Caeli Widger - Mother of Invention

Slowly, she began to sit, but bile rose in her throat and she lay down again.

“Tessa? Hello?” A familiar, bell-bright voiced lilted through the door. “It’s Rita Gupta.”

“And Vivian.”

“Can we come in?” said Gupta.

“Yes,” said Tessa, wincing at the croaky sound of her voice.

“Oh,” said Gupta, stepping through the door. “I had no idea you were still in bed. I’m so sorry.”

“We were worried,” said Viv. “You never sleep late.”

“No, no, it’s fine,” said Tessa.

“Are you feeling okay?” said Gupta carefully.

“Not at all,” said Tessa. “I’m not feeling okay at all.”

“In what way?” said Gupta, concerned. “You look worn out.”

“Did you sleep in your clothes?” asked Viv.

Tessa nodded.

“May I have a look?” said Gupta, stepping closer to Tessa’s bedside. “When did you start feeling sick?”

Tessa made an effort to sit up, and this time made it upright without feeling like she was going to vomit. Still, it was arduous. She closed her eyes and sat with her back against the headboard.

“Do you mind if I touch your forehead?” asked Gupta.

Her hand on Tessa’s face was dry and cool, somehow comforting.

“No fever.” She pulled an ocular scope from the pocket of her white coat. “Can I look at your eyes? Can you open them?”

Tessa opened them and blinked, willing the room around her into focus.

“You can look,” she said. “But I’m definitely not sick.”

“You’re not?” said Gupta, curious. “Because you don’t look entirely well.”

“No offense,” said Viv. “But you don’t.”

Tessa breathed deeply to steady herself. She pictured the queasiness exiting her body. It did not budge.

She looked into Dr. Gupta’s doe-brown eyes.

“I’m not sick, Rita,” she said. “I’m pregnant.”

Thirty weeks and four days later

“Ice chips?” Kate proffered a plastic cup.

Tessa waved it away. Her contractions were three minutes apart.

“You’re doing amazing, Tessa,” said LaTonya.

“Breathing like a champ,” said Kate, nodding.

Gupta lifted Tessa’s gown to check her. “Close to nine centimeters,” she said, pleased.

The next contraction hit her like hot, deep rods to her center, from all directions. A cramp dialed way beyond its natural limits. All the analogies she’d heard: Take your worst menstrual cramp and multiply it by a thousand. Like running the twenty-sixth mile of a marathon over and over and over. They were apt but also completely wrong. Childbirth was its own, specific pain. It was shaped from fear. The fear of cleaving one life from another. She understood: A separation this profound must be momentous. Pain was the form of expression. It was how the body mourned.

The baby was leaving her in order to join her.

She unleashed a ragged scream.

When the pain receded, she heard Gwen’s voice: “I’m glad I got to skip this part.”

“Gwen!” said Kate. “That’s not nice.”

But Tessa tried to smile. “It’s okay, Gwen.”

Tessa was no longer afraid. Her friends had all done this and survived, without partners. Not simply survived, but flourished. They were out in the world with their babies. Working and mothering, working and mothering. They were using Mammarinas and the Intimizer and they were happy. Exhausted, yes, and still stretched thin, but with a minimum of the g-word and a strong sense of fulfillment.

If they could do it, Tessa told herself, she certainly could. Without Peter. Their divorce had finalized last month, and he’d moved to Oregon with the hiker. Lindsey was her name. A cute, sporty name. She was thirty-three. An avid hiker and climber. This was as much as Tessa had learned; she wanted to know nothing else.

Almost as soon as her last contraction ended, another began.

“More breathing,” said Gupta.

“You’re okay, Tessa,” said Kate. “It’s almost over, over, over.”

“Push through,” said Gwen. “Get it?”

“Shut up,” said LaTonya. “Tessa, honey, breathe.”

“Stop telling me that,” said Tessa, inhaling as deeply as she could, but it was harder than ever. She heard herself making guttural, goatish sounds.

“Stay present,” said Gupta. “Stay right inside this moment.”

“Fuck this moment,” said Tessa, as Gupta peered between her legs again.

“Ten centimeters,” said Gupta. “Congratulations. It’s time.”

Tessa had the wild, intense urge to push.

“I need to push,” she said.

She pushed.

“Crowning,” said Gupta.

“Beautiful!” said Kate.

She pushed again.

The ring of fire felt more like a crown of thorns. Burning.

“Aaaaahhhhh!” she yelled. Her voice filled the room.

“One more,” said the doctor.

Tessa squeezed herself and felt the baby moving through her, felt the smooth tangle of limbs passing through her.

“Reach down and grab her,” said Gupta.

Blindly, Tessa reached between her legs to the slippery thing emerging.

“Now bring her onto your chest,” the doctor said.

“Oh my God,” said Gwen. “Oh my God.”

Tessa obeyed, and suddenly the baby was there, damp and bleating, her weight tiny but essential on Tessa’s chest.

At her bedside, the three women of Cohort One stood weeping. Tessa lowered her face to the top of her daughter’s perfect head, covered in a scrim of dark hair, like Peter’s, and kissed it.

Tessa and Viv sat in side-by-side chaises on the empty beach near Big Sur, baby Petra parked on her swim-diapered bottom between them. She was busy poking holes in the sand with a plastic shovel, grabbing at shells and rocks, flashing a gap-toothed grin at her mother each time the gentle surf lapped at her toes. When the rising tide splashed over her chubby thighs, she squealed in surprise.

Viv reached to lift the baby to dry sand.

“No, let me,” said Tessa. “I don’t want you to strain yourself. She’s twenty-two pounds now.” At ten months, Petra was in the ninetieth percentile for both height and weight, a healthy and exuberant child. Already Tessa could not imagine life without her. This was what had surprised her most; she’d always imagined a baby would make her feel displaced, that it would muscle into her life, helpless and teeming with insatiable needs, and fracture the person she’d once been into disparate pieces. She’d assumed a baby would cleave her into mommy Tessa and grown-up Tessa. That her life would require the permanent juggling of these roles.

In reality, Petra had quite the opposite effect. She was demanding, yes, but she felt like a natural extension of Tessa. Her effect was expansive, unifying. It was as if Tessa had brought a part of herself out into the world that had formerly lain dormant inside her.

Peter, she realized, had been the one who’d made her feel divided. In a perpetual struggle to tamp down certain parts of herself, to cultivate others. It was not his fault. He’d done the best he could. He’d loved her. But deep down, she understood now, he’d wanted her to be a different kind of woman. The kind who equated his needs with her own. Perhaps all men sought that, Tessa thought. Perhaps she was inherently undesirable in that regard. Destined to be alone.

Except that she had Petra now. She was not alone. But it felt right: having Petra and not having Peter. It was simply a feeling, not an idea. She was not suddenly pro-baby; she did not feel her life was “complete.” She still felt hungry for her work, an itch to keep moving, to build and test and accomplish.

“It’s okay, I’ve got her,” said Viv, maneuvering the baby onto her lap. She made a happy, gulping sound. Tessa’s daughter adored Viv.