At 36 weeks pregnant, I stood in my mother-in-law’s kitchen holding a gravy boat while she dug five orange-painted fingernails into my arm and told me to stop using pregnancy for attention. My husband was six feet away with a basket of dinner rolls in his hands, strong enough to carry roofing shingles up a ladder all day, and he stared at the gravy dripping onto the tile instead of telling his mother to let go.
Chapter 3
Alda locked my shop herself.
She waited while I finished the boots because, as she later told me, strangling a pregnant woman would have defeated the purpose of helping her.
At one o’clock, she drove me to Dr. Ramirez’s office.
Gloria was already in the waiting room.
Of course she was.
She wore a leopard-print scarf, gold hoop earrings, and fresh orange nails. A small notebook rested on her knee.
Frank sat beside her with his cap in his hands.
Brian had come directly from a roofing job. There was black tar on one forearm.
Gloria looked up.
“There she is.”
I walked slowly toward the chairs.
“Thirty-nine weeks and still strolling around. I was the size of a house by now.”
“Hello, Gloria.”
She tapped the notebook.
“I wrote down my questions so we don’t waste the doctor’s time.”
Alda sat in the corner with a magazine.
She held it upside down for several minutes.
My contractions were approximately three minutes apart by then.
I had developed a method.
There was a poster across the waiting room about calcium.
When a contraction began, I read it.
Calcium supports bone health at every stage of life.
Dairy products, almonds, dark leafy greens.
By the time I reached the bottom, the contraction usually released me.
Gloria kept talking.
“I’m going to ask about induction. Somebody needs to. She’ll keep that child in there until the Fourth of July if nobody encourages her.”
Frank leaned forward.
He had owned a barbershop for forty years and understood faces better than most doctors.
“You okay, kid?”
“Wonderful.”
He frowned.
Gloria laughed.
“Oh, please. When it’s real, she’ll know.”
Another contraction started.
I found the poster.
Calcium supports—
“With Brian,” Gloria continued, “I screamed so loud people heard me from the parking lot.”
Dairy products—
“When labor is real, you cannot sit calmly in a waiting room.”
Almonds—
“You certainly can’t have a conversation.”
Dark leafy—
My left hand tightened around the arm of the chair.
Brian noticed.
He looked at my hand.
Then my face.
I gave him the smallest possible shake of my head.
For once, his silence helped me.
He slid his hand under mine.
I squeezed.
Hard.
His mouth tightened.
He did not make a sound.
The nurse opened the door.
“Rachel Marino?”
I stood.
Gloria called after me.
“Tell the doctor we’re coming in for questions.”
Dr. Ramirez watched me climb onto the exam table.
I stopped halfway through a contraction and stared at a picture on the wall.
“How long?” she asked.
“What?”
“How long have you been doing that?”
“Since last night.”
Her face changed.
“Contractions?”
“I think they’re practice ones.”
“How far apart?”
“Three minutes. Mostly.”
She stared at me.
“Mostly?”
“One was four.”
She washed her hands.
Then she examined me.
It took slightly longer than usual.
Finally she removed her gloves.
“Rachel.”
“Yes?”
“These are not practice contractions.”
“How do you know?”
“You are eight centimeters dilated.”
I stared.
“Out of?”
“Ten.”
I thought about it.
“At ten?”
“There is a baby.”
“Oh.”
Dr. Ramirez folded her arms.
“How long since they started?”
“Almost fifteen hours.”
“What did you do this morning?”
“Worked.”
“At the shop?”
“Yes.”
“What did you do?”
I hesitated.
“Repaired some boots.”
For the first time in four years, I saw my doctor briefly lose professional composure.
“You repaired boots.”
“Yes.”
“While eight months—”
“Nine.”
“Nine months pregnant and in active labor.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You knew something was happening.”
“I didn’t want to make a fuss.”
Her expression softened.
That was worse.
“Who made you believe labor was a fuss?”
I looked away.
She did not make me answer.
“Who is outside?”
“My husband.”
“Anyone else?”
I laughed weakly.
“Everybody.”
“Good.”
She opened the door.
“Bring them in.”
Gloria entered first, already talking.
“Doctor, thank you. I’ll be quick. My first question is what we can do to move this along because Rachel’s side of the family tends to—”
“Mrs. Marino.”
Gloria stopped.
Dr. Ramirez’s voice remained quiet.
“Your daughter-in-law is eight centimeters dilated.”
Silence.
“She has been in active labor since sometime last night.”
Gloria’s pen remained suspended above her notebook.
“She worked an entire morning at her shoe shop. She then sat in my waiting room for almost thirty minutes without telling anyone she was having contractions every three minutes.”
Frank’s mouth fell open.
Brian went pale.
Dr. Ramirez continued.
“A wheelchair is coming. She is going directly across the street to the hospital.”
Gloria looked at me.
Then at my stomach.
Then back at the doctor.
“She’s in labor?”
“Yes.”
“She can’t be.”
Dr. Ramirez raised one eyebrow.
“She is.”
“But she was sitting next to me.”
“Yes.”
“She was reading the calcium poster.”
“Yes.”
Gloria turned toward Brian.
“Did you know?”
Brian slowly raised his right hand.
It was bright red.
Four white crescent marks crossed his palm.
“I knew she was squeezing.”
“And you didn’t tell me?”
“She told me not to.”
Gloria looked genuinely bewildered.
“Since last night?”
I nodded.
She stared.
“Fifteen hours? Without telling anybody? Who does that?”
Another contraction began.
I could feel it building.
For once, I did not look for a poster.
I looked directly at her.
“You told me people were tired of hearing about it.”
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
In six years, I had never seen Gloria speechless.
“I meant the sighing,” she finally said.
I breathed.
“I meant the rubbing your back. I never said not to tell anybody you were having the baby.”
“You said I made everything dramatic.”
“That isn’t the same thing.”
The contraction climbed.
Gloria stepped closer.
“I was trying to toughen you up.”
She lifted one finger toward me.
“You cannot blame me because you decided to do something ridiculous.”
She was close enough to touch.
So I touched her.
I reached out and grabbed her left arm above the elbow.
Gloria yelped.
“Rachel.”
I held on.
The contraction tightened until the room narrowed.
“Rachel, you’re hurting me.”
I breathed through my nose.
“Let go.”
I squeezed harder without meaning to.
“Oh, my God. Brian, get her off me.”
Frank, standing behind Gloria, looked at his wife.
Then at me.
Then he said mildly, “Don’t milk it, Glory.”
Alda made a sound in the hallway that might have been a cough.
The contraction finally eased.
I released Gloria.
She snatched her arm against her chest.
For once, she had nothing to say.
The wheelchair arrived.
As the nurse helped me sit, something inside me gave way.
Not physically.
Something older.
Something I had been holding longer than the baby.
“This hurts,” I said.
Everyone looked at me.
I said it again.
“This really hurts.”
Alda grabbed my purse.
“Good,” she said. “Keep going.”
I did.
I complained all the way to the elevator.
I complained while they rolled me across to the hospital.
I complained about my back, my hips, the wheelchair, the fluorescent lights, and the fact that somebody had apparently designed maternity gowns without consulting anyone who had ever possessed a human body.
Nobody died.
Nobody accused me of weakness.
And no one laughed.
