Chapter five: Born into the Storm

I never allowed the pain to be so loud. Not just physical pain, but the sharp, clawing kind that rips through your inwards, but the kind that whispers constantly in your observance. You’re alone, you’re unworthy. You’re about to bring a child into a world that doesn’t want either of you.

It was a Tuesday morning. The sky was shining and full of shadows, as if it too were holding something outside. I woke up to a cramp that arched my entire rear off the bed. I assumed it was the familiar pain that had followed me into my ninth month like an unwanted caller. But when I got up from bed, I felt a stuffiness teardrop down my shanks.

My water had broken.

I was shocked.

"Kattie!" I screamed, gripping the rustic rail of the bed as another compression clamped down on my chin like a vice.

She wheeled out of there.

She had left beforehand to support her manager!

We were two months in arrears with rent and had a list of baby particulars we could not let go of.

Another compression struck, and I collapsed to my knees, heaving. My tummy was constricted and heavy, and my breaths were uneven gasps.

I crawled to my phone and called her number.

She answered on the third ring. “ Hello"

"Kattie, it's time," I plodded to get out. “He is on the way."

"Oh my God. I will go incontinently!"

The line went dead.

I was alone, formerly again.

I bounced back and forth on the arm of our dilapidated settee, agglomerating up like a fetus, soliciting the pang would subside long enough to reach the sidewalk. The maternity center we had listed ourselves to enter was over thirty minutes outside of town, and we didn't have a car, no public transportation for Uber, and no options.

By the time Kattie got there, I was moaning on the bottom, sweat pouring down my tabernacles. The world around me blurred like heat on asphalt.

She flung herself into the room, fear drawing color into an otherwise pale face.

"Jesus, Sophie!" she dropped to her knees." We need to go — we need to go, now.

Our neighbor, a hack motorist, Mr. Amos, offered to take us for nothing. I knew it was Kattie's charm or sympathy, but I did not mind. I was in the back seat, crying out in agony between tightly gripped teeth as we jarred over potholes and steep angles.

My vision was starting to blur.

"We are nearly there!" Kattie yelled from the front seat.

I tried to nod, but another compression washed over me like a surge.

My fingernails smelled like worn leather seats. “He is coming!" I yelled.

The sanctum was a dull slip-up erected between a worsening storehouse and a convenience store. It looked more like a halfway house than a warm sanctuary for new life. But the moment we pulled up, two nurses came rushing out with a wheelchair.

Get her in there! She's crowning!" one of them yelled.

I was rolled down dark corridors with dim lights. There was the scent of antiseptic and old chuck. I could hear women crying in other apartments. A laugh burst from me before I even knew I was the one screaming.

They placed me on the bed, stirruped legs, nurses yelling orders, sweat pouring down my body, and I knew I was going to be torn in two.

"Push!" ordered the midwife. “Push, Sophie, now!"

"I can't! I can't!" I screamed.

"You have to! His heart rate is dwindling!"

Everything went high. Kattie grasped my hand. “You've come this far, Sophie. Do not quit now."

I screamed so hard that I believed my lungs would burst. My head felt like it was floating above my body.

And also, I knew.

They halt the world in its tracks.

A laugh.

Hard, Angry, and Alive.

I arched back onto the soaked wastes, shaking, heaving, gashes blurring everything.

" It's a boy," the midwife said.

They placed him on my chest, and the room was silent.

He was crinkled, his face sanguine, small fists gripped up, as if he was gearing for battle, against the world that escaped us both. His eyes blinked open, rich brown with sparkles of gold.

And I wept.

I wasn't alone presently.

"Hello," I breathed, once parched lips. “Hello, baby."

Kattie bent over me, gashes flowing down her cheeks. “He is perfect."

"I do not have anything to give him," I replied. “ No father. No home. No future."

You brought him to life, Sophie. You brought him love. That is all there is.

We named him Ethan.

The first night, I did not sleep. The room was black, with the distant soft murmur of babies crying. My body ached like it had been in war. But I could not look down on him.

He slept peacefully, his small casket moving up and down, one hand wrapped beside his face as if he was fiddling about something cozy and secure.

I think of Damien.

Would he mind if he knew? Would he indeed recall me?

A part of me had to go find him, to scream in his face that he would leave me with a life I never asked for, and no why. But another part of me was hysterical about what he would say.

What if he did not want Ethan?

Horror — what if he did?

I shook the thoughts out of my head and kissed the top of Ethan's head.

"You are mine," I said. “Yes, only mine."

We were discharged three days later.

The nurses offered us a bag of clothes and diapers. Kattie had prayed for the matron to let us stay for one further night, but the sanctum was full. We had to leave.

The sun was too bright, the megacity was too noisy. I cradled Ethan against my casket, the sensation of him both fragile and grounding.

Kattie hailed a bus with fire blazing in her eyes." We will be alright, Sophie. I promise."

In the apartment, a final notice was left by the landlord on the door. Two months' worth of rent, and I did not have one penny to my name.

There was a heavy mist of moisture within, and the pungent odor of earth, but I set Ethan in the corner amidst a huddle of bunched clothes and looked at him as if he were everything that signified.

Hours later, Kattie came back with pulverized milk and chuck. 

"We will stretch it to my stipend in the coming week," she laid it down beside me, saying.

I jounced, swallowing the guilt that filled my throat like a gravestone.

I could not go formula, so I nursed him, watching his bitsy lips nurse with despair. My guts hurt, my body hurt, but I never complained.

Because he demanded of me.

I stayed awake the entire night. I peered at him. The nose. The ears. The golden hair — a scarce thing for my tone, but a memorial. A mark indelibly left that he was of another.

Damien's son.

But not his to keep.

Two weeks later, I vended the rest of Mama's jewelry to buy Ethan’s proper crib from a secondary store. Kattie got me a part-time cleaning job at an original church while she worked double shifts as a waitress.

We alternated working like clockwork — always one minute home with Ethan. We would live on instant polls and prayers.

Some nights, I cried in the restroom so Ethan wouldn't realize what we were doing.

Nights when my milk has dried up under stress.

Nights when I had thought about transferring him off to be espoused.

But the moment I held him and heard the beat of his heart against mine, I knew I couldn't.

He was the reason why I had survived all this: the burial, the gossip, the labor, the starvation.

He was my miracle.

And although the world had given us nothing but tempests, I promised him that evening as he slept in the antique crib

“I'll give you the sun.”