And Then Life Happens (27 page)

Taken aback, I stared at her. “You really think so?”

I must have sounded pretty naïve. And I
was,
in fact, naïve.

“We can find out quickly. Take a pregnancy test.”

Ian and I had spoken about children only once, and that was when I had worked for him and we were not yet a couple. He had explained at the time, full of conviction, that he didn't want any more children, because he already had a daughter from a previous marriage. In response, I had asked him, “And what if you have a girlfriend who absolutely wants to get pregnant?”

“Then she's out of luck,” he answered with a laugh.

Just as convinced of my words as he was of his—only very seriously—I had replied, “If I were that woman, I wouldn't go out with you! I definitely want to have children one day.”

After that, we had never talked about the topic again. And now, a few years later, we were married. And I might be pregnant. How would Ian react if it were true?

*   *   *

“You're pregnant! You're pregnant! Hooray!”

Elke hopped from one leg to the other. I had come out of the bathroom with the colored test strip, after I had let out a telltale cry. Suddenly, everything seemed like a dream to me. I tried to imagine that a little person was growing inside me, but the thought was completely strange to me. Nor could I connect my nausea with the emerging life inside me, no matter how hard I tried.

“It's really true! You're pregnant! I'm happy for you, Auma!”

Elke hugged me tight; her excitement was palpable. When she was pregnant with Jan and Lena, she could imagine nothing more wonderful. When I had visited her in Carbondale for the first time, she had walked around the room with a pillow under her overalls for fun and played mother-to-be.

And now I was pregnant, and she was again seized with euphoria. Her high spirits were downright contagious.

“We're having a baby,” I said to her, smiling, but my voice wavered a little. “And you'll be an aunt. I'm happy about that.”

The rest of the afternoon, we sat together and imagined my future.

“It will be a girl!” I said confidently.

“You can't know that.” Elke laughed.

“Yes, it will be a girl.”

“And why are you so sure?”

“I just know. I want a girl, and I know that this child will be a girl.”

Elke gave up trying to convince me that the opposite was possible, but in my head the discussion went on. I really wanted a girl. I could not imagine having a boy. A girl simply suited my temperament much better.

*   *   *

I could hardly wait to tell Ian the joyful news. During our phone calls, I barely managed to keep it to myself. I had decided to surprise him with it on my return home, and my plan succeeded. I bought a card, on the front of which was a picture of tiny baby hands, and gave it to him when I was back in England and we were sitting together at dinner. Ian carefully opened the card and discovered on one side the ultrasound image of a baby and on the other a few corny words like “Hello, Daddy!”

With a broad smile, he looked at me. And before he could say anything, I declared, “It will be a girl.”

“Of course!” he answered with a laugh. “Real men have girls.”

I was overjoyed. And that night, as I fell asleep with my husband's arms around me, I knew that our little girl was in good hands and would be received with great love into our world.

*   *   *

My graduation film was finally finished and could be submitted for approval. It was December 1996. I was in Berlin again for a few weeks, and each evening when we spoke on the phone, Ian asked impatiently when I would be returning to England. “After the film's first screening,” I said each time.

My film was titled
All That Glitters Is Not Gold
and was about an African woman living in rural Germany as the wife of a wealthy but rather cold German husband. She is extremely lonely. One day, she loses her seven-year-old daughter under unusual circumstances.

When I showed my film to faculty and students, it was very quiet in the hall and it was impossible to tell how it went down with the audience.

After the lights came back on, it took a while before the silence was broken. Finally, a student raised her hand and said, “The whole thing is unrealistic! In real life something like that would never happen.”

With that she set something in motion that resembled a tsunami. Suddenly, I was subjected to a multitude of questions and criticisms. I tried to respond to the many attacks, some of which did not make sense to me. I felt as if I could not really defend myself at all. My film seemed to have offended people, but what exactly it was that was offensive no one could explain clearly to me. Even when I later asked Elke and some other friends, whom I had invited to the screening, what on earth I had done wrong, they were not able to give me a clear answer. I could only suspect that from the point of view of the Germans, the film made the African woman too much a victim and so triggered among the viewers an unpleasant sense of complicity.

Feeling rather bruised, I left the hall. Shortly before leaving the building, I went to the bathroom. There I discovered that I was bleeding.
My baby!
I thought in horror. I was in my third month, a critical time for miscarriages. In a panic, I rushed out of the bathroom to look for Elke. Fortunately, she had not gone home, but was absorbed in a conversation with some other people. I took her aside and told her what had just happened to me.

“We're going to the hospital immediately!” she said resolutely. “Don't get worked up and don't move more than necessary.” With these words, she took me by the elbow and led me toward the exit. “Sit down here on the stairs. I'll get my car.”

*   *   *

In the hospital, I was informed that I might, in fact, have a miscarriage. But I was reassured, told to just lie still on my back and everything would be all right.

I expected a few days of prescribed bed rest, but the doctor who examined me the next day said I would have to remain lying down until the birth. Almost seven months!

From day to day, I grew more distressed, especially as I could not pry a clear explanation for my condition out of him. A few days before Christmas, Ian, who had heard the despair in my voice, made a decision. “I'm coming to get you,” he said. I did not feel comfortable with the idea—what would the doctors say about it?—but I simply could no longer bear to stay in the hospital and agreed to his plan.

“We can't be held responsible if you take your wife with you,” the doctor treating me told Ian, when he showed up the next day in the hospital. “Anything can happen.”

“I understand,” he replied, and asked for the necessary documents. “We'll deal with this in England.”

*   *   *

The doctor in the British hospital, where I went immediately on arrival, sent me back home after the examination.

“If you have any pain, take these pills here. Otherwise, you can do everything without any problems.”

“But in Germany I was told…”

“Everything is fine with you. There's no reason to lie in bed all day.”

Was this a classic case of “different countries, different norms,” or was I the victim of an error in judgment? In Germany, the doctors had insisted on total bed rest; in England, however, I was advised to keep a stiff upper lip and carry on with things as usual. And that's what I did!

On the morning of May 3, 1997, I gave birth to a perfectly healthy daughter—I had been right. I took her in my arms and at the sight of her little face felt a love such as I had never previously experienced. I was insanely happy—and at the same time panic-stricken. She was so little and seemed so fragile. I was afraid of pressing her too tightly, not holding her securely enough, being incapable of looking after her. I was beset by all the fears that most women probably have at the birth of their first child. Suddenly, I was responsible for the survival of this little being who was completely dependent on me. There's no doubt that happiness and fear are closely related.

Ian sat at my bedside. He had missed the actual birth. When the contractions had begun the previous evening and he drove me to the hospital, it had been assumed that the delivery would take substantially longer than the two hours my daughter needed the next morning to come into the world. For that reason, Ian had been told on the telephone that he did not have to hurry. So by the time he had woven his way through the rush-hour traffic, his daughter was already there.

“It can't be true!” he exclaimed as he rushed into the room. I lay exhausted on the bed. Aunty Jane, who was visiting us at the time, entered the room behind him.

“Look, over there.” With my head I gestured to the bassinet in which our little girl was sleeping peacefully in a white romper. “There's our daughter.” I was overjoyed. It sounded so good. Our daughter. My daughter. I had a daughter.

“Can I pick her up?” Ian asked hesitantly.

“Of course!” said Aunty Jane, beating me to it. She, too, was smiling from ear to ear. “And hurry, or else I'll take her from you. I want to hold my granddaughter in my arms.” In place of her older sister, my mother, Aunty Jane was at that moment the grandmother.

Then came the obligatory photos: the baby with the father, then with the exhausted but elated mother, finally another picture with Aunty Jane, and, of course, a shot of the leading lady lying in her bassinet. We had named her Akinyi, which means “morning child” in Luo. I looked through the wide window of the room. The sun shone brightly. It was a magnificent, almost cloudless day. Here in the room, my husband and my aunt admired our child, and outside a wonderful early summer day was dawning.

*   *   *

In my first days as a mother, my everyday life revolved exclusively around our daughter. I had eyes almost only for her. For the fear that had seized me in the hospital and the doubts about whether I would manage to take care of her were still alive. It became really difficult when Aunty Jane left and I was alone with the little one during the day. Ian had to work, and in the neighborhood—we had just moved to Bracknell, a town in Berkshire—I still didn't know anyone. My one attempt to get closer to my neighbors had failed miserably.

Shortly after we had moved into our house, I invited our immediate neighbors—to the right and left and across from us—for tea one afternoon. And they all came. We sat in our small living room, drank tea, and made small talk, as I imagined it was done in England. And when they said their friendly good-byes, I thought the afternoon had been a success, especially as they said things like “You should definitely stop by our place, too.” Then I waited, but in vain. Not a single return invitation came from our neighbors.

“I find that really impolite,” I said, disappointed. We were sitting in the kitchen, Ian was making dinner, and I was nursing the baby. “In Kenya, you always return an invitation after visiting someone. Anything else is impolite.”

Ian just shrugged.

“Don't you think so?” I was a bit irritated by his silence.

“It's somewhat different here,” he began, as he peeled the last of the potatoes. As he said this, he turned to me, because he had heard the sadness in my voice. It was not the first time we had spoken about the—in my eyes—somewhat strange social behavior of British people. But now that I was alone all day with the child, I suffered increasingly from their distance. I longed for friends and companionship.

“Here people don't deal with each other as openly and freely,” Ian explained.

“Then why did they come to our house at all?” I asked, annoyed. “I thought they had a genuine interest in getting to know us.”

“Unfortunately, it was probably only curiosity,” Ian replied, as he put the potatoes on the stove. There would be fish and a salad as well. “But it might also be that they don't invite us because they don't want to disturb us. We Brits are somewhat strange in that regard.”

It surprised me that our neighbors' behavior seemed not to bother him.

After a while, my loneliness became mixed with resentment toward Ian. I didn't understand why he had not taken time off after the birth of our daughter. Almost immediately after I returned home from the hospital, he had gone back to work. It occurred to me that the loner who was now my husband had told me once at the very beginning of our acquaintance that he could easily imagine living on a secluded farm somewhere in Scotland. There, he wouldn't need more than a sheepdog.

“Why don't you join a mother and toddler group in our area? There you'll definitely meet other mothers.” With these words, Ian put the fish in the oven.

“What is a mother and toddler group?” My question sounded only moderately interested. I actually wanted to do something with him, not with mothers I didn't know.

“It's a group of mothers with babies or newborns. They meet regularly and do various things together. There, you'd have the chance to get to know people.”

But everything was not as simple as Ian imagined—at least not for me. Although I tried out several mother and toddler groups, I did not really feel comfortable at any of them. The fact that I had little desire to talk only about diapers and burping techniques didn't make it any easier. Because many British women—unlike in Germany—have their children rather early, I frequently met very young mothers in the groups. I myself was already thirty-seven. On top of that, almost all of them were housewives, had entirely different interests than I did, were—with the exception of one mother—white, and came from the conservative British middle class.

I felt out of place and missed my friends in Germany, missed the vibrant life in Berlin. Even Bayreuth seemed to me lively and exciting from afar.

“Can't you take a few weeks off?” I asked Ian. “Then we could invite the neighbors over again.”