Corrina squats at the edge of the bed panting as another contraction starts. I kneel behind her, chest pressed against her back, arms under her elbows, feeling the heat of her damp body against mine.
“Push to my fingers,” says the doctor, “push the baby’s head to my fingers.”
“Push, push, push,” the nurse and I chant like backup singers as I feel adrenaline pulse through me.
After two more contractions, the baby’s head crowns and Corrina yowls. Hearing the commotion, two more nurses file into the room, one wheeling a plastic bassinet. They join the push chorus.
“Mom, I can’t do this,” Corrina cries.
“Yes, you can. You’re almost there,” I say, pressing my head against hers.
“One more push,” the doctor says.
Corrina tucks her chin into her chest, groans, and I see the baby’s shoulders slowly emerge, then the rest of the body slips out fast like a wet fish.
“Meet your daughter,” the doctor says, placing the baby on Corrina’s belly.
Corrina beams through tears, eyes fixed on her daughter, intimate stranger she brought into the world.
“Grandma,” the doctor asks, “would you like to cut the umbilical cord?”
My legs wobble as I stand up on cool linoleum. I wipe my eyes and steady my hand as I position the surgical scissors between the clamps, then snip the cord tethering my baby to her baby.
Later, I use the nursing station phone to call home. I get the machine, Kyle’s voice. “You’ve reached the Bentons. Kyle, Anne, Corrina, and Traci aren’t home right now. Leave a message and we’ll call you back.”
“Greetings to the new grandpa and aunt from the new grandma,” I say. “It took all night, but we have a little girl. Seven pounds, two ounces, born at 7:07 a.m.” I pause in case Kyle is screening calls. It’s been sixteen hours since Corrina and I arrived at the hospital. We left a note on the fridge, and I called once she was checked in. But this is the first time I’ve left her side since then. No one picks up. “Well, call me when you get home from work or school. Okay?” I hang up. I think about calling Kyle at his office, but two nurses are doing paperwork and I feel self-conscious not knowing if he’ll pick up there, either.
Back in the birthing room Corrina grimaces every now and then. “I’m still having contractions,” she says.
“Nasty little thing they never mention,” I answer.
She wants me to stay, so I file thoughts of going home for a hot shower and conversation with Kyle.
In the afternoon Corrina’s former pediatrician comes to examine our new baby. If he’s surprised to see Corrina at twenty-two with a baby of her own and no partner in sight, he hides it well. Dr. Markus calls our baby a “perfectly healthy little peanut,” and tells Corrina she can call his office anytime. After he leaves, Corrina changes her daughter’s tiny diaper for the first time and swaddles her in a flannel blanket. Satisfied, she sits in the rocker, and we watch the baby’s eyelids fluttering as she fades back to sleep.
“Dad will come tomorrow, and bring Traci, right?”
“Of course he will. He loves you,” I say pressing one hand against my heart.
At 9 p.m. Corrina swallows a Tramadol and snuggles down to sleep. “Thanks for being here, Mom.”
“I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.” I kiss her brow, fluff the bangs stuck to her forehead, and then kiss my granddaughter. “Goodnight, Little Peanut,” I say and will Kyle to visit.
The baby’s father won’t be visiting. Josh is probably home reading Goodnight Moon to his son, getting ready for bed alongside his wife. Josh told Corrina he was single when they met last summer. That he’d married his high school sweetheart a month after their graduation. That it had been a terrible mistake. That they were getting divorced. That his wife and son were moving back home with her parents. She believed him, until she told him she was pregnant in mid-January when she couldn’t hide it any longer. Josh broke it off and they haven’t spoken since. Kyle and I had met Josh. He’d been in our home dozens of times. When I found out, I wanted to throttle Josh. I wanted to mend Corrina’s broken heart. But I couldn’t do either. Instead, I crocheted dozens of tiny granny squares in the softest thinnest yellow and cream merino wool yarn I could find. I made a square most nights, after everyone else was asleep. For thirty minutes in welcome silence I sat on the couch with the reading lamp on, pulling yarn from the skein with practiced fingers, wrapping the smooth yarn around my narrow crochet hook, making tiny chains and loops into delicate squares, each one smaller than a drink coaster, intending for something both beautiful and durable to emerge–– an afghan sturdy enough to withstand baby burp-ups and blow-outs, a covering that would move from the baby’s crib to the foot of her bed as a teen, and at college a reminder of home and family, eventually given to the next generation when, if, that time came. And now, I gaze at my perfect granddaughter, wrapped in a generic hospital blanket while my granny squares remain unjoined, resting in a tote bag I left by the front door in our haste. But Little Peanut is safe in her plastic cocoon, and I want to keep her that way forever.
At midnight a new nurse pokes her head in the room. I wake up, but Corrina doesn’t stir. Little Peanut is awake, though, gazing up, fist in her mouth. I pick her up, inhaling her newborn scent, sweet and unsullied. I carry her down the hall to the nurses’ station to call home and leave a second message.
“Hey guys. So, how was prom?” I pause. No one picks up. “I guess you’re still out,” I say, hopeful. “Everyone here’s fine, tired though. It would be great if you came to visit tomorrow. Okay?”
I hang up, and in a honeyed sing-song voice I haven’t used in years, say to my granddaughter, “Let’s see if we can’t make that old grandpa come meet you.”
The morning after their breakup, Corrina told me about the baby and that she wanted to keep it.
“Babies don’t ruin your life, Dad,” Corrina told Kyle as we ate dinner that night.
“But they change you forever,” he said, spearing broccoli with his fork. “There are some opportunities you’ll never have again.”
“Dad, I can raise a baby and still get my MBA. Lots of women do it.”
“Life’s hard enough as it is,” he answered. “Couldn’t you have waited?”
“Why can’t you be like Mom? She’s happy for me and she’s going to help with the baby.” Corrina huffed to her bedroom.
“You knew? And that Josh was married? That’s just great, Anne.” Kyle threw his napkin on his plate and left the house before I could answer.
I was pregnant when Kyle and I decided to get married, and for all these years I believed we got married because we were in love, not because I was pregnant. Had I been wrong? And had I asked Kyle to give up too much when I asked him to quit the band when Corrina was a toddler? I’d grown resentful on those long nights home alone, even though I didn’t want to leave her with a sitter to put on makeup, strap on stilettos, sit in a smoky bar, and listen to Kyle’s band play the same sets week after week. He sold his drums and spent nights baby-wrangling with me after crunching numbers all day and seemed genuinely happy watching our daughters tumble and cartwheel through the house as they grew. We’ve been married more than two decades, and we’ve devoted ourselves completely to our children, but maybe not to each other.
It would be so much easier if I could say exactly why I ended up in bed with Kyle’s best friend Steve last December. Maybe it was my loneliness, or Steve’s sadness, or maybe it’s simply that infidelity runs in my family like a defective chromosome. Kyle was the one who suggested the redecorating, who said Steve needed something new and colorful in the house to help him get over his divorce, that Steve could be the first client in the decorating business I wanted to start now that Traci was nearing the end of high school. The new and colorful thing in Steve’s house wasn’t supposed to be me, but a comforting hug turned into a comforting kiss, turned into full-body comforting atop his brand-new comforter. It only happened that once and instead of repainting, Steve sold the house and moved to a condo thirty miles away.
Corrina didn’t know about my affair when she told us about the baby. But she knew my father left my mother for her best friend when I was in junior high. Maybe that’s why she believed Josh would leave his wife for her. Corrina’s been slow to forgive herself, and I wonder if I’ll ever forgive myself. “How could I be so stupid?” we both ask ourselves in our weaker moments. It’s a question we see in Kyle’s gaze. And the answer seems to elude us all.
As I walk past the empty cafeteria smelling of coffee and disinfectant, Little Peanut begins to smack on her fist with hunger, and I turn back toward the birthing center. It’s after 1:00 when I hand her to Corrina, who half-wakes and guides the baby to her breast as if she’s done this for weeks, not hours.
“Every time I fall asleep, I relive the birth, contractions and all,” Corrina says. “I’m so tired.”
“I know this doesn’t help, but I was awake for two days after I had you. It’s such a huge thing, giving birth. Your body and mind are trying to process it all.” I kiss the top of both their heads and curl up on the loveseat. Before I drift off to sleep, I picture Kyle here holding his granddaughter and all of us looking on smiling. He loves her, loves Corrina, loves me, too, even if he’s unsure right now.
In the morning the hospital buzzes with industry. Staccato voices page doctors on the intercom, breakfast trays are delivered, and the nurse clucks quietly as she checks Corrina’s vitals, scooping the baby off to the nursery for her checkup. After breakfast Corrina holds her daughter. They are both quiet and it feels as if we’re in a state of suspended animation after months of being stiff and formal at home, polite, but distant––though Traci hasn’t seemed to notice, busy with senior year activities. Now we wait for Kyle to come, as if his presence has the power to determine our reality.
Corrina will be discharged later this afternoon, and to pass the time we watch a Lifetime movie, laughing at the swelling soundtrack and the soap opera plot that isn’t so far from our own lives.
“You should have an illegitimate sister who’s married to your brother,” Corrina says. “And I guess I’m due for an evil twin or an inoperable brain tumor or both.” Soon her giggles fade. She clicks off the TV and turns to me, shoulders shaking. “Mom, how am I going to do this?”
I hug her. “Oh, honey. You’re going to be a great mother. You already are.”
The door to Corrina’s room opens. A running shoe appears, followed by a jean-clad leg. It’s Traci, in her Class of ’95 sweatshirt, carrying a balloon bouquet that says It’s a Girl and a white box tucked under her arm.
“My little baby sister!” cries Corrina, who is holding the baby. She kisses Traci’s cheek, and they chuckle at the drama.
Kyle slips in behind Traci, holding a plush collie with a giant red bow around its neck. He doesn’t look in my direction.
“Daddy, you’re finally here!” cries Corrina.
Kyle leans down to hug Corrina and sits next to her.
“Do you want to hold her?” Corrina asks as she carefully maneuvers the sleeping baby into the crook of his elbow.
Kyle grins, the way he does when he’s quietly pleased, lips closed in a pink wedge.
Traci sits next to me on the loveseat. I pat her knee.
“You should open this,” Traci says, leaning forward to give Corrina the box.
“Mom,” Corrina says as she opens the lid to reveal a crib-sized afghan. “Isn’t this the blanket you’ve been making to surprise me?”
“Yes, but I wasn’t finished.” Corrina hands me the afghan. I unfold it. My tiny perfect yellow and cream granny squares have been joined together with wildly uneven stitches, rendering an afghan more trapezoid than rectangle. “Traci?” I ask.
“I worked on it all day. Dad helped.”
I look at Kyle. “You don’t crochet.”
He grins and shrugs, then smiles at the baby and coos to her. “Grandpa learned to crochet today. Grandpa hates it.”
“Who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks?” Traci says and we all groan.
Then Kyle asks Corrina, “Have you named her?”
“Not yet,” Corrina says. “I’m waiting for her to tell me who she is.”
“Well, that could take years,” he replies. I see the shadow of beard on his cheeks. He looks worn out, as if this is all too much for him. “But we have time,” he says as he kisses our granddaughter on the forehead. He winks at Corrina, and then turns toward me with a weak smile.
“Thank you,” I mouth as I run my fingers over the soft yarn in my lap. The perfect granny squares I crafted almost without thought after years of practice are now joined together. Individual pieces too small to have purpose have been transformed by novice hands into an afghan bound with loops of varying tension at off-kilter angles. A new creation. Not perfect, but whole.
Cathy Warner is author of three volumes of poetry: Difficult Gifts, Home By Another Road, and Burnt Offerings; and editor of three poetry anthologies. She writes, photographs landscapes and the night sky, renovates homes, and leads writing workshops in Western Washington. Find her at cathywarner.com.