(Part 1)

I looked around at the chaos. Our fight had sent our plates onto the floor.  I looked down at my negligee. The pink silk shift we’d bought in Atlantic City was ruined by the blood dripping from my face.  I slowly stood and wobbled into the tiny bathroom. I couldn’t bring myself to meet my own gaze in the mirror as I cleaned myself up. The light in here was as unforgiving as the one in the kitchen.  I looked at my arms, I saw the deep bruises from his fingers, layered over the old bruises.

He hadn’t meant it. He hadn’t meant any of it.  It was just flashbacks, some shell shock from Belgium. This night hadn’t been the first episode, but it had been the longest and deepest to date. Peter was convinced I was a spy. I looked the part, I guess. He often made reference to his commanding officer and to some information I was supposed to be hiding. Sometimes he believed I had information… but it’s better to chalk it up to his terrors and forgive him. It wasn’t as though he had them often.  I could handle him at his worst, I thought, I’d proven that. My love would heal him. It would just take…time.

I really remember that night because it was the night before I realized we’d put one and one together and made three.  I’d been feeling queasy for the past several weeks, the stress from that night didn’t help matters.

The next eight months of 1922 flew by without incident.  As soon as he found out he was going to be a father, Peter had been absolutely elated.  The good times were back in full force. In October, he stood next to my bed, daring the doctor to throw him out, and he swore over and over he’d make an honest woman of me.  That we’d get married as soon as we got off the maternity ward. I was smiling and groaning and squeezing Peter’s hand as I pushed. “I see the head!” the doctor crowed.

One more push brought immediate relief.  Peter couldn’t even stop his own tears. “I’m so proud of you,” he said, kissing my forehead.  “Doc! What is it? A boy?”

The doctor didn’t say anything. A nurse came to his side and quickly scooped up the baby, another nurse standing nearby, ready with fresh warm towel.  There was a dreadful silence hanging in the air. The two nurses worked furiously for a few minutes. I couldn’t see what they were doing. “Where’s—”

“Miss Wanderwell, your child is deceased,” one of the nurses said brusquely, laying heavy emphasis on my title. “God rest his little soul.”

The next thing I knew I was being roughly cleaned up by the pair of nurses.  Believing me still unconscious, they traded snide remarks about the, um, value of my character, the mercy it was the child had died instead of being raised by parents like that, and how the father couldn’t even be bothered to stay as his child’s mother languished, had it not been for the valiant efforts of the doctor on call….

I tried to sit up but was pushed back none too gently against the mattress.  “We aren’t finished. Please try to be still.”

“Where is my—”

“Your son is deceased,” came her stern tone again.

“Stop telling me that!” I tried to shout, but my throat was so dry it came out as weak rasping.  The kinder nurse brought me a glass of water. As soon as I drank it, I said, “I want his body and a priest here now!”

The nurses exchanged looks. “You want—”

“I want my son,” I said, “and I want a priest.”

To my very great surprise, the kinder nurse wheeled a small table close to my bed.  On it was a tiny, bluish figure partially wrapped in a bloody towel. I picked up my son, holding him carefully in my arms.  He wasn’t heavy, and he was cold to the touch, tiny hands balled up into fists that would never cling to mine, perfect tiny eyes with beautiful long eyelashes like his father’s that would never look into mine.  “Please fetch me a priest,” I said again. “I beg you.”

The nurses left.  I sat cradling my little boy.  “I’d have called you Oliver,” I said.  “I wish you’d decided to stay.” I sang him a lullaby, the only one I’d ever get to sing to him, desperate to fill a lifetime in the few moments we had left together. “Here’s the Japanese Sandman sneaking on with the dew / Just an old second-hand man, he’ll buy your old day from you.  / He will take every sorrow of the day that is through / And he’ll bring you tomorrow, just to start life anew.”

The priest arrived and I told him my story.  He told me he couldn’t baptise Oliver because baptism is for the living.  But he said he could bless us both and that we should give Oliver his name so that St. Peter would know how to announce him at the throne of the Almighty.  As Father read from his book, I held Oliver. I made the sign of the cross over his forehead, just as I would have done if he’d have been baptised.

The priest spoke with the nursing staff for me, and they gave me a certificate of cremation.  I wasn’t ready to say goodbye, but Father stood patiently as I kissed my little boy and handed his tiny body over to him. He looked me in the eyes like no one had yet done and said two words I still carry with me: “Courage, daughter.”

Those were the last kind words anyone said to me.

General