True Stories (35 page)

In a bed screened by blue curtains, a woman lies peacefully on her back reading
Name Your Baby.
Another is ready to take her baby home; as Linda and Nik approach, she thrusts her bare legs out from under the sheet and flashes her feet at them: ‘Look! I've got
ankles
again!' The room next door is empty: everyone's sneaked out on to the sunny balcony for a smoke. They are herded back in, giggling guiltily. Sharon, Nik's caesar and Zoe's mother, shows the doctors her abdominal wound. Its excellent neatness and speedy healing are universally admired. She lies back, passive and content.

Melissa of the premature twins is sitting up against her pillows, in fine fettle. Hard to recognise in her the pale, determined labourer of—was it only yesterday? Her hair is washed and fluffed out in a big cloud. She is cheerfully expressing milk for her babies who are still in neo-natal intensive. She has photos of them wedged cleverly into inverted polystyrene cups so she can see them from her pillow.

She talks only of the boy twin. His name is now the issue. Melissa and her husband have disagreed. The name he wants is ‘from another generation,' says Melissa firmly. ‘I'm not budging.'

Mala today looks livelier. She smiles at Linda and whispers a shy greeting. Linda examines her and pronounces her ‘medically fit—ready to go home'. Her husband nods, hesitates, then points to the baby in the crib and says something in his soft voice. Linda mishears him and thinks he's telling her the baby's name. ‘Does it mean something?' she asks.

The father clicks his tongue in frustration. ‘Not name.
Skin.
' He urges her to note that the baby's skin is much lighter in colour than his or Mala's.

Nik stands stock still at the foot of the bed. Linda steps forward to the cot and leans over it. A beat. ‘His skin,' she says clearly and carefully, ‘will darken in four to six months. As soon as the sun hits him—boom. All babies are born with light skin.' She hovers over the baby. She looks up at Mala's husband. Something more needs to be said. Linda swallows and takes the plunge. ‘He bears a very strong resemblance to you,' she says. ‘Oh,
very
strong. Doesn't he. Yes—the father's the winner, with this one.'

A pause; then everyone breathes, moves, smiles. The doctors leave the bedside. Passing the baby's cot, Linda flutters her fingers above his fragile little skull, barely holding back a desire to touch. The baby has a pensive expression, as if he's just had an important thought but can't quite remember what it was. The feeling in the air is complex beyond words.

1995