Free She Will Build Him a City by Raj Kamal Jha

and soft, when they wheel you into my room in the nursing home after they measure you, weigh you, clean you up. I have some stitches which hurt as I hold you in the crook of my arm, sized and shaped to make you a perfect fit. When you cry, they take you away to feed you because I am not ready with milk.
    Through the night, I slip in and out of sleep.
    ~
    I remember the day before and the day after your birth, my three days of doing nothing; of having, at my service, three nurses, two attendants, two doctors, from wake-up to sleep time. My legs massaged, my back kneaded; my heels, cracked in several places, dipped in warm water from where steam rises, fragrant, then dabbed dry, gently, with a warm towel and then, in the end, softened with cold cream. My first manicure, my first pedicure, I learn these words in the hospital, someone else cutting, filing my nails to a perfect shape – all edges rounded, dead skin removed.
    An attendant escorts me to the bathroom, holds my hand, like I am a little girl. I tell her, you don’t have to, she says, no, we have to be very careful, there is someone inside you now.
    The bathroom floor is dry, I stand under the shower. The nurse tells me to undress, I am awkward, she says, no one’s looking, don’t worry, I am going to close the door.
    I watch water run down my body, there’s a mirror in the bathroom in which I see myself, through the shower’s frosted door, my shape and, inside it, yours.
    The bath soap is liquid gel, so soft in my hands it slips between my fingers, drips to the floor, mixes with the water there, foaming a puddle around my feet. The towel Jincy, the nurse, gives me is so large it wraps me in its folds, one, two, three, half a four, almost like a sari, white in colour.
    Take two towels, Didi, she says, one for the shower, one for the hair. And drop them in the bathroom, leave them there, we will clean up.
    They give me a blue gown, buttons in the back.
    You don’t have to wear anything underneath the gown, she says, matter-of-fact.
    That night, I latch the door, step out of my gown, walk around in my room, I have never done this and so I do it again and again. I stand at the window and look down at the street. At people walking by, trams, buses. I wait for a crowd to gather, to point to me and say, look up, look, there’s a naked pregnant woman at the window, is she crazy?
    ~
    It’s like I am on vacation.
    There’s no waking up in the morning looking at the clock, no dragging myself to the balcony to light the oven, clear last night’s ash, no choosing the right-sized pieces of coal so that they catch fire quickly, no putting wood or paper to help the fire spread, no closing eyes to keep the smoke out. No ironing clothes, no cooking in the kitchen, no sitting on my haunches, no sweat trickling down my back. The nursing home has a generator so there’s no preparing for the power-cut every evening, cleaning lanterns with ash, no making new wicks from old clothes, no pouring kerosene oil. So I don’t wake up once I fall sleep. Except, of course, when they bring you to me twice or thrice in the night when you cry. Even then, I just hold you close and my big sleep drags your small one into its folds.
    Breakfast is cornflakes and milk in a white ceramic bowl cool to the touch. They check on me every four hours, lunch you won’t believe: three kinds of vegetables, two pieces of fish, chicken too, bread so soft, so white, so warm I don’t want to eat it, I want to show it to your father. Rice is poured onto the plate compacted, shaped like a bowl, steaming fresh with fragrance of herbs I have never smelt before. Glass of milk, chilled in the fridge; orange juice, and, on top of all this, ice cream. Strawberry one day, vanilla the other, they ask, would you like a cup or a stick, choose, we can give you both if you wish. And towels, big and small, rolled up, warm and cold, whatever feels good at that time, for the forehead, for my face.
    All this because of