Her instinct was to decline, but one Friday, in her sixth month, after her swim spent pondering the family of tombstone carvers who had appeared in the novel—a mother and father and three daughters given free rein to choose the gravestones, to decide on the embellishments and the epitaphs of those eliminated by the sympathetic executioners—Joan found herself in a small mirrored room, standing on a mat, listening to a broad-shouldered woman telling them about prenatal yoga. The woman’s hair was a brazen red, a fakery that failed to impart the youth she must have been after.
“Hi, everyone. I’m Lannie. By your wet heads, I’m guessing you’ve been swimming, which is good cardiovascular exercise, but yoga will help you stay limber, improve your balance and circulation, keep your muscles toned, and teach you to breathe right and relax, which will come in handy for the physical demands of labor, birth, and motherhood. I’m going to show you several poses, but we’re going to start with ujjayi, a special breathing technique which will prime you for childbirth. Ujjayi will let you fight the urge to tighten up when you’re in pain or afraid during labor. You’ll take in air slowly through your nose until your lungs are completely filled, then exhale completely, until your stomach compresses.”
There were laughs and the Pregnant Six grabbed at their bellies.
“Yes, of course,” Lannie said, “but you’ll still be able to feel it from the inside. Now watch me.”
She inhaled until her large nose narrowed and her chest rose up like a bulwark, then there was a whoosh of an exhale that went on forever, which Joan found loud and annoying.
“Got it, everyone?” and the Pregnant Six yelled, “Got it.”
They were their own cheerleading squad, and despite their inclusion of her, Joan felt distaste, remembering the horde of girls at her high school, she younger than everyone in her grade by several years, fourteen when she was a senior, and those girls, in short swingy cheer-skirts and crop-tops, roamed the hallways, making what they believed were pithy, hurtful remarks in superior voices that made some kids cry. About Joan they once said, “There’s the girl who sure loves her pens. Wonder what she does with them alone in her bed.” An unclever comment that had failed to land, proving to Joan, again, how easily people cracked away at others’ humanity, the pain they inflicted comforting something inside of themselves. She couldn’t help wondering what the Pregnant Six said about her when she was not among them, when they were massed and crooning together.
They practiced ujjayi breathing, their exhalations out of sync, until Lannie said, “Okay. Good enough for the first time. We’re ready now for our first asana. Virabhadrasana I, a standing posture, the first of the three warrior poses.
“Yogis are known for their nonviolent ways, but the Bhagavad Gita, the most respected of all the yoga texts, is actually a dialogue between two famous and feared warriors that takes place on a battlefield between two great armies spoiling for a fight. What is commemorated in this pose is the spiritual warrior who bravely battles against the universal enemy, avidya, which is self-ignorance, the ultimate source of all our suffering. What you all want to work at battling in yourselves.”
It was obvious to Joan that Lannie had memorized her yoga patter, but into Virabhadrasana I Joan went. Then Virabhadrasana II and III, Tree, Downward Dog, Cat-Cow, and good old-fashioned squats, out of place when Lannie was talking on about the meditative benefits of yoga, silencing their inner dialogues, and learning just to be.
Joan found she was curiously limber and graceful doing the poses, that she enjoyed heeding the instructions, ceding control for the hour, focused not on her novel’s unfolding story, as she did when she swam, but on the mystical way she was contorting her body, watching herself in the mirror transitioning easily from one pose to the next, despite her belly, and the sloshing, along with a kick or two, from inside. When she looked at the others, she was surprised by their precious way of holding themselves, mincing through the poses, hands rarely straying from their cargo, as if they were vessels for the world’s next great philosophers.
“Time for Baddha konasana, sometimes known as cobbler’s or tailor’s pose,” Lannie said. “Drag your mats to the wall. Backs up tight and straight against it, put your soles together and let your knees fall apart—
“Meg, you’re not grounded. Get grounded. Yes, spread those ass cheeks apart so you’re stable.”
At last, they were told to lie on their sides on the mats. “Time for a pregnancy-modified Shavasna, corpse pose. Get comfortable. Eyes closed. Arms and legs relaxed. Palms facing upward. Now, inhale. Pull that breath into your lungs. Now, exhale. Force all that air out of you. Now, everyone, tense your entire body gently. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Now, let go. I’m going to shut off the lights and you can stay as long as you want.”
*
When Joan opened her eyes in the darkened room, she was alone, her mat the only one left on the floor. The clock above the door read 3:05; the class had been over for more than an hour. She felt happy, hazily happy, a feeling that lasted as she drove home, and through two more hours of writing, and through dinner with Martin, laughing when he told her about the day’s mishaps made by the residents assigned to him, listening carefully to him describe the initial steps for a radical surgery he was conceiving that might be able to restore sight in a permanent way for certain ocular diseases. Through it all, she honestly felt the glow of pregnancy; she had not felt it, not truly, before.
In bed that night, lying on her side with her back to Martin, straddling the body pillow as if it were a horse, she said, “I liked the yoga a lot. I’m going to do the classes with Lannie, but after the baby comes, I’m going to find a real yoga teacher and real yoga classes, even if I have to drive to another town.”
Martin yawned and said, “Sounds good. Whatever you want to do sounds good to me,” and then he was lightly snoring.
Joan thought about her old neighborhood in New York, the yoga studio she had often passed. Not once had she thought of opening its door, going in, checking it out. She felt her heart softening toward the baby a bit more; the way it was offering her something new in exchange for room and board.
3
Silas and Abe were left in a wicker basket at a firehouse, to the right of the red bay doors, found by the captain, who looked beneath the tattered blanket and discovered twins, nametags pinned to their onesies. A cooler bag was next to the basket, diapers on top, nursing bottles below. When the captain pulled out a bottle, it was full. All the bottles were full, each one labeled Fresh Breast Milk in fluorescent pink ink, and dated; the one in his hand dated that day.
The captain carried the basket and bag into the house, and his husky men, who threw themselves into fires, cooed over the babies, made goo-goo faces and trilling sounds, changed them and fed them while he called Children’s Services.
The woman from the authority arrived and said, “At least they’re infants. That’s the key. They’ll be placed in a heartbeat.”
The captain said, “Please make sure they’re kept together. Hard enough start to life, without them having to go it alone. They’ll always be looking for each other, if you don’t do the right thing.”