Rebecca Coleman - The Kingdom of Childhood

She shrugged off her rucksack by the gate and let herself into the barnyard. The barn door was ajar, buoying her hopes that he would be there. The white hens ignored her, scratching in the dust for hidden bugs. From an open window she heard Daniela’s strident voice, an argument with her mother or father in vehement German that carried on the gusty breeze. The wind sucked the edges of the curtains outward, twisting them wildly like waving hands.

A metal rake stood propped beside the partly-opened barn door. Judy was thin enough to slide in without moving it, which was fortunate, because the hinges were old and tired and the heavy door usually stuck in a rut of mud. She gripped the gingerbread against her chest and stepped inside, pulling in her breath to call for Rudi; but before she could speak his name, she saw him right before her.

He was there, seated on a straw bale with his back to her, his shirt in a heap on the ground; straddling his lap was the girl who was Kirsten’s friend, wearing the flower-sprigged dress Kirsten had sewn for her, its white crinoline flaring out on each side of Rudi’s waist like two chrysanthemums. She was facing him, and Judy could see now that Rudi’s disregard for the crucifix that hung above them was absolute: he kissed her with his hand behind her head and his mouth pressed hard against hers, so ardently that all the gentleness Judy knew of him was gone. The girl’s hands traveled across the creamy skin of his back, her pace languorous, and when they circled around to the front of his pants he dropped his head back and disturbed the silence with a noisy, quivering sigh.

Judy took a large step back. One shoulder at a time, she retreated out the barn door. She let herself out through the wooden gate and threw the gingerbread heart into the mud. At home, Kirsten stood at a living room window, cleaning it with ammonia sprinkled onto a crumpled page from the Stars & Stripes. The bow of her apron bobbed at her hip, and her feet were bare.

“Guten Tag, Mausi,” she greeted Judy.

“Guten Tag,” Judy replied. She looked into Kirsten’s eyes and wondered how it is that a soldier fights and a savior suffers, but a woman, in lying down, rules everything.

Zach was a Pisces. I discovered this while rooting through his school file, not long after. It should have come as no surprise—I had already suspected as much by his nature, and his March birthdate only confirmed it—but I felt chagrined nonetheless. Sixteen and a half, and solidly so. I had hoped he was nearly seventeen, as if it made a difference.

Say no, I remembered imploring him. Because I knew the wrong was in my intention, and his was powerful enough to stop it. But he hadn’t wanted to, and so there was nothing left to hold it back. The frenzied desire I felt for him surprised even me. I had thought I wasn’t capable of it, all the way up until I crawled over him on all fours and knew I would have him or be consumed by what burned in me for him.

It took me no time at all to make an appointment with my midwives’ practice, once I could no longer pretend I wasn’t going to do what I had just done. I knew enough to understand I was out of my depth when it came to the contemporary rituals of birth control. Prior to the moment Ted produced a small foil packet from the night table, I had never seen an unwrapped condom that wasn’t on a safe-sex poster. Russ had no use for the things, and my only other serious boyfriend, Marty, hadn’t either. Back in the 1970s, the solution was simple: the woman went on the Pill, and that was that. Clearly Ted had caught up with the times, and now Zach had proven to be a devotee as well. But anything that could break or slip off provided too great a margin of error, by my accounting, especially when the stakes were as high as these.

As I signed my name on the clipboard at the front desk of the midwives’ practice, I asked, “Is Lynnette here today?”

The heavy woman in the pastel-print scrubs didn’t take her eyes off her computer screen. “No, she doesn’t work here anymore.”

I blinked. “She doesn’t? Really? But she delivered both my kids.”

The typist looked at me with a smile at the corner of her mouth, and I imagined she was gauging my age and thinking I was lucky if my midwife was still alive. “We have several excellent practitioners,” she said dryly. “When were you last here?”

“About three years ago,” I told her, chagrined. So much for my annual well-woman visit. I hadn’t given it the slightest thought before last week.

“You’ll be seeing Rhianne Volker today. She’s new to our practice but has a lot of experience. I’m sure you’ll like her.” Her smile was not a reassurance so much as a period at the end of her sentence.

I sighed and took a seat. Once back in an examining room, I glanced around at the sterile surroundings and ruminated on how much more medical midwifery looked now than it did when I was having babies. Back then it all seemed touch-and-go in someone’s converted spare bedroom, quilts and blood pressure cuffs competing for shelf space. I relished feeling comfortable with it, affirming to myself the naturalness of the birth experience. Now, I could hardly see the difference between this office and an obstetrician’s.

The door opened and a short-haired woman came in, wearing a lab coat over a band T-shirt and jeans. “Hello, Judy,” she said with a glance at my chart. “I don’t think we’ve met. I’m Rhianne.”

“I haven’t been here in a while.”

“Several years. Have you been anywhere else for your care?”

I grimaced. “No. I used to come every year like clockwork to get my birth control prescription renewed, mainly. But I haven’t needed it in a while.”

She sat in a molded chair and smiled. “And now you do.”

“Yes. People do still use the Pill, right?”

She laughed. “Yes. Things haven’t changed that much. There are other options available, though, if you’d like me to discuss them with you.”

I shrugged. “I’d rather just go with what I know.”

“That’s fine. So how are—” she glanced at my chart again “—Scott and Maggie?”

“Oh, they’re doing well. Both busy with school.” I shifted my weight on the sterile paper of the exam bench. “Do you have children?”

“Not yet. Someday.” She smiled again and stood to wash her hands at the sink. “I’m glad yours are well. You should send in pictures. We always love to put up photos of the babies we’ve delivered, all grown up.”

I chuckled. “Now, if that doesn’t make me feel old.”

“I’m sorry.” She pulled on a pair of gloves and turned to face me. “Now, shall we get started with our exam?”

As the noodles boiled, Zach mixed up a batch of cheese sauce from a bag of yellowish powder, smashing butter down with the side of a fork. He felt a little guilty cooking up such a lame meal for his mother’s lunch, but with her regular trips to the grocery store cancelled because of bed rest, he and his father had let the pantry get way too bare. Rhianne would be over shortly, leaving him no time to indulge any sort of vegetarian creativity with whatever remained. The important thing was to get her fed.

He took the glass bottle of milk from the fridge and eyeballed three tablespoons, then took a swig from the bottle. It was good, he considered, that she was having this baby in the Maryland ’burbs. In New Hampshire she had an arrangement with a local farmer to provide unpasteurized, straight-from-the-cow milk for their family’s use—officially, due to what the law required, for the use of the cat. The farmer never questioned Luna’s three-gallons-per-week requirement, and it was not until Zach was in high school that he realized the practice was unusual even among the most hardcore health enthusiasts in his community. Here in Maryland, the best his mother could do was organic glass-bottle milk, pasteurized but not homogenized, home delivered twice a week. He had never gotten sick from the raw stuff, but the pregnancy made him feel protective; it was probably better for her to drink the thin watery version everybody else was used to.