This is for You - A Short Story

I shouldn’t say this, but I was content; having you stay home and not have to share your story with friends at work. The role of a journalist is to give an account, to dig and unearth truths, and to make known what they find. You have always been the one thrusting a microphone into a victim’s face, begging their trust and carrying every broken part of their voice. While you adjust a lavalier on the collar of a man whose wife has taken her life, you whisper into his ear how sorry you are. I am so sorry… This is your story… You can trust me… You let me know when you’re ready… I’ll be right here. And every time you win. With one question, the camera captures the unspoken emotions of another, and the man breaks down on live television, his face scrunched up, his fist clenched tight with helplessness. You see them. You touch and are touched by their stories. You come home to me and we sit with the heaviness all around us but still, we sit.Things are different now and this time, you’re the one with answers I’ll rather you keep between us. Not everyone wants to hear about your resilience in a story that is bound to end ugly. Not everyone would believe this could work. But I did. Or should I say, I was grateful to play the role of a supportive husband. I watched you stretch your arm for a blood draw. I watched the clear gel smeared on your abdomen, the transducer, sliding in circles. One moment you were bursting with life, unwilling to accept a reality that wasn’t yours, couldn’t be yours. The next moment, it was confirmed. No longer pregnant. Empty. Hollow. Everything gone. Whatever we had been building had collapsed and unknown to me then, our whole lives with it.Expectant management. That is what we had to do. In the eighth week of pregnancy, your baby is the size of a raspberry, they said. A raspberry. A fruit. The sticky sweetness layering our tongues. I remember everything. No heartbeat. No clear fetal pole to measure. That we had to wait to “see what will happen.” That you had to maintain the vessel of your body knowing you’re only carrying to let go, eventually. That we had to walk out of the hospital, past the delivery suite, into a world thinning out and having no room for us, bruised you, stroke by stroke. And I had to watch.We waited without talking about it and half hoped that if we did things right, we could correct the situation. It is said that a husband is the head of the household. I’ll say family but I see how the meaning of the word has shrunk to the size of nothing, since January and when a woman is convinced lying still on her back with her feet up for days will preserve the life growing inside of her, you do not question it, you do not ever mock the attempt. You rub her feet. You ask how she’s feeling. You do all you can to be there, while staying out of the way lest an action on your part interferes with her procedure. I did this, the whole time suppressing the conviction that we were both growing a little insane by the day.I knew it instantly as it took place. Dark red clot coming away. Shiny. It looked like a river. I wanted to cup it in my hands. You would not sit on the toilet. You would not listen to me.“You want me to drop it in the bowl?” Your tone was harsh.I backed away. I said I don’t know. What if it drops with a thud? What if we break something?You looked at me then and without saying a word I knew you were saying to me, everything is already broken. But I was terrified. It was past two a.m. I’m thirty years old and I’d never seen anything like that in my life. In order to keep you calm, I had to first be calm. Nothing had prepared me for this.When I was seven, my brother locked me in the basement for losing his batteries. We were the only ones at home and I did not pound on the door. I did not scream or beg to be let out. I fell asleep on a pile of old clothes to the sound branches gently creaking outside. At bedtime, when I told my mother, she had a pretend horrified face on, a laugh tucked in her cheeks, she wanted to know if I cried and yelled. I said no. she wanted to know why. “I knew he’d come back for me,” I said. Whenever I’ve told this story, no one has asked “and what if he didn’t?” I see there is a part of the human condition that clings to hope, one that refuses to see nothing but a good possibility. If I’m being honest, it isn’t because we haven’t seen worse but because we stand to lose nothing if we believe.I’m ashamed to admit how little I know about pain or what to do with it once it arrives. I say that as though pain sets off to find us and strikes through our names once the damage is done. Or is it so? I have had a good life and haven’t had to fight for much. With everything given me, I’ve known abundance like nothing before and yet, this is me, us- a low count and a low ovarian reserve. There was no pleading this deficiency.A glob of tissue dangled to the floor. There was something like a sac. I saw what looked like a bean inside and pressed my fingers over my eyes. I couldn’t look any longer. Later we’ll be told, “If you looked closely, you would be able to see where the eyes, arms and legs were forming.” The only thing I wanted to see was a reverse of what had happened and the mound of your belly blooming something.Most pregnancy losses are due to factors the woman cannot control.I looked hard at the pamphlet, the paragraphs blurring into each other before my eyes. The nurse who handed it to me had called it a helpful resource. There was a picture of a woman with her hand resting on her abdomen, looking back at me. No baby in sight. I imagined she was a model. I wondered how many takes they must have done to get her depicting our sadness, our loss.Keep your eyes lowered… look devastated but hopeful… No, no, not too hopeful. Imagine carrying a child and watching it disappear… What is the one thing you love the most? Now what if I said I was taking it away from you? Yes. Give me that.I was on my knees and pressed to the ground, a profound shock running through me, numbing me of every other emotion I could have felt. Do I scoop it and keep it in a Ziploc? Do I label it? What about the blood? Should we clean it up? I am convinced these questions never escaped my mouth. I must have thought them to myself. Because I remember the silence and how it filled up the space. How you were crying loudly without a sound, disbelief and panic had coated your throat.Lying there, you were the most dangerous animal.The clutter of grief is never what sits resting at the center. It is the roots it takes; how it stretches and branches out of us, piercing what surrounds us. The first thing I saw was the rage, directed at me. I knew what was happening and that was when I begun to shake my head slowly and pull away. I remember thinking don’t do this now, do not make me the target. I am on your side. This is us against everything we never wished for. Sometimes you know you’ve lost a battle without fighting. And still, I fought.

***

My favorite photograph of you was taken long before we met. You were fourteen. You had been awarded a bronze medal as second runner-up for your school’s local tournament. The two girls next to you are brimming with pride, their gold and silver medals hanging loose on their necks. And there’s you, your eyes trained on the camera with a fierceness in your jaw. Your lips are slightly curved but you fool no one. In your eyes, the rage lurks. We’ve laughed at the photograph many times and in your defense, you’ve said the same words: I wanted to win. It didn’t matter that you’d come this far. Your only evidence and really, consolation, at having lived a full life was a proof of victory and no one could take that away from you. Certainly not I.There are days I like to think the pain of losing a child is the most unbearable thing and nearly impossible to not be wrecked by it. And some days I realize a greater tragedy awaits- waking up next to a woman you no longer recognize as your wife. You repelled me. Quit talking altogether. You wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep. You lay on the couch for days, only getting up to use the guest bathroom. The one we shared had been marked forever by what we witnessed. I too couldn’t walk in the door without the image searing my eyes. Once I tried to lay a blanket over you and you threw an empty tray at me, screaming that I leave you alone. It cut just above my left eye before crashing to the ground. While I swept the pieces off the floor, you wept with your head buried inside a cushion and my eye filled with blood.This is not a confession but your way of grieving was a fresh wound deeper than the loss of our child. Your absence was armed and loud. I wanted to lock myself away, to be unyoked from all that bound us together. Forgive me but for days, I had my fear shift into a bitterness that clawed at me from the inside and I found you unworthy, leaving nothing whole in your wake.There was a part of me that wanted what you had- a place to lay it all, someone to take on the weight while you opened yourself up to heal. Only none of this was healing you. I am familiar with your honed practice of withdrawal. I know just how much space you want before needing me again. Do you remember when we counted down to an hour before you’d let me hold you, after we argued about who takes longer to get ready? If we were not so young, so new at grappling with the brutality that is life, our fate wouldn’t have rippled out from this one moment. I became aware of the distance that was plugged inside us, clunked in place like a jammed knob. What had always felt like your presence was now a cluster of ruined things, tensing and pulsing between us. For me, the only agony rearing up inside was from wanting you. I have never been afraid when you push me away. Know that. But I cannot bear the thought of being the one you crash every time you come close to losing your mind.

***

Before we spiraled into something beyond repair, I decided to finish off the nursery. I picked steel blue paint. I painted the walls in neat straight lines and the room was a fine cloud. And then I thought to myself, what if we have twins next time? And so, I drove to the shop one more time and chose what was called a daffodil yellow. As I walked back inside the house, I saw you watch me, daring me. I found myself needing to feel present. It was almost as though I was disappearing, parts of who I was was being erased by a big sponge and to stay alive, I had to pin myself down with force to remain where I belong. I painted yellow over the blue on one side. Now the room was neatly divided, each part ready for what would come. I left the door ajar, the empty wooden crib tucked into the far corner. I needed you to know I wasn’t giving up. I needed you to see how I too, wanted the same thing.The next morning when I woke up, I saw our hardwood floor covered in paint, a mixture of blue and yellow. You had tipped the buckets and the paint had spilled all over and was already turning to a solid film. I cleaned it up. My illusion of hope drained away. How does one survive their own rage? You did not see it then, but this house was on fire and nothing was going to be spared. The psychological function of blame is deflection. It is a balm, a soothing distraction. Brené Brown calls it simply, the discharging of discomfort and pain. To release from confinement. To allow a pouring out for your own relief. I was the cup to be filled and every portion I received, I received with grace.

***

It had been three weeks and the longest season of our lives yet. All I wanted was to hold and be held. When people you love are mired in their own sorrow, so much that you’re lost trying to trace their pain, who draws who out?I had been having dreams I wanted to share with someone. You were my one. In the dreams, I saw you standing there, legs apart, waiting for something to fall from underneath you but there was nothing. Behind us, I heard the wailing of a child and I moved towards it. In each dream, the cry grew louder than the last and you were stuck, planted on the bathroom tiles, searching for what was no longer there while I cradled the baby in my arms.

***

“It was the size of a raspberry.”Fourth week. By now I was starting to think we were never going to move past this place. That we’ll grow apart and like many marriages, settle into a pattern of nourishing our wounds and hoping they save us somehow. I looked at you, unsure what to say. Your voice was weak and carried an edge of innocence I hadn’t cared to look for. You said it again.“It was the size of a raspberry.”I put down the mug I was wiping dry and sat next to you, not too close but just enough to let you know where I stand, where I have always stood. By your side, if you would let me.“But first it was the size of a grain of rice”“And then a sesame seed-”We went through the developmental chart we had memorized at the hospital, our unborn child taking shape in our minds. From lentil to blueberry to kidney bean. I reached for your hand and saw the tears welling up in your eyes. And mine too.“It survived so much,” I said. We didn’t lose everything, I wanted to say. We have what we have.I cried harder when you rested you head on my shoulder. I had been wanting that for so long. To be seen, to be made useful. Sitting there, my body trembling as you let me in, I learned something about myself that day when I felt inside of me the assembling of strength I never imagined I could have. It was only because it was suddenly meaningful to let go. That a man is as much what is given him and what is taken away from him.“What if the next time it dies at a different stage?”You were looking at me, really looking, for the first time in weeks. I wanted to say if it does happen, let’s walk through the muck together. Do not shut me out. This is my loss too and will you please hold my hand. I wanted to say if it does happen, we fight together and not against each other. If anything must endure, it should be us.Instead, I pulled you, my love, into my arms and said, “We try again.”