Kalila

Kalila

Other books by Rosemary Nixon

The Cock's Egg

Mostly Country: Stories

Copyright © 2011 by Rosemary Nixon.
Excerpts from
The Little Prince
by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, copyright 1943 and renewed 1971 by Harcourt, Inc. reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Publishing Company. This material may not be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call 1-800-893-5777.

Edited by Bethany Gibson.
Cover image detailed from an image by sskies, morguefile.com.
Cover and page design by Julie Scriver.
Printed in Canada.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Nixon, Rosemary, 1952-
Kalila / Rosemary Nixon.

I. Title.
PS8577.I95K35 2011      C813'.54      C2010-907057-7

Also in electronic form under ISBN 978-0-86492-699-9

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP), and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness, Culture, and Sport for its publishing activities.

Goose Lane Editions
Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court
Fredericton, New Brunswick
CANADA E3B 5X4
www.gooselane.com

For Kiala

Table of Contents

One: Quantum

Two: Inordinate Light

Three: Refraction

Four: Deflection

Five: Superposition

Acknowledgements

About the author

The news is like staring into an eclipse of the sun. Look at it straight and you'll go blind.

You prepared. You prepared for a child to be born. You have not prepared for this. You stand at the window of your classroom and look out past your plants. You can see down to the smoking door. Kids huddled in bunches without their coats. Their breath rising, cloudy spirals.

Roses. You must bring Maggie roses. For a moment, shifting through papers on your desk, hunting the missing wire for tomorrow's torsion bar experiment, you forget. Forget you have a baby. This baby. You take a breath and bend into your chair. Your students sit quiet in their desks. Some are looking at you; others look away. You say, When a wave passes from deep water into shallow, the ray refracts toward the normal. You want to say, Today is cancelled. You think the baby's name.
Kalila
.
Beloved
. The students go about their work, filling water tables, generating waves.

When water rolls from deep to shallow, you say, it can create a tidal wave.

Miraculously, the day ends.

You pack your satchel with student lab reports, drive to a florist. Ask for a dozen roses. The young woman behind the counter winks, says, Well, have we got hopes tonight! Gets glum when you don't answer.

At the hospital, you step off on the fifth floor, Neonatal Intensive Care. And wonder how you got here.

I sit in Neonatal ICU and imagine a daughter. Fluorescent lights stare down, a worker vacuums. Ninety machines hum. Our baby. This girl. The baby next to Kalila's isolette was born last night without a brain. His eyes stare out. There's nothing in there. I have to look away. The mother sits beside his isolette, unmoving. Iceberg face. It pulses through me. Sudden choking laughter.
You look just like your baby
. I look down at mine, eyes closed, legs splayed, blue diaper dwarfing her. Inside burning. She will be reckless, this daughter, Kalila. She will play hard, be a tomboy, scrape shins, throw a football, throw herself into her history.

Throw away this picture, Maggie.

An acquaintance, Judith, is sitting on a bench in the waiting room. I hardly know her. The husband left her two, three months ago. I see the woman on occasion, at the grocery store, at church. We never talk. This morning Judith shows up at the hospital. Dark coat, rubber boots, no earrings.

You can't get in, I tell her. They barely allow family. You can't stay. Even my sisters have trouble getting in.

Two hours now. There she sits, on a hard bench in the waiting room. Offering no words.

I look over at the iceberg mother.

Dr. Norton enters the nursery. The one doctor who never dresses like a doctor. Today she's wearing a floral-print skirt. It shows beneath her lab coat. Dr. Norton carries a chart, moves to the isolette next to Kalila's. Her sleeve touches that mother cast in ice.

Good morning, Mrs. Angonata. The woman doesn't answer. The doctor pulls up a stool, sits down beside her. Expels a breath. There's not a lot we can do for your son. He's being kept warm and safe.

A twitch. The woman shakes. She shimmers in this cold, blue-lit neonatal nursery.

We don't know how long. Some hours? Perhaps several days. No, you don't have to hold him. No, some mothers choose not to. Please, call me any time. Wait, no, it's not too hard. It's just the cords get caught. I'll help you lift him out. She lifts the empty baby, empty dangling legs, stare fixed on nothing. Lifts him from the mess of wires into a frozen mother's arms.

Mother. Doctor. Judith on a hard bench. Maggie Rachael Watson.

Under fluorescent lights, four women without a language stare into the present.

Dr. W. P. Vanioc rubs his neck, picks up a pen, and reads.

Dr. Vanioc unties his shoelaces, leans back in his chair, raises his arms to ease his headache, and returns to the child's chart.

The baby came in a week ago, transferred from the Peter Lougheed Centre on her third day. She has everything wrong with her, and no reason that he can see. Slightly under four weeks early. Normal delivery, although they induced the mother due to toxemia. The right side of the child's mouth shows evidence of facial paralysis. She has excessive mucus secretions from her nose and throat. Her feedings result in coughing and choking and vomiting. She already has developed upper-lobe aspiration pneumonia as a result. The ductus is still open. The babe's on 40% oxygen. Dr. Vanioc makes notes on his pad. He will suggest Lasix, put her on digoxin. He reviews the nurses' reports.

The doctor twists his wedding band around his finger. His headache makes him want to take it off. The babe developed hypocalcemia and was given an IV of calcium gluconate. Feedings started again twelve hours ago. The infant sucks moderately well, but her pulmonary signs are worsening. Likely more aspiration. The parents young, but not so young. Late twenties maybe. The mother exhibits high anxiety. She's small and worried, like a wired spring.

Dr. Vanioc takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes. He thinks of his wife, at this moment spooning mushed peas and puréed squash into his small son's mouth, irritated that her husband gives sixteen hours a day to these sick babies while he neglects his own. Dr. Vanioc thinks of his wife's indignant back, the fine curve of her spine where it reaches her buttocks, thinks this for a moment, then pushes it into the headache that climbs his neck. He turns back to the charts.