Layers

4Birth

4

Birth

London, March 1972

Nefeli did not know how long she had been standing still over the white cot in row number three of the nursing ward, her eyes glued on the baby’s pale yellow face turned on the side, her skin almost translucent under the lamp.

‘Would you like to give her her next feed, as you are here?’ The voice over her right shoulder and next to her ear startled her. ‘We need to wake her up now. She is such a sleepy-head.’

‘Sure’, Nefeli mumbled, turning to face the white-collared nurse. She recognised her face from previous visits. She was one of the few kind ones, as one could discern from her calm blue eyes.

The baby had been in hospital for almost five weeks. Pathological jaundice, the doctor had said, probably due to being slightly premature. Nothing to worry about, he said, and yet it had proved mysteriously slow to clear. Nefeli had been visiting her every day. Well, to start with every day, then every time she had to go to hospital for check-ups and appointments with the social worker. She had been there, bending over her hospital cot, with the fluorescent lamps on, which made her look even more darkish yellow than she already was.

This baby did not look remotely like anything she had imagined. She didn’t look like her baby. Two fair, handsome people producing a yellow-faced Chinese-looking baby? Were the doctors sure that there was nothing wrong with her other than the jaundice? Maybe she had some kind of disorder? She had asked them so many times. She should not have drunk the glass of beer that Mrs Marika kept offering her with lunch. ‘Beer is good for foetuses’, she would tell her. ‘It helps them grow bigger.’

She had loved being pregnant. It was a floating experience, like being immersed in a dream from which she did not have to wake up. It had been the only time in her life that she had felt pampered, loved even. The last six months in London had been amazing. She would attend her daily English classes in Covent Garden religiously and then she would stroll down Oxford Street, occasionally buying clothes for the baby in neutral colours. Only the best, exactly as she was instructed by ‘The Prince’. She could not resist stopping in the brightly lit superstores. She would spend what felt like hours staring at the endless counters of elegant brands of make-up and perfumes. Estée Lauder was her favourite. Once a week she would get back home with a new acquisition in a crispy, perfumed paper bag. She had to be careful with her money though, she wouldn’t like to have to ask him again for more. Still, what a thrilling sense of freedom it gave her. She had never had so much money before to spend on the things she liked.

Occasionally she would walk further, all the way to the river. Once, she even crossed Waterloo Bridge and found herself on the south side; but then she lost her way a bit and by the time she was all the way back to Wood Green, Mrs Marika seemed on edge. ‘We have been waiting for you for lunch’, she told her. ‘I began to get really worried that something had happened to you.’

All these lovely lunches that Mrs Marika prepared for her while she’d put her up for the last six months. She had not known that food could taste that good. She would even make her bed for her, which despite her initial embarrassment she had grown accustomed to accepting with ease. Sometimes she caught herself wishing that this was where she had grown up. Even Mrs Marika had told her once, patting her tenderly on the shoulder that she had become the daughter she never had. Mrs Marika had been the only female presence in a house accustomed to the rumble of four boisterous boys, all of whom, bar the youngest, had now left home. She could see Mrs Marika’s sorrow, every time she talked about her eldest, the one who took a gap year in India after finishing his first degree and who ended up accepting a permanent job in Bombay.

‘What is a Greek-Italian boy doing in India? It is full of disease out there, Son, come back home’, she would tell him, sighing.

‘I am a British citizen, Mum, lots of us out here. You wouldn’t believe how cosmopolitan it is’, he would invariably reply.

Nefeli could always see tears in Mrs Marika’s eyes when she related a version of this dialogue. The other two sons were both at university, and it was only the second eldest, Anthony, who studied architecture in London, who would occasionally join them for lunch. But he had opted to share a flat with friends rather than stay with his parents – all down to Mrs Marika’s generosity of course, who was paying some of the sky-rocket rent on his trendy London apartment-share with her hard-won savings. He was Nefeli’s least favourite out of Mrs Marika’s sons, as she found him snobbish and full of himself.

‘Hey Nefeli,’ he would tell her, with a considerable hint of irony in his voice, ‘now, that your English has improved, come and visit Notting Hill. It is still a bit grotty, but it just has the right kind of vibe. Rock bands in the making’, he would add in a daydreaming voice. ‘We are rewriting history. We are changing the world. Not like the rotten feel around here. I tell you, north London suburbia sucks.’

‘I am perfectly happy here’, she would reply. ‘And I am so lucky to enjoy your mother’s amazing cooking now that you all, apart from Spyros, have left home.’

Mrs Marika would always intervene at this point, sighing. ‘None of them likes my cooking, they don’t like Greek food. You see, this is why every time Anthony is visiting, I cook English food. I have to apologise to you for this, Nefeli, boiled stuff is so tasteless. But my sons’ favourite is not even that. They all prefer American hamburgers and those disgusting-smelling Indian curries.’

‘Your English cooking is so tasty, Mrs Marika’, Nefeli would say, and Tony, as he preferred to call himself, would get ready to make his way out, giving the two of them an unfriendly look and chatting with his father about football before finally exiting in a rush, giving his mum a quick peck on the cheek.

‘Don’t be a “moany”, Mum’, he would tell Mrs Marika jokingly before leaving.

It seemed like all of Mrs Marika’s energy had now been invested in Nefeli, as even her youngest, still at home, was most of the time locked in his room, supposedly studying for his university entry exams while the sound of rock music would get the walls of the house vibrating.

‘You need to rest and eat well to produce a healthy baby’, she would tell her, bringing some toast dripping with butter to her room only two hours after they had finished eating a large lunch. Only once did she appear to be in a more sombre mood.

‘I wonder if I am doing the right thing hiding this from your mother’, she told her. ‘What is happening in your life is a very serious thing and I don’t know if you realise it. Have you thought what it will be like to give your baby away just like that?’

Nefeli remained silent, looking down at the floor and refusing to lift her eyes. She was hoping that Mrs Marika would stop talking soon and return to her normal cheerful, caring self. But she did not stop.

‘Are you sure this is what you want to do, Nefeli?’ she persisted. ‘You could stay here for a little bit longer with the baby if you wanted to, until you sort yourself out. But in order to do so, I need …’ She hesitated. ‘We need to talk to your mother.’

Nefeli interrupted her. She was upset now. ‘I told you when I first came here that if you talk to my mother I will go and stay somewhere else. I only came to stay here to please her, because she was worried about me living abroad, and then I saw what a nice person you were and I decided to stay over and to trust you with my secret. My first plan was to move out as soon as I found a place, you know that. I thought I explained everything to you when I first came, so I don’t understand why we are having this conversation now. I do not even see this baby as mine. I am carrying it for a couple who cannot have children and I am getting paid for it, I told you that. It would not be right to keep it. It would be like stealing money.’

‘Or so you are told. Every woman has the right to keep her baby’, Mrs Marika said sternly.

‘Not if she has accepted money to give it away. This was my passport to London, to learning English. This is the life I have always dreamt of. Don’t you see how good it is for me?’

Just as Nefeli had thought that the matter was finally settled once and for all, Mrs Marika interrupted her.

‘Why does he keep calling you every day then?’ she asked, looking her straight in the eye. ‘What are all these long, whispering phone calls about? You are having an affair with a married man and he is going to break your heart, Nefeli.’

She was right of course, kind of right anyway. Part of her wanted to give the baby over as soon as she was born and continue with her life in London, build a life here, study and find a job and marry someone later on. Would Mrs Marika help her settle if she chose to stay longer? she wondered. Another part of her, almost despite herself, kept thinking of him. The burning, fleeting moments of guilty s*x, the cuddles in the office when they thought no one was looking, all the promises of the things they would do together. She missed him terribly and she was bitterly disappointed and hurt that he had not come to visit her as he had promised. She did not believe his excuses about being too busy with work. She knew what the real reason was: his wife, of course. He had to be very tactful with her now that he was preparing the adoption, she could sense as much.

From the beginning of the new year, Mrs Marika had tried to prepare her for going in to hospital and giving birth. It wouldn’t go unnoticed, she had said to her, that she was a young single mother and she was not prepared to lie. She would have to tell them the truth. She had been spared the check-ups: Mrs Marika was so experienced; she had given birth to four healthy boys. She had told her to watch out for the baby’s movement, and after a while the kicks inside her stomach could not be missed. Sometimes, especially in the last month, she had been woken up in the middle of the night by what felt like a punch to her innards. Hmm, not the gentlest of babies, she had thought to herself. A prospective boxer, perhaps?

Troublesome, though, this baby’s birth was not. It slid out like a fish eventually. All the pain and the anguish happened before they arrived at the hospital. What was happening to her that night? She kept going to the toilet every ten minutes, passing copious quantities of water. It felt like her insides were being ripped apart. She was convinced that either she or the baby or both of them were going to die. Eventually, around five a.m., Mrs Marika was woken up by all her comings and goings and she found her lying on the floor of the living room, bent in two, to the degree that was possible with that big belly of hers.

‘You are in labour’, she said, without managing to conceal the panic in her voice. ‘We must go to hospital right now.’

‘But I am not due yet, it cannot happen yet, it is not possible’, she mumbled.

‘It doesn’t matter. It can happen early, and it will, any time now. We need to go’, Mrs Marika replied, rushing about and gathering her things as though she was about to check in to hospital.

She was in no way ready to give birth, but the worst was to follow. Mrs Marika could not have prepared her for the extent of interrogation that she would endure soon after the ordeal of birth. As soon as she declared that she was a single mother, a twenty-year-old as well, she was booked for a visit from the social worker. And even before the social worker’s visit, she noticed the nurses’ hostile glances, the contempt in the tone of their voice when they spoke to her.

‘She is one of those, a teenage mother’, she had overheard one of them whispering to another. Who were these people and what was their right to question her decisions? She did not even live in this country, so surely they should have no say about how she lived her life. And then the social worker turned up at her bedside, just as she was about to drop off after the sleepless night of agony she had had. She pretended that her English was not good enough to have a conversation, but then the social worker, a stern-looking woman with long grey hair (why would anyone keep their hair long and grey?) offered to find her an interpreter.

This was the worst possible scenario, Mrs Marika told her discreetly after the social worker had left her bedside. ‘The local Greek community is very small here, Nefeli. Everyone knows everyone. I hope you understand that my position is delicate. Hosting an unmarried pregnant girl will be much frowned upon by all the church-goers. People may even gossip that I am doing it for money.’

Nefeli was alarmed. She had caused Mrs Marika enough trouble already.

‘We are just here to make sure that you realise what the implications of your decision are’, the social worker said to her during her second visit the next day, looking her piercingly in the eye, once Nefeli had consented to explain to her the situation. ‘Handing your baby over for adoption is an irredeemable decision. You can never change your mind. You lose your baby for ever. Do you understand?’

She had a feeling that everyone around her, including Mrs Marika standing at the far corner of the room, looking down, was expecting an emotional reaction from her, like bursting into tears or losing her temper; but she would not give it to them.

‘Yes, I understand’, she kept saying, smiling. But the social worker would not let it go, not until she got her to agree to at least a single session of counselling.

‘“Counselling”? What on earth is that?’