In the Dark of White

In the Dark of White
"Tu parle français?"
"What?" Johnna yelled back, over the ruckus of her friends, proclaiming loudly and quite out of key to be free falling, da da, free falling.
"Français? Aide? J’ai...," the small black boy repeated, voice quavering and tears negated by rain, his head, which barely reached the window of the mini-van, downcast, making him hard to hear.
"Kid, sorry, but you’ve got to get out of this intersection. Light’s gonna turn," she said, rolling up her window and making question eyes at the passenger seat’s occupant.
"I don’t know what he wanted. Must’ve had a stutter or something," she explained.
Just as the window shut, the boy’s final plea, a defeated, "S’il vous plait," reached Kate’s ears, somehow falling between the notes of the blaring Tom Petty.
"Who’s blabbering in French?" she inquired of her trip companions. This was so rarely a multilingual group. Hell, they rarely bothered to cross the Maryland state line, let alone an international date line. It was a wonder they’d agreed to the long drive to their friend’s wedding in North Carolina. Must be the appeal weddings have for the recently married and thereby validated in the world. A time to show off their gold bands of commitment, maturity and desirability. To join the ever expanding network of people who have risen from the depths of bar discussions and dating to the world of mortgages and baby planning.
An epiphany sounded from the driver’s seat, banging all over the car so sudden and sharp its origin. "Oh, right. French. That’s français, right? I thought he was just mumbling gibberish."
"Who?"
"I dunno. Some weird kid. There he goes," she muttered, pointing and pulling through the intersection.
Kate’s eyes turned to wrap around a small boy, maybe ten or twelve, judging by his size, running from car to car in what appeared to the warm, comfortable night drivers with little more to worry about, to be a vain attempt to dodge the pelting rain. In actuality, though his shoulders carried the weight of the falling water, the burden driving him to his sporadic, jagged run was something else, something heavier. Perhaps the panic that showed in his now upward gaze, searching, searching for calm, reassurance among the passing drivers.
All of whom honked and yelled and kept windows tightly shut against the rain and this bolt of panic striking between the lightning.
Turning to look behind her as the car pulled away, she bumped her friend Sam, who could sleep through anything, including Tom Petty renditions.
"Oh sure, he began, crabby from the disturbance. "Just knock a poor guy all over the place. Who am I to the magnificent Katherine and her royal court?" he queried, making a sweeping gesture of mock servitude.
"A humble servant," was Kate’s reply. "And sometimes jester."
Their playful tirade continued, but faded away in her mind as a word grew there in its place, squeezing out everything else to make room for itself.
STOP.
It grew and grew, that soda foam that you think you can keep from pouring out all over the glass, but that inevitably spills over, every damn time.
STOP.
"Stop," she heard her voice say. She put a hand up reflexively, like a child petrified of the parental reaction to a loud belch. Looking around she was almost relieved that no one seemed to have noticed.
Then again, without warning. "Stop." Louder. "Stop the car."
Sam sent her a sideways glance, and that’s when she knew to yell.
"Stop Johnna, go back."
The dark calmness of her tone left very little room for argument, odd for her. Her ideas were always a bit odd, a bit off kilter, so she was used to posing them as possibilities, quite probably stupid. She didn’t make commands. She didn’t give orders. She lacked the confidence of conviction to do that.
Though Sam often wondered why. She’d lost so many bets on her odd notions, always betting against herself, that he couldn’t believe she still didn’t yet trust herself. Not even after the incident with the cat.
They’d been driving back to school after Christmas break. Heading straight at the intersection that would take them to the campus, he noticed her gaze shifting to the left, eyes following a path into nowhere, as far as they were concerned.
"Ah yes, the great Katherine’s vision at work again," he had chided, pulling the car into a McDonald’s to prepare to turn around.
"No Sam," she’d said, "it’s nothing. I was just daydreaming."
"Sure, sure. And what, my dear, do you want to lose to me this time? I’ve been coveting quite a few of the new CDs in your collection...perhaps Chronicles, or no, your Indigo Girls..."
"Sam, you hate the Indigo Girls."
"Indeed, but you do not. To you, they are the singing poets of your world, your experience, your innermost feelings," he said, taunting, knowing that for sure, this time, she’d bet for her intuitions, instead of against them, unwilling to risk the CD collection she’d spent years building.
"Every one of them, I want. Every Indigo Girls."
"Fine. There’s nothing down there. Every Indigo Girls. And if I win, I drive
your car whenever I want for the next semester."
After driving a few miles down the path in question, with Kate hunched in her seat, looking down but still unable to hide her curious peeks at the roadside, they found the most beautiful cat, gray, with more specks of white than black, almost as if it had been flicked on with a paint brush. It’s leg was broken but immediately upon seeing Kate, even before she touched it, it stopped crying and looked at her, stared.
The cat’s name is now Turner, in honor of its method of discovery. She had been hesitant to keep it at first, but her then boyfriend was planning on becoming a vet and enjoyed utilizing his book knowledge on a real animal.
And it loves Kate. Like nothing you’ve ever seen. The cat hugs her. Even does things for her like a dog...brings her papers she thinks about needing and pulls her blanket over her with its teeth when she falls asleep reading on the couch.
So, he had a bunch of CDs he had no desire for, Kate was still without transport for the semester, and still, she wasn’t convinced of her uncanny ability to see things, before they were even there.
"Coincidence," she had said stubbornly, handing over the CDs and crossing her arms.
You could almost see the war going on in side of her, between the part of her that accepted this ability, wanted to trust it, and the part that prided itself on being, apart from these incidents, Ms. Logic, capable of wrapping motive, emotion and pain in a cord of cool headed rationality and tossing them aside to see just what is.
These instincts, these ideas of hers, though they’d probably be relished and envied by others, are painful to her, a reminder of the world’s incongruencies, of things beyond her control or comprehension. She is sought after, found by some voice, some idea, that she can’t shut out, can’t ignore, can’t escape, except through these small defiances, these mini-rebellions through which she loses more and more of her prized possessions to Sam, the voice’s greatest advocate.
"Well, here you are Ms. Woman of the Night," Johnna mumbled, emphasizing the Ms., as if Kate wasn’t aware that Johnna had married the love of Kate’s life and Kate’s ex-boyfriend, Geromy, who was dozing peacefully in the front seat.
Kate gave his seat a jolt as she jumped out the sliding door, face to face with a field of slick, black asphalt.
"He’s gone, Kate, come on," begged Johnna. "If we’re late to our dress fittings tomorrow, Meg’ll kill us. In, in, in. In."
"In, in, in," Kate mumbled to herself in Johnna’s authoritative I-was-ready-yesterday-to-be-a-soccer mom voice.
She sighed. Now she was a fool, in the rain, talking to herself. She could all but taste the humiliation. Stepping out into the rain after a small boy for reasons that were ridiculous, especially to her. On her tongue raindrops and the taste of her own insecurity. She knew that taste. It was amaraetto sours, her first association of it at the bars she used to navigate trying to prove to herself, through the attention of men, that she existed. Oh that confused look in their eyes. "Did I go to the library instead of the bar? Aren’t you that girl with the only A in Davidson’s Genetics class?"
So she hadn’t become a socialite by going to bars, hadn’t turned into a guy magnet by reading Cosmo, hadn’t even been deemed attractive despite an occasional attempt with make-up and clothes other than flannel. "I want a girl in flannel," Geromy had said, "someone real."
Ah, but how illusory looks can be. Kate couldn’t nail down her identity if it stood on a board and handed her a hammer. She was too busy wandering from identity to identity, trend to trend, idea to idea, trying to find something that could hold her attention, that could make sense for more than three, six months, before her sense of rationality could weed out the incongruencies of studying politics or psychology, because of their reliance on the unpredictable and indeterminable behavior of people. Or literature, because of its removal from the real world. Or science, because of its suppositions of absolute truth, though grounded in human experiment and therefore error. She was wandering, hoping someday for a quieting in her mind that might let her settle, for something.
And all the while those damned impulses kept distracting her and leading her into random situations that had nothing to do with anything.
"Hey, said Sam, placing a hand on her shoulder, "we..."
"Shhh. Hear that?"
And they were running, moving towards the whimpering.
The small boy appeared from what at first seemed like nowhere, but was actually an abandoned gas station, invisible without its neon sign. Soft moaning sounds found them.
"Well, put that useless French minor to work," Sam nudged, shoving her forward.
"But I can’t remem..."
"Do it, Kate," Sam spoke, his voice betraying rare impatience with her self-doubt.
"Tu as besoin d’aide?" Kate stuttered, the words feeling awkward and artificial.
"Oui, c’est maman," came the reply and with it Kate’s amazement that what got As in French conversation classes actually worked in real life.
"Oú?" she asked, following the boy to the dilapidated cement structure. Unable to see, she bent and moved toward the moaning sounds until she stumbled and was brought to her knees beside a large mound of woman. She bent to see the whites of the woman’s eyes, and when she realized the cause of her pain, was amazed to hear only minor moaning. No screams, yelling, curses, no writhing—just moaning, eyes upturned, accepting, looking and taking in Kate’s horror and fear and incomprehension.
The woman offered no information, did not beg nor plead, but merely repeated the same phrase: Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, all the time staring into Kate’s eyes.
Kate turned to give her second command of the night, to find that Sam had already gone for help.
"Think, Katie, think," she told herself. "Listen for signs of pain, contractions. yeah, but damnit, she’s making no noise. How is she making no noise?" Katie’s voice rose in her head, almost shrill, incomprehensive of this situation, it’s incongruencies.
At that, the woman’s hand shot out as if in answer, trying to signal pain. But she was soothing it instead, laying her leather brown hand on Kate’s, not squeezing in pain, but just laying it there, as if Kate needed more pain management than she. And still between moans, the chanting: Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci, Dieu merci. The eyes never leaving Kate.
Kate removed her hand and placed her own on top, not wanting to be a burden, but to ease one, and noticed the woman waiting patiently for her attention. She knew because the eyes were no longer resting, but searching for her own. When Kate finally met her eyes, fully and with her complete attention, the woman carried their gazes to the small boy, standing silently, shivering in a corner. Kate sat, staring at the child, amazed at his calm, his lack of fear. Waiting, just waiting to see what would happen, demanding no attention, no condolence, no reassurance that life would go on as usual once this was over. Kate couldn’t take her eyes from him until once again they were moved away by the woman’s gaze, to the bulging stomach, to the area between the legs where the stomach would be emptied, and it was black, so black, so empty, and Kate was swallowed into the pool of black nothing.
II.
And then, fading in its arrival, there was a charm, dangling in the black space, no, hanging from the neck of the form now beginning to flesh itself out. It is the woman’s neck and she is still giving birth, but where is the boy, and the rain, and the walls are muddy and rough, not cement, why? And why is she screaming this time, the woman, screaming and screaming and Kate puts her hands over her ears but she still hears them, and then the beating from the mid-wife, telling the woman to shut up, be strong, that she isn’t a child and has lost the child’s right to tears and rage. And Kate’s hands fly up again, over eyes and ears but they aren’t big enough and soon, the mid-wife’s hand is slapping her, slapping her hands away from her ears and eyes, and why? "To watch is not to feel. What right have you to block her pain, her blood water? Listen, listen to the shame of her cries" she says in a language that is foreign, but somehow understood, deep within Kate’s skull, penetrating the mush of her brain’s quietest parts. So Kate peels away her hands and lets the sound travel through her ears, and realizes that the screaming isn’t just the woman’s but a baby’s and that the birth is over, but the woman is still being worked on.
Doing what? Doing what? Oh God, sewing, the mid-wife is sewing the woman shut and Kate looks at the stitches and rough, rusted needle in horror as the woman lays back, accepting these stitches that lock in her identity as a woman, as one who receives a husband’s love, along with his ideas, his commands, his life, but never, because of the pain, the ripping, asserting her own.
Kate is beckoned, the woman’s finger hardly moving against the table she is on and Kate goes to her, takes the baby that is placed in her arms and it feels heavy and powerful, so heavy for a baby and yet it is only a baby. This does not explain her fear, why afraid of a baby. And she sees it is a boy and goes to the woman to give the baby back and suddenly she is standing empty handed, in the gas station again, witnessing the birth of the little boy’s sister.
III.
Blinking into the white lights of the hospital, Kate tried to remember what darkness was. She stared at her hands, the white-clean walls, at her clean, white friends and could not remember darkness, though she knew she’d once experienced it.
Now Sam was talking. "Kate, come on. She’s okay now. You did great."
"Was she always such a drama queen?," whines Johnna. "It’s not like she popped the kid out herself. Why the trauma?"
The hand reached out for her, pale and so familiar that its owner’s identity wasn’t even relevant. It was safe and trusted because it matched her own hand and everything else so well: the nurses’ uniforms, the official documents, the doctors’ coats, the white sheets draped over the people being flown through the ER via Stretcher Air. Thank you for flying with us. We hope this won’t be your final destination. Kate laughed in her own mind hearing the ridiculousness of this, of flying stretchers aimed at preserving clean white lives.
Of course she would follow that hand, for it had led her always, often changing specific identities, but always that sure, steady, pale hand led her through her days. She reached for the hand, marveling at how it’s tone blended, matched with hers, so that hers was almost lost in it, mingling, and she wondered which fingers were hers. She stood to go.
"And we’re off. Don’t worry," the hand person said with a squeeze, "they said they’d take good care of her."
"Who?" Kate asked in a daze of tired comfort, like warm milk delivered to bed by a loving grandmother.
"The woman we brought in here?" came Johnna’s frustrated voice. "Jesus Kate, it was all of ten minutes ago."
Her wrist twisted. Her hand was free. She remembered darkness. A black woman-lump that didn’t scream and a small shivering boy that didn’t cry. There were languages that didn’t match like all of these hands did. Night. Rain. And that saving hand through pain, calming her panic with its roughness, its reality, its assertion through contrast of pulsing life. The eyes.
And they were all dark. And she didn’t match.
She turned alone and walked back through the corridor, the white, white hallway, but she held on to dark, shuddering through fear and pain and reclaimed her seat, resting her head in her hands, pressing hard to keep the dark.
Looking up five minutes, or an hour, or a day later, the three figures could have been mirrors so similar were their experiences, their tone, eyes, ears, mouths to hers. They were standing, though, looking sure and big and in control and she sat. Crumpled. Looking up.
The glare hurt her eyes.
"Please Kate, let’s go. There’s nothing you can do now. She’ll be fine."
Sam sat down, shooting her a glance. "It’s the mumbling, isn’t it? What did she say to you, my bilingual amigo?"
"Amiga."
"Yeah, whatever. So?"
"Thank God. Thanks be to God. By God’s grace."
"Well, you’re welcome, but..."
"No, that’s what she said. She met my eyes, put her hand on mine and thanked God."
"No offense. You know I think the world of you. If I believed in God, I’d thank him for you too, but Kate, you could’ve been anyone. In her position, would you be too picky about the worth of your rescuers? You’d promise your first born to anyone who could get you out of there."
"She didn’t care, Sam. She could have had that kid alone there, died.
"How"
"I don’t know how I know but I do. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about herself or giving birth in some clean, virgin white hospital. She didn’t care. That wasn’t it."
Kate’s eyes followed Geromy and Johnna as they took their exasperated selves to a coffee machine.
"I have to know she’s okay, Jake. I have to."
An arm slid around her shoulder and she laid her head back onto it, closing her eyes and exhaling sterile air.
"Well, there’s your man," Sam said, nudging her head.
"Kate? I’m Dr. Hughes. They say you brought the woman and boy in?"
"Yes. How is..."
"The boy is fine. We’re treating him for some intestinal problems not uncommon where they come from."
"Which is..."
"Africa, we think. It’s one of the areas they practice the sort of genital mutilation evident on her body, which is why delivery was so difficult for her."
"Difficult, but she hardly..."
"Well, I don’t know," he said, hurriedly, laughing. "Difficult for us, then. In either case, you can go. Everything is...."
"But what will happen why is she here who is responsible for her where does she live?" the questions flooded out of her mouth, sounding almost panicky, making her feel weak, pathetic.
"Well, she won’t go far. She didn’t make it dear." Again, a hand on her shoulder. Weight. "Sorry you misunderstood. She lost too much blood due to the tears from the mutilations. The children will go to social services. From what I understand, the baby will stay here probably, since she is a citizen, but the boy will probably be sent back, once we can get a translator in to figure out where to ship him back to."
With it finished Kate was left standing with Sam, feeling pressed by something. His arm was again around her shoulders, but it felt too heavy, much heavier than before, and she had to step away, to find the weight still there. She walked a few steps to a nurse, not knowing before she said it why she was approaching her.
"I’d like to see the baby," she said, "the African woman’s child?"
"Oh sure, only black kid in there I believe. Maternity’s up a floor. Sure was nice of y’all to bring ‘em in, though really, in the long run, I don’t know what good it did."