Dear James
You won’t believe this, but lately, I haven’t felt like eating. I am watching the calendar and the days are disappearing. It feels like the clock is ticking faster and faster, and while I can’t wait to get out of here, I also can’t bear to think what’s coming and so I feel trapped and on edge and scared all of the time. The fear takes up all of my energy, and I can’t concentrate. I try to eat for the baby, but I don’t even want to. For the first time in my life, it is too much effort to open my mouth and put food in there.
I just want to go home.
So, I have been going to the meal times to have my name marked off by the nurse, and sometimes I sit and pick at my food, but mostly when I am not at work, I sit alone in my room and stare out the window at the road. I’ve imagined you getting out of a car at that kerb so many times that I feel like I can remember it happening for real.
Tania has made some mean comments about me not eating, and tonight while dinner was on, she actually followed me to our room. At first I thought she was going to demand I return for dinner – that perhaps she was taking my lack of appetite as a personal insult against her cooking. Instead, she withdrew a small black canvas bag from the very back of her locker and told me that I must come for a walk with her.
I tried to resist, but Tania is a very forceful girl. I am a little scared of her, to be honest. In the end, I followed her only because I thought it might be quicker to just do whatever she wanted to do than to argue with her against it.
She took me to Eliza’s room. Eliza works in the kitchen, and I don’t know her very well, but we all heard the commotion from her room in the small hours last night. Her quiet moans became grunts and screams, and a nurse came to check on her and found her in the late stages of labour. The ward men came and took her away and after she was gone, the home seemed too still.
Poor, shrunken Eliza came back to the home this morning. Her belly is deflated, and the rest of her with it. She has spent the day in her room alone. At least she does not have to work now – she is only here for a few days until her parents arrive to take her home.
I have gone out of my way to avoid Eliza in the hallways because I don’t have a clue what to say to her. She is spending all of her time grieving her loss, I am spending all of my energy resisting mine.
Tania explained what we were doing as Eliza and I followed her towards the front door. The three of us were going to the maternity ward in the hospital across the road. If there were kind midwives on, they would allow us to spend a few minutes with Eliza’s baby. This is apparently something that Tania does whenever she can for the girls, and although it’s totally against the rules, Mrs Baxter must know that she does it. The black canvas bag houses a Polaroid camera that Mrs Baxter gave us, so that if we have the chance to say goodbye to our babies, we can at least take home a small memento of that moment.
I asked Tania why I had to come. It seemed an intensely personal journey, and I felt awkward tagging along. I thought maybe she was being cruel, just trying to ensure that I really understood the true horror of what was about to happen to me.
But Tania explained that not all of the midwives are kind enough to allow this mercy mission. She would go inside the maternity ward first, and look into the staff room to determine who was on duty. If the awful midwives are there, or if for some reason Mrs Sullivan was in the office, I would need to feign an emergency to distract them so that she could sneak Eliza in. Tania suggested I groan and moan as if labour pains had started, generally to make as much noise and fuss as I could to get the attention of all of the staff.
You know how I hate trouble, James. You know how hard I worked at school to avoid confrontation with the teachers. It seems that I’m not that girl anymore. I didn’t really want to do what Tania proposed, but how could I not? There was such desperation in the way Eliza held my hand that it would have been inhumane to refuse to help her.
In the end, I didn’t need to do anything, because the kindly midwives waved us in and one even allowed Eliza the chance to hold her son. Oh, how beautiful that little boy was, with his mop of fine blonde hair and his squished up button nose. Tania took a photo of Eliza with him in her arms. It was a beautiful moment, the best one I’ve had since I came here – actually, the best by far. For just a few minutes, she was any new mum, getting to know her babe. I could see what Eliza was doing – she was staring at him, almost unblinking, and touching every part of him with her fingertips, and even breathing in deeply again and again, trying to soak the essence of her baby through her senses . . . to steal it away with her.
But when the time came to leave, the bliss of those moments was gone. Eliza just wouldn’t give her son back. Eventually I had to hold her arms while Tania and the nurse worked to get the baby away from her and back into its cot. Eliza begged and wept and tried to bargain with us for just a second more and we all wanted to give it to her, but we really had to be back before 10 p.m. As it was we only made it by a minute or two before the nurses locked the front door and came past to do a head count.
I can still feel the way her body shook when she fought to get out of my arms and get back to her baby. I can still hear the way she screamed, the sound is bouncing around in my ears – burned into me like some kind of audio tattoo. I don’t think I’ve ever been so close to someone in so much pain before. I could feel her agony just as if it was my own – maybe because I am so terrified that it will be my own.
When we got Eliza back to her room, Tania handed her the Polaroid, and Eliza clutched it to her chest and collapsed onto her bed. We left her alone then, because we had to run back to our rooms, and because even though I wished with all of my heart that I could do something more for her . . . anything more for her . . . there was nothing more that we could do for Eliza H.
She’s one of the lucky ones, you know. Lots of the girls never even get those moments with their babies. It seems like such a small thing to ask for – after all, we’re talking about one single cuddle here. It’s nothing at all in the scheme of things and it’s everything in the world to the girl who misses out.
My heart and mind are racing tonight. I feel trapped and desperate because I really am just a caged animal with everything on the line. I was so sure that you’d be here by now. Why aren’t you here, James? I turn it over in my mind day and night, trying to find the missing piece of the puzzle that would explain why you haven’t come. I am so distracted by your absence that I don’t even want to eat and I can’t sleep.
You must by now have received these letters and you must know how utterly, hopelessly desperate I am for you to come.
What possible excuse could you have for not being here now?
I don’t even want to write this in case writing it down makes it real, but I really am starting to wonder . . . did you ever love me? How could you have loved me, if you leave me here to face this alone?
Could I have misjudged you so badly? Did I know you at all? You’ve been part of my life forever, how could I have been so wrong?
I am sorry for the handwriting, and for the mess of these words. I keep thinking of Eliza, and me, and our baby, and you – and I am all over the place.
If it is true that you don’t love me and that you are just going to leave me here, then please at least send your parents to let me know. I will find a way to extinguish the love I have for you too. Maybe if I do that, I will feel less, and maybe that will make me numb so that I can survive what’s coming.
Lilly