Waiting Room
The room is bright from the cold, electric lighting. An exposing, stripping light that allows no shadows or soft hues. Its presence simultaneously useful and intruding.
A few abandoned toys spill out of the green plastic crate left in the corner. A wooden soldier with a broken sword, stuck in half-march towards a ballerina in a fluffy dress.
A low table in front of me is crammed with old magazines and faded newspapers. I am waiting for my turn to see a midwife. Reaching for one of the mags, seems too precarious. I may tip over and end up with the small sofa I am sitting on stuck to my backside. Like a hippo in the cartoon I saw on TV during my morning English class. The teacher said it was best to start at children’s level. Have fun learning, she said. Look at the pictures.
I abandon the idea of reaching for mags. Too much trouble. To look at the pictures. I sink deeper into the lumpy cushioning and close my eyes.
Light still penetrates through my closed eyelids; the small circles look like someone sliced through a rainbow.
My hands rest on my belly; it feels big and warm. The skin on my face is shiny and tight with puffiness. My hands and ankles are pale and wobbly like the dough my grandmother used to knead into bread before sunrise. I feel tears rising from the current sloshing deep inside me. I peel my eyelids apart, blinking purposefully, once, twice, and again. The saltiness makes me straighten my back. Unfold my hands and check the bag beside me. I packed it especially. A lavender coloured nightdress, matching dressing gown, a pair of soft white slippers and a pale-yellow outfit for a newborn baby.
My baby. I have no name for my baby. Voiceless and nameless, sheltered within my body, it is safe. I want to keep it safe. Keep it mine.
The news of the baby had arrived suddenly. The nurse with dove-like eyes and an easy smile said: You are going to have a baby, and then, as an afterthought: What are you going to do?
I said nothing.
My steps clicked loudly over the tiles in the corridor leading out of the clinic.
Outside, brilliant summer sunshine was making an old city look vibrant and hopeful again. Its ornate facades glistened like glazed Sacher torte. Walking towards the main square, I tried to imagine my baby’s face. Rushing across it, a newspaper boy shouted the latest headlines; armies moving by the riverside, barricades further inland. I quickened my pace towards the tram station, away from the paperboy. Tram number nine would take me all the way to my grandmother’s house. On the edge of the city. Where I grew up.
It was a familiar trip. I was trying for one of the window seats. To watch the city passing by. It had long been one of my favourite pastimes. That let me think. About my baby. And about the war.
My grandmother’s house was behind an old walnut tree at the end of our street. Where an old water pump with a long iron handle stood amongst rose and peony bushes. On the left side of the entrance gate. Streetlights were blinking themselves alive as I opened the gate.
My grandmother smiled and stroked my hair. Like she did when I was little. Plaiting it into a thick braid.
The two of us sat under the walnut tree until the dawn poured in, milky-white, like hospital lightbulbs. Talking about her meeting my grandfather at the start of the war. The one before this one. He was the tallest and the most handsome of all the new officers, she said. A few months later, on his first furlough, they married. Secretly. Their firstborn arrived with the armistice.
I buried my face in my grandmother’s lap. It smelled like apples, flour, and cinnamon. It smelled like my childhood.
Where are you going? she asked.
New Zealand.
Where is that?
Close to Australia.
Far away.
Yes.
In the morning, I took the first tram back to the city. In my bag, there was a lavender coloured nightdress, matching dressing gown, a pair of soft white slippers, a pale yellow outfit for a newborn baby. And a small basket of strawberries my grandmother picked from her garden. They glistened with dew. Like tears.
