The Abbess Of The Abyss

The abbess of the abyss walks the path between wisdom and intelligence. She has trod many routes, roads have risen before her, occasionally ignorance has led her down blind alleys ...

It looked different in the morning, in as much as there was light, people were awake and the blood in my bed had dried into stiff ribbons. My baby was still there, pink and snuffling, in her clear, plastic fishtank. Flowers arrived. The lilies spilled onto the bedside table, their orange pollen leaving a scattering of dusty. Sunshine flooded the ward, through large windows, and coated me in a thin, filmic sheen.

I fed her (my breasts hurt). I spent time in the smoking room (my addiction had not been cured by pregnancy). I thought of her father (and his hand-drawn representation of Matisse's blue woman). I was vaguely aware that I drifted, along with the poisonous plumes puffed from the cigarettes. I stood outside of time and inside of passage. Things (a baby, an afterbirth, milk) left my body. Other things punctured me (realisation, responsibility, loneliness).

People came and people went. Paulette and Tommy. Mother and father. His mother and father. Not him. He was somewhere else.

I took the baby home and fiddled to get her into a nappy. The square of material was too large for her tiny bottom. I did not want to wedge her legs open. Her babygrow seemed overly big. When she cried her whole face joined in with her mouth. Her fists became little balls of annoyance. Limbs, legs and arms, flexed back and forth, demanding attention. My breasts filled with milk, until they almost burst. On the outside they felt like rocks, slightly lumpy, solid, very hot. My nipples protruded, attempting to escape from the pressure building up behind them. The pain was excruciating. When she put her mouth on me it burned.

I picked her up. I put her down. I washed her eyes with cotton wool. I changed her. I stroked the top of her head. I cleaned in between her toes. I nibbled her too long nail. I could not imagine introducing stainless steel to one so young, blades, no.

On the fifth day she was ready to meet her maker. I dressed her in the white, velvet suit he had bought her before he went to prison. The hood flopped about around her face. Her eyes were still shut most of the time. When she opened them they were little beads of very dark blue.

In the visiting room of the prison I passed her across to him. He looked down at the bundle in his arms. “She's very small.” I felt insulted. I wanted him to say “She's very beautiful”. Her head rested in the crook of his elbow. She was asleep. “And how are you?” he asked.
“I'm fine, yes, fine, a bit tired.”
“You look well.” What do you say to the woman who has just had your baby while you were locked up in a cell? The conversation was stilted. I suspected that he had nowhere to go with his emotion, so he kept it inside.
“I got the hospital to phone you as soon as she was born,” I offered.
“Yes, I know.”
“What happened?”
“I was in bed. The wing had been locked down for the night. A screw came and hammered on my door and then shouted 'it's a girl, 7lb 14oz, mother and baby both doing well.”
I wanted to ask him how he felt, receiving the news of his first born through a metal door.
“And then all the men started up, banging metal against metal, you know, mugs and plates against bed frames and windows. They made a right racket.”
And so my daughter had been welcomed into this world, of prisons and convicts, with an orchestra of domestic percussion. Jesus had bells. She had tin plates.

She began to cry. Matt looked shocked. Some of the other prisoners turned around. I suppose it was not unusual, for life to continue on the outside. He was not the first man to miss the birth of his child due to incarceration. I went to lift up my top and put her to my breast. “Not here,” he hissed.
“But she's hungry.”
“Do you have any idea how long some of these men have been inside?”
“No.”
“Or what for?”
“No.”
“Look, you getting your tits out is not a good idea.”

I took the baby from him and tried to jiggle her to sleep, but her little belly could not help making the shrill noises come out of her mouth. “I think I'm going to have to go and feed her.” He was disappointed. We only had an hour together and I had to leave. “Bring a bottle next time,” he said.
“But she's breast fed.”
“Not in here she isn't.” He was annoyed because he was upset. I could see from the way his mouth worked and his eyes looked.
“OK, next time I'll bring a bottle and you can feed her,” I said, “I'm sorry, I didn't think of it.”
He smiled a thin, tight smile, one of those that you have to try and force onto your face. “Don't worry about it.”
But I did. I felt my eyes beginning to mist over. I returned his thin, tight smile before scurrying from the visitors room. A female screw stopped me on the way out. Peeling down the blanket from the grunting child's face she said “Aw, she's beautiful”.

We rattled along nicely, me and the baby. I spent my days attending to her needs. She was fairly portable, and I had a car, so we went out and about, saw friends, spent time in the park, got to the supermarket, etc, etc. Unfortunately, once the initial euphoria had worn off, I began to feel pressurised. It was not unusual for her to wake three or four times in the night. I would feed her and put her back in her cot. She reacted angrily. I winded her. She burped. I tried to lie her down again. She screamed at me. I left her, closing the door carefully behind me. I sat on the landing listening to her. She did not stop. I went back in. She was all red and rumpled, her fists flying. I fed her again. I burped her again. I put her down again. She screamed again.

This went on for a few weeks. During the day I felt ragged. Exhaustion was beginning to take over. If I got in the bath, she screamed. If I tried to make something to eat, she screamed. All the time, this noise of her crying for me. I knew she wanted me. I was her mother. It was my job to meet her wants and provide something to satisfy her.

Some days she was crawled about inside me, as if there was not enough space left in my head for me to exist. I could not string a sentence together. Thoughts would wander off all over the place. Jobs got left undone, because I was constantly interrupted in the middle of them. Eventually, my time ended up being broken down into small lumps, like crumbs in the bottom of the biscuit tin. I started to hallucinate, mainly black shapes and shadows out of the corner of my eye.

It was worse at night. I so desperately wanted to sleep. I would get into our bed and snuggle against the pillows, imagining Matt's arm wrapped round me, laid slack against the dip of my waist. Listening, always listening, to see if she was sleeping or stirring. Once I had convinced myself that I might get a few minutes shut eye she would start up. It was not her fault. She could not help being hungry and frightened in a room on her own. I would drag myself out of bed to see to her needs. It did not occur to me to bring her into bed with me. The nurses and mother had advised against this, in any event, suggesting I should instead wrap her tightly in a blanket to give her a sense of security.

One night, looking down at her miserable, red face and her fists that had fought free of the swaddling, I realised I wanted to hurt her. I picked her up under the arms and held her away from me. She screamed right into my face. Her whole body dangled from my grip. She was floppy and stiff all at the same time. I hated her. Her gummy little mouth, twisted and raging. Her saggy nappy bum. The folds under her chin where grime collected. I felt cold all over. I knew something was wrong. I should not hate my own baby. I should love my baby. My baby should make me smile and feel happy. How could I feel happy at 3.00am?

I put her down gently and went into the lounge. The red phone on top of the speaker suggested to me that I might like to talk to someone. I picked up the receiver and dialled my parents' number automatically. Mother answered. “Hello?”
“It's me,” I said.
“What's the matter?”
“I'm angry with the baby.”
“Where is the baby?”
“In her cot.”
“Have you hurt her.”
“No, but I wanted to.”
“What did you do?”
“I just put her down again. She was crying. I picked her up and put her down again.”
“Did you feed her?”
“No.”
“When did you last feed her?”
“About an hour ago.”
“She'll be fine.”
“What about me?”
“Have a cup of tea and a cigarette.”

I wanted mother to hug me, to come over and fix the problem. I knew, deep down, that mother would not do that. I knew in the same way that you know when you have a headache coming, or that you are going to be late. The baby was screaming a storm. I wandered into the kitchen and put on the kettle. Tea was not going to resolve this situation, but in the five minutes it took to make it and start drinking it, I felt calmer. I had not hurt my baby, even though I had wanted to. I had walked away and shut the door. 'Sometimes you have to do that,' I thought to myself. It does not make the problem go away, but it keeps it in the one room, contains it.

And so it went on. Every week I took the baby to see Matt. He cuddled her and fed her. He kissed me. I watched him talking, in his blue and white striped prison shirt. His head and face were shaved. He was doing a course. He got on well with the other guys on the wing. Occasionally something would happen, but nothing major.

I went to college on Monday's to get a secretarial qualification. Mother looked after the baby from 8.00am to 9.00pm. I liked being without her. It felt like my arms were my own. I did not miss her, when I was in the canteen, eating without being interrupted by her crying, or when I sat in the classrooms, learning to touch type, my fingers concentrating without having to hold or juggle something else. I was surrounded by girls, and we chattered and laughed and talked about clothes. They went home, to a dinner cooked for them by someone else, and then they went out, with their friends or boyfriends. I went home and tidied up, struggled to pay the bills and visited my husband in prison. My life was like a branch of a tree that had been split off by lightening in a violent thunderstorm. I was lying on the ground, they were reaching up with their eager leaves towards the sun.

And then I fucked someone else, almost by accident. I did not mean to do it, it just happened. I want to forget about it, in the same way that I want to forget about the man who put his penis through my open car window and masturbated into my face when I was 17. I cannot forget about it though, because Matt cannot forget about it. While it was being done to me I was doing it to him. A daisy chain of black spiders. I do not like spiders. I wish I could forget about it, and that he could forget about it.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We cannot see backwards until what is in front of our faces is behind us. The abbess of the abyss walks wisely. In the dark crack, where is it claustrophobic, lies knowledge. If I can fold this between the pages of a book maybe my wish will come true.

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