Greg said it would be fine. The place was perfect for us. We would be sharing it - co-tenanting, he called it - with people we know. He knows them, anyway. They weren’t exactly friends. More like casual acquaintances. But they were nice. Older than her, but then Greg’s a whole lot older than her, too. Oh, not a whole lot, but older. Let’s see: he’s eight years older than her. That’s kind of a lot, at the age they are. But she likes it that he’s older. He’s had experiences she has never had. Wouldn’t ever, anyway, since they’re mostly guy experiences. But she really didn’t like the guys around her age. They were like kids, juvenile delinquents for the most part, that’s how she thought of them.
When she first met Greg she could hardly believe he would be interested in her. But he was. A little like a big brother at first. He kidded around a lot. But there was something about him, something that told her that he felt there was more to her, for him, than that kind of relationship. It took long enough to get going, but it did. She happened to see a lot of him because she happened to be over at her friend Yvonne’s place a lot.
So when Greg said that the house was perfect for them, it was. They had the ground floor, Edith and Robert had the top floor. He would help her start a nice garden, he said. When she felt she had the time. Not just yet. He knew how involved she was, just getting used to having a baby. It was as though he could understand how she felt, as though her life had been ambushed by events that just seemed to happen before she even realized they were happening.
She felt swept along by everything, as though she was somewhere else, not in her body, like those out-of-body experiences she had read about, when people died, and their spirits floated above their body and they observed what was happening, with people mourning their dead body. And then something happened and the spirit slipped back into the body and they were somehow saved from death. They saw a blinding light, something like that. They were given another opportunity to live.
She wasn’t sure she believed anything like that. That it could happen like that. But she could imagine it, in a way. And it’s possible that thinking of that made her feel as though something similar had happened with her. As though somehow her life had taken a turn and she was unable to do anything about it, just accept what was happening. As long as she had Greg, really, she didn’t mind. He makes her happy. And he knows that. He told her time and again how much she means to him.
She depends on him, on his judgement. He knows so much that she has no inkling about. Just living with him is an experience in educating herself about so many things. He always seems to know the right thing to do, somehow. And she respects that in him. She always waits for his advice, to hear from him how he thinks about things before she makes up her mind. He’s always telling her she should have more confidence in herself, in her ability to work things out for herself. She’s intelligent in her own right, and she should recognize that in herself, he says. There’s nothing whatever wrong in her ability to discern things.
Well, when she had been cautious around the two dogs from upstairs he had gently taken her in hand, shown her how quiet and non-threatening they were. Two huskies. You’d think with two dogs Edith and Robert would prefer to live downstairs, not up on the second floor. Easier access to the outside with the dogs, that kind of thing. They really doted on those dogs. And, she learned, it was true, they were quiet dogs, never bothered anyone. She would often be startled though, feeling that someone was in the room with her - the kitchen, for example - and she would turn around and there they would be, looking in at her from the doorway, watching her, their alternate blue-green eyes focused on her as though they were interested in what she was doing.
She never wanted to encourage them. So she would turn her back and ignore them, and they would quietly pad away, back upstairs. They weren’t supposed to come down to their part of the house. They sometimes did, anyway, when Edith or Robert were careless, not aware of where their dogs were. Greg said not to mind, just to think of them as kind of phantom presences. They made little sound, no bother to them.
And they were used to us, to seeing us around all the time, in any event. We often invited Edith and Robert to dinner, and they reciprocated. Sometimes we’d have a barbecue and invite other neighbours over, too. It’s a nice street, with nice houses and nice people. Lots of small kids around, too.
There’s an elementary school only a street away. It’s where we plan to send our own kids, when we have them, and when they are old enough. And that might be a good time for me to return to school, to do a little catch-up. Because I would like to finish my Grade 12. Greg thinks I should, he says it’s a good idea. Just to have the paperwork because, he says, I’m smart enough and know enough and can pick up enough on my own. He says I should consider life itself an ongoing education. He’s that smart. It works for him, although he’s got a university degree.
“You keep selling yourself short”, he keeps telling me. “You’re a whole lot more intelligent than you think you are, and I should know”, he says.
“If you say so”, I tell him.
“I do!” he always says, hugging me. I love it when he does that. Not telling me I’m smart, but when he’s so impulsive, when he grabs me, and hugs me, and kisses me, and holds me close. I just adore it when he does that. He cherishes me, he says. Imagine that, being cherished. I told my mother that once, what he says to me. And she laughed.
“That’s nice”, she said. “We’ll see how long that lasts, before everything gets to feel kind of stale, and you along with it.”
I was really offended. “That’s an awful thing to say!”
“Well, honey-child, awful it may sound to you, but it’s the truth. You’re just a kid, it’s puppy-love.”
“Greg’s no kid. He’s pretty adult, he’s a mature adult, and he loves me and doesn’t mind telling me that.”
“Yes, you’re kind of lucky, that way. It’s always nice to hear. Good for the old ego. But trust me, I’m your mother, I’ve seen a whole lot you couldn’t ever begin to imagine. I’ve had the experiences, I know what it’s like once the bloom of an early marriage loses its appeal. Best to know, better to be prepared, than to have it hit you in the face.”
“Mom! What you’re saying happened to
you, it isn’t going to happen to
me!”
“You think so? Well, you’re not alone, you’ve got plenty of company. Things always start out sweet and cozy before they begin to deteriorate, and once that happens, the relationship degrades so fast your head will spin.”
“
Why are you telling me these things? Why are you speaking about these things to me? My relationship with Greg is on firm ground and
nothing is going to change that. I don’t challenge him and berate him and blame him the way you always did with Dad. I don’t make his life a living misery!” I didn’t want to say those things, but I felt I had to, to defend myself, and to defend Greg, too for that matter.
Mom shrugged. Sometimes she knows when she’s gone too far. After that she was non-committal, non-confrontational.
Not long after that my pregnancy was over. In the sense that our baby was born. I could hardly believe it. For that matter, nor could Greg. He didn’t care that we had a baby girl, it was just the same to him. He was thrilled, out-of-his-mind happy. We had agreed I’d stay home for the baby. At least for a while, maybe until she is two or three, he thinks. Longer, if I want to It’s up to me, he says. He would be happy if I wanted to just stay at home, look after the baby for as long as I want to. Our baby.
And, he said, there might be more, more kids if I’d be agreeable. He would like a family of at least a few kids. As for me, I’m not sure. What I want, I mean. I mean, in a sense I’m still just a kid myself. That’s what I meant, when I said I felt as though I’d been ambushed. Ambushed right out of my teen years, is what I meant.
But on the other hand, I guess you could say I went into this with my eyes wide open. I’m no dunce, I know about restraint and contraceptives, all of that. But when I’m with Greg, it’s like that’s all I want out of life. He’s considerate and sensitive to my feelings, and I have complete trust in him. We talked about all of this, beforehand.
So it’s something we both wanted, a baby, a child we would love and share. It’s just that, sometimes, I think it’s too much, too soon. Oh, I know my mom had me when she was 18, so I’m kind of a year and a little more ahead of her. I know, because she has told me so often, that she resented me coming along, as though I had anything to do with it. I will never,
ever feel that way about Melody.
It’s true I’m feeling really tired all the time. But what else to expect, she’s only six weeks old. She has needs that I’ve got to tend to, because I am, after all, her mother. But it is tiring, and it’s a lot to get used to. There’s so much to think about, to remember to do, looking after her. Greg is good, he helps whenever he can, when he’s home from work, and on the week-ends. But I don’t like to ask him to do things that I can do, after all he works hard, too.
Anyway, Melody has changed a whole lot of things. There’s no more spontaneity, about anything, anything at all. We’re disciplined now in a way we’ve never had to be. In observation of her schedule. And we worry about her all the time. Any sounds she makes that we’re not familiar with, and try to interpret. If she’s eating all right, and, you know, the other stuff; changing her diaper constantly. Diaper rash, that’s another thing to look out for.
My breasts are swollen, and my nipples are sore. She’s emphatically taken to nursing. I have experienced none of the problems I’ve read so much about. She latched on without much prompting on my part. She can find her own way around the landscape of my upper body. She sucks, and the milk flows.
Her tiny fists clench themselves into hard little balls of determination. Greg adores her. She’s healthy and that’s so important to us. We want her to have every opportunity that life can offer her. She’s such a teeny, tiny thing, yet Greg has talked about university already. He thinks she could be a scientist, a lawyer, anything she wants because she’ll have the brains and we’ll stimulate her to think for herself and be ambitious to achieve anything she aspires to.
I don’t quite know what to do. Everything seems utterly pointless. As though the future has simply evaporated into nothingness. It all seems so black, so bleak, without any hope. And I don’t know how to console Glen. Even though my heart feels as though it’s been torn out of my chest, and my head won’t stop aching, he seems more inconsolable than me. He just sits there. He won’t do anything, nothing at all, won’t move from where he sits, mourning. It was hard enough, the funeral, her little casket, holding whatever was left of her tiny frail body, so dependent on us, on me. We got through that. I’ve no memory of it, actually. People were kind. That dimly penetrated. Hushed, whispered sounds, little else.I
am awfully tired, but I know this is a tight spot I’ve got to get over. It’ll get a whole lot easier as she gets a little older. It’s this first bit of her existence, our little girl, when her mother is still groping around for self-assurance, responding to those demanding needs. The insecurity will pass, I know, partly because Greg encourages me to believe that, and partly because I know it will, and then I’ll be more confident, less stressed, less tired.
Getting up in the early hours of the night and morning is difficult, but that won’t last, either, as she matures and her feedings become a little more regularized, organized, less time-sensitive. I know that, because I’ve read it in some really good baby books. That’s Greg again, anxious for me to be reassured, to have all the information I need. He knows how much of a reader I am, omnivorously reading everything I can get my hands on, just latterly diverted to reading books like this. And barely having the time, now, even for that.
When my mother came over late last week, she fussed a bit over the baby. Actually, it was only the second time she saw Melody. The way she took to her almost made me warm entirely to my own mother. To edge slightly beyond the emotional gulf I’ve always felt that strained our relationship.
She watched while I nursed Melody, and said how old-fashioned I was. I just shrugged, changed her diaper, got her ready for sleep. It’s the best nutrition a baby could have, the most natural, and it beings us both, I know, emotional fulfilment. I can’t say that to my mom, she would just raise her eyebrows as she always does, and express that gruff, cynical laugh of hers. We just don’t think alike, strange as that is.
She picked up her purse and I knew exactly what she planned to do.
“No smoking here, Mom.”
“Aw, forgot. Well, how about we go out to the deck, I can smoke there, can’t I?”
“Sure, Mom, go ahead.”
“Well, c’mon, I want you to come with me. The baby’s been fed, she’s sleeping, and secured. Just leave her there, and come on out with me. So we can talk.”
Talk, I wondered. What about? Anything and nothing. Mom likes to talk. Mostly about herself. I just shrugged, made sure Melody was fastened into her car seat securely, tucked the blanket closer around her, set the car seat on top of the table, leaned over to kiss her moist little forehead, and followed mom out the sliding door. The deck is right alongside the kitchen. I left the glass door slightly ajar.
“I’ve moved back in with Jack again”, Mom announced. “I think he’s learned his lesson. He begged me to come back. I’m easy.”
She’s a great one for teaching high-decibel “lessons”. My childhood years were fraught with the fall-out of those lessons. Directed toward Dave, my dad, and me as well. High-pitched declarations of being fed up with being hard done by. Nothing anyone ever did, around her seemed to satisfy her. She found fault with everything, and her screams would echo throughout the house, deafening us, as we cringed helplessly under one assault after another. I wasn’t sorry to leave home.
“How long is
that supposed to last?” I asked, recalling the succession of men she has lived with since the final separation from my dad. I’ve lost count. One relationship after another, all of them collapsed. Emotional investments gone awry.
She shrugged. “As long as it does”, she responded. She liked to talk about how abusive men were, how much she had put up with trying to find the perfect mate, someone who would respect her many endowments, someone she could rely upon. She had no problem netting men. They were always attracted to her good looks, sharp wit, her dramatic flair. And no mistaking her qualities as far as her professional work ethic and capabilities. She always brought home the bacon; her salary level far exceeding that of the men she took up with.
She always said how disappointed she was that I had interrupted my education, that she anticipated more intelligence from me. In a sense, I regret that too, but I do intend to remediate the situation as soon as I can, return to school, and then enrol in college courses. I can do it, I know I can, and I will.
We talked, she smoked her cigarette and I made to return to the kitchen, but she held me back. “Relax” she said, “for God’s sake. Take a break from that routine of yours. The baby is sleeping soundly, just sit there and take it easy.” She had another cigarette.
When, some 20 minutes later we returned from outside it was to find a silent chaotic scene of pure hell. Silence screamed. The dull, heavy thud of my life collapsing fell over me, and I almost evaporated at the sight of evil. The sinister, blood-curdling scene of a dog slinking out of the room, silently padding away, leaving its prey, my baby, half consumed, unrecognizable from the beautiful tiny human that I had left, become an object some lunatic hand had fashioned out of dead clay, with a swirling display of garish bloody guts spilling from its interior; a model for medical science to teach its practitioners the inner mechanism of a human body.
I felt my mother’s arms pulling me, one of her hands open, clasping my eyes so I could no longer see. I heard a horrible keening shrieking sound, and wondered why my mother was screeching so horribly, since no one had done anything wrong. I felt myself fall, while being supported, and then there was nothing more to feel, to hear, to see, to acknowledge.
I read the headlines later, much later. I don't know who had saved them, carefully cut them out, and set them away for, presumably, later scrutiny. They went something like this: "Excellent mother" charged in death"; "Quebec teen found her baby mauled by dogs". I have been arraigned in a youth court on a charge of manslaughter.
Greg is frantic. He got me a lawyer. In court, the lawyer said "She lost her baby yesterday and less than 24 hours later she is arrested and charged. She found her baby dead, devoured by a dog. It's a sight she will surely never forget."The Crown prosecutor explained to the media that the manslaughter charge stemmed from my failure to provide "the necessities of life" to my baby, resulting in Melody's death.
