A Stranger's House (27 page)

That night we made love, sweet, hopeful love, Tom's lips warmer and softer than I could remember, and as I moved above him, felt him deep inside me, felt his warm tongue gently caress my nipple, felt his hands softly touching my back, I knew that if it were ever to be, if we were ever to bear children, to conceive, it would be on this night, the eve of our beginning, entry into a new world.

 

I dreamt that night, the dream now rote, now dead, no longer something I feared. The children at my bedside were as familiar as a mother could imagine, children I loved and dreaded at once, predictable in their silence, their eyes on me. The only new feeling I had in me, if it was a feeling at all, lay in my waiting for my son's hand, to see if he would offer it again. That was what I waited to see.

Finally that part in the dream came, and he raised his hand, just as soft, just as pale and cool as every other night. Then his lips seemed to quiver, the corners of his mouth rise, to change, and I saw on his face what might have been the beginning of a smile, a child's tentative, apprehensive smile at some stranger: me.

Slowly he lifted his head up as if to take me in, and I could see the soft porcelain skin at his throat and chin, his smile growing wider, and I braced myself, ready for the abyss inside him once his smile broke open. Still he held out his hand.

I was suddenly frightened, my skin prickling, my mouth dry and hot, my neck sweating, and I realized all in a moment, all in my dream, that I did
not
want to touch him. What I'd waited for for so long, the touch of my child, of these children, was about to happen, and I saw that I did not want it, because the waiting would be over, that subtle progression from nothing to something, from despair to hope, would be over. The children would be here, and I would have to look in their eyes, and I would have to know them.

But then he smiled, a brittle smile, the edges of his mouth breaking with the movement of muscles, his thin lips almost disappearing.
Finally I could see his teeth, hard, white, and nearly glowing, whiter than his throat, his chin.

His smile held, and he reached even closer, until his hand was right before me, inches from me, and it seemed miraculous that he hadn't yet disappeared, that he wanted to touch me, wanted me to hold his hand, though I knew I had only sutured stumps.

Then the middle child, the girl closest to me, lifted her hand, too, and she smiled, and the smallest girl, my baby daughter at the foot of the bed, both hands clutching the edge of the bedspread, let one hand go. She reached for me, and I could see the light half-moons of her nails on the tips of her small fingers.

My two girls smiled, their smiles as light as my son's, the abysses, the black infinite space that had come each time before, gone, the three of them smiling at me and smiling, each with a hand held out, waiting for me, waiting.

I
saw
these children, knew them somehow: in their eyes, their sharp, obsidian eyes black and glistening, the whites brilliant against the gray of skin in moonlight, I could see Tom's eyes, his dark irises, the soft eyelashes; and in the curl of their mouths, the corners drawn up, the two girls still with baby teeth, I could see me,
me.
The boy and the younger daughter had Tom's high cheek bones, his near-black hair; the middle daughter's hair was lighter, the shade my own.

I looked at them, at my children, these three at once alien and familiar, known and unknown, and my fear ceased. It disappeared, and I sat up in bed, wanting to take their hands, to touch them, to let them lead me wherever it was they wanted me to go.

Suddenly the room was not the bedroom in our apartment, but was my own room out in Chesterfield, and I had in me the same feeling I'd had the first night after we'd seen the house, when I'd awakened to the new cold, and thought that perhaps we had already moved into the house. Now I was here, the fireplace to my left, a small fire burnt down to embers filling the room with a deep orange glow. To my right was the window; through it I could see the dull, leafless trees of late fall, and the barn, a dark silhouette, above it a lonely quarter moon, ashen and empty.

Even though this was my room in Chesterfield, it had our bedroom furniture in it: against the wall before me was the dresser; on Tom's
side of the bed was the armoire, and here was our bed. The walls were clean and white and free of the ugly paneling, the room just as I had imagined it would be, just as I'd wanted it, except that this was now our bedroom. It was no longer my room, but ours, and I did not mind. I felt good in here, as if this were a better idea, the way things should have been all along.

The children still held their hands out to me, and the baby, my baby, nodded at me, her fingers closing over her palm and opening again, closing and opening.

I could move. I leaned toward her, and I hesitated a moment, swallowing at the thought of putting out to her one of my stumps, but I went ahead, and as I did I saw I had my own hands again. I put my left hand out to her, amazed that those black threads had disappeared, and that here, here was my hand again. I looked at it and saw, too, that there was no scar there, those two raised pieces of flesh like short, red worms gone, the hand perfect and unblemished, just as it had been before Mr. Gadsen's rabbit.

Fear was gone, and when our hands touched, hers warmer than mine, the three of them moved back from the bed a little to allow me room to climb down. This is what they wanted, I knew, though no one spoke, no one motioned. We were silent.

I stood, the hardwood floor glistening and warm, the linoleum long gone. I looked down at the floor, and saw that I was naked, remembered I hadn't put my nightgown on after having made love with Tom, that sweet love in which we'd conceived our first child. This I knew, still holding my baby's hand, the three of them standing around me, smiling up at me. Then the boy took my other hand, my right, and started across the room, slowly leading me, half-turned toward the fire, his face toward me so that he was silhouetted by the orange embers. I felt my daughter's hands on my legs, too, gently prodding me to follow.

For some reason I felt full, almost bloated, and I felt strange walking across the room in our finished home, felt as though my center of gravity had been altered somehow, that if I had leaned forward only a little I might fall, and still I followed her.

We were headed for the armoire, I realized as we passed the hearth, the fire's warmth on me, led by a boy who seemed familiar and seemed a stranger, though I knew he was my own. He brought
me to the armoire, and the three of them moved behind me, and I could feel on the backs of my legs three sets of small hands, on my body the warmth of the embers.

I looked in the mirror on the armoire door, and I caught my breath.

I stood naked before the mirror, my abdomen swelled with a child. I was pregnant, before me my image, bathed in the sweet glow of that fire, illuminated. Immediately I put my hands to my abdomen to touch myself, to make sure this wasn't some trick, some distortion of glass. To make sure that at least in my dream I was pregnant. And it was true: the skin was swelled out and hard, taut, a child inside me. The skin, too, was smooth, and as I caressed it with my fingertips, swirled my hands over it again and again, I felt the silent flutter of a kick, my baby's kick, inside me.

I looked back to the mirror, looked at myself. I wanted to see, see what I would look like nine months from then, this dream a prophecy, I knew, a promise.

My breasts were now round and full, my nipples and aureoles large, soft with the warmth of the fire, the light moving across me. I touched them, touched the nipples to try to raise them, to see if perhaps the first traces of warm liquid were there, to see if I were ready yet to nurse, though I knew milk came in only after birth. Yet it happened: my left breast, the nipple now aroused, erect, gave out a single drop of liquid, and I put the tips of my first two fingers in my mouth, tasted precisely what I had hoped for: the sweet, sweet milk that would charge my child with life.

The children, still behind me, leaned their faces toward the armoire, and we looked at one another in the mirror. With one hand I touched the crown of each child's head, and they smiled up at my reflection.

Then I brought up my hands and let them fall slowly down my abdomen, lingering as long as I wished, registering in my brain the feel, touch, tightness of skin. In the light from the embers it seemed I could see a shine in places where the skin had been pulled too taut: stretchmarks, I knew, small vertical shiny lines beside my abdomen that signaled my baby was ready to be born. Stretchmarks, something I'd not thought about before, but which now, as I took myself in, I did not mind. They were signs of life.

I touched my navel, too, felt and saw how it protruded, a hard, tiny knot at the apex of this swelling, and for a moment I imagined the umbilical cord of the child inside me, and my blood passing through that cord and into that baby, me inside it, it inside me, a miracle.

I let my hands go even farther down, and looked at myself in the mirror, in the light. My pubic hair was thicker now, had grown broader below my abdomen, a confluence of vague lines that met at my pubic bone, and I felt the softness of that hair, wondered at why the body decided growing more hair would accompany a woman's bearing children.

I looked at myself. I looked and looked, not daring to close my eyes, not daring even to blink, for then, I knew, the dream would be over, and I would have to begin the nine months of waiting before me. I wanted to savor this vision as long as I could.

And I looked at the faces of my children, because I wanted to remember them, too; remember their clothes, their white, soft hands on my legs; remember each child's eyes and nose and mouth and cheeks and hair, because they were the ones who had brought me here, who had given me this vision. I looked at them: at the tallest, oldest, who came to my waist; at my first daughter, who stood to the left of me, the side of her face pressed to my thigh; and at the youngest, only a little taller than my knees, who held onto my leg the most ferociously of the three, the material of her white dress soft against my calf.

Then I felt it, the flutter again, and I looked at my abdomen. In the dim orange light I could see the movements of the baby, evidence of life inside me showing outside: high on the right side of my abdomen my flesh poked out momentarily, a shadow raised, a simultaneous kick inside me, like some gentle bird slowly spreading its wings, proof enough for me that I
had
conceived this night, had made life with Tom. The baby kicked again, and again the skin pushed up, a shadow formed. Lower and to the left was another movement, another push of skin, and I knew then how the baby lay in me: its feet tucked high and up, just beneath my ribcage, rows of bones spread and distended to allow for the great size in me. Its feet were up there, and down below, on my left, were its
head and arms, and once again I ran my hands across myself. The lower left side felt fuller, rounder, and I knew this was its head. I knew.

Just as suddenly I felt a drop in me, a quick shift in my center of gravity, a falling, and I saw my abdomen move, too, all of it seeming to slip lower as I watched, and I knew that this was birth, and I could hold in me no longer the elation, the joy I felt at this fruition. I put one hand on my lower abdomen, and with the other moved to touch again the heads of my children.

I looked in the mirror as I brought my hand down to my son's head, my left hand, and saw on the flesh between thumb and fore-finger those ribbons of scar tissue, the remnants of that bite back now, and I shuddered.

The boy had lost his smile, and I looked at his reflection, hoping for some show of emotion, some shine of happiness in his eyes, but there was nothing. Only his sharp, ebony irises and blank whites of his eyes, and as I watched in the mirror his face suddenly went deep gray, the cheeks sunken, the eyes drawing back into their sockets, his hair—that glossy, black hair—lifting and flying on some invisible, untouchable wind that shot through him.

I could do nothing. I needed to scream, to move away from him, but nothing happened: I only opened my mouth, trying to let out that scream, but felt cold, dead air shoot into me, fill my lungs. The shifting in my abdomen continued, weight moving lower and lower, and still I tried to scream.

I looked at the girls, hoping somehow that they might comfort me, but their faces, too, were going over to the gray and black of my son's, their hair flying, eyes sunken. Then they opened their mouths, and I was not surprised to see black holes again, the girls' dresses pick up and dance on the wind in the room. All three opened their mouths, and I could feel the cold wind on me, my skin scratching over with goose bumps, the back of my neck drawing tight, my eyes tearing with the cold.

They flew through the room, their faces gone to black, the embers in the fireplace dying and shooting up sparks and dying again, the warmth here and then gone. The children flew, and as always imploded, disappeared into themselves.