The Limits of Enchantment by Graham Joyce

Author:Graham Joyce [Joyce, Graham]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: G&S Publications
Published: 2013-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

20

‘Ultrasound. You’ve heard this old wives’ tale and you’ve heard that old wives’ tale, and I’m here today to tell you there is no way of knowing the gender of a baby unless you have one of these.’

MMM had a machine plugged in at the front of the class. It was a huge evil-looking cabinet with a screen and dials and switches, and trailing leads and wires like it hatched out writhing snakes just for fun. It looked like a nasty piece of science fiction. It had taken two caretakers to wheel it into the room and set it up for us to see. MMM said it was a great boon to obstetrics. She patted the machine as if she’d wired it together herself, or as if it were a capsule that had brought her safely back from space.

‘We’re going to need a good bicycle,’ Biddy said loudly, ‘if we’re to take one of these contraptions out and about with us.’

MMM did what she always did with Biddy’s remarks, and that was to squint through her glasses, scrape her bottom lip with her prominent front teeth, and pretend Biddy was slightly simple. ‘No, Biddy. Midwives will not be expected to carry one of these around. One day, and that day is still a long way off, one of these will be set up at every hospital. This one we have here at the college is for teaching purposes.’

I say she pretended. Sometimes MMM seemed so short of irony that maybe she actually thought Biddy had contemplated putting the machine in the wicker basket mounted on the handlebars of her bike. Biddy, though, was never thrown by this manner. ‘So we’re learning about a machine we’ll never get to use, then. I see.’

It was only the second week of the course and already I could see the war shaping up between Biddy and MMM. Whenever Biddy spoke it was always with humour or arched, so that you took what she meant indirectly. MMM always said what she wanted to say with no room for margin nor skew, nor space for misunderstanding deliberate or otherwise. These two women couldn’t possibly inhabit the same room, or breathe the same air. They shouldn’t even have been put in the same lifetime together. It was a mistake.

‘Well Biddy, it’s crucially important to keep abreast of technical developments. A modern midwife should know of the resources available to support any difficult diagnosis. That’s why I’m showing it to you, here, this evening.’

I could see the alliances forming, too. Some of the women on the course were irritated by Biddy’s interjections. They just wanted to blink at the sci-fi equipment and go home to make their husbands’ suppers. Others supported Biddy with a well-timed chuckle directed against our teacher’s squinting superiority. As for me, I wanted to side with Biddy: I wanted to challenge MMM, to speak up for Mammy and say there is indeed a way of knowing a child’s gender long before it sees the light of day, but that only we few know of it.

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