Good Pretty Mothers: Excerpt #1

Everything about having a baby, from conception, to pregnancy, to labor, to birth, was difficult for Audra. Even the idea of it was challenging for her; when she tried to conjure an image of her body swollen with a child, or herself as a graceful, ethereal mother, her breasts soft mountains overflowing with golden springs of milk, the glow of motherhood radiating around her like heaven’s light, her mind sputtered and coughed, emitting black smoke like a rusted car engine that had run out of fuel. She had never thought of herself as a mother, had never felt the instinct that all her girl friends seemed to have to make babies with handsome husbands. Being a good wife and mother was a future she had always envisioned for herself, but more out of a lack of imagination for a different kind of future.

She never said any of this aloud, especially not to her husband, Dillon, who seemed to invoke the portrait of their future family without any difficulty and with unabashed confidence. He was built to be a father—it seemed his very body was designed by God to carry the weight of loved children.

So when, shortly after their wedding, they began in earnest to have a baby and realized it would not happen naturally, Audra simply smiled as she imagined a very good, valiant wife would when presented with difficult challenges on the road to becoming a mother. She kept her face calm and stoic through each medical procedure, no matter how uncomfortable or painful, and hid the overwhelming dread with each failed attempt, knowing she would have to endure another round of the tortuous fertility treatments.

When they finally conceived, Audra was relieved—she could give her body permission to rest, to submit to the growing life inside her. She slept heavily and long, encircling herself in thick blankets long after the sun had risen through their bedroom curtains, Dillon in constant motion to prepare, work, provide.

Six weeks after the successful transfer, they returned to the fertility clinic. Audra lay on her back, a thin hospital gown hanging pathetically from her swelling body, her feet placed wide in the cold metal stirrups to force her legs open.

“Just a bit of pressure,” the technician had said, guiding the probe, which looked like a curling iron in a condom, inside Audra. She could feel the instrument pushing around her insides, searching for life. She squeezed Dillon’s hand, and he smiled at her, gripping back.

On the screen was a grainy image, mostly static, like snow, around a dark, amorphous blob.

“That’s the gestational sac,” the technician explained, moving the wand inside Audra. “And that,” the technician whispered reverently, tapping her keyboard. “Is your baby.”

“Oh my god,” Dillon breathed. His eyes brimmed with tears as he stared at the monitor. “Our baby, Audra.”

Audra squinted at the screen, trying to make out a discernable shape of a baby, but all she could see was a grey smudge inside the dark oval on the screen, no larger than a grain of rice. The image steadied, and within it, something trembled—a pale, intermittent flash, as if the light itself was breathing. The technician pressed a button, and a white line cut through the tiny shape. The bottom of the screen filled with trembling bands of white, pulsing in neat, urgent rhythm.

“What’s that?” Audra asked, her eyes tracing the galloping waves.

“Your baby’s heartbeat,” the technician responded, smiling.

Then—finally—Audra felt it. The spark. The moment she thought she’d lost, or somehow had not deserved as a mother. An electrical thrill ran down her spine, and she felt her eyes widen, her pupils expanding to receive the full light of the waves of her baby’s heartbeat. They blazed through her, etching a new pathway through the circuitry of her brain.

She was a mother.

Audra hobbled through pregnancy, marching her way slowly to every milestone with the promises from her doctors and friends that the next phase would get better, she just needed to get through the next leg of the journey and she’d find relief. Her mother called daily, rattling off natural remedies for nausea and regaling Audra with stories she’d heard hundreds of times before about each of her mother’s two pregnancies.

“I just adored being pregnant,” her mother sighed over the phone, Audra laying in bed with the smell of her vomit permeating the room from the trash bin by her head. “My hair was thick and shiny as could be, and my nails were so strong. People would see me from behind and they wouldn’t realize I was pregnant until I turned around, I was still so slim.”

Audra swallowed, felt a strong wave of nausea pass through her. She closed her eyes, willing the gatorade she’d been sipping to stay inside her.

“Mom,” she croaked.

“Of course, I was completely exhausted,” Audra’s mother continued. “I was still working, worked all the way up to the day I gave birth. I remember one time I was driving home in the middle of the afternoon, I must have been four or five months pregnant, and I just had to pull over because I was just so tired. I parked at the McDonald’s and closed my eyes, woke up three and a half hours later! I couldn’t believe it.”

Audra’s abdomen spasmed, her body contracting as sharp bile came shooting up her throat. She sat up quickly and grabbed the trash bin, wretching violently, the blue gatorade bubbling sickenly at the bottom of the bin.

“Oh, sweetheart,” Audra could hear her mother speaking on the phone as it lay next to her on the bed. “Okay, sounds like you’re not feeling good. I’ll give you a call later, okay honey? Feel better, bye now.”

After Audra had gagged and heaved until she was completely empty, she fell back into bed, exhausted. Her mouth stung with the taste of vomit, but she knew getting up and walking to the bathroom to brush her teeth was a futile waste of her dwindling energy as she was likely to vomit again soon. She closed her eyes, waited for sleep to take her.

She felt the baby move inside her, gently. She smiled, and fell into a deep, dark sleep.

Audra had wanted to labor at home, refusing to leave until she absolutely had to despite Dillon’s desperate appeals to leave for the hospital once the contractions began coming consistently.

“Audra, please,” he pleaded as Audra lay, sweating and gasping for air, on the floor after an intense, painful contraction. “We need to go. It’s time.”

“Not yet,” she breathed, enjoying the feeling of the cool, hardwood floor on her face. She tried to push herself up, and Dillon came over and lifted her from under her arms. “I don’t want them to push me to have an epidural too soon, or force me to take Pitocin when I’m not ready. C-sections are on the rise—did you know that? And it's because doctors are intervening too early in the labor process.”

Dillon clenched his fists, shaking his head as he walked away from Audra. He leaned against the sink, breathing deeply and exhaling. He was not used to being in a position where he was not in control, and Audra knew this was his version of a living nightmare. She walked over to him and placed her hand on his back. He looked at her, his face twisted with anxiety.

“Please,” she whispered. “Let me do this.”

Dillon searched her eyes, his expression torn between love, fear, and pride. He looked at their kitchen clock, each hour represented by a different northeastern bird.

“One hour,” he said. It wasn’t an offer, or a negotiation. Audra nodded.

Finally, after Audra could no longer stand from the sheer exhaustion of the intense contractions, Dillon had called an ambulance and gotten her to the hospital. The air in the hospital room smelled of her sweat and of the lavender oil that Dillon had massaged into the pressure points of her wrist. The doctors and nurses walked by in a blur, their white coats leaving a misty trail behind them as they brushed past Audra’s bed. Clear tubes ran in neat lines around her, and Audra felt like a fly caught in a spiderweb. She began to fade in and out of consciousness, the pain in her pelvis dulling in her body as the anesthesia from the epidural coursed through her. The physical exhaustion began to bleed into her mind, her thoughts clouding like bacteria blooming in a wound. She imagined the pain floating out of her body, materializing as a shadowy ghost standing beside her. It stood beside her; a nurse walked through it. Audra wasn’t afraid, but rather felt as if she was seeing an old friend again, someone she had once loved but had grown apart from years ago. She tried to speak to it, as she had done so many times before, but her mouth was dry and her tongue was swollen. The dark figure flickered, and vanished.

The next thing Audra was aware of was a heaviness on her chest. Her eyes were open but everything around her was blurred, the noises muffled, as if she were at the bottom of a pool looking up. She felt the weight on her chest shift, wet and warm, smelling of blood. Slowly her vision cleared, and she saw something small was bundled on top of her. The lights of the room hurt her eyes, and the sounds of machines and voices became clear and cutting as knives in her ears. Something soft brushed her cheek—a small hand. Audra tried to speak, but her muscles around her jaw felt as if they were melting like hot wax. She blinked slowly, Dillon’s smiling face, wet with tears, coming into focus.

“You did it, Audra,” he sobbed, stroking her hair. “Your blood pressure dropped and you lost consciousness, so the medical team performed an emergency C-section. The doctors said you’d be feeling groggy from the anesthesia. But it’s okay now—he’s here. Connor is here.”

She looked down at the small mass on her chest, the wrinkled face of her baby finally becoming clear. He was naked, his body a bluish purple and still covered in a thin layer of blood and afterbirth. His face was swollen, his eyes crusted over, his head covered in fine black hair. Audra felt a rush of panic—something was wrong. He looked unnatural, monstrous. She looked at Dillon, her eyes wide with fear.

“I know,” Dillon said, wiping his tears and smiling broadly. “He’s perfect, isn’t he?” He leaned over and kissed the baby’s wet, slippery head.