memories, the hooded stranger was drifting toward her. The stranger’s cough—raspy, rattling—sounded like it was right in Marie’s ear. Marie ducked her head and stared at the ground, her shoulders drawn up—mid-flinch—as if waiting for a blade to fall across her neck. Seconds passed; nothing happened. In the silence, Marie straightened and looked up to see the stranger standing two feet away. The stranger’s eyes seemed to be looking at and through her at the same time. Marie wet her lips to speak, wavering on whether or not it was wiser to stay silent.
“We’re at the crossroads, honey,” the woman said, answering Marie’s question before she had uttered a sound.
Marie looked down at her feet. Her eyes grew wide. The crossing in the roads was following her. Suddenly she knew that two dirt roads would have crossed beneath her feet no matter where she had stopped. A racket of confusion broke out in Marie’s mind. When she looked up, an incredulous look had grabbed hold of her face. The stranger waved away Marie’s expression like she was swatting a fly.
“Don’t be scared, little girl. Just hurry up and speak your mind. How can I help you?”
When Marie didn’t respond, the stranger flicked a black speck from beneath a fingernail and watched as it arced over Marie, fluttering as it passed overhead. On the descent it whimpered quietly and fell behind Marie like a stone. Marie covered her face with her hands and shuddered.
“Stop stalling! I don’t have time for this. Speak, lost one. You came to get something or leave something?”
The stranger made a hissing sound with her teeth, and the hissing rattled something loose inside Marie. She felt the gurgling of an answer trying to erupt from deep within her.
The stranger lifted her arms, and her hands floated in front of her. Her arms stretched forward, and she gently removed Marie’s hands from her face. The gleam in the stranger’s eye brightened as she stared at Marie. Their gazes touched for the slightest of seconds. Then the stranger gave two appraising nods and let her hands fall away.
“So that’s why you’re here,” she said. The sound of the her speaking throbbed in Marie’s ear. “You’re here to get rid of that feeling.”
Marie’s body vibrated as a sob rose to her throat. She felt the force of hysteria would strangle her.
“I want to go home,” Marie managed to croak.
“When you go, do you want to take this with you?”
The stranger touched a hand lightly to Marie’s forehead. A familiar heat rose through her. It was the heat that flared every time her friends unleashed an insult, slight, or offhand shaming of black people. It accompanied the inside jokes, the dark derision, the knowing glances that characterized her people as less than. Marie called it her outsider heat, her imposter heat, and it burned whenever she was reminded that she didn’t belong.
Marie retched. Her body pitched forward, but she kept her lips clamped tight. She felt an army of ugly words marching out of her memory, gliding into her viscera, then snaking up her chest, carrying with it the bitter taste of bile. The stranger’s cackle sounded like metal teeth scraping against concrete.
“Don’t nobody ever admit to asking to come here, but once they here, they can’t deny the truths I tell. So tell me then, sweetie, what you gonna give me to get free?”
Marie kept her head down until she started to feel the pressure of blood rushing to her scalp. A fine web of sweat covered her skin. She raised her head cautiously, and a wave of nausea crashed inside her.
“It won’t hurt. Not less’n you keep dodging the truth. Now listen good; I will take all the hurt out your body, and you will pay me for it. You won’t pay me now, mind. I’ll come collect when the time is right. No matter how much you try to prepare for it, it’ll be something you never expect. And when I take it, you’ll remember that you promised to give it up. Deal?”
Marie didn’t speak. She was too busy fighting for breath. The stranger placed her hand on Marie’s shoulder blade. The heat flushed through Marie’s body again, this time at triple the intensity. Marie cried out in anguish. She clenched her fists and teeth, waiting for the heat to pass, but the woman didn’t remove her hand.
“Is it a deal, dearie?” the woman asked.
“Yes, yes, whatever you want,” Marie yelled. “Take it. It’s a deal.”
As soon as the words left Marie’s mouth, she heard a whirling sound. She lifted her head. The trees, the grass, even the crossroads beneath her feet began to rotate slowly around her. She stood and looked around. The nausea was gone—so was the stranger, though her soft, grating laughter lingered in the air.
Marie’s body whipped around in a circle. Faster and faster, she turned. It felt as if the air were pressing against her. Then the ground beneath her feet crumbled away. She shrieked so hard she thought she’d taste blood on her tongue. Then just like that, the ground was solid again, and her body was still.
She found herself staring at her own reflection in a darkened subway window. The subway car jerked around a curve, and she stumbled. When she regained her balance, she realized that she was on a full subway car. Her head was pounding, her throat felt raw. She checked her cell phone. What time was it? Where was she? Where had she just been? Where was she going?
The subway slid to a stop, but Marie was frozen in a sea of amnesia and indecision. She could not muster the mental strength to decide whether or not she should exit the train. Through the subway window, she saw a hooded figure sitting on a bench at the station. A dark vision ruffled its wings within Marie’s subconscious. She blinked and leaned toward the window, struggling to remember. But then the doors closed, and the train took off before the memory could make itself whole in Marie’s mind.
Labor was hard, much harder than they said it would be, and much longer than Marie and Steven had planned. After a day at home and a day and a half in the birthing center, Marie’s baby still had not crowned. Marie was so worn out by her unproductive labor that the words “birthing plan” lost their meaning. When she heard Steven asking the midwife for a few more hours at the birthing center, she squeezed his hand and whispered, “Let’s go to the hospital.”
In the hospital there would be syringes and scalpels, exactly the instruments she had intended to avoid by choosing a birthing center and midwives over doctors and their medical approach, but after 36 hours of labor, Marie had reached her limit. Getting into the wheelchair was torture, but being wheeled past the bulletin board with snapshots of smiling parents caused a more haunting pain. Despite putting in so many hours of labor, Marie and Steven would not succeed at natural childbirth. They would have no right to count themselves as a birthing center success story.
As she rode to the hospital, all she could think about was holding her child at last. She imagined sobbing, kissing him softly, and scolding him for being so stubborn and shy about coming into this world.
The nurse who greeted them at the hospital was old, older than Marie thought nurses were allowed to be, but she could not dwell on that thought or any other. There were just too many distractions. There were the persistent but ineffective contractions that she had brought with her to the hospital, the cries of strangers that surrounded her as she rolled through the emergency room, the swarm of residents in white coats that moved around her room with clipboards in hand. Time was galloping by in odd, uneven clumps. A nurse wearing a shirt with bunnies and balloons printed on it seemed to be checking her blood pressure for hours, while another nurse attached a fetal monitor to her stomach so quickly it seemed as if it had always been there.
In the sea of white coats and pastel cartoon prints, Marie could not see Steven anywhere. Just after an IV port was stuck into the back of her hand, Marie felt her abdomen tensing again. When the next contraction hit, a high-pitched beeping sound exploded from one of the machines.
“What’s happening?” Steven asked.
His voice, thick with worry, cut through all the noise in the room.
Marie winced, smothering her groans, silently willing the doctor to answer. The doctor felt the sides and the top of Marie’s swollen belly with deft hands. He leaned over and pressed a stethoscope to her navel.
“We shouldn’t push this any longer,” he said to no one in particular.
When the contraction had passed, the beeping sound quieted. All the medical personnel turned their eyes to the fetal monitor.
“The baby is stable,” a nurse with a high-pitched voice squeaked.
“What’s… happening…?” Marie muttered through her exhaustion.
“The baby’s heartbeat stopped, but it’s back on track now,” the midwife said patting Marie’s leg.
“I’m going to set up an OR,” the doctor said and shot the midwife a decisive look.
