Post-Partum Document
Susie Jones was pregnant. She was twenty-three and it was her first. She’d broken the news to her husband when he was listening to the football, and for some reason she'd thought that was hilarious.
‘First sign of baby-brain right there, interrupting our Dave in the middle of footy. Can you imagine?’ Susie was telling this story now at seven months gone, slumped on Iris’ sofa.
Iris hadn’t invited Susie Jones over. Iris hadn’t seen anyone in months, but of course this ‘get-together’ was all Karen Oaks’ doing.
‘She’d love to hear from you,’ Karen had said over the phone. ‘No one else has any babies. Don’t get me wrong, we’ve all had babies but it’s not the same when they’re grown, is it?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘And how old is yours now, four months?’
‘Five months,’ Iris said.
‘Ooh heck, dunnit just fly by?’ And Iris hadn’t responded because she didn’t have anything to say.
Her little blue-eyed boy, that’s what her friends called him, and Iris decided she’d best adopt that nickname too because she hadn’t thought of one herself yet. She just called her baby ‘Nick’. She didn’t think that he looked like a Nicholas, although he did look remarkably like his father and, as his father was also called Nicholas she supposed that, actually, he must. Remarkable really was the word for it. They had the same square jaw, the same beady eyes, the same screwed-up mouth, always so small unless he was bawling which set her teeth on edge.
Iris didn’t know how to stop him crying. She’d just never learned. She cuddled and kissed, spoke in a sing-song voice, rocked him gently, but it never worked. It was like he hated her, but then he needed her so desperately that she couldn’t possibly leave. Who would love her then? The mother who left her own child? No, Nick was too intelligent for that. He knew as soon as he was born she’d have no choice but to accept his love and his alone. Eventually, when the cuddles and kisses proved entirely ineffectual, she would be forced to do it. She’d pull down her brassier and allow him to grip onto her with his teething, gaping mouth, making her squirm as the liquid drained from her, experiencing that same nausea that she felt when doctors took her blood. It was worth all the pain and the heavy breasts just to avoid that feeling of being sucked at for a few more moments.
Now Susie Jones sat on her dirty, fabric sofa next to Karen Oaks, and Iris wanted to cry but she wasn’t sure why, so she didn’t. The three of them smoked their cigarettes and cooed over Nick squirming on Iris’ lap. Soon, his face changed. In came the screwed-up expression which meant he wanted to cry soon too, and Iris didn’t know why he wanted to do that either.
‘Oh, I think someone’s hungry,’ Karen Oaks said the second he started fussing, and soon his mouth was wide-open, wet and threatening.
‘Aw, can I watch? It’s so beautiful, that bond, you know?’ Susie interjected.
‘No,’ Iris said quickly. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘G’on, it’s only us girls. I used to whap ‘em out all over the shop when our Ian was a bairn, it was the only way I could ever stop him scriking. Course, he’d start pulling ‘em out for me if I didn’t get there fast enough,’ Karen said and the two women laughed together while Iris sat there, self-pityingly, alone. She recognised the sinking sensation in her stomach which signalled that soon she would have to do something she didn’t want to do, but which was required to maintain her illusion of normality.
‘I just don’t think he’s hungry,’ she attempted. ‘I fed him before you came.’
‘We’ve been here ages.’
‘Well, he ate a lot.’
The cries were getting more insistent and Iris knew what she looked like. She could tell by the doubtful expressions on their faces. They would speak about her afterwards. Bad mother, they would say, didn’t even seem to care that he was crying, left him starving hungry, poor thing, and Iris was would never be able to defend herself because the way she felt was indefensible.
‘He does seem upset,’ Susie Jones attempted cautiously.
‘Well, you know bairns. Suppose sometimes they cry for no reason…’
‘I’ll feed him,’ Iris said, too quickly, to the point that they would know she was annoyed, and she tried to recover with a warm smile but she just looked mad with her sudden teeth-baring expression after an outburst.
Iris imagined herself as an animal. A pig, perhaps, or a dog laid on its side passively while its young audibly nibbled on sagging, brown nipples. She cautiously withdrew her breast, tried to keep the nipple hidden but failed, as she knew she would. She smiled awkwardly, hoping that they would notice her embarrassment, but Karen Oaks and pregnant Susie Jones still had their eyes fixed on her bawling son.
He clenched on quickly and began sucking and Iris felt her anger grow with each insistent slurp. You bastard, she thought, could you not have pretended for at least a second?
‘My goodness,’ Susie said, ‘isn’t it beautiful?’
‘You do miss it in a strange way,’ Karen Oaks added. ‘I definitely miss the bond I had with mine.’
‘Does it really go away?’ Susie asked.
‘No, of course not, but it’s not the same, is it? When they’re in their teens and only bothered about Top of the bloody Pops. You miss them even though they’re still technically there.’
‘Oh, everyone says that though, don’t they? That they grow up so fast.’
Iris felt her eyes prick with tears. This was expected. She’d been like an overhanging, grey cloud waiting to burst the entire time these women had been here watching her and her son, waiting for her to slip up. She wondered how she could feel so guilty and angry all at the same time, and over such a tiny, little child. The anger made her think she was a terrible person, built up the guilt she knew she was supposed to feel. In turn that guilt made her anger more apparent, because why should she feel guilty? She’d never agreed to any of this. She’d never had a say in marriage and children. How could she possibly be expected to cope? This anger grew into guilt at being angry into anger at being guilty into an exhausting, overwhelming sensation that left her numb, blank, responding only when she had to so she wouldn’t feel too much.
Iris had never been fond of children. Her parents were. They’d wanted four or five but only managed one in fifty years of marriage. They called Iris their ‘little miracle’. Whenever they saw a baby they would speak in an absurd language, goo-gaaing and gaa-gooing nonsense at an indifferent and confused face. They made bizarrely specific comments to strangers about the beauty of their children, always insisted on getting maddeningly involved in school events. Iris had found it humiliating to see them waving at every sports day, shouting out her name from the crowd. Even as an adult she found the whole thing embarrassing. All that sick and piss and shit, the screaming, the total disregard for etiquette… Familial love evaded her.
They said it would be different when she had her own and it had been, in a way. There was so much love there when she saw that big, square face of his. Sometimes she watched Nick while he slept and it was painful, physically painful, to feel how much she loved him. It overwhelmed her so much she would stand over his crib and sob, silent tears falling in drops off the bottom of her chin. She’d think about how it was so strange that their faces scrunched up in the same way, and that very thought would make her hands clasp tighter on the pillow while he looked so sweet and peaceful, imagining a life where he’d never have to feel the way she felt right now. Of course, she’d never do it. But then, she couldn’t ever be too sure. Both the Nicks would sleep through this. No one ever woke when Iris cried.
‘Oh love,’ Karen said, ‘don’t get upset.’
‘You’ll still have him forever,’ Susie said. ‘But bless her, int she sweet?’
‘Yes, it’s hard to think of them aging.’ Those words were wrong, and Iris knew it. These women would know that ‘aging’ was not why she was crying.
‘Don’t be sorry, love. It’s emotional, especially when they still breast-feed.’
At this point, Iris had stopped feeding him. She handed him back to Karen Oaks, feeling sickened as she tucked herself away. The pain in her breast had subsided but she knew it would come back soon. She asked them to watch him while she put on the kettle.
‘Tea, was it? Or Coffee?’ She made a joke about being too tired to remember anything these days and her friends laughed, kindly, more sympathetic now that they’d seen her being milked.
‘Oh, I guess I have that to look forward to,’ Susie said, ‘that and the sleepless nights, oh, and the night feedings, and our Dave’s no use, don’t know how to change a bloody nappy, and thanks, by the way, Karen, for the clothes. Int that sweet, Iris? Karen gave me so many things she doesn’t need. Shoes, bottles, clothes, the lot.’
‘Well, that’s being a mum for you, you quickly learn how to share.’
‘No space for it in the house, I suppose. But thanks all the same, it’s impossible to shop with Dave’s limp.’
And as they talked, Iris vaguely noticed herself disassociating, felt her mind leave her body while these women joked about the cuteness of small shoes and the sweetness of soft blankets with faded, yellow ducks, and dilation, and stiches, and all those screams of agony, and the exhaustion of it all, and how it was so sweetly cute, so cutely sweet, just so god-damned adorable, even down to the shit-stained clothes and dirty nappies.
‘Speaking of which,’ Karen called through to the kitchen. ‘It might be time for someone to be changed.’
Iris normally changed him on the living room floor and she would’ve done there and then, but somehow she felt ashamed to let them see it, smell it, didn’t want them to think any less of him. Nick’s shit was tough to clean. It stained his baby-grows a filthy yellow round the legs. Her house always smelled like shit now. It was one of the first things Karen said when she’d walked in, ‘I remember that new-baby smell,’ while Susie wrinkled up her nose.
Iris laid him on the kitchen table, the only surface free of dirty plates. The sink was piling up now too. Iris looked at all the grime, wishing emptily that it was would go away. She hardly ever remembered eating, let alone cooking, so she wondered how it always got so filthy. She unbuttoned his baby-grow at the crotch and pulled it over his head. He whimpered while he was undressed. She figured it was the hardness on his back, perhaps the cold, but even then she couldn’t help but feel irritated, then horrendously ashamed of her own irritation. Over his whimpers and cries, Iris continued to hear the all-knowing voice of Karen Oaks.
‘You know when mine was this age…’
Iris looked at the yellow sludge in his nappy. It had been flattened by his bum-cheeks into a butterfly with round, flat wings and Iris, for a second, thought she might just love it. She imagined this might be symbolic, this butterfly. This shit-stain indicated a fresh beginning. He would have a clean nappy on soon and the kitchen would be clean again in time. She would bake her husband cakes and he wouldn’t feel the need to work so late to avoid her, driving around town doing God knows what. Iris wouldn’t let herself think about these things. She wouldn’t worry. She would be a good mother and she’d learn to embrace the sucking on her breasts, and all the talk of blankets and tiny shoes, and baby Nick would hardly ever cry because he’d know his mother loved him very much.
‘How you getting on in there, love?’ Karen Oaks had asked and Iris replied:
‘Beautifully,’ as she spread out the used nappy and decided that pregnant Susie Jones deserved to see the truth, the real art behind this whole thing, motherhood.
‘Look,’ she said to both of them, walking back through to the living room. ‘Isn’t this so special?’ and she laughed slightly as she spoke, her eyes still wet with tears as she held the nappy out to them. But Susie Jones and Karen Oaks just stared at her. At first their eyebrows raised, looking appalled, before they turned away. Iris felt her confidence waver. She wanted to explain her thoughts so that they’d understand that this did matter, that this was a breakthrough and things would be good now.
‘Look,’ Iris said, realising that she was nearly sobbing. ‘Look, you’re not looking properly.’
In the next room, baby Nick kept crying spread out on the kitchen table
'Post Partum Document' is a story from Davies' MA dissertation Fluid, a collection of stories based on 1970s artwork relating to body fluids. Other stories from this collection can be found at Literally Stories, Storgy, The Fictional Cafe, and The Bookends Review.