Christopher Ransom - The Birthing House

'Jesus, did they see them, too?'

'I don't know. They wouldn't talk. I asked them if they were okay, but they just sat there and I couldn't deal with it, so I turned out the light and went downstairs. The Laskis came in laughing. They were too drunk to walk and Mrs Laski left her purse at the place, so I said forget it, pay me later, and I left.'

'Did you tell anyone? Besides Eddie?'

'No. Not then. The next day Leon came over and gave me seven dollars, asked me how the kids were. I said they had a hard time falling asleep. I think he knew, though, because I was still kind of shaken up and he said something like, "I know it ain't easy putting them down, but that's the way it goes around here, so thank you." Something like that.'

'I'm not sure . . .' Conrad began, then stopped. She was like someone with an alibi and doesn't care who believes her because she was certain of the truth. 'Nadia. If you felt fine after, how can you say it was real?'

'Why are you making me do this?'

'Am I making you do anything, Nadia? Really? Because it seems to me you keep coming back, you keep telling me these things.'

'The zeks - those gray women - they were real. They took my baby away.'

'Who--'

'I'd never been with a man. But I knew I was pregnant. And someone else, those zeks , whatever they were, they were judging me. When they saw I was unfit, they decided they didn't want me to have the baby. So they took it.'

She was a scared kid. She was confused. She's still fucked up about it. Something had happened, but not this. She was wrong, had to be .

'I told you, you don't get to choose what to believe.'

'Then explain it to me, because I don't see how.'

'It took me a long time to understand. It was real, but it didn't happen to me. Not then. Not that night.'

He realized she was crying.

'I was seeing myself, later, like I am now. I saw myself pregnant, and now I am. I saw what would happen if I got pregnant . . .' she was near to sobbing '. . . and I didn't deserve this baby.'

'Oh, no, Nadia. No.' He went around the table and sat beside her, resisting the urge to hug her. He held her hand. 'Don't think that.'

She looked around the room. 'Now do you understand? Why I don't want to be here?'

'Nothing is going to hurt you here.'

'It doesn't matter. You couldn't stop it. If they want to take it, they will.'

'Did you tell your mother? Anybody?'

'Not my mom. Eddie didn't believe me.' She fell into his shoulder and cried. He didn't know what to say, so he held her there for a few minutes until she slowed down and caught her breath. 'What if I don't deserve it?' she said.

'Why wouldn't you deserve it?'

'Because I'm not married. I don't know how to take care of it.'

'That doesn't matter,' he said without hesitation. She wasn't teasing him now. This was real. He still didn't understand, but he was glad she let him in. 'Whatever it takes. I'll help you.'

23

He was back in high school, aware that he hadn't been there for years. He was the older self but also the boy he had been. He was wandering through the halls looking for her. He found her in the cafeteria, sitting on a crackled brown leather couch in the corner. The lunchroom had been half-transformed into someone's house, a house party. He waded through the other students, ignoring them as he pressed forward, thinking of what he would say to her. He knew he had to get it right. Had to say the right thing or else he would scare her away.

When he arrived she looked up at him. She had the same flawless young face, all wide glowing cheeks and semi-flat nose.

Holly. Holy Girl.

He wiped his hands on his jeans. He was a mess, the older version. Wanted to hide this version. She wasn't supposed to see him this way.

'Holly,' he said.

'Shhhsh. Don't say anything,' she said in a whisper. 'She'll hear us.'

Conrad thought of Jo, a stab of guilt pressing into his belly. He turned around and the cafeteria behind him was a black wall. A terrifying black edifice. His fault it was here. He'd brought it with him, let her down. Had to save her. His heart slammed as Holly turned and her face changed--

He snapped awake in bed, in the house, blinking into the dark. He felt the blackness with him, in the room. He dared not sit up or move. If he did, it would come to the bed and devour him, end everything.

His eyes adjusted to the dark and still he saw only different shades of black against black. The curtains over the window. The open closet a funnel of black going blacker. The wooden sleigh bed curling like a wave at his feet. A blanket draped over the sleigh frame.

A shadow moved.

He did not move so much as his eyeballs.

At the foot of the bed, there was a body standing over him. She was tall. Not moving. She was watching something, looking down. Tall enough to be his wife.

Not real, he told himself.

Maybe she came home early.

Could not open his mouth to ask her anything. Impossible to act. The terror so great he thought he was dying while she loomed over him, staring down, willing his heart to stop.

Not real, he kept thinking. She's not real. Not real, not--

She moved.

Or maybe she had been moving all along. For he saw now that her arms were rocking back and forth, slowly. Holding something in her arms, her head tilting forward, her face and eyes invisible while she looked down at the bundle in her arms.

'Behbee,' she whispered. Her voice hoarse, deep. 'Ohmmma save the behbeeee.'

It was a full minute later, another interminable minute of watching her arms rocking, when she turned. Her body moved stiffly with grief away from him, out of the bedroom.

No footsteps in the hall. He felt rather than heard her departure and only then did he breathe. The bed shook as the tremors rippled through him. He almost began to cry, but he was afraid to make a sound.

There is another woman in this house. She wants something, and she's growing bolder.

The next morning, Conrad found more packages on the porch. It was not the first batch, but it was the big one. He hauled them in with the others and opened them all, a summer Christmas he had been avoiding. All the invoices were made out to Joanna Harrison. The boxes disgorged drapes with zoo animals on them, rustic wooden shelving units that looked more like Lincoln Logs than furniture, and a designer trashcan designed to keep baby shit off your fingers when disposing of diapers. But it was this final item that kicked off the project and got him going full-tilt.

'Okay, kids,' he said to the dogs, opening a cold beer and thinking he was overdue for a good old-fashioned drunk. 'Let's do this.'

Using a painter's razor, he slit the plastic manifest and inspected the packing slip from the largest box. TOTAL: $2845. He sucked at his beer. The invoice was the yellow copy torn from a generic three-layer pad. At the top, the pressed ink stamp read

Karl Stobbe Carpentry

Wisconsin's Finest

Amish Carpentry & Woodcrafts

He arranged the contents in an exploded view across the living room floor, taking extra care to keep the dogs from running off with the sanded pegs and support beams.

There were no instructions, and Mr Karl Stobbe, fine crafts-man that he was, had not left a phone number or web address on the invoice. Conrad knew the usual stereotypes about the Amish - most were in Pennsylvania but plenty had settled in Ohio and Wisconsin, too - living without telephones. Maybe Stobbe was the real deal. Conrad stared at the contents for almost half an hour before he packed it all up and carried the box upstairs.

He set the kit in the library, tuned the radio to NPR's classical station, and began ripping up the carpet. Avoiding the stain on the floor as best he could, he pulled staples from the wood and chipped away the dried, stuck padding. He dragged the mess to the garbage cans on the side of the house. He returned to the fridge for more beer three times - he was sweating the stuff out as fast as he could drink it - and lost himself in honest labor.