By the following Saturday everything had been arranged. I had gone over to my cousins and shocked the hell out of him by showing up on his doorstep the very day we had decided to have a Tom Sawyer party to help Emily ready for her impending arrival. Matt was just as surprised as I had been at learning that in this huge world we live in somehow we had managed to have a common connection far from home. Not that Matt and I had lived really near each other but we had both grown up within thirty miles of one another on the southwestern edge of the state. Yet here we were more than 2 hours north and still managed to have only one degree of separation. Of course once I told Matt what I wanted he readily agreed to help out his neighbor and cousin. Matt is a good guy. I had known he'd agree quickly. He's always been one to give a helping hand. The rest fell quickly into place.
Saturday morning Cherry showed up at my door ready to work. She had her dark air tucked under a bandanna and a smile on her face, "Ready?" she asked as I gathered up all the things I was dragging over to Emily's with me. We'd all agreed to bring things that would help get the room ready and also make it a party type atmosphere. So I was had paintbrushes and wallpaper paste along with a few other things in the way of artsy stuff. I also had chips and deviled eggs, made with fresh farm eggs not store bought. Cherry had brownies and plastic to cover the floor while we painted.
"Sure, Matt is supposed to meet us there. He's bringing a ladder over. Plus I think he went to my aunt's and got some home grown canned green beans. My Aunt makes the best."
"Cool Beans!" Cherry laughed as we headed down the stairs.
Cherry though had a surprise waiting for me in the car, her uncle Colin. "How'd you manage to rope him into this?"
"I mentioned Jane would be there."
I laughed, "I guess he really likes Jane."
"It seems that way. They've known each other less than a month but they are together every chance they get. It's neat that Jane and Uncle Colin have hit it off so well but it makes me nerves, too," Cherry said as she put most of my stuff in the trunk of her car. For once she was actually driving.
"What do you want to happen between them?"
"I don't know. I never dreamed they'd click. Colin doesn't know Sign language. Well, he didn't anyways but he's catching on fast. And I adore Jane. She's cool but I don't know if the two worlds can combine that easily. Jane is so Culturally Deaf and Colin is so so… I don't know the word I want."
"Well, they say opposites attract. Maybe all this means nothing. Jane and Colin are just friends afterall."
"Are they just that?" Cherry asked raising an eyebrow.
That caused me to look at her quick. "Do you mean what I think you mean?"
"It's not like I'm going to ask. I mean he's my uncle and she's my teacher but it's possible."
I bit my tongue from saying more as I hopped into her car and gave Colin a red faced smile. The idea was enough to make me squirm in my seat.
I said little on the drive over to Emily's house but my mind ran amuck. I wondered why the very idea of people engaging in sexual relations caused us to be embarrassed. What was the big deal anyway? Why did we try and push from our conscious minds that in order for Emily to be pregnant she had to have been intimate with a man? What did it matter if Colin and Jane were more than friends? The act itself is nothing more than innate. It exists for no other reason than to procreate. It is only humans the higher thinkers of the animal kingdom that have made sex to be more than procreation. Somewhere along the line humans decided that sexual intercourse corresponded with the feeling of love and affection. But love and affection can exist without sex ever playing a role. So why is it that humans by nature are embarrassed by the act and afraid of acknowledging it as primal? Does the fact that most humans make love make them less respected or some how sinful? Of course not, so why do we become embarrassed at the thought of someone we care about making love with someone they have feelings for, since that is what humans have correlated sex as meaning? Of course I'm ignoring the fact that some people engage in sex for no other reason than what could be said to be recreation.
I decided as we sat at the last stoplight before turning onto Emily's street that it really wasn't the thought itself but the fact that thinking along those lines was an invasion of privacy. We become embarrassed because it is as if we are seeing what is happening behind closed doors. So we can easily acknowledge the fact that Emily was carrying life but to venture to think about how that life was created was an invasion of her privacy. It is as if the thought reveals the deep secrets that should only be acknowledged between lovers.
But somehow the wall of invasion crumbles between friends. You sit in a group of women that are friends and they will tell you thing that would make your toenails curl. The same goes with guys. It is only with acquaintances, and respected people such as our teachers and our parents that we get wishy-washy about sex. I guess in reality it also has to do with crossing some boundary. To know those intimate details is indicative that a line has been crossed between professional and personal as well as that of an invasion of privacy. So that was why Cherry and I turned several shades of red if we thought about the what-ifs between Jane and Colin. But was I really embarrassed anymore about Emily? I'd been with her as she miscarried. I'd seen her in a paper gown with more skin showing than was ever revealed in the classroom. I know even though I had long since crossed that imaginary line there were times that I still tried hard to remain close to it out of respect. But was it hard for me to think that Jack and Emily had been together and created a child out of love? No, I no longer was embarrassed in acknowledging the fact. But I wasn't going to approach her and discuss it either. Some things are better left unsaid.
We jumped out of Cherry's car to find most everyone already there before us. Colin greeted Jane with a hug as would be expected but Cherry and I shared a look as we greeted Betsy, Nora, Emily and Matt.
We set right to work. First dragging out everything that was piled up in the room. As we did this I had to wonder where Emily's beasties, err babies were. I looked around for Emily only to discover Nora had regulated her to sitting in the living room and was watching the proceedings with a disgruntled look, "Babies where?"
"My Bedroom. Not want bother people." She replied looking towards the soon to be converted nursery.
"Help you not why? Nora."
"Yes, not let me."
"Come with me. You tell everyone paint how?"
Emily smiled her pretty smile. Nora gave me a dirty look but managed to keep her "fook you" soundless though I easily read her lips. With all of us working the room was cleaned up and painted in less than 3 hours. We then sat around for the next six hours eating, playing cards, assembling nursery furniture and such while the paint dried. We would put up the Winnie the Pooh wallpaper later.
Colin and Matt went to Matt's home to watch a baseball game while us ladies sat around and shared labor and birth horror stories that Emily would really have preferred not to know. Nora signed, "Back in my day the doctor would come to the house. I remember I was seventeen when I had my first baby. My husband and I lived with my mother. We lived on a farm. It was expected at the time women would have their babies and return to the fields or back to housekeeping the next day. I am a small woman. My husband was a big man. My first child was very big and turned backwards. I was in labor for 2 days before I finally had my son. Ether was the only drug, that and fortifying doses of whiskey. I nearly died from blood loss. I tore from one end to the other. The next day I washed 3 loads of laundry." Emily cringed.
I piped up next to try and offer Emily a little reassurance that she probably wouldn't suffer as badly, "Woman not have it that bad anymore. A friend of mine who is an obstetrics nurse tells me they call women who are less than five feet tall walking c-sections. But women who are tall, five foot eight or more tend to spit their babies out. They have the ability to use their height to get behind the contraction and push with it. There is more muscle area to work with making labor much easier and normally shorter. I don't think you will have any problem delivering this baby. Now if it were me, I say give me drugs, knock me out and wake me when it's over."
Emily laughed her silent laugh then became serious, "Debbie, my midwife and Micki her assistant told me the same thing. I'm not scared about how long my labor will be or the size of the baby. I'm a big lady. According to Debbie I have the pelvis of someone made to have babies. I'm more worried about getting too tired to push. I'm not young. I've seen the shows about giving birth on TV. I have seen the women get so tired they don't have the energy to push, young woman that look like they run marathons crying because they don't have the strength or endurance to push their babies out. I'm twice some of their ages. I don't know if I will have the stamina. That scares me. Maybe I'm too old to be doing this. I don't want to have to have a caesarean because I can't push."
"I think you are worrying needlessly. As long as you don't panic at the pain and start pushing too soon you will be fine."
"What would happen if I pushed too soon?" Emily signed and I converted in my head to English word order.
"If you pushed too soon it would cause the cervix to swell and won't allow it to dilate correctly making it harder for the baby to come down and enter the birth canal. The swelling would keep you from being able to push the baby out. That is why you have to remain in control of the contractions and stay focused. You are still taking Natural Child Birth Classes right?"
"Yes, I have four more to go. I can't believe I'm having a baby."
Jane laughed, "I never thought you'd have a child." Betsy agreed.
"Why did you think that? I am curious why everyone says they never could see Emily as having a child," I asked.
"I don't know why. Maybe it is because of her age that I didn't consider it a possibility. Or maybe it is because she gives her entire life to the school. She used to drive every Saturday to the main campus and back. It was a 6-hour round trip drive just to teach a 2-hour class. Until this past year she would come in to work even if she thought she was dying. Her job meant that much to her. A child would have to come before work, before us, her family. I'm sure she has told you before that she thinks of Betsy and I as her family, the school is her family since she has had no true family since her brother passed away," Jane explained.
"Do you think the same?" I asked Betsy.
"Yes, she never seemed like she wanted to be a mother. The students, the faculty, her pets they were enough. She was fulfilled without needing motherhood. I know she will be a good mother but she's not fulfilling a deep-seated need by having this baby. I think she would have been just as happy never to have been given this chance."
"That is true. I was fine with my life the way it was. When I was 80, I would have looked back on my life without regret even if this hadn't happened. I've had a good life," Emily responded.
They continued to chat. Cherry told about her mother having the twins. I hoped it didn't hurt Emily by having the story told but again my mind drifted off to think about Emily. I couldn't help but wonder if Emily was truly as happy with her life as she had thought. Over the past year she had told me bits and pieces of her life story. As a child she was the forgotten child. Her mother would get busy with housework or her job and forget about little Emily. Emily as the forgotten child didn't seek out companionship, instead she would head for the nearby pond and swim without anyone to watch out for her safety. She had a brother but grew up alone. The only time she found companionship was while she was attending the School for the Deaf. There she wasn't alone in that she was with others like herself. She grew up to be a bubbly jokester and kind hearted because of the way the Deaf school is structured. Most students find a connection that hearing counterparts don't find because they take their hearing for granted. Deaf students learn ASL and create social networks that support them their entire lives through their residential schools. In this way they are much better adjusted than many hearing students. But even with the network did Emily truly find the acceptance she so needed or was that why she became the athlete she became? Was the swimming her way of saying see I belong? Someone if not my own family will remember me. But what happened after she no longer could compete at international levels? Was that what drove her to become a teacher, so that she would again find acceptance and belonging? Is that why she gave 120% to the school? By giving of herself totally was she really still fighting not to be forgotten yet again? Did she realize that by having the baby she would be loved completely and unconditionally? Did she realize that possibly for the first time in her life that she'd never be forgotten again? Of course I could be miles off the true mark about Emily but maybe not.
I came out of my reverie just in time to remember the little something extra I had brought. I wasn't sure how it would go over but it seemed like a neat thing to do at least to me. I went out to Cherry's car and found a small bag and carried it in and stood in front of Emily waiting for her to acknowledge me. "What?" she signed her cobalt eyes sparking with merriment.
I fumbled with the Signs as I am a bit shy, "I brought body paint. I thought all of us could paint your stomach and take a picture so you have a keepsake."
And we did just that. We painted stars, rainbows and flowers until her stomach was a mass of color and a living reminder of the art of creation that like Emily would not be forgotten.