Beautiful Nursery, Quiet and Clean

“You have to let go, my Love— we have to accept that she’s dead and try to keep living without her.” Michael’s voice was calm, but his words were like acid on an open wound. Esty slammed her chair back from the kitchen table, spilling her glass of wine into her husband's food by accident, and stormed away from dinner. Michael sat motionless, staring at his slowly flooding plate. He only moved when he involuntarily jumped at Esty slamming a door, and then closed his eyes and rhythmically adjusted his yarmulke, a nervous habit he couldn’t break.

There was so much to do before Baby arrived! Esty giggled as she arranged handmade stuffed animals in the crib that her Zayde had made for them. Women in her community had come over to her apartment to make these little stuffies, an idea Esty’s sister had. It was nice in theory… but in practice, no one actually knew how to crochet little bears and elephants, and the results were hilariously misshapen. Esty loved them even more for their lumps and misaligned features. Her baby would too. She would be surrounded by funny animal friends, handcrafted for her with love by a community that she would grow up an essential part of. Esty absentmindedly began humming a tune she remembered from her childhood, and imagined rocking her baby to sleep as she sang it. The nights would be long, and she would sleep very little, but these small inconveniences would be completely overshadowed by the joy that would burst in her chest every time she looked at her baby girl. She couldn’t wait.

Lawyers were already fighting over settlements before Esty found out that her subway car had malfunctioned and crashed. She had awakened in the ER with IVs up her arms, a thick bandage compressing her head, and a cup of room-temperature tea slowly evaporating from a plastic mug on her bedside table. The monitors that tracked her functioning beeped and hummed, and Esty idly wondered why the curtains were closed when the clock clearly reported that it was midday. Only secondarily did she wonder why she was in an emergency suite at all.

After several minutes of trying to put the story together with her broken memory, Michael finally came into the room— he nearly dropped his styrofoam coffee cup when he saw that she was awake— and hurried to wrap her in his arms. Esty hugged him back, but quickly had questions. Why was she here? What was going on? What had happened? Michael stammered through the short of it: subway malfunction, fiery crash, few survivors. He seemed to have covered it all, until he subconsciously glanced at Esty’s swollen stomach, and something between fear and grief crashed across his eyes.

Esty glanced down, and didn’t need to investigate further to suddenly know that there was no one growing inside her anymore. A moment passed; machines continued their beeping and humming. Someone in an adjacent room coughed. The colors of the room faded to echoes of their original hues, and darkness closed in on Esty’s vision. As the world around them continued turning, Michael and Esther together wept.

Sunlight streamed through yellow muslin curtains, and Esty hummed as she swayed on the soft carpet. She traced her fingers over the delicate daisies she had embroidered on the miniature bedsheets, intricately woven shades of yellows and creams and greens. She glanced up, and gently adjusted the stuffed baby ducks hanging from a mobile above the crib— they must have fallen down again earlier in the day. There was still so much to do… but the work was beautiful and filled her with joy. They had waited so long for this baby, and she was going to make sure everything was perfect. Esty walked over to the large cardboard box containing the books she had picked out with her Bubbe. She lifted one out and softly turned the pages, imagining reading the words out loud to her child: “I’ll love you forever// I’ll like you for always// As long as I’m living // My baby you’ll be.” Esty smiled and placed the small blue volume on a shelf. She looked at the box, filled to the brim with books hastily thrown in, then glanced over at the nearly empty bookshelf. Time to arrange a rainbow of stories.

The living room was full with friends, cousins, aunties, and children, and yet Esty was miserably alone. Why were they here? Why did they think that sitting on her couch and using her kitchen and ruining her peaceful silence with their loud gossip would bring her baby back? The ladies’ heels clacked on her clean wooden floor, making more work for her later, and sending grating noise into her ears.

Michael had arranged this— had called every woman in the community to come over and make her Forget. Well, she refused. She refused to let the memory of her child die alongside her tiny body in the rubble approaching Bedford Av. She was somewhere down there, decomposing in a pile of trash just as ugly and gray as the underground air she couldn’t breathe. Someone shoved a plate with bland knish and babka into her hands, and guided Esty to her own armchair.

“Here, have a rest,” her auntie Aliza said, as though she were doing Esty a favor. Esty looked up at her, and felt a sudden wave of nausea. She stood up quickly and her vision fuzzed. She mumbled something about needing the restroom, and slowly felt her way to the bright yellow door in the back hall. She slipped in, closed her eyes, and sank to the soft carpet.

While most women in her community had many siblings, Esty herself was an only child. In giving Esty life, her mother had given up her own, and her father had never remarried. For some time, Esty had felt lonely and deprived of the sibling experience compared to all of her friends, however, the community of which she was a part was structured so that no one had to be alone.

Esty didn’t have a living mother, but she had aunts and cousins and Bubbes and friends— she never felt as though she lacked female support. Sometimes it was too much… secrets were nearly impossible to keep in her community. But overall— and especially now as she prepared for her baby— it was such a blessing to have this built-in support system. She and Michael hadn’t told anyone, but they had already picked a name for their baby girl. It had been chosen by listing out all of the women who had been formative in Esty’s life, and then trying out those names with their own surname. She was so excited to give birth and then hand the baby over to her auntie Aliza as Michael told her that the baby shared her name. It was going to be so beautiful.

It had been months since the miscarriage, and Michael still had no idea what to do for his wife. His Mame had told him to get busy making another child to distract Esty from her grief; Michael had quietly told her to get out of his house. That had been weeks ago, and Michael had privately begun wondering if maybe his mother had been right with her inappropriate suggestion. But Esty wouldn’t let him anywhere near her, and he wasn’t sure he would be able to perform anyway, with how depressed his wife’s grief had made him. He would just have to be patient and keep trying to help her move on.

How could he reach her when her mind was somewhere else entirely, somewhere inaccurate and harmful? This seemed almost further than grief: delusion or insanity, a madness brought on by the worst pain Esther had ever experienced. She barely spoke anymore, hiding herself away in the room no one else was allowed to enter. When he complained about the situation to the Rabbi, he had been told sternly that this was Esty’s first time being pregnant, and that he ought to have more compassion and understanding. Michael had wanted to snap back that it was his first time losing a baby too, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate. So he had kept his mouth shut, and had tried to fix the problem as best he knew how. Tonight, he paced their living room as the clock thunderously announced endless passing seconds.

Esty was so fatigued. She held her belly and leaned back against the nursery wall, lounging on the floor. There was so much to do, so much to prepare… She didn’t know how to be a mother…

She needed to protect her baby. Protect her baby, protect her baby… Nothing could happen to her. She couldn’t take the baby out of the house, she couldn’t let anyone kiss the baby… Protect her baby…

She mustn't go on the subway. The subway crashes. There’s fire and noise and death and quiet. Protect her baby… The subway will kill her baby. Esty will get on the subway and kill her baby…

The door creaked open, illuminating the previously dark nursery. Michael sighed, and sank heavily to the floor next to his wife. He looked at her tear-stained face for a moment, then dropped his own in his hands.

“Esty… you have to get up, Esty,” he moaned quietly. Esty looked at her husband quickly, then said in a voice eerily calm and matter-of-fact:

“Michael, there’s so much left to do. We need to put the mobile back up; it keeps falling down in the crib.” Michael grunted and pounded his face with his palms. He sucked in a sharp breath, collecting himself, then took his wife’s head in his hands and looked straight into her dark, wide eyes.

“Esther, I’m trying to be patient— but this is hard for me too. You have to snap out of it. The baby is gone. You’re not pregnant anymore, and you can’t keep pretending you are and fixing this room up. She’s… she’s dead, okay?”

Nearly a full minute of silence passed as the pair sat on the floor of a nursery that would never be used. This room was meant to hold joy. It was meant to be a place of nurturing and comfort, of rest and growth. This was where Aliza was supposed to sleep, and where she was supposed to cry, a sign of her vitality. This room was meant to be filled with love and life, yet now it reeked of madness and death.

Michael studied Esty's face as he held it, watching it slowly contort from sadness to anger to confusion— and finally, to resolve. She stood up, supporting her flat belly, and dusted her dress off. Then, she said simply,

“You can sit there all day if you want, I’m going to do something that’s actually useful.”

And Esther set about hanging a small stuffed duck back on her baby’s mobile.