by Jane Downing
The baby sleeps in the travel cot. Essie can see him through the bathroom door, which she quietly closes before turning on the taps. The motel plumbing thunders. It’s a wonder the noise doesn’t wake the baby, or her partner who she left lying on the bed. She cracks the door to check; spies the miracle of sleeping faces.
Before the steaming water fills the bath and fogs the mirror, she catches her reflection. This is what she’s avoided for six weeks. Not wanting it to be part of her story. But motel mirrors are large and uncompromising and she is naked.
The scar is livid. A cross between lurid and vivid. No longer a wound, the two edges have knitted. The long cut is flanked by side scars from the stitches tracking down either side. Low on her belly. The surgeon had joked, you’ll still be able to wear a bikini after I’ve finished with you. She hadn’t laughed. Wouldn’t have even if the next contraction hadn’t mugged her voice.
They’d left Essie awake throughout the surgery. The anesthetics took away the pain, just not her consciousness so she remembers the tugging as the doctor lifted the baby clear of her body. The echo of the birth throbs in time to the rush and gush of the water filling the motel bath.
Essie lowers herself in. Her hands on cold porcelain, her feet in hot water. Then her thighs, then her scar.
The water supports her and draws out the aches of the last weeks that have been a blur of busyness and exhaustion. It is easy now to drift. To give in to tiredness. Only, there are jags as real as scars too across the insides of her eyelids. Burnt afterimages that do not fade.
The water cools. It is no longer amniotic.
Her weakness manifests when she tries to get out. Essie’s core has been stitched back together but the fault lines remain and groan heavy and hot as she attempts to lift herself.
Essie lies in the water, does not call for help. She has tried to hide the scar from her partner as well as herself. She has shown herself to him only in parts since the baby entered their lives. He would not fail to see it in all its ugliness as she lies naked and stuck in the bath. And then she’ll never be perfect, flawless, immaculate in his eyes again.
She lies back and sinks her face under the water. Decides she will turn on the hot tap and warm up the water, enough to tempt him into the bath with her. In this scheme, she will bend forward to hide her scar and he will get in behind her, spoon her as they take precious moments together while their child sleeps. Then, instead of a grappling of arms and a face-to-face tugging to lift her free, he will edge his feet under hers and she imagines he’ll be able to push her to standing. She will step free of the bath. Wrap herself in one of the tired, motel towels.
She does not call to him. Yet. She waits. Soon, if she waits too long, the baby will wake and cry.
Jane Downing’s stories and poetry have been published around Australia including in Griffith Review, The Big Issue, Antipodes, Island, Westerly, Overland, Meanjin, Canberra Times, Cordite, and Best Australian Poems.
Hyades Magazine 