 |
|||
|
|
|||
|
Maternity Ward Memories Twenty-three years ago, my oldest son was born in Moscow, Russia, at a time when maternity wards in hospitals did not use pantiliners. They recycled the same stock of rags because medical officials considered cotton pantiliners, which were discarded after a single use, too expensive and not sanitary enough. Instead, they issued each new mother a dozen rags a day, and told her to fold and refold them a few times, so she wouldn’t need more than a dozen a day. The bloody rags were collected and sent to a laundry, boiled, bleached, sterilized, and delivered back to the wards for the next usage. The hospitals’ measures against contamination also included an iron rule: nobody allowed in, except medical staff, and no personal possessions were allowed into maternity wards. That meant no fathers, no friends – and no underwear. Imagine the new mothers, happily waddling around the ward in their shapeless hospital gowns, glowing with their new status and squeezing those rags between their legs! I was one of those happy young mothers. After my son’s birth, I spent four days in the ward, chatting with my roommates, eagerly listening to the second-timers talk about the rewards and complications of motherhood, breastfeeding my tiny son, and standing in line to the “rag-exchange den.” To avoid long lines, every room in the ward had been assigned a time slot in which to exchange their rags. “Tante Natalia” ruled with an iron fist, maintaining our schedule rigorously. When I first saw her, Natalia’s appearance shocked me. Her uncombed greasy hair stuck out from under her white medical hat. Suspicious gray deposits marred the undersides of her rugged nails. Her red, potato-shaped nose, shot with purple capillaries, hung below dull, flat eyes. Her hands didn’t look clean either, yet she distributed “sterilized” rags to all of us. The first day I went to exchange my rags, I witnessed Tante Natalia scolding a young mother, who dared to ask for an additional rag. Reveling in her power over us, Natalia prattled about thriftiness and proletarian pride. Then she demonstrated how to refold a bloody rag so it could be applied a couple more times. When she was done, she thrust the refolded rag back at the girl who fled in tears. Her roommates later told me that they shared their spare rags with her until morning when she could venture back to the den for her daily allotment. I was a good customer and never went above my quota of twelve rags per day. My flow wasn’t heavy and I had always been good at folding and refolding things, even before my pregnancy. On the third day, I napped after the midday feeding and slept through my scheduled time for the rags exchange. Although I dreaded Natalia’s displeasure, I needed clean rags desperately. I went to the den. Most doctors had already left. The nurses on duty indulged their itching tongues at the nursing station. As it was the time between baby feedings, most mothers had gathered in the common vestibule in front of the TV. Nobody stood in line to the exchange den. To my relief, the door was still open. Instead of the old harridan Natalia, a tall skinny woman in an immaculately ironed hospital dress was packing the laundry sacks with the bloody rags we usually dropped into a corner. “Good evening, ma’am,” I said. “I’m sorry. I overslept. Could I have a few clean rags now, please?” “Of course, dear,” she said quietly. She stopped her packing and turned. Her face, clear and intelligent under her white hat, didn’t resemble the nasty old shrew Natalia, who had commanded the den for the last two days. This woman looked like a couple of my parents’ friends, Moscow University professors. The only links between the two rag-exchange mistresses were the dark bags beneath their eyes. I glanced at her spider-like hands. Unlike Natalia’s, this woman’s nails were clean and neatly filed. “You don’t look like you work here,” I blurted. Smiling faintly, she gestured at the shelves full of the clean rags. “Take what you need,” she said. Obviously, she wasn’t going to count the rags like her predecessor. Delighted at the unexpected cornucopia of rags, I grabbed a huge pile, clearly more than twelve, and tossed a quick look back at her, checking her reaction. “Thank you, ma’am,” I said. She kept on smiling, her eyes crinkling at the corners, lips quivering. She watched me as if I was a beautiful piece of art instead of a young woman with a residual belly in an ugly hospital gown. A tear rolled down her sunken cheek. I fidgeted, moving closer to the door. Tomorrow, I would be gone from this place. I should’ve escaped with my booty of two dozen clean rags then, but I lingered. For some reason, I couldn’t leave her. Another tear gleamed briefly on her cheek. She didn’t seem to notice. She couldn’t drag her gaze off me. “What’s wrong, ma’am?” I asked. She shuddered as if waking up. “I shouldn’t have come to work here.” She shook her head. “I don’t deserve so much joy.” Dropping to a chair behind her counter, she began to cry. “Why?” I asked. I didn’t feel so much joy, except when the nurses distributed our babies for feeding. Mostly, we spent hours complaining to each other about postnatal cramps and breastfeeding, and gossiping about our husbands and in-laws. “I was a bad wife. My husband left me,” she whispered. “For another woman? Parasite!” I spat, clutching my cache of rags. “I’m sorry.” Slowly, I backed out of the den. I hated those old billy goats that preyed on younger women then abandoned their wives. I halted. “I’m so sorry. Why?” “During the war he was wounded. He couldn’t be a husband anymore.” Her shaking fingers dug into her tall chignon of gray hair, dislodging her starched hat. The hat fell to the floor, but she didn’t notice. “We had two sons just before the war,” her words interspersed with sobs. She kept talking without looking at me, her eyes fixed on the shelf beside my shoulder. “We had such a good life. Worked together in an architectural firm. Raised our sons together. I was unfaithful to him only once, I swear. I loved him. He was a good father and a wonderful husband. We had retired recently.” Her narration turned into a screech. “And now the old fool had to go and kill himself!” “But the war ended forty years ago,” I said. “Why did he do it now? When did he do it?” “Last month. He left a letter. Said he ruined my life because he couldn’t be a husband. Said he wanted to set me free. Cretin!” Hunched behind her counter, she clutched her face with both hands, weeping, swaying. “I couldn’t stay home alone anymore. My sons are both working. They have their families. I needed to do something.” “Couldn’t you find another place to work, not so dirty?” I nodded at the sacks of bloody rags. “You’re an architect, right?” Suddenly, she stopped crying and lifted her puffy red eyes at me. Rimmed with dark circles, they seemed enormously deep. “This is not dirty.” Fighting the tremors that wracked her thin frame, she picked up a bloody, smelly rag with both hands and shoved it under my nose. “You don’t know the meaning of dirty, silly girl. My husband’s blood from his slit wrists was dirty. This is the cleanest blood on Earth, the blood of joy.” Her spindly hands spasmed as she seized the rag in her fists. Her face contorted with pain – “So much joy!” I flinched from both the sour stench of the rag and her agony. “Of course,” I mumbled, shuffling out the door with my hoard of rags. “I’m sorry.” Awkwardly, like a sprinting duck, I waddled away as fast as I could without dropping the rag between my thighs. There was nothing I could say or do to make her feel better. Besides, it was feeding time. Soon the nurses would cart the babies out of their glassed-off ward. I had to wash my breasts and prepare to meet my hungry son. I had to smile. The next morning, my son and I were dismissed from the hospital. I never saw that woman again, but even now, 23 years later, I still remember her and her words to me, “The cleanest blood on Earth, the blood of joy.” I didn’t understand her then, but I do now. Olga Livshin is a mother of two and a reporter for the local Vancouver newspaper, The Source. She immigrated to Canada from Russia in 1994. Her son is 23 years old and unaware of the existence of momwriterslitmag.com. Her daughter is 17 and unaware of anyone's existence but her own. Olga also writes fantasy novels and short stories. She thinks being a mom is her best fantasy epic.
|
|||
|
