Fairy (3 page)

“Judy?”

“You ready? She just called.”

“Yes, yes, of course. What's the address?”

Cecilia jotted down it down on her palm. “I'm on my way.”

Cecilia knocked. The woman's moans penetrated the wooden door and vibrated into the night.

Rapid footsteps. The door swung open and a large man greeted her, sweat dripping from his red face. He stepped aside, pointed into what appeared to be the living room. “In…in there. Sh-she's in there.”

“Okay, thank you.” Cecilia sidestepped past him, saw that the wetness on his cheeks was from tears rather than perspiration. He took a deep breath, combed his fingers through his curly hair, ran the back of his hand across the bottom of his nose.

An inflatable pool sat in the middle of the living room, filled with rippling water and an agonizing woman. She gripped the sides of the pool, her fingers nearly puncturing the plastic, hissing and groaning. Her belly floated atop the water like a deserted island.
“Eeeee.”

Judy stood behind her, massaging her shoulders, letting her know everything would be all right, that she was doing great.

Cecilia stepped into the room and Judy locked eyes with her.

“Take over for me here. I need to check dilation.”

“Oh shit! Fuck, please, please help me. Pleeeaaase!”

Cecilia trotted behind the woman, squeezed the flesh of her shoulders, neck, reached into the water and rubbed her back. “You'll be okay. Just breathe. In through your nose, out through your mouth.”

But the woman wasn't listening as another contraction nearly bent her in half. Her husband wept and paced the living room, his eyes never leaving his wife.

“Is something wrong? There's something wrong, isn't there? Don't let anything happen to her, please. You can't let anything happen to her.”

“What's your name?” Cecilia asked the man.

“J-Jason.”

“Jason, your wife and baby need you to be strong, okay? Stay positive for them.”

“Just fucking help her!”

Judy had both arms submerged in the water, her face pointed to the ceiling with her tongue clamped between her teeth. Her eyes widened. “The baby is already crowning.”

“Wh-what does that mean?” the woman said. She turned toward Cecilia. “What does that mean? What's wrong with my baby?”

“She's only been in labor a couple of hours,” Jason said. “Is…is the baby okay? Tell me the baby's okay!”

“Oh Jesus, it hurts.
It fucking hurts!
”

Cecilia had stopped massaging and watched as Judy worked. The midwife looked up at the woman, water dripping from her face.

“Your baby is almost out, honey, okay? We need you to push, and push hard.”

“Come on, a nice hard push for your baby. One, two, three…
Push!
” Cecilia let the woman squeeze her hands as her cries were cut off and she pushed. The woman's body shook and a high-pitched whimper seeped from her lips.

Jason had collapsed on the kitchen floor, weeping into his arms. He spoke as he cried, the words nothing but saliva-coated gibberish.

The woman screamed, nearly shook the walls down. The water clouded with a burst of dark blood.

Judy pulled the baby and placenta from the tub, stood up, cradled it. There was no sound, no wiggling.

The mother and father were silent, both staring at Judy and their baby. Cecilia watched with them, unable to move, unwilling to approach what she already knew was a stillborn.

Judy inspected the baby with her hands, then placed the stethoscope hanging from her neck to the child's chest. Her face suddenly drooped, and she didn't have to say a word.

The mother wailed, splashed water all over the living room carpet as she thrashed her arms and legs.

Cecilia moved away as Jason joined his wife and the two of them cried and sobbed. She met Judy in the next room, gave her a somber look, but Judy met her gaze with something else in her expression. There was no shock, no sadness, but something else. It stopped Cecilia in her tracks; she tried to speak to the midwife, but her throat refused to let any words slip by.

“We still need to cut the placenta free from the body. We'll need it.”

“Wh-what? Need it?”

Judy handed the baby, covered in blood and wrapped in a blanket, to Cecilia, the gelatinous red placenta hanging from her hand as she gripped the umbilical cord. Then she pulled out a pair of silver scissors from her coat pocket. “I'll take care of it.”

“What are you doing, Judy? What the hell is this?”

They were standing outside of Cecilia's place. Judy had followed her there, refused to explain anything until they got there.

“I want to help you, Celia. It's…it's something I have to do. I
have
to.”

“The baby needs to be taken to the medical examiner. What the hell is wrong with you?”

Judy held the baby and placenta in her arms, both wrapped up in the same towel as before, now separated. “I know this seems crazy. Believe me, I know. But how long have you known me?”

“How does that even matter? I don't—”

“Just how fucking long?”

“I don't know, ten years?”

“Have I ever given you reason not to trust me? Do I strike you as a crazy person?”

“Well, not until now.”

“I know how you can have a baby, Celia. I know how. And it would be your baby, inside of you. Yours. You would birth it, the baby would be yours.”

Cecilia stared at her, hands clutched to her chest. “This is…this is mean. Why would you say that to me?”

“My children…” Judy started, her eyes moving to the dead baby in her arms. “The first two were perfect, no problems. But we wanted a third. We wanted one more to make our family whole. But…but something was wrong. My baby was stillborn, looked just like this when he came out.” She displayed the tiny, curled-up body. “We tried again and again, but it kept happening. We were devastated, heartbroken. But I was told, I was told what to do.”

“By who?”

Judy shook her head. “You can't know that, you can never know that. She told me…told me to put my baby under my pillow.”

Cecilia actually laughed, eyed her door and wondered if she could outrun Judy, slam the door in the midwife's face.

“She told me to hang the placenta outside of my window. And the fairy would come.”

“The fairy? The fucking fairy? Judy, you need to leave. You need to leave right now.”

“So I did it. I hung my placenta outside of my window. I tucked my baby under my pillow, laid my head right on top of him.” She smiled. “And he came. The fairy came, just like she said he would. And he gave me my baby.”

Cecilia thought back to the photograph, the small child hanging from the harness swing. She'd met the older two before, but never the youngest. As far as she knew, nobody had ever met the youngest.

“Judy, I think you should head home, to your family, to your children, okay? If you want to give me the baby, I'll make sure it gets to the medical examiner.”

Judy shook her head, took a step back. “Don't you see, Celia? This is a gift. You're supposed to put your own baby under your pillow, but you can't have one, and by fate, you get this one.” She held out the baby again, its little body shifting, its head rolling and now facing Cecilia. “This is meant to be.”

Cecilia turned her back on Judy, walked to her front door. The midwife stayed in the street, shaking her head, still holding the baby out for her.

“I'm going to sleep. We've had a long night, and obviously you're not in your right mind. I'll pretend like none of this happened, but you need to take that baby to the proper authorities. The parents deserve to give their child a proper burial.”

She didn't give Judy a chance to respond as she slid into her home and slammed the door. Skittles celebrated her master's return. “Shhh, Skittles. Quiet.”

Eye hovering over the peephole, Cecilia watched the pinched image of Judy standing there in the street, between the two cars, now clutching the dead baby to her chest and staring down at it. After a few more minutes and a few glances toward Cecilia's door, she finally got back into her car and drove away.

Cecilia leaned her back against the door, let her body slide down until she was seated. Skittles forced her head into Cecilia's lap, slathered her fingers with tongue and whined.

She didn't know if she'd ever get out of her head the image of Judy holding out the bloodied, dead fetus. Judy. The most level-headed, professional person she knew.
Jesus,
she thought,
if Judy can go off the deep end like that, I'm screwed.

Her hands shook as she petted Skittles on the neck and behind her ears.

A fairy? Put a fucking baby under my pillow?

The whole thing sounded too twisted to have even entered Judy's brain, let alone try and persuade Cecilia to participate in it. Like some maniac's version of the tooth fairy. Cecilia wondered if Judy had been crazy all this time, if she was just good at hiding it, a functioning psychopath. But it just didn't add up. Not Judy.

Smears of dried blood coated Cecilia's palms, and the sight of it turned her stomach. She got to her feet, ran a hot shower, rested her head against the tiled wall as the scalding water engulfed her.

She woke up to a message on her cell phone. From Judy.

Please tell me I imagined all of that. Please tell me Judy didn't really tell me to put a stillborn under my pillow.

She picked the crust from the corners of her eyes as she checked her voice mail. Her heart pounded in her chest as she anticipated what Judy would say.

“Hey, Celia. I'm sorry about last night. You're right, I was just tired, all messed up from what happened. I went straight to the medical examiner and dropped off the baby, then went home and crashed. Please forgive me. Anyway, I've got another woman due in a couple of weeks, and I was wondering if you would be interested in coming with me again. Talk to you later.”

Cecilia erased the message, tossed her phone onto the bed. It was good to hear Judy's voice back to normal, strong and stern, not that whispery and dreamy tone she had last night. Just the thought of it and the look on the woman's face turned Cecilia's stomach into a tangle of nerves.

I just won't mention it, that's all. I'll pretend none of it ever happened.

As patient as Judy had been toward Cecilia through all the recent bullshit, it was the least she could do.

She got dressed, brushed her teeth, filled Skittles's bowls with water and kibble, then started to drive toward the office.

She told me to hang the placenta outside of my window. And the fairy would come.

Cecilia was relieved to see that Judy wasn't at her desk. Though she had no plans to speak about the events of last night, she knew the unspoken words would be loud and clear anyway, knew that awkward silences were inevitable.

“Where's Judy?” Cecilia asked Rhonda, another of the doulas.

“Called, said she was having some trouble with her kid. Said she wouldn't be coming in today, maybe tomorrow too.” Rhonda never once lifted her gaze from her cell phone as she said it, using both thumbs to text, her fingernails clicking against the screen.

An image of Judy's youngest, smiling from the harness swing, covered in blood and wrapped in a towel entered her mind, sat there for a minute, refused to wander off. Cecilia shook her head the way Skittles does after a bath, and now Rhonda looked up at her, raised an eyebrow.

“Did…did she say what was the matter?”

“No, and I didn't ask. Not my business.”

“Yeah, okay, thanks.”

As Cecilia walked out, she heard a whispered snicker from behind her, then the repetitive tapping sound.

She walked back outside, squinted against the sun. The air smelled of wet leaves and cooking hamburger meat, and her mouth watered as she stared at the Burger King across the street. A cup of coffee and some food would be welcome, she thought, so she strolled across the parking lot, stood at the crosswalk.

She couldn't help but think about Judy, about what she had said last night. Not only what she was trying to make Cecilia do, but the fact that she believed her third child came into the world this way. Judy had never mentioned any miscarriages or stillborns before, and Cecilia considered the two of them pretty close, figured that was the sort of thing you needed a friend to talk to about. Just the way Cecilia entrusted Judy with her own problems.

“Except for your divorce.”

And now she stays home because she's having trouble with the child? Cecilia pondered making an anonymous call to CPS. If Judy truly believed this stuff, the baby could be in trouble, could be getting abused. Though the thought of Judy abusing her children would have been preposterous only a day ago, now it didn't seem so far-fetched. Not after the look in her eye last night, not after the things she said.

Cecilia tapped her foot, wiped the beading sweat from her brow. Her stomach growled as another wave of sizzling beef hit her nostrils. The cars continued to zoom by and she began to grow impatient as the orange hand refused to flick over to the white walking man on the crosswalk sign.

“Celia? Is…is that you?”

A man's voice. To her left. And only one other person in the world had ever called her Celia besides Judy.

Her skin prickled, her chest tightened; suddenly she couldn't breathe.

After what felt like an hour of collecting herself, she finally turned to face him. Her knees threatened to buckle and spill her to the concrete, but she held herself together, forced a smile. “Hello, Frank.”

He pressed his lips together, wrapped an arm around a woman's waist. A pregnant woman's waist.

“Celia, I'd like you to meet my wife, Christina.” His face burned red, and Cecilia could tell he felt as awkward about all of this as she did.