The thought of having another baby never even crossed my parents’ minds. After surviving a severe postpartum depression, a crisis in the country, barely making ends meet, and endlessly borrowing money to feed her two daughters, my mother decided to go into business. Dad was working in the police by then and had already started drinking in earnest; he rarely spent weekends or evenings with us.
This way of life, when no one was ever home, when everyone went about their business and the children were left to their own devices, was already firmly ingrained in the life of the family. Until there was enough money in the box under mom’s shoes to go on vacation to the sea…
God, what a fairy tale it was!
After a rainy and chilly summer on a hot seashore. My sister and I had an incredible pleasure to run on the gravel, swim till blue in the face, beg for a glass of cherries or a tube of condensed milk on the beach. This holiday of life fully touched my parents, as if they were distracted from the endless survival, relaxed, rejuvenated, began to walk hand in hand.
A month after my return from the south, I found my mother in the kitchen in the middle of the night, crying. She brushed it off, but she started crying regularly, and a little later I added to this the problems with my father. The test was not deceiving – we were all waiting for a big challenge, a new addition to the family.
At my age of 10 I already had an idea how things stand about the conception of children, and (where would it come from? from a movie?) I knew that there were pregnancy tests.
I found them in my mom’s bag, in a hidden side pocket. Two bright stripes, daily scandals behind the wall, mom’s strange look and feel, grandma’s pressed lips, dad’s angry face, and endless conversations, where the same phrase of those around me: “no need to breed poverty!” was met with some frantic “I’m not going there again!” by my mother. (I did not know “where” at the time, but now I see the statistics of abortions in the 90’s, a terrible statistic).
All of this gradually came together into a big picture, it became clear that my mother was expecting a child, that no one wanted that child, that everyone around me was telling my mother to go somewhere and do something, but she flatly refused. There was a terrible feeling, a sense of trouble, hanging over our apartment, over our dining room table, where there were always caramels in a vase, over every bed, and right over me.
It was the trouble that smelled from the morning when my mother was making pancakes with her eyes puffy from crying, the trouble that poured from the tap when my sister and I were taking a bath, the trouble that lived in every pocket of my father’s police uniform.
It was so strange to understand, to guess, to feel infinitely-adult, but to see my parents, “talking”, trying to close the door tightly (and then shouting so that it seems and the neighbors behind the wall hear).
It was strange to hate my beloved grandmother, who clearly (children’s intuition is so accurate) wished us something bad, otherwise why did my mother after her arrival again closed in the bathroom and sobbing for half an hour. At one of those moments, I couldn’t stand it and told her that I knew everything, that I really wanted to support her. And I really want a brother or sister, that I would help her, like I did with Olya, that we would cope with everything together.
Can you imagine, I said “together we’ll manage”, as I remember those feelings now: boundless love, relief that we didn’t have to pretend anymore, some kind of determination.
My mother immediately stopped crying and, for the first time in a long time, she looked at me warmly and maturely, as an ally. And now, years later, I realize that my sister and I were her only friends in that situation. The children she had already given birth to…
Dad then gave her an ultimatum: “If you decide to keep the baby, the family will break up.”
He could not forgive his wife for rebelling this time, their relationship was in a state of total strife and without the pregnancy, and the short southern idyll already seemed like a dream. Daddy’s parents had stopped communicating with his daughter-in-law. Grandma and Grandpa would now pass gifts for us or call us on weekends, but Mom wouldn’t even talk to them on the phone, she’d just hand the phone over to me.
My girlfriends also twisted their fingers around their temples: “Where do you want a third one? You just got out of a psychological hole, no one does business with infants. And the arguments were ironclad, but even more ironclad was my mother’s determination to give birth. As time went by, up to 7 months she went “for the goods” in the capital, carried huge bags of baby clothes, did not give up a small, but with such a hard open business, which, on top of everything else, brought income. And then she folded up shop in the market, until better times.
I do not know what a woman usually hopes for in such situations, where she draws strength from, but I can say that my mother bore all the hardships with dignity, did not complain, and was much kinder, happier and brighter than I could remember.
Dad drank a lot, kept promising to go away but never did, they never talked to mom, and the three of us (mom, me and my sister) slept in a double bed and locked the room at night, because if dad was in a bad mood, dishes, furniture and other things started flying around. I think this was the toughest phase for our family, where everyone in the family was tested for their strength.
I tried to take full responsibility for my sister and household chores, my mother, as best she could, earned her bread and tried not to lose heart and not to despair, my father passed a difficult and painful test of responsibility, alcohol and (as it turned out years later) other women, but who am I to judge him – time itself has put everything in its place.
The whole nightmare ended one sunny day in May, when my little brother was born.
My mother woke me up in the night and whispered that an ambulance was coming for her and then she would be back with the baby, gave instructions for the next few days, kissed my sleeping little sister, packed a big bag and left. I immediately woke up Olya and we (oh, this child’s faith in God) until the morning on our knees prayed that all was well with mom and baby. Then daddy came back from his shift and, learning what had happened, started dialing a number over and over again, asking, “Has -NNN- not given birth yet?” He was completely sober that day, but for some reason he was crying…
And when he got the message from the other end: “You have a son, 3600, 50 centimeters!” he sat still and looked straight ahead for a long time.
This baby lit up our house from the very first day, he brought peace and quiet back and became the center of attraction that kept everyone together for many years, side by side, in the same harness, because, as they say, “work together, it unites. We all worked hard to raise this boy.
Guess who is now the favorite of all relatives? Who is the most wonderful, handsome, smartest and in every way a great kid (well, like a kid, 17 years old is no joke)?
The heir, the successor of the family, the hope and support of his parents. Our parents, who survived the crisis and stayed together, no matter what.
The upshot of this whole story could have been that men are assholes and weaklings, that babies should not be carried and born in such an atmosphere. That being older children under such conditions is a colossal mental blow, that our whole world is cruel if even your own people can do this to you (think of my grandparents’ position).
But I won’t talk about that, just quietly thanking the universe that we made it through and that I now have another family member.
If you were moved by this story, thank the author with a tee. Have you encountered similar situations in your life? How do you evaluate the behavior of the father of the family? And the woman herself?
