Birth in Suburbia
Chapter One

Friends

Debbie heard the rattle of the wheels on the pavement long before she noticed the woman, who stopped in front of her and smiled.
She has her own teeth, Debbie thought, and for her age this seemed remarkable. She looked a hundred, a thin bent reed of a woman, wearing layers of clothing despite the weather. A miniature Yorkshire terrier sat poised in her wheeled shopping basket, on top of what appeared to be pile of vegetables loosely covered by a tartan throw. Debbie detected a faint odour, not unpleasant, like oranges and cloves, a Christmas smell on a warm sunny day. A pale knotted hand reached out and gently touched Debbie’s stomach. Debbie smiled; she was used to it.
“Mothers never leave their children,” the old woman said.
“I have no intention of leaving my baby”
“Not you dear. We are all children you know.”
Debbie looked past the woman, along the street, to where Chrissy was waiting for her. She was thinking,
Help! This strange woman has accosted me.
“They used to burn midwives, as witches” the woman added. “I was one you know.”
“A witch?”
“A midwife dear, long ago. There’s something you should know.”
The woman’s look was direct, and for a moment Debbie felt like a rabbit caught in headlights.
“Your mother is with you.”
The woman lowered her hand and without another word continued on her way. Debbie watched her turn the corner. The sound of the shopping basket wheels faded into the warm air.
That old familiar lump in her throat, the unresolved anxiety, returned. Debbie’s mum had died three years earlier.
“Are you coming?” Chrissy called from the doorway of the bistro. Debbie turned and walked toward her friend.
“Who was that?” Chrissy asked as they stepped out of the sun and into the air-conditioned entrance. Debbie stopped to catch her breath.
“I don’t know… strange. I’m getting nervous,” she said. “I want to get it over with. Look at me, I can’t talk and walk at the same time.”
Sergio greeted them.
“Good afternoon ladies. Your table is ready in the courtyard.”
He guided them through the limited space between customer’s tables, past the sweltering kitchen, and toward the open door at the back of the restaurant.
“A glass of white wine please, Sergio. What are you having Debs? You must be so hot in this weather. Thank God I’m not you,” Chrissy said, reclining easily into her seat like a sated leopard.
“Sorry we’re late Sergio,” Debbie held her hand to her eyes against the glare of the sun.
“Want to borrow my shades?” Chrissy asked.
Debbie shook her head. She thought she could hear the fading rattle of the wheels of the old woman’s shopping basket. She sat down and worried the gold band on her right ring finger.
They were in the shade, beneath the parasol, at a table in the small cobbled courtyard at the rear of the bistro. The terracotta painted walls, overgrown with ivy and clematis, and the warm breeze together with the pots of geraniums and ‘busy lizzy,’ gave the courtyard a pleasant continental feel.
“How was your antenatal class?” Chrissy asked sipping her wine.
“You know, the usual, we were scared witless with detail for the first half and then expected to practice relaxation for the second.”
Debbie’s baby was expected in three weeks; on the day before her thirtieth birthday.
She felt heavy and tired. The midwife’s graphic descriptions of labour raised barely suppressed fears. Listening to her had brought mixed feelings. After the class she asked her friends Helen and Liz what they thought. She wanted to know how they felt about labour and birth, if they were really afraid. They claimed to be nervous, but they seemed so confident.
I’m going to give birth and I must to come to terms with it.
“Do you think it will make any difference? The relaxation and breathing I mean, will it help? I’m not very good with pain,” She confessed.
“Is anyone?” Chrissy said.
“What will it really be like?”
She looked at Chrissy, with some trepidation. Chrissy had the capacity to be brutally frank, but she was the one with experience of childbirth.
“Bloody excruciating, that’s what it's like,” Chrissy said. “Have the epidural. You can’t go wrong. No pain; let them do it for you.”
This was not what Debbie wanted to hear. Chrissy appeared to have forgotten how anxious she herself had been before Natalie’s birth. Debbie could remember her reading everything she could get her hands on in the hope of an easy passage.
“You had forceps, Chrissy.” Her voice was incredulous, the word forceps sounding more like blasphemy than instruments.
“That’s what I mean,” They’ll do it for you, with the forceps.”
“And you had an episiotomy.”
“But I didn’t feel them doing it,” Chrissy replied.
“Come on Chrissy, you felt it afterwards, didn’t you?”
“That’s true, but I had all the time in the world for it to heal, didn’t I? That bastard,” she was still bitter enough to never speak his name.
Helen always referred to Chrissie’s ex as Lord Voldemort.
“I thought he had gone off sex, but he hadn’t, had he? You know what he used to say to me when I was pregnant? His excuse for not…you know, doing it? ‘I’m afraid I’ll hurt the baby.’ Him, how? Didn’t he ever look at himself? With what?”
Chrissy laughed bitterly, unable to conceal her resentment.
Mildly embarrassed, Debbie looked around to see if anyone was listening, but the other tables were now empty.
She did sympathise with Chrissy, her husband had behaved cruelly to her, having an affair when she was still pregnant, and then leaving just weeks after Natalie was born, to live with an eighteen-year-old girl, who immediately became pregnant. But that was almost five years ago now and she had heard it all before, a number of times. Today there were other things to talk about.
She kept hoping Chrissy would move on and together with Helen and Liz had tried playing cupid, inviting her out to dinner with an assortment of suitable, available men, all of whom were presented to, and ultimately cold-shouldered by Chrissy, who managed to maintain an air of cynical detachment.
Insect repellent could not have worked more effectively.
It was taking her a long time to learn to trust again, too long. They hoped one day she would find someone to love and trust, and start to look forward.
It was Helen who one day finally said:
“Perhaps we should give it a rest. Chrissy seems happy enough, she has Natalie, a lovely home and a job she enjoys; perhaps a man would not make it better for her. If it happens, it happens. At least we wouldn’t be to blame if we introduced her to someone who made her life a misery.”
From then on finding a man for Chrissy was taken off their ‘to do’ list. Pregnancy had brought a new set of priorities into their lives.
Debbie watched Chrissy take a cigarette packet out of her bag and rummage for her lighter before deciding not to smoke. Chrissy said nothing, but replaced the cigarettes and found a pack of mints.
Chrissy said, her voice now calm,
“I should have realised at the time, you know, when he started having two showers a day and doing sit-ups to get rid of his belly; and then there was the day he washed his own his underpants, he hadn’t done that before.” Chrissy laughed, suddenly conscious of the ridiculous intimacy of her comment.
“Sorry,” she said, “I don’t mean to go on.”
“Yes, on a need-to-know basis I would give that one a zilch,” Debbie said.
“Well I know that’s nothing on its own, but there were other things.” Chrissy chewed her bottom lip.
“The working late, the phone ringing and no one there, you know all the typical signs that you don’t notice when your head is in the sand, and well, in truth, you don’t want to know, do you?”
“I would want to know,” Debbie said.
“Yes, but what would you do if you found out, if Sean was, you know, seeing someone else?” Chrissy asked her.
“I don’t know, I can’t imagine Sean doing it, he doesn’t have the time apart from anything else.”
“They can all make the time Debbie, if they want to,” Chrissy said, but added quickly, “Although I wouldn’t worry if I were you, I can’t imagine Sean doing it either. He’s so bloody organised he couldn’t handle two women, too many potential complications.”
Debbie nodded. That was true, Sean made sure that everything in their life was organised. When they first met she had found this attractive, but occasionally she secretly craved spontaneity, some demonstration of her value to him; an occasional complement or affectionate word would be nice.
There were times when she felt invisible.
Contrary to what Chrissy thought, Debbie wondered if being well organised would give him more opportunity for infidelity, not less.
Looking back, she realised how quiet she had been of late, and how she could cry at the smallest thing.
At home Sean had been making an effort to be patient, but Debbie knew it was an effort for him, an effort that was wearing thin. She had found safety in silence. If she didn’t talk about the things that were worrying her she avoided more tears.
In private, she could sit and let the tears flow, and she usually felt better afterwards.
A sparrow ventured close to her feet searching and picking for crumbs or anything that resembled food.
Debbie was struck by a sense of recognition.
That’s how I feel, she thought, pecking for crumbs.
Chrissy looked at her.
“You okay?”
“I’m fine thanks Chrissy, just thinking and I suddenly feel tired, ready for a nap, must be the food.”
As they left the bistro Chrissy invited her round to her house that coming weekend.
“I’m having a barbecue on Saturday if the weather stays like this, can you make it?”
“Sounds great; Sean will light the barbecue if you want.”
“And what makes you think I can’t light my own barbecue?” Chrissy replied, responding to Debbie’s smirking face. She knew Debbie was remembering last time.
“Paraffin marinade is not my favourite.”
“Okay then, point taken, I’m sure Nigel will give him a hand. Helen and Nigel said they’d come if she isn’t in labour, she’s due next week isn’t she?”
They walked through the small shopping mall, stopping to look in the windows on the way, and crossing the road toward the car park where they parted.
Chrissy planned to do some serious shopping before collecting Natalie from school.
Debbie’s house was situated on the far side of the green adjoining the road where Chrissy had left her car.
“Are you alright to drive Chrissy?”
“Two small glasses and that was ages ago, I’m fine, and I’m on holiday. I’m having the week off, although the beggars won’t leave me alone and keep ringing with problems, but I’m not going in until Monday and that’s final.” She smiled at Debbie.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Debbie continued her way home across the green to collect her dog Scooter. She was tired but couldn’t bear the thought of sitting in on such a nice day.
Her spirits were momentarily lifted by the sight of two very young children who were sitting on the grass picking the heads off daisies and throwing them at each other in fits of laughter. The green was white with daisies, the sun was shining. It was a beautiful afternoon.
She needed to think. Sean was at work. She had to talk to him, later.