EIGHT FLOORS (3F)
Eight apartments. Eight lives mid-thought. One rogue firework tearing through them all.
According to the app my contractions are three minutes apart and according to the doula I’m five centimeters dilated. I recall other instances I’ve been halfway: through a book, around Seward Park, last night’s movie. Wait…what did we even watch?
At least I can still think in full sentences. And I’m doing my breathing like the hypnobirthing book taught me: in for four, out for eight.
“Seattle babies come out swimming,” the doula announces. The birth pool is nearly full. Our living room feels like a fairy garden: tea lights lace the walls and lavender steam shoots out of a diffuser. A soothing voice offers affirmations from a speaker: “I am ready to receive my baby. My body was designed for this.”
“Each contraction brings me closer to my baby.”
Contraction—
“My body and my baby work together as a team.”
The affirmations were soothing two centimeters ago but now her voice has become a nuisance. Just as the music did. I instruct my husband to turn it all off. I say “turn it all off” more than once, more than twice, and I hope he understands that I’m not just talking about the speaker.
The doula asks me again if I feel like I need to poo. I am in a dark forest surrounded by tall trees, and, yes, I feel a pressure around my rectum that insinuates such. She tells me that that is good and then she tells me not to push. Right. Very counter intuitive, bitch. Did I call her a bitch out loud? I don’t know.
The creepy French king who made his wives give birth lying on their backs just so he could get off—I hope he’s not watching from heav—hell. I picture his ghostly pale face with bright blue eyes and an ugly wig. I should get on all fours!
Contraction—
Where did I go? The hypnobreaths are not working anymore. I’m thinking of my mother now. She said I was born smiling. She doesn’t live here, and due to scheduling conflicts she’s only seen me pregnant in pictures. I feel guilty. But also grateful she’s not in here barking at Alexa to “play Quran.”
Contraction—
My grandmothers did this how many times? Maybe by candlelight?
Contraction—
They tell me what a good job I’m doing. I tear my robe off. It oppresses me. It’s so easy for them to say and they all oppress me.
Contraction—
The warm water in the birthing pool dances against my naked body. I want nothing more than to push this turd out, to experience relief. I refuse the laughing gas. I can’t do all the things they’re asking me to do in the order they’re asking me to. I shout for my husband to TURN IT ALL OFF!
He meekly dabs my forehead with a lavender-infused towel and offers me apple juice. I’ve been touched enough, I’m certain now. From the inside out. I growl at him to get away from me. I catch a glimpse of my reflection. My eyes flash yellow.
I’m running through a dark forest. The pine trees and evergreens are so tall they conceal the sky completely. The soil is dark brown and damp and soft, and it carries me. Tears launch off of my face as soon as they escape my lids.
When I look down I’m not wearing any clothes. My stomach is flat but there’s a deep knowing that I’m pregnant. I want to look around me but the laws of the dream don’t allow it. I can only look straight ahead.
I breathe deeply. I know the way. I’m darting trees and taking corners, my steps rhythmic.
A whisper in the wind commands me to push. I drop to my hands and knees. The earth continues to lift me up like something precious. Ahead of me there’s a baby dripping in blood and fluids attached to an umbilical cord. It’s levitating toward me.
From behind me, I feel a strange sensation, like I am splitting in two halves. It hurts, but not like it should.
A familiar man’s voice emanates from the trees, harmonizing with the woman’s voice that commands me to push.
Up until my belly button I’m halved and I can almost make out the baby’s eyes. I try to reach out for it with my hand, but I can’t. The rules are pre-programmed. I’m weeping. The child is cooing.
My ribs crack. Salty tears fly onto my shoulders, breasts lactating. The baby has my eyes. The forest is clearing behind it leaving an opaque whiteness in its wake.
My chin splits. The forest is disappearing. I understand that’s my baby. My nose halves just as the levitating creature arrives, offering me a knowing smile.
The sound of an explosion—deafening, misplaced—rips through the whiteness and for one second, everything is the same color.