Holding Silvan Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the shower—the doctors say that for a normal labor like mine, they usually monitor intermittently anyway. Nor do they know what to say about the last kick I felt in the shower, a big kick as if Silvan were stretching out inside of me with all his strength. A baby’s kick is usually a good sign. What’s strange to them instead is how the damage doesn’t show up anywhere else but in Silvan. We learn about cord blood gasses and placentas, neither of which showed signs of damage. Nor did the tests right after birth show much more than lethargy. All they know for sure is that the damage happened during labor, because the brain swells within twenty-four hours of such an injury. Perhaps this is why, though he nursed, he could not stop crying. Because something unseen was already wrong.
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    BUT NONE OF this is enough to make sense of what is happening. No medical information can. There’s something else I need—and when David asks in bed what will make this easier, I know what it is. “I want people to see him, my baby,” I say. In that moment, the miracle of Silvan is that he is mine, that he came out of me, and I am flooded with a maternal pride of possession.
    We begin by inviting Margie and Gavin. David has known
these two since college, since before they were a couple, and I have known them since I met David, right before they fell in love. They seem entwined with us as a couple. We’ve taken swing dancing lessons with them (David dropping Margie on her head), vacationed with them, we’ve planned our weddings together, and nine months before us, they gave birth to their own first child. Nine months before, we’d gone off eagerly to see Margie and Gavin and their newborn son Oscar, and after David saw Margie, still swollen and exhausted but rushing around full of her characteristic glee and good humor with a babe in arms, David said to me with his usual blunt honesty, “I can’t really picture you having what it takes to be a mother.” We were approaching a curve on the freeway when he said this, me at the wheel, and I felt enraged. This was the same curve where I’d felt myself losing control six years before (a late driver, I was taught by David) and he had reached over calmly to put a steady hand on the wheel. This time, our roles were reversed. In that moment on the freeway, I knew I was pregnant. While he anxiously reminded me that I was a writer and that writing was selfish, I felt already changed. I felt equal to this rushing curve ahead. “I’m going to be a mother,” I said, rounding the curve with competence, “with you or without you.” Already the hormones were kicking in, making me this angry, this weepy, this full of my own defiant sense of power. In this state, David’s familiar honesty felt intolerable. He asked how I could be so certain I was pregnant. “I just know,” I said, “so you’d better practice saying only nice things to me from now on.” He grinned. We were getting off the freeway now, both of us grinning, and I let go of the steering wheel for a moment to take his hand as if I’d been driving this well all my life.
    When we arrive at the hospital, Margie and Gavin are already waiting for us in the hall. Oscar is not with them and for a moment, I am hugely disappointed. I had wanted this spark of life and hope. But Margie says her sister-in-law thought it would be better for me if I didn’t have to deal with someone
else’s child. And I realize she is probably right. They have dropped everything, including Oscar, for this moment with us.
    David takes Gavin in to see Silvan while Margie and I go into the little waiting room. It is dark and done in beige, and covered with blankets and pillows and crumpled magazines from all the parents who’ve camped out the night before. It is ugly and grim.
    I try to explain to Margie what little I know in a hushed voice so I don’t disturb