A Mother's Goodbye

Kevin runs a hand through his already-messed hair and lets out a sound I don’t like. It’s part groan, part sigh, and it sounds like despair. ‘We can’t have another kid, Heather,’ he says in a low voice. He won’t look at me, his stubbly chin tucked toward his chest. ‘Things are tight enough as it is.’

He thinks I don’t know that? That I don’t realize we’re two months behind on the rent, and we have all of two hundred bucks in the bank account? We’re one teetering step away from destitution, and have been for so long that I’ve almost got used to living on that knife-edge. But you can only keep your balance for so long.

It wasn’t always like this. When Kevin worked our lives were completely different then. I try to remember the people we used to be. I try to hang on to the woman I was, because sometimes I don’t recognize this person I’ve become; this tired, stringy-haired, stressed-out woman who screeches and shrieks and bites her nails, whose pregnancy is a looming disaster rather than the joy I wish it could be.

Back then, before his accident, Kevin smiled and laughed and tossed the girls up in the air. He kissed me in the kitchen, and we walked around the block on a summer evening, the girls on their rusty trikes in front of us. Small, simple pleasures, but that’s what happiness is, isn’t it?

We had money – not a lot, we’ve never had that, but enough for birthday presents and take-out on Fridays and the occasional splurge – a trip to a theme park, a dinner out. I didn’t hold my breath when I paid for the groceries, or wince when I checked the bank balance on the ATM, at least not often. Life didn’t feel like a minefield, and now I’ve just stepped on one, everything exploding around us.

I can’t have this baby.

I can’t have an abortion, either. That might seem obvious to some, and sometimes it does to me, but I’ve felt my babies kick, I’ve seen them curled up tight or wriggling like crazy on the ultrasound screen. What makes this one so different? Just a little bit of money, or even a lot? Besides, we’re Catholic. Not so much with the church going, not every Sunday, but still… It’s the way I grew up; it’s what I know.

And then of course there are other people to think about: Kev, my family, my neighbors, my friends. What if someone found out? What if I was seen? The gossip would never stop, along with the pity and judgment. I don’t know which would feel worse.

This part of North Elizabeth, New Jersey, is like a small town where everybody knows everybody else’s business. We gossip on our cracked front steps and out on the sagging back porches. Kids whisper in the schoolyard. Women lean across grocery carts. Men talk in bars. Someone would know. Someone would figure it out, and then what?

But am I tempted? Yes. I’ve looked up the number of the local Planned Parenthood clinic and sat there with the phone in my hand while Lucy played around me, chattering to herself, with no idea what was going on in Mommy’s mind. I’ve told myself to call. No one would need to know, no one would find out, and it would solve everything.

‘So what are you going to do?’ Kevin asks, and I blink, stung by the ‘you’. We’ve been married for eleven years, we have three kids, he’s the only man I’ve ever kissed or done anything with, but it’s my problem. Of course it is.

‘What do you mean, what am I going to do?’ I ask, and for once I let him hear my irritation. I’m always so careful with Kevin, but right now I don’t have it in me. ‘What are you saying, Kev?’ I ask, and I know I’m daring him to say what he means, even as I realize he won’t.

He’s a good man, Kev. Underneath the pain and the bitterness, that good man is still there. He’s still the one who stammered when he asked me out, who asked if he could kiss me that first time, and then bumped my nose with his. We both laughed, and it was okay. It’s always been okay, until the accident. Until a fall from a forklift turned Kev into a man I don’t feel I know and sometimes I don’t even like.

Kev stares me in the face for a full minute. I hadn’t realized how faded his eyes have become. They used to be such a warm hazel, glinting with gold, but now they just look muddy. He’s thirty years old and he looks more than forty, but then so do I. Three babies, no sleep, no money. It adds up – and then it takes away.

‘My workman’s comp ends in six weeks,’ Kev says, and for a few seconds I just stare back at him.

‘You mean you have the hearing.’ That’s what the lawyer called about this morning. Three years of disability payments and then it comes up for review. But Kev will keep getting it – he was injured on the job, something went wrong with the controls of his forklift and he ended up flat on his back on the concrete floor, a fall from fifteen feet.

I got a call at home, someone from work, and then the union, telling me the company would cover the hospital costs; that the company owed us. I could barely take it in; my mind was buzzing and blank, and everything in me felt gray and numb. I didn’t know if Kev had hurt his brain along with his back, if our lives were changed forever. And it turned out they were.

He was in the hospital for three weeks and nearly three years later he’s still on heavy meds. He can’t lift anything more than ten pounds. He certainly can’t go back to his old job. Of course he’ll get the disability payments renewed.

But Kevin is shaking his head. He won’t look

at me. He picks at a threadbare patch on the chair with a ragged fingernail. ‘The lawyer said today that they won’t renew it. They’re saying I’ve had maximum medical improvement’ – he sneers at the words – ‘and that I can resume light duty, the dicks.’

I stare at him, hardly able to take it in. ‘So you mean there will be no more money…?’

‘The lawyer says I can get permanent partial disability, but it won’t be much. And the company doesn’t have any light duty for me. What a fucking surprise.’ He sounds so bitter, and I can’t blame him. But we have to have more money coming in, baby or not. We can’t survive otherwise. We’ll lose the house, we won’t be able to eat, never mind another baby.

I swallow hard, blinking back the dizziness. ‘But can’t you appeal…?’

‘The lawyer says it’s not worth it. This is the best I’m going to get.’

The lawyer, the lawyer… I don’t even know his name. Someone the union sent, someone with a loud voice, shiny shoes, buttons straining against his belly, a smell of sweat. I never liked him. I didn’t trust him. I don’t think he once looked me in the eye.

‘So there’s nothing we can do?’ My voice is a squeak. Even after all the crap we’ve had thrown at us, I can’t believe it. I make two hundred and twenty dollars a week maximum, and doing that many nights just about kills me. Our rent is eight hundred, never mind all the other expenses.

I didn’t think we could sink much lower, but now I see a whole new pit opening underneath us. Losing the house. Going on welfare. Food stamps, public housing, the government paying our way, just barely. You never get out of that pit. You get lost in it, lost and forgotten and ashamed.

And I know it would just about kill Kev, to admit that much failure. Kev always has been proud how we’ve made it on our own. When we were first starting out, we didn’t accept a single handout from my parents, not that they had much to give, and even less now. His parents didn’t have anything – his father’s a drunk, his mother just as bad. Kev doesn’t even want the girls seeing them.

‘That’s it,’ Kev says dully, and he reaches for the little orange canister that holds his nightly medication and pops the lid. ‘Not much more I can do.’

‘And this baby?’ I ask in little more than a whisper. I feel sick inside, like that pit that just opened up beneath us is really inside of me. Everything is sinking into it until there’s nothing left but fear and despair. ‘What are we going to do, Kev? How are we going to manage?’