Chapter 21: Immersion.
She cries, feeds, vomits, shits, cries again.
Feeding is painful. The splint presses on my scar.
Sleep. I can no longer sleep.
I didn’t know that I wouldn’t sleep again. My nights no longer belong to me.
Maria Beatriz gazed at the baby, then looked at my half open eyes.
“Why don’t you stay in bed in the morning? Rest a little?”
I stayed.
The baby was calm in the morning. She slept, and I closed my eyes.
Luís was talking to his mother in the kitchen.
“Não te preocupes com isso, mamã, sei o que estou a fazer.”
“Luís! Não pode ser!”
He reappeared, gave me a kiss, another one to the baby. And went to work.
Maria Beatriz was standing at the door now.
“Did she sleep well? Did she sleep through the night?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Ah malandra! But now she is… tem os sonhos trocados!”
I didn’t understand. Her dreams switched?
She paused.
“Olha lá”
Looked at me. Then.
“You can’t let Luís go to work without a meal! He ate a yoghurt! Men need more than a yoghurt! He needs proper food!”
I understood the words. Not the idea. I shouldn’t have slept, after all?
But after that, I didn’t sleep in.
I got up. I cooked. I answered the phone. I answered the door. Patients waited on the steps outside, and on the bench in the hall.
Maria Beatriz swept the floor, and washed it.
In the evening, we sat side by side on the sofa, the carrycot resting in a corner.
The baby grizzled and stopped. Maria Beatriz looked at me. I didn’t move.
She grizzled again. Stopped. Then the cry rose again, thin, painful.
I got up. Maria Beatriz got up.
We reached, together, for the red-faced baby and its gaping mouth. I held her, and Maria Beatriz held her arm. Together, we lowered her onto the changing mat. We fumbled for the same zip. Then the poppers. Then opened the splint on both sides. Maria Beatriz reached for the oil and cotton wool, but I got there first.
“Como é?” She was confused about how to thread the nappy between the baby and the splint. But Luís had shown me.
It was Luís who showed me how to remove the splint. How to bath her and towel her dry. And Luís who could calm her, holding her gently against his shoulder, singing and jiggling a little dance.
“You don’t need to wash her too much.” He told me. “Skin has a natural protection. If you wash her too much, you strip that away. There are studies, here in Portugal, that show that too much washing is detrimental.”
Maria Beatriz did not agree.
“What does he know? Dr. José Morais was one of the grandes pediatras de Lisboa, and he told me to bathe my children twice a day.”
“Don’t take any notice of my mother, Teresa. Listen to what I tell you.”
Maria Beatriz hmphed and went to the kitchen with a mop.
She had brought with her a collection of gifts from her friends. Tiny gold bracelets, gold heart pendants, earrings in the shape of a bow, hand knitted shawls, blankets, baby bonnets and hairbands.
She gave me a dozen printed cards.
“You should write to my friends to thank them. É de bom tom.”
I started to write my thanks. “Muito obrigada…”
“No! No! Not like that! Write this: Fiquei sensibilizada pela sua generosa lembrança.”
I wrote this out twelve times. Now the addresses?
“Dona Maria de Lourdes Vasconcelos e Sá, a porta vermelha em frente dos correios, Abrantes”
“The red door in front of the post office? What number?
“I can’t remember the number. But everyone knows where it is. It will get there.”
The rest were similar. Luís laughed, and sat down, opening his newspaper.
The baby was crying again. I picked her up, fragile in her splint, and held her to my breast.
Maria Beatriz looked at both closely.
“There’s no milk in that!”
“There’s plenty of milk, mother!”
“But is it good milk?”
“Of course. It’s naturally good.”
“The baby is too small.”
“She’s completely normal.”
The baby slept in the afternoon. I practiced the piano again. Für Elise, at Maria Beatriz’ request. She hummed along, slightly out of tune.
At the end of the week, Maria Beatriz left for Abrantes.
My mother arrived.
She did the ironing, cooked, held the baby when prompted.
I slept a little more in the morning. Not too long; the phone started ringing early.
When I played the piano, she read her book, but commented that I was improving.
Soon she, too, had gone.
I looked at my child, her tiny fingers.
My child.
My Catherine.
I played Moonlight Sonata while she slept.
