A History of Wild Places(33)

In my bare feet, I leave the safety of the porch and walk out into the field, listening.

I hear the cry of a woman.



* * *




I wash my hands in the white basin sink outside the birthing hut, a bar of homemade tea tree oil soap foaming between my fingers, dirt sloughing off down the drain. The scent of the soap reminds me of all the births I’ve witnessed over the years: counted fingers and toes, ten and ten, wailing cries and lungs sucking in their first breath, followed by exhausted sighs of relief from the mothers.

A baby is about to be born in Pastoral.

I enter the circular birthing room encased with windows, the morning sun just beginning to peek through the tree line, warming my face. The skylights overhead have been propped open and the sounds of the forest—birds beginning to chitter, leaves brushing together—filter in. The circular hut was constructed beyond the main row of homes and buildings of Pastoral, away from the commotion of community life. It rests beside the creek, tucked among the trees—a quiet, restful place where mothers can feel calmed by the sounds of the forest.

“She’s almost fully dilated,” Netta informs me quietly when I enter the room, then her footsteps move swiftly away from me, toward the far wall, her left heel dragging across the wood floor. I’ve never seen Netta—she came to the community later than most, after I lost my eyesight. But I know her by her walk, her odd labored steps, as if one leg is bent wrongly outward from the other. She is a short, narrow, wisp of a woman, and she always smells of basil and a little of something sweet, like wild bearberries.

On the bed, in the center of the room, is Colette Lau; I can hear her throaty moans. And seated on a wooden stool at the end of the bed is Faye—Pastoral’s resident midwife.

Netta, Faye’s assistant, mutters something at the far side of the room, like maybe she dropped something. Cursing her clumsiness.

“Baby’s coming fast,” Faye says to me when I reach the bed, my fingers finding the white cotton sheet and then Colette’s hand, seized into a fist.

Too soon, I want to say in response. The baby is coming too soon. But everyone in the room already knows this: Colette still has another eight weeks to go. Too soon.

I hear the faucet turn on at the little sink inside the room. Netta is preparing cotton rags, heating water, busying herself with tasks. Idle hands…

I lay a palm on Colette’s shoulder. “Bee,” she says, her voice breathy, strained. “Is the baby okay?”

I do not come to the deliveries to assist in the process. I have no interest in midwifery. I am here to listen, to feel for the baby’s heartbeat, to sense if anything changes inside the womb: if anything feels wrong.

I slide my small hands over Colette’s stomach, swollen and shifting like an ocean tide, the baby inside is anxious—ready. “She sounds good,” I tell Colette. “Strong. Ready to be born.” A little lie to reassure her. The lies come so easily these days.

Three months back, I had been sitting next to Colette at the gathering when I felt the baby’s heartbeat thrumming rhythmically inside my ears. A distant pumping of blood, the rush of a heart pattering against not yet fully formed ribs. She was a girl, with tiny nub fingers and toes that curled together. I told Colette she would give birth to a girl, and she cried, clutching her stomach. Colette came to Pastoral twelve years ago, just before everything changed, before the forest was unsafe and the borders could not be crossed. But she’s never talked about her life before, in the outside—only that she lived in southern California and was living a life that didn’t feel like her own. So she fled north to Pastoral.

I wonder if Ash—her husband, and one of the community builders—knows that she’s in labor. Two years ago, they fell in love swiftly during the heat of midsummer, and soon after, they stood beneath the Mabon tree in the gathering circle while Levi bound their wrists together with yellow yarn, a symbol of their union. I felt envious—a pit sprouting thorns in my stomach—listening to the words Levi spoke, how their love could not be severed after that day.

Levi and I have never bound ourselves to one another, never stood side by side and promised to only love the other in front of the whole community. He insists we keep our devotion a secret. A quiet love, he called it once. But I’ve always sensed a hesitation within him, reasons he won’t share with me. And in truth, a part of me likes the idea of it—a secret love—a thing meant only for us. But there are other times when I want a loud love: screaming, lungs burning, moon-deep kind of love.

Colette claps her hand over mine and squeezes, her expression wincing away from the pain. The contractions are coming swiftly now.

The baby is close.

“Slow your breathing,” Faye instructs, standing up from the stool. Faye never delivered babies in the outside world. She was a therapist before she came to Pastoral, counseling families and children in a small town in Washington State. But when the community’s midwife passed away, Faye took up the responsibility and read every book we had about childbirth. “Your body knows what to do,” Faye assures. “We just need to listen to it.”

I don’t say aloud what I also feel inside Colette’s belly, the strange sputter, the uneven fidget. The baby is anxious, wants to come out, but something isn’t quite right.

Colette grips my hand as the delivery begins in earnest now.

Faye coaxes her to push with each wave of contractions, while Netta brings damp washcloths, draping them over Colette’s forehead, cooing softly and stroking the hair from Colette’s eyes. Netta is well-practiced, and someday she will take over as Pastoral’s midwife when Faye’s hands begin to tremble too badly for deliveries, when her eyes can no longer focus and her stamina wanes.