I pace the room and the lost men come to me. My drowned father, Samson. Between them, they had crafted me. How can I pass on such an inheritance to a child? How can I conjure up some miniature soul from the mysterious unknown, feed it upon my blood, and then push it kicking and screaming out of my body into this world? Existence has been heavy enough for me. Would it be a blessing or a curse to bestow it upon some small, unknown stranger?
But then this tiny thought unfolds. It whispers hope. It says that perhaps here—far away from the island, far from those malevolent spirits, far from those cruel hands, in the arms of this strong and loving man—it could happen. Perhaps I could be a mother in a different way. Perhaps a child would be born who is a new thing, not an entity ruled by ghosts. A child made by him and me would be born of love, even if accidentally. And this accidental child, born in this safe place, it would love me unconditionally, and for this I yearn.
*
When I tell him, his eyes widen and his brow rises. He spreads his hands on the table, pushes himself up, and goes to stand in front of our window, his back to me. He looks down onto the street where the late October sun is falling like weak drizzle. I say, “Say something.”
He says, “I don’t know … A baby?” His voice trails off and he stands there for minutes. I stay quiet, waiting. He comes back, squats next to me, holds my hands. “I just … I don’t think we can. Do you want this?”
I shake my head and then I’m not sure. “I don’t know. I never thought I wanted to be a mom, but maybe with you…”
He says, “We’ve talked about this so much. You’ve always said you didn’t want to.”
I shrug my shoulders, my hands on my stomach pointing out that the decision has been taken from us, has been made by unknown, unseen forces.
He says, “But we’re so good. Look how much freedom we have. How easy our lives are. It’ll change everything. I don’t want it to change. I love our lives. I love how we are together.”
I counter, “I love our lives too. But maybe it’ll be like us multiplied. It’ll be us times ten. You, me, and a little one. A tiny one just like you or me. It could be good.”
He says, “Have you even thought this through? Do you know how much time and effort and money it’ll be? I’m just trying to get off the ground. I mean, if I sold some paintings it could be different.”
“Yes, of course. I’m not proposing we adopt a puppy.” He lets go of my hands, gets up, and paces the room again. He says, “I don’t know.”
I say, “I have to go to work,” and stand up. Something in me is far away from him, but he must feel it, because he comes and holds me close to him, strokes my hair with his palms. I rest my face against his chest. He says, “We’ll figure it out together. I promise.” His voice sounds like it has traveled miles to me, but I nod against his skin.
*
I go to my doctor and find out that I am about seven weeks pregnant. At home despite my trepidation I open my old nursing manuals, and there are the lists of attributes:
The embryo is around 13 mm (1/2 inch) in length. The heart is beating with one chamber. A dividing wall is formed in the heart. Arm and leg buds are beginning to grow. The lower jaw and the vocal cords are beginning to form. The mouth opening is forming. The inner ear is being created. The digestive tract is developing. The navel string is being created. The following organs are being formed: the lungs, the liver, the pancreas, and the thyroid gland.
It sounds like a poem, like the lines of the most beautiful poem in the world.
Inside me, these things are happening. The delicate whorl of an inner ear, its complicated mechanisms beyond the grasp of all science to create, is being created. Inside me, organs that pump blood, breathe air, secrete hormones are coming into being, forming the tiny swirl of life that will be this miracle, a new human being. A childhood memory rises, of listening to the Buddhist verses that extoll the sanctity of life, verses that claim that a child is a child from conception and that the months we spend in utero too are marked as a year of life.
*
I can’t eat, I can’t sleep. I am as devastated as a bombed-out city. He tries to hold me, but I don’t want him. I walk my shifts like a zombie, go through my paces at bedside on automatic. Nadine tries to talk to me, but I push past her. I wonder when one of the others will report me for being careless, for more than once pushing the needle into flesh rather than vein so that patients gasp and swell and complain. There is a time bomb ticking inside me. This is one problem with a deadline set in stone as much as in flesh.
At the grocery store and at the park, I stop to watch women with their children, the way they look at their little ones and the way that longing gaze is returned. No matter how far the child might stray, there is always that look over the shoulder to make sure mommy is there, mommy has not left. The mothers always know where their children are, even as they hold coffee and talk to the others. Always, this invisible umbilicus stretching between a mother and her young.
To be adored like that. To be loved unconditionally, to extend the way we are together, Daniel and me, to this other unknown person, who is also both of us. Could we be like that? Happy? All three of us in love with each other? It seems the last thing missing in the life I have built.