A Collection Of Short Stories | ✔

We Are Miracles

The three women who sat so close to each other like sisters in the rattling bus, yet their eyes avoided each other's like strangers . . .

Whores. Whispers about her and her two friends felt like the annoying buzzing of a mosquito flying around her head. More mosquitoes formed an army and swarmed around her, buzzing and buzzing. The prying eyes of all the girls in the corridor were on her, watching her from the top to the bottom. Those eyes tried to look past her grey uniform, a peek into the chamber full of treasured secrets. The block heels of her sandals collided sharply against the stone floor as she began sprinting towards her room, unable to withstand the whispers anymore.

Once in, she slammed the weak, wooden door shut, hugging the forbidden book close to her chest and collapsing heavily on the cold, stone floor. She barely regained her strength before the urgent knocks on the door sent her scampering in the small room to find a place to hide the book. The door carelessly flung open and just in time, she shut the drawer.

"Relax, Anna. It's only us," came Roberta's calm voice.

Anna's heart was still pounding like the shaking of a bell long after it's struck. "I-I got it."

"You're the best!" Natalie's chirpy voice was like the song of a skylark among predatory vultures, oddly cheerful. She excitedly opened the drawer, the book, the money and flashed the money with a broad grin. Her large stomach bounced as she swayed her hand, she was due to deliver the baby in some days, unlike Anna and Roberta who were a few months pregnant.

These women were the residents of Stonebell Hills, a manor house established by the government for future mothers carrying illegitimate children. Every unmarried, pregnant woman was obliged to be admitted to Stonebell or other such manor houses and if a woman failed to do so, she would face severe punishment of getting publicly stoned to death for her sins. Abortion was against the law and anyone caught in the act would extend the same punishment to the doctors agreeing to perform the abortion as well. Stonebell Hills had a hospital two kilometres away from where after a baby was born, the mother and the baby would be sent to the chemical factories for cheap, manual labour. Horrifying accounts about the living conditions in the factories floated around now and then like women and children poisoned from gas, burnt from acid and some even dying by suicide by consuming the chemicals to avoid the routine beatings of the owners. The hard-faced wardens sourly reminded the women that working at the factories was the best opportunity their lowly lives could ever get to survive in the world. A rightful penance for their sins.

"Women are strong!" Natalie recklessly shouted the words from the book and Anna quickly placed her hand over her mouth, muffling her words and giggles.

"Don't risk it," Roberta said sternly. "They're already suspicious of us."

"Okay, okay, let me go!" She struggled against Anna who let her go after getting the look of approval from Roberta. Natalie sat on the squeaking cot, rubbing her belly and scrutinizing the book. "It's a girl, I know it. I'll raise her to be a strong woman just like the writer of this book says- Women are strong. Their strength lies in their endurance, they endure the burdens of society and they endure the pain of giving birth. Childbirth which everyone thinks is a miracle. Women give life to such miracles. Without women, there will exist only lost, white threads forever finding a needle to be useful."

"Yet they let the men get away with this," Roberta said, glancing out of the window at the sturdy male guards and faintly touching the slight bump of her stomach. One of the guards looked up and Roberta hastily pulled the curtains, her face flushing a deep red which was unusual for her stoicism. Anna, a keen observer of her surroundings, bewilderingly realised that the rumours about her two companions were true. Whores. Why else would the gatekeeper give her the forbidden book with money in it? But with a child in them, they could still---?

"Don't tell Natalie, she doesn't know," Roberta whispered in her ear, knowing Anna's bitter realisation. "You're helping us by smuggling, I'm helping by other means and she's going to help us another way soon."

"Soon we'll be out of here!" Natalie cried out in joy, fanning the money. "We'll get a ticket to Paradise (Paradise was a nickname given for their neighbouring country where women somewhat retained their basic rights) and we'll buy our own land and nurture cows and goats with our children. Together like sisters."

Anna noticed Roberta's dreaded expression and wondered what could be troubling her about this marvellous plan?

She soon found out on the day when Natalie was howling in agony, surrounded by the dull walls of the hospital room. Anna was beside her, grasping her hand as she pushed with all her energy, beads of perspiration on her crumpled face. Anna was partially petrified at how much pain Natalie was in and partially amazed that this frivolous, giggling woman could endure it all. The baby emerged out soon, covered in white fluid and blood as the nurses cleaned the crying, little human.

Natalie fell asleep in exhaustion and that was when Roberta entered the room, she had disappeared since Natalie's first, distressing contractions came. Anna was baffled when Roberta secretively said something to the nurse, shoved money in the nurse's hand, took the baby in her arms and proceeded to go out. Anna instinctively followed her, making Roberta stiffly halt in her tracks.

"This is how she's going to help us," Roberta pointed at the sleeping baby, sleeping in oblivion just like her mother. Whore. First, it was selling the body, now the baby.

"Y-You can't do this to her. It'll destroy her!"

"This is for all of us. We'll get enough to buy our land and raise animals, all of her dreams are going to come true. Didn't she want that? Someone has to sacrifice for it."

"If someone did that with y-you, your child . . . "

"I can give my child to her if she wants. But my child will take a long time. We can't stay here till then. They'll take her and this little one and kill them in those wretched factories." Roberta softened her tone and looked at the baby. Almost lovingly. "Don't worry, she's going to be given to a good house. She'll be raised to be a strong woman, just not by her mother."

And that was why the three women didn't utter a single word as they sat rigidly next to each other on the bus, separating their land in Paradise into three, the largest one given to Natalie who left hers barren forever.