Widow: An Excerpt

“I’ve always been bad with a drink. It got worse when my daughter, at twenty-three weeks—long past when it’s supposed to happen if it’s going to—fell out of me onto the grass. I went for a walk that day. I was happy. Galel had finally agreed to the name I picked out. He wouldn’t have if he knew from where it came.” I laugh. “The pain came like...a bowling ball dropped on my foot. I thought it was a charley horse. It travelled up to my midsection and, next I remember...nothing. Nothing. Just air. It was passing by my face in pure darkness. I could hear everything, but I saw nothing, could feel nothing. I knew I wasn’t on the ground anymore. I thought maybe I’d died and made it as far as purgatory and stopped. Then I heard someone tell me I had my baby. She was so formed they thought I went into labour, which I had, but only because she was so large my body had to contract to spit her out. Dead.” I’ve gone into a cold sweat. My palms are wet. “An ambulance didn’t come. The people said I told them to call my husband, that I would sue if someone called the hospital. I knew something was wrong. I knew it so strong, so well. We took the baby home in a woman’s jumper. I was a mule against going to the doctor the same day. I wanted to be sure she wouldn’t cry before the doctors tried to—” My breathing is laboured. I won’t let Samuel touch me. “I want her to know that I remember what she felt like, smelt like. But she was only flesh. No colour to her cheeks, no life in her fingers or toes. She wasn’t alive. She’d been gone for days, maybe more, Doctor Putnam said. She was pronounced at 8:22pm. One year and one day after my wedding anniversary.”