Small Island by Andrea Levy
But she was insistent – only if I followed her instruction could her pain be eased.
‘Can you help me to the bedroom?’
‘Mrs Bligh, please, let me get some assistance.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake – just do as I say, Hortense.’
Two arms she wrapped round my neck in a mighty embrace. I struggled to stay on both feet as I walked her into the required room. She landed hard on the bed. Only briefly did relief spread on her face before she cried out again. I thought to join her – howl up the house until we both were delivered from this misery.
‘Mrs Bligh, I am worried for you, please.’
In response she gave a faint smile. If she had not, I might have slipped to my knees to beg for her to release me. But she took my hand, enclosed all my fingers and said, ‘I know what’s wrong with me.’ She then squeezed them all together as if trying to extract their juice. This time it was not only she who yelled with pain. Releasing my crippled hand she struggled along the bed like a beast. Not only panting but on her hands and knees. She began unbuttoning her cardigan. Shrugging it off with difficulty. Her blouse she almost ripped from her chest, losing several buttons. She wriggled as I helped her pull off her skirt. Her pink slip was wrenched tight across her. She drew it up to her chest, the strain on the seams popping blisters of white flesh through several little openings. I thought to avert my eye for this woman would soon be naked. But to my surprise I saw that, far from revealing her exposed skin, she was bound around the middle with a length of bandage. As she unlocked the knot on the bandage I feared for the injury it would expose. For had her husband not shown himself to be a violent man? The oozing gash from the flick of a knife. The pus-y indents of a vicious bite.
‘Please let me get the doctor. Your wound may need new dressing.’ Although not of a delicate disposition, still I worried I might faint. But she paid me no mind. With care she unravelled this cloth. I turned my eye so it might just peek. But there was no cut, no blood, no gash. Like bread dough rising in a tin, as she unwound, her stomach steadily swelled in front of me.
‘Mrs Bligh, are you with child?’
Once the bandage was fully discarded it was plain as a drink of water. Her bulbous belly puffed, relieved that it was now freed from its bind. She lay back on the bed commanding me with a pointing finger to fetch the cushions and pillows to prop her up. As she did, another contraction was upon her. And this belly bucked and rolled as the child inside fought for release. ‘Oh, God, I think it’s coming!’
How had she kept such an ample secret wrapped so tightly to her?
‘Please let me get the doctor, Mrs Bligh. You must go to the hospital.’
‘No, there’s no time. I’ve been having these pains since yesterday. They’re worse now. I know it’s coming.’ Once again the pain was scorching her face crimson. It was not in my experience, giving birth. I had watched chickens, of course, laying their eggs, but none of them had ever required my assistance. I held on to her hand patting it gently, my mind fretting on what else should be done while willing my eye to keep back its fearful tears.
Her pain subsiding, she spoke through a panting breath, ‘Don’t worry, I know what to do.’ She struggled with a little giggle, ‘It’ll be like Gone With the Wind. You know the scene . . .’ before a contraction blurred the words into screeching. I knew the scene very well and I did not care for the comparison. What doubt was there that she was the prosperous white woman? So, come, did she think me that fool slave girl? Dancing in panic at the foot of her bed? Cha! I am an educated woman. I knew that this birth would happen. ‘Cross your legs and see to your knitting, Mrs Bligh,’ I could tell her, but that baby would soon drop from her. All I would have to do is catch. Gone With the Wind! I closed my mouth from its gaping determined to show this impertinent woman what it means to be raised in Jamaica in reach of the foremost hands of a Miss Jewel. I took off my coat and hat. And one after the other put a roll on my sleeve. ‘Come, Hortense,’ I said, ‘better go boil some water.’
Her husband was yelling the words, ‘Queenie, open this door – what’s going on? I demand to know,’ and the accompanying banging became so regular its beats no longer startled me but became the rhythm I worked by. Placing the kettle on the stove, collecting towels and sheets from a drawer, soaking a cooling cloth and carrying through a bowl of fresh water were all performed to this man’s bluster.
‘It’s just a women’s matter, Mr Bligh. Soon come. No worry,’ I told him through the wood every time I passed the opening. No man is required at a birth but any fool could see why Mr Bligh would be considered an intruder. This ignorant man was not even wise to what was ailing his wife. And even the stupidest pupil at Half Way Tree Parish School – yes, even the wretched Percival Brown, using his fingers to count – would be able to tell that Mrs Bligh’s come-lately husband was not the father of the soon-come child.
Mrs Bligh called for me with a yell so urgent the booming, bottomless tones seemed to come from the devil himself. In comparison, Mr Bligh’s protestation squeaked puny as a mouse.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
I was ready to tell her that while all that was required of her was to lie back and expel the child I had been asked to perform as maid, midwife and doctor all in the body of one woman. But she raised her hand, calling me to her timidly – all she needed was I. I placed the damp towel on her head. She held it there – her mouth open in a soundless howl. The room was malodorous, stale and airless. But the useless window would not budge.
‘Leave it. Just tell me what’s happening. Is it coming? I can feel it coming.’ She pointed an insistent finger to the region of her being she wished me to concentrate upon. Up until this time I had contrived to avoid gazing on Mrs Bligh’s private parts. Unschooled in the process of birth, I was none the less aware that eventually it would be this area where my attention was most needed. I prised her fingers from once more crushing my consoling hand and I offered her the grip of the bedpost instead. I thought the metal of the bed would buckle as she yelled her loudest. It was with politeness and – it would be wrong to say otherwise – reluctance, that I asked her, ‘Please could you open your legs a little wider, Mrs Bligh?’
‘Call me blinking Queenie, for Christ’s sake,’ she shouted, just before she started to cry.
‘Okay,’ I told her, ‘I will call you Queenie, Mrs Bligh. There is no need for tears.’
‘I’m crying ’cause it bloody hurts!’ she screamed.
I was learning that Englishwomen can behave in a peculiar fashion. And this one was conspiring to be the oddest one I had ever met. Suddenly she was smiling again, ‘Oh, what’s happening, Hortense? Tell me,’ and seeming to all the world like she was pleased to be having this baby.
So I looked. What a thing was this! A wondrous sight perhaps – for there was the round head complete with curly dark hair matted in blood pushing out from within her. A new life for this world. But it was quite the ugliest sight I had ever beheld. Only a few days before this pretty white woman was going about her business – collecting her shopping, hanging washing on a line, passing the time of day with neighbours – now, prostrated by nature, she was simply the vessel for the Lord to do His work. This woman’s private parts had lost all notion of being of the human kind. Surely they could not stretch wide enough to let the creature pass. Cha, all this straining, squeezing and screaming. I would not presume to tell the Lord His business but, come, the laying of an egg by a hen was, without doubt, the more civilised method of creation. Every tissue in my body was tingling with repulsion. But for the sake of this woman’s well-being, not even an actor on a stage could have held a gaze of rapt wonder more steadily.
‘The baby is on its way,’ I told her. ‘The head is there.’
‘It’s crowning,’ she said. ‘Can you see it?’ The noise she then created brought to mind the relieving of constipation. I was wearing my good white wedding dress. What consternation befell me as I realised I would have no chance to cover myself
‘You must push, Mrs Bligh,’ I said.
And with one venomous yell of ‘Queenie, call me bloody Queenie,’ the head of the baby popped full out.
‘I have the head,’ I told her. For there it was, cradled in my hand, in this obscene resting place. Crumpled as discarded paper. Dark hair, nose with two nostrils and lips that waved in a perfect bow. Suddenly that fresh mouth sprang open to deliver forth a mighty shrill scream.
I lifted my head to tell her, ‘One more push, Mrs Bligh.’
This baby’s head then began to twist round – turning without aid from me. No further injunction was necessary before, in one slippery rush, I found myself holding the whole baby.
‘It’s here,’ I said. ‘I have it. I have it here.’ But she had fallen back upon her pillows. ‘It is born, Mrs Bligh – it is here.’
I lifted the baby carefully so she might see. She held out her arms. The slimy purple pink of a robust earthworm, with skin smeared in blood and wrinkled as the day it would die, and yet still Mrs Bligh’s eyes alighted on this grumpy-faced child and saw it as someone she could love. This was truly the miracle to behold. Leaning forward she enclosed this baby in two grateful hands. ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God.’ And luckily my dress had remained clean.
‘We must keep it warm,’ I told her. A throbbing cord of bright silver blue still tied mother to child. I brought a towel to clean and wrap it, but this wretched cord hindered all our movements.
‘We have to cut it,’ Mrs Bligh said. ‘Get the scissors – they’re on the dressing-table.’
I had thought my work done but here was she once more commanding me to fetch. I washed the implement in the bowl of boiled water. Drying it carefully I handed the scissors to her.
‘No, you’ll have to do it, Hortense.’
As soon as my mouth protested, ‘Me?’ reluctantly I realised it was only I who could perform this distasteful task.
I placed the cord within the open blades. Was I averting my eye or closing them? I do not remember for all at once Mrs Bligh was shouting. ‘No, wait.’ String, Mrs Bligh informed me, I needed to make two ties in the cord – one near the baby, one near her – and cut in between. She was insistent on this fancywork, observing me tying the knots as strict as a teacher at school. ‘Good. Now you can cut it,’ she finally granted. The scissors cut through the gristle with an ease that startled me. At last, she took the baby into her arms, embracing it against her chest. Then like a fussy shopkeeper with his wares she began to inspect. Two arms she lifted to delicately count every finger. Ten toes she looked for. A gentle wind she blew at each nostril. She wiped an eye. Then, rummaging careful in the middle of its two legs, she said, ‘It’s a boy. He’s a lovely, perfect boy.’
I had no time for this reverie for the room was cold, the mother gone fool-fool and the baby naked. Every blanket had slipped to the floor in all the confusion. Bending to retrieve them at the foot of the bed, I found myself awkward by the feet of Mrs Bligh. When, all at once, Mrs Bligh’s private part let forth a burp then spat out on to the lap of my best white wedding dress a bloody-soaked lump of her insides. Looking like a piece of best liver it burst on to me as if I was some bullseye in a game. My anguished cry had Mrs Bligh straining to look between her knees at the commotion.
‘Oh, good. That’s the afterbirth. Don’t worry, it’s perfectly natural,’ she told me.
Soaking pink with the bloody splattered tissue, my poor dress wept. I picked up this slippery excretion and dumped it in the bowl of boiled water (with no doubt in my mind that this Englishwoman would probably wash her vegetables in this same bowl tomorrow). Mrs Bligh tutted at the sight of my spoiled dress, then said, ‘Come and look at him, Hortense.’ She was crying again. ‘He’s a lovely little boy.’
And I said to myself, Hortense, come, this is a gift from the Lord – life. What price is a little disgust on your best dress? I decided to pay it no mind.
She had wiped all the blood and yellow muck from the baby’s face and wrapped him tight in the messy towel. She pulled the cloth down, away from his chin, so I might get a good view. I looked at the baby. Then my eye went straight to Mrs Bligh, who was cooing with words incomprehensible to the fully grown. I looked back to the baby to make sure what my eye had seen was true. Once more to Mrs Bligh, I perused her face for signs that what I could see she saw also. But her only response was a loving smile as she tenderly wiped at the dark hair on his head. Was it possible this woman had not noticed?
‘Your baby is black,’ I said to her. For, no longer that slimy purple pink, his skin had darkened to be browner than my own. ‘Mrs Bligh, you know your baby is a black child.’ Dreamily she tell me to call her Queenie. ‘Mrs Bligh, can you hear me? You have a coloured child.’ The skin of this baby appeared so dark resting against the pale ghostly white of its mother that, for a moment, I wondered if this blonde woman had swapped her baby for another while I was otherwise engaged. How else would this happen? ‘Mrs Bligh, can you see your baby is not white?’ But she paid me no mind, beginning her counting again – ten fingers, ten toes, she tells me. Yes – and every one of them black!
This woman had ceased to make sense, when just then I heard the voice of Gilbert Joseph at the door. ‘Hortense, what ’appening in there?’ Was it the Almighty intervening to point a finger? As these words were spoken, Mr Bligh blustered on, letting Gilbert know that he should remove himself from the door, in what, after all, was his house. Outside together and still scuffling. I looked to Mrs Bligh with her baby, serene as a Madonna on the messy bed. And it felt like a vicious cruelty to have to ask her, ‘Shall I let them in now?’
Fifty-four
Gilbert
Now, come – let me think where to start. I must begin with Hortense. Bloody as a murderer, she walked out of the door of Mrs Bligh’s basement flat. The whole front of her good white dress was red. Her hands, delicately holding her coat and hat, were, however, covered in the congealing scarlet stains of a hapless butcher.
‘You can see your wife now, Mr Bligh,’ was all the explanation that was forthcoming from her lips.
As she moved past me to ascend the stairs to return to our room, her nose lifted so far in the air it was a wonder her neck did not break. Now this was the story that my mind conjured. Queenie had in some way insulted my fiercely proud wife. Her hat a little old-fashioned? Her English not so good? Who knows? But a slight none the less for which Hortense took grave offence. In retaliation Hortense had – with a knife, perhaps, or a hatchet – killed her. Not until I was standing behind Mr Bligh, trying not to make too much noise to vex him with my presence, looking on a bed that contained Queenie and a newborn very brown-skinned baby, did things enlighten sufficient for my senseless brain to finally realise that, oh, boy, no, this was bigger trouble than that!
Never had I heard such a noisy quiet. We three – no, we four – caught in a scene that defied sensible comment. Queenie fondled her pickney that was plainly still wet behind the ears. The blameless baby wiggled, unaware of the accursed situation it had squeezed itself out into. Her husband, staring on them straight-backed as if on parade, wiped a hand back and forth across his head in the exact spot where his cuckold’s horn would rise. While I frowned. For I knew Queenie had put on a bit of weight but what an astonishment to find it was the type you could dress in a bonnet. Some word was needed to break this frozen clinch. So it was I who said, ‘Shall we still get a doctor?’ The fool husband then turned his gaze to me. So bewildered was his countenance, it was almost comical. But this situation’s funny side was obviously not what was troubling him at that moment. His eye locked on mine. And in that steady stare lurked true pain. My tongue had just begun with urgency to click to the roof of my mouth to utter the words, ‘No, man, this is nothing to do with me,’ when he lunged at me.
Two hands grabbed scruffy fistfu
Cha, blood running wet down my chin and I wiped my nose on the sleeve of my one good suit. It soaked up the indelible liquid like sponge. I went to go. Leave these white folks to their problems. Looking at the front of my stained, ripped and ruined suit, I knew I had problems too. Plenty.
But he had not finished yet. He sprang up to jump on my back. This man was tenacious as a vine. I swung this way and that to dislodge him. His hand was clawing nails in my face. So I whacked him with my elbow hard in the stomach. He deflated fast as a pricked balloon, but not buzzing off round the room: he slipped almost gracefully from me on to the floor again – his knees curling him up tight. At last, I’d killed him! He stayed that way. Breathing heavy as a crying child, wrapped up rigid on the floor. Come, I had not hit him that hard. ‘You all right, man?’ I asked, after a little while. I got no reply except his anguished breath. So I told him once more, ‘Cha, nah, man, I sorry for you. But this business is nothing to do with me.’