The Grafton Voice

Birth, by J.M. Price

The evening was warm and a soft breeze blew the gauzy curtains like the wings of the wood thrushes that were that were settling in the twilight. The scent of honeysuckle hung thickly in the air. It was the sort of evening that makes one curiously nostalgic for a time one has never experienced – that fills one with longing for a place one has never been.

She folded her hands in her lap and watched the persimmon coloured clouds fade into a starry sky. He would not come. She rose slowly and walked to the edge of the porch. She leaned over, almost far enough to fall into the fragrant pink peonies below. It had grown completely dark now, so she had to squint to see into the cluster of tall pines that stood by the farmhouse. The birds had quieted and now the only sounds were her breath and the clicking, buzzing insects of summer. An owl swooped down from a high branch and seemed to glide lightly over the ground before soaring back up with his diminutive prize. She rather liked the little brown mice with glittering black eyes that sometimes peeked at her in the kitchen. She didn’t want to watch one die. However, in this particular instance it seemed to her so much a part of the cycle of life that it wasn’t distressing. She wrapped herself in the lace shawl she had knitted herself and went into the house, the wooden screen door closing noiselessly behind her.

Undressing upstairs by candlelight, she stared at the vacant bed. It was only eight o’ clock, but what was there to do? She stood in her thin nightgown and shivered. Why was she so cold? It was summer, but the night smelled distinctly of autumn. She closed the old window and allowed both the cat and the dog on the bed. It was something he never would have stood for.

She had waited on the porch for him for twenty-seven weeks now, knitting or sewing in her rocking chair and listening to the birds. She expected him to walk up the path at any moment, his eyes sparkling, his beard long, his boots crunching the earth beneath him.

She slept fitfully, dreaming of his lips on her skin, his breath on her neck, his big hands. She dreamed that he drowned, that he had been walking beside her by the creek bed, lost his footing and was carried away by the current. She dreamed of owls and of children. Once the dog woke her, howling, and she was sure he had come. But there was nothing.

In the morning she woke with the sunrise and went to collect the eggs from the chickens, the dog not far behind. She hadn’t seen a person in days but couldn’t bear the walk to town. Their words still echoed in her head: “He’s not coming back.” Maybe it was true, what they said, but how could that be? The life they had built for themselves – their life. They had not had a chance to have children. And now she feared that she would. Alone. Without him. And so she waited.

She wandered into the meadow and picked flowers, holding them in her skirts. It was her punishment, she thought, for doing the unthinkable. He had had been engaged to be married. He had left the betrothed woman for her, pressing up against her in the dark in the house her father had left her. No one wanted to talk to them after that. Probably people were saying she deserved it, to be left alone in the country without her love and only a bastard infant to care for. She carried the flowers back to her house and realized that the baby would come soon. She artfully arranged the flowers in a pitcher on the table. She put her hands flat on the table and closed her eyes. She felt his strong arms encircle her waist and move up to her swollen breasts, and she shuddered at this ghost.

After she realized he wasn’t coming back, she began to accept the pain of solitude. She did not have time for self-pity, for she had to prepare. While she was not welcome in town to fetch the supplies she would need, occasionally an old woman who felt sorry for her would come by to check on her. “He back yet?” The old woman would ask politely, well aware that he wasn’t coming back. “Not yet,” was always the response.

The old woman brought things from town that did not grow in the garden or on the land, items like fabric and sugar and flour that other things could be made from. In between these weekly visits, she would garden and farm, spin and knit, sew and bake, and make candles, teas and soaps. The old woman could sell these homemade things in town to pay for the things she brought. It always made her laugh a little to think that the people in town would burn the nice things they bought if they knew where they had come from. It had been perhaps the most productive time in her life. And then one night it was all over.

She woke to the full moon streaming in the window to make a bright beam across the white sheets, and with a primal moan and a great gush of blood and water, she delivered me by herself in the night. She lifted me from between her thighs and onto her breast and began to sob – not with pain but with joy – at her daughter, her perfect, beautiful daughter.