Crossings (6 page)

He cuts the vaginal walls and, with his hand now far inside, up to the wrist, his whole bloody hand for god's sake, he turns the baby.

There is a lot of screaming. She does not say ouch, she says, ‘Aieeee,' very long and drawn out. My hands go to pieces. And all the time she looks into my eyes as if I can save her. I can save her.

‘
'Sta bien, 'sta bien
,' I say over and over. I think I am saying, ‘It's okay,' but I think now it was likely, ‘Be good.' Oh god. Ah, well. Maybe that's what she expected me to say, god knows.

And the baby comes out.

He snaps off the cord with his fingers. He doesn't tie it or do anything I've been led to expect. He just snaps it off and gives me the baby. And he looks amused.

It's solid. It is very solid. It is not soft. It is hard and solid and it squirms. Muscular. Furious. I saw children like that in the stone frieze in Chartres. The Massacre of the Innocents. Their faces contorted with fury. The way children would be if someone were to kill them. A genius made that. He knew all about children. They do not die, nor come into the world, content.

It is hard and muscular and it squirms against me, a hard real living baby. Complete.

‘
Es un niño
,' I say.

The Hallelujah Chorus has just come on in my head.

‘
Un niño
,' she says. Blissful. I give it up to her. Annunciato Ferris.

And we wait for the afterbirth, which is a great deal messier than the baby. The doctor sews the girl up with a needle and thread. Unsterilized. We will come back here in three days with the penicillin.

‘
Mañana
,' I say to the girl but in fact I will be back tonight with the booties, the sweater, the flowers. And she will tell everyone that her husband gave them to her. Her husband with his other wife in Guadalajara, by the State.

She is his wife by the Church. He hasn't been near her for three months, and he won't be either, for another two. When she's ready to get pregnant again.

Out in the courtyard the women are standing around a great cauldron of boiling water.

‘
Agua caliente
,' I say. ‘
Agua caliente!
' I start to laugh. ‘
'Sta bien
,' I say through hysteria. ‘
Es un niño
.' And, as they all start to converge with glad cries on the door of the chapel, ‘
No. No mujers. Elle—uh—sólida. Muy sólida. Que es la mere? La mama?
' I can't think of the word for
mother.

One of them, the blackest of them all, comes to me, laughing and crying, saying, ‘
Gracias, gracias, gracias
,' and she falls down and kisses my hand. No one pays the slightest attention to the doctor, who is standing by the gate waiting for me. In years to come I will say, ‘When I delivered a baby,' bringing it out casually. ‘
Usted, sólida
,' I say sternly. It doesn't surprise me that she has kissed my hand. Not at all. I
have
delivered a baby. It was all my doing. It was me.

They say, ‘
Vaya con Dios
,' and so on, and I go like the Holy Mother herself to the gate.

‘
La primera niño
?' he says to me. Something like that.

We are walking down the dusty yellow road. Well, he is walking, I am floating.

‘
Si. La primera
.'

‘
La primera tiempo?'

‘
Si
.'

He laughs. ‘
Agua caliente!'
He shakes his head and laughs and stops to light another cigarette. ‘
Agua caliente!
'

He is laughing.

‘
Como la cinema
,' I say, ‘
como les romans
,' mixing up French and Spanish as I always do when I'm excited.

He is laughing like hell. ‘
Servidora!
' he says.

‘
Servidora!
' I say, and we are laughing in the hot dusty road, the dead heart of the siesta hours, laughing like lunatics.

I adore him. I want to throw myself at his feet and wash them with my hair.

In the meantime, Ben is drinking tequila. Slice the lemon. Sprinkle salt on the back of the hand. Lick. Suck. Gurgle. Lick. Suck. Gurgle. Later he will not bother with the refinements. Gurgle.

I insist we drive into Guadalajara, immediately, right now, to get booties and a little sweater, and the flowers.

We deliver them to the chapel and drive back to our villa, through the iron gates, parking under the high walls with the broken glass on top.

‘I want a baby,' I say.

This all comes as a bolt from the blue to Ben. To me too. Although I can hardly believe I didn't know. I was just doing the fifth draft of the book. I mean, get this, for god's sake.

The book is ostensibly about Joe, who is upset about the Hungarian Revolution. A good Communist, he is all wrought up, he can't believe the news about Stalin either. Norah, his rather dumb wife, goes mooning about, when she is not attending classes in Boolean algebra, thinking of round fat squat pots. I'm not kidding. They have a friend, his name is Harold. Harold looks out for Norah while she's at university. He talks to her about his sex life. He says to Joe, ‘How's the car, Joe?' Joe gets more and more depressed. He hasn't touched Norah for umpteen months. Norah has an affair with an English boy. Everyone thinks he's queer. She gets pregnant. While she's in hospital—can't remember why—Harold comes in all wrought up. Joe comes in all wrought up. Joe hits Harold right in the kisser, thinking it's all his fault. Norah smiles.

I mean, I wrote that, saying, ‘Joe is a facet of my own character,' meaning it, and all the time Norah bumbles through the book like a bright morning star. I was a great believer in the artist as conscious craftsman. I mean, I really thought it was a book about a disillusioned Marxist.

I mean, the damn book starts out with Wilma and Mary and their frigging abortion party!

But I didn't know. I thought I had made a discovery, all in one afternoon in an abandoned chapel in Zapopan. Religious revelation.

I'm trying to get out of it. Telling this part. Deep breath.

‘But you
agreed,
' said Ben. ‘You
agreed
not to have children.' We were back now from our trip to the market in Guadalajara and the chapel. His face was no longer so flushed.

‘I know, but I've changed.'

‘But you said,' Ben said.

‘I know, but now I want one.'

He went to the kitchen and brought back a glass of tequila which he downed at once, without salt or lemon.

‘That's the end then,' he said. ‘You have broken the contract.'

‘All right,' I said.

I went into the bedroom and opened the upright wardrobe.

‘What are you doing?' he said from the door.

‘I'm packing,' I said. ‘I'll catch the plane tomorrow.'

‘Where are you going?'

‘Home.'

‘What am I going to do?'

‘I don't know.'

‘I can't get back alone,' he said. ‘I can't. You know I can't.'

‘You have the car.'

‘I can't. It's 1,200 miles to the border. I can't.'

He was afraid. He was afraid of everything in Mexico. Venezuelan actors. The heads of pigs on market stalls, freshly bleeding, covered with flies. Gas station attendants whose meters never worked and whose prices Ben would never debate. I would. The 400-year-old mummies of nuns in the basement of the chapel in Mexico City. Hair and fingernails so long in death, their bones grinning through their skins behind the glass tops. I read that this is not scientific: the hair and nails do not grow after death; the skin merely recedes, giving one this impression. But then, those nuns must have been terribly vain. He was afraid of bullfights, though he went, where I would not. Of tarantulas, large as beavers, scuttering across the road near Mazatlan. The spiders in the Aztec village, yellow and orange and black, swaying in their webs across the village street, inches from your head; a village where the sun shone directly into the street only at noon, so high were the mountains, so perpendicular and mauve. The hare-lipped children, the cataracts, the beggars lying asleep on the pavements.

‘You take the plane. I'll drive back.'

‘I can't, you know I can't.'

I knew he couldn't.

But most of all he was afraid of the deep slit in the earth, I forget the name. It led five thousand feet to another world, far below our high plateau: a tropical world, where bananas grew. If you stood a quarter of a mile away, it was like prairie grass, uneventful. But walk near and there, at your feet, like something out of Jules Verne, an entrance to the centre of the earth. I'll remember in a while. If I don't think about it.

So I stayed.

I stayed and I went to the clinic. I finished the book.

One day we went for a walk to the, to the

If I don't think about it, I'll remember. ‘Let's go down and see!' I said, excited all of a sudden.

Ben was perfectly willing. We started down. It was I who got asthma. It was I who made us turn back.

One night, waking, is that Ben above me, staring down into my face, propped on one elbow, his hand

No. I read that in a story. I imagined it. It was one of my hypnagogic things. But I did become afraid of spiders, as if Ben's fear were contagious. I had never been afraid of spiders. I would carry them out into the garden. I still do. I do again, I mean. But then, I was afraid. I would dream of them scampering, furry legs, over my face as I slept. And I wake and I see Ben above me, staring down into my

I see his hand and it has a thread dangling from it. But that must be a lie.

A year later I signed the papers to commit me to Essondale. In the meantime, we had come back to Vancouver, I had become pregnant. I had had an abortion.

Now I was enormous. Huge. I weighed one hundred and fifty-eight pounds. We agreed it was a symptom. We agreed I should commit myself.

The psychiatrist was a nice young sandy-haired man named Dr Hutchinson. Ben explained everything to him and he filled in the forms and I signed where he marked, in light pencil, X.

Ben was explaining that I understood this was a decision made of my own free will. This was voluntary committal, and I understood the significance of that.

I was very tired.

The doctor said would I leave for a few minutes, he had something to discuss with Mr Ferris.

I left. I sat in the waiting room. I didn't read. A long time seemed to go by, but then that might be me.

Ben came out, his face quite white. He looked shaken. I felt frightened.

‘Would you mind stepping in here again, Mrs Ferris?'

I looked at Ben, but I couldn't tell what was wrong.

‘Please. Sit down.' Everything had changed. ‘Please.' I sat down. ‘Would you like a cigarette?'

‘I don't smoke.'

The psychiatrist gave what sounded like a laugh. But that might be me.

‘There's just one or two things I'm not quite clear on,' he said. ‘What would you do if you didn't go to Essondale?'

‘What I was doing,' I said.

‘And what was that?'

I held out my hands. They were covered with blue and white paint. Green enamel. ‘The house.'

‘You have taken a house I understand.'

‘Yes. I've been painting it.' I kept my hands out as if he wouldn't believe me otherwise.

‘You were going to move in, when?'

‘End of the month.'

‘One week, that is.'

‘Yes. With my sister.'

‘I see. You were going to leave Mr Ferris.'

‘Yes.'

‘You do realize, Mrs Ferris? You do
know
you're not having a baby?'

‘Yes. I realize.' I wished he wouldn't smoke. It was bad for the baby.

He gave another short sound that might have been a laugh.

‘You don't have to worry,' I said. ‘I can write anywhere. Ben will be all right.'

‘All right?'

‘I mean, I can still support him.'

He didn't answer for a minute. ‘Mrs Ferris,' he said finally, not looking at me, ‘we don't like to put people in Crease if they're functioning.'

Crease. It was Crease. Not Essondale. Essondale is for the involuntary.

‘You see, you are still functioning.' He seemed to be safe with the word. He used it again. ‘So long as you can function, I wouldn't really like to see you go to Crease …'

‘All right,' I said. ‘But I do want to leave him, you see.' I wanted to be absolutely honest. I was quite mad. I wanted him to understand the full extent of my madness.

‘You know,' he said, ‘I've read about these cases, but I have never actually seen one before.' This time I was sure. It was a laugh. ‘I mean, where a relative comes in quite lucid, quite coherent, and the functioning …' He thought better of going on. ‘Mr Ferris and I have agreed,' he said, ‘we have agreed, that perhaps he should have therapy.'

And that is how Ben went to Essondale. Crease. That is how Ben went to Crease instead of me.

Barranca
. That's the word. I remembered.

So Jocelyn and I moved into the house. It looked lovely. I'd spent a whole month cleaning it, painting it, buying furniture from the Salvation Army and St. Vincent de Paul's. The fake Sarukhan rugs. The Renoir reproduction of the girl with the cat. Blinds made to order. Curtains. It was a terrible mess when I found it. When I opened the door of the oven (the landlord sold me the stove for ten dollars), I was met with a solid block of green. I couldn't figure out what it was at first. It was mold. When I tackled it, like an idiot, with a bucket of Spic 'n Span, I got knocked clear across the kitchen, landing up against the glass-fronted cabinets. Actually, I didn't feel too bad. Wham. Right across the kitchen, as if some great fist had caught me in the stomach. I sat there for quite a while, and then I started to laugh. I was still laughing when I found the electrical shutoff in the cellar. ‘Well, I got shock treatment anyway,' I said to the fuse box. In the crawl spaces under the eaves, the former tenants had thrown all their garbage. That took me three days. Razor blades. Apple cores. Incredible, and they were Germans. The panelling in the dining room was real mahogany. When it was oiled it came up beautifully. There were stained-glass windows at the entrance and in the dining room window. Even in the glass door on the built-in buffet. A dream of a house with a blue-tiled fireplace. And a garden. Rose bushes. A lawn. All for seventy-five dollars a month. I'd never spent so much, but Jocelyn and I were going to rent one of the bedrooms. I bought a lawn mower, a hose, a pitch fork. A shovel for the furnace. An axe. When I left, the landlord's wife complained. It was in beautiful condition, that house, beautiful. When she moved in. ‘She's going to have to pay damages.' This to Ben.