Читать книгу Invisible Earthquake - Malika Ndlovu - Страница 10

11th January, 12h45

I am paralysed, yet I want to surrender. I'm surprised at how hours pass, days, now one week. I want to hold on, hold back, slow down for fear of further distance from you, from the sensitivity of my still-leaking breasts, from the flow of blood that still connects us so intimately. I don't want time to take these sensations of you away from me. I also want time to ease the sharp pain of memory that these bring so instantly.

Any moment could be the point of bursting, of breaking down at the sadness of our story, the cruel if-onlys and what-ifs. Baby items fall across my path unexpectedly and I must pack them away, not for two months till your due date, but for an indefinite period now.

I so much wanted to touch you. Now I nuzzle your brother a little deeper, a little longer than usual, imagining your satin-soft skin against my lips. I was afraid I might touch you too much, you – so fragile and pure, afraid too, of what holding you too long would do to me when the time for letting go came. So I tenderly stroked you with my fingertips and my breath. I wrapped you in a cloth that I knew I would bury too, my fiery yellow sarong. In the few hours we shared alone in that delivery room, I held you until my arms ached before putting you in the crib beside my bed, using a thin scarf to shade you from the glare of hospital lights and prying eyes of hospital staff checking in on me. I tried to maintain some kind of cocoon, the way mothers swaddle their newborns.

The days pass with or without my consent. I visit your grave for the second time, on the seventh day since your birth – one of the many, many cycles that call to be completed. Since that turning point announcement of “no foetal heartbeat” initiated me into that enormous clan who know the death of a beloved.

I am shaped by your absence, haunted by the detail of you.