Wait for it to focus, wait and then there she is, the woman between my legs. I see her face, her reassuring smile.
My voice fractures into a thousand shards, little spinning me, little jagged me. Here a glimpse, there a glimpse, fingers inching closer.
I keep an eye on the table to the right, watch the line where the wall meets the ceiling. I don’t trust them, don’t trust lines but then again, I don’t care. Not now.
My laughter shatters the room. I trust her.
I fade in and out.
Morning started in the thin pink ethnic t-shirt that took me under the tree I’ll pass by later. I’m sure the bole of it remembers me, it showed me how to bend into the nature. I said I’d do whatever it takes and I did.
Now I come to think of it, it was the pale green embroidered t-shirt, did I change in the morning, now I’m not sure? Either way trees came and went. They wheeled me inside.
Later. Round about now a new ceiling watched me sleep despite the spasms.
Pillows subsumed me.
You know when you can hear your mother inside you saying that you have to rest? But you know and she knows that you can’t, not now. Well, not just yet.
And your mother’s face is around you with that look, that understanding that you can’t stop. And she swallows hard, keeps it all in, and like her, you do just the same.
And she sits alongside you in the silent dawning kitchen, she makes the tea for you while you let yourself feel feelings for a while.
She wears that old green dressing gown that kept her warm and she shuffles with her life-lived feet. She knows. And under her dressing gown, her body that made you, is reminding you that you can do this, that you have the strength.
You lean into the worktop, the oak takes your weight. It’s quiet in here, apart from your sniffing and the soft sounds of your mother busying herself around you.
She walks alongside you keeping you up.
She passes the tea cup to you. She knows everything you feel.
You drink up, wipe your eyes.
Do it all again, she whispers.
You can stop soon. just not today. Your mother on the inside, charging you up. again.
The water seems kinder today or maybe I’m just more aware of it that’s all. I wash my arms with consciousness as though cleansing myself from within. It helps.
I wonder about the woman in the black dress . It looked black though its print was of tiny bright flowers, red maybe orange. She passed me on day one, eyes pooling, brimming, hand to nose and mouth as she rushed out. I couldn’t hug her but the feeling pulsed up through me. It would have startled her anyway if I’d reached out, she had enough to deal with. She spilled over as I just about kept it in.
That was last week.
I wonder about her this morning. Is she having a shower, does she have time for a bath, is she thinking in the water like I am? Is she held in its amniotic fluid, giving her strength for another day.
Maybe she has a quick wash, doesn’t bother with make-up, or maybe she needs it as a shield against the world.
Does she feel the tightness in her chest, her tummy flip as she sanitises her hands and pushes through the heavy doors? Has she forgotten she’s even got a body, is she churning in her head, like me.
The water is kinder today, present, healing, it tells me to slow down as it drips off my skin. Little spheres of surface tension, swirling rainbows dance inside. I send them out to the woman in the black dress, I hope she’s still holding up, like me.
I must try to remember I have a body.
I breathe out.
It’s day eleven, (maybe twelve.)
Now there’s a tree watching over the bed, birds scrabbling for food, people darting in and out the Costas just off to the right and if they looked up from their latte they’d see me in the window looking out.
I didn’t like yesterday’s room though, felt too far tucked away, almost a sense of punishment, of neglect. Broken thinking on my part, of course. Tiredness doesn’t help.
Of course the care was on point and Senior Sister Gemma enfolded me with her reassuring London tones, her voice and her words and her ways. She called me darlin’ and we joked about the room upgrade. She should have been pulling pints but she was pushing beds instead and I was grateful .
And when the upgrade came, when trees were administered, when the relief of natural light came into view, I relaxed (a little.)
A ward with a window over green and the bole of the tree stands guard, steady, constant, dependable bark that’s been there a hundred years watching people change.
I feel like I’ve been there a hundred years but it’s only day seven or is it eight?
Maybe that’s why the previous room took me down, floored me with an echo of late pregnancy, of no privacy, of people poking and me hanging on. Propped up, out of time with a job to do, concerned faces, waiting, willing. Praying.
I think that’s it, the silent magnolia walls, the speckled ceiling, just a little too high for my liking and a view, (if you can call it that,) over the scrag end of the buildings.
Still, that’s not now.
I’d better get up, I’ve got a job to do. I hope Gemma’s on today. I like her long black pony tail. When she walks, it swings like a metronome on her back, keeping me steady with her rhythm.
Is it day six or seven, I’m not sure? Not that it matters. Time has rolled in on itself. There aren’t hours, there are interruptions, people doing things, bringing things, taking, giving, adding observations to their charts. There’s no natural light, everything’s in suspension.
I walk the corridor in my mind, through the big old doors, nod to the receptionist, past the childrens’ drawings of a lion. The lion smiles, you know, the way they do? Secure in their strength, protected by a massive mane of gold. I think he waves a paw at me, not sure. And up the slight incline almost like a ramp boarding a ship to somewhere else, a sense of entering a different world.
The artwork on either side demands attention but I rush past, abstractions blur, birds and flowers shrug at me. They don’t care, they’ll be there on the way out, suspended in gouache, captured moments that mean the world to someone.
My feet keep walking, step after step, soles squeak on their lino, sometimes heels click, depending on which shoes I’m wearing. It doesn’t matter either way so long as I keep going. Past the towering stacks of SHEETS and BLANKETS covered in thin plastic. They’re organised in here. I’m back in the machine, cogs turn, people sometimes smile, sometimes avoid your eye. Everyone churning, focused.
I walk the corridor in my mind. It’s 06:08. I’ll walk it for real again soon. I’ll say hello to Leo as I go past, Maybe I’ll imagine that I’m a lion too.
Do you know how much I hate the relative’s room? I know hate is a strong word, maybe I resent it, is that better? Of course, I’m so grateful for it too, its functional furniture, its token flowers on the windowsill as if to say don’t worry, things will bloom again.
Do you know how much I feel for The Lady from Upstairs? She visits us twice a day, in her clouds of dementia, has a little walk with the nurse who tells her she can’t go any further. That’s the men’s ward, she repeats but The Lady from Upstairs doesn’t care, she protests, she says hello regardless and we wave back until she turns around to go again. She’s on repeat – as am I.
It makes me sad, it makes me grateful, it rams home our essential life affirming interconnectedness and all I want to do is bundle her up in my arms and hug her until all the things she struggles with will seep away, until she’s a young lithe girl again, giddy, in fresh love and her mind is as crystal clear as her young eyes.
I turn away, I look towards the bed I sit by. I want to do the same for all the patients. I want to make us all ok, but I can’t.
And on the way in for the nth time this week, up the endless polished corridors, I passed the brand new parents, the father clutching a warm thing to his chest, he murmurs ‘it’s ok young one,’ as as I go past, although I know he’s not talking to me. And as I reach the place where I turn off, where I brace yet again, an elderly man pushes his wife in a wheelchair, and I feel the invisible threads between us all. The elderly woman and baby swap places, meld into each other and I can’t tell where either begin or end.
This morning I took time out in the relative’s room, I looked out past the sprig of freesias to the claustrophobic slabs of brick. I know this place. I’ve got form.
I throw my damp tissues into the bin and head back to the ward. The Lady from Upstairs will be back to see us soon. I hope she feels happy in her world, somehow, in some way.
Why is everything so blue in here? I guess it’s designed to bring calm but it doesn’t really work. I don’t like blue concertina curtains. They unnerve me.
The woman’s dress, it almost brushed the floor.
The cold stone in the cathedral and all I could see was the fabric to my left as she sat there. The golden swirls, maybe paisley, maybe African, I’ll never know.
And to the right of her ochre and viridian I sat quiet and tried to regain myself.
And she helped us when her language wasn’t ours, when our battered tourist phrase book didn’t work.
And I wonder if she ever thought of me years later, of the young woman who she helped, taken ill in the arms of Our Lady and did she remember the warm blanket of her words.
I did.
She sat with me in silence until the taxi came and in broken English, as we left, she blessed us with healthy children. And I was grateful for her words, her care, the sanctuary of her presence. And a year later in the healthiest of pregnancies, in my blooming, I was so thankful for her prayer.
With thanks to the woman whose face I never saw, who came to my rescue, who helped us when we needed it and I wonder what she’s doing now and I send her back a prayer.
Lilies grew out of the scar on my tummy, daring, irreverent and girlish. They flung their arms wide; they didn’t care. Lisianthus burst up and out, willowy, confident, pretty and they knew it. They waved at the lilies who nodded in respect. Painted ladies and red admirals fluttered from the same places where the flesh had bled, their damp tissue paper wings felt cool against the air. Meconium pumped out, squirted across the scar as if to say, I love you, I remember. As if to say, all the pain, the hours of spasms, the empty walls I looked at, waiting hoping, are all tucked away and understood.
The nights spaced out, the ceilings passing over me, all locked away with care and when my language broke, when halos caressed each word that left my mouth, when every breath was forged from armour, when the weight of the shields tore my muscles to shreds, I kept on holding. When every cell pulsed with one cause, when no one could help me but the tiger claws that grew, claws of steel against the battle that consumed me.
Then.
Then my scar erupted, then it exploded out in trees, oaks towering from my tiny form, their roots soaked in my blood, fed from my placenta and willows softened out the gash, they wept over the chasm where my abdomen had been, they wrapped their tendrils around the scalpels and the knives, they paved the way, they saved me. They dropped leaves into my hollow and from the mulch, from the deep rich earth inside me, petrichor filled the theatre, soil sodden with my tears and surgeons took a step back, as I expanded, I roared life into the room.
Eagles flew out of me, feathers caked in green and red, they soared around the room, under their spotlights, singing loud. I remember the golden flash of their beaks, they winked at me with eyes that saw more than I could and, in the crater, where my abdomen used to be, a forest thrived, birds cheered, creatures danced, insects giggled in the sunshine.
I watched the ceiling smile down on me as I stroked the wound, hand bloodied and joyous. We Made This the corpuscles seemed to say. And my body rejoiced. My body was perfect, my scar came to show me the way.
Right now I feel I am hiding from the blossom as it holds onto the branch but I know it’s out there, I feel it waving, bobbing, whispering to me from outside my window. It won’t be long before I look it in the face and I can hear it calling out to me, look up, look up, look up again and I know I will.
My trees know just what to do just like my clouds and I am gentle white and pink and sometime rippling rose. I hear them just beyond the glass, framing the trees, throwing their colours to sky and I breathe out. I breathe out as if for the first time, I breathe out like the morning when I woke and squealed and rushed and laughed.
And women fussed around me, hair was curled in ringlets and my feet secured in ivory silk. They would hold me up and they did, as they do now and I breathed out. And I was bound up in taffeta as I always would be, strapped in and laced with ribbons at the back. And at the front, encasing my heart, I was held in rich wine velvet, the deepest red because I could never wear anything else, soft and strong, the unconditional love around my tiny form.
And it’s ok I tell myself, and it is. I can smell the fabric, hear its rustle, taste the rose pink lipstick on my mouth and I am there.
Ready to be wrapped in blossom, petals on me, decorating my features, tickling my neck like confetti dropping down. And I shuffled, I clicked heels down our pathway and nestled my boots in the footwell of the car and later, not much later, they moved over ancient stone, disturbing the dust of centuries, the remnants of other women who had walked and stopped and spoke and loved.
And in the echo of those before me I stood, silken and shimmering like something waiting to emerge and I did. I raised my bouquet to the sky and petals fell around us, photons warmed us, like they do and sunlight lit red velvet, lit my face and the scent of blossom filled us up, as if to saturate the day in certainty and it did and it does.
I’ve been hiding from the blossom for a while now but today I peered back outside my window, took the deepest breath to drink it in. It’s all ok, it whispered to me and I heard it. It reached me, saved me yet again. The wisdom fluttering down through years, curled and chaotic just like me, but it will settle, rest itself soon and nourish the soil beneath my trees. I’m drenched in petals and confetti yet again. Thank God my flowers know just what to do.
Janey L Foster 