Baby Class

Irene Cantizano Bescós | Issue 2.9

The rain keeps beating on the window, and the baby is crying, and she holds him, feeds him, rocks him, looks at her phone, hums a lullaby, feeds him, rocks him again, and her cheeks are wet, and now she realizes it's dark and she hasn't turned on the lights, and she doesn't know how many hours have gone by. She can't go on like this. She goes outside.

The cold London air, the grayness of the sky, everything scares her, so she pushes the pram and hurries her steps like she’s escaping until she’s back in the flat again with the baby on her breast, and the hours grow long scrolling through a thousand perfect smiles, a thousand perfect lives, so she doesn’t think, so the fear doesn’t creep in. Everything feels wrong; everything is foreign. She holds on to the baby and cries.

And then her husband comes home and takes the baby, and the baby cries, so she takes him again, and nothing seems real. And when he asks what she has done all day, honestly, she has no idea. We could get a nanny, he says, but she can’t bear anyone else holding her baby, she can’t bear being apart, and she can’t bear not being able to shower again. She feels like she’s going to throw up.

—

Feeling bad about yourself — or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?

Her pen hovers over the form, and she can feel the therapist’s gaze, growing impatient. She will play along.

The therapist looks over her forms and nods gravely. “Tell me what’s been happening,” she says with a well-practiced empathetic smile.

“I’ve just been feeling a bit anxious.”

“And why did you decide to seek help?”

Because everyone is concerned about her mental health, and she tries to explain to them, but they say, “Oh, I know it’s hard, but they are only little for a little while,” and “you will miss the baby cuddles,” and “these should be the happiest days of your life.” And meanwhile, she’s drowning, and they don’t understand, because they didn’t rip open, her whole body a gaping wound, and the blood and the tears and the milk are not theirs.

“My husband thought it would be a good idea.”

“I think what you’re telling me is that you’re feeling a bit lonely. You’re still adapting to a foreign country, and you just had a baby. Your feelings are very normal. Have you thought about joining a baby class?”

So she goes to the damn baby classes and really tries to make friends, to talk about the missed sleep, the naps, the awake windows, the leaps. She’s just parroting, just trying to be normal, one of the mums. Still, they can see through her, and every time she asks, “Sorry, can you repeat?” she feels more stupid, and somehow she is not invited for a coffee and ends up once again in her apartment, and the baby is crying and crying, and it’s raining again.

—

Monday, and although she has nowhere to go, she puts on her coat, puts the baby in the pram and leaves, because what else is left to do? She can’t stand the idea of being told off again by the therapist for not getting out of the house, like a naughty little girl who hasn’t done her homework, although it is zero fucking degrees outside, and still it rains every damn day.

She wanders aimlessly. The office buildings, the bus stop, the trash, the patch of grass, the Tesco Express, the greasy spoon, the streets, the bitter cold, and all the people in and out without ever looking up.  There’s also a tiny church, and for the first time, she goes in and looks at the community board. Mum & Baby fitness club, tai chi, yoga, a choir, French group, more baby classes and . . . wait, a new baby class. “Feel like you don’t fit in?” the flyer says. It’s here. Today.

“Come on in, love, join us.” She jumps, startled. There’s an old lady behind her, beckoning her. Smiling eyes, shabby jumper. Sod it. She shrugs and follows her to the basement.

And now she is there, downstairs, in the impossibly sunlit room. It smells like a forest, like the earth after the rain, and she wonders if she’s finally psychotic because she can hear the sound of rustling leaves and smell the sweetness of the bluebells. But it is a baby class and there are scattered toys across the floor and mothers and fathers and babies, and the babies, oh, the babies are flying.

“Fancy a cuppa? You can call me Mahte,” says the woman, who no longer looks that old.

The babies giggle and glide down to their parents’ laps to be cuddled and fed and then take flight again.

“How?” she whispers.

“All babies can fly, love, we just have to let them.”

Her own baby is looking at the others mesmerized. He points and babbles and tries to stand up.

“You see? He’ll be flying in no time,” Mahte says.

“Who are you?” 

“A friend. All of us here come from different places. Old places, forgotten places, places that don’t yet exist. Or sometimes, the house down the road. We all found ourselves lost and alone and didn’t know what to do with our babies. It’s hard to be a stranger. Here’s your tea. We also have biscuits.”

Her baby crawls to the toys and starts munching on a glowing ball with a swirling galaxy inside, and somehow it’s all right; she hugs her baby, breathes in his smell, and feels herself relaxing for the first time in months.

Around her, the familiar conversations take place, “How old is he?” “Is he crawling yet?” “Are you getting any sleep?” But also, “Did you dream of the dark sea?” “How do you catch a constellation?” And “What did his bones tell you?”

So she drinks the tea, she eats the biscuits, and there’s a warmth in her belly and she doesn’t say much but lets herself be lulled by the sound of their voices, and lets her baby chase the flying babies, and she will have to ask what’s in this tea because she has never tasted anything this good before.

The next day, she is sure the class will no longer be there, and she considers going to A&E for postpartum psychosis. But the baby has slept through the night for the first time ever, and instead of dread, she feels joy when she wakes up.

Her husband smiles. She won't tell him about the class; this is between the baby and her.

She goes back to the church and the class is still there and they sing strange songs, and her voice joins in and soars and becomes strong, and the music fills her lungs.

Today, her baby is flying.

The weeks go by and there are twigs in her hair and silver coins in her pockets, and she’s growing wild, and her husband's body feels so good again, and she sings lullabies in strange languages and forgets the words for simple things.

She gets to love the other babies, knows them by their giggles, and every day when she leaves the church the trees are ablaze with meaning and all she can think of is going back tomorrow because nowhere else does she feel this safe and it is like falling in love, like coming home, like looking herself in the mirror and finally recognizing her reflection.

The third day? Week? Month? She sees the door in the middle of the room and how didn’t she notice it before? The room opens to a forest, although the church is in the middle of the city. And beyond the forest? She can’t tell.

She walks to the door and breathes in: deep, damp, musky earth, and she holds her baby tight against her chest, for she suddenly knows that if they cross the threshold they will never return.

“You can take that step. The world you knew as a child and forgot how to see. You’re starting to remember. You could come back. Come home.” Mahte is behind her again; she tends to appear like that.

“You belong with us. Otherwise, you would never have met us. You were lost and now you are found. You will never have this chance again. The door won’t open, not in your lifetime or his.” She points to her flying baby. “Your half-remembered dreams could be his life. He will never have to grow up and forget.”

“Maya.” Mathe calls her name for the first time. “Come with us, let the hunger take hold of your heart. Let it grow, let it consume you.”

There are fires behind her pupils and her eyes are sharp and inhuman. She no longer looks like an old lady. She doesn’t look like a lady at all.

All the memories rush back, not of the other country, but of everything she left behind, of all the versions of herself she gave up on. And she knows this is her last time, and if she walks away now she will forget and her life will be a continuous letting go.

She looks at her baby. All her love, her terrible love, stronger than her hunger, stronger than desire, stronger than herself. Because already she can see that this baby, made from her blood and her yearning, this baby she grew, he will not be like her. He will grow up and never be afraid, and the world will never feel foreign to him. He will never be a stranger. He will always feel at home. And she owes him that.

She will not cross the door.

—

The baby never flew again. He is at nursery, and she is going back to herself. She has a job now, and weekend plans, and people she can call friends. The madness, the desperate love, are fading away. The pills keep the terror at bay. And she is happy, as happy as she could ever be. But every morning after the full moon, while everyone still sleeps, she goes down to the Thames. The mist is rising over the river and her eyes water. As she breathes in the cold air, her feet lift off the ground. She soars. 

—

Irene Cantizano Bescós is a Spanish writer and immigrant living in the UK. Irene’s work has been featured in Black Hare Press, Tales to Terrify, Moria, Literary Mama, Five Minutes, (mac)ro(mic), Azahares, Amethyst Review, and boats against the current, among others.