Belonging

A story for you

After the American gave birth to her daughter on Christmas in Stockholm, she shared a room in the big hospital, Karolinska Sjukhuset, with two other new mothers. The room had four beds, but apparently it was a slow season for nativity in Scandinavia. The fourth bed was empty. All the energy of new life seemed to be rushing towards the manger. To her left was a Swedish woman who never spoke and almost never moved except when the nurse brought baby Lars to her breast every few hours. If Rosemary, the American woman, peeked over during the feeding, she could see that the Swede was trying to connect with the baby boy, but no matter which way she held him, he fidgeted in her arms. Other than that, Birgitta stared at the weary Christmas garland draped on the molding on the opposite wall.

Opposite Rosemary, Petra, the Yugoslav, gesticulated and screamed in Serbo-Croatian from the first mopping of the floors before the sun came up, to the very last burble of the TV game show when the lights went out in the evening. Rosemary couldn’t tell what all the screaming was about. Was she in pain from the stitches? Was she afraid of being a mother, always having to attend to baby Magdalena when she was hungry, when she had colic, when she was feverish, god forbid? Or was Petra just taking the opportunity to express her outrage before she went home to Vlado who would not tolerate complaining. Several times during the day, a party of her sisters or cousins or whatever would show up with boxes of sweets and savories which they would unpack on the bed, leaving the hospital blanket decorated with flakes of puff pastry. The fried dough, ustipci, was so greasy that even wrapped in napkins the oil left big blotches on the sheets. Petra took no pleasure in the food. She continued to scream and could be heard, the nurses said, all the way down in the basement where they did the x-rays. Meanwhile, the cousins gossiped. One woman would lean in with a conspiratorial expression on her face, the better to divulge a fragrant tidbit. The other would raise a hand to her heart and squeal in disbelief. But Petra didn’t join in. Even in the unfamiliar Serbo-Croatian, you could tell that she wished they would go away and leave her alone.

It was its own little universe, room 602 opposite the elevator. Nurses and aides and orderlies came and went, each in an identifying uniform, changing shifts every eight hours. Dark, wrinkled women pushed trolleys of foul-smelling hospital food into the room and equally foul-smelling dirty laundry out and away down the hall. Occasionally, a starched Nordic doctor would appear in the doorway and offer the new mothers a canned smile and a few boilerplate scraps of conversation

“I enjoyed the little cookies with the raspberry filling very much, Mrs. Stojanovic. I hope your sister won’t forget to bring them in again.”

“Have you had a bowel movement yet, Mrs. Winters?”

“Miss Svenson? Miss Svenson?”

Sometimes, Rosemary thought it all sounded like a joke set-up. An American, a Yugoslav and a Swede walk into a bar…

Jack Winters came in the afternoon to check on Rosemary. He was distracted, as usual. Not quite wrapping his brain around the life-changing enormity of baby Caroline’s arrival. For him, she had appeared out of nowhere, even after the full term of nine months. A Christmas baby, just like Lars and Magdalena. It left an unfamiliar taste in Jack’s mouth. It was slowly beginning to dawn on him that he was a new father in a strange, frigid country where he was living because he had refused to fight in a war in another strange country, ten sweltering degrees north of the equator. He tried to focus on Rosemary and Caroline, but half the time he was somewhere else, thinking grandiose thoughts about improving the lives of working people or harboring fantasies of retribution against clerks in his office who were misguided or just plain dumb.

No one ever visited Birgitta. She didn’t have a husband or a boyfriend, or maybe she did and he didn’t give a shit. The only thing that occupied her after the nurse took the baby away was a little scrap of knitting she was working on. Rosemary was useless with any and all handicrafts. She found herself staring at the other woman’s fingers, clack-clacking the needles back and forth, making a sound like typewriter keys.

“How do you do it so fast?” she asked, just forging ahead without stopping to worry if Birgitta spoke English or wanted to talk.

“I learned when I was a girl. You just do it without thinking. That’s what I like about knitting. Not having to think about anything.”

“What are you making?”

“Oh, it’s the beginning of an afghan. Lars will be in university by the time it’s finished.”

Rosemary was aware of a suffocating boredom, but she was determined to keep the conversation going no matter what it took. Talking with foreigners always involved a lot of questions which was, let’s face it, so awkward. She didn’t know what to say. Was it too much to ask to have a little human contact here in this bleak place on Boxing Day? Just then, when she had completely run out of possible topics, the plump, red-headed nurse came in with baby Caroline. The baby nuzzled her head against Rosemary’s breast and wiggled her tiny fingers. Her body gave off a heat like woolen mittens drying on the radiator. The two of them were singing the same ancient song. Then an interruption, an unexpected voice.

Birgitta, making a herculean effort, asked, “Is the little girl your first?”

“Yes, she is. I’m not sure I did the right thing. Having a baby so far from home, so far from family. My mother’s beside herself. Is yours here in Stockholm? Your mother?”

“No.”

Nothing else. Just no. What was that all about? Privacy? Rudeness? It wasn’t how they did it in New York, that’s for sure. In Stockholm, you often got one word answers. Yes, no, aquavit. Once her Swedish language teacher didn’t show up for class. The next day, the students asked if she was ok, if she’d been sick. Oh it was just something lite konstigt, the teacher said. A little peculiar. And it turned out that what was a little peculiar was that the teacher’s sister had given birth to a stillborn baby. Not big talkers.

“My mother died when I was fifteen. My father re-married. I don’t like her and she doesn’t like me,” Birgitta said in the same flat tone. And then, like the abrupt end of a thunderstorm, she put down her knitting, lay back on the pillow and turned towards the window. A few uninspired snowflakes were falling out of a pinkish sky. Who needs it? Rosemary thought, reaching for the paperback Raymond Chandler she’d tossed in her bag at the last minute. What else was there to do, really, but take your mind off the pain, the strangeness, the questions? Am I going to be good at this? Do I have a talent for this? She couldn’t believe that she was missing her mother who she wasn’t at all close to, but hey, aren’t you supposed to have a mother around at a time like this? Petra had a steady stream of women fluttering around her, but there was no indication that she wanted to be with them and there was no use in Rosemary or Birgitta trying to talk to her. So Petra cried. On Boxing Day, the screaming of Christmas had been replaced by a pitiful sniffling and moaning. It was starting to make Rosemary flat-out crazy.

She drifted off with Raymond Chandler on her belly. You couldn’t really get a decent night’s sleep in the hospital. Monitors were always beeping. Someone was always yelling for help. Half the time she wasn’t sure if she was awake or dreaming; Jack trying to explain the difference between Lenin and Trotsky; the language teacher’s sister looking for her baby under all the beds; the little frilly paper outfits her mother used to put on lamb chops for the sake of modesty. In the early hours of the morning of the third day in the life of the babies, Rosemary woke up and squinted at Petra who was not crying. There was a low murmur coming from her side of the room. Birgitta was sitting on Petra’s left, humming a lullaby. She stroked the dark hair of the sad new mother who was lying on her back with her arms outstretched, her two hands open, and gave Petra two afghan squares, one in each hand. A yellow one and a blue one like the Swedish flag.