April 1952
I was twelve.
She called from her bedroom
and I ran to help.
“I’ve miscarried.
Look under the covers, between my legs.”
I don’t remember the shape,
But the colour was meat-red.
“Wrap it in newspaper,” she said,
“and put it in the garbage.”
I would have done
what I was told.
But on my own, I wouldn’t have thought
That she needed a bath
Or someone to change the sheets.
She told me to call Ina.
Ina Pitcher came over the next day
To give her a bed bath,
and I can remember the basin
and the warm, wet washcloth
and Ina pulling back the covers
and removing her clothes
and washing her naked body.
Ina was brave.
Arta. I am gasping for air.
ReplyDeleteThree brave women in this poem. So much trauma and grieving around miscarriages that is left unspoken. We talk about it so little. Until it happens to us. Then everyone has stories to share, moments of re-grieving.
ReplyDeleteWhy I wrote this poem?
ReplyDeleteand
Who was Ina?
I wrote this poem when 3 of us were applying to take a poetry course together at the university. We all had to submit a portfolio of 10 poems to the professor and then tell why we wanted to take that course. All of us wrote our poems. None of us were chosen to take the class. Kelvin could just get poems he had already written. I had to sit down and write 10 poems. I have no idea where the others got to. You know, since I am neither a poetry reader or writer, I wouldn't have been interested in keeping them. I was more interested in getting ino a class with you and Kelvin. Eventually we found a class that we could all enter. I think it was International Women Writers with Donna Coates.
On re-reading and then posting the poem, I was taken aback with other memories that it contains for me. I can see exactly where Ina lives -- just over there in Rosedale. I can see her husband, her two girls. I can name many women who were devoted to Wyora. I wonder why it is that she called Ina, for I wouldn't have thought Ina would be on the list.
When Ina came over, I must have been in that room, for I can remember details her washing my mother's body. I do remember that Ina came over the day after I called. I think about that. Was Wyora so bad that she couldn't even get out of bed? What was going on in the rest of the house? If I was twelve then Darla would have been 1. That means there were 6 children in the house, if you count me. Was I helping with meals, and what was going on when she was in bed. I have no memory of any of that.
Nor of anyone else stepping in to help or brining meals. That all may have happened.
That isn't what was burned into my mind.
Re the moments of loss around having babies. My guess is that yours a powerful story that I will want to read.