"Breathe, Kathleen-Anne, breathe."
Breathe. As if it's that simple. Breathe. As if I can focus on anything but the searing pain. Breathe. As if I'm not being torn apart by this thing that's forcing its way out of my body. Breathe. As if I can do anything but scream and scream and scream.
The midwife, a forty-something Irish harridan, who wears an expression like she's constantly smelling something nasty, glares at me in irritation and checks her wristwatch, as if me not breathing is somehow delaying her being somewhere else. Well, she can go for all I care. I'm tired of her fingers prodding and poking me like I'm some prize cow at the county fair. I'm tired of her rolling her eyes and pursing her lips in frustration. I don't want her here. I want Rheemus. I want my husband to hold my hand and stroke my brow and tell me everything will be okay. I want him here by my side, but this room, with its clinical, puce green walls, stench of bleach and the ghost screams of thousands of women before me, is no place for men.
I can't say I blame him none. I don't want to be here either. And I don't want this pain. I've endured twenty hours so far and I can't take no more. My legs tremble violently in the stirrups as another contraction cuts into me and I scream into the push, gripping the edges of the rubber sheet in clawed fists.
"Good, Kathleen-Anne," the midwife says, but nothing about her tone makes me feel like she's pleased with all the pushing. "I can see the head." And then she adds, muttering as if I'm not in the same darn room, "Finally."
The contractions are coming faster now. Too fast. I'm not ready. Twenty hours of Hell and still I'm not ready. I have to push again and it's burning so bad I wonder if this is what Hell feels like, to be constantly screaming and sweating and burning, and all the time knowing it's because of this thing inside you that feels like its gripping on for dear life and refusing to just get the heck out.
The midwife checks her watch again and frowns, deep lines scarring her forehead. Her bright shock of red hair is scraped back severely from her face, pulled into a tight bun on the top of her head and it's that I can see now as she leans in too close to me, close to where only Rheemus has been and I'm overwhelmed with how much I hate this, how much I hate the indignity and the shame. Why did nobody ever tell me? Why did they only ever talk of birth like it was some spiritual awakening, like having the preacher lay his hands on your head in church, while the choir sing and clap and bang their tambourines in jubilant celebration? I remember now. Remember how the old ladies that took a seat down at the store, would watch me over their wire-framed half-moon spectacles, eyes beady like hawks, thin lips frowning as I gushed and crowed over how beautiful it was all going to be. They'd known, of course. They'd pushed and screamed out just as I was now and darn it, if I wasn't just the stupidest, most empty-headed girl they'd ever clapped eyes on.
Something is wrong. I can see it in the midwife's face. Can feel it in the air even, as if these sickly, green-hued walls are closing in on me, the room shrinking by the second.
"You have to push, Kathleen-Anne," she barks at me. "You're not pushing hard enough."
"I am," I insist, tears stinging my eyes. "I am, I swear."
Thunderous pain rips into my abdomen, cracking the base of my spine and I brace my feet against the stirrups once more, and push. I push so hard that I think I might split in two. The midwife's frown deepens and without another word, she straightens up, heading to the door and then she's gone. I'm alone and scared and I can feel the baby's head. I scream for Rheemus to come, but I know it's no good. The waiting room is outside the ward, because God forbid the men should have to endure the inconvenience of listening to all those screaming women while they sit sipping their coffee and having a smoke. That just wouldn't do.
The door opens and chaos erupts. The midwife is back with reinforcements in the shape of two stern-looking nurses who look like clones of each other and a physician, who is rolling up the sleeves of his crumpled, gray-white shirt as he walks in. He's tall and painfully thin and so pale I think he must be a vampire, like in one of those dime-store comics that Rita used to read when we were back in high school. He dips his head and looks and if my cheeks weren't already flushed from exertion, I knew they'd be as red as the wild strawberries that grow down by the Creek. I don't like him looking at me there and I have to remind myself that he's just checking on the baby, but when he looks up, our eyes meet and my heart stammers with fear.
"Mrs. Jones, I'm afraid we are going to have to carry out a forceps delivery." His voice carries no emotion, as cold and as empty as the air that hangs over Stony Crag Lake on a winter's day. "We have to give you an episiotomy."
"A what?" He might as well be speaking the Devil's tongue, for all I can understand him.
"An episiotomy." He repeats it slowly, like I'm some kindergarten kid who barely knows what day of the week it is. "The baby's head is stuck. We have to make an incision so we can get the forceps in there."
I'm reeling. The room is getting smaller and smaller and this time, the walls are covered in razor-sharp spikes and they're coming right at me. I shake my head, my voice hoarse with panic as I speak. "N-no," I say. "No, you can't, you mustn't..."
The midwife and the physician exchange a look, one that tells me they knew what was coming, they knew what my reaction would be.
"Mrs. Jones, this really is the only way. We have to act quickly if we are to save your baby."
The midwife and the nurses are busying themselves by the counter, moving things around and making clanking noises. They're silent as they work, making the noises seem louder, metal upon metal grating in my ears. I crane my head to look and see the tools laid out on the surgical tray, harsh, white light glinting off sharp, steel edges. The physician is washing his hands at the basin and pulling on his gloves and no one is talking. Why is nobody talking? I can't breathe. I can't think. I can't do anything but lay here, with my darn useless legs up in the stirrups and my heart hammering against my ribcage.
They're ready now and I'm still not, but how can I be? How can I be ready for this?
"Wait," I croak, as the midwife wheels the trolley over to the physician, who delicately picks up the scalpel between his thumb and forefinger. "Wait, aren't you going give me a shot to numb me up?"
"There's no time, I'm afraid."
Now I know why the nurses are here, with their grim faces set like stone gargoyles.
I begin to panic, arms flailing, but they're already holding onto me, holding me down and I can't do anything but watch, wide-eyed, as the physician waits there, holding the scalpel aloft as if capturing the moment in some wild, sadistic glory.
Another contraction is coming. And so is the knife.
Breathe, I say to myself. But I don't breathe. I scream.
***
The baby is crying and so am I.
I sit on the edge of the bed, facing the bassinet and the tears stream down my cheeks. I know I should pick her up. I know I should comfort her, but I don't. I just sit here feeling numb and exhausted and pointless.
Brenda cries a lot and I can't help but think that she knows. She knows I failed her. When she needed me the most, I just couldn't do it and they were the ones that brought her screaming into this world instead, not me. There's a tiny scar on her head from the forceps and every time I see it, the emptiness swells inside, like a balloon that just won't burst. It just keeps growing and growing and each day I feel a little more numb. Give it a few more weeks and I don't think I'll even know how to feel anymore. I'll be this empty, cold thing that just happens to look like Kathleen-Anne Patricia Jones.
The floorboards creak in the hall and I quickly wipe away the tears on the cuff of my blouse and lean over the bassinet, gently stroking the backs of my fingers down Brenda's cheek and humming Clementine to her.
I know he's looking at me. I can feel the soft warmth of his gaze caress the back of my neck and I know if I turn around, sure enough, he'll be standing there in the doorway, watching me. He's been watching me an awful lot lately, which only heightens my sense of inadequacy, because the truth is I've never felt inadequate around Rheemus. He dotes on me, always has. Mama says it's because he can't believe his luck marrying the 1962 Stony Crag High prom queen, but Rita and Connie say it's because he can't believe how a lowly, two-bit-town mechanic like him, ever ended up with the prettiest girl in the county, especially not one eight years his junior. I don't know about any of that stuff, but I do know he's a good man. He's handsome and true and loyal and he'd do anything for me. Anything.
A floorboard creaks again, nearer this time, and I try not to flinch as he plants a soft kiss in the crook of my neck and slips his hands around my waist. He smells good – a mixture of Old Spice and engine oil, which I know most people would turn their nose up at, but I've always loved it, because it reminds me just how grounded he is. He's the pillar holding us steady and I need that. I've always needed that.
"How's my two favorite girls today?" he says, cheerily, but there's a tightness to his voice that's been too prevalent recently and I hate hearing it because I know I'm to blame.
"Oh, everything's just fine," I reply, but I don't look at him yet. I don't want to see the wariness in his eyes, or the disbelief, because he knows everything is not fine. Everything is far from fine.
Another kiss. A reassuring squeeze. But he doesn't move away and I know he's mulling something over, I can almost hear his thought-cogs turning slowly, like there's a clockwork brain in there, whirring and wheezing as the wheels revolve. He brushes his lips over my skin, a feather-light graze that gives me the shivers.
"So..."
Here it comes. I brace myself, gripping the edge of the bassinet.
"Rita dropped by the garage earlier, said her and Constance would just love to see you."
It hangs there in the air and I don't know what I'm meant to do with it. I don't know what I'm meant to say. My friends – the ones I spent every day with throughout high school – have seen me twice since Brenda was born and both times I knew they were just itching to leave. I'd tried. I'd really tried, but by then the fake smiles had started to stretch my face muscles until I'd felt like one of those plastic mannequins from the fashion emporium in town and I was struggling to maintain the façade.
"They did?" I smile sweetly. Keeping up the pretense is almost like a physical pain. "Well, isn't that nice?"
"See, that's just what I said too!"
Rheemus sounds pleased as punch and what can I do but play along? I know they never said nothing about wanting to see me. It was him. It was all him.
"So I said they should come by tonight, maybe you girls can go have some fun together. Like you used to."
I want to tell him that those days died with the old me in the delivery room. I want to say those days died when they cut me. When they held me down. When they pulled my baby from my body with that awful metal contraption. But I don't. Instead, I count to ten and just breathe.
"Well, I think that sounds just swell," I say.
He pulls me into a typical Rheemus-hug. It's warm and comforting, like the crochet blanket we always put on the bed during the winter months and I don't want to let go.
"I think this will do you the world of good, Kathleen-Anne. I really do."
***
It turns out that Rita and Connie's idea of fun these days isn't quite what I remembered. Or maybe it was always like this and my head is just fuzzy with layer upon layer of cobweb memories that are gathering dust and clouding my mind.
We pull up on the short driveway, Rita and Connie upfront and me sitting in the back, leaning between the seats so I can get a better look at the house. It's only on the other side of town, but this street with its neat, residential straight lines, clean sidewalks and rows of overhanging willow trees draped with kudzu vines and moss, seems almost like another county to me. I stare at the house trying to get a sense of something vaguely mysterious about it, considering what I know goes on inside those walls, but it just looks like any other average house. It doesn't look special. It doesn't look sinister. The only thing that sets it apart from the other houses on the street, is that the porch has been painted butterscotch-yellow, as opposed to the standard white. I half-wonder whether maybe the summery, sunshine paint is to counter-balance the badness that exists inside.
Of course, Rita and Connie don't think that idea is worth gold at all. They say Barbara Arden is a flake and a charlatan and this whole thing, coming here, is just one big joke to them. They want to see the self-proclaimed medium at work, doing what she does best, faking contact with the spirit world and making a sweet fool of herself in the process. But I hesitate as they get out of the car, because my Mama always told me never to come here.
Once she calls them, they never leave, Kathleen-Anne. They never leave, do y'hear me now, girl?
I never really understood what she meant by that back then, only that it was something bad. Something really, truly bad. And I don't want to go into this house with its pretty, butter-colored porch and hanging baskets full of jasmine and lilac, that trail down onto the boards. Vibrant, purple honeysuckle scrambles up to the porch roof, twisting in and out of the posts, strangling wood in a suffocating lovers embrace. It looks beautiful; a serene pocket of bliss with its magnolia trees in the yard and gingerbread trim porch, but the storybooks always told me that gingerbread houses weren't as pretty as they seemed on the outside. Gingerbread houses contained terrible, nightmarish things and I can't shake the feeling that I'm about to be swallowed whole as soon as I step foot inside this one.
I want to tell Rita and Connie that I don't want to go in, but I know if I do, that'll be it. The friendship that I'm already barely clinging onto will be gone and I'm not ready to let go. Not yet.
And so I say nothing. Instead, I follow them up onto the porch and wait as Connie rings the bell. I can hear its off-key tones resounding deep within the house and there's something awful about the sound, something that prickles the hair on the back of my neck and makes me self-consciously rub at the goose-bumps that rise on my forearms.
For a moment, nothing happens and a fleeting sense of hope sparks inside that maybe no one is home, but then I hear the footsteps, clipped, echoing taps on what sounds like a tiled floor, and the sharp snap of someone unbolting the locks.
I hold my breath as the door of the gingerbread house opens.