A Life's Work Read Online Free PDF Page B

pregnancy. What,
again
? they may say; or, Haven’t you had enough? You will be feeling, the section adds, physically and emotionally drained. Your body, used up by a previous pregnancy, will sag and bloat. What with all the incessant tidying up, washing and cooking created by children who fling carefully prepared dishes to the floor and empty out boxes of toys as quickly as you can fill them, as well as waking up several times a night and screaming, you probably won’t have any time to yourself to think about this pregnancy. You may feel that you cannot possibly find the extra love to give to a new baby. You may be existing on burgers and fries. You may worry about your relationship with your partner, about money, about whether you need a bigger house. At least labour won’t be so bad this time, it adds, because all your muscles will have been bent out of shape by the last one.
    I telephone the hospital to book an antenatal class. You’re too late, I’m told, we’re full. You should have booked earlier. I wasn’t pregnant earlier, I reply. I see that I have entered a world of obsessive foresight, in which women at my stage of pregnancy are now putting their unborn children down for desirable schools. A feeling of panic at being left behind, unprepared and hence exposed to pain like someone abandoned unarmed in a jungle full of wild animals, seizes me. I make several more telephone calls and finally find a pregnancy yoga class being conducted in a suburban community centre. I turn up and sit with six or seven other pregnant women in a circle on the floor. The teacher sits in our midst, cross-legged. I have not yet experienced such a gathering of my own species. We appear imprisoned behind our stomachs like people behind bars, like people who need help. I feel a certain relief at our communality, a sense of assuagement. I wonder why I have ridiculed and resisted it. The teacher tells us of her own experiences of birth. They are yogic and positive. She tells us of her moment of illumination, when she realised that pregnant women just needed people to be nice to them, and that given the short supply of such people, the solution was for pregnant women to be nice to
each other.
So here we are, we are told, about to be nice to each other! The teacher flings her arms in the air and laughs effervescently. We are instructed to breathe deeply. We adopt various positions. Birth is mentioned several times, vaguely. We stand against a wall and do things with our legs. One girl can do the splits. Presently we are told to find partners. The instruction cauterises my enthusiasm. I don’t want a partner. In fact, I want to go home as quickly as possible. Nevertheless I select, or am selected, mutely. We are, it appears, going to give each other a massage. This is what is known as being nice. We are told to divide ourselves into masseur and massee. I am massee. My partner, a girl with fuzzy white hair, a deep tan and a nose ring, whose name I have forgotten, proceeds with her work. I close my eyes. I am as rigid as steel. The teacher issues her instructions in a soft voice, as if someone were asleep next door. I leave my body and drift determinedly elsewhere, while tension rises in me like a tide. After a very long time, the massage stops. I meet the girl’s eye awkwardly and laugh. My own tenure as masseur I embark on with professional zeal. I am not going to be found wanting. The girl’s skin is foreign and private, and though I will gentleness upon myself I am brisk with the consciousness of invasion. Afterwards cookies and tea are produced. I make an excuse and leave. Glancing back from the door I see the women all sitting in a circle with their mugs, their silhouettes fertile and vulnerable. No one is saying much. I feel like a man, caught in some shameful act of abandonment.
    Winter draws in. I begin to feel a more or less constant despair at my predicament. In the mornings, when I wake up, I