She wanted to know if the baby was a boy or a girl, but it's too early to tell. She asked if the baby was tall. The technicians laughed, and said we won't know that for a long time. M asked if the father was tall. She said, yes, he was. Then, said M, it's a good chance that the baby will be tall. And we were all quiet, watching the strange, unlikely wink of a pinpoint on the screen, which the tech told us was the baby's heartbeat. Francine's baby is ten weeks old. Do people count the age in utero? Like, three months from the baby's birth, will he be a year old? Or she...will she be a year and nine months on her first birthday? I don't know. I haven't thought much about things like this. M was trying to translate words like "effaced" and "diaphragm" and "internal os " into French, and I was sitting by, trying to picture them in English and coming up with nothing.
I've never cared. Women get pregnant, I watch them blow up and wear cute clothes, I go to their parties and watch them unwrap more cute clothes, and then I get their birth announcements in the mail. They bring the babies to church and show them around--I admire some, I've worshipped at least one, and most of them I am polite toward.
But now there's this little brown baby whose life I am a little bit responsible for. Who knows what will happen a few months down the road, but for the present, I haltingly translated it out of the abortion clinic and into an ultrasound machine. Here's something spooky for you--the projected due date is my birthday.
My French-speaking skills are best personified as Quasimodo. Looking at the butterfly-wingbeat improbably representing the baby's heart, I thought how altogether absurd it is that my crippled language skills allowed us to see it.
I didn't mean to get into this drama, this Lifetime TV special. I just wanted to practice French, to regain the sophomore-level fluency that I'd attained a few years ago. Meeting with Francine a couple times a month was cheaper than taking classes somewhere, and I thought it might have the side benefit of letting her get out from time to time and help her feel a little more at home in America.
I bought her a coat for Christmas and felt uncomfortable about being viewed as some kind of patron, so I asked her to pray for me about my difficulties at work. She grabbed my hand in the car and lofted an oration that could have taken the unclean spirits out of Benny Hinn himself.
Two days later, my manager at work stopped treating me bad.
Two months later, Francine asked if I could take her to the hospital. On the way there, she pulled out the paperwork with a Planned Parenthood logo stamped on the top.
She met some guy "en route"--just some nobody that she ran into at a bus stop or on a corner, while she was taking a walk. "Prendre l'air" is the phrase she used, "decouvrir la vie un peu." Taking the air, rediscovering life a little. They went to a restaurant, then they went to a hotel. His name was Mike, and he was black. That's all she knows. She's never seen him since and doesn't care to. It wasn't a big deal, she said. It was a little "defouler." It relaxes one, it's amusing. It's just a little fooling around.
She called me while I was at my friend's birthday party last weekend, saying she was in pain and wanted to go to the hospital right then. I didn't know if she meant go back to the abortion clinic, or if she needed the emergency room, or if she was just being emotional. I went into the bathroom and collapsed on the floor, sobbing strange, unlikely tears that came as heavy and cleansing as vomit. I can't do this, I said. I'm completely alone and I don't know what to do and I can't even talk to her about what she wants to do. I can't shuffle this responsibility off on anybody, and I can't just drop it, either. I came out and my friend, whose birthday it was, began to comfort me and exhort me. She said, you can do this, you have everything you need in Christ. And, like Francine, I sucked it up and said, you're right. I can.
Do we all do this, or is it just me? Just blunder into other people's lives for our own amusement, our own enrichment, thinking we'll give a little to them of what they need and take a little of what we want. A little "defouler" that unexpectedly leads to "le coeur qui bat", the beating heart. My French is improving, no question.
Francine was afraid to have this baby when she first told me about it. "I'm a refugee, I have no job, I have no money, how can I have a baby?" she said to me, over and over. But today, while we were talking with the counselor at the pregnancy center, she smiled with more warmth and vulnerability than I've ever seen her show. She wanted most of all to have a picture of the baby. They gave her the ultrasound photos and asked, "Who are you going to show them to, first?" She handed them to me and said, "Á toi."
I'm irresponsible, I'm barely making any money, I can barely get on time to the places I'm supposed to be, I forget to call and show up. I didn't plan on this. I don't feel ready for this kind of commitment.
How can I be the kind of friend this woman needs?
