I try to find the pieces
by Ahu Aydın

Baby in my arms, I sit on the living room carpet with my back against the sofa. I watch the wind invade through the window, from the setting sun. Dust particles catch the colors. The baby boy and I sit still. The breeze lifts the tips of our hair. I’ve never felt this light in my life. 

I remember the phone- in my bag, in the small room. I don’t know if I would like to call him anymore. So I decide to leave this phone call business for later. The blue hospital band on the baby’s tiny wrist catches my eye. I rip it off with my nails, careful not to poke his chubby arm with my sharp fingernails. 

Feeling a need to escape the dust, I get up from the carpet and sit on the sofa. The same sofa I sat on 9 months ago to call Adem. 

“I’m pregnant,” I said.

“Abort it.” A firm whisper 

“No.” I said.

“For fuck’s sake”

“You will come here. My son will grow up with a mother and a father.” Trying so hard to match his firmness. 

“How do you know it’s a boy? Have you gone to the doctor already? Without telling me?”

“No, I haven’t gone to the doctor yet. Even if I had, it’s too early to tell. But I feel it.” I said. “I know it’s going to be a boy.”

“I don’t have time for this nonsense. Abort it.”

“I want you to leave Manisa, move here with me. Your daughters are grown now, they don’t need you. The baby will. The baby needs us both.”

He sighed and hung up. 

I called him back a few days after that. Told him we didn’t need to get married. He just had to be there for the baby. First few years at least. Then he’d be free to do whatever he wanted. Return to Manisa for all I cared. I had no intention of aborting my son. I had no intention of getting married. “We’ll see,” he responded. Dry and sticky. The words followed me wherever I went, left me no moment to breathe. This lasted months. 

I’m not so sure I want him around anymore. 

I gave up on marriage when I was 21 . When my mother and grandfather (I never knew my father), let my younger sister marry before me. “We cannot meddle with her fate,” they said. “Be patient. Your luck will turn around too.” The day they came to ask for her hand, I decided I’d never get married. I decided it was better to be a woman who was never married than an old  girl still desperate for a husband when she ought to have outgrown the urge.  So I stayed home. Never tried looking for a man; turned away those who came looking for me.  I lived with my mother and grandfather until everyone started to die. 

My grandfather in March (due to old age). My niece in June (traffic accident). My mother in November (cancer, they say). My sister moved to Istanbul. She calls me to tell me to visit sometimes. I try to explain to her- I have no intention to travel all that way when I’m perfectly happy here.

Seventeen hours it took for my sister to give birth to my niece. And the baby came out bone wrapped in skin, nothing else, with a look of inevitable death in her eyes. Dark irises- black almost- that suck you into the darkness. We rushed them to the hospital- I had told my sister to give birth at the hospital but she hadn’t listened. The doctor shot a quick glance at the baby but did most of his examining on my sister. The birth had left her very sick. She had to stay in the hospital for a week. I don’t think she ever really got better. Her hair kept falling out in fistfulls, her lips never went back to the color they were before. I sometimes wonder if it was worth all that, for my niece’s seventeen years of life. Would my sister have gone through it all if she’d known the life she was bringing would be so short?  I get disgusted by myself for even thinking such things.

The plastic bag sits next to me; rustles with the breeze from the half open window.  I cannot stand the plastic bag. The noise it makes, the smell of the nylon. The gold colored stripes that pretend to sparkle against the black. I lay the baby down on the sofa and go to the trash. I tear the black bag into tiny little pieces and throw them in one by one. When I return to the sofa the baby is awake. He is crying. I take him in my arms. Kiss him. Rock him. The baby keeps crying. 

A few days later the baby will cry again. Maybe then Adem will attend to him. Or I’ll be in the bedroom, and he’ll be in the living room. He’ll yell, “The kid is crying.” And I’ll go running to the child. He’ll have his feet out. Hairy, green on the tips, lying on the sofa for everyone to see. For my son to see.  Or he’ll pretend he cannot hear and I’ll go running to the baby. 

I met Adem seven years ago- I was forty four then. My grandfather had just had his stroke. I had been working only a few weeks at the pavyon. Nothing shameful- I  washed the glasses. Kept the place clean on the outside. We met on the line where the purple light leaking out of the building met the yellow of the streetlamp. We had both gone out for a cigarette. 

I’m not a dirty woman, I insisted on having an imam marry us first. Not all imams marry men to their mistresses these days but Adem took care of it. Found one that would. I chose not to ask if they’d known each other from before and why. It was never a real marriage, anyways. Only a formality. A religious obligation. I am not a dirty woman. 

It didn’t take long to get into our routine. Adem would call me on his way from Manisa to Izmir. He needed to come to Izmir once a month. For his shop, I think, or something like that. “Is the flat available?” He would ask. If my mother was out cleaning houses and it was only me and my grandfather home I would let him come. 

We never knew if my grandfather could hear after the stroke. We discussed with my mother, some nights, when we came across the music channels he used to listen to while zapping. He never responded to any sound, but I hope he could hear. I really hope he especially heard me and Adem. When Adem would leave, I’d light my grandfather  a cigarette and make him smoke it. In memory of the cigarettes he got me as a child to keep me quiet.

The baby keeps crying- screams piercing the walls. I wonder if his cries were caught on the security cameras. I didn’t think there would be so many of them. Like magnifying glasses with every step I took. In the hospital. On the streets. I don’t think those things record sounds. I’m not even sure if the baby had cried or not. I can’t remember. I go inside and open the cupboard; grab my dead mother’s headscarves from the top shelf. I take a blue one, with green tassels on the edges. The police can’t recognize me like this; I barely can. 

The baby moves his arms and legs around, as if he’s swimming in air. With a look on his face as though he’s moving the waters of all the seas with one push. I don’t know if my baby had hands or arms when he died. I only have one photograph, from the 6th week. He didn’t have arms yet then. I don’t know if he had them when he was washed away by the blood and pushed down the drain by me. I held the hose at him. I watched him disappear down the pipes, scanning through the blood, trying to see his pieces. Only I cried for him in this entire world. But I have no idea if he had arms or not. 

The night I washed our baby down the drain, I sat in front of the window. The one with  the streetlamp right behind it, shining on my forehead. If I moved my head even the slightest bit, the light got into my eyes. So I sat as still as I could. My eyes on the tiny notebook in my palm; I had written in it what I was to say to Adem.  The phone in my other hand. I waited for my fingers to go to the buttons, but they didn’t. Days passed. I forgot the words. Adem never knew his son died before he was born. The baby would have been born today. 

I left the house this morning before daybreak. Wearing the nurse’s outfit I bought from the shops last week. The air was foggy- it’s always foggy at that hour. The water droplets penetrate your clothes, try to reach into you, under your skin. My hands were in my pockets and inside the left one was the black plastic bag. I had tested it the night before; put a 4 kg pack of flour in it to make sure the bag was strong enough. It took me half an hour to get to the hospital. I walked with forced determination. Cold. Sure. Like granite. I passed through the hospital doors, went into the maternity ward. Nobody stopped me.

“Hello, I’m nurse Meliha. I need to take your baby for a few routine blood tests. I’ll bring him back to you in five minutes.” I said to a foreign family. “My husband will come with you,” the mother said in broken Turkish. “I’m sorry,” I replied. “We don’t allow anyone other than  hospital personnel in the laboratory. But it’s right next door. I’ll bring him back in a minute.” And they just handed me the baby. I took him in my arms. Carried him to the toilet. Went into a stall, took the plastic bag out of my pocket and put the baby inside it. I walked out the hospital door. Nobody stopped me. 

The phone in my lap, I sit still in front of the window. Once again, I need to call Adem. We haven’t spoken since the week I found out I was pregnant. “Our son is born,” I will say. “You need to come to Izmir.” It’s the last thing I need to do. And then I will have a family.  The hours pass before I have time to notice. The night settles deep into the hills. My fingers refuse to dial the numbers. 

Ahu Aydın is an emerging writer originally from Istanbul, Turkey. Her work has appeared in Apogee Journal. She is based in London and holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from the University of Cambridge.

Image source: Tommaso Pecchioli/Unsplash

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