Mrs Covet

One afternoon, with nothing else to do, I took off my dress and looked into the mirror. My hips and thighs had puffed up, thanks to Nat’s forced feedings, my belly stuck out, but my arms and legs were still skinny. I looked like someone had started to blow me up, but stopped before the limbs were fully inflated. There was a dark line drawn down the centre of my torso, as if by a Chinese brush. It travelled from between my breasts, all the way to my pubis, bifurcating my belly, as if marking me for some operation. How strange pregnancy is. I still can't get over it. To house a baby inside. It makes me feel anonymous, animal. That day, as I stood in front of the mirror, I felt the most intense need to meet this baby. I suddenly had to see its face. This blankness, this image of me I saw covering up my child — I wanted to claw it away like clay. I needed to break the spell of containment, confinement; I needed to escape from Nat. I wanted to scream. And then — I swear to God it happened this way, I am not making this up — my waters broke. As I was standing there naked in front of the mirror, warm liquid travelled down my legs and gathered in a pool at my feet. Two months early. I put on some sweats and called the doctor. Left the kids with Nat. Thank God she was there, I thought, as I rushed out the door with Craig. My dear husband’s face looked pinched, he avoided my gaze. He was frightened. Seven months can be enough, but not always. I knew what he was thinking. He was thinking, if we lose this baby, she won’t survive.

They cut me open and lifted him out of me. After, I looked down at the ruby-red gash in my abdomen, glistening like a fleshy flower, my legs warm, numbed, itchy from anaesthesia. The doctor held the baby up. He was silent. Moving faintly. Blue. He was handed away. Three masked doctors massaged him wordlessly under orange light. I asked to hold him. No one answered. They kneaded his flesh, trying to coax his reluctant spirit back through the threshold of the world, where it hovered, undecided. Then I heard the wail, fine as a silken thread, floating through the air. I knew he would live. I knew this one was fine, just as I had known my baby sister would die from the moment I held her in my arms, though I did not know it in thoughts. She lasted two months. A child without a destiny. Sixty-one days stamped on her hand. Virginia.

The baby had to stay in the hospital for a while, and so did I. Every night, Craig came to see us, and told us how the boys were doing. Nat had shaved their heads. She said there was a head lice scare in school, but I doubted that. She had always wanted them shorn. Then there was church. She had taken them twice in one week. Craig said she even went out and bought them new, Christian-looking clothes. We laughed about it. She was living in the house. Of course she was — how else could Craig get to work by seven-thirty?

I felt so peaceful once the baby was born. I felt like I would never plan a thing again. I was cocooned in the present, all alone with baby Adam. He had to be in an incubator the first couple of days, when I wasn't breast-feeding him, but after that they let me keep him in my room. I just stared at his face for hours. The truth is, I was a little nervous about going back to real life.

But finally the day came. We drove up to the house, and I saw Kyle, my big-boned boy, walking outside with the garden hose. He had a crew cut, and was wearing a red-and-white checked shirt tucked into his jeans. He looked like something out of Leave It to Beaver. ‘Hey!’ I said. He ran to the car and looked at me shyly. He’d only been to the hospital to visit twice. He was getting used to life without me. As he peered through the back window to take a look at the baby, I wondered: If I die, how long would he remember my face? My voice? How long till he never dreamed about me any more? The main thing I loved about being a mother was being indispensable. The front door opened and Nat stood wearing a maroon sweatsuit, her hand on Tyler’s shoulder. I got out of the car and hugged both boys.

‘I hate the baby,’ Tyler announced.

‘Oh, now,’ said Nat, ‘he’s your brother. He’s gonna be your buddy. For now he’s just a baby.’ She reached in, cooing, and took Adam from the car seat, set him on her mammoth breast, where he looked as small as a ferret. I felt a mixture of envy and relief. I was so tired.

‘You go up and nap,’ said Nat as we walked into the sterilized kitchen. ‘I'll bring him up when he starts rooting.’ I climbed the stairs gratefully, the incision in my belly burning. Craig followed me. It was so amazing to be able to walk upstairs with no kids following us. Craig lay beside me and looked in my eyes. His blue-grey irises were magnified behind his round glasses. The thing about Craig is, his parents were divorced when he was eight; secretly he lives in fear that one day he’ll fall out of love with me and leave, and I’ll turn into a bitter and unlovable woman, like his mother. So I never know if his love is real, or if it’s just distilled guilt. But I knew at that moment he loved me.

‘Well, you did it again,’ he said.

‘I’m a little scared.’

‘He’s going to be fine. I’m glad Nat is here.’

‘Me too. How much are you paying her, anyway?’

He shrugged. ‘She’s a present from my mother.’

That night, at dinner, as we were tucking into Nat’s famous lasagna and chopped salad, the baby sleeping peacefully in his bassinet, a fight erupted between Kyle and Tyler. Kyle was trying to steal a cherry tomato from Tyler’s plate. ‘Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s tomato,’ said Craig. I stood up to wash some more. Nat shot up fast instead, chuckling. ‘My husband calls me Mrs Covet,’ she said, washing the tomatoes in a sieve. Craig and I looked up at her, surprised.

‘I didn’t know you were married, Nat,’ Craig said. Nat put her hand on her hip in mock outrage.

‘Whatdya think, I was an old maid? He calls me Mrs Covet ’cause whenever he orders something in a restaurant, I change my order so’s I can have what he’s having, ’cause it always sounds so much better than what I ordered. Mrs Covet. That’s me.’ From that night, Craig and I started calling Nat ‘Mrs Covet’ when we were alone.