Gladys

I don't want to write this post.

You see, I started to write it weeks ago. I had written about Johnny and Elias, and a dear friend that sits next to me in one of my classes suggested that I write about Gladys next.  But Amy had just told me that Gladys was not doing well, and I didn't want to write about her under those circumstances. I didn't want to feel like I was frantically clinging to the only memories I would ever have of her. I decided I would wait until she got better.

She didn't get better. She passed away early Friday morning.

And so tonight, I will tell you about Gladys.  The order of events is probably way off, but the heart doesn't always tell stories in order.  I've written some of this before. I'm going to write it again.

It was just a normal morning.  I had cooked breakfast already and came into the living room. Timmy said good morning and casually mentioned that he thought there might be a new baby, but he wasn't sure.  I bee-lined it to the nursery, running barefoot over the dry grass, dust flying with every step.  I skidded into the room and nearly bowled Nathan over.  Honestly, I didn't know the babies well enough at this point to recognize a new face, so I just counted them. There were the right number of heads.  I went to good-naturedly berate Timmy for his mistake, only to eat my words a few minutes later when one of the nannies confirmed that there was indeed a new baby.  She said she was five months old, but she seemed a few months older than that.  I don't remember which nanny it was.  It didn't matter. All I could see was this beautiful, cranky, fat little baby, sullenly curled up in a bouncer, whimpering quietly, and glaring at me with all the mistrust that one little being could muster.  I got lost in those eyes.  It was like she knew how heavy the world was, like she knew so much more than any child should ever have to know.  She was wearing a pink and yellow dress. The body and sleeves were a silky material, and the skirt was sort of lacey.  It was faded and torn, but it was clean. 

I reached toward her.  I could feel the heat before my hands even touched her.  She was raging with fever.  My heart jumped into my throat, and I breathed a silent prayer. Sweet Lord, not another one. Not another sick baby that I didn't know how to save.  I scooped her up and held her against me. She smelled like rancid sweat and dirt.  I didn't care.

Her steady whimper turned into a full-out cry almost as soon as I got her in the main house.  Something about it made her anxious, but she calmed down if I took her outside.  I fixed her a bottle, and she refused to take it.  I tried every nipple I could find.  It was like she didn't know how to suck, or just didn't want to.  She finally struggled herself to sleep, and I laid her feverish body down in defeat.  By now I had stripped her to try and cool her off.

Her family was coming to sign the papers.  I asked Tom if I could sit in on the process, and he said that was fine.  Her mother had died from something really random-- "stomach pains," I think. Her father was someone from the Congo who had basically just been passing through.  They had fed her nothing but a few spoonfuls of "porridge" a day since her mother died.  Her unwillingness to take a bottle made more sense now.  There was so much more to the process, but eventually, the papers were signed, and the orphanage was her home.

At some point the medical officer came.  He gave her a malaria test, and it came back positive immediately.  He said to start her on Coartem, an antimalarial.  Her family had brought her medical records, but they didn't appear to actually be real.  For starters, the recorded weights for the last few months could not possibly have been right.  All of the entries were written in the same handwriting and the same pen, as if someone had hastily scrawled it down before turning the corner and handing it to us.  It was like this little girl had no past at all.

I was desperate to get her to eat.  She would sleep fitfully for a few minutes, then wake up terrified and wail until I picked her up and cradled her against me.  She instantly calmed a bit if I took her outside.  I spent so much time walking in slow circles in the shade of the big tree outside the house, singing softly to her of "dancing bears, painted wings," my own tears falling to mingle with hers, because I just couldn't make her believe that she was safe.  And still, the fever raged, despite dose after systematic dose of baby tylenol.  I worried the medicine would be too much for her system to handle-- malaria is  is vicious on the liver and spleen.  I would lay a cold cloth on her sweaty forehead, and it would literally be hot to the touch seconds later.  I sat with her on the stone wall of the courtyard that evening and bounced her from knee to knee, promising over and over again that it was all going to be okay.  I'm not sure which one of us I was trying to convince.  Majory, one of the nannies, came and sat with us.  She cooed to Gladys and stroked her bald little head.  "My child died of malaria," she said.  I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing.  Then she hugged her and gave her back to me.  I think it was the only time I saw Majory really hug one of the kids.

I made a cereal/milk mixture that was thick enough to make spooning it a little easier, and I cradled her in my lap.  Her head lolled back over my arm, and her mouth hung slack.  Her eyes stared up at me.  They weren't accusatory anymore.  They were just desperate, and tired.  I brought half a spoonful of milk to her mouth and dripped it into her cheek. She swallowed. And then she took another spoonful. And then another. And after an hour of painstakingly dripping it into her mouth, she had taken it all down.  It wasn't much-- less than 75ml, I think-- but it was something, and for the first time, I let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we might be able to fight through this together.

The cat adopted her.  At first, I put her in the cradle to sleep, but she was really too big for it, and she slept so lightly that if she moved at all and touched the cold metal bars, she would wake up screaming.  Chai did her best to help.  That first night, I curled up on the couch with the cradle next to me so I could reach out and check on her if I needed to.  Chai slept pretty much on my face, with her tail draped lazily over my shoulder.  If Gladys moved at all, Chai would hop into the cradle.  I woke up more than once to find her snuggled up next to her, and each time I wondered if angels came in feline form.

The fever came in waves, like it does with malaria.  I struggled to keep the Coartem down her.  She spit up an awful lot for a child who was barely taking down calories at all, and she was pretty much guaranteed to spit up if I gave her the medicine. 

One morning one of the nannies and I took several of the babies, including Gladys and Jessie, down to the clinic.  There was a group of women sitting a few feet away.  The nanny translated for me.  They had commented on each of the children in turn. Referring to Gladys, they said, "She is very dark. But also beautiful."

And she was. She was easily the blackest kid at the orphanage, to the point that she looks almost comical in the pictures I have of her next to the other babies.  She had a heavy brow and a flat nose with big round nostrils.  Her full pink lips were dreadfully difficult to coax into one of her rare grins, but when she did smile, you knew she meant it.  She would blow spit bubbles sometimes to amuse herself.  She wasn't "pretty" maybe in the way that the world defines it, but I thought she was absolutely drop-dead gorgeous, even if she could produce more snot than any child I have ever laid eyes on. 

With only two doses of Coartem left, her fever was still going strong. The medical officer gave me a baggie of Quinine to give her.  He cut the pills into quarters and left me dosing instructions (which, many weeks later, I discovered were actually way wrong).  The quinine was so bitter that she wouldn't swallow it at all.  I swear this kid could throw up just on impulse.  I tried it for a day and a half, but it just wasn't working.  We switched to injection.  I don't remember how much they were giving her per injection, but I remember it was an awfully large amount.  A baby can only handle about 0.5mL a shot. I think she was getting about 4 times that. Her hip would swell as the fluid was injected, and she would cry in pain if I accidentally put any pressure on the area.  After a day and a half of going to the clinic three times a day and waiting around for someone to show up and give her the shot, they finally sent the medicine home with me to give her.  Three times a day, I walked down to the nursery to give it to her. I hated doing it.  I know how nasty that medicine is, and I could see the physical pain it put her in.  It can cause terrible hallucinations as well as permanent deafness and muscle damage, among other things. 

Then one morning, the fever broke, and it didn't come back. That was also the first morning that she smiled at me without some major prompting.  I just walked in the room, and she smiled.

Eventually, she got to the point that she was trying to gum the spoon to death every time I dropped some formula in her mouth.  I tried a bottle again, but she didn't seem to know how to suck.  I found a nipple that was split at the end so that the milk came out in a fairly steady stream.  She took it.  I had to be careful not to give it to her for more than a few seconds because she couldn't quite swallow fast enough to keep up if I did, but it helped her get the hang of a bottle.  Then we moved to a normal nipple, and finally she was drinking like any healthy baby would.

She moved to the nursery about halfway through this process because Jessie had come and was demanding pretty much every spare moment I had to give.  I just couldn't handle both of them at once.  I managed it for two nights, but but they were both eating every two hours, so by the time I fed one and got her to sleep and fed the other it was pretty much time to make a bottle for the first one again.  Timmy, Jazz, and Troy were great to take them of a morning so that I could go grab a few hours of solid sleep, but I figured the night nannies were there for a reason, and they could handle Gladys through the night.  I had her a lot through the day though, at least until Jessie got worse.  She was very, very clingy.  She had finally come to trust me, but it was that kind of fragile trust that comes at first, where every time I left the room or put her down she seemed to think I wasn't coming back to pick her up again.  Timmy often commented that she was a rather ugly baby (I think partly to annoy me...), but I think he kind of liked her.  Once I came into the living room to find him dancing with her to some terrible rock music.  She loved it.

She spent a lot of time in the dining room and kitchen with me.  One morning Essie scooped her up and comforted her.  Sometimes I would put her in the little chair that hooks onto the counter and let her play while I bustled around doing whatever.  One time someone gave her a piece of bread to play with, and she thoroughly enjoyed slobbering it into a mushy mess and rubbing it into the counter.

When I would walk into the nursery, whatever nanny was there would jump at the chance to hand her over to me.  Gladys was never an easy baby, even after the malaria was gone.  They would say, "Your baby is crying for you. Your baby wants you. Your baby, she cries too much."  She was kind of stubborn.  She wouldn't stretch both arms up for me, but she would hold one hand out when she saw me, as if to say, "Yeah, you can pick me up if you want..."

I loved to go in the nursery first thing in the morning as all the kids were getting dressed.  I was helping one of the toddlers into a pair of jeans and distractedly asked a couple of the kids to go rock Gladys in her bouncer, because she was crying and my hands were full.  I looked up five seconds later to see Moriah rocking the bouncer with every ounce of her toddler strength.  Glady's startled face, which was flying systematically up and down, made me laugh out loud.  Thankfully, she was strapped in, or else Moriah would have bounced her headfirst onto the stone floor.  I jumped up and grabbed her, and she gave me this scowl that clearly said, "Yeah, thanks..." before dropping her head solidly on my shoulder and sighing theatrically.

Even though she was probably about the same age as Ana and Ephraim, she wasn't nearly as developmentally advanced as they were.  She spent most of her playtime sitting on the mat, leaned up against whoever was closest to her, watching the world around her with those giant eyes.  She was a very low stimulus kid.  Antics that would make the other babies around her age laugh didn't phase her at all.  She wasn't particularly happy or unhappy; she was just sort of uninterested, or shy, like she was reserving judgment for now. 

The morning Jessie died, Amy reminded me, "You still have Gladys."  I needed to fill my empty arms with something, so I went and got her from the nursery and sat with her on that same spot on the wall where Majory had met us five weeks before.  I fed her the morning bottle and talked to the kinders, who had all gathered around me, as one by one the Texas group emerged from their rooms to be met by the news that we had lost Jessie.  I carried her around a lot that day, and in the days that followed.  The Quinine had left it's mark-- she cried in pain if I absentmindedly patted her on the bottom-- but her hearing appeared to be intact.  Amy took her at one point and was playing with her on the couch, and she made her giggle.  I played with her fat, round little toes and daydreamed about how strange it would be to come back the next summer and find her walking and talking. 

The morning we left, I didn't hug her goodbye. She was asleep, and I didn't want to wake her up. She sleeps so lightly, you see, and I hated to disturb her.

And that's how I'll always remember her.  She was asleep on her stomach, both arms wrapped up around her head.  Her mouth was partly open. Her head was facing away from me to the right.  She was wearing a tie-dye shirt and matching shorts that a friend of mine's aunt had sent as a donation.  Her long eyelashes curved down to meet those black, round cheeks, and she was peaceful.  I whispered to her that it wouldn't be long.  Just a few months.

Weeks passed, and school did its best to eat me alive. One morning Timmy chatted me on facebook to let me know that he had walked into the nursery to find Gladys struggling onto all-fours, trying to crawl.  I was so proud of her.

Timmy took some pictures of the kids and posted them on facebook for those of us who were stuck stateside.  Gladys' face had thinned out so much.  Of all the kids, it seemed like she had changed the most since I had left.  She was starting to look a bit more like a little girl and a bit less like a baby.

Time went on.  Amy told me one morning that Gladys was not doing well. My chest tightened.

I knew that Amy had taken her to the hospital.  My head expected the worst.  My heart wouldn't believe it, not even when the phone call came, and so I stared at the screen that said "Unknown ID" and willed it not to be.  Before I could make myself answer it, the call went to voicemail.  The message confirmed what my heart knew.  Gladys was gone.

It's hard to process it, really.  I'm not there.  I didn't see her get sick, and I wasn't with her when she finally gave up.  Part of me thinks it won't be completely real until I get back to that crib where I left her and see that she's not in it.  It's been an interesting thing to try and handle during the holidays.  Someone commented rather coldly that life didn't stop mattering just because one baby had died.  They're right. Quite to the contrary, in fact. The things in life that do matter become much clearer, and suddenly what's under the tree and whether that carol has been overplayed this year and all of the consumerist tradition that has grown up to be a holiday really doesn't matter at all.  It's all in perspective, I suppose.

These are the fleeting memories I have of her.  They're not much, but they are precious to me, as she is.  I've caught my self humming a lullaby for the past couple of days.  It's one I wanted to share with her when I saw her again.  Maybe she's listening now.

"Goodnight my angel, time to close your eyes
And save these questions for another day
I think I know what you've been asking me
I think you know what I've been trying to say
I promised I would never leave you
Then you should always know
Wherever you may go, no matter where you are
I never will be far away."