At 20 weeks we visit the jolly Afrikaans woman again for a scan. The day before I arrived home after a trip to the Kruger Park to visit my best friend from high school, out from her home in England. It was an arduous eight-hour trip, and I was exhausted.
I take Ricky to tai chi with me on the morning of the scan because it’s near the clinic and he tells me when I get back in the car that the timing is all completely off. We are doing fan form, and the sound of the fans snapping open and flipping closed in the almost-spring air and amid the leaf blowers thrills me. The grace and slow breath of tai chi, our balletic movements – even if ill timed – brings me back to my body like nothing else lately. I try to walk the line between relaxed and firm, holding but being released at once, focused and loose, a kind of effortless effort.
At the birthing clinic we are again shown the baby who is now plump and taking up much of the room in the little sack. I take a video of the heart beating, in which the sonographer booms, “Strong, hey?” She also points out the “little labia”, two parallel lines between her legs: it’s a girl. We sort of already knew from our 12-week scan, but it’s for certain now. A daughter, we are to have a daughter. At one point she moves her legs all the way up and over her head, like a yogini doing a shoulder stand. Her hands float to behind her head: it ain’t no thing. I’m impressed.
All her measurements come out normal, the piece of paper the sonographer hands us is full of ticks in the correct column, and I feel like I’ve just done well in a test I didn’t even study for. I keep being slightly surprised all is progressing normally and well.
I am always in a half-brace position, clenched against the oncoming blast. So when I miscarry or lose my job, I feel something like relief: ah, the bad thing has come. I can unwind into grief. From a tight, sucked-in, shoulder-up, stomach-crunched position, my belly can bellow out and then in again, then out, then in, heaving like a sea that has suddenly become unfrozen.
We wait outside for a bit for a midwife appointment, and Ricky and I hug, slightly breathless, elated. A girl, and all is well! We watch a huge woman in her socks move slowly through the parking lot, sipping something. She walks as though she were moving between delicate glass ornaments, ponderous, each step seemingly chosen, but also dreamy. I will be there, in that strange land, soon.
The midwife tells me to halve my sugar intake and I’m aghast. I make up my mind to quickly double it so halving it won’t be so bad. She also “palpates” the baby, holding my hands beneath hers and pushing in sharply so I can feel the hard bone of her head. The girl gives an indignant kick. I’ve been feeling her for a few days, and each day it becomes clearer and stronger. There she is, there, there. It feels like twitching muscles, flutters, swirling. She is my secret, and I am hers. We convene daily, hourly, in our dark inner chasm. I begin to love her.
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