Meg Elison - The Book of the Unnamed Midwife

He gurgled. She watched.

When he was no longer attacking her, her training took over. She pushed him back and applied pressure to his hands with her own. She thought about tying up the wound with a sheet as the blood washed over her hands and his together in rhythm. His face was all round black holes, staring up at her. The dark blood rushed out of him, staining her bed. She was covered in it. Her knife had fallen to the floor. She thought about her phone, realizing she had knocked it across the room when she’d sent the nightstand tipping over. Then she remembered it was useless.

She looked back at him, and the coursing of blood was getting weaker. His arms were growing slack and his choking sounds were fading. She pushed harder against the wound and remembered how he had held her down, just like this.

It was over quickly. His hands relaxed and slid away from his neck. She let go when he did, watched him go limp all over. She saw the gap in his throat, a ragged trench that leaked out slow blackness.

Her feet tangled when she tried to get out of the bed and she fell out of it instead. She tried to stand and her knee found her still-open knife on the floor. It made a tiny cut in her skin and she mechanically walked into the bathroom and found the peroxide in the cabinet by feel. She opened the white cap of the brown bottle and poured it out over the tiny cut in her knee until the bottle was empty. The bubbling, cold liquid ran down her leg on to the tile floor.

“Blood borne pathogens,” she said in a completely neutral tone of voice.

She found another bottle under the sink, casually knocking unwanted things out on to the floor. When she found it, she opened it and upended it over her chest. She had forgotten the tamper seal, and nothing came out.

“Oh.” She pinched the plastic half-circle with her right hand and pulled. Peroxide poured out and she ran it over her arms and neck, washing blood off her body. She poured it over her panties, soaking the crotch. It puddled pink and foaming on the floor. It soaked the carpet at the bathroom door. When she was finished, she put the cap back on the bottle and dropped it neatly into the bathroom trash.

Cold and dazed, she walked back out into her bedroom and tried not to look at the body. She slipped into a pair of jeans she found draped over a chair. She threw the wet shirt she had been wearing on the floor and pulled another from her closet. She put on a hoodie over it, then found a pair of socks and tied up her shoes. She walked back to her bed and pulled the sheet over the face she had never really seen.

Her hands found her cellphone on the floor and slipped it into the tight back pocket of her jeans. She closed her knife carefully and slipped it into a front pocket. She picked up her journal out of the wreck of her nightstand and shoved it down the front of her hoodie. She locked the door to her apartment and left with nothing in her hands.

The lone woman walked out onto the street and saw the orangey-pink in the east that meant the sun would rise soon. She walked up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco, not precisely in herself and not thinking. She came to a place she knew. It was a café she had come to a few times. She walked in, numb and cold, and sat on an old leather couch.

There was no one on the streets to hear her wailing. She sobbed and shook so hard she thought she would break. Her head throbbed and her throat ached and she pounded herself in the chest with both fists. She held her face and screamed and asked questions with no answers. She begged and apologized and raged.

When there was nothing left to say, she got quiet and pushed herself into the corner of the couch. She pulled her legs up close to her, knees tight together. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled the hood over her face. She thought she might fall asleep, but she watched the sun rise, husked-out and raw. When it was full light, she got up stiffly and walked out the door.

She wandered into the Mission District without any idea where she was headed. The sidewalks were covered with broken glass and garbage, single shoes and the usual piles of city junk. In the street, cars were parked neatly in some places and rose up on the sidewalks in others. The road was choked here and there with accidents both minor and severe. She saw that some of the wrecked cars had corpses in them, including one pinned to a motorcycle trapped between two small cars. She tried to stop looking after that.

The Mission was always dirty, it was always derelict, but it had formerly been teeming with life. Alarming and empty now. The windows of the stores and restaurants were broken and there was no movement. Above the stores, windows to flats were hung with blankets and flags rather than curtains, looking as unkempt as ever but deadly silent. The only thing she could hear in the cold morning air was the flapping and cooing of pigeons, with the occasional shrill seagull. The city was without streetcars or hordes of people, without dogs barking or music pouring out of windows and the small radios carried by the homeless.

She smelled the sea and the sweet odor of rot from both food and dead bodies all around. The corners and alleys smelled like piss, maybe they always would. Block after block went by and she hesitated, thinking of traffic and signals and safety. She had to force herself to stop worrying about being hit by a car and start thinking what she should do if she saw another person. This was the first walk she had ever taken in this neighborhood that had not brought with it the smell of a dozen people smoking weed, the haze drifting from windows and bold passerby. Her senses were ringing the bell; the city was dead.

A different smell was beckoning to her. As she came to a corner, she could hear a little noise and she hid in the eave of a theatre, under the marquis, listening. Somewhere on the other side of the intersection, someone was cooking. And singing.

She stayed there as the smell grew stronger. She could smell garlic and mushrooms, she was sure. She heard the singing only in snatches, but the voice sounded high. She thought she should turn around and go the other way, and she fought with herself on that for a long time. In the end, hunger and simple curiosity won out. She came out cautiously and walked into the intersection. With a glance in all directions, she crossed diagonally away from a liquor store that stank like someone had smashed every bottle inside. The wind shifted and the aroma came again. Garlic and corn and cheese. Her stomach growled.

She came to the busted-out windows of an old Mexican restaurant with faded signs. The door stood open. She didn’t see anyone. She walked through, craning her neck toward the sound. The song was clearer now; it was old with lyrics in Spanish. The person singing was doing a pretty good impression of the dead singer. She came through a short door into the kitchen.

A tall dark-skinned man stood at a gas grill, cooking an assortment of pupusas and sweating. He turned toward her with a smile, then goggled at her with his mouth open.

“Who the hell are you?” His accent made the last word joo.

“I’m… I’m… that smells amazing. I didn’t mean to bust in on you. Are you…?” She stood half in the doorway, deciding whether to run. She didn’t know what she should ask. Are you dangerous? Are you gonna eat that? Terror and curiosity fought hunger and disorientation. She stood, unable to obey any of them.

He put the spatula down slowly. “Look, I just wanted to make some food. I don’t want any trouble. I’m waiting for my friend, Chicken. If this is your place, I’m sorry.”

“No, no it’s not my place. I’m from across town. I haven’t seen anybody else on the street.”

“You and me both, girl. Me and Chicken thought we were the last two motherfuckers on earth.”