The Sixth Wade.

By  Ann De Lorme

 

There was a time when she was just a little girl of ten -- a little girl of ten seemed so long ago in nineteen something or the other ---- when she could spin round and round without getting dizzy, faster than any of her sisters, they would collapse all around her but she would still be whirling like a top.

 

Now, she could barely walk, even with the help of the furniture, she felt dizzy with every step she took. And so damn heavy, there wasn’t a bed comfortable enough to lie on or a chair comfortable enough to sit in. The weight she carried in her womb bore down upon her spine ---- like a dead weight, but not a deadweight ---- a being waiting to be expelled from her cervix, but her cervix, the door to her world held tight against the thumping of a tiny foetus.

 

It could be any day, any moment, any second. She could feel the fetus floating downwards from darkness to a light that she hoped would soon bathe and soothe It.

 

After managing to lie on her soft bed, she caressed the area where she could feel It and she spoke soft, beautiful words she was sure It heard and would respond to. She could not guess whether It was a boy or a girl, so it was safer to refer to It as a Thing.

 

A Thing of the Past soon to be a Thing of the Future. Soon, very soon.

 

Her children gathered around her enormous belly, that swelled with every day the Thing occupied it. They took turns to feel, to sense the movement of the Thing. It took her and them back to the past when she held each one of them expectant, imprisoned in her womb and then their momentous entry into the world -- - multiplied by five.

What would her sixth be like? She was nearing forty and there would be no more. Five were already too much to handle. She hadn’t wanted five, but she had them all the same. They just happened along.

 

Often, she felt she had no control over her body, she wished she could control it, understand it better. Talk about her sex life with her husband, her fertility, her Roman Catholicism, but whenever she had tried, her mouth would just open and the words would not come out, they stuck in her throat, as if it were a sin to speak them aloud. Words that were buried with her, in Sin that confounded her.

 

Spasms of pain distorted her face. A door was shut, refusing to open. It had to open and release what lay behind it, into the light and only then could she rest.

 

To drive away the pain she reminisced. Her thoughts went back to the days her children were baptized, the days of joy and salvation that brought her relief.

 

Her eldest May was baptized on May day with holy water tempered with holy sweat dripping off the temples of the priest, on a beastly hot summer’s day. Dora in July, rain dripped from a leak in the old church into the baptismal font, in Madras. Anna was baptized in Jabalpur, with holy water drowning an unfortunate gecko. Kathy with unholy water on a busy christening day when the holy water wasn’t enough to christen so many Catholic babies, all born on the eleventh of November. As for Jack, he desecrated the holy water in the baptismal font with his pee, so Jack was baptized with his pee.

 

She felt the October heat. Alone in her bedroom she discarded her dressing gown. Would this balloon burst and spew its contents right where she lay? It was swelling to global proportions. The veins of her abdomen stood out against the transparency of her white skin, stretched to its limit. Dark, bluish-green cords mapping out the boundaries of nations across the globe of her belly. She passed her hands over tautly stretched boundaries, the boundary of her endurance.

 

Her time was surely at hand.

 

Arthur and the two older girls, May and Dora heard her cry and were soon at her bedside.

 

Her husband took one look at her , noticed her paleness and said, ’I’m taking you to the hospital.’

 

‘Am I due?’ she asked, not wanting to raise a false alarm.

 

‘Look at yourself, Mum!’ May exclaimed.

 

‘She ought to be in hospital, not lying here in agony,’ Dora said.

 

Arthur left the bedroom to take the Riley out of the garage and May and Dora left to change into their going-out clothes. Then it suddenly happened, the Thing fell silent. It kicked no answer into the wall of her womb. There was complete inactivity. All her five had been active right to the end, it almost seemed like they couldn’t wait to be born. But Little Thing seemed to prefer floating in the darkness of her womb.

 

How to get It to move on?

 

She spoke to It, ‘Come, on! Every Thing likes to be born. I want to get over, giving birth to you. I want to hold you in my arms and see you, to show you off to the other members of the family.’

 

She was answered by complete inactivity. So complete there could be only one word for it -- -- death.

 

The Thing she had carried for nine months, so close to her heart, to every inch of her, was dead. But the strange part of it was that, she could not feel Death.

 

May and Dora helped her out of bed. They were strong girls. May was plump and round and Dora was slim and tall. May was two years older than Dora. After a couple of steps she would stop to catch her breath. The strain was so much, like climbing a tall mountain -- -- and the air so thin, not enough to inhale, to give her strength.

 

‘Breathe slowly, in and out, one step at a time and we’ll be there,’ Dora said, gently urging her on.

 

Arthur honked his impatience.

 

‘Coming Dad,’ the girls shouted, as they inched towards the front verandah.

 

She waddled like a Mother Duck with the girls on either side of her, acting as crutches. Finally they eased her into the wide backseat of the car. In times of stress, she could rely upon her bifurcated self, that, from a comfortable distance gave her encouragement and drove her to overcome the worst. A comfortable Stella Marie, never over-stressed, never over-wrought, but always at ease, who made the uncomfortable Stella Marie’s swollen, leaden feet lighter and the Floating Thing, floating not in placental fluid but light, lighter in air.

 

‘That’s it, that’s it, Mum,’ said May in a voice of encouragement as she sat beside her and took her hand. Dora sat in the front seat beside Arthur.

 

Anna took charge of Kathy and Jack when the adults were away. The children were filled with apprehension, with a childlike ignorance of what a womb could hold. To Jack, an electric train set, or a sack of chocolate gems, thought Kathy -- -- any sack that has to open and spill out its contents and a revelation of how-much and how-many.

What would a Mum-sack reveal? thought Anna. A girl or a boy? Mum wanted a boy. She was always saying ‘she had too many girls’. Another Jack? Who cried like a booby when his pencil-box was snatched from him. Another Jack, with a long Thing hanging between his legs, that girls didn’t have. Did that make Jack special?

 

At the Jabalpur Military Hospital, in the Officers Family Ward, a nurse in starched white and two hospital ayahs bent over her. The nurse seemed an Anglo Indian and that made her feel better. She checked her pulse, temperature and blood pressure and left with a sweet smile.

 

Arthur and girls kissed her goodbye and left with a promise, that they would soon return, during visiting hours in the evening.

 

When they left, she felt down in the dumps, once again. The inactivity in her womb was starting to worry her. Earlier, she had not felt Death but now, she could feel the unpleasantness of it. If It had not made it through the ordeal down the birth canal, she could have accepted Death. But Death in her womb, while she lived - the living harbouring Death. It filled her with such dread, right down to between her thighs -- a terrible urge to expel It in haste.

 

The physician, Capt S.K Dikshit visited her in her room. She was kept in a room all by herself, with no cradle beside her bed, like all expectant mothers usually had. Why no cradle? Something had gone wrong, terribly wrong, she knew it, but was afraid to ask. The doc was friendly and smiling. Everybody was friendly and smiling, like when people pitied you and wanted to deceive you with pleasant smiles.

 

The gynaecologist on duty looked like Raj Kapoor, with light eyes and a lock of dark hair drooping onto his forehead. She could visualize him performing ‘high jinks’ in a Hindi movie as he bent over her womb, expressionless, poking and jabbing her abdomen. To her questions he gave no answers. He just made signs to two nurses, near her bedside, who were attending to her case.

 

She was a ‘case study’ and she felt it too.

 

A freak! There might be a two headed monster in her that couldn’t make it out because she didn’t possess two cervices.

 

Or a ‘case’ of shattered glass bottles -- -- a bottle had broken in her, with tweezers they would remove the pieces, place them in a kidney tray and hold them up to the sunlight. ‘While I watched, hoping the pieces would somehow come together to form the sixth Wade.’

 

She pictured all kinds of freak shows that could occur in, or outside of her. The gynaecologist and the two nurses left her, guessing. The smiles had been wiped off their faces, instead they appeared rather grim. After a while one of the nurses re-appeared and gave her shot, which she suspected to be some sort of sedative. Whatever it was, it calmed her, but did not stop her imagining all types of weird situations. Nor did it stop the tears that streaked her cheeks. ‘What is happening inside of me? Why are they not telling me anything --- hiding the facts from me? Is the Thing inside of me, dead or alive?’

 

A little later came another jab and shortly afterwards, she was undressed, covered with a sterile gown and wheeled out on a stretcher through green corridors with white railings and then no more railings, just double green walls - dark down, light above.

 

She felt awfully drowsy, she wanted to sleep but still be aware of what was happening around her. She was gently lifted onto an operating table, with a large bright light overhead. Another jab and all the lights went out, even the largest and brightest of them.

 

When she came to, in her ward, it was like the beginning of a new day. The Thing of the Past had slunk back into the Past. He had not made it into her world, almost as if he was too afraid to be the sixth Wade. She had wanted to call him ‘Jim’ after Grandpa Jim Wade. Grandpa waited eagerly in his home in Burhanpur, for news of a grandson named after him. But now that ’Jim’ was no more she was not afraid to call him ’Jim’ whenever she conversed with him, in her thoughts.

 

It was good that they had not immediately brought her dead foetus to her, but Nurse Jenny Summers, the Anglo Indian who befriended her, told her, ‘he was beautiful and perfectly formed’. There was some problem with the umbilical cord that might have strangled him in her womb. She took it as a sign that she should have no more. She had been blessed with five - another was not to be hers.

 

‘He must be with the Good Lord in heaven,’ she told Jenny, who was also a staunch Roman Catholic.

 

‘We have kept him in the morgue,’ Jenny said quietly.

 

‘He will have a Catholic burial,’ Stella replied, ‘For he was born a Catholic.’

 

Jim Wade, who was a Protestant, would surely have argued with her on that score, she thought. ‘But we will not call Jim Wade, till all is over,’ she told herself.

 

Arthur visited her in the evening, accompanied by May and Dora. May and Dora took it in turns to kiss her cheeks. They wanted to hide the grief they felt at the loss of a brother, from their Mum and were afraid of asking the wrong questions, so they left their parents to grieve in private.

 

Arthur sat by the edge of the bed and took her hand. He had visited the morgue and seen the perfect sixth Wade lying on a small block of ice, tiny and fragile, transparent white, like glass, his mother’s complexion. He could hardly believe that he and Stella had created such perfection in death. He ached to hold the stillness. He dared to touch the cold white frozen fingers and counted to five.

Whenever a child was born to them, he and Stella would count his or her, fingers and toes and when they reached the number ‘ten’, they were confident that all was well with their newborn. Grandpa Wade had six fingers on his left hand, one little finger more and he would have liked to have a grandchild with an extra finger much against his son’s wishes. He said ‘it was a sign of good luck’. ‘The devil’s luck,’ replied Stella.

 

Stella stared at the hospital-green walls that enclosed her. A simply shaded electric bulb swayed to and fro, casting giant green shadows that embraced her. She ached for love, even the love of shadows could calm her aching soul. Past the curtained windows with their blinds parted, she could see the hospital garden, the signboards that directed hospital staff to the ‘Pathology Department’, the ‘ICU’ etc.

 

Even with Arthur beside her, she felt alone and unloved and she could barely understand why she felt the way she did. Then she worked up the strength to ask him, ‘What does our little boy look like?’

 

‘A very pretty boy,’ he told her, ‘A beautiful boy, perfect in form and feature -- --’

 

‘My angel,’ she interrupted him, ‘He was so beautiful that God wanted him and took him away from me to be an angel in the sky.’

 

Arthur was sceptical of angels, like his father, Jim Wade, but he said nothing of it to Stella. Whatever Stella wanted to believe, whatever made her happy was okay by him.

 

Her good friend Ethel White entered the ward. She bent down and kissed Stella on the cheek and gave her hand a squeeze. Her husband Robert followed close behind. He and Arthur exchanged meaningful looks and Arthur got up and stood beside him. They talked softly to each other. Ethel took Arthur’s place by Stella’s bedside. Shortly after, they left Stella and Ethel to converse in private.

 

‘How are you feeling today?’ Ethel asked, concerned about her good friend.

 

‘A lot better than yesterday. I would like to see my baby,’ Stella confided. ‘Go to the morgue and bring the baby to me.’

 

‘It will only upset you unnecessarily. You must get well soon. The other children need you at home.’

 

‘I must see him, to say ‘goodbye’ to him, for I carried him within me for nine months,’ Stella was adamant.

 

‘I will speak to the doctor in charge and you will see your son,’ Ethel replied, having changed her mind, seeing Stella’s pain and beginning to understand what her friend felt.

 

‘He must have a Catholic funeral. His coffin must be carried to St Joseph’s church and a Mass said for him, before he is buried in the Christian cemetery. Please help Arthur with the arrangements,’ Stella pleaded. The words just flowed out of her and she could not stop till she spoke what she felt.

 

‘Of course, my darling. Don’t concern yourself with regard to funeral arrangements, it will all be done in the right and proper manner,’ Ethel reassured her. ‘Now, I shall leave you to do your bidding, my fairy queen. Remember when you were the ‘fairy queen’, no, no, I’ve forgotten, you were the wicked fairy godmother and I was Snow White in our ninth standard school play. And you hounded me like a real witch.’

 

‘Now I’m being punished for it, Snow White,’ Stella replied, breaking into a smile. Her smile brought tears to Ethel’s eyes, for Stella had not been able to smile for many days, the pain and the anguish of this last pregnancy had left her completely despondent.

 

As Ethel left, May and Dora strolled in, they seated themselves on either side of her. If she asked for a glass of water, they gave it to her, if she wanted to munch a cream biscuit, they offered it to her. Both girls wanted to serve her in any way they could. They had lost a baby brother, but they could so easily have lost their mother, the likelihood of it played on their thoughts and made her all the more precious to them.

 

More than an hour later, Ethel returned with a bundle cradled in her arms. The girls bent over in curiosity as Ethel placed the bundle in Stella’s lap. Stella was seated in bed. Her breasts were swollen with milk. In silence she held the frigid form of her perfect little boy to her warm motherly breasts. Tears fell from her eyes onto his frozen body and if her hot tears were life-giving, he would surely have been resurrected right there where he lay in so much warmth. But here Death had the upper hand and what she takes away she never gives back, come what may.

 

She is as greedy for Life as Life is to live.

 

She bent down and kissed his cold face frozen to stone. May and Dora did likewise. They sniffed into their handkerchiefs. Then Ethel thought it better to take the child out of the arms of the living and put the child back where he belonged, in the realm of death, in the morgue.

 

Arthur and Ethel made preparations for Jim Wade’s funeral. Stella could not attend, due to her ordeal. She lay in hospital for a further week recovering her strength, both mentally and physically.

 

Having seen and felt her loss, made her feel a whole lot better, than if she had not seen and been near to her dead child.

 

The sixth Wade was taken home in the Riley, in Ethel’s arms. He was placed in a coffin so small it fitted at the back of the Riley, which took him to church. The children placed wreaths made out of flowers from Stella Marie’s garden, on the tiny coffin, placed on a stand before the church altar.

 

Father Holy Joe had never sang the funeral hymn, ‘Nearer my God to Thee’ over such a small coffin. He sprinkled holy water on it and all around it, praying loudly. The church pews were occupied by the colleagues of Major Arthur Wade, senior and junior military officers. They filed past the coffin in their smart military uniforms saluting Jim Wade, who had but lived to die and died to be saluted by the top brass of the Jabalpur cantonment.

 

It was worth dying for, thought Jack, like a miniature funeral for a Major General. Even the commanding officer made his presence felt. The medals, the uniforms, the military salutes made Jack proud he had a brother, even if it was, for only a day.

 

A dead brother was better than having no brother at all.

 

Father Holy Joe conducted a high Mass with choir and all. He was the newly appointed Parish Priest and this was the first funeral he was presiding over, in the parish. He would show his parishioners what he was capable of, when anyone was born, married or died from among them; they would want for nothing in a religious ceremony performed by him.

 

He possessed a gun throat that resounded through the church, a voice like a sergeant major‘s, that stormed out of the tall windows into the thorny bougainvillea in the church garden. He said prayers and sang hymns all the way to the church cemetery, as the pallbearers bore the tiny coffin to its tiny grave consisting of a tiny hole in the earth.

 

He had not taken too much time or too much place, from the moment he had arrived to the moment when he left forever. And those that he left behind, wished him god speed on his journey to his Neverland, beyond the grey clouds that floated above.

 

For a while nobody mentioned the sixth Wade. He had left a tiny foetal shaped wound in Stella Marie that bled drops of sadness. She kept hidden from all but Ethel, who had shared her moments of grief.

 

Ann De Lorme is a sculptor, fiction writer and a painter. She loves to create. Every creation tells her something about herself and brings her closer to an understanding of who and what we are. When she needs to express herself there is an over-riding compulsion to take create form of art and when she has completed the work, to move on because everything can’t be said in one piece of creation, it continues into the next and the next. Ann has not taken formal, academic training. Whatever she does is spontaneous. She can be contacted at <anndelorme@rediffmail.com>