Normal Variant

Normal variant, read the report.

Normal variant is really pretty good, hardly different, slightly original.

In fact, the radiologist looked perfectly normal moving the gooey end of his large tube over my abdomen. Oh look, you can see it… You really don’t want to know? Because it’s quite clear, you can see it, can’t you? No, I didn’t want to know, but the radiologist’s pleased expression left no doubt. The impact made by a penis on a screen! Even in the shadows, even tiny, even not quite finished. I didn’t want to know, though I ended up knowing, that my baby was equipped with a penis full of promise. I didn’t really care. I was thrilled, but I would have been just as thrilled with a vagina and vulva. I would have been thrilled with any little being about to be, vigorous, swimming in the privacy of my subaquatic interior. The cherry on the sundae was not the mini-penis buffeted by the amniotic waves but the miraculous valve, alive, vibrating, opening and closing with the sound of a light breeze on a summer evening. Yes, at twenty weeks the heart of my very first little one was beating like a drum. So home I went, calm, dewy-eyed, with a blissful smile, ready to give up raw milk cheese and sashimi for the rest of my days.

I don’t quite remember how the anxiety came over me. At first it was slight, subtle like a hint, a tremor, almost nothing, but then it grew, settling right in the heart of my chest, so much so that rereading the famous report, normal variant soon struck me as completely abnormal. First, the question mark. How could I have missed it? It had been there all along, huge, a scene-stealer like my very first little one’s penis on the ultrasound image. A question mark changes everything, raises questions, sows doubt. And then those two words written in lowercase letters: echogenic kidneys. Echogenic: that which is opaque on an ultrasound image. Echogenic: that which sends back the ultrasound it receives in the form of an echo. An echo, on an echogram, is not normal. Echogenic-kidneys-colon-normal variant-question mark. All of a sudden, it was no longer a joking matter. All of a sudden, fear crept in, the fear that my very first little one wouldn’t make it, would give up along the way, drop out of the race.

Still, J and I went on vacation on the other side of the ocean, two probationers with knots in our stomachs. I’d never been to Calvi. I thought the salt air and infinite blue might be a good start for an echogenic baby. For three weeks, in my red trapeze dress that shrank a little each day, I roamed the steep coasts of the Isle of Beauty, danced with the goats on the mountains, ate grilled sardines, swam, swam, swam, my porous womb absorbing the Mediterranean. In the evening, I’d come home drunk on salt and sun. J would place his head gently on my belly to listen to the pulsating, vibrating valve. At times, I even forgot about the question mark and the echogenic kidneys. Snug and warm inside, my very first little one was growing. Already thirty centimetres long, he weighed about six hundred grams, reacted to noise and recognized my voice. Hello my little baby love, it’s Mummy, my Bear Cub, I’m waiting for you, I’m here. Fingernails covered the tips of his fingers. He opened his mouth at regular intervals to sip some amniotic liquid. His hiccups produced joyful jolts that tickled my insides. He bounced off the walls of my womb, brushed his feet and mouth with his hand. At times, through my papery skin, the top of his knee drew a hill or a volcano.  

It was on our return home that the end of the world arrived. Each time unique, the end of the world. My very first little one had been well underway for twenty-three weeks and, from the much less normal look on the radiologist’s face as he ran the gooey end of his tube over my belly, I quickly realized that something was brewing in the depths of my uterus. No more jokes. No more marvelling at the magical vibrating valve. He wasn’t laughing at all. Neither were we. I won’t hide it from you, I’m worried about the fetus’s kidneys. The… fetus? What… fetus? My very first little one is not a fetus!

In the waiting room, J and I sat patiently, watching toddlers crawl on the carpet. Then came confirmation of the end of the world. Her name was Christine. She was an obstetrician and as beautiful as Reese Witherspoon. The last thing she wanted was to deliver the news: The kidneys are full of cysts. They will never be functional. Right from birth, your baby will need dialysis, and if he survives, we could try to do a transplant when he’s around two years of age. But child donors are rare. Sometimes we have to transplant an adult kidney, though these procedures are extremely risky. I wouldn’t advise it. I’m so sorry. 

I immediately turned into a river. A wide, violent, inexhaustible river, befitting the situation. I would have liked to float downstream, to let the current carry me away and swallow me up, me and my big useless belly, but the hospital had its rules and regulations. It had to be done quickly, very quickly, because prior to twenty-four weeks, a… fetus has almost no chance of surviving in the big, wide world. A mother (me) can send her very first little one off to the land of the angels without anyone giving the matter much thought. My very first little one was twenty-four weeks minus two days. He could die without authorization.

The next day, Christine was waiting for us with her appropriate half-smile and unequivocal words. I wouldn’t have wanted anyone else when letting go of my very first little one, because it’s not as easy as you might think, even when you’ve never seen him, even when you don’t know what he looks like. You have to start by spreading your legs to allow a young man with a promising future to work comfortably in your vagina. The resident hadn’t been warned during his medical studies that he would one day have to insert large cotton swabs soaked in prostaglandins into the vagina of a distraught young woman. He had not been warned that he would have to help me, barely thirty years old, send my very first little one to the land of the angels. He completely lost it. You should have seen him, with his big clumsy fingers, unable to perform elegantly. Fortunately, Christine took matters into her own hands. After placing the cotton swabs between my trembling legs, she touched my abdomen and my legs stopped shaking. There, it’s done. I could now fall asleep while waiting for my cervix to soften. The next morning, it would open like a flower.     

The next day, nothing went according to plan. My whole body protested. It hadn’t benefitted from the full thirty-seven weeks to prepare for the Olympic finals. Drastic measures had to be taken: an injection of oxytocin to open the desperately closed door! This time, my uterus went into high gear and the heart of my very first little one gave out. Broken, the miraculous, living, vibrating valve. When he would emerge into daylight, he would see nothing, feel nothing, would not even take a breath of life. Afterwards, I followed directions to the letter. Yes, that’s good, open your legs, even wider. Relax. Just a little more effort! Breathe in, breathe out! Harder! Breathe! Yes, very good! Push, push! Again! Well done!

When my very first little one arrived in a slimy magma of blood and water, the nurse in pink fled. Seeing my very first little one, dead, slip between my legs like a piece of soap on a toboggan on a rainy day, it all was too much for her. She left, furtively closing the door behind her. It struck me that for a nurse, her nerves were a bit fragile, but after all, what did I know about her life? Perhaps she too had cried rivers sending her very first little one to the land of the angels after a toboggan ride. Perhaps she had strong opinions about the situation, a moral conscience that wasn’t aligned with the events. Perhaps she would never, ever have nipped her baby in the bud, even an echogenic baby with kidneys full of holes.

When the nurse in blue came in, I knew she wasn’t going to let me down. It was crystal clear. I thought she must have been standing behind the door, listening in on the great mystery of life and death combined in one noisy tragedy. Immense in her sky-blue smock, her charcoal gaze fixed on mine, she knew the grief and devastation brewing in the room. She cleaned my very first little one with the meticulousness of a watchmaker, rid his eyelids of the dried blood that sealed them, coated his little body with a sweet milky liquid, and then handed him to me as an offering.       

I immediately buried my head in my hands. I didn’t want to hold my very first little one dead in my arms. She insisted: Are you sure? I knew that looking at him would make him disappear forever. Eurydice, the nymph, had been the victim of the same curious love when Orpheus couldn’t contain his desire to see her. But the charcoal-eyed nurse knew all the myths. She had washed other babies that hadn’t made it. She knew that I had to look back, that the story had already been written, that Eurydice and my Bear had to return to the Underworld. She knew that the worst thing would have been not to hold my very first little one in my arms, even dead, even not quite finished. Nicole, my friend, thirty years older than me, had told me how, in the sixties, chloroformed and tied to her bed, with no one by her side, she had given birth to a stillborn child that would never be shown to her. When she woke up, taken aback by her deflated abdomen, she thought she’d been dreaming, that her nausea, the unfamiliar heaviness of her body and her hardened breasts hadn’t existed any more than the little girl with pigtails that she’d imagined a hundred times, running through the tall grass. Fifty years later, she was still mourning that first child she hadn’t been allowed to lay eyes on.

The charcoal-eyed nurse knew all this. Eurydice in the Underworld, Nicole and her grief, all those women before me put to sleep in a bed to give birth to a dead child they would never see. You really don’t want to see him? I’ll take him away… So I screamed and the entire floor came to a standstill. The nurse turned around and placed my very first little one in my arms.

Looking at his sweet, perfectly drawn features, his crumpled ears, his thick hair standing straight up on his soft skull, he looked absolutely normal. Tiny, but normal. I adjusted the yellow cap that had been put on his head, then rocked him for a long time. My baby Bear, my tiny little Bear, rock a bye baby, gently you swing, over the cradle, mother will sing, sweet is the lullaby over your nest,
that tenderly sings my baby to rest… There was nothing left but joy, the morphine coursing through my veins and me, almost mother, half-mother, better mother, bitter mother. Quick, quick, bring me a telephone! I want to talk to my own, whole mother. Mum, mum, my very first little one was born. He’s so beautiful. Yes, Mum, he died, but he was born. On the other end of the line, I heard the sobs of my mother whose womb was bleeding, far away, for the emptiness left in mine. I hung up. The nurse in blue picked up my very first little one, took him away and didn’t look back. 

Translated from the original French by Shelley Pomerance