what and what’s hers and where’s the nursery, the baby is swaddled in rows among other cribbed transparencies while she lies childless and alone in the general ward.
Having done its time, this particular baby is full term, and punctual, so in these respects it delivers, establishing the lifelong patterns from the outset. As it crowns, it is clear that the child will be born with a caul. The thin foetal sac continues its hold at birth, sticks to her scalp, giving her the animal newness of a drowned kitten.
The nurses whisper, exchange remarks about the psychic gifts and omens that a caul endues. Does the mother want to keep it, good luck against a sailor’s drowning?
Her No! is so firm, so forceful and abrupt, that they wonder for a second if she’d thought they were referring to the baby, but that’s a scrap of flesh she has to keep because it’s hers, and she no mere slip of an unmarried girl who might consider giving it away. Though by the looks of it, they agree among themselves, the baby might do it for her; it’s half gone, might not even be up to saving itself. The infant weighs in at a puny five pounds.
When the caul is lifted and thrown into the bin of medical waste, another striking mark is revealed. The infant has a marked double crown. Two crowns which oblige her scanty hair to perform extraordinary accomplishments, whirling in opposite directions upon her bony tortoise head, as if she is simultaneously being whipped this way and that by an imperceptible wind.
The newborn is noticeably underweight and restless, with surely the most wrinkled, angular, unprepossessing body ever seen. Has she, perhaps, been stretched on a rack, then abruptly released? Why is her body so insubstantial, a ghostly form lengthened into two dimensions?
And she has oddly light-coloured eyes, this child, faint green, with dark circles baggaging beneath. She looks too worn to be freshly arrived in the world, so that visitors who see her shake their heads and cluck.
She watches them, already a watcher who will not sleep, eyes zithering. She is sleepless and scrawny, which annoys the nurses, since all she’s had to do so far is spend nine months laying up stores of fat, relaxing on a comfy velvet sofa, so to speak.
What’s the story with this one?
Nora Murphy doesn’t know, and she is anyway heartily sick of stories, so she sleeps until such time as she is made to surface, hauled from the depths of exhaustion, given a child, that child, and told to feed. Thrown in again at the deep end.
But she quickly rises to, forced afloat by her newly inflated breasts. She is a buoyant body on a sea of white sheets. Nora doesn’t like it, being mammothly mastoid, but she must start to learn the little she will come to know about being a woman with noticeably big bosoms. And she’s a wreck, discovering their real purpose; didn’t even like the other fumbling that much, all Mark Murphy’s manhandling.
Again, there are hands all over her body, women’s this time, and voices instructing her No, no! Not like that. Here. And her engorged flesh is gripped and painfully flattened, directed towards the ugly gummy mouth which must be teased with the tit until it clamps over the nipple.
Which is a serious shock. For never, ever, has Nora thought of herself as a woman with anything as coarse as tits. The word itself has never touched her lips because it does not apply to her, and nor will she use such crudity to diminish other women.
Though it has surely tricked her all these years by hiding. In ordinary stitches and authoritative institutions, in irregular appetites and regular dentition.
Hell! Tits are everywhere for the looking, Nora thinks, mocking her own exhausted naïveté. All shapes and sizes. I was such a t- . . . an . . . idiot for not realising.
Come now, Mrs Murphy, the ward sister declares, Baby is hungry. Baby must latch and suck, so that she can eat and grow. Just keep trying.
Oh lord! Nora harries herself, Isn’t that always the damn case? Trying, trying! Why won’t some things come more easily? Doesn’t she deserve a little luck?
Otherwise, Sister says, stating the obvious, taking in the child’s puny body, This little girl will be in trouble. And then more sternly: Do you want your baby to be in trouble?
Why would I want trouble? Nora’s head silently countermands. As it is, you hardly have to look and trouble finds you.
Eventually, however, there’s a trickle, and the sister says Thaaat’s it, clever mommy, yes, and Nora feels a warm, prideful rush, induced against her will by the official praise. She feels herself glowing with simple achievement, though aware that it ought to be galling to be treated like a simpleton, or a child.
Still, however, it is the child which doesn’t seem to know what to do, when Nora had thought this whole breastfeeding business was plain instinct. Why is the baby such a slow learner? What’s wrong with her that she doesn’t suck? Christ, she’s fallen off again, the stupid tongue fat as a slow-witted slug.
Both Nora and her baby are ignoramuses, and the sisters of the secret knowledge systematically intervene and re-apply the leech each time it drops off the nipple into a fidgety pausing which isn’t sleep, wet tongue tipping in . . . out . . .
After much trying, she’s on fast and there comes a curious, vibrating release as the milk begins to pulse in sharp almost electrical spurts that induce a reciprocal yank deep between Nora’s legs, as if the fluid is coming from her uterus. The tugging is insistent and then gradually abates, until eventually, which does not take that long, Nora finds with surprise that the vat is dry.
She is empty. It is done.
Uh, not, actually, since a mother must always have extra reserves. So the procedure is repeated on the other side, the reluctant feeder chucked and tickled towards further attachment. Gradually, Nora’s other teat gives the infant a slow bloating, after which the baby gapes and wails, abdomen held in a tightened distension. There is probably something the mother must do, but Nora doesn’t know what, as she’s burped the infant already.
This feeding, feeding this thing, she is expected to do every three hours. Not quite demand feeding, since it is she, the mother, who must demand of this fussy child to feed, must make her want it until the child gains the desired weight.
Nora does not think she can bear to go through this whole palaver eight times around the clock. But it’s tough. She has to.
For now, it’s: And how is Mother doing? And is Baby full?
And in response to Nora’s question: No, you can’t. First, you must get up and come to the nursery to change Baby, because after the feed there will be a stool. Then go back to the ward, as Doctor will do his rounds later, in maybe half an hour. Then all of you new mothers – a hand indicating – must come for Baby’s first bath, to learn how. After that, you can have a little wash if you want, but if you’ve got stitches down there, careful, do not get them wet. And then the duty nurse will bring Baby again for its next feed.
And lastly, as a studied afterthought: Is your husband coming to see you properly at visiting time, Mrs Murphy? Doesn’t he want to hold the baby?
After this, Nora can hardly remember her question, but it’s in there somewhere, squashed very small. And as she watches the woman in the white uniform, insensible white lace-ups bustling beneath, a watch pinned upside down upon her chest, Nora thinks: Who is this baby you are talking about? Why do you make it sound as if there is only one baby for all of us? Do you want us to fight for it? Me, I’m not up to squabbling; if there is someone who wants the baby more than I do, she can take it.
Though
