Lydia Netzer: Shine Shine Shine

She saw that there were three young men standing around a pile of stones, and heard them shouting “NO!” down at a pile of rocks, and she heard a voice from inside the pile of rocks, pleading and crying, and then she knew that these were Maxon’s brothers, and the rocks were a well, and they had made him go down that well.

Country wells were inexact mechanisms and plumbing could become clogged by anything biological, or just a buildup of silt or rust. There were methods for cleaning wells that didn’t involve freezing a human being in cold mountain spring water, but for Maxon’s brothers, the downside of this method did not exist. They had to clean out the well, to get it working again, and they didn’t mind freezing Maxon to do it, so there was no problem. Now they were standing back from the well, being quiet and pretending to be gone. They stifled their laughter and poked each other in the arm. There was a rope hanging over the side, but it wasn’t tied to anything. He couldn’t pull himself out. Pulling on the rope would only pull it in on him.

Hearing him scream from in the well, Sunny’s heart froze. He could be dying. He could be losing whatever there was of his mind to lose. She felt her rage rising, her need to protect him. At least she could yell, “I’m here, Maxon! I’m here!,” and he would know that he wasn’t left in the well, legs braced against the sides, neck deep in the water. She knew that it hurt him to be down there in the cold. But she kept her mouth shut, her legs slack; her pony kept on plodding down the path. She knew that if she let them know she was there, it would be worse for him. The two of them could not overpower these three men. Later, he would learn to beat them. But now, they were an army.

Then they took the rope up, and began to pull him out. His head came up first, dark and wet, and then his body. He climbed out and stood there, dripping. The brothers were angry. The task had not been accomplished. As they conferred about what was to be done, motioning at Maxon as if he were a wrench or a drill, he stood shivering, his whole body shaking. Sunny could see them but not hear them, except for a few sounds that punched through like the bark of a laugh. Maxon was wearing nothing but boxers. She could see every bone in his body, his sharp clavicles, his jutting hip bones, the knobs on his back. It was so precious to her, that body, covered and uncovered by the trees as she passed them, his cold and dripping body. He clasped his arms around himself, rubbing up and down and trying to get warm. She was terribly and permanently moved. She never forgot it.

The brothers turned to him. They were finished discussing the matter, and they directed him sternly to get back into the well. He shook his head firmly, back and forth, ducked to run, but quickly one of them had him by the wrist. He let out a yelp, a sound like a wounded dog that turned Sunny’s blood to fire. Then “No!” he yelled. “No, no,” and “Please!”

She panted, her breath coming in gulps. She would call to him, “Maxon, run!,” and he would come straight to her, jump up on the back of her pony, and they would canter away to safety. She could save him, protect him, warm him, those wet bones pressing against her back as they fled, his cold arm clamped around her waist, hips banging against her, making the back of her shirt cold and wet. But she said nothing, did nothing, let the scene pass behind her, let the trees cover it, the noises of it slipping away into the birdsong and cicadas. Her pony was too small even for just her. With Maxon on board, too, it would be ridiculous, he probably wouldn’t even trot. Hers was no white stallion, she no crusader. The most she could do for him was to never speak of it, never let him know she had heard those cries, she had seen him brought so low, watched that wretched shivering in the woods, and felt for that cold body such a strange desire. Later, in the fall, she would hold him in her arms in the planetarium, and kiss him under the stars.

SUNNY WENT INTO HER house and shut the door. She locked it, doorknob and bolt. They would have to burn it open with a torch, pry it open with a pitchfork. They would have to crack her open like a nut. Inside the house, she dropped to her knees with another contraction and began to crawl toward the living room. She made it to the rug, so immaculately dyed and tied, a million knots per square inch. It had cost eighteen thousand dollars. As many knots as there are stars in the sky, said the salesman, a lively Moroccan. Bad analogy, Maxon had said. You’re looking for density, not quantity. Try rods and cones on the retina. That gives you both.

When Bubber was a baby she had laid a plastic mat over this rug, to protect it from stains. She kept pushing the mat down at the edges, then replaced it, and then she took the mat up and they abandoned this room altogether. It became the shrine, the holy crypt of urban respectability, a resting place for the crystal pieces she acquired, the Indian carvings, the silver. Cabinets ringed the walls, glass cases sparkling. A museum of only five years of history. This is unbearable, she thought. I can’t bear it.

She rocked on her hands and knees. She could feel the baby, and the baby was coming down. There was a turn, a big somersault in her stomach, and at that moment, she knew that the baby was about to come out. The baby was about to be born. In the darkness on the inside, everything was in the right place. There was no communication from outside to in, or inside to out. But there was a process in place inside the womb that no external timetable could hinder or accelerate. She dragged off her underpants, pulling them back, down, and kicking them to the side. The contractions were now coming one right after the next, rolling like particles, not like waves, bombarding her, turning her inside out.

She put her forehead on the rug and strained, and the straining finally gave her some relief. In the straining, she finally felt better. There was no one coming to help her. There was no backup plan. If she would be torn apart, then she would tear herself apart. There was a change in Sunny’s mind. A new sense of this-is-happening. She erased all contemplation, all reflection, until there was only Sunny herself, a raw and bleeding thing in a lemon yellow silk chiffon babydoll dress hiked up wet around her waist, dripping sweat, ass in the air, trying to explode.

In the pain and the inversion, with all her blood a hot bubble in her head, she finally knew. She was unfit, and she was bald. But she was the only mother that was here. In the dark, where all the muscles were, where the baby had turned herself around and kicked for home, there was no bald and no unfit. There was only a body with a baby in it, doing its best. I’m sorry , said the body to the baby. I’m bald. I’ve made terrible mistakes. Almost all of your grandparents are dead because of me. I’m going to embarrass you. I’m going to fuck things up. But I am your mother, and I will do my best. Whatever I actually am, and whatever I can actually do, I am the mother you have. Here I am. Doing it.

The contractions overtook her. She tried to climb the drapes. She wrapped her wrists in the soft fabric and lay back against them, rocking her body against the curtain rod, writhing and groaning. The curtains held, but her mind wavered. She slipped out of time, out of this painful anchor. Maybe it was an accumulation of everything that had happened, or maybe it was an experience common to every woman who labors alone. She did feel the pull of her hands on the drapes and the burning, heavy urgency between her legs. It made her push, push, right down from her throat to her thighs. But beside it, under it, and around it, she saw a purplish fog rise up over her eyes, and she began to see things that weren’t there: her baby, and the life she would have.