A DIFFERENT VOLCANO
Creative Nonfiction
It was mid-August and an unseasonably dry and hot year, even for New Mexico. Our oldest daughter had turned one two months before and our second daughter was nearly two months old. My husband and I had recently moved from New York and we were standing in the kitchen of our new home. “Is that a dog?” he asked. I turned my attention away from the dishes and looked out the window to see an animal with a golden coat walking across our driveway. I didn’t have my glasses on, but the slow and purposeful gait with the head dipping low between its shoulder blades was unmistakable: a feline. “It’s a mountain lion,” I said, not necessarily to him, but to say it out loud, to comprehend that there was a large, predatory animal in the driveway of the house we had moved into less than a year ago.
A few days later, my husband left for Brooklyn where we’d kept our one-bedroom apartment and his business is based. Our new house was much bigger than anywhere I’d lived before; there’s space in New Mexico. I stared out the large picture window of our family room. It was during the monsoon and I could see it raining over the desert and mountains from many miles away while the sun shown brightly on our own house, the blue of the sky somehow appearing to be bluer than anywhere else. I waited for the storm clouds to come and soak the cracked lines in the dirt of our backyard, but they never came. At night, I barely slept while he was gone, not yet used to the noises in the house and the distance between bedrooms. Our oldest daughter was sleeping one hundred feet and a journey apart from me, while our newborn was asleep in her pack n’ play on the side of our bed. The light of my phone hurt my eyes, but I kept searching: “Mountain lion in my driveway.” “Mountain lion attacks.” “Mountain lion and small children.”
In the morning, I fed the girls and let them play. I hadn’t yet introduced them to television, and now they had each other. Our oldest attempted to put sunglasses on our newborn who was lying on the rug, unbothered. I had two kids between the ages of thirty-nine and forty-one. They are twelve and a half months apart. I was new-mom tired; I could barely hold onto a thought or make a sound decision. Through our kitchen window I could see the Jemez Mountains, where there’s a large caldera carved out by a volcano that exploded over a million years ago. I looked at our driveway, half expecting to see a mountain lion in repose on the black pavement. From my late night searching I’d learned how uncommon it was to see one, that they are very reclusive animals. But nothing felt safe, not even an empty driveway, once I became responsible for the lives of small children.
My husband and I both lived in New York for twelve years, although we only met in the last two. We decided on New Mexico because we both had history there, with my grandparents having lived in Angel Fire and Truth or Consequences over the span of thirty years, while my husband had done a writing residency in Santa Fe several years before we met and couldn’t forget about the sky. In New York, I’d worked for an artist in her studio arranging the transit and installation of intricate and beautiful sculptures. While still living there, I became pregnant at thirty-eight and suffered a miscarriage, and then became pregnant again six months later. When I was about eight weeks along with my second pregnancy, we took a trip to Greece. I’d had a positive pregnancy test but we hadn’t yet seen a heartbeat. My OB/GYN told us to wait to go on the trip until we knew the pregnancy was viable. She didn’t want me to experience another miscarriage while navigating foreign and ancient lands. “Fuck that,” my husband said, but it wasn’t as callous as it sounded. He believed in the power of life and maintaining optimism. I also knew that he was still heartbroken over the loss of our first pregnancy, and to keep on with life felt better than waiting in a crowded Manhattan doctor’s office to see if it was going to happen.
I avoided feta and raki, the after dinner apéritif that was sold in label-less glass jars on the side of the roads in Crete. It made me feel buzzed just from smelling it. At a roadside taverna wrapped in fuchsia bougainvillea, the older female proprietor pushed a shot glass towards me after our meal. “No, no, I’m pregnant,” I said, resting my hands on my stomach. “Happy life!” she said, seeming to understand, pushing it closer still. My husband drank both, and I couldn’t blame him. When I felt nauseous, which was often, I inhaled the Mediterranean air and ate bowls of whole milk yogurt, finding relief in my discomfort; it was a sign that the baby was growing. We took a sunset cruise around Santorini, our final destination island, and before the sun had set and everyone else was drunk at the front of the boat while the captain worked the dancing crowd for tips, we stopped to snorkel. I was a competitive swimmer from ages seven to twenty-one, and the sound and feel of being underwater was comforting. I was the last one to get out, diving underneath the boat and emerging on the other side, once, twice, three times. There were no colorful fish or corral, just sand and large grey rocks coated in brown algae, remnants from a different volcano. The sun was lowering in the sky and my husband was calling me. The water was cold, but I lingered. It was a chance to escape from the small talk I’ve never been good at, when all I wanted to think about was safely harboring the life growing inside of me.
Upon returning to New York, the heartbeat of the fetus was confirmed and we scheduled an appointment with the genetics counselor. She sat across her desk, showing us laminated graphics of chromosomes gone wrong and brochures relaying the accuracy of blood tests in determining genetic abnormalities. Never having a mind for or interest in numbers, especially when it came to quantifying the likelihood of having a healthy baby, I let my husband ask most of the questions. In the end, while increasingly losing patience, he let go of his mathematical mind. “So basically the results will help us determine if we want to abort the baby?” he asked. While I can’t remember her exact response, it was a stumbling answer that more or less landed on yes.
When we returned to the genetics floor a week later, it was for blood work and the nucal translucency test that had to be done when the fetus was between ten to twelve weeks old, the short span of time when they’re able to capture a measurement of liquid behind its neck. “We don’t want to know if it’s a boy or girl,” I blurted out. The experience of having a baby grow inside of me felt so abstract that to identify its sex felt overly scrupulous, like an effort to define its life before it was even born. The technician took measurements while we watched, her mood dictating that my husband and I should be quiet. When she was done, she exited the room and came back with a doctor. We were told that the reading was high, and that readings in that ballpark have indicated babies with Down syndrome or other genetic abnormalities. “You’ll have to wait and see what the blood test says,” she said. They handed us a reel of pictures of our fetus, one an incredible shot of the baby looking upwards, appearing to be smiling with a large orb-like shape and smaller, white spots hovering above its body. It looked like it was floating inside an entire universe.
While waiting the five days until we got the blood work back, I had fitful nights of sleep and went to work, not telling my coworkers that I was pregnant. At night before going to bed I searched online for ultrasound photos of fetus’ known to have Down syndrome, comparing them to the pictures I had in my hand. It was a losing game and one that made no sense anyway: we had already discussed that if the genetic test results came back indicating a potential defect, that if the baby had a chance of surviving and living a decent life, we would keep it. What I was really most fearful of was that I would have miscarriage after miscarriage, and that my husband took a chance on marrying someone six years older than him and that neither of us would be able to have the family we’d hoped for.
“I have some good news!” the genetic counselor said when I answered the phone. I was standing in our small, Brooklyn kitchen with the lights all on even though it was the middle of the day, our basement apartment never getting any sunlight. She told me the blood work came back showing little to no sign of a genetic defect while reminding me that there was still a two percent chance of inaccuracy. I was relieved, but later in the day with the stress of the past week shedding off of me I looked at the ultrasound photos on the refrigerator. I thought about how in the time it took to get the results back that our baby had grown to the size of a lemon, and developed bones, eyes and vocal chords and that I hadn’t found joy in any of that. There were more genetic tests they suggested for me to take, but I never went back.
I found a midwife in lower Manhattan and cancelled future appointments with an OB/GYN I never really liked anyway, or perhaps it was just that I had bad memories of her office, of seeing a heartbeat and then not. I printed out labor mantras and recipes for drinks with electrolytes for while I was laboring at home, and hung them on our fridge. On weekends, I took long walks around our neighborhood and at night avoided pregnancy apps and the Internet altogether. When I went to a friend’s baby shower at an impressively large apartment on the Upper West Side, I told other moms my birth plan of giving birth “naturally,” without the intervention of drugs, and in the Birthing Center at Mount Sinai. “Have you seen the list of reasons they move you to the labor ward? Just so you’re prepared?” one mom said, while another one, someone I already knew, smiled with tight lips. Later, in private, she told me she’d developed a condition during labor where her skin itched so badly that it felt like she was being attacked by red ants. I sympathized, of course it sounded awful, but somehow still not listening to what she was trying to tell me, sure I’d have the birth I’d hoped for.
The trips to the midwife didn’t involve regular sonograms. We saw our baby at twenty weeks and then not again until thirty-seven. I peed on a stick that measured my pH levels and sat in front of her while she asked me if I was taking my vitamins. I looked at the dozens of cards hanging on the wall behind her that showed smiling patients with their new babies. I went to work, sometimes throwing up in the bathroom, and often sitting on the toilet for way too long, just so I could put my face in my hands and look miserable without anyone watching. I waited to tell my boss until I was nearly five months pregnant and I couldn’t hide the bump anymore. The next day, she handed me a sealed envelope. “Don’t open this until after the baby is born,” she said. “I had a dream of what the sex would be. I’m rarely wrong about these things.” She was right, and I have the letterhead with her handwriting that says “GIRL” in all caps written with a black Sharpie framed on our daughters’ bedroom wall. My mom and sister made plans to come a week before my due date, renting an apartment fifteen blocks and a neighborhood away.
I labored an entire night at home in our apartment, mostly in our bed, even though sitting was painful and it felt like the baby was trying to push through my backbone. I could have stood and walked around but I felt an urgent need to be near my husband, even though he was sleeping. My water didn’t break, but after eleven hours of contractions and the sun having risen, the midwife told us to get in a car. The driver took the fastest route that meant crossing the city west below Houston on a stretch of street with cobblestones and huge potholes. “Sorry, sorry!” he kept saying, and I could tell that he meant it. I walked into the hospital we’d toured once before for a practice run, waiting for an elevator we knew might take awhile. When the contractions came I stopped and leaned against walls, breathing slowly until they passed. While waiting to be admitted my water broke, streaming down my leg with such subtlety that I’m not sure I’m the one who even noticed it. It had a brownish tint that was later confirmed to be meconium. Because meconium was on the list of things the Birthing Center wasn’t equipped or allowed to handle, I was asked to get out of the birthing tub that I was nearly giddy to be floating in each time my contractions subsided.
The Labor & Delivery Unit was on a different floor. It was a stark contrast from the quiet hum of the Birthing Center, with a blur of doctors and nurses moving through the hallways. My midwife stood in the background of my room seeming suddenly powerless. The labor room was large and would have been comfortable, outside of the increasing intensity of my contractions. After five or six hours more, they were so severe and intense that there was no space in between them. It felt like a vice was gripped around my torso from the inside, and I watched my heartbeat on the monitor to be sure that I was still alive. The relief of the epidural felt like an impossible gift. I fell into a deep and restful sleep, until I was woken up. “You have to start pushing,” my midwife said. I was given Pitocin to make the contractions begin again and I pushed and pushed and the baby’s head came down but not far enough for them to grab it, and then went right back up. It was no longer painful because I couldn’t feel a thing below my breasts, but I also couldn’t be sure if I was actually trying. Whatever I was doing, it didn’t feel like enough. At some point, my mom was there to get something from my bag, or a number from my phone. My husband sat in a chair and I was alert to the fact that he had been watching basketball on his phone. That people were behaving relatively normal around me, that they were doing their jobs and waiting while I was attempting to perform this monumental task, seemed astonishing.
A male doctor who I’d never seen before was brought in. “If you keep pushing there’s a chance the baby’s shoulders will break trying to get through the canal.” It was not something he was discussing with other doctors, but directed at me. What could I say? They wheeled me into the bright and controlled chaos of an OR room. A sheet was hung from a stand to divide my head from my body, and they got to work. Our daughter’s due date was April 25th but she was born on May 5th. May is my birthday month and the month that connects spring and summer. I have always felt happiest in May. I heard the suction of a tube removing fluids from her throat before I heard her cry.
“Look at all that hair!” a nurse said. And it was incredible, even coated and slicked down with the thick, white vernex. I can’t remember if I tried nursing our daughter or if I only nuzzled her into my neck. Whatever it was, she was taken away after only a few minutes and handed to my husband while they performed the post-op procedures. I was hoisted onto a rolling bed and put into a hallway, unsure of where they were. The first person I saw was my mother. I told her the name we’d decided on if it was a girl, Iman Joyce. Iman the name I picked from the twenty or so Muslim names my husband had put on a list, and Joyce my mother’s middle name before she got married, when she made her maiden name her middle one. At some point they rolled me into a room with my husband. When I came in, he was holding our daughter with his shirt off, practicing his skin-to-skin.
No one told me what it would be like to become a mother, except my own mom who said: “You will love that child like you haven’t loved anything else the second it’s put into your arms.” But instead, I felt emotionally vacant and bewildered, not because of our baby, but because of what I’d just experienced. They couldn’t release me for forty-eight hours due to the C-section, and I was glad to be in someone else’s care. I left my gown loose, my aching torso and breasts exposed to my dad and my roommate’s family and anyone else, while I learned how to nurse. On the second day a female nurse stopped to watch. “Is your daughter breathing normally?” she asked. “I think so?” I replied, feeling her wriggling against my chest, the sound of her gentle sucking quiet, but audible. The nurse swiftly took her out of my arms and wheeled her away. It would be another hour and us asking after her several times until we were finally told that she’d been admitted to NICU.
I pressed on, pumping with the hospital’s industrial-sized pump so they could bottle feed her my breast milk, holding a pillow over my scar as I walked back and forth to the NICU ward so the stitches didn’t burst, and repressing my fear about her inconclusive test results, none of them able to determine why our daughter wasn’t breathing properly. Insurance wouldn’t cover more than two more nights in the hospital, but we were able to book a room on a floor for longer-term and live-in patients, paying for it out of pocket. I knew we were fortunate to be able to do this. There was another new mother who lived in Brooklyn and even though she wanted to be with her daughter in NICU every second of the day, she could only come on the days her husband wasn’t working. She was in so much pain from her birth and not able to make the commute alone. But the part I remember the most clearly was sitting in a chair during our visiting hours when I locked eyes with my daughter but couldn’t hold her. She was alert, and it was easy to imagine that she knew exactly who I was, even though she couldn’t smell or touch me. I wanted to rip off the chords feeding her oxygen and reading her vitals and take her out of the Plexiglas shell, certain that if just she and I went somewhere, that I could literally nurse her to health. The restraint I had to maintain was intolerable to the point that at times I couldn’t even look at her, sure that I was guilty of a form of abandonment.
After nine days, her blood oxygen levels normalized to a place where the doctors were comfortable sending her home. They never found out the root cause of the issue. My sister had left and by that time my mom had been in New York for nearly a month, and my dad a week. Our apartment was too small for them to stay and they’d already spent more than they’d budgeted on the apartment rental. They needed to return back home. I sat in our dark basement apartment while my husband went to work, envious of his ability to leave, untethered. His mother came and cooked for us, and together we watched hours of Bollywood movies. And after she left, our daughter and I spent countless hours alone, my first introduction to the rhythms of taking care of small children, the endless hours of cooing and shaking rattles, changing diapers, giving baths and trying to understand hunger cues, punctuated by moments of complete awe and disbelief that I grew a child inside of me. All the while I was experiencing an onset of anxiety that I’d never experienced before, the thoughts running through my mind constantly: would I leave her somewhere, would I accidentally drop her or forget about her, did the person on the street who told me she was beautiful know where we lived? I had experienced a traumatic birth with our newborn admitted to NICU and it felt logical to blame my onset of anxiety on that. My midwife and others told me it was hormones, but nothing could come close to explaining the newness of the feelings I would have in the months and years to come. A child had been born, and a mother, too.
There’s a picture of my daughter and I in the hospital bed before she was admitted to NICU. I’m holding her on my chest with plastic ID bracelets around my wrists, and looking down at her with closed lips and a gentle smile while she’s sleeping. She’s wrapped in the pink and blue striped baby blanket from the hospital, us both knowing so little of what was to come. I’d seen versions of this photo before, printed and framed or saved in someone’s cell phone, not understanding how deeply personal they were. My memory of the mountain lion exists as though I imagined it. My husband recalls the long tail, and I do not. Still, when I open the garage or we walk down the driveway to check the mail, I’m aware that one could be watching. Of course I learned to love my daughter like my mom said I would, more than I’ve loved anything else. When it wasn’t immediate I never left her side, day after day and night after night I mothered, doing what no one had ever taught me how to do.