“There, there, molay, don’t worry,” she says reflexively, teeth clamped around the last hairpin. “I’m coming.”
Anna Chedethi straightens sheets that don’t need straightening. The contraction is like a distant cloud, visible over treetops, then casting its shadow on Elsie’s face as cramping pain twists her body, wrings it out like a washrag. Elsie grips Big Ammachi’s hands so hard that her knuckles could crumble to powder. “There, there. Just breathe. You’ve been through this before,” she says. But the truth is Elsie hasn’t. Baby Ninan slipped out like a kitten squeezing through window bars.
The contraction passes and Elsie desperately sucks in air. Big Ammachi is startled to see in Elsie’s eyes not fear, which would be natural, but that terrible sadness again. “Ammachi, take me to the nest.”
“But we went there an hour ago, remember? Let’s walk in this room if you like.”
She strokes Elsie, waiting, reliving her own blessed and terrible ordeal of giving birth. She remembers she had ceased to exist anywhere but in this room. Who but a woman would understand? Just when you thought the pain couldn’t get worse, it did. The thread between her and the world snapped, and she had been utterly and completely alone, battling God, battling the miraculous creation that He had allowed to grow inside her, and was now ripping her—also his creation—in two. Men like to think that women forget the pain upon seeing the blessed baby. No. A woman forgives the child, and she might even forgive the father. But she never forgets.
With the next contraction, Elsie is already bearing down. “Hold Anna Chedethi’s hands.” Moving to the foot of the bed, Big Ammachi spreads Elsie’s legs and pushes her knees toward her belly.
She doesn’t understand what she’s seeing. Instead of the dark, glistening hair of the baby’s head framed in that oval, she sees pale flesh. And a dimple. It’s the baby’s bottom! That dimple is the anus. Hearing a pounding, she’s distracted, wondering who’s hammering at the door, until she realizes it’s her own heart. This baby is upside down. This is trouble. The contraction passes and the bottom retreats, gaining no purchase. Maybe the birth canal hasn’t fully softened, so perhaps if they give it time—
Suddenly, Elsie’s legs shoot straight out as though unseen pulleys extend her limbs. “Elsie, don’t! Bend your knees again!” But Elsie is past hearing, her legs rigid, toes pointing at the door, her arms curled against her chest in a strange posture. Atavistic grunts come through her clenched teeth, along with frothy blood-tinged saliva. “She’s bitten her tongue!” Anna Chedethi says. Elsie’s eyes roll back, showing only the whites. And then she convulses, her limbs flailing, her body rattling the bed. Big Ammachi gathers Elsie’s head to her bosom, as though to deny whatever spirit is taking possession, to keep it from whipping Elsie to and fro. After an eternity, the intruder retreats. But it has taken Elsie with it: she is limp, her breathing coarse, her eyes half open and gazing to the left. She is unconscious.
Big Ammachi folds Elsie’s legs once more so that her heels rest on her buttocks. To her dismay, the view hasn’t changed. She washes her hands in hot water, thinking through what she should do. She removes her ring and smears coconut oil on her right hand, past the wrist.
“Anna Chedethi, kneel on the bed. Put your hand here on her belly and push when I say so. Lord, my rock, my fortress, my—well, you heard me before,” she says in the same stern voice she used with Anna Chedethi. But for the convulsion, they might have waited for nature to take its course, for the baby’s bottom to stretch the canal, for Elsie to push . . . but the passage looks as wide as it is going to get, and an unconscious Elsie can no longer bear down.
She gathers her gnarled fingers into a bird’s beak, then insinuates them into the birth canal. Her fingertips ease past the baby’s bottom, spreading out, worming their way up, the space so tight that her joints scream. She closes her eyes as if to better see in the womb’s darkness. She sweeps around and stumbles onto soft stubs. Toes! And the back of an ankle? Yes! With a fingertip, she pulls on that foot, keeping its angle with the shin as she found it. Just when she thinks it might snap, the foot slips down past the baby’s buttocks and is outside. She finds the other foot higher up, and eases it out, and now, with no fuss, the buttocks slip out as well, along with a loop of umbilical cord. Anna Chedethi looks on, her mouth gaping.
The legs dangle from the birth canal, wet and slimy, one knee flexed and the other straight, as though the baby is in mid-stride, trying to climb back inside. Its spine faces them, like a string of tiny beads under the skin. She wraps a towel around the sagging infant torso and pulls. The trunk doesn’t budge, but rotates glacially, like a water wheel. She probes within once more and hooks down the crook of an elbow, and as a bonus, both shoulders deliver. Only the head remains collared by the neck of the womb. She glances up at Elsie, who hasn’t moved. The froth on her lips bubbles with her rapid, shallow breaths.
She pulls, but the head is planted as if in stone. She fantasizes that if she calls the baby it will say, “Yes, Ammachi?” and come to her as so many little ones have. The sweat dripping into her eyes blinds her. Anna Chedethi wipes her face for her and flutters the bamboo fan. The umbilical cord dangles below the child like a white serpent, pulsating and twitching with Elsie’s every heartbeat, the knots of veins under the gelatinous surface distended and angry. Seeing all of the baby but its head makes her think of Elsie’s statue. Before Philipose defaced it.
“Anna, push when I tell you,” she says irritably, even though it’s her own wandering mind that annoys her. She squats as the next contraction begins, her knees creaking. Anna Chedethi presses down on the swollen belly, while Big Ammachi pulls down in the direction of the floor. But the awful angle between neck and body frightens her. “Stop! Pull up, not down,” a voice clearly says. Anna Chedethi hasn’t spoken. Who was it then? Is the long-standing resident of the cellar below them trying to offer advice? She eases a finger inside to find the baby’s mouth; then, with the next contraction, while keeping the head bent, she stands and pulls the baby’s torso up and toward Elsie’s belly, because something or someone told her that was the way. “Push, Anna!” The head comes free with a gurgle, the sound of mother and baby surrendering to nature’s rule that no soul can linger betwixt and between, not if it wants purchase in this world.
Anna Chedethi expertly ties and cuts the cord while the newborn lies blue and lifeless in Big Ammachi’s arms. She blows gently on the tiny nostrils. “Come on, precious! You’re out of the water and in Parambil!” Nothing happens. She has a clear memory of Odat Kochamma, bending forward on her bowlegs, her arms behind her for ballast, and saying into Ninan’s tiny ear, “Maron Yesu Mishiha.” Jesus is Lord. She looks up to the false ceiling and beseeches her, certain that her companion of so many years is looking down. Say it, Kochamma! Do you want me to do it all?
—and the child fills its lungs and squalls, a glorious sound, a universal language, the first utterance of a new life. Big Ammachi’s clothes are drenched in sweat, her very bones hurt, her eyes burn, but her joy is overflowing.
There are happy noises outside the door: those waiting have heard the baby’s cry.