Future Home of the Living God(61)

“Right after the next contraction, I’m going to check you,” she says to Tia, and she does. Her face is remote and far away.

“Pretty soon now, huh?” says Tia in a tough, scared little voice.

“Well,” says Sera, “you’re dilated.”

“How much?”

Tia and I are prepared to hear that she’s ten centimeters, that she’s ready to have her baby.

“Two,” says Sera.

“Two? Two? Oh god! Oh shit!”

Tia throws herself back against the rolled end of the futon, into the sleeping bags. I can feel the despair swirl out of her, the flailing fear. “No! Here comes another!” And Tia reaches out and grabs my hair so hard that she’s pulling it out and we both scream. She tears at my face with her screwdriver fingernails and manages at the same time to lash out with one leg and catch Mom’s jaw with her heel. Sera goes down, stunned, kneels on the floor and then tries to crawl forward to help me pin Tia. But Tia’s slim, strong legs kick too fast. She rakes out again with her talons, scoring down the other side of my face, drawing blood. I think maybe what the Slider said was true, or maybe it’s a curse for murdering Orielee—these babies can’t be born without medical intervention. Something terrible, unnatural, is taking place and we are doomed to die in a welter of bloody, agonized hysteria.

Tia goes unconscious when the contraction stops. Her hands go limp. She shuts her eyes and begins to snore.

“Is she going to die, Mom?” I whisper. “Is she trying to kill us? What’s the matter?”

Sera rights herself. She’s already got Neosporin out for my scratches and is touching my face with the grease.

“Oh, Tia just now? Honey, that’s normal.”

*

I feel funky, sour, and Sera gives me a couple of her antibacterial wipes, cautioning she’ll need the rest for the delivery. Tia is now making progress. I don’t know what else to call it. Progress, of course. Going through increased pain in order to get into even worse pain that will mean the end of pain. Clearly, once you’re in labor, you’re in. The only way out is through. By some handy miracle of utter denial, I don’t take Tia’s labor personally. Don’t feel the clutch of terror that I probably should, watching her struggle to climb out of each contraction. Her hands and legs move rhythmically. Like she is crawling up and down vast cliffs. She does not complain. She seems to have decided to obey the pain, not fight it. Her face is burnished with sweat. I offer sips of water. Sera touches her lips with her fingers, smears on beeswax lip balm. Tia doesn’t talk to us anymore, she just crawls into the pain, up and over the lip of the incline, and then crawls down into a little nest of sleep.

Hours pass. I can’t believe I write this. Hours pass. I do not understand how her body doesn’t break. She stays whole, as far as I can see, but her eyes roll back to the whites. And she greets each oncoming contraction with a powerful sound, a growl that starts low in her ribs and rises in pitch until, at the ceiling of her contraction, it is a cougar’s scream. I heard that sound twice, once in my backyard and once out camping with my parents in Glacier Park. They closed around me in their sleeping bags and none of us slept again that whole night. Now the same sound from Tia rises in the little cave, until Sera says, checking her once again, “It’s time to push. Push!”

Instantly, with the first push, Tia turns into a human being. Although her face swells, grotesque with blood, and her eyes bulge when she bears down, between the pushes she is weirdly animated. She’s herself somehow. She talks.

“Am I going to see my baby soon?”

“Soon,” says Sera, “soon. Ready? Now . . .”

But this baby is stuck. There is no budging it. Hours pass. I really cannot believe that I have to write that again. Tia is still pushing, her lips drawn back. Her eyes bloody and a tiny vein broken on the crest of her cheekbone. Mom takes the old chair in the corner and knocks the seat out. Tia sits in the chair and pushes down, into gravity, into the rock, into the earth, straining her hips to break. In this way she begins to move her baby. I’ve got my hands ready, sterile-gloved, underneath. No baby. I don’t recognize Tia. Her face is twice the size it should be and her hair is needles. She’s pulsing electricity. She is magnificent. But scary. Her eyes are sunken and her mouth drags at air. At one point, I think that she is dead. No motion. I freeze with her. She takes a huge groaning breath in and pushes again and there is the crown, the top of the head.

“Easy now, easy. Let’s just let your baby slip out,” says Sera.

Tia’s sound comes from the stone itself, the cave talking. With the next push the baby’s head is out, eyes shut, unmoving. I am cradling its face. And then another push and here is the rest of the baby and I’m on my stomach on the floor of the cave wrapping the baby as Sera, next to me, clamps off the cord and cuts it. Sera takes the baby. Tells me to catch Tia before she falls and to put her down on the bed. And then there is the first hint of fear in her voice, the first sign that Sera’s scared.

Tia reels off the chair and I nearly drop her, but we manage to tumble down onto the bed. Mom is working on the baby. She’s hunched over and she sucks something from the baby’s mouth, spits, then puts her lips to its tiny face and puffs. Tia’s bleeding. She delivers the placenta, but keeps on bleeding. I squeeze her hands. Raise her hips.