Dropped Threads 3 (28 page)

The voice of my late deaf grandmother, no less influential, was absorbed by me in a different way. Deaf from the age of eighteen months, my grandmother married a hearing man. Together they raised eleven hearing children, five daughters and six sons, my mother being the eldest. Because my grandmother was an expert lip-reader, my language memories of her are largely visual. Her eyebrows are slightly raised; her steady brown eyes watch for the message on my lips. After a slight pause—for the moment of understanding—her quick and inimitable laugh is heard, and her kindness seen. If my grandmother happened to be worried or upset, she moved deeper into the silence of her internal world. At those times, she moved her lips as if talking to herself, but she turned aside so that no one could lip-read
her
. She twisted her wedding band around and around on her finger, a sure sign of distress. Or sat on a chair with one knee crossed over the other, her foot bobbing steadily.

•    •    •

I was a lurker, a watcher, a listener, beguiled by storytelling, enticed by the circle of laughter. And yet, after I began to attend school, all of this must have taken place during holidays—Easter or summer—because when I was four years old our family moved to a small village in rural Quebec, three hours by train from our much larger extended family in Ontario. My father and my uncles were present on many of these occasions, but it was the women who were my role models and they were the ones to whom I paid most attention. Still, I did not want to become these women—what young woman, after all, wants to turn into her mother? But at some level there was an awareness of being shaped by the collective of female voices. Voice and
story. One story rolling into another. Teasing and laughter all around.

In my grandmother’s kitchen, ongoing language was visible. Words were shapes—written into the air, or spilled from a pair of lips, or outlined by the speaker’s hands. Because of my grandmother’s deafness, even the youngest grandchild took part in the “acting out of language.” When I recollect what seem to be the crowded scenes of my childhood, the aunts always have something in their hands: a spatula, a tea towel, a dishcloth, a rag. They are wiping—small children’s faces, sticky fingers, the countertop, the heavy oilcloth on the table after a meal. There are children between their knees, iodine is being painted on scraped shins, burrs are brushed from someone’s hair, buttons are being buttoned. But my aunts were equally at home with a wrench in their hands, or a screwdriver, a hammer. They could take apart a house and put it back together—and one of them did. They knew how to farm, how to pitch hay, how to saw steaks off a frozen side of beef, or raise turkeys. It seemed to me that my aunts could do anything they set their minds to. What I could not have articulated at the time was that I was watching and learning strength.

My mother and my aunts did not seem to take themselves seriously. At least, not publicly. One of five children, I had already learned that you had to laugh if you wanted to survive. Survival was more complicated as the family group became larger. If you could not laugh at yourself, you could be hooted out of a room. Every one of us, girls and boys, knew that. I also knew that life was not easy for the adults in my life—my parents, my aunts, my uncles. As children they had lived through difficult years during the Depression. After they married and began to raise children, they had crises and responsibilities to deal with. Still, it was impossible
to be dreary in that family. As we spread out, stories crisscrossed the widening space and connected us back. Stories were ravelled and unravelled just as surely as porridge was made, dresses were sewed, shirts were ironed and children patched up and comforted, skills that every one of the women could carry out with expertise.

How else, except by being with my mother, my grandmother and my aunts, would I have learned that the best way to measure a bolt of cloth is from nose-tip to fingertip, stretching your arm horizontally to one side? “It’s a yard,” my mother said. “A yardstick measure. As long as you don’t turn your head.” (It didn’t matter that I had questions about the length of a person’s arm, or that I would never learn to sew; I was more interested in the stories.) How else would I have heard of the jilted boyfriend who loved one of my aunts and never recovered after she married another man. Fifty years later, when he met her in the street, his lips shaped the silent words “I love you,” because he remembered that she could lip-read. His wife was beside him and none the wiser, as the two walked past. How else would I have heard the expression that someone was wandering aimlessly, “like a buck in a rainstorm.”
Buck?
I thought—or did she say duck? I didn’t ask. Or the story of WeeWee the fish who died in his goldfish bowl and was floating belly-up, only to be revived because my aunt raced to the rescue and gave him a few drops of brandy with an eyedropper. And how WeeWee died again and again, surviving for another twenty-five years because he was sure to be revived by an eyedropper dose of brandy dripped into his bowl.

How else would I have learned about the hobos of the thirties when my mother was a child, men who made their way up the long and dusty lane from the rail yards and were never denied a meal at my grandparents’ farm. My
grandfather was absent during the week, because his work allowed him to be home only on weekends, but food was passed by his daughters through the doorway to the hungry men who sat outside in the shade while they ate. Or the story of my grandmother, trying to think up a special dessert for her children and serving peach halves in pink Depression-glass nappies that had been purchased at Woolworth’s, five cents apiece. In the hollow of each peach half she added a half teaspoon of my grandfather’s rum (while he was away) and a dollop of whipped cream. Money was scarce but milk and cream were in abundance on the farm, Depression or no.

Throughout my own childhood, if a visitor (or an entire family) arrived unexpectedly around mealtime—at my parents’ home, or the homes of my grandparents or my aunts—an extra plate was laid, whether or not there was enough food. If there was not, the main course was shared and, to compensate, extra slices of bread and butter were heaped onto the platter in the centre of the table.

The generosity of spirit that surrounded me in childhood helped to shape my optimism and endowed me with hope. The adults of my world—especially my aunts and uncles—bestowed love and laughter, gifts beyond reckoning. The intimate and loving voices of the women helped me to find my own voice—as a woman, a parent, a writer. And though our large family is now widely scattered while generations continue to be added, and though my grandparents, four of my uncles and one of my aunts have died, the early voices still demand to be considered and heard. They are as surely inside me as an arrow is inside a compass. I could no more remove them than I could remove my own genetic code.

J
ANUARY 7, 2003. VANCOUVER WOMEN’S HOSPITAL

It’s 2 a.m. and I’m finally in labour. My husband, Wayne, lies on a foldout cot beside me while I toss and turn, nauseous and feverish from the prostaglandin suppositories placed in my vagina every four hours since ten o’clock yesterday morning. The contractions started rapidly, but for the last few hours there haven’t been any. My body seems to have shut down. The night nurse fusses about, attempting to find a vein for an IV. Maybe I’ll be the first woman ever for whom the hormones won’t work. Perhaps they will have to cut the baby out of me.

DECEMBER 13, 2002

The first time we see our baby, she or he appears on the grainy screen of the ultrasound monitor in profile, one hand raised as if in welcome or dismissal. I want to peer closer, but am afraid to. The results of a routine test of my blood showed an abnormally high level of certain hormones associated with genetic disorders. Although they assure me that the test is renowned for yielding many false alarms, all I can think about is that this serene-seeming creature may be fatally damaged.

Later that day, while a long silver needle plunges into my uterus to sample my amniotic fluid, Wayne holds my feet and I try not to jerk as the pierced muscles go into spasm.
The doctor performing the procedure is holding an ultrasound wand steady against my belly, enabling us to see the baby’s echo once again. Our child is curled up like a hibernating mole in a corner of my womb.

CHRISTMAS 2002

The two-week waiting period for the amniocentesis results coincides with the Christmas holiday. After some debate, we decide to spend it with Wayne’s family in the Okanagan. It seems like a better bet than sitting at home.

Yet there is no escape.

On Christmas Day we sit in Wayne’s parents’ sunny living room listening to an old recording of seasonal favourites, opening bag after bag of tiny sleepers, pastel crib linens and hand-knitted booties so small my thumb can barely fit in them. Everyone knows there might be a problem with the pregnancy, but once in motion the gift-giving train is hard to halt. Behind my cheerful exterior a sudden thought sears me: What will I do with all this if the baby dies?

DECEMBER 28, 2002

We’re back home and the phone is ringing. My husband hovers, helpless, in the doorway while I grip the receiver so hard it squeaks. To disguise my pregnant state I’m wearing jeans zipped up tight, the straining top button lengthened with a rubber band.

“Hello?”

“It’s trisomy-18,” the midwife says matter-of-factly, and then, “It’s a girl.”

I bend over, cradling my belly, as if I’ve been kicked in the stomach.

The following day, the medical genetics counsellor at the hospital shows us pictures of trisomy-18 babies and lists our
daughter’s likely abnormalities: severe mental retardation, heart problems, liver problems, intestinal problems … most fetuses with this abnormality are lost to miscarriage. The odds are against even those that survive to birth: 90 percent die in the first month of life.

“But aren’t there some babies who survive to adulthood?” I ask, hoping my child might somehow be the exception.

“No,” the counsellor answers. “There aren’t.”

Our child’s fate hangs over us like a heavy, metallic cloud. We know what we must do but not how to say it, the word “terminate” unspoken between us, with its kinship to the term “exterminate.”

“If you decide not to continue with the pregnancy you have two choices,” our doctor tells us. “A late-term abortion under general anaesthetic, or induced labour.”

We opt for plan A. It seems the most painless: I’ll be asleep and won’t have to go through pointless pain. And although we’ve been told that seeing, even naming, our child will help us to grieve her loss, neither of us can imagine doing that. Rather than providing solace, the pastel pink hospital pamphlets with their reverential tone provoke in me an irrational rage: to hell with hospital bracelets and miniature nightgowns! If this is the end, let it be quick and clinical. I refuse to obscure this loss with sentiment, with angel wings and teddy bear smiles.

JANUARY 6, 2003

I’ve changed my mind. Lying in bed last night, I recalled the day, two months ago, when my daughter seemed to speak to me. Walking on the beach in the rain, I heard a little voice from inside say clearly
I’m a girl and I’m okay
. These words now seem like a cruel joke, but then again, perhaps they aren’t—perhaps she
is
okay with her condition. And if
she is, then I must be. I am, after all, this child’s mother. Having made the unthinkable decision to end her life, the least I can do is to allow death to happen in the most natural, dignified way possible. Perhaps, in fact, this is what motherhood requires of me—not to deny her, but to stay present with her through this dark passage.

My husband and I switch to plan B.

Now, the house feels strangely expectant, the congratulations cards I received when I spread my good news still displayed on the living-room bookshelf. Wayne and I get out our daughter’s ultrasound snapshot, light a tiny beeswax candle in front of it, and attempt to say goodbye. But how to say goodbye to someone who hasn’t arrived?

JANUARY 7, 2003

At 5 a.m. the grief of my loss twists me up in it like a tornado, carrying me away for a while. After crying for over an hour, I feel the contractions start up again, and now, at 8 a.m., the baby is ready to be pushed out.

“Try sitting on the toilet,” suggests the day nurse, a sturdy Irishwoman who has seen many women through this procedure. She helps me up from my bed, places a plastic bowl inside the toilet seat, and I sit down. I feel something weighty pressing against the lips of my vagina, then in one slippery motion my baby comes out.

“It’s happened,” I yell, unable to actually name
it
. The nurse hastens back into the bathroom, bends down between my legs and cuts the umbilical cord. I get up hurriedly, aware of something red floating in the bowl.

I just gave birth! Back in bed, I deliver a tiny placenta. For an instant I feel like a real mother. Then the nurse passes my tiny daughter to me, laid out on a folded sheet. Dead.

Wayne nestles up close. “She’s beautiful,” he says.