“She’s almost fully dilated,” Netta informs me quietly when I enter the room, then her footsteps move swiftly away from me, toward the far wall, her left heel dragging across the wood floor. I’ve never seen Netta—she came to the community later than most, after I lost my eyesight. But I know her by her walk, her odd labored steps, as if one leg is bent wrongly outward from the other. She is a short, narrow, wisp of a woman, and she always smells of basil and a little of something sweet, like wild bearberries.
On the bed, in the center of the room, is Colette Lau; I can hear her throaty moans. And seated on a wooden stool at the end of the bed is Faye—Pastoral’s resident midwife.
Netta, Faye’s assistant, mutters something at the far side of the room, like maybe she dropped something. Cursing her clumsiness.
“Baby’s coming fast,” Faye says to me when I reach the bed, my fingers finding the white cotton sheet and then Colette’s hand, seized into a fist.
Too soon, I want to say in response. The baby is coming too soon. But everyone in the room already knows this: Colette still has another eight weeks to go. Too soon.
I hear the faucet turn on at the little sink inside the room. Netta is preparing cotton rags, heating water, busying herself with tasks. Idle hands…
I lay a palm on Colette’s shoulder. “Bee,” she says, her voice breathy, strained. “Is the baby okay?”
I do not come to the deliveries to assist in the process. I have no interest in midwifery. I am here to listen, to feel for the baby’s heartbeat, to sense if anything changes inside the womb: if anything feels wrong.
I slide my small hands over Colette’s stomach, swollen and shifting like an ocean tide, the baby inside is anxious—ready. “She sounds good,” I tell Colette. “Strong. Ready to be born.” A little lie to reassure her. The lies come so easily these days.
Three months back, I had been sitting next to Colette at the gathering when I felt the baby’s heartbeat thrumming rhythmically inside my ears. A distant pumping of blood, the rush of a heart pattering against not yet fully formed ribs. She was a girl, with tiny nub fingers and toes that curled together. I told Colette she would give birth to a girl, and she cried, clutching her stomach. Colette came to Pastoral twelve years ago, just before everything changed, before the forest was unsafe and the borders could not be crossed. But she’s never talked about her life before, in the outside—only that she lived in southern California and was living a life that didn’t feel like her own. So she fled north to Pastoral.
I wonder if Ash—her husband, and one of the community builders—knows that she’s in labor. Two years ago, they fell in love swiftly during the heat of midsummer, and soon after, they stood beneath the Mabon tree in the gathering circle while Levi bound their wrists together with yellow yarn, a symbol of their union. I felt envious—a pit sprouting thorns in my stomach—listening to the words Levi spoke, how their love could not be severed after that day.
Levi and I have never bound ourselves to one another, never stood side by side and promised to only love the other in front of the whole community. He insists we keep our devotion a secret. A quiet love, he called it once. But I’ve always sensed a hesitation within him, reasons he won’t share with me. And in truth, a part of me likes the idea of it—a secret love—a thing meant only for us. But there are other times when I want a loud love: screaming, lungs burning, moon-deep kind of love.
Colette claps her hand over mine and squeezes, her expression wincing away from the pain. The contractions are coming swiftly now.
The baby is close.
“Slow your breathing,” Faye instructs, standing up from the stool. Faye never delivered babies in the outside world. She was a therapist before she came to Pastoral, counseling families and children in a small town in Washington State. But when the community’s midwife passed away, Faye took up the responsibility and read every book we had about childbirth. “Your body knows what to do,” Faye assures. “We just need to listen to it.”
I don’t say aloud what I also feel inside Colette’s belly, the strange sputter, the uneven fidget. The baby is anxious, wants to come out, but something isn’t quite right.
Colette grips my hand as the delivery begins in earnest now.
Faye coaxes her to push with each wave of contractions, while Netta brings damp washcloths, draping them over Colette’s forehead, cooing softly and stroking the hair from Colette’s eyes. Netta is well-practiced, and someday she will take over as Pastoral’s midwife when Faye’s hands begin to tremble too badly for deliveries, when her eyes can no longer focus and her stamina wanes.
The sky through the windows grows brighter as the sun washes over the valley. Netta opens more windows to let in the morning breeze and Colette’s moans turn into hisses and then a puffing sound she makes with full cheeks. Morning becomes midday, hours of pain and moments of strange calm.
In the heat of afternoon, I settle my hands on her stomach and feel the baby’s stammering heart rate, the slowing pulse, the struggle to be free of the womb. “She needs to be born now,” I say aloud, a little too urgent. I feel Colette’s heart rate quicken.
There is no response, but I know Faye understands. The heart isn’t as strong as it should be. Too small, too weak.
Faye urges Colette to drink a warm mixture of crushed herbs—raspberry leaf, black cohosh, and primrose—most of which were grown in my sister’s garden. The tonic will speed the delivery, urge the baby into the world, and Colette chokes it down with eyes pinched closed, drops slipping down her chin that Netta wipes away.
The minutes move swiftly now, the contractions coming in bursts. Netta scurries around the bed, making adjustments, bringing water, always water, to soothe and quench and clean away sweat mixed with tears. Colette holds in her breath, a tightened sound as she bears down—the strength of countless women before her who gave birth in this same way shivering through her—her body knows the rhythm, the task to be performed. And finally, as the sunlight begins to dip to the west, the air growing cooler against my skin, she pushes the baby forth.
A little girl wails into the soft dusk light, startling an owl who had been roosting near the birthing hut. I listen to its wings thumping out into the dark.