Future Home of the Living God(60)

“I better get back,” he says. “She can walk from here?”

“It’s common practice during labor,” says Mom. “It helps the baby come faster.”

“I’ll be okay,” says Tia. “The contractions stopped. Maybe out of fear? I haven’t had one since we left the garage. Let’s get where we’re going.”

Shawn retreats. We’re in here now with Tia until her baby comes. If anything goes wrong, there is no Plan B. No crash C-section.

“We’re going to be all right, you’ll see,” says Sera. Her voice is almost blithe, but her assurance can’t be real. I follow her in. We slowly toddle single file down a skinny, rough-walled passageway. The way gets narrower, the ceiling buckles. We hunch lower and lower until we are crawling on our hands and knees—the gravel cuts into my kneecaps and palms. I try to drag our stuff with me and sometimes have to inch along on my side like a worm. I break out in a terror sweat. I am underneath tons and tons of rock—massive and senseless amounts of rock. I try to make my mind a blank, try to meditate, follow Mom without thinking. But then we come to a heavy wall with a black mouthlike aperture beneath. It looks like a medieval dungeon wall. We are supposed to slide underneath. Tears stream down my face.

Mom edges under on her stomach, and pulls her stuff behind. Astonishingly, Tia rolls through quick as a cat.

“Come on,” says Tia, panting, “push your stuff through.”

“I can’t do it,” I whisper.

“Do you need help?” says Mom.

“I can’t do it. I’ll get stuck.” And I do get stuck. Mom gently torques me this way and that, rocks me along under the stone, pulls me through inch by inch. My heart is beating so fast I almost pass out. By the time I am on the other side I’m sick. The two have to wait while I go to a corner, walking upright anyway, to puke. There is a shrine where I stop, a niche carved in the rock. In it, there’s a little plastic statue of Mary. Her blue cloak and peach-pale face are grimed with sooty dust. I say two Hail Marys and feel a little better. In her presence, I will be all right. Maybe she’s looking after me—she should be looking after me. It’s her job. I put a little pebble at her feet, an offering, among many other little stones. People like me put them there, grateful for her protection as they squeezed under that nightmare stone.

“Let’s go,” I say.

The air is bad, stale and oxygen thin, mineral smelling, dank. It makes us sleepy. Mom says to breathe deeply, concentrate on breathing. I break into a clammy sweat and try to control my racing heartbeat.

“Stop,” says Tia.

We hold her as she gasps. Her breathing surges and she cries out. “It’s a bad one.”

“A good one, a good one,” says Sera, and in the thin flashlight’s beam I see that Tia wants to belt her for saying that. I don’t blame her. But unless Sera is relentlessly cheerful about our situation, at some point we’ll probably just sit down and get hysterical and die. When Tia’s done I pat her back and help her stumble along. The passageways widen precipitously, then narrow alarmingly. We climb a tiny set of steps cut into the rock, a winding set of stairs. Then we pass through a dark esophageal tunnel.

“There’s a domed room, warm, just ahead,” says Mom. “It’s wired for electricity and there’s even a tiny stove, vented to the outside. And Shawn put a drum of dried soups and stuff in there, too.”

“Ramen?” I say.

“Maybe.” Sera’s trying to cheer us along. “That’s how come I’ve got the roller bag. It’s filled with gallon jugs of water.”

The news of water and hot soup seems to galvanize Tia and she tries to stride through the passageway. “I just want to be lying down when the next one comes,” she says. But she isn’t. It is the next one after that.

Our little room, a real cave, has got limestone walls and lumpy stone jutting out all over. There are some ancient handwoven rag rugs on the floor, and a futon, chewed by rats. I stuff back handfuls of batting until the mattress is intact enough for Tia to lie down.

“Put these down on top of the sleeping bags,” says Sera.

She’s got a bunch of hospital pads in her roller bag. Plus antibacterial wipes, a surgical sewing kit, alcohol swabs, sterile latex gloves, and those eyedrops mandated by state law even though the last thing this baby’s got to worry about is an STD-induced eye infection. Still, I’m so relieved and impressed with my mom that I put my arms around her—you in between us. She holds my face and speaks, looking into my eyes.

“We’re all going to be all right, especially Tia. Don’t you worry.”

This sort of against-the-odds cheer used to drive me crazy. Now I suck it right up. I bury my face in the soft black scarf I knit for her. After everything, she’s somehow kept that, run away with it. I stroke it and want to cry. Then Tia yells and we’re back in her labor. I sit down with her and train my flashlight on the watch. She’s down to three minutes apart now. Sera passes her flashlight up and down the walls until she locates an industrial extension cord dangling against the stone. She plugs the stove in, finds a small lamp, and plugs that in too. She turns up the oven and opens it wide—in a few minutes the room seems a little warmer. There’s a heavy tarp rolled up over the doorway and Sera lets it down, to keep in the heat. There is a saucepan and a teakettle in the drawer beneath the oven. She fills the kettle with water and puts it on the top back burner. I hold Tia in my arms as she goes through five more contractions. Then five more. I think she must be ready to have the baby. Sera puts on a pair of the sterile gloves. Her hands look ghostly.