving crowds was charged with an impatient and aggressive air. Cara struggling with two large bags of shopping felt strangely overwhelmed with relief on seeing Monica’s wide friendly face amidst a sea of scowls. Grabbing one bag and pointing her in the direction of a rooftop café Cara gratefully followed until she found herself sitting opposite the woman she had only once met.
"Its mayhem, always is on a Saturday I’m afraid. This is the only way to survive," gushed Monica as she poured milk into their coffees and pushed a packet of digestives towards Cara saying they were great for her blood sugar.
"I’m pregnant"
"I thought you were a little washed out. How are you feeling? When is the baby due? Is your partner thrilled ?"
Cara listened to and registered the questions but felt the tears well up and fall unselfconsciously onto the table. She explained in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t have this baby. It would be a travesty, an insult to her sister who had left her stay with her after Pete left. She hadn’t meant for any of this to happen but one night when Suzan was on night duty as a nurse she had found herself sharing a bottle of wine with Steve and after hours of shared confidences had ended up in bed together, comforting and pleasuring each other. Cara hated herself afterwards and had left the following week to move into a pokey bed-sit, an action taken in part as retribution for her betrayal and numbing guilt. That she had gotten pregnant after only one night had been a mistake, a tragic mistake that had to be erased before other lives were destroyed, wasted.
Monica listened to all her reasons for a termination and to give her credit said nothing until she’d finished.
"I’d give you ten thousand pounds up front and twenty thousand on delivery of the baby. I’d also pay for you to go away to another county until the baby is born and nobody would be any the wiser."
It was the matter of fact way she said it and the manner in which she was providing a solution to the dilemma that utterly convinced Cara in the end that going through with the pregnancy was the right way.
Monica’s husband was into property, an euphemism for filthy rich and it turned out he wanted a child just as much as his wife. A small balding man in his forties, he welcomed Cara into their home with the courtesy and charm of a man used to getting his own way. It turned out he was willing to pay over the odds for a white child of Anglo Saxon origin that would one day inherit and perpetuate his vast estate.
"So you see Cara we have a lot to offer to a child and I know Monica and I would love and cherish the child as our own."
And so the contract began with Cara signing a form saying that once the baby was born he/she would be given up for adoption to the Burnsworths.
Nobody else knew about their mutual contract. It was their secret, this financial binding that had determined the course of her pregnancy up until now. Towards the end Cara grew tired of their concern, felt weighed down by the responsibility for other people’s happiness. So when the day arrived that she went into labour she craved her aloneness more than anything, wanted the first few moments to be locked into her memory box of her and her son.
Once she was able she called Monica from the hospital payphone, tucked away in a dilapidated corridor that ranked of disinfectant and over cooked potatoes and cabbage. Cara shuffled her way back to the bed like an old woman catching a glimpse of her little boy before crawling back onto her hard sterile hospital bed.
"He’s a good ‘un, your little," said a passing nurse to no one in particular as she busied herself ticking the charts at the bottom of the beds. She wanted to say he wasn’t hers, he was Monica's but her voice strangled wit the truth of the statement. Monica wanted this child more than anything whereas she would have had it sucked out of her before he could have safely anchored to this world. She hadn’t thought regarded the baby other than an unwelcome visitor that needed to be ousted and afterwards endured until he was given to his rightful mother.
When he cried she was shocked, not knowing or wanting to do anything to bring her into contact with the baby she had birthed hours earlier.
"He’s hungry, your lad, that’s all," said the very thin and worn out woman from the bed opposite Cara. There were two cots next to her bed, housing the twins she had carried for what must have been a tortuous nine months. Cara noticed the spidery lines etched on the woman’s face and judged her to be in her late forties.
When Cara made no effort to get to her by now frustrated baby the mother of the twins came over and bent down into the cot stopping the screams mid air.
"There, there you beautiful boy. What a bonny lad. You must be very proud, although the first is always a shock," she added kindly as she settled the baby in the crook of Cara’s arms.
"I’m not breastfeeding. He needs bottles," was all she could manage to say to this mother of twins who hovered near her waiting for her to respond to the baby.
The nurse came around with the milk all perfectly sterile white in tiny little glass bottles given as free samples from the formula companies clamouring for business to the none breast feeding members of the community. The nurse picked up the baby and showed her how to put in the nipple into his mouth until he began to suck, knowing that his very life depended on this primitive limbic response. This was part of the nurses job teaching first time mothers like her to feed and look after their children. She told Cara that she’d get the hang of it in no time, all it took was a bit of practice and see how the baby sucked when he was hungry, sure wasn’t he doing all the work.
She placed the baby in Cara’s arms waiting until she saw she was comfortable with the procedure before dashing off to emptying the bed pan from the woman two beds away.
For a few seconds the baby’s eyes opened and seemed to bore through hers causing in heart to flip over and to feel erratic. His eyes were a deep blue just like Stevens and she could swear they were looking at her watching the person he needed the most to anchor here.
Monica should be here she thought. This is her job, her world, her choice, not Cara's. Cara put the baby back into the cot and reduced any sentimental misgivings to the voided corners of her mind. The baby was not for her to keep. He owed his life and potential opportunities to Monica. I was only the vessel she thought, the vessel for a being that was persuaded to be born.
To get away from the cloisters of maternal murmuring Cara made her way to the hospital chapel. Inside the welcome coolness and darkness enveloped her, offering her a respite, a chance to be at peace for what she was about to do. Dear God she thought, although she doubted his existence most of the time but just in case she asked him to forgive her for giving up her flesh and blood but surely he would understand that he was going to a good home, a wealthy home where all his needs would be provided for. Besides she had given life when she could have opted not to and surely that counts as an act of goodness and she would be absolved of her crime which was to have her sisters husbands child. But surely the fact that they were unaware that this happened meant something, that they were not in a position to be hurt or feel rejected.
Cara became aware of another presence in the church as she pondered on her rejection of her own flesh and blood. At first she thought it was she who was sobbing aloud for she certainly felt like doing so herself. But then she heard the definite sound of heart wrenching crying. A woman sitting over in a pew on the left was clearly bent over in grief, her body heaving with the strength of her feelings.
Her baby boy had died as he was being born. He never had the chance to breathe, to feel or smell his mother. Cara stroked the lady’s back as she relayed her story in between each paroxysm of grief. Her husband had died in a freak accident at work a few months ago and how death had stolen her son as well.
Cara stayed awhile and held her, absorbing whatever she could to help ease her pain. It was the lady’s first child, her one hope in a world that had grown very dim in the past few months.
"Do you believe we go somewhere when we die? Like a sort of heaven or after life?" the lady asked as her sobbing subsided and she needed a confirmation that there was something more beyond here, something better, more beautiful.
Cara nodded, letting the unsaid words wash over them and shoulder the pain just for a while.
Her baby lay there perfect but waxen and still. She picked him up and held him as close as she could and closed her eyes . She sat down on the nearby chair and sang a lullaby that promised to protect her child in his hours of darkness. The cavity of Cara’s heart flooded with another’s pain, the love she had witnessed in spite of the odds that were so cruelly stacked against. She gently closed the door to the private room that shielded the rest of the mother’s with live babies from distress.
Back on the ward the new lives were noisy, busy with their demands for food, warmth cries tinged with their urgent need for love. That’s what it all boiled down to. Love. The loving and the caring needed to cushion the blow of their arrival here. Cara wanted to gather her son in her arms and promise to love him and cherish him but she was too late.
Monica and Doug were at the bedside and Monica had taken the liberty of taking her son out of his cot. Cara watched as the tears rolled down Monica’s cheeks onto the creases of her smile. Doug stood behind her and stroked her head, looking after his wife while she cared for their son.
Monica’s son or Cara’s son? Death had blurred the boundaries, reversed her previous promises. Life and death. By choosing life over death we still have to face the consequences thought Cara. She went over to the worshipping couple and told them to take home their son.
© 2001 danmahony.com
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