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God Gift

Blogs: #21 of 25

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God Gift

GOD’S GIFT
By Yelena Tylkina
“You missed a spot.”

Nikolai Nenko, “Kolya”, pointed his swollen, hairy finger at the kitchen’s ceiling.

“We need a second coat of paint. I want the apartment to look new for the baby.
It better be a son! Women are worthless…” he exclaimed with contradiction free, firm look on his face and banged his fist at the table. Than he moved forward gently slapped the swollen belly of his nine months pregnant wife, Dina and added:
”I will name him after myself! My Junior.”


Dina, at the moment, was standing on a chair, with her left hand holding the top of the refrigerator, stretching her body far up while her right hand moved a large brush with crimson paint back and forth. She was painting the kitchen’s ceiling. Dina had a hard time keeping her balance on a kitchen chair so, instead of answering her beloved Kolya, she just moved her shoulders nervously like she was trying to scare off a fly. Nikoly put out his last cigarette, gazed at the cigarette-butt for some time and wrinkled his forehead as if trying to remember something of importance.

“Red kitchen is very patriotic. Yew! A good beginning for my son, maybe he will choose a military profession. Nikolay Nenko Junior- the Officer!” Kolay commented with joy in his eyes, then crushed the empty pack of cigarettes in his hand and complained to Dina that the smell of paint gave him a bit of headache and that he had to step out to clear his head and to get some cigarettes. Did she need anything from the kiosk? Maybe some sweets, or some cold beer, because a woman in Dina’s condition must have cravings from time to time, you know.

Nikoly stood up from his chair, yawned, stretched his stocky body, made boxing moves with his hands in an illusion of a boxing match with an invisible opponent and disappeared from the kitchen. Dina heard pocket change drop on the corridor floor as Kolya started a long chain of curses and the entrance door slam against its frame as Kolya’s baritone descended downstairs.
A soft embrace of a peaceful silence gave Dina chills. She glanced at her bare arms, covered with goose bumps, shook her body a couple of times like a happy dog and started singing:

“… Willow, green, little willow
You bended over Fast River,
Don’t conceal, Let me know,
Where is my love gone?”

The cosmopolitan, Kieve native couple married three years ago. They began to worry that Dina was sterile during the second year of the marriage. Privately, Dina agonized over her ability to get pregnant. She strongly believed that her marriage would collapse if she didn’t get pregnant soon. And now, Dina’s stomach was “bigger than a globe” as Kolya would say, and she felt like a queen in her kingdom. Loved, protected and needed. Who could ask for anything more?

Glowing with happiness from a thought of coming close to motherhood, Dina worked enthusiastically, bending and stretching in every direction her swollen - but not for long now - body. She would stop only to sweep beads of sweat from under her newspaper hat, or to pull down her sun- flower pattern housedress that hardly covered her protruding belly. She had so many things to do before baby came. She would try to finish painting her tiny, “khrooschouvka” apartment today, then…

Dina stopped working, stopped thinking and squatted down on the chair. The air bubble got stuck in her windpipe. She grimaced and moved her chin from side to side, rolled her eyes in and out from her eye sockets, puffed her lips forward and gasped for air like a dying fish on the shore. Then still holding the brush in her fist, Dina knocked it against her rib cage, splashing red paint all over her self and the kitchen. Finally, she belched.

“R-wow!”

The power of the belch was so overwhelmingly intense that the chair she stood on suddenly moved. Dina lost her balance and plopped her butt on the floor. A hot waterfall ran out between her legs, creating a puddle around Dina’s thighs.

“Oh My God! My water broke!”

Dina jumped up. Cupping her crotch with her hands, she rushed to the kitchen window and stuck out her head.

“Kolya, Kolya!” She screamed into an empty street.




But her husband was nowhere to be found. Dina rushed out of the apartment down three floors and two blocks of agony to reach a pay telephone.

“Hello! My waters broken! Baby is coming! What? Address? …and wait outside? I am outside! Ok………..Ok!

After the emergency phone call, Dina dragged herself back to her building with the hope of finding her husband. She hadn’t quiet yet reached her building than she heard the siren. Dina waved her hand and screamed, signaling her location. Still, the ambulance car drove passed her. Dina went into a hysterical fit, pulled up the bottom part of her dress and waved it like a flag. The ambulance car backed up rapidly and suddenly stopped in front of Dina. She groaned from surprise and seized her belly for protection.

Totally soaked in perspiration, the ambulance driver jumped out and helped the pregnant woman to get inside the ambulance.

“I’m sorry Honey! I’m alone on this shift! Please try to hold on till we get to the hospital!”

The ambulance roared and leaped down the road. The siren screamed, “Get out of my way! Get out of my way! We have a situation here! We have a situation here!” OOOOOUUUUUweeeeeeeee!OOOOUUUUweeeeeeee!

Inside the ambulance, the stench from fresh vomit attacked Dina’s sense of smell and suffocation squeezed her throat. The ambulance had neither a bed, nor a place to sit on. Dina remained standing and held herself steady as the ambulance raced and twisted and turned, by grasping a sticky overhead cable inside the cabin. The floor was covered with a mélange of liquids that the human body produces. Her feet slid on the slimy floor and Dina banged hard against the ambulance wall but, through sheer will, she maintained her balance. Dina felt her abdomen snap and her insides begin to slide downward. She howled with pain and desperately scanned the interior for a medical robe, or anything that even appeared clean. At a corner of the cabin, she spotted a stack of newspapers.

The child stuck to the newspaper like a fresh kielbasa.

The boy was pink and had a very loud voice. The ambulance finally reached the destination. The driver helped the young woman with the newborn child in her arms to get out. The bright sun and fresh air punched her in the face. For a moment, the world spun and she almost fainted.

“Oh Honey! Hold yourself together!”

Evidently, even experienced driver was not prepared for the ultimate reality and began to fuss around Dina.

“You did it! Look what kind of a warrior you’ve given birth to! A Superman! I can’t believe my eyes!”

The driver took off his not so medically white jacket and wrapped it around the young mother.

Dragging her feet like a drunken wino with the taste of the umbilical cord still fresh in her mouth, Dina entered the hospital. A beastly looking, red-faced nurse – who was really meant to be a butcher, barricaded the entrance.

“Hold on! What’s this? Eh? You’re bringing your infections in here? You gave birth in the street, then stay there! Get out! Go home!”

The exhausted mother walked out and sat on a bench under a linden tree. It was a fresh October day, full of sunshine. Migrating groups of birds were singing going away songs. The little boy smiled. The malachite autumn sky reflected in his eyes. Wrinkling his nose, child blew a bubble with all the colors of the rainbow.

“Look at this gorgeous baby! This is simply God’s gift! The whole world has blossomed!”

The new mother looked up and saw the joyous, baked-apple face of the old woman.

Then Dina finally realized her situation, as if she was seeing everything for from a distance. Her housedress was damp and smudged with blood and mucous that still dripped from her thighs. She wore but one dirty slipper and held her child wrapped in a newspaper. Dina twisted her face and bared her gums in silent cry and began to rock her now skinny, fragile body, back and forth.

“Cry honey, go ahead, tears are the best remedy for pain.” With the corner of the sweaty sleeve of her brightly colored blouse, the old woman began to clean the child’s face. “Look honey how the newspaper has imprinted itself on you baby’s forehead! I can read it: M-e-d-i-c-a-l l-e-a-p f-o-r-w-a-r-d. Ha! Perhaps he will be a Professor, or a Doctor!” She then gently stroked Dina’s hair.

“To give birth is not a big deal, Honey. The real work is start now. Trust this old woman, she knows. I have on my one seven kids. They are all over the country. Some go even as fare as Vladivostok. Some are in jail. One is dead… In a new life is a new hope.”

Event Date: 7 October 1977

Creative Realism @2005