Song: The Rake's Song (The Decemberists)
025. antagonist
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They submerge me in the warm bathwater, knees and belly surfacing, my lungs collapsing like paper fans. I can barely breath. Stomach contracting, lifting. The punching, drumming. Breathe. My belly, my baby. The porcelain of the bathtub is slippery under me, the room is smoky, hazy, the fire turning everything red-faced and drunk. Just breathe, girl. They stand over me. James with his slumped, corroded face and the half-blind midwife with her right eye milky as a fingertip. The midwife talks to me. Just talks to me. The words fall, the belly seizes. I pray. I send my prayers off like petals listless from a blossoming tree. God in heaven, help me. Help me with this child. The windows are fogged, cracked. Outside, it snows. The trees white and sagging, like old breasts. The hymnals whistle through the slim cracks in the clapboards.
“You gonna make it, Miz Josie. There ain't been a single child I ain't been able to deliver smooth and red, Miz Josie. You gonna do just fine. Just push. Push him out.”
Push.
James stands hunched and bland. His lips bulged forward, his forehead sloped. Yellow teeth, barbed, shoveled. Hands in his pocket, cigarette dangling from his mouth, his face bent, splotched, like a good book. He stares at me. Just stares. I know what's on his mind. He wants a boy, godssakes. He's grinding over that thought, shaking it out, fermenting it. I push and push and tell it to come out a boy, or lord in heaven, I think he'll kill it.
I feel as if my guts are being gathered in fistfulls, uprooted.
Hair sticky on my face, heaving, pushing. Belly ribbed and mooned like a bullfrog throat. The faces above me like planets. Just push, Miz Josie. Child at my doorstep. A-knocking, knocking. The strum of each contraction. Building up, condensing. My son. My son. James chewing real slow. His jaw lifting, snapping. The trembling cigarette, bouncing and red-eyed as an insomniac. The midwife's hands probing, guessing, blotting. Eyes staring forward, detached as orbit-less moons. The shriveled brow. The raisin lips. Screams coerced from my lungs, squeezed out. The baby emerging, crowning. Spreading, spreading. Fingers frantic and jobless. Breathless baby, breathless boy.
He chews and smokes.
I push.
The midwife with her pilfered hands and her coaxing, cooing. Bones and veins emerging, surfacing. Temples rounded, pressured, feels as if I'm gonna bleed from my eyes, ears, nose. Heartbeat residing in every artery like churchbell. James swings his head. The gutless room crowding around me. Pushpushpush.
“I can see it, Miz Josie! I can see it! Oh, he comin out real fast!”
I hold the edges of the tub. My knuckles turn white and stark, like barren wives. Rimmed eyelids, shackled breath. In and out. In and out. Puffing cigarette. Drawn lips. And the baby! The baby! Neat, candied face. Features small, gray, wrinkled. The old man expression. Indelible cheeks. Warm, sloppy body, held up against mine, blue and noisy. I hold my breath. Wish it out. I wish it into my arms, into this godforsaken world.
He taps his foot.
Just cry.
The tears, unbidden, unwelcome, like ants when the warm weather comes. Soft communication, sliding chin-ward. The midwife holds my hand. James wouldn't touch it. He lights a new cigarette. He appraises, examines. Blank head of silence. Fumed, gassed, his face like a trench. He catches me looking at him. Smiles. I close my eyes. The smile festers like a rumor.
“He's comin out. Godssakes, this'll be the fastest birth I ever done!”
Oh Lord, Lord. Make him good, make him right.
Just scream.
It snows.
I feel him leave me. Cold, whiteness spreads through my body, my chest. I decompress, uncorked, uncanned. Dizzy, dizzy. Fireflies of light crinkle in and out of my vision. James rises. The midwife scoops him out of the tub, snips the cord, wraps him in a blanket, all in one swift movement. Spanks his footsoles. There is the quietest, valved intake of breath. And he starts crying, wailing. His voice pealed and nodding. Shrill and wonderful. The midwife bounces him. I stretch out my arms. Baby, baby. Names? The necessity of a name hits me. James looks at it. His face shrouds, purples.
“What's wrong with it?”
Midwife with tight, white lips, her eyes laden. She hands me the bundle, kicking, slippery. What's wrong? I accept him.
“That's too bad,” she said. “That's just too bad. Happens ever once in a while. Nothin you can do about it. I'm sorry, Miz Josie.”
I look down. Broad, slabbed face. Slanted eyes, misshaped ears emerging like fungus. Webbed finger gaps, toe gaps. The thin, translucent forehead, all his veins and capillaries spread out like a map. Floppy eyelids, a swollen, empty stare. The fatty blubber skin. Wads of drool at the edges of its lips. Moron face. Dim, clumsy intelligence.
James looks at the midwife.
“Out,” he says.
She stands, shaking her head, collecting her rags and instruments.“I jest does my job, mister. I jest do my job the way it supposed to be done. An mistakes happen to the best of us, I'm sure. Retard or not, I'll still be expecting my pay. Five dollars by sunday, an I'm real sorry but – ”
“Out.”
She shakes her head again, big swinging, sweaty lantern, opens the door and steps out. Loose snow and little breaths of the night swirl in. The midwife leaves behind a cavernous silence, which rests and yawns like a housecat.
The baby cries. Open, pink mouth. Toothless, a snubbed nose. Its tiny fingers curl and uncurl like brainstems. Wailing, wailing. Loud and insurmountable. I look up at James. He just smokes. Bland eyes. His hard, black face pushed forward.
“James,” I say.
He reaches. “Give it to me.”
“What? James, what – ”
“Give it to me.”
“You can't do anything to it! It's a baby! It's our baby!”
I feel like fool sitting in the tub with a screeching baby in my arms, naked, sunken, protesting, light-headed, the room cupping around my like the face of a curious child.
My baby.
Wordless, James reaches for the the child. I shrink, roll, slide, screaming. He grabs a fistful of my hair and yanks me back. Baby wails even louder, trembling, tightening. Nonononono! Give it to me! For God's sake, you good-for-nothing whore give me the little bastard! James slaps me. I gasp, shiver. The baby slips out my arms. He snatches it up. My whole face feels like it's about to come loose. All the sockets and bones grinding. Waxy eyed. Pink and naked, the moon and snow staring blue and motherly through the window like a nurse. I cry, sob. James wraps himself in an overcoat and a scarf. Wailing, squirming baby. Hair plastered to his forehead like insect wings. The knubbed, bloody belly button. James, James! It's a baby! It's a baby, godssakes! What are going to do?
He opens the door and steps out into the bruised night.
