Four Fires (43 page)

She does this all over again every night just before she goes to bed. She also has a small enamel basin, two flannels and a jug of boiled water beside her bed as well as a jar of potassium permanganate and a jar of seaweed extract and other assorted herbs.

Early on the Saturday morning we're supposed to leave Yankalillee for Melbourne, Sarah wakes up feeling strange and then she gasps in dismay, because she's discovered she's pissed her bed.

The sheet is sopping wet between her legs and so is her nightie. For a moment she's horrified, then, almost at once, she realises it isn't what she thought, that her waters have broken (whatever that is). It's not her that's wet the bed, it's the first sign the baby is coming.

Suddenly she gets this pain. Later she tells us, 'It's a vice-like pain across my tummy and it takes my breath away. I want to scream, but I think I'll wake Mrs Rika Ray up, yet I can't help myself.

The pain is so bad I start to sob and groan because it's getting worse and I'm sure I'm going to die.'

Mrs Rika Ray, who's sleeping on a hair trigger, hears Sarah in her sleep and she's up in a flash and runs down the passage to the door of Morrie and Sophie's bedroom and knocks loudly.

'Sophie! Sophie! Waking up please. Come quickly, we are needing boiled water and the towels!'she cries.

Sophie wakes up and sits bolt upright in bed, she thinks she's in Poland 'O borze oni ida Maurice gestapo po nas przysli chca nas zabrac ( Oh God, they are coming, Maurice. It's the Gestapo, they are coming for us!'), she yells in Polish.

But then she must have realised what was happening and she leaps out of bed and hurriedly puts on this pink chenille dressing gown she's made specially, so that if she has to go to the corner telephone to phone Morrie, she'll be respectable.

'Bring hot water, Sophie! Baby coming! Put on kettle and pot also for sterilising!' Mrs Rika Ray
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shouts from the other bedroom.

But Sophie has been programmed for a different kind of action, one she's rehearsed in her mind a hundred times over. She's got to get to the corner telephone and call Morrie. Now nothing else matters.

She's out the front door and has reached the front gate when she remembers the sixpences in the envelope pinned to the door. But the door has slammed behind her and is on a Yale lock and can't be opened from the outside. Morrie has done it specially, because Sophie needs to know she's safe when she's inside the house. So now Sophie can't get back. It's two o'clock in the morning and she's screaming and banging on the door. But Mrs Rika Ray is busy with Sarah, who's also screaming, and so she doesn't hear her and can't come anyway.

To add to the catastrophe, Maria and Costa and their family next door have left early the previous evening to catch the train to visit her sister, who is getting married on the weekend to an Australian-Italian who owns a big orchard near Shepparton. At that time in the morning the street is completely deserted. Sophie's knuckles are practically bleeding from hammering at the door. She's panicking like mad and can't think what to do next.

Meanwhile Mrs Rika Ray can't wait for towels and hot water because Sarah's baby isn't hanging around for anyone. She lays newspaper over the fruit crate Sarah uses for a bedside table and puts all her things down on it, including the newspaper parcel she's sterilised. Then she spreads thick sheets of newspaper over the bed, lifting Sarah's legs and bum onto it. As she lifts Sarah's legs, Sarah's hit with another excruciating pain and screams out. 'I need to push, oh God, pleeeease . . . I-havetopush'

'You are calming down, please, Sarah, we are getting to pushing when I am examining sliding-out possibilities. Now, please, you must bring your legs up so.' She grabs a hold of one of Sarah's legs in each hand and bends them at the knee and pushes her legs back and then slides extra newspaper under her bum and where the baby's going to come and then has a good look-see at what's going on inside Sarah.

'Please, I have to push! Oh, oh, it hurts so much! Ahaaawha!! Shit! Shit! Shit!'

'My goodness gracious me, bushings please! Such language, it is not becomings a lady!' Mrs Rika Ray says calmly. 'The baby head it is making to slide out perfectly, my dear. I am putting my hand on the top and then you are pushing, Sarah. You are pushing hard and I am holding baby head, it must not come too quickly, we are not wanting tearing of perineum! Push, darling, your baby is sliding out very beautiful, like wet pumpkin pip.'

Sarah pushes hard and then lets out a scream and her baby comes sliding out into Mrs Rika Ray's willing hands. She places it between Sarah's legs and reaches for the little rubber pump contraption and inserts it into the tiny mouth and, pressing on the rubber ball, sucks out the mucus and fluid in the infant's mouth. The baby's eyes crinkle up and, balling its tiny fists, the baby starts to scream its head off. She doesn't have to hold it upside down and spank its bottom like they say you must, because it's breathing a treat and also yelling its lungs out, which requires a whole heap of breath.

'My goodness gracious me, this one she will be opera singer!' Mrs Rika Ray is ecstatic. 'It is a girl, a most beautiful very, very wonderful girl, Sarah! Very, very healthy!' Mrs Rika Ray says.

Sarah is still panting furiously but the moment she sees her daughter, she bursts into tears, trying to smile and at the same time trying to stop her panting, all of which can't be done simultaneously. So she bawls and pants. She's not crying because she's sad, but because she's so happy.

Then Mrs Rika Ray becomes aware that someone is banging furiously on the window of Sarah's bedroom. She moves over and opens Nancy's yellow-daisy curtains to see a wild-eyed Sophie outside, her nose pressed against the windowpane and the branches of the lemon tree behind her, a lemon resting on top of her head. She pushes the window up and Sophie climbs into the bedroom, gasping and falling to the floor with a thud. But she's up in an instant, even before Mrs
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Rika Ray can reach out and give her a hand. Mrs Rika Ray doesn't seem too surprised at Sophie's entrance. 'Hot water we are needing, a kettle to boil and a pot, you are hurrying please, Sophie.'

But Sophie isn't listening, she doesn't say a word or even glance at Sarah or see the baby but makes straight for the bedroom door and runs down the passage to the front door where she grabs the envelope containing the sixpences and flies out the door and tears down the pavement to the telephone booth on the corner. The door bangs behind her.

The scene in the bedroom continues uninterrupted. Mrs Rika Ray lifts the baby from between Sarah's legs and places her on her tummy. 'Sarah, you are holding the baby only on your tummy, you are soon seeing fingers and toes for counting, but not yet.' She takes each of Sarah's hands in turn and shows her how to hold the baby. 'Be careful, the umbilical cord we are not yet cutting, I am tying first then we are cutting.'

She reaches down to the newspaper parcel on the wooden fruit crate beside the bed and takes a single length of twine about eight inches long and ties it tightly around the umbilical cord, about an inch from the baby's navel. Then she takes the second piece and ties it about three inches further up towards Sarah's tummy. She reaches down again and picks up the scissors and cuts through the section of the cord contained between the two pieces of twine. In this way she stems the blood flow through the cord from the baby and the mother's end, and at the same time detaches the baby.

With the baby no longer attached to its umbilical cord, Mrs Rika Ray looks down at Sarah.

'Now you are lifting baby and holding to breasts. You are holding up baby and you are counting ten for fingefs, ten for toes.' She smiles. 'If you are finding more than ten, you are telling me please and I am putting baby back quick-smart and we are asking Mr Stork for new one.' Sarah smiles weakly at Mrs Rika Ray's feeble joke as she lifts her baby up toward her face.

Throughout the birth Mrs Rika Ray hasn't raised her voice and is perfectly calm, seemingly going about her business with plenty of time on her hands, as if what she is doing is the most natural situation in the world. Which, when you think about it, I suppose it is. Sarah senses that she's in good hands and does what she's told, now drawing and clutching her daughter to her chest so that her stomach is exposed.

'My dear, we are taking out placenta. I am pressing down on your tummy, I am wanting deep breath, then slowly, slowly breathing out until next contraction is coming.' She sees Sarah's look of dismay. 'No, no, it is not hurting.'

Pressing down gently but firmly on Sarah's tummy with one hand, she proceeds to tug carefully on the umbilical cord and, waiting for the next contraction, she allows the placenta to slide out.

She then checks it to see that it is intact. 'Everything perfect, Sarah, a very, very nice birth we are having, I am giving eleven out of ten, no questions asked!' She wraps the newspaper around the placenta and sets it aside for Morrie to examine. 'Now we are looking for the tearing. If the tearing has come, we must wait for Morrie to stitch.' She examines Sarah. 'My goodness, so lucky, so very, very lucky! First birth and always tearing but no tearing, only very small, not needing stitches, your perineum it will be like new in week, you are having spontaneous birth and very nice baby to boots.'

'Oh, she's so beautiful,' Sarah whispers. 'Thank you, thank you, Mrs Rika Ray.'

'Red hair she is having, beautiful like her mother,' Mrs Rika Ray smiles. 'Now, my dear, I must go to kitchen. It is cleaning up we must do, making you and baby clean like a whistle. I am boiling water and bringing basin and changing sheets. Where is Sophie? I am the complete bamboozlement with disappearance of Sophie. A very, very big mystery. She comes first through the window and then she is disappearing in thin air! Abracadabra, I am not knowing where! I must boil kettle now.'

Almost as she says this, there is a furious banging on the front door and Mrs Rika Ray goes out
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and opens it to find a sobbing Sophie on the other side. 'Just in nick of times you are coming, Sophie, no more midnight wanderings, we are needing boiling water in kettle and clean sheets.

You must help me now please.'

'Morrie! Morrie is comink, Sarah will go to 'ospital!' Sophie says tearfully.

'Hot water and basin, Sophie! Sarah is having a baby girl. She has very, very easy pumpkin-pip special, first-class sliding out, a copying-book birth.'

Sophie brings her hands up to her lips, her eyes are wild and terrified. 'Oh my God! The Kommandant, he will kill za baby! We must hide baby, Morrie is comink, he will do it!' She starts to laugh hysterically.

'Hystericals we are not having!' Mrs Rika Ray slaps Sophie hard against the cheek and Sophie grabs at her face and sinks to her knees in the hallway, sobbing, 'I am sorry, I am sorry,' she sobs.

'No time for sorry. Boil water!' Mrs Rika Ray commands. 'I must get the herbs for cleaning and disinfecting.' Sophie gets to her feet and runs into the kitchen and Mrs Rika Ray hears the tap at the sink being turned on and then the sound of the kettle being filled.

Mrs Rika Ray sets about tidying up, removing the newspapers from the bed and the bottom sheet. It isn't long before Sophie enters with the large kitchen kettle, clutching the handle in both hands. She looks at Sarah for the first time and sees the baby, now asleep, on Sarah's breast.

'Thanks to God! Thanks to God!' Sophie cries.

'We are thanking God later, Sophie.' Mrs Rika Ray takes the kettle. 'Now we are cleaning baby and mother and you are helping me.'

But instead Sophie sighs and collapses to the floor in a dead faint.

Mrs Rika Ray brings her around and makes her sit with her back against the bed and she puts Sophie's hand in Sarah's. 'Hello, Sophie, have you seen our little girl?' Sarah says, smiling weakly.

Sophie bursts into sobs. 'Ja loede kochala wiecey. ]a przyzekam.' ('I will love her more than my life, I promise.')

Mrs Rika Ray pours the contents of the kettle into the basin and adds cold water from the jug until she judges it hot enough. Then she taps a few crystals of potassium permanganate (Condy's crystals) into the basin, turning the water purple, and adds the extract of seaweed (iodine). She starts to wash Sarah. When she's finished she takes up a jar of herbal ointment and rubs it into Sarah's thighs and girl parts. 'It is natural analgesic, my dear, for taking away pain.' After she's made Sarah comfortable, she starts to clean the baby, having first thrown the water from Sarah's basin out the window and added fresh water from the kettle and a lighter solution of the previous concoctions. Finally she pats the tiny infant dry and swaddles it tightly in one of the baby blankets Mrs Barrington-Stone has given Sarah and hands the bundle to Sarah, who draws her baby daughter to her breast. The tiny infant, exhausted from the birth, immediately falls asleep again, sucking its thumb. Sarah lifts her baby bundle gently and hands it to Sophie to cuddle.

Sophie is ecstatic. Tears once again run down her cheeks, but this time happy ones. Mrs Rika Ray makes Sarah take a tablespoon of something else she's brought and soon she too is asleep.

She then changes the sheets and cleans up the room just as Morrie arrives home, banging the door behind him and running down the hallway.

Sophie's sitting there, holding Sarah's baby. She looks at him. 'All my life. All my life,' she says quietly in Polish, smiling this huge smile.

Mrs Rika Ray takes the baby from her and puts it on Sarah's chest.

Sophie rises and rushes into Morrie's arms, 'Morrie, you have come just in time!'

Morrie laughs, 'I am in time for what? The christening?' He walks over, takes the baby from Mrs Rika Ray and places it at the end of the bed. Then he unswaddles her and checks for any abnormalities, examining for a hernia, looking to see that the spine is straight, or if there are any birthmarks. After he sees that the baby's palate is intact, he tidies up the navel. Sarah's daughter
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doesn't much care for all this extra fuss and yells her tiny head off. Morrie pronounces the infant perfect in all respects, then swaddles her again and hands her to Sophie.