‘Here he is! Here’s your boy.’ The midwife beamed at her, cloaked in sweat that had come from a sense of unique achievement. She was handed her son, as delicate as a box of eggs, his yolk-wide eyes singing at her. As if exorcised of some necessary evil, a gasp of fright had flown from her mouth as he was born. She could pretend this was as a result of overwhelming pride, as was expected, but the long hours that followed did nothing but empty her. It was not a matter of not being in love with her newborn son, it was not a matter of love at all. It was the shrinking that she felt as she realised that there was less of her, and that she recognised no part of herself in him. Something had become lost, and as much as she could consider the conversations that would no longer occur, or the movements she was never to replicate, it was not that at all.
In the corner of the room, her partner sat in the warm lull of exhaustion, occasionally eyeing her from behind his glasses. These were looks of love, and he was safe within his satisfaction. Earlier he had congratulated himself, told his mother that he was complete; that the mechanics of his body could now function without interruption. He had kissed her, and listened for the whirring of cogs.
She would love to say that there was hope, and joy, and eventually she would get over it, but she couldn’t. He had become a great obstacle, the boulder at the mouth of the cave. We like to believe that when we are born, our parents are great gods that gave us life so that they could adore us, and remark upon how mortal we are. Their immortality comes from us, as is the case with Gods, and she could not imagine having to live forever for anyone.
She waited until they had fallen asleep, when she could slip out from under their gaze, safe in the knowledge that there would be excuses that she could make if she accidentally woke them. The halogen lights made them look already dead, and as she looked down, she sensed something of a corpse in her too. From underneath the bed, she pulled out her clothes and silently slipped her feet into her shoes; slowly she took her first steps onto the floor that held her so sceptically. There was no drama or theatrics in these movements, just the oiling of bones as she prepared herself to walk from the room unnoticed.
She looked back once; not to remember, but to make sure she hadn’t been seen. She left the hospital without the curiosity of the guilty, without observing those in other rooms who had done it right. She did not turn her head sideways to cross the road, as if she was proving her certainty to the world that she could belong to again, because a woman who is whole does not understand the concept of doubt.
