The Ladies of Managua (41 page)

“There are two subchorionic hematomas, blood clots, on your placenta; a larger one and a small one that looks like it might be dissolving,” the doctor said. “That's probably what caused the hemorrhage. In the majority of cases, the clots simply resolve themselves. But it does make this a high-risk pregnancy; we'll have to watch you.”

“Fine,” Mariana said. “That's fine. But the baby's okay?”

“The heart is beating away. Do you want to hear it?” the doctor asked, and I stopped trying to puzzle out the word before “hematoma” and laughed out loud because it's such a ridiculous question—does anyone ever say no? Are there parents who respond, “Oh, thank you, but I'd rather not hear my child's heartbeat?”

Mariana looked at me and laughed, too. “Of course we do.”

“Wait!” I yelled as the doctor reached for a switch on the side of the ultrasound machine. He raised his hands as if he were the victim of a holdup, and I blushed a little before asking Mariana, “Shouldn't we wait until Allen gets here?” I had called him from the helicopter, I knew they were on their way.

“Probably,” Mariana said. “But I don't want to wait! I don't think I'll believe the baby's okay until I hear it.”

“I'll have to check on the clot again,” the doctor said. “There'll be more ultrasounds, plenty of chances to hear the heartbeat.”

“See! Win-win!” Mariana grabbed my hand, the doctor flipped a switch, and the sound of our baby filled the room, stronger, more rhythmic, and more powerful than anything else I've heard. If I could, I would have these three noises programmed into every alarm in every hotel room in the world, so that I would always have a choice among the chattering of my mother, the deep breathing of Mariana as she sleeps, and the thumping heart of my grandchild.

 

43

Maria

THURSDAY, JANUARY 15

When I first found out about the baby, I kept listing all the reasons why this pregnancy was a disaster. It complicated things with Allen, when we had such a nice situation, just the two of us grown-ups. The pregnancy—the baby—could very likely stall my career, derail my relationship, suck me away from my art. I would no longer be the protagonist of my own story, the subject of my own painting. In the first few days after taking the at-home test, before my doctor's appointment, I didn't tell anyone—not even Allen—because it seemed so unlikely, so ludicrous, that I kept thinking that maybe this would just go away. Not just thinking. Hoping. Wishing, even.

But I spent most of the terrifying time on the helicopter praying in Spanish, the language of all my most serious supplications, that everything would be all right, that my baby would live. Every now and then one of the items on that early list of fears would float up into my consciousness and shock me with how quickly, and how completely, my feelings had changed. The baby could spell the end of me and Allen, or of my career, or both. All of this was still true. And yet, each time I thought of one of these reasons, which had relentlessly laid siege to my brain in those first few weeks, I now wanted to scream, “I don't care!” The facts were still true but the feelings weren't anymore. And then the shock and fear would subside, making room for guilt, which kept whispering that maybe I deserved to lose what I now wanted most. Maybe that's what you get for changing your mind.

*   *   *

That's what I was telling myself, that I was just getting what I deserved, yesterday when Dr. Alvarez discovered the baby's heartbeat. I make him sound like an explorer, landing in a new country. But that's what it felt like to me, like he was breaking new ground, changing the very geography of the world in which I live.

I've heard the baby's heart twice now: once with Mama, once with Allen. Both times I cried, the first time because the sound was so strong, so real, it made me understand that I hadn't lost what had somehow become the most salient feature of who I am right now.

And the second time because I was watching Allen. Mama had told him I was okay, and so was the baby, but that was all he knew, so when he arrived at the hospital he swooped in, trying to take control, for once, to be the planner, the person who fixed things. He'd spent the car ride to Managua manning his phone, and when he arrived, he was erupting with names of doctors at high-risk pregnancy practices in New York, dates of how soon we could get on a flight out of Managua, agencies with private nurses who could move in with us overnight—because, of course, I couldn't live alone at my place anymore and would have to move into his apartment.

I just laughed until he finally shut up and sat down, kissing my fingers, my wrist, my palm until I got so embarrassed I had to do something, so I turned to Dr. Alvarez and said, “This is Allen. He's very worried about me. And he has a very efficient assistant who, it appears, has been rather busy this morning.”

I had spoken in English, so that Allen could hear me making fun of him, and so that he'd understand that the doctor spoke the language perfectly. Allen extended his hand and said, “I'm Maria's fianc
é
.” I didn't correct him; maybe after spending so much time with my Bela, Allen had transformed into a social conservative, and he felt the doctor would give me better care if we were about to be married. Or, he was just taking advantage of my ridiculously good—no, giddy—mood, to try to settle everything to his liking. It's a smart tactical move, to force the issue when I'm feeling amenable. Mother would be impressed. Whatever his motive, I decided to let him identify himself, and our relationship, to the doctor however he liked. No one was writing this on our permanent records. And it didn't really matter, certainly not to Dr. Alvarez. To him—and to me—what is more important than the question of what Allen is to me is the fact that he's the father of this baby.

I asked the doctor if he could please repeat the ultrasound. Allen watched the blob on the screen pulsing before the sound was turned on, and when it was, he closed his eyes and all the worry slid off his face, leaving his contorted forehead smooth.

*   *   *

Dr. Alvarez is a miracle worker—he managed both Allen and my Bela. He informed them that I'd be going home with neither of them, that he wanted to observe me for a week to see if the smaller clot dissolved completely. And that I wouldn't be flying to New York, or anywhere, until he and his colleagues had a better sense of the larger clot, as flying can make clotting worse.

Dr. Alvarez is also the gatekeeper. He's instructed the nurse as to when my Bela and Allen are allowed in the room and when they need to leave so that I can sleep. He seems to have a soft spot for Mama when she pops over from the office, because I've woken up to find her sitting in the chair next to my bed, staring at me in a way that makes me a little nervous. And happy. When I was in grade school, about twice a month I would dream that Mama was with me, rubbing my shoulder to wake me up the way she did when she visited. Sometimes the dreams were so vivid that I'd actually see her until my sleepy eyes focused and I realized it was my Bela or the housekeeper, and I would turn away so that they couldn't see my disappointment and realize that they weren't the person I wanted to see first when I woke up. Now, when my eyes blink open and I see Mama, I always roll over so that I'm not facing her; it's a reflex. But then I stretch and twist and turn back to her once I'm fully awake, glad that she's still there, that she was willing to gaze quietly at the back of my head for a moment.

Allen and my Bela have plenty to do when they're not here. She's busy thinking of names and digging through boxes to find Abuelo's old christening gown, the one Mama, T
í
a Celia, Rigobertito, and I were baptized wearing. I think she feels that if she has the outfit for the baby, there's no way we'll omit the ritual, and we'd have to be married before we stand before a priest to baptize our child—at least according to Bela's rules, if not the priest's.

And Allen's making arrangements. He called the gallery and set up for my short-term disability leave, telling them I had internal bleeding. No one has asked for more information so far, and no one's gotten any. And he's flying home on Monday; he was reluctant, but I insisted. He has work to do and I'm in good hands; if I need to stay much longer, he can always come back.

Sometimes Allen and my Bela visit together—apparently they spend hours gossiping like old ladies. Given the somewhat risky nature of my pregnancy, I want to keep it quiet. And given the illegitimate nature of it, so does my Bela. Which means that she has no one but me, Mama, and Allen to talk to about the baby. And Allen says he knows no one else in Managua, and no one in New York who tells such good stories as my Bela. I'm not one hundred percent convinced that they actually have a fully functioning language in common, but when I asked Allen how they manage to communicate so well, he said that after a few Tom Collinses, my Bela sounds just like Scarlett O'Hara.

As for me, I've been sleeping a lot, which is the point of bed rest, I guess. And when I'm awake and alone I draw in the sketchbook my Bela brought me. I have a new painting in mind. There's a woman who takes up one entire edge of the canvas, but you can't see her head, just her arms and breasts and swollen belly. And on the other edge there's a man with graying hair, gesturing toward the middle. I'm not sure exactly what's going to go there; it hasn't come to me yet. But I know it will. I keep playing the sound over and over in my mind and I know that one of these days I'll come up with a visual representation of our baby's heartbeat.

 

44

Isabela

FRIDAY, JANUARY 16, 2009

It wasn't until this morning that I was able to shake off Allen. He's a lovely person, if a bit crass at times, and I did just begin a novena to pray that he'll become my grandson-in-law, and sooner, rather than later, now that we're going to be related by blood, if not marriage. But I've never met a needier man in my entire life. All he wants to do is talk about how well Mariana looks—except he calls her Maria—how much ruddier her coloring is, how her mood gets brighter with each passing day. And then he wants to discuss all the articles he's been reading about prenatal blood clots, which is even worse. He attacks me with percentages, how many resolve themselves within the first trimester, within the second, and how many go on to pose serious problems. It's enough to make me wish that his hotel didn't have the Internet floating around everywhere, enabling him to pull up charts and numbers on his phone and thrust it in my face while I'm trying to enjoy the darling basket of tiny
pains aux chocolat
they serve with coffee in the lobby caf
é
.

I understand what he's doing, of course: he wants a guarantee, a promise that everything is going to turn out all right and that a year from now he'll be a married man again and a new father with a healthy, happy baby and a healthy, even happier young bride. I give him every reassurance I can. Mariana has the best doctor in Managua, Ninexin saw to that, and Dr. Alvarez raves about the practice he recommends for her in New York. He's not the kind of man who says things just to make women happy, or because he knows what it is they want to hear; he looked right at me, bold as brass, when he said that Mariana didn't need any added pressure right now, just pleasant distraction, and that I wasn't to bring up any topics that might cause her stress. So when he assures us that we have every reason to hope for, and expect, a positive outcome, I know we can believe him.

I used to be offended when doctors said things like that, “positive outcome,” as if we were talking about science experiments and not the lives of two people who are among the most important in the world, as far as I'm concerned. But during Ignacio's illness, I became used to how they speak—and they're much worse in the States, where they want you actually to tell terminal patients that they're dying. It's so rude, like telling fat people they've put on weight; is it really possible they haven't noticed? You should have seen the doctor's face in Miami when I asked for his cell phone in case Ignacio had an episode late at night! You would have thought I asked for his number so that we could make a date to go out dancing!

The older I get, the more experience I'm gaining with the men in white; they're almost as familiar to me as their black-dressed counterparts, the priests. And I've got several of those at work on Mariana, too: I've sponsored a Mass each week from now until her due date, as a show of faith and gratitude for the luck we've had so far. When I thanked him at the end of the last service, Padre Juan Bautista told me he kept my granddaughter and her husband and their unborn child in his prayers every day. I just thanked him. What he doesn't know won't hurt him, Allen says, and he taught me the most wonderful English phrase: “Need-to-Know Basis.” I am keeping everyone on a Need-to-Know Basis as far as Mariana and the baby are concerned. And I know Padre Juan Bautista well enough to know that he uses his resonant voice to great effect to say Masses and keeps quiet the rest of the time; I won't have everyone in the congregation sidling up to me asking why they're the last to hear the good news of Mariana's marriage and the impending arrival. I told him, “Padre, Mariana doesn't want to worry anyone so we aren't saying a word about the pregnancy. Not unless someone has a demonstrated Need to Know.”

He just smiled and nodded at the phrase, which I said in English; pobrecito, his English isn't as good as mine. But he's a lovely priest, just the same.

I've told Allen that if Dr. Alvarez and Padre Juan Bautista and God Himself are in charge of Mariana and the baby, which they are, mother and child are in good hands and I am confident everything will be fine. Every morning since we arrived in Managua I've told him that, over breakfast at his hotel, and most afternoons and evenings at the hospital, too. I am as sincere and reassuring as I can be. But there are just some things that should not be discussed at the breakfast table.