The Unfinished Child (2 page)

Dr. Morrison made eye contact with her husband again, and his tone took on a more paternal note. “You’re young,” he said, placing his hand on Margaret’s shoulder. “I’m assuming you’ll want to have more children, and this child will take time away from their normal development. Having a child who is so difficult will be a strain on your relationship with your husband and it will restrict your friendships.”

The fog was thickening now. Dr. Morrison’s face was hazy, his lips shone with saliva and moved in slow motion. Margaret locked her gaze onto his mouth, saw the once-white teeth now stained yellow from tobacco, and marvelled that his lips would not stop moving.

Should their daughter live, he continued, she would have the mental development of a three- to six-year-old. She would have no friends, never be allowed to go to school, never work, and would spend all her days at home with nothing to do. The humane thing was to put her in a place where she’d be housed with others who were just like her. Society’s rejects. The retards, mongoloids, and imbeciles. Those weren’t the doctor’s exact words, but they could have been. But didn’t Margaret herself feel like a reject most of her waking hours? A move to the city was almost like moving to another country. She didn’t speak the same language as the women she met. Around Donald’s family, with its comfortable money and polite conventions, she felt as if she had four arms, three legs, and stood ten feet tall. Maybe that’s the kind of girl child Dr. Morrison saw, one ill at ease in a foreign land, stunned by her removal from her mother’s warm body.

“The odds of you having another mongoloid child are slim,” he went on, patting her shoulder as if she could now look forward to her next delivery. Then he smiled and made some quip about lightning never striking twice in the same place.

“I want to see my baby,” she said.

Dr. Morrison’s face grew stern. “I don’t think . . .”

The invisible cord that tethered her to her child tightened. “I want to see her now.”

The doctor fixed his gaze on Donald and shook his head almost imperceptibly. Margaret cleared her throat and Donald met her eyes. Her heart constricted. He was just a boy, really, sweet-natured and kind, used to being taken by the hand and safely guided through his days. He’d never learned how to push against someone in authority. Make waves in a still pond. There was fear in his eyes, and as he reached out to take her hand, she could see him waver between asking her to lead him and taking the lead himself. How quickly his first test as a father had come, before he’d had any time to get used to the role, before he’d even set eyes on the being he’d helped bring into the world. Margaret found she was holding her breath. What kind of man was he going to be?

“We need to see her,” she said firmly. Donald nodded.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Dr. Morrison said, “but if you must see her, please do so quickly. Believe me, it’s for your own good.”

The doctor left the room. Two minutes later a nurse arrived and placed the swaddled infant into Margaret’s arms.

Margaret felt the weight of the child sink into her chest. If only she could absorb this child back into her body and hold her safely there. The warm flannel blanket against her skin radiated heat like a late winter sun in a blue sky reflecting off newly fallen snow. She closed her eyes against the brilliance and took a deep breath. Then, slowly, she peered down at her child, at the flawless skin on her baby’s face, perfect as a newly ripened peach. Such relief. Her baby wasn’t monstrous in the least. In fact, she didn’t look that different at all. How could they possibly know she was a mongoloid?

The girl had thick, dark hair covering her scalp. Her chestnut eyes were slightly up-slanted, but they weren’t dull in the least. A spark of life burnt within, just waiting to be fanned. Margaret’s heart melted and broke at the same time. Was what Dr. Morrison said true? Was she to look at her baby with only the future in mind? Couldn’t she mother her child in the present? Give her love and sustenance for just this day? Surely there was hope.

She continued to inspect her child. Maybe her nose was a bit flat, as if she didn’t have a bridge, but maybe she just had a little nose that would fill out in time. Hadn’t Margaret spent endless childhood hours pulling the tip of her nose down to stretch it from its blunt roundness into a more dignified and lengthy line, with little result other than developing a bad habit of pulling at her face all the time.

Margaret placed the baby onto the coarse bedding that covered her outstretched legs and unwrapped the blanket. “Look, Donald. She’s not missing anything.” Ten toes, two dimpled knees, ten fingers, two ears, a tiny cleft in her small chin. The dread was fading now. Margaret lifted her baby to cradle her against her chest, but the child’s arms fell slack like a rag doll’s and her neck rolled perilously toward her shoulder blades.

“Careful,” the nurse cautioned kindly. “Her muscle development isn’t what it should be. She needs extra support, like this,” and she put Margaret’s hands not just beneath the baby’s neck to cradle her head but also at the base of her shoulders to keep her arms from flopping too low.

Margaret raised the baby to her chest and held her. Then she lowered her face, placed her nose atop the baby’s head, and breathed in the scent of her. She had never smelled a newborn before, but the infant smelled like she imagined a normal baby would smell—sweet, needy, and infinite.

Should their daughter live, the doctor had said. Did that mean she might die? Or was it a question he posed?
Should
she live? Was he asking if the small bundle of warmth in her arms should have a life? A small cry escaped from her throat. Oh, it was too much to take in. Yet this was her baby. This was the child she’d said she couldn’t wait to meet, but now their meeting was all wrong. It was without joy. If Dr. Morrison had just given the baby to her without saying anything, she’d never have known something wasn’t right. She’d have taken it home and let it sleep in its crib. She’d have nursed the baby in the rocking chair and watched the colourful mobile sway above the crib. Oh, why didn’t he just let her love it and find out on her own?

The nurse returned with a bottle of formula and, once she had confirmed the doctor wasn’t present, asked, “Did you want to try to feed her?”

Donald shifted nervously beside the bed. “Margaret . . .”

She waved away his fears, took the bottle, and placed it to her baby’s lips. Milk dribbled down her daughter’s cheek and filled the hollow of her ear. The baby sputtered and choked and began to cry even as her mouth opened for more fluid. Despite her efforts, Margaret couldn’t quite direct the baby’s mouth for proper suction to occur. She stared at her child, her little mongoloid, a defenceless infant who needed care. Extraordinary care, if what the doctor said was true. Extra-ordinary.

“It’s not so bad,” the nurse said softly, as if reading her mind. “I’ve seen far worse.”

Margaret met the nurse’s eyes. What was she trying to tell her?

Dr. Morrison returned to the room with a sheaf of papers in his hand. “Look these over,” he said, handing them to Donald. Then he took the baby from Margaret’s arms, handed her to the nurse, and nodded toward the door. “It’s for the best,” he repeated. “She’ll get the special care she needs. Poplar Grove Provincial Training Centre. She’ll be taken care of there. They even have a special ward just for mongoloids.”

The door closed behind her baby.

The room emptied of life until just she and her husband remained.

The overhead lights shone like a spotlight onto the black type on the pages before her. A government-run institution for undesirables. All they had to do, according to the doctor, was sign at the bottom of the page and their troubles would disappear. Dr. Morrison said their baby would have the mental development of a three- to six-year-old, but people loved three- to six-year-olds, didn’t they? Why hadn’t he spoken about love?

Shame wrapped them in its dark cloak. “She’s just a baby,” Margaret cried. “It’s not her fault.”

Donald sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed her shoulder. Margaret took his hand and forced him to look at her. His eyes were wet and afraid, like a little boy who had hurt himself. In that small glance before he looked away, she saw his fear and his attempts to hide that fear so he could be strong, like a man should be. She saw his desire to take charge, to comfort and not need comforting himself, and as she witnessed his clumsy effort to shield her from his own fear, she loved him more and desperately hoped his decision would make him someone she could be proud of.

“It’s not anybody’s fault,” he said. “If the doctor says Poplar Grove is the right place for her, then we have to trust him. Those places must exist for a reason.”

“Did you see her? She was warm and sweet and—”

“Stop it, Margaret. I can’t . . .” He stood up and walked to the dark window.

Margaret felt herself go cold. Did he think his mother might be outside in the parking lot, ready to tell him what to do? Was she standing by to heap more criticism on Margaret, in her muted way.
You tried, dear. Better luck next time. Don’t use the dessert fork for the salad, dear.

Donald looked so vulnerable that for a brief moment Margaret felt her heart constrict. He
had
chosen her; he’d stood up to his mother at least that one time.

Finally he turned and spoke. “I’m not a pioneer, Margaret,” he said so quietly that she strained to hear. “I’m sorry to say that I’m not that brave.”

She held out her hand. “Maybe we could learn to be brave together.”

He turned back to the window and didn’t respond. Against the dark pane, his face was reflected back to her, but she was unable to read the variety of emotions that played across his face. Finally, she saw his back gradually straighten and she knew what he had decided.

Hours later, when Margaret finally stopped crying, she and her husband signed the papers, but first they named their child. Carolyn, after her mother’s sister who died of tuberculosis at thirteen. Jane, after Margaret’s childhood friend. Carolyn Jane Harrington.

Donald gathered up the papers and tapped them on the table to line them properly. The death of expectation, that’s what this was. They’d expected to take a baby home, and now . . . 

“We’ll try again,” her husband said, wiping a tear from her cheek. Then he kissed her softly on the mouth and held her chin up to look into her eyes. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”

Margaret smiled weakly and nodded, moving her hand to touch his unshaved cheek, gathering all her energy into that simple gesture to move them both forward.

It was worse
than a funeral. Nine months of hope and a lifetime of regret. No ceremony, no finality. Her in-laws tried to be kind to her, but Margaret could read their true thoughts: if only their son had married someone from his own background . . . Sometimes Margaret caught her mother-in-law looking at her as if she wanted to wash her hands, as if Margaret was a piece of raw meat left out too long on the counter.

Nonetheless, her in-laws
did
try to be kind to her, for Donald’s sake, and they repeated Dr. Morrison’s words as if they’d written the script together. She was doing the right thing. She was young. She would have more babies, healthy babies that would feed and laugh and not be sick. Babies that people wouldn’t turn away from. Babies that would give her something in return for all her hard work.

Three days after Carolyn’s birth, Margaret left the hospital empty-handed save for a set of strict instructions prohibiting her from visiting her baby for at least six months and the mantra
It’s for your own good
firmly lodged in her brain. Her breasts pushed sorely into her thin blouse. Her milk had let down and left large, round stains in the silk. What dress-up game was she playing? What had she been thinking when she’d packed that blouse? She was nothing but a childless mother, left to fend for herself with an ear always cocked to an empty distance.

The sun scalded her pale skin. She and Donald returned home, and Margaret saved her tears for the long hours when her husband was at work. Nothing happened naturally anymore. She switched from taking baths to having showers because she couldn’t stand to look at her bloated and changed body, the bruises still so close to the surface. Her feather duster stirred up unwanted images of her baby crying and alone. Better to have put it in a burlap sack and thrown it into the creek than to be left thinking of it unloved and untended. Faceless and unwanted. She dusted the images away. And when her husband reached for her in the night, tender and seeking mercy, she feared what the outcome might be.

On a bitterly cold January
night in a northern city, Elizabeth drove west toward a restaurant where her friend Marie had made dinner reservations. Christmas lights still decorated the avenue and many of its storefronts in an attempt to change retail statistics. Elizabeth drove carefully on the now-rutted streets and finally pulled to a meter at the curb. All day she’d been fighting the feeling that she was moving underwater and something awful was about to happen. How absurd. There was no running or standing water in Edmonton at this time of year—the North Saskatchewan River was jammed thick with ice. But travelling on ice could produce a similar fear of drowning, for at any moment the ice, thin in spots from the moving current below, might give way and she’d fall right through, gasp at the excruciating chill of the water, and succumb sweetly to hypothermia just like that father of a boy she’d known in school who had fallen through his pond while using a tractor to clear the snow from the hockey rink he’d built for his kids. The whole class had gone to the funeral.

A cold blast of icy wind sucked the air from Elizabeth’s lungs as she stepped from the car outside the restaurant. Move, she told herself as the fingers of winter slipped beneath her collar. Just move.

Inside the restaurant, a young, pierced waitress in cowboy boots led her to a booth at the back, far from the drafty door, and brought her biscuits with a green jalapeno jelly. Elizabeth ordered a margarita. She wanted to lick the salt rim and imagine herself at the beach, a hot sun overhead, and pull the heat deep into her bones.