Falling

Short Fiction

From Islanders, a book of short stories

FALLING

More snow, falling.

I watch snowflakes flutter and fall like the spirits of dead souls on the alley below the curtainless window of this dilapidated Old Town hotel room and think of a line from an Elvis Presley tune, my favorite of his songs: “Since my baby left me, I found a new place to dwell.”

Cradling my new-born infant, just hours old, I imagine a young Elvis–his slicked-back dark hair, doe-like eyes and trademark curling lip–and wonder if this year’s flurries will descend not only to whiten and cleanse but also to purify the hearts and souls of the lonely, the forlorn and the forgotten. Those limping through life with heartbreak. Like personas in lyrics of songs I have heard. Like sad minstrels. Like me.

I let the infant suckle at my breast and think it funny (hilarious, really) how I could have kept my pregnancy a secret, especially from them, Papa and Mama: my inquisitors.

Juan Celso Villareal, my papa: a Bible-spouting devout Christian always ready to judge and condemn. A man so wrapped up in tradition and a hodgepodge of temporal pursuits (like finding God in the Internet) he never has reason to listen to or consider anybody’s opinion but his own. And Martha, his wife, a genuine mental case, a hypochondriac whose obsession with failing health drives her to discover religion in any exotic natural healing fad, from the wonders of cat’s claw root to the

anti-inflammatory cartilage of a dead white shark.

Both my parents are so self-possessed and uninvolved, they can’t imagine that their seventeen-year-old daughter, their perennial pride and joy, has a problem–a serious problem, take my word–that no amount of money, rosary sayings or magic herbal remedies can make go away.

“We raised you to be a good girl, a model Christian,” says my mama, and repeats it like a litany.

“For heaven’s sake, your uncle is the parish priest. How could you do such a thing? Even think it.” Papa’s admonition against sin. Always how, never why. The least minor little fault. Like a nail, hammering guilt home.

And Father Marcos is no help, either, Papa. When I go to the padre for consolation and guidance, what does he give me to ward off sin except more rusty nails. In the sanctity of the confessional, I bare my heart’s bleeding wound to a conservative priest and tell him the truth:

“I’m pregnant, Father Marcos. I’m pregnant and scared and miserable and want an abortion.”

So what, dear Mama, does this holy man say, do?

“You’ll burn in hellfire, child. The life you have growing inside you is a sacred gift from God. You have no right to destroy it. Only God can murder and create. Abortion is an abomination. You brought this mark upon yourself. Repent and beg forgiveness. Have the baby.”

“Have the baby?” I ask it sobbing, almost hysterical. “How can I have the baby? The baby’s father is a married man. Papa and Mama will kick me out, if they don’t kill me first. Then where will I go? How can I have the baby?”

“Repent, repent,” he counsels like a cackling crow. Then he closes the confessional window with the severity of a cell door being shut. I here only my sobs, feel my heart bleed.

When he next speaks, it is to pronounce an admonition: “We named you after the Immaculate Conception. Consider that.”

I lose control and dash from that place no closer to a solution to my plight than when I first go in. Feeling guilt now. Like Mt. Everest upon my shoulders. And the worst of it is, I have nobody to blame but myself. Or so he said.

“We named you after the Immaculate Conception. Consider that?”

I have. The glorious name I never asked for. The name they gave me. Like a stigmata.

María. María. María.

They would never forgive me a mistake. So how could I learn to forgive my own? Sensitive and beautiful, poised and perfect as a spring-blooming rose. A church goer, baptized and confirmed. A brilliant scholar and valedictorian this year. A lover of poetry and singer of songs.

My high school friends and teachers would chuckle at the irony. How could a straight A student end up in such a fix? How could somebody that perfect make such a mistake?

The obvious questions. I ponder them myself. If only they knew. It doesn’t require “brains” to get into trouble. But it sure does take serious gray matter to get one’s self out.

Elvis, you old hound dog. I have found a new place to dwell.

It happened like this. I go to a crummy hotel and pay the leery-eyed desk clerk for this room, but for he life of me I don’t remember how I got here. (You took the bus, silly goose, the morning bus on Division St.)

The snow, the pain, the talons of the wind. I remember these exactly. A minor blizzard falling, the cruel Chicago winter Hawk coming in gusts off the lake, trampled snow underfoot and, of course, the via dolorosa of my delivery: the rushing, pulsating, wave-like patterns of my labor pains.

I knew that giving birth would be no picnic. No summer hike through Lincoln (or any other) Park. When I read in National Geographic how tribal African women, while pregnant and close to delivery, would wander far from their villages and give birth with no assistance, bravely, I thought I could do it, too. Sprawled on the ground, like a wildebeest or a lioness.

And, why not? Either that or confront the demons and devils that await every unwed mother, Christian or not: shame, that scarlet letter–then stoning at the wall.

Tell the truth? I can’t because I have killed it.

Wearing loose skirts, over-sized blouses and heavy woolen sweaters, I fool them. I fool every one of them, and decide to have the baby–when the time comes–on my own. In the “wilderness,” like an African princess.

I ask Mama: “What’s it like, having a baby?”

Like a mantra she mumbles something about it being the most fulfilling experience any woman can ever have. Ah, yes, Motherhood. How could I have been so blind, so foolish and self-absorbed? You fall in love. You have sex and get pregnant. Then the baby comes. So natural, and more predictable than a rainy day: the baby.

Fulfilling, Mama?

I suppose there’s reassurance in your morsel of homespun wisdom. And some is better than none. I press her words to my chest during labor, a life preserver against the scourges of a slow delivery, a premature birth and pain, Mama: dolor.

I think nothing of motherhood now. I move and act strictly by reflex. The baby is an insect, a tightfisted little thing feeding at my breast. It sucks so greedily, I draw back when I feel it pinch my nipple. I stare at the baby, its hollow cheeks and wrinkled flesh, still reeking of afterbirth, and I am awash with the misery of the delivery. The stench of urine and bloody smells. Contractions, like relay runners, coming at intervals. Placental fluid staining the bed sheets. The gasping and straining for breath.

When the baby finally makes its appearance, it juts its head and wriggles free with a strange plop like a stone striking water.

I surrender then, exhausted, thinking only of you: Elvis. The “Burning Love” and rags-to-riches lip-curling, hip-shaking, pelvis-swinging idol of millions. The forever beautiful and fair Elvis. The Elvis of the gold lamé suit. You, who never had to bear such pain.

I sob and breathe and laugh but with grief and emotional despair.

The sky hangs low and dark, brooding. I watch it snow as before, only now I have opened the bedroom window. Yawning like a hungry mouth, its flaked wooden maw makes me shiver. Blasts of cold air and flurries pelt my face. I brush the snow aside, pick up the baby. I stare past the window. I breathe. I tense. I think.

“We named you after the Immaculate Conception.”

“I didn’t ask you to. Why didn’t you name me Susanna instead?”

“Hush, young woman! Don’t be irreverent.”

“Irreverent, Father? Dare I be so glib? I know, I know. Repent.”

I don’t blame the baby for the road I must take. It’s my choice to make, just as it was my choice to give birth or not give birth. I don’t do it because the baby looks sickly and malformed, pale as a faded sheet. Least because I can’t stand to share its pain, or hate myself, or feel guilty, tired and depressed. After all, I have only myself to blame. At least I can be that fair, that honest. The child will die as it was born: an innocent, an angel.

But what about me? If I were a welfare mother, would they then mourn? Would they then care? Would they then forgive?

Such is the double-edged blade of my deception. It cuts one, frees the other.

I cradle the baby in my arms, as any mother would, and consider how far up three stories seem. The beauty of snow. The alley and city below, shrouded in urban peace. Yes, this city of the Big Shoulders.

I no longer fret about myself, or any woman in such a fix. Least of all, why she stumbles, why she fails, why she falls.

I think of you, Elvis Presley, triumphant king of rock and roll. I say to you and all the rest:

“Yes, I’m strong. Yes, I’m lonely. Yes, I can. Yes, I will. Yes . . .”