The Birthing House Read online

  Inside, she clutches her doll and dreams of Mother.

  When she awakens next her body is sore all over from curling upon itself in the tiny space which grows smaller with each year. She is shivering and when she places a hand on the rock wall she knows the fire upstairs has gone out and that she has slept through supper again. She pushes the piggy loose and crawls out, her large feet cold upon the basement floor. She climbs the stairs in search of sustenance. In the kitchen she finds a pot of cold soup and a scrap of hard bread, which she breaks. Alma carries her bowl to the front parlor and prepares to load the fire, but a thump from upstairs startles her. She thinks perhaps the fire is still burning in the belly stove upstairs and she carries her bowl up, up and into the library.

  The fire in the library is also cold. Alma hears the thumping sound again and forgets her soup and eats only one more bite of the hard bread before she turns to the room Mother made so pretty. Alma walks down the hall and around the black wooden banister at the front stairs for the patrons. Alma hears a woman in Mother’s room and her heart jumps as a rabbit. Though she knows it cannot be possible, for a moment she dares hope it is Mother come home and that the weeping sounds are Mother crying tears of happiness.

  Alma opens the door and sees three women of the house who have grown cold to her standing in the corner, heads bowed to the leather table in the center of the room with candles burning from every sill. The Other Mother on the table is tall and her lustrous black hair is strong, but she is not Mother. The Other Mother on the table is crying in soft rhythms and sweating all over her stripped bare body. Even though the winter is deep on the house, the room is very warm and full of the woman scents Alma knows from the house but stronger than ever before.

  Docca Gunree is kneeling before the Other Mother in her time of need and his glasses are almost falling off his large red nose. His thick black hair and gray-streaked beard are oily and dripping from his labors as he speaks in mumbled commands. The Other Mother screams louder in three short peaks and then begins to howl. None of the women in the corner turn to see Alma, and Docca Gunree is concentrating so that he is unaware Alma has entered.

  - the Lord has blessed Our Eden

  Alma draws near, called to the table as if she might at last understand an important piece of Mother’s history. Docca Gunree’s face turns red as he pulls and shifts his black boots and becomes impatient the way Alma has seen Farmer Mitchell with the foals in spring in the field beyond Black Earth. The howl goes on for minutes and Alma must cover her ears it hurts so much until Docca Gunree jumps back and the streams of black spatter his arms and face. As if by magic the behbee is in his arms and the women of the house run from the room. Alma thinks of the doll the way the Other Mother’s legs collapse. Docca Gunree pays them no mind as he takes the tiny behbee in his rough hands. Alma thinks the lil’un needs a bath so that he - Alma cannot see to know if he is a boy or a girl, but she knows he is a boy - can be swaddled and set in one of the basinets to await the women of the house come to feed him. Alma’s heart hurts when he cries, which are somehow small and very loud in the hot room.

  - forgive us dear Lord our humanly trespass

  Alma sees the blue cord that runs from the lil’un’s belly to the unseen dark between the Other Mother’s legs and Alma follows it up and back down, marveling at the connection. Docca Gunree’s other hand moves with the silver blade over the lil’un’s small round belly and he cuts and cuts. Alma sees the cord and Docca Gunree shakes his head, fighting something inside of him Alma cannot see, and Docca Gunree curses, weeping as his large hand moves.

  The world cuts. But the world does not cut away.

  Already the cord is wrapped around the neck and Docca Gunree is pulling until the small crying sounds gurgle and stop. Alma does not know how she knows, but at last she knows about all the behbees Docca Gunree has made and how though he says sometimes a woman must give a life to have a life, this is his choice, not His choice.

  Alma falls back on her bare feet and bumps against the wall.

  Docca Gunree’s face turns to her and his tears are flowing with the sweat and the black down his cheeks. His tongue pushes over his cracked lips. The Other Mother is not moving or screaming any longer and Docca Gunree’s red eyes are seeing into Alma until he knows what she has seen, what she knows. She screams and runs back and around and down the front stairs and deeper into the house, into her secret hiding place grown cold. Alma pulls the piggy in place and flattens her body against the wool blanket and holds the doll Mother made for her close to her chest and closes her eyes as tight as she can. She is careful not to sing but she knows the words and Mother’s sweet voice is here in the dark and her warm breath is on Alma’s cheek. She pushes away the memory of Docca Gunree’s face and the black and the little face and lips when he stopped and cut - and through the song Alma is with Mother and no longer frightened, even when his boots come thudding down the stairs and over the floor and the piggy is loose and the cold comes in and his hot wet hands are pulling her out. Even when he is tearing her dress on the piggy and lifting Alma high and throwing her down on the bed and screaming over her and pressing his wet lips and the salt penny blood and black beard against her young skin and his heavy hands are scratching are touching are shaking Alma for the first time in many months as he will again for many nights in the next six winters which are for Alma the longest seasons.

  Sleep the dream sleep o’ sweet child

  Mother is here

  when the sun she rises and when she sets

  Mother is your home, the only home Alma needs

  remember Mother lives forever, forever in Alma’s heart

  remember every day, o’ sweet child

  no tears for me does child Alma shed

  thread through a needle cannot mend a young girl’s heart

  Mother is here o’ sweet child Alma even when

  thread through a needle cannot mend a young girl’s heart

  She is standing before the mirror. Alma. She stands bare before the tall glass and marvels at her body, the strange power she feels building within. Her legs are equine, rippling with sinew and whiter than snow. Her hips are as dinner plates, sliding beneath her flesh as she twists. Her breasts are heavy in her hands, and she traces the mysterious blue lines pulsing beneath the surface like rivers flowing to the wide rose circles, one larger than the other, each aching with a dull throb she encourages and fears. Beneath her waist is thick delta that has grown as luminously black as the strands falling below her shoulders. She places one palm over the cusp of her belly and closes her eyes. She thinks by now she should be able to feel the lil’un inside, but his pulse continues to elude her fingertips. All the things Dr Justin Gundry has done to her. Alma knows she has given a life, but she does not have a life. Not yet. Or perhaps, as she heard one of the last remaining women of the house comment late one evening last winter, the things he has done have already ruint her. Perhaps she cannot make life. Was a time this thought brought tears to her eyes, but that time has passed. Alma fears not this fate. She does not know her age, but she knows she is a woman. She knows that Mother was correct. Alma has grown big and strong, and at last she is prepared to take a life to have a life.

  Downstairs the Other Mother with red hair of fire is singing her gayest song, as she has been singing for the past three months since her arrival, since Dr Justin Gundry gave her the lil’un. Dr Justin Gundry has grown old and feeble, but his spirits appear to lighten in this new Other Mother’s presence. Though the Other Mother with red hair of fire sings, her voice is not sweet like Mother’s. Alma knows the night is coming, and soon.

  Alma is standing over the basinet where the lil’un with red hair sleeps. She awakens at the sight of her, her shining black infant’s eyes searching in the dark. Alma extends a finger and she clutches it with a stubby but firm grip. She blinks up at her, and Alma loses herself in singing to her.

  She is still singing when the Other Mother with red hair of fire enters with the oil lamp and
begins shrieking.

  - Away, away from my child, Justin make her go away

  Alma is standing on the porch feeling the snow blow in. The Other Mother with red hair of fire is shouting but Alma cannot hear her words. She is staring at the Doctor, who cannot bring his red eyes to meet hers. At last he pulls his new bride inside and leaves Alma standing in the cold.

  Alma is pacing in the woods, stomping through snow that covers her ankles as she rakes her hands through the winter air, clutching and snapping at branches. Her shrieks echo through the dell and no one is here to answer.

  - mother mother mother mother mother

  Inside her, he feels the color of her mounting rage and knows it is a blackness without end.

  When Alma returns the house is silent, dark, sleeping. She moves through the front parlor, up the servants’ stairs, into the library. She walks on soft bare feet and opens the door to the Doctor’s quarters. He is sleeping deeply, the sour perfume of his medicine hanging in the air. Alma closes the door and retreats. She walks back around the black maple banister to the delivery room where some of the Other Mothers gave a life, that which has now become the nursery.

  The Other Mother with red hair of fire is sitting in the rocking chair, head bowed, with her back to Alma. The lil’un coos in the night before returning to her feeding. The lil’un is still suckling when Alma brings the blade through her mother’s throat.

  In the basement, Alma removes the piggy and places the swaddling child in her lair, making a nest of the wool blanket, adding another to ensure her warmth until she is able to return.

  - I shall call you Chesapeake, from the place Mother was born

  The child with red hair stares up at Alma, reaching for her finger.

  - Sleep the dream sleep, Chessie, until Mother returns

  Alma’s arms are burning. She has grown strong, but the Other Mother grows heavier with each step. The path to the forbidden place stretches out into the frozen night, and the snow is streaked red with each lumbering step. She leans forward, pulling as a mule pulls the plow through deep soil. Inside the forbidden place is a table and Alma rests the body there. Above is a rope dangling from one of the beams. Alma loops the rope around the wrists and neck and pulls. She knows the ground is too hard for digging, but tomorrow she will have to dig no matter the weather. For she knows the secrets the Doctor keeps and what bones wait under the cross in the yard. For many years he has kept these hidden from the rest of their growing society outside of the house in Black Earth. Alma knows there are men of the law who would come if she sent word and the Doctor would hang for his crimes, as the red hair of fire now hangs for hers. But she knows too that exposure would bring the house from under them and Alma would be lost without a home for Chessie. Worse, the people of the growing society would perhaps spread their judgment and take her Chessie away.

  She closes the door and washes her hands in the snow.

  Inside she warms herself by the fire. Her hands are stiff, and she moves them over the flames. Her work this night is not finished.

  Alma stands in the hall, in the doorway facing the sleeping Doctor.

  - Comes the time

  He is slow to stir and so she makes her voice stronger, undeniable.

  - Justin Gundry comes the time to join Mother

  Her voice, after so many seasons of silence, mutes Doctor Justin Gundry with a fear he has not known, but already he is rising from his bed. He is on his feet quickly, then hesitating, unsteady. Alma is forced to bring the silver blade to use sooner than planned, but she is not yet concerned. He lunges. Alma has grown tall and strong but the old Doctor is stronger. In the struggle that ensues between the master quarters and the hall where the black maple banister curves all the way around, Alma is pushed back even as she employs a life of hatred and rock-hard strength to plunge the knife into his belly and up, up, under the breastplate. He gasps, spewing spittle in her face. She rolls him aside calling his name over and over to place her judgment and for Mother.

  - Justin Gundry Justin Gundry Justin Gundry

  Justin Gundry the mortally wounded falls, but not before clutching his orphaned child Alma to tumble with him. Together they descend to the main floor foyer and the sound of Alma’s neck is as loud and small as a sapling birch in winter. He is on top of her, her hand still clutching the handle of the blade, the point of which the fall has driven into his spine. As he breathes his last, his gray eyes bore down and Alma releases the knife to take him by the throat. She crushes the bones under the flesh until his gray eyes run to black and rupture as he passes from this life into that which lies beyond.

  In the deep of the house the child called Chesapeake cries out for its mother, for any mother, to mend her young heart.

  Alma rolls the Doctor off her. She cannot feel beneath her waist, but she can move her arms. She claws at the floor and begins to drag herself to her lil’un. Her cries echo all around her, and she cannot find the way down. She uses the last of her strength to lift her head, straining like a serpent there upon the floor, until the cords stand out and flex and the last splintered bone severs under the pressure and there is no more pain.

  Alma’s body abandons its functions even as her spirit, this indomitable inside of her, lashes out for the new life it has always desired, staining the floors and walls and stones as it joins the Other Mothers who have given a life to have a life.

  Child Chesapeake’s cries go unanswered. She perishes in the stone walls that hide their secrets until another Great War passes and the new people of faith come bearing hope for a new life. Only then are the Daughters of Eve, the All Mother, awakened, ready to usher in new Life and Its unending need into the birthing house.

  The world cuts.

  40

  Time became once again a thing he could sense, and the room smelled of medicine. He was warm, floating in a womb of weightlessness, surrounded by dim sounds and occasionally rocked as in a crib. He regained physical sensations of soft cotton wrapping his naked body, but still he remained heavy with sleep.

  He was too weak to rise but in the darkened room there was warm flesh and the pressure in his mouth. When the cool button slipped between his teeth at first he resisted, but his hunger was stronger and so he fed. During the feedings he experienced the last of the visions that weaved her history, and he came to understand that he had been feeding this way all through the long long night.

  The last he remembered was the fight, and chasing his wife up the stairs so that he could apologize to her. There were flashes of her fall that came after, but nothing beyond the stairs. He knew that he was missing an important detail from the very end, but whenever he tried to remember his wife’s face it escaped him. When the pain in his stomach flared up like an umbilicus of fire, she would come again, hovering over him, feeding him, filling him up as he had filled her during the lonely nights. He did not know how much he had healed, but he felt better after, full of her.

  The pain was still a fire inside of him, but he was driven from bed by the need to know. He looked under the moist cloth around his waist and saw the purple-black thread where she had sewn him up. He was able to walk, slowly, and he moved down the stairs over the better portion of an hour. He shuffled around the main floor and checked every room. He looked behind the doors in the bathroom and the kitchen pantry and in the foyer. When the dogs began to follow him he stopped to feed them and nearly fainted bending over the bowls.

  He went down the stairs into the basement. He shone the flashlight on the stone foundation walls and stood in the spot where Luther had been growling and bleeding. He stared at the foundation and traced the stones with his eyes until they fell upon the one that was loose. He was too weak to remove the stone to see what lay inside, but he need not bother. He already knew what secrets the little piggy kept.

  If there had been any doubt, it vanished. Not doubt that he had lost his mind, for he knew that he had. He had fallen prey to loneliness and delusions brought on by guilt and the emotional, if not completely p
hysical infidelity with Nadia. But if any doubt remained that Alma had been real, as real as his wife, this before him ended all such doubt.

  A single loosened stone. He had not noticed it when he searched before. But his dog Luther had noticed it, and knew something inside these stone walls was not right. He was for a moment, but only for a moment, relieved at the sight of it now. Because it allowed that he was not a murderer. He knew he had lost track of time - the time between Nadia leaving his bed and Jo discovering her in the garage - but he had never believed he was a true savage, a killer.

  But he was guilty.

  What had Laski said about hauntings?

  It happens to good people, because even good people got problems. And problems is what your haunted house feeds on, son. Just like a one of them payday loan stores. So it goes, and sometimes it goes to murder. Conrad knew that he was responsible. Alma may have performed the ritual removal of Nadia’s unborn, but what had given birth to Alma? Had he not fed Alma as he had fed Nadia? As surely as the girl’s pregnancy and hopes were fed by his domestic duties in the kitchen, so too was Alma fed by his yearning, his desire to be a father. From his first days under her roof, he had left the door open for her return.

  She had always been here, but now she was loose, reclaiming her place among the living and breathing.

  He had to do something about that.

  He exited the basement through the wooden door to the yard. The night was cool and he walked slowly down the path toward Our Eden.

  He stopped when he reached the grave. The dirt was fresh, bulging obscenely above the grass. A small cross made of sticks had been set on top, tied with string, just as the Doctor had taught her more than a century before.

  He was about to start digging when self-preservation kicked in again.