Irenosen Okojie - Butterfly Fish

The woman with the clicking heels showed her face, gaunt and knowing in the gap. A hospital ID hung from her neck. She squinted, scribbling notes in a pad. She knew she couldn’t help me. I was a lost cause. She took a deep breath, released the wind from her mouth, scattering the scenes inside the ambulance. They fell into each other, changing to some unlikely animal. Yellow chickens became yolks again, I smacked a brass key repeatedly against the desktop, and fish carried untied shoelaces in their mouths. My mother’s bracelet fluttered at the edge just as the siren came on, wailing in my ears.

I felt a hand on my shoulder; its broad, firm grip was familiar. “Hey, have you been waiting long?” Mervyn asked, face full of concern. He helped me up. The man in the chair opposite coughed into his chequered handkerchief. I managed a half smile that felt more like a grimace. “Thanks for coming,” I answered, trying to wrestle the sinking feeling in my stomach, the panic I was feeling at the thought of being out in the world again.

“No problem. You knew I’d come. Anything for you, you know that. I’m just happy you reached out to me. We haven’t seen each other much since Queenie died.”

He blew a breath out slowly, as if trying to compose himself. Damp spots had spread on the collar of his crisp, blue shirt. Maybe he didn’t know how to comfort me, what to say. Sometimes, people struggled in these situations. I almost told him I didn’t know what I needed to hear. And Queenie? What would she say seeing me like this? It was partly her fault for inconveniently dying and leaving me alone. Anger bloomed in my chest, followed by sharp, painful pangs of longing.

“I brought you here once as a kid you know. You’d stopped breathing. Your mother was beside herself, hysterical. I’d never seen her that way.” He rubbed his face, grappling with the memory. “When you finally came round, it was as if… You’d been somewhere. You were a strange child, otherworldly at times.”

We crossed the stretch of gleaming, pale aisle, leaving behind groaning lift doors and the constant patter of footsteps. He’d parked his black Mercedes Kompressor right near the entrance. I slid in carefully. It smelled of mint and leather. He turned the engine and radio on; set the car into gear before expertly moving off. The bulldog on the dashboard began to nod at the panic and fear growing inside me; Anon caught the bulldog’s head during two pit stops. Tears ran down my cheeks. I rolled the window down partially, leaned against it to feel the cold air on my face and the city shrinking beneath the fingers of my lost arm.

The hole came attached to the baby’s ankle, just after it was born. At first it was barely the weight of a breath. Then it became dense and unknowable despite the irony of the baby who arrived into the world howling at the pale, blue ceiling, blinking frequently as though adjusting to her new setting, clenching and unclenching a demanding fist, being named Joy.

Motherhood Na wah oh! Queenie thought lying in the hospital bed, drenched in sweat and bone tired. I don suffer for this child she muttered, the comment barely passed her lips. The Doctor and nurse smiled at each other. After cleaning the baby up, the flaxen haired, pudgy-faced nurse handed her over wrapped in a light cotton blanket.

“Oh she’s a beauty!” the nurse remarked, glancing at Queenie for a reaction. Queenie gave a wobbly smile. “Thank you. I thank God for this blessing.” She felt as though she was on the edge of the moment, floating beyond the emotional connection the situation called for. What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she be overwhelmed with the depth of feeling other mothers’ spoke of? Instead she was relieved. Soon she’d be able to fit into her clothes again, hold down food. Her morning sickness had been morning, afternoon and evening sickness. She’d found herself embarrassingly vomiting into a bin on the street, throwing up on a bus, darting into pubs as quickly as her unsteady legs could carry her; vomiting so much it seemed she’d lost organs in the process. They surrounded her while her head bobbed above putrid, urine stained toilet bowls. She checked they were hers by the weight of a lung in her hand, a heart circling the bowl, its ventricles flooded by flushing water as she rocked back on her knees cursing.

The baby was at her breast. Queenie felt nothing except pangs of hunger and a doom she couldn’t explain. She wanted to ask the nurse why the baby’s shadow was in the doorway. The small mass in her arms screamed. She knew the nurse wouldn’t be able to tell her. She closed her eyes, a gauzy haze descended. Her lids flicked open. The shadow was at her breast, sucking greedily on a large brown nipple. She looked into Joy’s knowing brown eyes, her irises orbited darkly. Queenie sighed, sinking into the hole. The ceiling fan spun between prior scenes of the birth.

Queenie didn’t call him to see the baby those first few days. She’d refused to tell him her due date in response to feeling like an afterthought in his neat, well-organised life. I don walka into this situation well well! Queenie thought, chiding herself.

She missed the smell of him, that warm, earthy scent that had a hint of exoticness. She missed the feeling he gave her, the softness of her malleable body beneath his broad, steady hands. Sometimes, she pictured an atlas of their times together rising from his shoulders, that he held that world in his hands during quiet moments. It had been difficult giving birth alone, panicked and half out of her mind.

She’d been in the supermarket when her water broke, clutching a bottle of vegetable oil that fell, missing her feet by an inch. She’d called out, heart racing, mouth dry. The realization she’d be giving birth alone sank into her caving body. Somebody grabbed her arms from behind, pulling her up. She saw him then, in his other life, sitting at a wooden dining table, holding cutlery, covered in birth water.

At the nurse’s station, Queenie held the black phone receiver, the dial tone a new heartbeat. Life-sized worker bees; the nurses flitted to and fro in all directions. And the faint jangle of medical instruments, footsteps and fast instructions seemed like some unlikely symphony a Doctor had concocted. What had she been thinking keeping this baby? How was she going to cope? You should have thought of that , she mumbled internally. Tears ran down her cheeks. The faint ache in her grew. She took a slow breath and looked around, trying to still her trembling body. An eggshell coloured desk sat in the centre, stacked with notes. Next to a watch a silver stethoscope borrowed breaths from a concave chest in the distance, trapping an international calling card, the zip from a polka dot dress, a brass head bearing the memory of a father’s touch, the blueprint of a baby from the blue. A swear jar with the note fu**! was perched in the middle. Queenie resisted the urge to pick up the jar and walk the sterile aisles rattling coins, until the delicate knot of her loose hospital gown came undone.

Earlier, she’d torn the name band from her wrist. She looked up at the whiteboard mounted on the wall, transfixed by the names and hospital numbers scrawled in barely legible orange handwriting, waiting for something to be revealed to her. She felt scared, lonely and miserable. Part of the baby’s blueprint had found its way into her throat, scrunching into a ball. Her eyes swam. She spotted a nurse flying towards her, face pinched. “You left your baby on the bed! You can’t do that. What if she rolled over and fell to the floor? Oh dear, you must be very tired.” The nurse remarked, searching her face worriedly. Queenie looked through the nurse, her mouth curving up in a half smile, half grimace.