Read Part 1 here, and Part 2 here.
Olivia panted, her swollen pregnant belly squished between the driver’s seat and the steering wheel. Between crushing spasms she willed herself to open the door and heave herself out of the car. The valet attendant at the hospital looked on suspiciously. “You need a wheelchair, Mees?” he asked uncertainly.
“No, God no, not a wheelchair!” The thought of sitting down through this pain was unbearable. Olivia hobbled onto the curb and lunged through the sliding doors. At the elevator she stopped, lost. Several people passed her, avoiding eye contact as she faintly moaned and tried to remember which floor she needed. Finally, a nurse coming off her shift grabbed her arm as she staggered and led her to labor and delivery.
In the lull of the early afternoon, several nurses bustled into the room, warm and maternal. “You’ll be alright, honey,” one said. “Is your husband parking the car?”
“No. No, it’s just me.” It hadn’t occurred to Olivia that she would feel lonely in this moment, but something about the impending arrival of another person that called forth the desire for a third, a mother, a sister, a husband to stand silently in the corner and avert his eyes from this unfolding ritual. “It’s just me,” Olivia repeated, a sudden contraction bringing out something between a yell and sob, rippling through her mind as the pain burst through her body.
The nurse, a woman whose name Olivia did not know and failed to learn, grabbed her hand, warm connection flooding Olivia’s limp arm. The nurses moved efficiently in an orchestrated dance, unfolding sheets, placing IVs, positioning the monitors which reassuringly blipped and beeped. At every spare moment, the nurse returned to Olivia’s lifeless hand offering a warm squeeze.
“Just one contraction at a time. You’re doing great, honey.” After the fact, Olivia realized that the nurse didn’t remember her name either. But “honey” is what her mother called people, a sneaky way of disguising the fact that she never remembered anyone’s name. This must have been what it was like for Marian: alone, no husband, no family.
After what could have been minutes or hours, as the sun threatened to sink below the horizon, Olivia’s body finally let go in tremendous spasms of force and surrender, and another nameless person entered the room. Covered in thick white vernix, eyes swollen, cheeks purple, the baby gave a fervent cry. The nurse moved to place her on her mother’s chest. She hesitated and instead whisked the baby away to be cleaned. Olivia felt nothing as she gazed at the squalling newborn across the room. The deformed ball of blankets smelling pungently of baby soap did not seem like a child.
So this is what it’s like to be a mother, Olivia thought as she mechanically took the bundle into her arms and searched the vacant face for signs of recognition.
The undoing of all illusion came through a well-meaning message. An email popped up on Olivia’s phone one night when she was up nursing. She had grown to enjoy the middle-of-the-night feedings, the hours slipping by as her body relaxed under the weight of exhaustion. She often sat in the glow of her phone researching, her baby’s face and fuzz of newborn hair illuminated by the blue light. The daylight hours were still a struggle, but Olivia felt she could manage her daughter at night; she knew what to do, and it felt good.
That night, the email from a genetic testing company alerted her to a message on her account. Olivia had all but forgotten she had an account. It had been a present from her ex-husband years ago, his idea of an interesting birthday gift. An engineer through and through, he seemed to think he could discover how to fix Olivia by getting access to her genetic material. Olivia had been furious. She had no family; she wanted no family. She took the swab and mailed it off in a fit of anger, silently pulling away from the man who subjected her to such a inquisition.
She never looked at the results, but she must have registered for an account. The message was from a woman claiming Olivia might be her aunt. With a sigh, Olivia opened the website and tried to reset her password. Maybe it was the loneliness of days spent working and nights spent feeding the baby. Maybe it was having a family now in her daughter that she was curious about the woman claiming to be her family.
Months passed without meeting. The woman, Katie, lived on the other side of town and was eager to meet Olivia. They kept messaging back and forth, but something always prevented them from getting together. Finally, shortly after the baby’s first birthday, Olivia found herself driving to a coffee shop. She was going to meet Katie. Maybe this would be the beginning of a bigger family for her daughter.
Olivia had not felt she could leave her baby with a sitter, but now that she was napping, she decided to go. An older woman, kind and quiet, sat in the living room, while the baby slept unaware of Olivia’s absence.
Katie had tried to explain what she knew, but Olivia was vague on the details. Whatever their exact relation—cousins or something—it seemed certain that they were fairly close family.
“I’m so glad you agreed to meet,” Katie said shyly. She had a round, earnest face, bangs threatening to hide her big, brown eyes from view, a delicate cleft in her chin. “I’ve been able to find a lot, but I just really wanted to meet someone.”
Olivia tried to smile.
“I was wrong about you being my aunt,” Katie said abruptly.
“What am I, then, a cousin?”
Katie paused. “I don’t think so.” After another pause, she continued. “I found a brother. Well, half-brother, technically. My mom and his mom used the same sperm donor. I think there were others.”
“Oh, yeah, my mom used a sperm donor. You think it was the same one?”
“It has to be. How else would we have so much in common?”
“Why did you want to research this?” Olivia asked, feeling confusion and disgust.
“Why wouldn’t you?” Katie said. “I just felt like I would never fully know myself if I didn’t meet my father. This is part of my identity that I couldn’t ignore.”
“I never felt that,” Olivia said flatly. Despite herself, her curiosity grew. “Did you find the guy?”
“Our dad?” said Katie. “He died before I could meet him.” Quietly, Katie took a paper out of the folder she had been holding. Olivia recognized the image before she saw it fully. Without looking up, Katie slid the newspaper clipping across the table. It was the obituary for Troy Carson.
Thoughts swirled in her head, joining in the hum of the white noise machine, muffling everything else. Olivia heard faintly, “My mother, my father, my daughter, my sister.” She felt quiet horror, panic beating a quick tattoo in her chest. She also felt something tender.
Olivia reached out to the child sound asleep in her crib, desperate to feel the weight of her muscular little limbs and plump toddler features. As she hefted her daughter from the crib, the child stirred. Olivia’s breath came quickly, dread rising. She wanted her to sleep. A hot tear spilled out, then another. Stifling a sob, Olivia rocked her daughter gently back to sleep.
“It’s alright, Zoe,” she soothed. “It’s alright. Mommy’s got you. You can go back to sleep.”
In her head, the panic continued to whirl. She was a monster, her daughter a disease. But the heavy surety of a sleeping child told her something else. She had not wanted to stay with Katie, she had not wanted to know more. She had left as soon as she could get away, rushing home in a quiet panic, racing to reach her daughter. As she held Zoe, a drowsy head on her shoulder, Olivia felt a calm that she had only known in her mother’s arms.
“It’s alright, Zoe, go to sleep,” she repeated, as much to herself as to the child she held.
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