bruises and welts. The scars that have been there since our first days of marriage.
“Enjoy yourself in there, Jesus,” I whisper. I feel like it’s going to be another boy this time. Been right with most of them. “Enjoy yourself while you can.”
I turn and look at Sven’s face just above the covers. Sometimes when he’s asleep like this, or passed out on the living room couch, I think he looks like a little boy, and I feel sorry for him, sorry for the bastard he’s become. And I reach out and run my hand gently over his cheek, feeling the wrinkles and the tough old skin of his, oily and bristled. I feel sorry for him and wonder where the child in him has gone and run off to.
I’m due any day now. My belly’s as big as an apple basket. This is my favorite time. Now. When I know the child inside me is fully formed. A whole little being squirming inside of me. When I look in the mirror past the bruises and the tiredness, I look radiant. I smile, and the smile is genuine. Sven doesn’t dare touch me now. Not these last few days. He stays away mostly, knowing how easily his rage gets the better of him. He only comes around when it’s supper time, sits at the table, eats the food I’ve cooked, and only talks to me after dabbing the grease from the corner of his lips.
“Please,” he says. “Let’s work things out.”
But it’s always too little, too late. He knows it, but the want in him is so great. It sobers him up these few days where at least he has to try.
I sit there. Look at him from across the table. The smile on my face is genuine, and my skin shines with that healthy glow. I don’t say a thing. Soon he pushes away from the table. Walks with his head down out to the barn. He’ll spend these last couple nights sleeping in the hayloft.
It’s the only time I have any power over him. And I know after this one is born, the beatings will come harder than ever. And after a few months he’ll take me again. Night after night. Take me in that angry way of his until I’m pregnant with number twelve.
Now, sweet Jesus, I think tomorrow is your day, the first day you’ll see this big, bright world. I put the pills in your daddy’s moonshine, so he’ll sleep all of tomorrow. Enjoy this last night in my womb. Enjoy the warmth of my blood, the beat of my heart. Because tomorrow you’ll meet your other brothers and sisters, out behind the barn.
I’m resting today. I need a good night’s sleep. It’s tough giving birth by yourself. It’s even tougher digging deep into the earth looking for the bones of your children. Tougher yet to pile the dirt on your newest one as he cries his first cries.
Down there with his brothers and sisters.
It’s the one time of the year I feel any power over Sven, but the glow I feel inside will last another week at least, even after Sven wakes from the drugs, beats me with his leathery old fists and asks me, “Why? Why? Why?”
The Nurturer
When the Grim Reaper came for John Pepper, instead of a scythe, she carried a cell phone. It took a moment for John to realize what was happening, but he rose from the ground and saw his earthly body on the kitchen floor. Blood trickled from his nose and his eyes stared lifelessly from their sockets. What happened? He’d been scooping chocolate ice cream, and now…
The scoop laid at his feet, a circle of melted chocolate filling in the crevices between the floorboards. He stared at his body lying there, trying to comprehend what was happening, until movement beneath the Reaper’s cloak distracted him. The black fabric billowed and swayed as if agitated by an invisible wind. The Reaper’s skeletal hand gathered the dark fabric about her throat and clutched it tightly.
How did he know it was female? There were no signs, no telltale features, yet something about the figure made him certain.
Her arm creaked as she extended the cell phone to John. He looked at it as if it might be poisonous.
The Reaper pushed it closer. “Listen,” she said. Her voice was sonorous, like the dying vibrations of a large, thick bell.
John reached for it and froze. It wasn’t a real cell phone. It was a toy. A
He’d rather it was something poisonous, something sharp and deadly. Not something this painful. Why this? Why Deirdre’s phone?
“Listen,” the Reaper insisted.
Deirdre was only four when a car driven by a drunken teenager ran her down. It happened two years ago, but John still could not sleep at night until his quota of tears had found their way to his pillow.
He placed the phone to his ear.
Again, the Reaper gathered her cloak about her. The fabric bulged, rippled, as if something moved beneath it.
“Daddy?” Deirdre’s voice was muffled. It sounded far away.
John’s jaw trembled. Words caught in his throat like chunks of wet coal.
“Daddy?” There was desperation in her voice. A glimmer of hope, perhaps?
John whispered, “I miss you, honey. I’ve missed you so much.”
“Can you play with me?”
John looked up, trying to read the expression on the face of the cloaked figure, but there was only the dull talcum of skull deep in the shadow of her hood. “Is this real?” he asked, watching her closely.
The Reaper slowly nodded.
Again, he heard Deirdre’s voice over the toy phone. “Daddy? Are you there?”
“What do I tell her?” he whispered.
The Reaper looked down so that all John saw of her was cloak and shadow. But she spoke, a hitch in her voice, the sonorous tone turning to a sad rasp. “Tell her yes,” she said.
John looked at the Reaper, heard his daughter’s voice in his ear over the phone. “Daddy, please — are you there?” she pleaded. “Please, Daddy. Play with me.”
He shut his eyes tightly, translucent tears streaming down transparent cheeks. “Yes,” he whispered into the phone. “Yes, Deirdre. Daddy’s gonna play with you.”
The Reaper reached for the phone and pried it from John’s tight grip. He looked at her questioningly. She signaled him to follow.
Was she taking him to her?
There was a mewling sound, a dry rasping. The Reaper’s cloak moved. John saw a flash of bone as she turned away. She tightened her grip on her cloak. John followed as the world around him turned to dusk. He took one last look at his earthly body before it was swallowed by the growing shadows.
The Reaper sighed. Her body quivered beneath her cloak. John felt a mounting excitement about seeing his daughter again, but he asked the Reaper, “Are you cold?”
The Reaper paused. She slowly turned. She shook her head and loosened her grip. She looked down at herself as her cloak fell open. “I’m not cold,” she rasped. “But he is.”
A small skeleton gripped her ribcage, his mandible making sucking motions at the place her breast would be. The baby stopped sucking for a moment and started to cry, its tiny bones rattling with cold. The Reaper quickly closed her cloak and the crying soon stopped. She turned away.
“Come,” the Reaper said. “Your daughter is waiting.”
Jam Session
