When I Ran Away by Ilona Bannister (best books under 200 pages .TXT) 📕

those things he only ever saw in American movies when he was growing up, like basketball and cheerleaders and frat parties.

“He needs you. Do you want to try to take him?” He holds the baby out to me.

He needs you. If he would just get mad and yell back, then I wouldn’t want to punch him so much. I know it’s irrational, unfair, to be mad at Harry. It’s not his fault. But it’s not my fault either and he’s the one who’s here so…

So anyway, fucking Harry, you think I don’t know what the baby needs? When I was on the table and they cut me open I saw him go up, up above us, lit by the fluorescent lights up against the ceiling tiles, before he started breathing. I saw him hovering in the lights, deciding whether to stay or go. Whether to take his chances with me. I know what he needs, I’m the only one who knows, but I also can’t walk or shit or sleep. I know he needs me, and Johnny and Harry, they all need me.

“Mr. and Mrs. Harrison, can I be of any assistance at all?” The midwife’s voice carries up the stairs. Fuck. It’s show time.

“Get dressed, I’ll go and get her.” Harry looks at me with his hurt face and goes off to pretend that we’re OK and give some excuses about why I didn’t answer the door with my hair done in my pre-baby jeans, a cake baking in the oven. I pull on the stained nightgown. I slide over on the bed to the side of the crib. He’s lying there, sleeping, swaddled up, like Baby Jesus. He’s a quiet breather. Scares the shit out of me.

She’s at the bedroom door now. “Hello, Mrs. Harrison, I’m Katie/Kate/Sarah/Sara, I’m the Community Midwife.” She stands at the door of the bedroom holding her bag. Community Midwife. They send one to your house. Maybe if they had let me see a doctor or something, or maybe the same midwife instead of twelve different ones in nine months, maybe all this wouldn’t have happened. And now there are health visitors and community whatever-the-hells walking through my house every other day asking me my name for the twentieth time, asking me to repeat my history again and again. I tried to go with it and do what they do here. I tried not to be that American one who complained. But look at me now.

“And how are Mum and Baby today?” She bounces into the room ready to save the day. I look to see who I’m dealing with. White, young, bosomy, stuffed into a floral dress that she tells everyone is “vintage” but really is just cheap and too tight. She’s never had a baby, probably never had a real boyfriend yet. An accent from some other part of England with words that end on a higher note than they started. Definitely not middle-class, but it had the small town kicked out of it by years spent in London and a university degree.

“Uh, Mrs. Harrison? How are you today?” Katie/Sarah asks again, moving herself into my line of vision.

“Oh. We’re OK. He’s sleeping now. Can you check me first before you do him?”

“Of course. Let’s have a look at you, then, while we have a few minutes of quiet before Baby wakes. Please lie down on your back.”

“That’s how I got into this mess.”

“Yes. Now lie down if you will, please.” Not even a smile.

“Sure,” I say, trying to shift onto my back. The numbness is starting to go in places. I feel things, but they’re muffled. Almost sound more than feeling. Like listening to the neighbors talking through the walls in my old apartment.

“Now, Mum, how are you feeling in yourself?” she asks. Doctors, midwives, nurses, they always ask this but I don’t know what it means. “In myself.” Am I angry? Alcoholic? Obese? Paranoid? Check, check, check, check. Thanks for asking.

“I’m OK, I guess.”

She looks at me, head to one side. “Are you feeling unwell?”

Oh, I don’t know, it’s so hard to say. I thought I was dying a week ago when they tore this kid out of me and I kind of hate this baby, but I’m considering a change of career and cutting out sugar. “No, I’m fine. I’m just very tired,” and I can’t hold the baby.

“Alright, if you could pull down the waistband of your knickers and let me have a look at the incision. Do you have any pain?” I pull the nightgown up, conscious that my stomach is exposed. Knickers—I always liked that word. Naughty but nice.

“Yeah, there’s pain. It’s coming through.” She peels the bandage off. “Now, hmm, I can’t quite see the incision clearly. Would you mind if I just move your apron so I can get a better view?”

My what?

Apron.

Did she just say “Apron”?

Yes, Apron.

Apron.

An apron. A skin-and-fat apron. Rolls of fat and dead flesh, rubber, jelly, fat, fat-apron.

She picks Jabba the Apron up off the incision. I hear the fat peeling off the raw cut and the stiches. The slurp of skin pulled off the wound. Velcro made of skin.

“That looks fine. Just keep taking everything as prescribed and the pain should subside. Feeling will come back over the next few weeks.”

I say, “OK, great,” wanting to cry but not having the energy, wondering if I could use my Apron to wipe my tears if I did cry, and then an old memory of my grandma putting her kitchen scissors in her apron pocket.

She asks me some other questions and the bandages go back on but all I can think about is my Apron. “Shall we have a look at Baby?” They always call him “Baby.” As if the only name I could come up with for him was “Baby.”

“He has a name,” I say. But I can’t remember it. I can only remember Johnny. Where is Johnny? I can’t remember and I can’t remember the baby’s name. I’m about to