Just Maybe, This Time

Just Maybe, This Time

Heidi Katharina Wiedemann

I hadn’t heard from her in ages. Nothing new in that, except yesterday the aunt called. “Have you heard from her?”

“No, why?”

“Cause I haven’t and I’m really worried. I had a dream that something happened to her.” So had I.

Whenever I dream of her it is always dark and brooding – she is going to prison, or she’s panhandling, her baby in a car seat in some broken up Ford, parked close by. She is either asking for money, or mocking me. I never know how to help her.

That’s how it is in the waking. She chooses to live on the fringe, and I never “get it”. I never understand why I am supposed to support her when she has left home, a good home, to live with her boyfriend in an unfurnished basement apartment. They have no money, no job, and no plan. She complains bitterly that I never approve, I am never “there” for her. On and on the accusations fly, until my bones feel weary and tired of it all. It is all I can do to hang up the phone. Yet she always calls back.

This time the pause between calls seems longer. No one attached to the spokes in her wheel of life has heard from her. I often feel able to tolerate the distance between us because I can rely on the other “spoke” people to pass on information. Information like is she still alive? On drugs? In prison? The baby?

So we all take measures to reach out, tentatively, mind you, lest a connection be made and we're the one stuck with it. Just enough to ease the gently nagging worry that maybe she isn’t alive, or is in jail, or isn’t ok. Just maybe, this time. Of course, she is fine. The phone had been disconnected. Was this the sixth or seventh time?

“Oh yeah, you’re worried? If you’re so worried why don’t you send some money?” Again, that drowning, sleepy feeling comes, the phone receiver heavy, her voice like nails on a blackboard.

After this episode, Katie, her younger sister, decides to pay a visit, make sure things are OK. Katie, too, had a dream, her sister was on heroin again, and she awoke from that determined to save someone – if not her sister, then the baby. Upon her return, Katie reports that she had a lovely visit. She seems buoyed by the “ok-ness” of her sister. She speaks glowingly of how well the baby is. It is obvious her sister is putting the baby’s needs before her own. The baby is fat, bigger than one would expect for an eighteen month old, half the size of his petite, hungry looking mother.

It is easy to feel hopeful. Maybe the young mother has turned a corner. While no one really approves (is it just me?) of where she is living, waiting out her lover’s prison sentence, she is, it seems, OK, no longer lost to a world of crime and drugs. Katie’s optimism is contagious. I begin to imagine taking the two-hour drive. I have only held Jonathan once, when he was born. His mother moved shortly thereafter. Katie brings pictures home that she may show me, but not give me, orders from her sister. “If mom wants pictures of Jonathan, she’ll have to come get them herself.” After repeated requests, I still haven’t been given an address, much less a phone number.

The pictures of Jonathan and his mother are beautiful. She looks a little ragged around the eyes, a little thin, but her smile of joy and love for her child are undeniable. I feel a twinge. As I look through the pictures, Katie regales me with stories; how Jonathan walked, giggled, hid behind his mother, ate a banana. How Jonathan was drawn to Katie’s boyfriend, how the four of them had a great time. The germ begins to spread; hope begins to gnaw at me. Just maybe, this time.
The possibility of visiting begins to seem real. A gift list forms. I will get things I know my daughter would not have the money for, a nice outfit, and some bubble bath. Jonathan will get an outfit too. What size might he be? He seems a big boy for his age. She has no way of knowing these fantasies are brewing, has no way of knowing I think of her at all. But I do. Often.

She calls today, fourth time in a week, more than we have spoken in the last year. Hope growing like a hot air balloon. She hasn’t asked me for anything. No money, no condition for our conversation, we are just talking. How is the weather, the baby, you? I’m finished school, your grandmother died, and so we go on. And with every call that balloon grows. And then it comes.

It begins this time with a discussion of how her father is now the one getting her a phone in his name. This will be her seventh.

“You wouldn’t do that for me would you, get me a line?” she asks. My radar should be going on, but it doesn’t. Hope is running interference.

“No” I answer far too quickly. To back up my answer I remind her of the many lines she has had, the bad credit that has developed as a function of taking long distance collect calls from the prisoner, how she has no hope of ever being able to pay a 700$ phone bill, let alone several of them. On and on I go, I can’t seem to shut up. What should I say? Nothing? She doesn’t let me get away with “nothing”. She wants me to spill the beans, attack her, and justify the shitty relationship.

My defensiveness falls on deaf ears and the tirade begins. The tirade of how selfish I am. What kind of a mother am I to not even care if she, my daughter, is hungry? What is wrong with me that I don’t see I should be paying her phone and food bills, that because I am living well it is my responsibility to make sure she is not in need. I should jump at the chance to provide for her mother-in-law. The drowning, sleepy feeling, the incredulousness of it all, creeps up on me. The heaviness sets into my shoulders, tears at my heart.

I try to interrupt, “Wait! Stop! Where is this going? Why is this spinning out of control?” I hear the hiss as the air fizzles out of the balloon, the realization setting in that I won’t be taking a day trip anytime soon.

It’s the day Jonathan is born. I peek around the corner to make sure it is the right room. She cranes her neck as she hears me coming, “Oh, it’s you”, disappointment weighing heavy in everyone’s shoulders. Never mind, I think to myself, just move on.

Maude, the mother-in-law, stepping in for her incarcerated son, is by my daughter’s side, stroking her small, nicotine stained hand. I stand on the opposite side of the bed, looking at her, ask how she is feeling. “Can you cut me a cheque for $25?”

“What?”

“A cheque, can you cut me a cheque for 25$?” Curt. Bristling. Is it the labour pains?

“You’re lying here having a baby, you don’t need a cheque.”

“Maude needs cigarettes.”

“Oh well” I respond. This is not going well. I already want to leave. All of a sudden, she has a contraction. She turns and curls up, fetal like, into the mother-in-law, who enfolds her, rubs her back, and helps her through the spasm. It is clear I should not be touching her.

More women arrive, her friend, the Aunt, the room is filling up. Nurses are coming and going. As the contraction subsides, she continues her barrage “Can’t you help me?”

“You are lying here in a hospital bed, about to have a baby, what do you need a cheque for?”

“That’s none of your fucking business. Why won’t you ever help me? Maude needs cigarettes, and we need stuff at home. Why do you always refuse to help us? You’re such a bitch!” Won’t anyone come to my defense? Why won’t I?

The Aunt, trying to change the subject, or save me, exclaims in a singsong voice, “I had a dream last night that there was a baby white elephant running in the middle of the room and I kept trying to catch it but I couldn’t.”

“No kidding” I reply, “A white elephant in the room”, the words bang off the walls, and out the window. The nurse reappears, I inquire as to how long this labor will take.

“Oh this baby won’t be here until at least tomorrow morning.” Relieved, I leave to return to my art class, promising to call later. She does not seem to mind my departure except that she still has not gotten a cheque out of me. I leave feeling sad, angry, that heavy feeling in my shoulders, I want to hang up – I think I have.

At 9:45, just before the end of class, I call the hospital to see how things are progressing. Mother-in-law answers, says oh yes, things have moved along rapidly, she’ll be having it any minute. Somewhere there is a twinge of not having known, not having been there.

I charge to the hospital. Despite everything, I want to be there to greet my grandson into the world. I arrive to much bustling and my daughter howling. I get on the opposite side of the bed from Maude. Another contraction. I am rubbing my daughter’s back. As the contraction begins to subside she turns her head and shrieks at me to stop rubbing her back, it’s bugging her. So I stop. During the next contraction, the nurse instructs me to remind my daughter to breathe, get her to relax. I attempt to do this. She tells me to fuck off, to stop telling her what to do; she’ll breathe how she wants. I have had children. I understand the mindset in the middle of childbirth. I am forgiving I guess.

She has another contraction. They are getting stronger. I am holding her hand, I must be squeezing it, she veers her head at me again, spittle on her chin, shrieks that I am hurting her fucking hand. Her aunt scoffs at her saying “Child, for God sake you’re giving birth, your mother holding your hand can’t hurt”. I want to thank her I think. I feel myself numbing out. Leaving doesn't seem an option.

The baby arrives. He is slimy, beautiful, screaming like a banshee. The nurse places him on her stomach. Someone has to cut the umbilical cord. She is about to hand the scissors to me. My daughter bolts to attention and says, “I want Maude to do it”. I feel the sting of tears, and I hurt, a pure, unadulterated hurt. I stay quiet. This is not my time; it is for her and Jonathan. She must choose how she wants to experience this. Everyone is only born once.

The nurse needs her to hand the baby off; they have to clean her up. I stretch out my hands, eager to touch him, she turns to Maude and hands her the baby. Everything has a price it seems. I am invisible and as devastated as I have ever been. Thirty minutes into Jonathan’s life, I get to hold him. I go to the phone, have him cradled in my arms, and call my mother, his great-grandmother, to share the news with her. My mother asks to speak to her granddaughter. I pass the phone. My daughter is brief, discourteous, and cuts the conversation short. I have to give the boy back. That is all I get of my grandson.

After enough fake smiles, enough phony “oohs” and “aahs”, and a final request for money that I am not going to give, I leave. I get to my car, sit, and weep for what could have been. It is not the first time I weep for what could have been, and I know it is not the last. I know she will call again, I know I will hang on to hope again, let it colour the lens of reality, act as the salve, make me believe what ordinarily I would not believe. Just maybe, this time I will be the mother my daughter wants me to be. Or, just maybe this time, we will finally find in each other what we both so desperately want.

Just maybe, this time.