Thirty-one
Diane didn’t know that Mary was in labor. She had headed into town to go to the grocery store, the bank, and to find a pay phone so she could make a private call to Alice Pool.
Diane took her time coming back, driving over the bridge that separated the island from the mainland, and she watched the water that had turned gray to match the sky. There was a storm out at sea, its long arms were twirling somewhere over the Gulf. It would miss them, the weathermen said, but the waves would rush in, swollen and dark, with their tales of the great churning beyond.
It was only in the grocery store, when Diane saw the gaudy red boxes of chocolate and bouquets of roses, that she realized it was Valentine’s Day. And now, as she looked out at the water, her hands on the steering wheel, she gave a tired chuckle.
“I’d bet you’d be rolling over in your grave, Dad.” She was speaking out loud, though she hardly realized it. “If you knew I was here in Bardavista.” Her father had considered it a cursed place ever since Vincent Drake had named it. She smiled. “It’s nice, though. I think you’d like it. It’s got a beautiful beach.” Her head started a slow nod. “The sand’s like sugar.” Diane had begun talking to her father since she and Mary had come here, feeling more connected to him than she had since he died. She understood him more now that she was facing what he had, a daughter pregnant far too soon.
She pulled into the driveway of the cottage she and Mary were renting and popped the trunk of the station wagon. She didn’t buy much food, just enough to get them by. Crackers and bananas and shrimp, which were cheaper than chicken here. She would boil a mess of them, and she and Mary would eat them cold while sitting in front of the television, watching the picture spasm in and out between bursts of static.
“Hi, Mare!” Diane called, when she walked inside. The metal screen door banged shut with a clatter. She set the groceries on the counter. “I’m home! I got some of that cheese you like!” She began unpacking the bags. “Mare!” she called again.
Diane found Mary in the bedroom lying on the mattress facing the wall. At first she thought she was sleeping, but then she pulled back on Mary’s shoulder and saw that her eyes were open and focused, that her forehead was damp with sweat. “Oh, Jesus!” said Diane, her hands shaking. “Mary!”
Mary’s eyes darted briefly to her mother, then she once again faced the wall.
“Come on,” said Diane. “We’re going to the hospital.”
The nurses didn’t look Diane or Mary in the eye as they rushed around the room.
“Would she like an epidural?” one of them asked Diane, her words soft, her drawl heavy with apology. She was sorry for Diane and Mary. All the nurses were. Mary was so very young.
“No” came Mary’s voice, sure and emotionless as she lay on her side in the white-sheeted bed. And all Diane could feel was her own heart like galloping hooves inside her chest.
Mary didn’t make a noise through childbirth. She didn’t scream or shout or beg for help with the pain. Diane only heard her breath rushing in and out and coming so, so fast. She’d tighten her fists and dig her nails into her palms so fiercely that she drew blood, but she was silent, her jaw hard, her eyes focused on something no one could know.
Diane wondered about the boy. Mary would tell her nothing but that he was a prince. That he had ridden into Sandy Bank on a white stallion. That he was going to come back for her. Diane wondered if her daughter had lost her mind. Or if she had created another beautiful, terrible lie. She wondered if Mary believed it. If she always would.
She was already seven centimeters when they arrived at the hospital, and so the baby was born within the hour. It was a gray February afternoon, and Diane let out a gasping weep when she heard the first cry. “It’s a girl,” said the doctor, without emotion or joy.
Diane squeezed her daughter’s hand, feeling her face turn wet with tears. “Mary, honey, did you hear that?” she choked. It hadn’t been so many years since she had lain where Mary was. It hadn’t been so many years since she felt the shame of slipping her feet into the cold metal stirrups as a girl.
The doctor handed the baby to a waiting nurse, then reached for a pair of surgical scissors and clipped the umbilical cord. Diane lifted her chin to see her granddaughter. “A baby girl!”
Mary’s body had gone limp as she submitted to exhaustion. She watched the baby with a guarded expression, her black hair soaked with sweat, a strand of it like a gash across her cheek.
“She’s beautiful,” whispered Diane. Bringing her hand to her mouth, she shook her head. “Thank you, Jesus. She’s just perfect.”
The baby was cleaned and weighed. Six pounds, eleven ounces. And Diane didn’t let go of her daughter’s hand. When the nurse brought the swaddled infant over to them, she looked from Diane to Mary. “Would you like to hold her?” she asked.
Mary simply looked at her, her beautiful face like stone. Diane slowly let go of her daughter’s hand. “I’ll take her,” she whispered, slipping her arms underneath the small bundle and pulling it into her chest. She brought her nose close to her granddaughter’s. “Hello, sweetheart.” Then she held her so Mary could see. “Mare,” she said. “Look at her.”
Mary’s face registered nothing. And Diane brought the baby back to her chest. She hoped that Mary would be able to be a good sister to the child, as they had planned. She hoped that she’d be able to love her, in her way.
All afternoon, Diane held the baby, stroking her head while keeping a close eye on Mary, who still hadn’t spoken since the baby was born.
“You want to hold her?” Diane asked.
Mary shook her head.
“But look how sweet she is, Mare.”
Mary let her head roll toward the window.
But Diane noticed Mary’s reaction to the baby’s cries, the way she’d lurch toward the child almost involuntarily. It broke her heart to see her fourteen-year-old stone-faced and silent, the front of her hospital gown drenched in breast milk that came unbidden, trying to fight her instinct and resist a child she was meant to love.
The baby slept in the nursery that night. Diane slept beside Mary. When she opened her eyes in the black night, she found Mary’s opened, too. “They feed her when she’s in there, right?” It was the first thing Mary had said since the baby was born.
Diane nodded. “Yeah,” she said, trying to hide her relief, her shock, trying not to even move. “They’ll give her a bottle.”
They brought the baby back in the morning, and Diane watched as Mary inspected her when they wheeled the bassinet back in, the way her eyes took an inventory. One head. Two legs. Two arms. Ten fingers. Ten toes. Then she swaddled her back up and turned away.
The first full day of the child’s life passed quietly, the sun making a graceful arc in the sky until the sky had been leached of light and it was night. Mary stood at the hospital room’s single window, her forehead resting against the cool glass, her eyebrows tensed as she peered into the night as Diane held the infant in her arms.
Diane looked at the back of her daughter’s head and the body that seemed so tensed, so ready to spring. She shifted, feeling the fatigue in her body reach down to her bones.
“Mary, honey,” Diane said, her voice cracked with lack of use; it had been a day with few words. “Can you hold the baby for a minute?”
Mary didn’t move. Diane shifted slightly in her seat, suddenly feeling the enormity of raising another child on her own. She was going to need Mary, she knew. She was going to need her girl.
“Mary,” she said, her tone sapped of patience, her words lingering and long. “I need you to hold your sister.”
Mary’s eyes found her mother’s in the window’s black glass, all that was unspoken passing in a look.
“Why?” asked Mary.
Diane held her daughter’s gaze. “Because I have to go to the bathroom, Mary.”
Mary turned slowly and looked at the baby, her arms at her sides. Diane struggled up, cradling the infant in one arm while pushing herself up with the other. “Mare . . . ,” she said, keeping her awkward hold. “Can you?” She felt herself slip slightly, fall back against the chair, and the baby let out a mewling cry.
And to Diane it looked like reflex, like some primal need to protect the being with whom she shared blood. Because Mary darted forward, sliding her arms beneath the baby and pulling her into her chest. Diane watched them for a moment, watched as Mary started to sway, calming the child.
“I’ll be right back,” she said, but Mary was still looking at the baby, some internal battle silently being waged.
In the bathroom, Diane turned on the water and sat on the toilet, letting it run and run, letting it drown out everything else. She wasn’t sure how long she stayed in there. It could have been five minutes. It could have been twenty. And when she opened the door, Mary was sitting in the blue pleather chair, the baby still in her arms. Diane watched them for a moment.
“So,” Diane said. And Mary started slightly, as if she hadn’t heard her leave the bathroom. “What are we going to name her?”
“Name her whatever you want,” Mary replied, though she couldn’t quite look away from the baby’s small face.
“She’s going to need you, Mary,” said Diane. It was something Diane knew without understanding how. “Do you know that?”
Diane walked over and sat on the edge of the hospital bed facing her daughter. Diane waited, knowing that Mary was a girl whose loyalty was fierce and rare and absolute. Knowing that Mary was deciding, right at this moment, whether or not to love this child, whether or not to give herself to her entirely. The baby squirmed in Mary’s arms and the expression on Mary’s face slackened, and at that moment, Diane knew it was done. Raising her chin, Mary looked at her mother, and simply said, “Let’s call her Hannah.” And with those words, it was as if Mary had slashed the palm of her hand and offered her blood as oath.