Acacia: Acacia

Chapter 21: Waiting for the kettle to boil

- 119 Nine months is a long time. Impatient and irritable, I felt like I was waiting, waiting, waiting for a kettle to boil. A low rumble. Swirls of steam. A hissing crescendo.The kettle will sing.The kettle will sing, and teatime will come.To soothe or stimulate, to warm or cool.Teatime will come. Eventually. You know how some women are said to have a glow about them when they are pregnant? I was not one of them. Morning sickness, chronic backache, and a host of complications that required a pharmacy of drugs. My body was staging a coup against me. I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t eat. I was anaemic and I wasn’t gaining enough weight. In fact, I had to be hospitalised a couple of times and put on a drip to keep me nourished. My blood pressure started doing a jeering jive. I was plagued with night terrors. And my feet were so swollen, I was quite literally walking on water. The sicker I got,the more I retreated into solitude and scorn.Ironically, I lived on baby food. It was the only thing I could keep down that had any nutritional value. Shell-shocked by an internal shudder I could not shake off, I again sunk into a wasteland of stalking shadows.A flat existence.An insatiable yearning forTaylorWolf. I was mad atTaylor for dying. I was mad at God just because. I was mad at my body for not working right. I was just angry, angry, angry. Careworn and emaciated, I stopped going to the studio. I simply could not deal with my conflicting hopes and fears regarding Sahara. I cried for - 120 an hour the morning I realised I could no longer touch my toes. All in all, pregnancy was less than fun. I wanted to crawl inside myself and hide there with my baby. After a couple of weeks of feeling wretched for shirking Sahara with no explanation, but feeling too pathetic to do anything about it, I called him to apologise for my aloofness. He was incredibly sweet and sensitive. He showed up at my apartment the next day with prenatal vitamins and ginger ale. I felt simultaneously silly and special. It was Gavin and Padma’s wedding that finally got me up and about again. They had two weddings actually, one in London with Gavin’s family, and the other in Jaipur with Padma’s family.As with Marcus and Rebekah, their love had somehow managed to unite two completely different worlds with ease and grace. Pregnant and puking, I was not able to attend, but Rebekah took tons of photographs so I felt as though I was there.The pictures from India were bright and colourful. Inspiring. Rebekah offhandedly remarked that the newlyweds should decorate their new apartment in an Indian theme. It hit me.A new apartment.Yes. After we were married,Taylor would often randomly sneak up on me – while I was studying or doing the dishes – and he would kiss me. Briefly but deeply. He would whisper huskily into my ear – “Hey!” – and then smile his vain, conquering smile. He loved that he could drive me crazy with one smile, one kiss. One touch and I spontaneously combusted. Thrilled, he would coolly return to whatever it was he had been doing before he jumped me. He never ceased to take my breath away. After he died, I kept expecting him to creep up on me and tantalise me with his touch. I lived under a constant cloud of disappointment. Every inch of our loft was saturated with memories of him. Every breath that I took there without him was both excruciatingly beautiful and painful. Being constantly surrounded by the stuff that had made up my life with Taylor was not helping me “move on” – whatever that meant. I needed a fresh beginning,a new space where I could hopefully figure out the whole motherhood thing. I also needed accommodation bigger than our loft - 121 where I could set up a nursery. And since I hadn’t started my residency yet, I also needed useful employment to keep me from running mad. Apartment hunting, moving, and decorating became my business – when I was not too sick to stand up, of course. My first thought was to move to Brooklyn in order to cut costs, but I stumbled upon an ideal two-bedroom apartment...