The Birthing House Read online

  He missed Jo that night more than he could remember missing anyone since Holly, and he would have cried himself to sleep if he had not still been in some form of shock. The night was warm and long, full of half-visions every time he nodded off on the grass with the dogs by his side. He dozed on the football field as the air cooled, and he became aware of the orange tint of his eyelids soon after.

  He woke on the field and the dogs were gone.

  When he had climbed the steps out of the stadium and made his way down the three blocks to Heritage Street and to his front porch, he found them beating their tails against the door.

  They wanted to go home. They had no other choice.

  After searching the house (feeling and finding nothing out of place) his fear was cut in half, and the thirty-minute hot shower washed most of the other half away. The yesterdays were becoming like dreams, their contents vanishing as quickly as he could forget them. He left messages with the front desk and on her cell, telling her only that he missed her.

  He sat in the office thinking about a job. Thought about becoming a father. Wasn’t that a job? There had been an article on Salary.com he’d seen a few months back. Some crack team of industry experts added up the hours and skills and decided stay-at-home moms were worth $131,000 a year. Stay-at-home moms had to be a nurse, a chef, a teacher, a driver, and a nanny all in one. Maybe all he had to do was wait for Jo to have the baby and - snap, just like that - overnight he’d be worth $131,000.

  Right now house-sitting was not a job. But he had an obligation.

  She answered the door, left it open and walked back into the kitchen while he followed her in.

  ‘There was no one there,’ he said. He knew she wouldn’t come back if he told the truth. He might have imagined it, he told himself. ‘I never saw anyone in the library.’

  She ignored this, as well as his assertions that Jo was in Michigan and he was not playing games. What would be the point? He confessed that, yes, he had felt something, but that could have been the fear working on his imagination.

  ‘Maybe there was a . . . presence in the house, but if so, that only proves what I’ve been telling you all along.’

  ‘What’s that?’ she said, drinking a peach yogurt concoction from the plastic bottle.

  ‘That I could really use your help.’

  ‘I think I’ve been telling you all along I don’t have any answers.’

  Conrad nodded. ‘What are you doing for dinner? I can cook something, unless you have plans.’

  She set the yogurt down and burped. ‘No, I don’t have any plans.’

  ‘You look like you’re doing well. Do you need anything for the baby? The, what, the prenatal vitamins?’

  ‘I don’t need anything,’ she said.

  ‘Everything was fine when you were there, right? I know it got a little personal at the end there, but I thought we had kind of a nice time. Don’t give up so easily, Nadia.’

  ‘You think I’m crazy,’ she said, flipping through a copy of US Weekly with a pregnant starlet on the cover.

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘You will.’

  ‘No, I won’t.’

  ‘Sooner or later every guy calls me a psycho.’

  ‘That’s why you’ve never been in love?’ She closed the magazine. ‘You’re not psycho, Nadia. I know psycho women, and you’re not one of them.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  Jesus, could he say anything that didn’t make this girl roll her eyes? ‘Look, I won’t bother you. I’ll be making teriyaki bowls later.’

  ‘Maybe,’ she’d said. ‘But probably not.’

  He tried to stare her down but she would not budge. He went to his ace in the hole.

  ‘Five hundred now,’ he said, placing the bills on the table.

  ‘Two thousand after.’ She looked at the money. ‘After what?’

  ‘After the rest of it. But no more breaks. We don’t have much time.’

  Nadia was stretched out across the love seat like it was a fainting couch. He hoped the food was a way in, like the money. She’d wolfed down two bowls of sticky rice, with broccoli and thinly sliced filet mignon he’d marinated and grilled for her. He’d eaten one bowl and then gone back to the iced tea. It calmed him to watch her eat.

  Feeding her, feeding the baby.

  ‘You really know how to cook,’ she said. The dogs huddled around and under her legs. It was what they did when Jo was here and he felt another pang of guilt that this neighbor girl, not their true mistress, was the one keeping them company.

  ‘I’m glad you liked it. There’s more if you get hungry again.’

  He left the dishes in the kitchen and took a seat on the couch to her right. He was wearing his Sebadoh tee, camo shorts over bare feet. It was too hot for shoes, and he wondered if he looked younger than thirty.

  She was wearing holey jeans and a faded green pocket tee shirt, his favorite look on most any girl. Her feet were bare and her toes had been painted iridescent pink, like little pearls. She’d done something home-made to her hair. It was shorter and choppy around the bottom. The bangs were pulled back on the center of her head, leaving the rest of her straight hair hanging squarely around her face. Her pregnancy had moved from a sometime distraction to a sort of Merlin ball that worked the opposite way: he fed by gazing at it, or wishing to gaze into it, to see the future. He looked at the bulge under her shirt and imagined a honeydew melon, a huge scoop of ice cream. Then, like she’d thought of it ten minutes ago and was ready to dump it on him, she told him another story.

  ‘A few times after the time with the dolls, I was attacked in your house.’

  ‘Attacked attacked? How? Where?’

  ‘Upstairs. In the guest room.’ She nodded up at the ceiling.

  ‘What happened?’

  As before, she looked away as she recounted it.

  ‘I was alone, or just with the children. The Laskis were out at the VFW. I made brownies while they sat in front of the fireplace and played with those block things, those thick Leggos for dummies. I tried. I really did. But every time I got close to them, they would just stare off into outer space. So I pretended to be with them while I was on the phone with Eddie, then I put them to bed at eight like I was supposed to.’

  ‘You knew Eddie back then?’

  ‘I’ve been friends with Eddie since I can remember.’

  ‘What kind of friends?’

  ‘Eddie’s not important now, not in this story.’

  ‘Okay. So you put the kids to bed.’

  ‘I even read them a story.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘The Tale of Pigling Bland, I think. One of those little antique books they had that smelled like mold. They didn’t fall asleep after I’d read it twice, so finally I just got up and turned off the light and went into the next room to read.’

  ‘What were you reading?’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘I’m a book guy. Just curious.’

  ‘One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.’

  ‘For school?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘That’s a helluva a book for a thirteen-year-old.’

  ‘Not really. The style is very simple. That was part of the point.’

  ‘To capture the voice of the everyman,’ he said.

  ‘And to make the story accessible to every man,’ she added.

  ‘Jesus. I hadn’t even thought of that, and I’ve read it twice. Did you get that when you were thirteen?’

  ‘I don’t know. And, no, it did not give me nightmares, if that’s your next question. It wasn’t the book.’

  ‘And you’re sure no one was here, just the kids?’

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘What time was this?’

  ‘Maybe eight thirty. Does that matter?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Then shut up and let me finish.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘I think I fell asleep. I mean, I must have, because one minute I was
reading and the next minute I was waking up really fast. Like when you have a dream that you’re falling and your stomach freaks out and then you wake up right before you hit.’

  ‘I think I had that same dream in this house.’

  She rolled her eyes. ‘Everybody has that dream. It’s like the most common dream you can have, next to flying. I looked it up.’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Smarty pants. ‘Go on.’

  She settled into the memory, zoning out with her hand stroking Alice behind the ears. ‘So I’m falling, I wake up, and the room is blurry and kind of dark. I can see shapes in the room with me. There are at least three of them. They’re big, like farmers. Big rough women in heavy coats or dresses. All in gray wool or black. They are standing in the corner, watching me. It’s the zeks, I thought. From the book. But not like I really thought they had come from the book. It was just a name that popped into my head. I knew these were something else.’

  ‘Zeks,’ he said. ‘The prisoners in the labor camp.’

  ‘Right. The name just stuck in my head. I can’t see their faces because everything is blurry but I can smell some chemicals and it makes me panic like I need to get out of the house and maybe that’s why they’re here, to get me out. I try to get up from the chair and ask them what’s wrong but I can’t move. The zeks are moving in a circle, surrounding me. And I guess this is when I realize it’s me. Everything that’s wrong here is me. I’m the thing they’re staring at.

  ‘They start to close in, tightening the circle. It looks like they’re holding hands but I can’t tell for sure. They seem to float toward me instead of walking. I can’t hear or see their feet. I

  can’t lift my head. The closer they get the more gray they are. Like animal skin beneath the fur. Finally, when they are almost on top of me, I can see their faces but there are no faces. Everything above the shirts is gray. Flat, like smooth stone. I’m so out of it I’m more curious than frightened, but something inside me is saying this is bad and getting worse. My body is trying to . . . my mind is understanding that my body wants to jerk away or get up but it’s like my body is thinking of it, not my mind. My mind is just watching.

  ‘When they lean over me and their arms are coming down at me I know they are touching me. I can’t feel the arms or hands but they are too close not to be touching me. I’m numb. Then I got scared. Because if they’re doing something to me, shouldn’t I be able to feel it?’

  She paused and looked down at her hands as if wanting to make sure they were still attached to her arms. ‘You’re not going to believe me with the rest of this.’

  ‘I believe you now. Why wouldn’t I believe the rest?’

  ‘The next part is where Eddie stops believing me. Like I’m telling him this for his entertainment or some shit and he gets to choose what parts he likes and what parts are stupid. But he doesn’t get to choose. You don’t get to choose.’

  He nodded. ‘I promise.’

  ‘One of the zeks touches my forehead. Her hand is right above my eyes even though I can’t move my head to look up. She stands beside me while the other two women are crouched in front of me. All I can see is the room in front of me at about waist level and a little bit above. The tops of the heads are smooth and gray like the rest of their heads and faces. Then they all jump back, because suddenly someone else was there. They all moved back and stood in the corner, like they were afraid of this other one.’

  ‘What other one?’

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see. He was taller, thinner.’

  ‘It was a man?’

  ‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see him. He was wearing black like the others and his face was covered, like one of those women in the Middle East. Maybe it was a woman. I don’t know - but she was big.’

  ‘Jesus, do you think it was—’

  ‘I don’t know!’

  ‘Okay. Calm down.’

  Nadia rubbed her eyes before continuing. ‘The other one was in charge. She, he. It took over. She leaned over in front of me and started pulling in bursts while her other hand is squeezing something, maybe pressing me down. And then, very faintly, for the first time I begin to feel something.

  ‘I can feel something hard inside me, like my thighbone or my back, and it’s being pulled like the handle of a stuck refrigerator door. I’m scared of what it might be and what they’re doing. I think if there is something bad inside of me I want her to get it out. That doesn’t make any sense, I know. But for some reason I still trusted them. A part of me feels the same way you do at the dentist. It’s my fault I have a cavity. The dentist is the guy who’s been working on your teeth for years. It’s not pleasant, but you know he’s right. You have to let him work. It was like that.

  ‘Then two things happen at the same time. I hear a voice in my head and it’s my voice but it’s not me talking. It’s telling me no, don’t let them do it, don’t let them do it, you have to stop them, and it’s getting louder. It’s me shouting at myself to stop whatever they are doing. The second thing that happens is I start to feel pain. It comes slowly like it’s real far away. Like a train. I visualize it as a train and I can barely see the light on the front, but it’s coming, and the light is the pain. The closer it comes the bigger and brighter the light becomes and the more it hurts and I know when it gets here it’s going to be unbearable. I can’t stop the train. I don’t know why it’s coming but it is.

  ‘The one kneeling in front of me bobs her head like she sees something she likes and the me inside of me starts shouting no stop stop stop get away get up and get away and finally the pain wakes me up because it’s so close now I can see the blackness behind the light and it feels like someone is burning me from the inside out, and it makes my body jerk and then I have to move. The more I move the more it hurts. And the more it hurts the more scared I am. She starts pulling again and I can feel the arms in front of me, and maybe something like hands inside of me. I’d never had anything inside of me, not inside of me . . . not then, and so I can’t be sure, but I’m pretty sure she’s inside me and she wants to take me apart in there. You’ll never be put back together again! the voice screams at me. Once it comes out you can never put it back in!

  ‘Then the worst thing happens. All three of the zeks in the corner snap their heads up all at once. For the first time I can see their eyes. Their eyes are marbles, black like a newborn’s eyes. I’m still waiting for them to smother me or tear me apart when she rakes her arms down over me and the pain explodes inside me and the blood, so much blood, it’s black like ink comes out and covers her arms and her face. The ones in the corner run from the room but she stays a minute longer, speaking in a voice that is either mumbled or in another language, I can’t understand her, but it’s a prayer she saying over me, I think. And then she is gone. The pain is so bad the dark room is gone and everything is white and I can’t think or see or move, it’s obliterating me the pain is so incredible. It’s beyond me, it’s impossible to describe because I wasn’t there any more and it felt clean. Like it was washing them all away, the zeks can’t hurt me, and she can’t be inside me any more because the pain and the white is too strong for them. And that’s it. Then it was over.’

  Conrad swallowed audibly. ‘Did you wake up?’

  ‘I was awake. I had been awake the whole time.’

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘It just ended. The white and the pain faded and when it was gone I was alone on the bed. I went to check on the kids. They were lying in bed with their eyes open, staring at the ceiling. They looked like they were dead.’

  ‘Jesus, did they see them, too?’

  ‘I don’t know. They wouldn’t talk. I asked them if they were okay, but they just sat there and I couldn’t deal with it, so I turned out the light and went downstairs. The Laskis came in laughing. They were too drunk to walk and Mrs Laski left her purse at the place, so I said forget it, pay me later, and I left.’

  ‘Did you tell anyone? Besides Eddie?’

  ‘No. Not then. The ne
xt day Leon came over and gave me seven dollars, asked me how the kids were. I said they had a hard time falling asleep. I think he knew, though, because I was still kind of shaken up and he said something like, “I know it ain’t easy putting them down, but that’s the way it goes around here, so thank you.” Something like that.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’ Conrad began, then stopped. She was like someone with an alibi and doesn’t care who believes her because she was certain of the truth. ‘Nadia. If you felt fine after, how can you say it was real?’

  ‘Why are you making me do this?’

  ‘Am I making you do anything, Nadia? Really? Because it seems to me you keep coming back, you keep telling me these things.’

  ‘The zeks - those gray women - they were real. They took my baby away.’

  ‘Who—’

  ‘I’d never been with a man. But I knew I was pregnant. And someone else, those zeks, whatever they were, they were judging me. When they saw I was unfit, they decided they didn’t want me to have the baby. So they took it.’

  She was a scared kid. She was confused. She’s still fucked up about it. Something had happened, but not this. She was wrong, had to be.

  ‘I told you, you don’t get to choose what to believe.’

  ‘Then explain it to me, because I don’t see how.’

  ‘It took me a long time to understand. It was real, but it didn’t happen to me. Not then. Not that night.’

  He realized she was crying.

  ‘I was seeing myself, later, like I am now. I saw myself pregnant, and now I am. I saw what would happen if I got pregnant . . .’ she was near to sobbing ‘. . . and I didn’t deserve this baby.’

  ‘Oh, no, Nadia. No.’ He went around the table and sat beside her, resisting the urge to hug her. He held her hand. ‘Don’t think that.’

  She looked around the room. ‘Now do you understand? Why I don’t want to be here?’

  ‘Nothing is going to hurt you here.’