RUE
by BROOKE RANDEL
When the water beneath me turns red, when it feels like a plum has fallen from my grip, when my toes straighten inside my shoes, I know I’ve lost the baby. I look into the toilet, so strange and cloudy, an ominous crimson bloom. All it took was a week this time. I look away and flush.
These things happen, I think. It’s okay. Then I leave the stall and return to work, a family-run dental office where every poster on the wall is about one’s smile, its color or brightness.
My husband makes homemade mac and cheese for dinner, pale noodles turned golden with butter and breadcrumbs. Steam billows when he pulls it from the oven. He feeds me like I’m very small and I let him. These things happen, he whispers in my ear. I want to bite his hand, but I don’t.
*
There is no waiting to try again. We spent the majority of our twenties and thirties trying, together and separately, not to get pregnant and no longer have the luxury of time. Back then, our days were endless—I changed schools, changed majors, dropped out, traveled across India, fell into depression, fell into love, moved to a new city, became a new person. I had so much time. I was made of it. I could be a journalist or a barista or a dental hygienist. I could be single or in a relationship, aimless or ambitious, focused or lost. Now I finally have the pieces of my life how I want them and instead of time, I am full of want. I can feel it drum inside me, loud and angry against the townhouse’s innate silence.
One month after the miscarriage, I get my period. It’s fine, I think, these things happen.
The next month, I get it again. My husband turns our rice yellow with saffron and stock, and we eat it together in bed, one bowl, two spoons. He brings the nourishment and I bring the heartache. There is a room across the hall from ours that’s empty and waiting, and we never step inside.
When I get my next period, the reddest of them all, it’s like a pen has spilled and can never write again. I tell my husband and he says we should buy a crib.
No, I say, no, we can’t.
But they’re on sale, he replies, it’s better to do it now.
I stare at him, the sunlight in his hair.
It will happen for us. He squeezes my hand. We have to believe.
*
My husband nests in the room across the hall. A box arrives with long wooden slats and short screws, and from it he forms a crib in a single night. Next comes a dresser with a changing table on top. I can’t bear to watch him work, his nimble fingers, that sure expression on his face. He installs Roman shades and a new closet door. He paints everything a pale shade of yellow. On his phone, he shows me pictures of rugs and then days later, one appears in the room across the hall as if it was always meant to be there. When he’s downstairs making dinner, I slip inside the room and touch the rug’s soft woolen fibers. I weep into them. My period is due tomorrow and all I can picture is the whole room folding itself into a box and going away.
But my period doesn’t come.
I clean ten patients’ teeth the next day, flossing between each one, and though every patient tells me they floss, these ten don’t lie. There’s no blood running down their gums. One cavity, but no blood amongst the bunch. I tell them to swish and spit, then give them goodie bags of toothpaste and threaders.
Another day goes by and my period doesn’t come. I am so scared of hope. It is all I have.
Another day goes by.
My husband cooks turmeric chicken and butternut squash for dinner. The smell follows me as I excuse myself to use the bathroom. I take a pregnancy test and leave it on the counter without looking. We eat the rest of our meal. I clean the spice-stained dishes, then return to the bathroom to see what the stick of plastic says.
Yes, it whispers. Another chance.
And then, from somewhere deep within myself, I hear another word. I hear the word But.
But? I think.
But there’s a catch.
It’s my uterus, that old fiend. I hated it as soon as I started bleeding in seventh grade. A boy asked me what I sat in after I got up in music class to sing. I hated my uterus when it made me double over in pain during my cousin’s graduation party, searching the powder room for a tampon or pad or anything that could soak up my embarrassment. I hated how my uterus cursed my skin, thinned my hair, bloated my gut, darkened my mood. How it made me admit I was not the one in charge.
You may keep this one, my uterus says, but there’s a price.
I can pay a price, I think.
You must guess the name correctly. You have three guesses.
And then my uterus goes quiet and all I can hear is the blink of my eyelids, the hum of the overhead light. My eyes stare back at me in the bathroom mirror, terrified.
*
My husband spins me in a circle when I show him the test. I kiss him once, twice, three times over.
We should talk about names, I say.
So soon? He asks.
Right away, I say and he kisses me, once, twice, three times over.
*
A week later, my uterus wakes me at three in the morning. The moon shines through the bedroom window, bouncing off my husband’s hair and drool.
It is time for the first guess. My uterus can be so demanding.
I don’t know the baby’s sex, so I run through as many names as I can in my head: modern ones, traditional ones, invented ones. There’s no good way to choose a single name, so I think of one I like, that might resonate with the rest of my body.
Quinn, I whisper.
No, it spits back, disgusted.
Something catches in my throat and I dash for the toilet, vomiting just as my head reaches the water. That was lucky, I think, then realize I am wrong. Nothing about this is lucky. I am on the cusp of another loss, another defeat. I flush the sick away.
My hand moves to my belly. I have two guesses left.
*
What do you think the name is? I ask my husband over dinner.
Do you mean what names do I like? He twists his fork into his bowl and lifts a swirl of pasta al limone to his mouth. A chunk of lemon zest plants itself in the corner of his lips.
I have a list on my phone, he says.
You do?
Yes. I don’t know, I started it a while ago. Whenever I meet someone with a name I like, or read one in the news. Not the bad part of the news, but you know, other stories.
Tell me your list.
He pulls out his phone and reads. He always surprises me with how prepared he is, how ready. I never feel ready for anything.
Matthew, Joseph, Evan, Willa.
Those are almost all boys’ names.
Oh, he says, I guess so. It’s a work in progress. I’ll add more names.
Matthew, Joseph, Evan, Willa, I say into my bowl of pasta. None sound right to me. There’s no way a cluster of cells named Joe is clinging to my side.
A week passes and I cannot think of a single name. Everything is wrong in one way or another. Too familiar. Too odd. Too boring. Too loud. At three in the morning, my uterus wakes me from my sleep.
It is time for your next guess, it says.
I wipe my eyes and turn toward my husband. He looks so peaceful. I will never be able to explain any of this to him, the pain, the pressure, the uncertainty. Maybe the baby will be like him, I think. Maybe they will be a junior, share his confidence. Share his name.
Daniel, I whisper, and he stirs ever so slightly. A lock of hair falls across his forehead.
No, my uterus grumbles. Not even close.
I feel sick, but instead of running to the bathroom, I stay where I am. I stay awake, unmoving, clutching my pillow, until the morning alarm goes off and I must unslump from non-sleep. I’m late for work, but no one seems to notice.
*
That afternoon, the receptionist at work waves me over.
The patient wants to know if you can be quick, he says. She has a work thing.
I call the patient’s name and lead her to chair three.
I heard you’re tight on time. We’ll clean your teeth as quickly as we can, I say.
Thank you, thank you so much. My next client is due soon.
What do you do for work? I ask, draping a fresh dental bib across her chest.
I’m a palm reader.
I nod, not knowing what to say. She wants me to rush so she can look at someone’s hand? She must see the skepticism on my face.
I can tell all sorts of things—life predications, romance, future, work, death.
Babies? I say. The word pops out of me so quickly, I can’t believe I’ve said it. I haven’t told anyone we’ve been trying. Trying and failing. It feels like everyone knows already, that they can tell just by looking. It feels too sad to say aloud.
Of course, she smiles. I spot the plaque around her canines and get to work. Once I scrape it all out, once I apply the fluoride, call the dentist over, unclasp the dental bib and walk her to the front, she hands me her business card. Call anytime, she says.
I only have one guess left. After work, I call the woman from my car and make an appointment for the following morning.
*
When I walk into the palm reader’s shop, I feel transported back to college with all the trippy drapings and beads and posters; the terrible dim lighting; the smell, if not the sight, of dust. She moves a stack of books off a chair and tells me to sit.
Let’s see your hands, she says, and I show her. She gives a soft, knowing moan.
You have good instincts, she says. There’s something you are right about, even if you’re doubting yourself. You know what to do.
I do?
You are a gardener. You know how to tend to things. I see much longevity for you.
I think of all the plants I’ve killed in my life and ask, Can you see a name?
She looks at my hands and I follow her gaze down, desperate for something to emerge from one of the many lines, nooks or knuckles.
I don’t see names, she says.
Just one?
See this, she says, pointing to the middle of my palm. This line represents health. Do you see how long it is? I ignore everything else she has to say. Why did I think a palm reader would help? I have lost so much time, so many chances. Matthew, Joseph, Evan, Willa. Quinn, Daniel. None are right.
I stare at that long, dumb line on my hand. A new name appears before me, so obvious and clear. The sound echoes in my head. I know it. I know it is right like I’ve known nothing else in my life.
I rush out of the shop.
How was the haircut? My husband asks as I push past him for the bathroom.
The nausea comes like a wave and I bow before the toilet, but nothing happens. It’s time, my uterus says. You have one guess left. My organs feel like paper, ready to crumple.
I know the name, I tell my uterus.
Say it.
I am right about something, I say to myself, repeating the palm reader’s words. I am right about the baby being a junior.
You already guessed his name, my uterus reminds me. The cramping deepens. My arm swings to the rim of the toilet out of instinct. I know this feeling so well. I cannot stand this feeling.
No, I say. That is not what I mean. A junior.
Say it.
The baby will be named after me.
Say it.
The baby will be Rue.
My uterus is silent. The pain simpers off slowly, then all at once. I sit on the toilet and the water beneath me turns a sunny shade of yellow. No blood. No cramps. Nothing stormy or awful or foreboding. There are no horror stories here. I pull a pregnancy test from the drawer and pee on it. I am pregnant, still.
Something new comes over me—a good feeling. I wash up at the sink. My eyes have never looked so relaxed, so certain. So like myself. The baby will be named after me. And that’s when I hear the scream.
I sprint out of the bathroom. My husband is on the floor of the kitchen.
Above him, on the counter, is a bowl of mangos, peeled. Some have been cut into fine pieces like gold. Some are still whole. Some are turning brown, stained with blood.
I cut myself, he says. I cut myself. He keeps saying it, again and again, in shock something bad could happen to him.
A chunk of his finger is on the floor next to him. It is both a lot of finger and quite small, lying on the tile, separate from the rest of his body. It no longer looks human, nothing that used to touch me, assure me, love me. A slick of blood lies under it like a plate, red as plums. It’s growing bigger, stretching outward.
My husband faints. His head collapses to one side. I grab a dish towel for his hand and wrap the wound like a bundle, like a long wish come true. These things happen, I whisper. He has so many other fingers. I kiss his hand once, twice, three times over, then call for an ambulance.
Brooke Randel is a writer, editor, and associate creative director in Chicago. She is the author of Also Here: Love, Literacy, and the Legacy of the Holocaust. Her writing has been published in Hippocampus, Hypertext Magazine, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere. Find more of her work at brookerandel.com.
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