40

A woman was shouting at her as if Rebecca was slow-witted.

“It will come when it’s damn good and ready, hon. And once it’s out, you won’t give a damn what led to it.”

In the bumpy rear of the Meltzers’ low-slung Chevy sedan Rebecca lay spread-eagled, whimpering with pain. Lightning-flashes of pain. These were contractions, she was supposed to be counting between them yet the surprise of the pain-! She was not so self-assured now. She was not so pleased with herself now. She had intended not even to show Edna Meltzer the baby for she feared and disliked the woman and yet here she was in the Meltzers’ car being driven to the hospital in Chautauqua Falls. She’d had to call the Meltzers when the pains began. Tignor had promised her, he would not be away at this time. He had promised her, she would not be alone. She had no number for Tignor and so she’d called the Meltzers. Somehow she was upside-down in the backseat of their car. Seeing the rushing landscape outside the car windows, a strip of white sky, from the bottom up. She would have little memory of this drive except Howie Meltzer in his greasy Esso cap behind the wheel chewing a toothpick and Edna Meltzer grunting as she leaned over the back of the passenger’s seat to grip one of Rebecca’s flailing hands, smiling sternly to show there was no cause for panic.

“Hon, I told you: it will come when it’s damn good and ready. You just get a hold of yourself, I got you.”

That hand of Edna Meltzer’s Rebecca squeezed, and squeezed.

…a druggy delirium in which waves of excruciating pain were confused with a sound as of high-pitched frantic singing. She called for the baby’s father but the man was nowhere near. Called and called until her throat was scraped raw but the man was nowhere near. Oh but he had promised, he would be with her! He had promised, she would not be alone when the baby was born. When the first of the contractions began and she’d sunk to her knees in shock, though she’d prepared beforehand like a diligent schoolgirl reading and underlining and memorizing passages from Your Body, Your Baby & You. She gripped her enormous belly with both hands. She cried for help but there was no one. And no number to call, to reach Niles Tignor. No idea where he was. In her desperation she did what he had not even needed to forbid her ever to do, called Port Oriskany information, the Black Horse Brewery, a disdainful female voice informed her no one by the name of Niles Tignor was employed by the Brewery at the present time.

But he was! Rebecca protested he’d been working as an agent for the Brewery for years!

A disdainful female voice informed her no one by the name of Niles Tignor was employed by the Brewery at the present time.

She would stumble to the Meltzers’ house a quarter-mile away.

She would plead for help, she was alone and had no one.

Her nightgown, toiletries were already packed. And a paperback book for reading in the hospital for in her naiveté she had thought there might be leisure time for reading…She would waste precious minutes in a futile search for the Certificate of Marriage in case she had to prove to the Chautauqua Falls Hospital authorities that she was a legally married woman, this birth was legitimate.

…a druggy delirium afterward to be described as eleven hours’ labor which she, at its center, would recall vaguely as one might recall a film seen long ago in childhood and even at that time not comprehended. As the baby would afterward be described as boy, eight pounds three ounces. Niles Tignor, Jr. who had not yet a name, as he had not yet drawn breath to cry. A fierce thing shoving its head hard and lethal as a bowling ball bizarrely crammed up inside her. And this bowling ball a phenomenon of solid heat inside which, you would wish to believe, a tiny soul translucent as a creek slug dwelled. Something will happen to you, a girl. You would not want. Now that it was too late, she knew what her mother had warned her against.

…druggy delirium out of which nonetheless she emerged to her astonishment hearing what sounded like a cat’s wail, so strangely in this brightly lighted room. Someone was saying Mrs. Tignor? She blinked to clear her occluded vision. She saw hands placing a naked flailing and kicking infant at first against her flattened, flaccid belly, then up between her breasts. Your baby Mrs. Tignor. Baby boy Mrs. Tignor. Such voices came to her from far away. She scarcely heard. For how hard the infant was crying, that deafening cat-wail! She laughed to see how angry it was, and so small; like its father furious, and dangerous; eyes shut and tiny fists flailing. Puckered monkey-face, soft coconut head covered in coarse black hairs. She laughed, she saw the tiny penis and had to laugh. Oh she’d never seen anything like this baby they were saying was hers! Wanting to joke This one’s daddy must’ve been a monkey! but knowing that such a joke at such a time and place might be misinterpreted.

And already her breasts were leaking milk, one of the nurses was helping the sucking little mouth find its way.

“”Give birth.“ That’s how a man would talk, I guess! Like ”birth‘ was something it was up to you, to “give.” My God.“

So dazed and happy now that she was home from the hospital and had her baby it was like the buzz you got drinking draft beer mixed with bourbon. Loving to nurse the hot-skinned little monkey that was hungry every few hours and as he sucked-sucked-sucked greedily at one fat breast and then the other, she, the new Momma, just wanted to talk-talk-talk. Oh, she had so much to say! Oh, she loved this little monkey! All this was so-wild-and-strange!

Edna brought the girl a copy of the Chautauqua Falls Weekly. Turned to the back pages, obituaries, weddings, and birth announcements. There were photos of the newly deceased and the newly wed but none of the new mothers who were identified as their husband’s wives. Rebecca read aloud, “”Mrs. Niles Tignor of Poor Farm Road, Four Corners, gave birth to an eight-pound three-ounce boy, Niles Tignor, Jr. at the Chautauqua Falls General Hospital, November 29.“” She laughed, her bright harsh laugh that grated against the ear, and tears leaked from her eyes. Going on and on about giving birth as Edna would report like she was drunk, or worse.

To her credit, this girl Rebecca had not been badly prepared for a new baby, Edna had to concede. She had a good supply of diapers, a few baby clothes. A crib and a baby-bath. She’d been studying some baby pamphlet a doctor had given her. There was food, mostly canned things, in the kitchen. And for sure Edna had castoff baby things at their house, to donate. And Elsie Drott had, too. And other women neighbors, if it came to that. Within a circumference of as many as four miles, women knew of Rebecca Tignor, some of them without knowing her actual name. A new mother, just a girl. No family, it looks like. The father of the baby just ain’t around. Seems like he’s abandoned her, out in the country. That old Wertenbacher house that’s practically falling down.

If the girl was worried about the future, she wasn’t showing it, yet. This, Edna Meltzer found annoying.

“He left you some money, I guess?”

“Oh, yes! Sure he did.”

Edna frowned, as if needing to be convinced.

Oh, Rebecca had had enough of Mrs. Meltzer for right now! Baby had ceased nursing and was drowsing slack-mouthed in her arms, here was a rare opportunity for Momma to nap, too.

Sweet delicious sleep like a stone well you could fall into, and fall and fall.

On an evening in early December, twelve days after their baby was born, there stood Tignor in the doorway of their bedroom, staring. Rebecca heard a faint breathy whistle-“Jesus!” Tignor’s face was in shadow, she could not see his expression. He stood very still, wary. For a tense moment Rebecca halfway expected him to turn away. “Tignor. Here.” Rebecca lifted the baby to Tignor, smiling. Here was a perfect baby, Tignor would see. It had only just awakened from its nap, staring and blinking at the stranger in the doorway. It began to make its comical blowing noises, bubbles of spittle on its lips. It kicked, flailed its tiny fists. Slowly Tignor came to the bedside, to take the baby from Rebecca. In infant astonishment the baby gaped at Tignor’s face, that must have seemed gigantic and luminous as a moon. Gingerly, Tignor held the baby. Rebecca saw that he knew to cup the small head on its delicate neck. Before entering the house he’d tossed away his cigar yet still he smelled of smoke, the baby began to fret. With his nicotine-stained thumb he stroked the baby’s forehead. “It’s mine, is it?”