To Be Gifted
By Priya Singh
The baby carriage is there when the woman comes rushing downstairs at half past five in the morning. She bursts out of the building door determined to not have to run for her bus as usual and almost side-swipes it. It blocks the mailboxes and presents an awkward obstacle to the metal gate opening onto the street. She doesn’t get a good look as she hurries by; only a black shape with a thick, crinkly sheet of plastic, and she wonders if someone is coming back for it.
Mothers in the city often drape such sheets over their strollers when it rains. This is not the rain that falls outside the city in the nearby forests. Water that strikes the pines and ash and birch, scented with the rich perfume of the Earth is a blessing. Something that people tip their heads towards the skies to receive. Their city rain has to fight its way through thick, soupy layers of clouds dyed unnatural hues of brownish grey. It strikes the sides of buildings. It beads off the backs of pigeons and ravens as they fly past clutching bits of food salvaged from one of the trash bins on the street which are more than enough in number, yet remain perpetually full. Rather than gently laying itself over the ground, city rain slams to the Earth. It soaks into coats and sneaks past umbrellas. The smell it leaves behind is an odd one of lived-out life, like the hallways of an old building.
The plastic sheets make babies look like lab specimens being carted around between experiments. Whenever the woman sees little feet wiggling and thumping against the safety bar through a foggy sheet, she cringes. She pictures them sweating and struggling for a gulp of forbidden city air. If I wanted to protect my baby from the rain, she often thinks. But a traffic light changes, a car horn blares, or someone pushes past her. The thought never takes shape.
Only the earliest of creatures are in the streets. The ambulance station is just raising its doors. The paramedics are gathered beside one of the ambulances with steaming cups of coffee. They wear tee shirts despite the gleaming layer of frost on the ground. Parents are wearing their childrens’ school bags, and holding little hands securely with their own. They rush their kids from the warmth of their apartments and to the bus stops.
The children, rather than looking resentful of the early hour, gaze around the lamp lit streets as they trot after their parents. They still have the bright wonder of creatures who find something new in each day when so many others have already resigned themselves to living them out in much the same way as the last.
The baby carriage is still blocking the mailboxes when she returns. The plastic sheet has been pulled back to expose a blue, cushioned cradle with a spotless white lining. It’s the style of cradle where the baby can lay on its back or sit up if they’re older. Where their education of the world begins with the shapes of roofs bordering the sky, the tops of trees, neatly spaced out along the streets, and the little lines and movements of people’s throats. It looks as if someone has just parked it while they run inside. People often park their carriages in front of the supermarket to avoid blocking the aisles. So far, she has never heard of one being stolen. It must be like stealing a Bible from a hotel room, the woman has often thought. Even the most hardened of thieves have some kind of limit.
There is a sheet of printer paper inside the cradle with the words ‘To Be Gifted’ in faded, blocky letters. She wants to check the mailbox. There are bills that will need to be paid before the end of the month. But she can’t get around the carriage without her coat touching it.
Her partner is already home. He is whipping a pot of instant mashed potatoes with little cubes of butter. His face is a grimace of concentration so that he looks in pain. She sets the table and prepares her own meal while he mumbles through a list of things left to do for his dinner. She pours herself a large glass of wine which he glances at but says nothing. He is streaming travel videos on the TV. A host is invited to different homes to eat what he perceives as exotic foods. In reality they are commonplace to the households he visits. At the moment, he is digging into a plate of local river fish and a soup with a spicy level that will supposedly blow his head off.
The woman’s plate is a colourful mound of vegetables. Her partner’s plate is like a paint sample card for shades of brown. A lamb steak dripping with oil-soaked peppercorns, instant mashed potatoes and some spears of white asparagus sitting in a pool of lamb juices mingled with blood. He will offer her some asparagus, knowing full well she won’t eat it because of the lamb juices. She will roll her eyes and ignore him when he offers. In the end the asparagus will be thrown away.
Was there anything today? He doesn’t take his eyes away from the screen or his plate when he talks.
I didn’t look. The mailbox was blocked. She gulps some wine.
Push the damn carriage out of the way then.
It would have been so easy for him to move the carriage himself. When he touches anything, it’s as if he sees no reason to try to understand it. Nothing holds much reverence for him. He picks up objects in his huge hands, looks at them as though they’re just another piece of junk cluttering up the world and tosses them aside. For the woman, the notion of touching the baby carriage makes her cringe.
Do you want some? He’s actually looking at her, eyebrows raised, chin thrust in the direction of the pot of mashed potatoes.
Maybe a spoonful. What’s in it?
It’s very simple. Cheese, butter, cream, salt, pepper, and crispy fried onions.
The instant potatoes are sticky and still heavy on her tongue even after she swallows and the flavors start to sour in her mouth. Nothing has a fresh, peppery burn like her radishes or a sweetness like the strips of red peppers she has sliced. Months ago, fresh vegetables would not appeal no matter how much she forced herself to eat them. Everything in that pot of powdered potatoes, the monochromatic, artificial flavours were all she’d craved. She eats three large spoonfuls.
It’s a quarter past five the next morning when she rushes out of the apartment building. She thought she would have time for a cup of coffee, but after a few sips she realized she had miscalculated the time it takes to walk to the bus stop. The baby carriage is still there. The plastic sheet is gone.
At the office, most of the rooms are still dark. The open kitchen where people take their coffee breaks is clean and quiet. No group of colleagues lounging at a table or standing in a circle, blocking the coffee machine. She hates that awful silence that falls over the group whenever she sidles up with an empty cup and politely asks if she can squeeze by. She feels responsible for shattering their easy rapport and skitters away as quickly as possible.
They weren’t always like this. For those few months in the late summer and fall when her body thickened and her clothes became a little bit looser, they noticed. They smiled more at her. If she came to the coffee machine some of them would move aside for her. Sometimes she stared at the buttons, trying to debate if it was wrong to drink coffee in her condition. If they hadn’t been there staring at her, she would have chosen coffee. But under their critical gazes, she chose herbal tea or hot chocolate, and they smiled in approval.
Mostly, people searched her expression for happiness or a sign of the moment when she would confirm for the whole office what everyone knew. Until then, they wouldn’t say a word. Not even when she had to leave her desk five or six times a day to clear the spinning, boiling sensation bouncing between her head and stomach. Once she had had to run around to the side of the building to vomit in some bushes. When she came back, there was a full carafe of water on her desk full of sliced cucumbers.
After some time her face narrowed to its original shape, then thinned further. She continued to wear loose clothes like a safety blanket. Her colleagues stopped smiling at her and exchanged significant glances with one another as they tried to assess the situation they now faced.
This morning she grabs a plain white mug ringed with old coffee stains and presses the latte button on the machine. It rumbles to life and its buzzing shatters the peaceful office like a building bell. It’s as familiar a sound as the constant slamming of fingertips against keyboards. At any given time of day, people trudge towards the machine with empty cups like weary travelers in the desert searching for the fabled spigot of life elixir.
The coffee is bitter and over-extracted. The beans are a cheap, mass market brand that has been around for over a hundred years. With every office the woman has worked in, the quality of the coffee seems to get steadily worse. Luckily however, this machine uses real milk. She saw a service technician come in one morning to replace the giant milk bag connected to the machine with a clear hose. As if it were some kind of robotic mother being prepared to nourish its charges.
She sips the foul drink, enjoying the smell of the coffee. A colleague from the accounting department walks past. Behind him is a little girl in a sky blue sweater and a pair of jeans, both with iron-on patches of different types of birds. There is a hummingbird on the breast pocket and a parrot just below one knee. On her left sleeve is a tiny sparrow in a deep shade of cornflower. She is wearing a huge purple backpack and carrying a wrapped paper tray containing squares of cake.
Every time he brings his daughter to work, he buys cake to share with the others in the accounting department. The woman dislikes his seeming need to apologize for her presence because the little girl is lovely and very polite. As father and daughter walk by, daughter stops to shake the woman’s hand good morning. It delights the woman so much that she feels the prickle of tears at the corner of her eyes.
Our new employee, he jokes.
They continue past the main doors and head for his office. The backpack bounces with the girl’s steps, and the woman wonders if there are books about birds inside. She makes a mental note to find something interesting with birds so she can gift it to the girl the next time they see one another.
The accountant comes back and grabs two mugs, one of them is a lurid purple. He has taken off his jacket and his tee shirt is the same sky blue as his daughter’s sweater. He smiles at the woman in a way that’s more than polite, but not friendly enough so she feels invited to start a conversation. He fills his own mug with a cafe au lait and the other with hot chocolate. As he reaches to press the button, her eyes fall across the muscled line of his arm. Just below the sleeve she notices a tattoo of three sparrows like the one on the sleeve of his daughter’s sweater.
Why do people like to dress their children to fit their own ideas? If I had a kid to dress, she starts to think. But she gulps the last of her coffee and doesn’t let the thought crystallize. The coffee is even worse when it’s cold.
Darkness never seems to relent whether she’s going to or coming from work. The baby carriage is still blocking the mailboxes. The paper which says “To be gifted” is still inside. There is a mark from the toe of a sneaker at the top corner as if someone stopped it from blowing away. She feels a twinge of pity for the spotless cradle. Today she wore heels to make checking the mailbox easier. But it’s still impossible to do it without the carriage pressing into her belly.
Her partner is on the sofa with his feet propped on the coffee table when she comes in. On his laptop, he clicks through an online newspaper of mediocre reputation. Cash for Antiquities is on TV. He sometimes goes on week-long binges with this show then hunts around the apartment, convinced he owns something valuable.
His grunt is an acknowledgement of her presence, but he doesn’t turn around until she starts unpacking cucumbers, tomatoes, carrots, and two bottles of wine onto the kitchen table. The bottles will probably only last a day or two. The one she opened last night is already empty, the bottle soaking in warm soapy water so she can take the label off.
What are you having for dinner? Asking about meals is one of the few ways they still communicate these days.
Leftovers.
Ok. A panel of antique experts are outbidding each other for an ugly, antique chair with a pattern of weirdly proportioned birds in a bare tree.
His remaining chunk of lamb steak is still on the table. It’s mostly fat and gristle. The bloodied layer of sauce has hardened, as if someone had used the plate for paints. The remaining mashed potatoes have solidified into a single lumpy mass in the pot. Even at the height of her brief experience with cravings, cold mashed potatoes were still revolting.
Months ago, she was often nauseous at random times during the day. Her brain understood what feeling hungry was like, but this was the intense hunger of someone who hasn’t eaten in weeks. It happened every three or four hours, starting with a dull throb in her head as a warning before her body was flooded with such unbearable nausea, that sometimes she couldn’t move.
On hospital days they packed sandwiches with butter and cheese and some with peanut butter and bananas. What type of bread and cheese to buy and who should carry the sandwiches gave them something to talk about. Otherwise, she couldn’t look at him. In the waiting rooms she stared at the wall or at the floating tea leaves in her glass thermos. They visited a lot of waiting rooms together and almost every one of them had a fish tank with children clustered around it. For one day of surgery it seemed as if they had had to traipse the entirety of a single hospital building to meet the different people who would be responsible for her care.
Weeks later he’d found one of the emergency sandwiches squished in the bottom of his bag under the beer bottles and prepackaged salads he usually bought for lunch. He’d picked up the sticky lump between two fingernails, and tossed it into the trash.
Cash for Antiques continues. He warms his grizzled chunk of lamb and throws it away after two bites because it’s fat and gristle. He throws the potatoes away too because they taste sour.
She eats cucumbers and tomatoes and peas for dinner. He calls to order a protein pizza with pepperoni and bacon. Listening to him chew through a slice of pizza is a nauseating experience so she leaves the table. She pours a big glass of wine and retreats to the guest bedroom.
The guest bedroom has become something of an escape these days. There is a narrow desk along one wall near the window and a bookshelf beside it. In front of the shelf is an armchair with a huge, stuffed polar bear. At the opposite end of the room is the bed where she’d slept all of last month until he somehow convinced her to sleep in their bed again. It wasn’t so much that he’d convinced her as he expected her to come back. She’d gone along with it because her mind was too numb to protest.
For a while, she’d ignored his advances until his increasing frustration made him harder to shake off. She could never voice the words whirling through her brain as if they were trapped in a windstorm, lost among all the other chaos. The two weeks recommended healing time by the hospital was not enough for her body. She felt damaged and confused. Time was what she craved now. In his mind the weeks after surgery were merely a timer counting down to the day when he could beg for or initiate sex whenever he felt like it.
His flesh felt magnetic when they were together. No matter how many times she moved away or pushed him away, his body was fastened to her in the next moment. His skin was baby soft, but now the feel of it and the heavy smells of sex that infested their bedroom triggered nothing but deep rage. The problem was, that rage was pushed too far down to bring to the surface. In her head she screamed at him for all of the countless ways he had hurt her. On the outside, she felt like a carved piece of stone being weathered down every day by a fierce wind.
Tonight, if she had luck, he would fall asleep on the sofa. Then she could stay here. If not, when he was ready for bed he would not leave the room until she came too. They could go an entire day exchanging only a handful of words - all without eye contact. But when he is ready for bed, he is almost aggressive in making sure she comes with him.
The wind whips across the trees outside and rattles the windows slightly. The pristine cradle in the baby carriage will be wrecked by all the grime swirling up from the ground. If she brought it upstairs, he would be lost for words, watching her wheel it into the guest room. Maybe he would think she had lost her mind after all. Then he wouldn’t enter the room anymore. If he still hovered outside, watching, she could simply shut the door in his face and lock it.
She wishes she had brought the rest of the wine with her. The room is chilly but there are some spare blankets under the bed. Kneeling on the grey carpet, she peers into the dusty underworld beneath the bed. There are some storage bags for extra bedding, back when they had guests, and she seizes the handle to drag one out. Two fleecy grey blankets are rolled on top of the bag, and it clangs with glass against glass as she pulls it out.
A week after surgery, she’d struggled downstairs with a huge duffel bag of empty bottles even though she was supposed to avoid that type of strain. The bottles had once contained vodka, or gin, or sweet wine; the cheapest possible brands without coming in plastic. She had filled three of the five of the recycling bins that day, praying none of her neighbors would come downstairs and see. The duffel stank of cheap alcohol so she threw that away too.
It’s a Sisyphean task, corralling all of the bottles from their different corners to make a single pile which will stay inside until it gets too big to ignore. This was never supposed to be her burden, but it is because her partner has chosen to make these bottles his lifelong commitment. He has chosen them over her, over a converted guest room. over a baby carriage. Of all the things the woman and her partner could have had, the eternal collection of glass bottles will be the distorted window through which she will be forced to see what led her to the hospital.
Throughout the process, every nurse and technician and gynecologist misinterpreted her tears and asked her again and again if she was certain. What if she could never conceive again? The question made her cry even more because they didn’t understand. It might have been her decision to terminate the life they formed, but it is vodka, gin and sweet wine that dictate their path. In her heart, she knew it would fall to her to try and protect this little life, and that she would fail. Any child of theirs could never have that sweetness in seeing something new and wonderful in the world every day.
In the early days of living together, he would sneak a few bottles into his bag every time he left the apartment so that he could recycle them without her seeing. But time has had a remarkable numbing effect, and he no longer cares if she walks in and he is in the middle of a gulp. Sometimes he raises the bottle in a toast and she wants to rip it from his hand and smash it over him. This never ending thirst is the only thing he will nurture. Not even someone of his own flesh can take that place.
The long stretches of silence he treats her to every day is a reminder that it is her actions that have shattered them. But the truth is that they had both been drawn to something that was just a heap of broken glass. It glittered and gave the promise of something beautiful but there was never enough to build anything solid, let alone rebuild. Now those shards have lost their sparkle forever. They remain as they are because that is how they have always been. Their pieces will not fit anywhere else.
She shoves the blankets into the storage bag and leans her weight on it to zip it shut. Then she hefts the cursed thing into her arms and marches past the living room to the front door. He swivels around when he hears the clanging and watches her put on a coat and a pair of flats even though the temperature is in the minus tonight. She shoves her keys into her pockets and shoulders her way out the door, carrying the bundle in her arms like a grotesque child.
Where are you going?
She shuts the door.
She can check the mail again. Someone has taken the baby carriage or it was thrown away, but either way it’s gone.
Are you ready to go? The nurse’s voice had sounded muddy in her brain as she was coming to.
You mean before or after? Her voice was still scratchy.
After. We’re going back to your room. You’re finished now. The nurse made it sound like she had gone for a haircut or a dental checkup.
The room swam into view. The top half of the bed was raised so that she was sitting up. The nurse wore pink scrubs and brown-framed glasses. The room had a bizarre orange color like an average restaurant trying to look like a hip bistro. The nurse had been typing something on a computer near the bed and her spotless white shoes shone through the woman’s blurred vision.
Everything had felt warm and drowsy that day for the first few hours after surgery. She had wanted to sink back into it, but he told her to get up. Otherwise the nurse would give her a new IV. Each new IV bag cost money.
First, she goes to the recycling bins - three are full. She fills the other two and a half, uttering a fresh obscenity with each bottle that gets slammed into the bin. She curses them and banishes them forever. When she goes back upstairs, it will be as if they’ve never left.
The woman stands in the empty rectangle where the baby carriage used to be. Golden and orange leaves glitter under a delicate crust of ice and blow towards the metal door. She crunches over the leaves as she reaches up to check her overstuffed mailbox.
Although the tops of her feet are tingling from cold, she sorts through ads for steaks and blocks of cheese on sale, and discounted crates of beer. Within the tangle is the bill from the hospital she has been waiting for. They were late in sending it, but now she can finally pay. She folds the envelope in half and shoves it into her pocket before reentering the tepid warmth of the staircase. He won’t have soaked the mashed potato pot. She’ll have to do that before she can go back to the guest room.
THE END