Future Home of the Living God(87)

It’s almost poetry. I hate to have to eat it. After a moment, I turn back over, my fist curled, my face stony. I try to still my heart, to breathe normally.

The doctor gives a tense little smile, glances around, and folds her arms and drums her fingers. She writes something else down and gives me the bit of paper.

Jessie, it says.

I stare in wonder, mouth the words. “The hospital?”

She nods.

I described Jessie once as a pale, skinny, chinless, nerdy type of woman. I said she was mousy, bland, limp-haired, and cave-chested. I called her the Dweeb, but I remember she went from noodly to rock steady. She really did have the nerves of an outlaw, not a dweeb, whatever that is. Now she has completely changed her look. She’s chic, a leader, with tousled blond hair and fashionable blue eyeglasses. She has a chin. Where she got it, I don’t know. I soon find out a few things. Turns out Jessie was not a nurse, she was an OB-GYN posing as a nurse in order to get women out of the hospital, disguising and hiding them, past security. Turns out she nearly blew her cover getting Agnes Starr off the birthing table, out of the hospital, in a body bag punched with breathing holes.



December 18

I complain about the bright spots, exaggerate my headaches, and get sent back to the doctor. But this time, and the next time, the others stay in the room and Jessie can’t talk. At last, there is a moment, and I find out that Agnes used a box cutter blade that Jessie taped to her upper arm as she went into labor. Jessie pretended that Agnes had died when her baby was born, and laid her into the bag. Agnes slit the bag open in the deep of night. She made her way out of the morgue.

I show a tiny note. It gives my old address, and where the money is still buried. And it asks:

What are my chances, baby’s chances?

Both of you 15 to 20 percent chance survival.

Will you keep track of where they take my baby?

Yes.



December 23

I know the Word. It is the oldest word in any language, first utterance. Ma, ah, oh, mama. Mother. Not the word uttered by God to make life, but spoken by the baby who recognizes the being on whom life depends.

I will hear that word. I will know that word. I will stay alive.



December 24

For once in my life, I am right on time.

9:25 p.m. It begins.



December 25

Estrella told me it was not going to matter, and it didn’t matter where I was giving birth. Or who was in the room, except that there was no Jessie. No outlaw. That mattered. But I forgot. I am the flame above the beauty of the fields. One by one the saints entered the room. Over the next hours thousands of spirits were admitted. We were surrounded by a jungle of plants. I shine in the waters. I burn in the sun, the moon, the stars. The saints were silent. All that mattered was getting through each contraction. Then the next. And the next. I could see myself reflected in the stainless steel panels. I was in an ocean shooting sparks of light. The waves were pain. I was flung up, dashed down. Over and over to infinity and then when I thought I must have died, I took a breath, and I was surprised. The ocean also took a deep breath. The day was gone. The night was dark, the light softened, and I realized that thousands of candles cast this glow and the gorgeous music that I heard was the thousands of spirits and human beings singing, The soul is not in the body. The body is in the soul. I heard the other song, the women’s song, between the contractions. I heard your baby song. And I pushed. The pushing went on forever, until, with a violence I didn’t know was in me, I pushed you out.



You were blue, just a slight tinge. As you breathed you turned pinker and redder and the soft fuzz that covered your skin began to glow like copper. Your velvety limbs unfolded, tensile and strong. You tipped your head back. Your eyes were the newborn’s slaty blue, but darker, already burning to live. You held my gaze and I put my finger into your hand. You stared at me, holding on with an implacable strength, and I looked into the soul of the world.



It’s you, I said. It was always you.



The sting of the needle stole my consciousness. As I slipped away, someone pried apart your fist and I felt you lifted from my arms.



December

Extremely weak. But still here.



January

They say my heart is damaged.



February

My dear son. I know you’re going to read this someday. I can tell that you’re going to wonder what it was like, in the before.

My parents would tell me things about the world, the way it was before, the way they knew it and loved it although, they always said this, We didn’t know it was heaven.

I would ask them, What was it like, years ago? The real cold, the deep cold?

And they would tell me.



Sometimes when the lake froze quickly and the wind was high, volumes of moving water were trapped beneath the ice, said Sera. Then you heard muffled explosions deep down, in the center, and rending moans where the ice met the islands. Cracks like gunshots. Hollow reverberating gulps. Sometimes there were the quick staccato reports of snare drums, fading in and out, as if a marching band wound its way back and forth below the ice.

If the ice froze slowly, the lake made a different music. A delicate whisper as the frozen wave tips touched. If the cold waves drove hard, fracturing the edges of the ice sheets, the shards tinkled together or rang off-key. The lake was surrounded by haunted wind chimes. Sometimes the lake breathed a tortured sigh, its lungs full of broken glass. If the temperature dropped, 50 or even 60 degrees overnight, the lake might freeze clear, trapping leaves and even small fish. You walked out on the ice, threw yourself down in your snug nylon snowsuit, and peered into an altered world.