December 26, 2006 at 10:08 pm · Filed under About Deanna's Book, Book Excerpt, Miscarriage, Suicide
During this run of fresh writing I’ve done over the holiday I’ve added extensively to the outline, trying to make sure each character is well drawn throughout the novel. The book is over half done now. I am still roughly on target to finish by the first week of February.
In this scene, we flash back to when Tina came home from the hospital and discovered Arnie had not just ditched her in the emergency room, but had left her life completely.
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Tina bumped the door to her garage apartment open with her hip and flipped on the light. She was thankful her parents hadn’t pressed her lately to move back to the main house. She didn’t think she could manage being in such proximity to them again.
She dumped her bag on the ledge between the living and kitchen areas. The handle caught on her wrist, stripping the tape off one of her bandages.
“Owwwie! Crap!” she shouted, pressing the gauze back down against the fiery burn of her stitches. “Don’t ever slice yourself!” she called to the ceiling. “It hurts like a mother!”
She rounded the short wall and braced her arm over the sink as if blood might come pouring out any second. She peeled back her orange sleeve and examined the bandage. Half the adhesive had worked loose.
She tugged at the gauze and tape, revealing the pale swollen skin marred by three clean distinct lines, now crisscrossed with some bizarre mending tape. Steri strips, or something, they had called them. Better than Frankenstein arms, she thought. Black stitches on red welts on white flesh. Ick. Thank God for progress.
She walked down the hall to the bathroom, where the light was better. Leaning her arm against the chipped porcelain sink then spotting her haggard face in the mirror made her vision blur and every emotion she’d felt a week ago crashed back into her.
She lurched for the cabinet where she’d kept the box of razors. They were gone, of course, her parents had certainly scoured the apartment for anything sharp. She sat on the toilet lid, still holding her arm on the sink, and leaned her forehead into the crook of her elbow.
It had been so easy. She and Arnie had always kept razor blades around, as he sometimes painted on glass and needed them to scrape away mistakes.
She had come home from the hospital, clutching the Polaroids the hospital had given her of Peanut. Her parents wanted her back in her room at home, but she’d felt certain Arnie would be waiting for her, and she wanted to show him the pictures.
The baby had been so tiny, so feathery light. He’d actually been able to breathe for a while, each inhale a great movement of his entire body, a gulp of air, a shudder on the way out. They’d wrapped him in a white blanket with a blue stripe, just one small white disk with a wire attached to his chest, and laid him under a heat lamp. She’d touched his tiny cheek, but not stroked, as the doctors said his skin was very sensitive and to over stimulate him would cause pain.
They stayed this way for two hours, her leaning over the glass wall of the crib, hand warm under the light and resting lightly on his back, until the monitor beeped a warning.
A nurse stopped in and said something about apnea and called in a doctor. Peanut still took random breaths, now spaced very far apart. The baby doc came in and removed the disk and handed Peanut to her. “It won’t be long now,” he said. “You can hold him until then. It won’t hurt him.”
She let her mom and dad take a turn, but her mom got too distraught and fled the room. Her father followed her shortly and Tina ended up alone on the bed with Peanut. She pressed him into her neck, her hand on his back, often holding her own breath until she felt the shudder of his. She kissed his small forehead and after a while realized she had continued breathing when he had totally stopped.
She tucked him next to her on the bed and fell asleep then, the stressful hours now passed, labor, delivery, panic and fear, her overbearing parents and Arnie dashing out–all behind her. Peanut was still warm against her cheek as she dozed off. Sometime later a nurse woke her and said she would have to take him away.
Maybe her parents should not have left her alone with the Poloroids, but she had insisted, even when it became clear Arnie had moved all his stuff out.
She’d stumbled to the bathroom and saw he’d left one drawing on the wall, his rendition of what he thought the baby might look like. This image was so different from his others–all Goth women and red streaks on black. He’d outlined the baby in pencil based on the sonograms, then colored in the delicate skins and features with soft chalk.
The one work of his he hadn’t taken with him was their baby.
The world had rushed at her too hard. She felt completely out of control, her future whizzing through her body–back to the old school, the mountain of problems, bad grades, attitude, teachers who didn’t like her, mean kids. She’d been so happy at the alternative school, accepted, unique. She and Arnie were artists and revered over there. Girls without supportive boyfriends were so jealous.
But on that day she came home from the hospital, all she knew was that her baby was dead, her boyfriend gone, and she’d soon be booted back to the horror of public school. She washed her face and hands and the gleam of water on her white wrists seemed too pristine, too pearl. The razors lay neatly in the chest of art supplies and she stopped thinking, stopped rationalizing anything at all. The act wasn’t about killing herself, not in that moment, or about escaping, it was about marring the perfection of her arms. She was tainted, her baby had died, she was unloved and unwanted. She felt she should be marked by this–that her physical body should bear the scars of the death of her happiness.
She leaned her pale arm against the sink and didn’t hesitate once. Three sharp lines straight down from mid arm to wrist. Before she could feel weak or frightened, she switched the blade to the left hand and made three more on the right.
The blood didn’t pour like she thought it would. The lines raised to the surface, first white, then pink, then a thin red etching lifted up. She hadn’t been consistent in the pressure, so some parts bled before others, creating beads that slid down the curve. Then one of the cuts opened wide and pulsed out blood with every heartbeat. It streamed out more like she’d imagined it would. She sat amazed by the color, red on white, so bright and harsh. She still did not feel woozy. Only the sting of the cut felt different than before she’d done it. She stood up and that movement made the blood really come forth, and now it flowed down her palm and off the tips of her fingers.
She realized then she might die. She sat on the toilet lid and tried to decide. Did she call an ambulance and save herself, or did she lie in warm water and let the blood flow sweetly out? She could wake up with Peanut. No one could take him away from her this time.
Her arms hurt something awful now and she did begin to see stars–pinpricks of light. The color was draining out of her vision–everything turning black and white. Some instinct took over and she stumbled into the living room and snatched her cell phone out of her bag, leaving streaks of red everywhere. She dialed 911 and managed to tell them what she’d done and where she lived. When the paramedics arrived, she was still lightly conscious and even smiled at a cute one. He would make a good dad, she vaguely remembered whispering before her memory ran out.
Tina exhaled in an elongated rush and fingered a steri strip. She wouldn’t do it again, no way. The ordeal had been entirely too much trouble–parent freak-outs, another visit to the same hospital, then the sophomoric case workers who insisted she go to therapy and the pregnancy loss group.
Actually, she was glad about that part. She stood and peered into the mirror, tugging on one of her spiked ponies. She felt real grown up there and Melinda was nice. She felt like someone who had been through something, and everyone acknowledged it. Nobody thought she was crazy or a loser. She could say anything she wanted.
The baby’s drawing still hung over the towel rack. Tina lifted it off its hook and hugged it close to her. Peanut had been a real person. He’d actually lived. She had pictures to prove it and he’d even had a dad for a while–a dad who’d been interested enough in him to draw him before he was born.
If only he’d stuck around a bit to actually see him. He’d regret it one day, if he didn’t already. Tina didn’t care so much that he’d ditched her. Boys in high school were a drag like that. But to miss your kid’s entire life. That’s the kind of thing you always end up wishing you’d done different.
December 8, 2006 at 5:36 am · Filed under Book Excerpt, Miscarriage
Let me warn you. This is probably the hardest section in the book. We’re about 2/3 through the story, and the main plot is about to unfold. This is the last section of background on the ladies, and part of how Stella got where she is, childless, without hope for a family.
Don’t read it if you aren’t ready, in a calm situation, and prepared to be a little upset.
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The door cracked open with a loud pop. Dane looked up from the sofa, where he sat watching television and drinking a beer.
“Hey baby. How was the emergency meeting? You doing okay?”
“Yeah.” Stella dropped her bag and keys by the door and flopped on the sofa. “Swig?”
He passed her the bottle. “Must have been a rough one. You never ask for a drink.”
Stella drank then screwed up her face. “Piss water. It’s because you drink piss water.”
Dane laughed. “Beer snob.”
“Alcoholic.”
He pulled her head to his cheek and they rocked together lightly. “You want to tell me what happened Pell Mell Stell? Did you tell everyone what happened?”
“Not at the meeting. Everyone had so many troubles.”
“They always do.”
“But Dot talked!” She sat up. “She told us so much!”
“But what about you baby? How many years you going to do this supporting other people before they help you?”
“I get my help by helping them. Besides,” she punched him in the chest. “I got you.”
“You do have that.” He set the bottle on a side table. “Let me hang on to you a minute.”
Stella felt her false brightness, her control, fall away as soon as he wrapped his arms around her. The sobs came again–damn–second time in a week! What was happening to her?
“Ah, Stell. You going through something? Is it the jewelry still?”
“No–I don’t think so. The babies just seem so very far away. And Kayleigh will have her Angelica soon. Any day.”
“I think we need to make a pilgrimage.”
Stella relaxed against him, the warmth of his skin seeping through to her cheek through the flannel shirt. “Really? We haven’t in a while.”
“Yeah. Let’s go.”
They stood and held hands, heading to the back bedroom of the house, which they kept for storage. Dane flipped on the light and they looked over the stacks of boxes.
“Geez, where is it?” he asked.
“It’s in here somewhere.” Stella waded through stacks of magazines and lifted a blanket. “Yeah, here it is.”
“You got them both?”
Stella lifted a pink fabric-covered box. “Yes. The other is below it.”
“Hand them over.”
She passed the pink box, then a blue one over to his outstretched arms.
“Back in the living room?” he asked.
She nodded, already feeling the downward tug of emotion.
They walked through the hall. “Music too?” he asked.
She still could only nod.
He set the boxes on the coffee table and searched a moment through a case of CDs. Even though she sat on the sofa, out of view, she knew the one he was taking out. Country stuff. Reserved for this. Normally she couldn’t stomach the sap.
The first notes came out the speaker and she shifted down again. But the pilgrimage was purifying, reset them in a way.
“You ready, Pell?” Dane sat beside her, knees wide, hands clasped together.
“Yeah.”
“How far back you want to go?”
“Just to Angelica.”
“Okay.” He slid the pink box nearer and lifted the lid.
The pregnancy stick lay on top. Stella reached for it and lifted it out.
She remembered ripping the protective plastic off and making Dane hold it between her legs as she peed.
“This is kind of kinky,” he said, looking up at her with his crinkling eyes. He hadn’t had a beard then, smooth faced, young, although hard then, already, with all he’d been through the last decade.
But they were together again and got married in a flash despite her family’s uproar. Stella was 33 and they wanted to get on top of the baby plan after such a long wait, so she never even bothered with the Pill.
“This is it!” she said. “Pee a’comin’!”
The stream fell cleanly and hit the water. “I’m missing it!” he said, laughing. “How do you aim this thing!”
Her laughter made her pee jiggle, she could hear it splashing. “Keep trying or you’ll have to fork over another ten bucks for a new one!”
“Ack! We’re too poor for that!” He shifted his hand between her legs. “Got it!”
“Good thing you like water sports!” she said.
Her thighs had been so thin then, small and perfect even splayed out on the seat. She touched them self-consciously now, broad beneath her flowered dress, and passed the stick to Dane, who leaned against her on the sofa. “You peed on me!” he said.
“You loved it.”
He kissed her forehead. “I did.”
“God we were so happy when that line showed up.”
“Look, it’s still there.” She tapped on the test stick.
“Yep. Some things are permanent.”
Dane reached into the box. “Ah, your attempt at booties.” He pulled out a tangle of pink yarn.
“Now now. I tried!” Stella examined the bungled knitting. She’d started the booties the same day, sitting with a how-to book and beginner needles.
Seven glorious weeks passed between when she took the home test and when they went to the doctor for her first checkup. Dane made okay money at the refinery; they had good insurance. She didn’t mind her job as a clerk at a department store. They weren’t rich or anything, but it would be okay.
The doctor didn’t do a sonogram back then at the first visit, but he felt her belly, checked her urine, and said everything looked fine. They drew some blood to check her pregnancy hormone levels.
Two days later the bad part began.
“Your hCG level is a bit low,” the nurse said on the phone. “It’s not anything to worry about, as you may have just gotten your dates wrong. We’d like to check you again, today if possible.”
She’d gone in and given more blood. She had no idea what they meant about her dates. Two days later, another phone call. They sent her to a radiologist for a sonogram.
Dane took off to go with her and held her hand as they watched the screen. No heartbeat. Baby measuring at six weeks instead of ten.
They had walked out in a daze. The world whizzed by in a blur of color and sound, but the two of them moved in slow motion.
“I don’t want to go to work tomorrow,” Dane said.
“I don’t want to go home,” she said. “All the things we’ve already done.” She thought of the booties, the blanket, some stuffed animals they had already bought. Dane had come home every few days with something new.
“Let’s just drive,” she said. “See where we end up.”
“You okay with that? Don’t we need to see the doctor again?” He unlocked the car, but they stood outside it still.
“There will be time for doctors. Let’s just take a trip together. You, me, and the baby. Before she’s gone.”
“She?”
“Yeah. She’s a girl. I know this somehow.”
“Okay. I believe you. And yeah. Let’s go.”
They took off through Missouri and into the Ozarks near Eureka Springs, Arkansas.
They turned off the highway and into Lake Leatherwood Park. The bumpy road jolted them as they peered out the dusty windows into the lines of trees. You could only see a swath of sky above. Eventually they came to a clearing where empty RV hookups led to a circle drive, an office, and a dock with rental boats.
“We can just sleep in the car,” Dane said.
“That’s fine.”
They paid $12 for a spot in the circle meant for tents near the shore. Stella felt the first cramps around dusk.
“You okay, baby?” Dane came up behind her as she bent over. She felt like something was compressing her insides.
“No. I think something’s happening. Maybe the baby is coming.”
“Should we go to the hospital?”
“I don’t want to. I don’t want some strangers around me. I like it here. The sky. The lake. Trees.”
“Well, here, sit on my shirt.” Dane took off his flannel and spread it on the ground. Stella curled up on her side.
“Are you in pain, my poor Stell?”
“Not exactly.” The cramps came in waves, but none of them were unmanageable. “I will bleed though, I can feel it coming.”
“You got anything?”
“No. I didn’t think it would happen so quick.”
“Maybe knowing about it somehow makes it happen. Like your brain admitting it to the body.”
She began to cry then, tears spilling over her wrists. “I admit nothing.”
Dane rummaged through the trunk and found a picnic blanket and a roll of shop towels. She watched him from the ground as he pulled off the soiled outer layer and stuffed it back in the car.
“This might help.” He knelt beside her and set the roll within easy reach. Dark was rapidly falling. “I’m going to scavenge for firewood before it’s too dark to see.”
Stella was afraid to move. Each shift of her body brought her closer to some end. Dane returned with an armload of kindling, then crumpled some junk mail from the backseat to light.
He spread the blanket and she crawled over to it. He lay next to her and curled her back into his chest. She felt safe then and fell asleep.
The crunch of wood dropping on the fire woke her. Dane had moved away from her to put more wood on.
“Sorry, Stell. I tried to be quiet.”
She felt sore and stiff from sleeping on the hard ground. She moved to a sitting position. Immediately she felt a thickness pushing from her vagina.
“Oh God!” She stood and held her hand between her legs.
“What, baby!” Dane leapt over the fire to get to her.
She unfastened her jeans and yanked them down. “It’s coming!”
He knelt before her as she pulled down her panties. “Is it there?” she asked.
“I think so.” He helped her out of the clothes, carefully cradling the panties as she stepped out.
“Is it there?” They held the underwear close to the fire.
“Yes.”
She looked at him, his face tight and full of fear in the orange-red glow of the fire.
She reached behind her for the roll of shop towels. “Here, wrap her in this.”
They separated the small ball from the underwear. “I can’t make anything out,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“I don’t know either.”
Hysteria rose in her. Crickets chirped. The fire snapped and crackled. Everything was disjointed, a shattered puzzle. Blood flowed out of her and she just let it drop into the dirt as she squatted by Dane, who peered at the black mass in the blue towel.
He sobbed, a big hard sound in the night. “What do I do with her? What is right to do?”
“Cover her,” Stella said. “Wrap her up tight.” Together they folded the corners of the square over baby.
“Should we bury her?”
“No! What if some animal digs her up?”
“Take her to the hospital? Shouldn’t we go now?”
Stella let go of the bundle and Dane pulled it to his chest. She tore off a section of the shop towels and stuffed them into the crotch of her jeans, then pulled them on.
“No. I don’t want that either.” She sat on the blanket without fastening her pants. “Here, give her to me.”
Dane moved close to her, resting against her side and shoulder. He passed her the bundle back again. She pressed it against her cheek. The towel was both soft and abrasive. It smelled of car oil and exhaust.
The weight of it comforted her. The baby had heft, thickness, and fit into her hand. “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” she said. “I think we should send her into the sky.”
Dane rested his head against her cheek. “Okay.”
“Is the fire hot enough?”
“I think so. I got some pretty big logs.”
“Let’s just sit here a minute.”
And they paused, stars overhead and the firelight washing them in orange, a far off sound of geese and the occasional snap of some small animal scampering through the trees beyond the clearing.
And, a while later, when they felt ready, they crept over to the fire, and set their baby in it. The fire burst into heat, red and orange and white and bits of blue. The shop towel curled up and charred and fell away. For a moment they heard a sizzle, then the flames calmed, settled back into the wood, and the night fell quiet and still.
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Empty
Cradle, Broken Heart
