Grace Grows (42 page)

When I slept, I dreamed of rushing water.

Early morning, I sat up and tapped Ty on the shoulder. “I need to go to the waterfall.”

He rolled over and looked at me with bleary eyes.

“The one by your house.”

“Wha?”

“The waterfall. I need to go there today.”

He rolled away and went back to sleep.

“Ty!”

He rubbed his face. “Grace. We are not traveling at this point.”

“Yes, we are.”

“There is no way you can do that hike. It’s too steep.”

“Is there another way to get to the water?”

He covered his eyes with his hand like I was giving him a headache. “There is a way!” I crowed.

He sat up. “Grace! We are not leaving town! What if you go into labor?”

“We’ll have plenty of time to get home.” I kissed his hip and wrapped my arms around him. “Just for the day. One day. We drive there, go to the waterfall, and drive home. We’ll be back here by late afternoon.”

“And you need to do this why?”

“I don’t know! I just do.”

He sighed. “I’ll reschedule my session.”

water

Bogue lent us his car and Ty called Jean and Nathan and told them we were coming. They said they’d close the shop for an hour and meet us at the house for lunch.

They were in the garden, weeding, when we arrived. Nathan patted our backs and Jean gave us warm hugs and kisses. She rubbed my belly. “I’m ready to meet this child!”

We sat on the side porch and ate chicken salad sandwiches. Jean and I did most of the talking. Ty consumed his food in about a minute and then sat frowning at me.

“What?” I asked.

“Eat up.”

“Did you tell her about castor oil?” Nathan asked Jean.

“Oh, yes—Grace—my friend Clarie is a midwife and she says if you drink a few tablespoons of castor oil it will start your labor.”

“Really.” I wasn’t sure I was that desperate.

“She also says that if you two would . . . well . . . she says intimacy will help get things going, too.”

I glanced at Ty. “Um, yeah, well, except with this baby,” I said. “He’s stubborn.”

“But we’ll keep trying, thanks, Ma.” He looked at his dad and I could see they both wanted to laugh.

“Well, I’m just trying to help,” Jean said. “My babies came early, so I don’t know what to tell you. Now, where is it you’re going?”

“I’m taking her to Jake’s,” Ty said shortly.

“Jake’s! What for?”

“She wants to see the waterfall. Actually, we gotta go.” Ty stood up and dropped his napkin on his plate.

I wasn’t finished eating, but he was literally tapping his foot. I sipped some tea to wash things down and got up.

It was about twelve back-road minutes to Jake’s Water World. I commented on the mostly empty parking lot.

“On the weekend it’s packed,” Ty said tersely. He was a man of few words today.

Jake’s was a slightly seedy Poconos tourist trap. We went into the log-cabin gift shop and Ty purchased two seven-dollar tickets from a teenage girl attendant who blushed and fumbled giving him his change. She reminded him that she was his cousin Heather, daughter of his mom’s niece, Beatrice.

“Oh yeah, hey, Heather!” He went around the counter and gave her a hug. Oh sure, I thought, soften up and be sweet to the little cousin and be grim and bossy with me.

“Is this your wife?” Heather asked shyly.

“Yeah, this is Grace.”

I shook her hand.

“Looks like you’re about to bust!” Heather said.

“Feels like it, too!”

“Well, we’ll see you later.” Ty marched me toward the exit.

When we got outside he grumbled something about paying money to enjoy nature.

We passed waterslides and carnival rides and concessions.

“Hey, can I get some kettle corn? I’ve never had it,” I asked.

“It’s nasty.” He didn’t even slow down.

I planted my feet. “What’s nasty about it?”

He stopped and came back to me. “Grace, can we do this and go?”

“Why are you being so mean?”

He sighed and went over to the concession. I stood a few feet away and listened to his protracted conversation with the teenage boy running the stand. It seemed that they shared a high-school English teacher. Ty could not believe Mrs. Zawicki was still teaching, she was about ninety when he had her. He asked the boy if she still pulled people’s hair if they looked at other people’s test papers. She did.

“You cheated on your English tests?” I asked as he handed me the bag of corn.

“
Accidentally
. You can’t help if you’re looking around the room and you see something.”

He marched on and I followed slowly, tasting the corn. It was weirdly sweet. I nibbled a couple of pieces before discreetly dropping the bag in a trash can along the walkway.

A staircase built into the hillside made our winding ascent and descent marvelously easy, even for an overly pregnant woman in a sundress and blue Keds.

At the top of the stairs I heard the water. Our water. We came down on the opposite side from where we had trespassed, but there it was, now thickly surrounded with vegetation, roaring from recent rains, and sparkling in the June sunlight.

Our rock, the rock I’d stood on, was on the other side. Over here I couldn’t reach the fall to touch it, but I got close enough to feel the cool spray. I opened my hands to it and closed my eyes.

Bliss—the heat of the sun on my face, the mist, the breeze. I swayed a little and felt Ty take hold of my elbow.

“I’m all right,” I said.

He squeezed my arm gently. “I know.”

Something skimmed my face and I opened my eyes. A blue dragonfly—lacy, lazy, iridescent—hovered inches away. I laughed, and a warm river rushed down my bare legs. My shoes were soaked.

“Hey,” I said to Ty, “I think my water just broke.”

I have never seen his brow so furrowed.

“We have time! I haven’t even had a contraction since before we left your mom and dad’s.”

Then I had a contraction. Considerably stronger than the ones I’d been having since last night. I grabbed Ty’s arm, surprised and a little freaked out. “Oh! Ohhhhh.”

He held on to me. When the contraction passed, he said, “Okay, let’s go.”

“Not yet.”

“Grace.”

“We have plenty of time. I want to stay here awhile. Is there a blanket in the car?”

“No!”

He walked me back through the park. Pretty much yelling at me the whole way, though the yelling was more in the content than in the actual volume of his voice. He couldn’t believe he let me talk him into this, he couldn’t believe I’d been having contractions and didn’t tell him, was I expecting him to deliver this baby in the woods and gnaw through the umbilical cord like a wild animal, how could I be this irresponsible, and so on.

“You’d use your pocketknife, of course. Gnawing would be nasty and unnecessary.”

He didn’t smile even a little.

“I don’t think this is
it
. I’ve been having contractions since we went to bed last night, but they’re still really far apart.”

“How far?”

“A half hour? Let’s just start driving, I’ll probably only have two or three more before we’re back home.”

He shook his head but did not slow down. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me. Oh wait, maybe I can.”

We had to stop in the parking lot for another contraction. It went on a long time, such a strong squeeze that I squatted and grabbed the bumper of a nearby car to try to take some of the pressure off my lower back. “Whoa. Wow. Ouch!”

“Shit!” Ty said. “That was less than five minutes since the last one! I’m taking you to the hospital in Stroudsburg.”

We got to the car and he buckled me in. He sprayed gravel pulling out of the parking lot. “Ty,” I said through gritted teeth. The squeeze was coming on again. “Take me to the house first, I have to use the bathroom.”

“Hell no!”

“Ty, I have to go!”

I had two more heavy-duty contractions before we got there. It was quiet when we went inside. Jean and Nathan must have gone back to work. Ty helped me climb the stairs.

Turned out I didn’t need to poop, it just felt like it. I stayed there on the toilet; it felt better than standing.

The bathroom window was open and the lace curtain moved gently, stirred by warm, fresh country air. I breathed deeply, knowing somehow that it would strengthen me for the next round of intense pressure.

“Are you okay?” Ty asked from the hall.

“I think so.”

He peeked in. “Can we go now?”

“No. Ohhhhh ohhh OH!” I could not suppress the escalating moan.

Ty came in and knelt in front of me. I leaned on him through the contraction. When it finally let up, he pushed my hair out of my face and looked me urgently in the eyes. “Grace, we need to get to the hospital.”

I shook my head.

He stood and pulled me off the toilet. Tried to pull up my undies.

I shoved his hands away. “No. I want to have the baby here.”

“Grace!” I thought the top of his head was going to blow.

“It will be okay, I know it will.”

“No!”

“Yes! It’s not that complicated. I’ve been reading about home birth. We can do it. It’s a natural process.”

“Oh, fuck,” he moaned. “Fuck. You are going to kill me.”

“Call your mom. Ask her to call her friend.” Another squeeze was starting. I squatted and held on to the edge of the bathtub.

“What friend?”

“The midwife.”

He went out to the hall. I heard him talking. He came back in, not looking so good, and sat on the edge of the tub. “She didn’t pick up. I had to leave a message on her cell. My dad said she left the store a while ago, but he’s gonna try to call Clarie, too.”

“Okay, thank you.”

“Shit, Grace! Shit! Why didn’t I just keep driving?”

“Everything will be fine. Run me a bath.”

While Ty was filling the tub, I got on my hands and knees and rocked. Anything, to try to shift the unbelievable pressure in my lower back. He helped me get naked and get in the bath, which felt amazing. Everything felt more manageable. What had been increasingly scary pain seemed to become simply a
force,
in the warm water.

Ty pulled off his T-shirt and knelt beside the tub. A nearly overwhelming squeeze made me grab his hands.

“Breathe, baby.” He looked worried.

When the force finally passed, I kissed his hand. “It will be okay. I love you.”

“I love you.” He leaned in and kissed me, long and warm.

The next contraction made me yell. For once, I was louder than Ty! This huge, relentless
thing
, this energy taking over my body, made these big noises come out of me.

He urged me again to do the breathing. He puffed away, demonstrating. I tried. But instead I made this loud HO-HO-HO sound. It seemed to help.

I got on my hands and knees in the water and HO-HO-HO-ed through what seemed like endless cycles of waxing and waning intensity. The HO-HO-HO-ing also seemed to help Ty. The stark terror on his face gradually receded and he now looked guiltily, painfully amused.

“Go-HO ahead and laugh! I know-HO I sound funny!”

He completely lost it.

“HO! HO-HO-HO-HO-HO!”

He lay on the bathroom floor, eyes streaming. Seeing him laugh has always been contagious for me. I couldn’t believe I was laughing in the middle of these incredibly intense sensations.

“I’m not laughing
at
you,” he said, whooping it up.

“I know-HO! Oh! HO! HO! Oh. OH!” Something major was happening. “I need to—”

He reappeared on his knees at the side of the tub. “What?”

“PUSH!”

“Oh
fuck
! Are you sure it’s time?”

“I HAVE TO!”

I braced my feet on either side of the faucet and Ty felt inside me. His eyes got wide. “Grace, I’m touching the top of his head!”

“Oh! Ho-HOOOOO!” I pushed, mightily. I reached down and felt myself opening. The need to push subsided and I collapsed on my elbows. I tried to breathe and regroup.

Ty leaned in for a look. “Grace, I can see him,” he said, in a shaky, awestruck voice. “He has
dark hair
.”

“Of course he does,” I moaned.

I could feel the baby moving through me now, coming out of me, feel the insane, burning stretch. “Ty, I’m tearing!”

He was rubbing me, tugging, helping the crowning head squeeze through the tight band of flesh. “Grace, you’re not. You’re not. You’re doing great.”

“I can feel it!”

“You’re not tearing, I swear.”

There was nothing to do but hope it would end soon. I was certain I was going to be disfigured for life.