R
uby watches, mesmerized, from the corner of the room. She has propped the flashlight up so that it shines down on Nessa and her mother, providing just enough light for her to see. For them all to see. She watches in wonder and amazement, as her mother pushes and pulls, as she whispers, coddles and coaxes. “Yes, yes, this is it. Just one more push. The baby is coming.”
Ruby is amazed by how calm her mother is, how that frantic unease that seems to have settled into her body has now disappeared. It’s as though her focus is so intense, her purpose so certain, that any fear she might have has no room.
Nessa writhes beneath her hands, her hips pushing skyward, her head thrown back. She is bathed in rain and sweat and mud. Everything seems to go on forever. The baby presses and then retreats. Teasing. Nessa’s entire body moans.
And then, it is so fast. There is the whooshing sound of something rushing into the world, the slip and squall. Her mother’s hands move quickly, unwinding the baby from the cord, unwrapping it like a gift, and then using the baster to suction its mouth and nose, as though drawing its first breaths from it with these instruments. The entire shack is rocking and swaying in the storm, but for a brief moment, there is nothing but silence. And then the baby’s cries fill the air.
Life.
Her mother works quickly, cutting the cord and tying it off, easing the infant onto Nessa’s chest, and covering them both with the warm, wet towel. Then she delivers the afterbirth, which Ruby knows about from her mother’s books, and Nessa peers at the baby, her chest rising and falling, as her breathing slows. As the rapid panting quiets to the slow intake and outtake of breath.
Ruby kneels near Nessa’s head and looks at the baby. Its face is red, its head elongated from the birth canal (another detail she learned from the books). Its eyes are unfocused but open, trying hard to find light, to find her mother.
“It’s a girl,” Ruby says, her throat swelling, her heart expanding in her chest.
Nessa looks at Ruby as though she has forgotten that she is in the room. She smiles. There is a thick wet lock of hair across her forehead. Ruby brushes it away, and Nessa closes her eyes. When she opens them again, the baby’s arm has come loose from the towel, and it flails out, pale and white in the darkness. Her hand is so small, each finger no bigger than a stem. As her fist uncurls, it is like a flower, a white moonflower opening. Nessa and Ruby are mesmerized. And then she opens her mouth and cries.
Outside, the wind beats against the side of the shack, and Ruby thinks of the three little pigs. The story used to terrify her and Jess when they were little. The wooden house was always the second to go, vulnerable to the Big Bad Wolf ’s rage. Only the brick house was safe from his wrath. She remembers her mother’s promises, “But this house, this house is safe. Daddy built it, and it is stronger than any brick house. It’s made of wood, but it’s also made with love. And not a single thing in the world, not even a wolf, can destroy that.”
She feels tears coming to her eyes as she watches her mother clean up, pulling fresh towels from the backpack, taking the baby from Nessa and cleaning the blood from her body, and then swaddling her tightly.
She wonders at the ease with which her mother shows Nessa how to offer the baby her breast. She isn’t even embarrassed to watch as the baby roots to find her nipple and then latches on. She watches her mother’s hands remembering these tasks. And Ruby is suddenly filled with a tremendous sense of peace. For a moment,
this
moment, it feels like everything is going to be okay. That something stolen has been returned to her. That something lost has been found.
Even as the next gust of wind tears through the hole in the roof, sending rain and leaves down into the shack, even as the roof caves in a little more, she knows that everything is going to be all right. Even as the door is torn from its hinges, the inside merging with the outside world, she is certain that everything will, somehow, be fine.
“Ruby, I need to go get help,” her mom says.
Ruby shakes her head. Feels the storm swelling inside her body, as though that open door brought the hurricane inside her. She is confused about where her body ends and the hurricane begins.
“I’ll be back,” her mother says. “I just need to get to a phone.”
“Is everything okay with the baby?” Ruby asks softly, afraid of the answer.
“I think so, but her breathing is a little rapid. She needs to see a doctor.”
“I’m coming with you,” Ruby says. She doesn’t want her mother to go.
“No, Ruby,” her mother says. “I need you to stay here with Nessa and the baby.”
And then she is leaning over Nessa, as though she is the child, saying gently, “I’m going to get help. I’ll be right back. Just stay here, keep the baby dry and warm.” She turns to Ruby and kisses her on the forehead. “I’ll be right back.”
But Ruby knows that promises, even those well-intended ones, can be broken.
I
n ten years, she never lost a baby. In the hundreds of births where she acted as midwife, not a single infant was lost. There were times when she was afraid, of course. Once, with the mother who lived way out in the woods in a trailer with her family of six. She’d given birth to all of her children at home, and despite having gestational diabetes, she’d insisted on another home birth. The baby was too large, her pelvis too small. And after twenty-four hours of labor, she finally relented and Sylvie called Robert and they took her to the hospital in an ambulance. She’d had mothers who hemorrhaged, and infants who’d aspirated on meconium. But she had always known exactly what to do to keep them safe. She’d never lost a child. Never lost a mother. When it comes to bringing babies into the world, there is no room for fear.
But now, as she rushes through the wind and rain, she worries. She worries that this baby will not survive. The rattle in the tiny barrel of her chest was faint but certain. She worries about meconium, about RSV. Clearly there has been no prenatal care, and if this had been a normal home birth, she would have come ready with antibiotics for the mother. She needs to get to a phone. The infant, the girl, should both be taken to a hospital where they can be monitored.
When they left the house, her phone was still working. But she can’t imagine that it is working anymore. Storms much smaller than this one have taken the phone line out.
She runs along the river’s edge; she doesn’t have the flashlight, and is relying exclusively on her memory and the sound of the river to guide her. She tries to remember the last time she ran like this. This movement of her body feels like a dream, though even in dreams she has not left the confines of her home. But now, her legs are flying, her feet are barely touching the ground beneath her. Her entire body is intent, purposeful, resolute. And she cannot fight this strange momentum.
She looks to her left at the river, waiting to find a place where it is narrow enough to cross. But the river is high and wide and rushing wildly downstream. She hears something else then, and it makes her stop. Her legs cease. Her heart even seems to stutter and stall. She holds her breath.
“Mom!”
The wind is calling her; it is only the tempest around her.
“Mama!”
And she knows it is not the sky, the voice of the leaves. It is Ruby, and she is running toward her. “Stop, Mama! Wait for me.”
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“We need to build a bridge,” Ruby answers.
They work in the dark, and Sylvie watches in wonder as her daughter builds the bridge. Branches and twigs, tethered and braided. Fallen limbs, lowered, and suspended. It is as though she is watching some sort of performance, as if Ruby is a magician, conjuring this wondrous construction out of the earth itself. She is building, blindly, in the rain. It seems she has been rehearsing for this moment, this illusion, her whole life.
Sylvie stands at the river’s edge, assisting her daughter as she asks her to retrieve the fallen branches, the round barrels inside the shack.
The river is wide and angry and deep here, though tamer than by the sugar shack. For now. They just need to get across the river. To the house. To the high ground of the road. Ruby works like someone possessed, her hands a blur of purpose and grass. This is madness, this is brilliance, this is miraculous.
Ruby is building what looks like some sort of raft, and for a moment Sylvie wonders if she plans to get on the raft and go, to flee, to allow the river to embrace her in its watery arms.
“Go get the towels and the scissors,” Ruby says.
And Sylvie nods and runs back to the shack.
Inside, the girl is sitting up now, and some of the color has returned to her face. She is holding the baby against her chest. When she sees Sylvie, tears start to roll down her cheeks. She is trembling, and clutching the baby as though she is a child who doesn’t want to give her doll away. Her bottom lip is trembling, and for the first time Sylvie realizes that she is still just a girl. A child.
“We’re almost done,” she says. “Ruby is amazing. She’s building a bridge.”
The girl is crying harder now, soundlessly but her eyes are awash with tears.
Sylvie squats down next to her and touches her bare shoulder. Her skin is so hot.
“Help,” the girl says, her voice like something broken. “Please help her.”
H
ere the river is an untamed thing, and as Ruby labors, she knows suddenly that everything (all of her research, her plans) have been leading up to this moment. This is her chance. This is the
why.
This is the
how.
Pontoon bridges, or floating bridges, have been used since ancient times when either the resources to build a permanent bridge were not available or when the bridge was meant to be temporary. These types of bridges were especially useful during battles when troops needed to cross a river but didn’t want the enemy to follow. The bridge could easily be destroyed after a successful crossing or broken down and carried on the march. She dreams herself a warrior, not in flight, but instead in
pursuit.
This is what Ruby thinks as she builds the bridge. She also tries to remember everything she has learned about the engineering: recalling the physics of a floating bridge. You need to take into consideration the weight of the load, and the displacement of water. She tries not to think about the river. She tries not to consider what will happen if her design fails.
When her mother returns with the towels, she sets about quickly cutting them into strips and together they braid them into ropes. Now she needs only to anchor the bridge. To moor it.
She and her mother roll the largest rocks they can find to the river’s edge. They tie their homemade ropes around the rocks and then to the raft she has made. And then they lower the bridge into the water.
Her mother does not say a word; she simply follows Ruby’s lead. Ruby can tell she is worried, but she also sees something she hasn’t seen in her mother’s face in so long. Trust. Belief. She believes that Ruby can do this. That the bridge will get them across.
“How is the baby?” Ruby asks, her words disappearing into the howling wind.
Her mother nods, but she seems uncertain. They need to hurry. And so she steps onto the bridge, feeling the river rushing beneath her. Her mother begins to follow, but Ruby shakes her head. The bridge is only strong enough to bear the load of one person, one
small
person.
“No,” Ruby says. “You stay here until I get across. Then you can come.”
Somehow, she makes it to the opposite bank, not far upstream from her mother’s house, which stands shuddering in the wind. She leaps off the floating bridge and braces herself against the wind, which feels like something wicked now, like something with ill intent. Her mother stands on the opposite side; they are separated now by the river. By this angry channel.
“Now?” her mother hollers across to her.
But Ruby feels a rumbling, like thunder only deeper. She feels it in her knees. In the very pit of her stomach. She looks upstream, as if she can locate the origin of this ominous forewarning. But there is nothing but darkness.
“Wait!” she hollers to her mother, listening to her gut. To that cautionary whisper in her ear, the one passed down to her from her mother. She runs away from the river, her body reacting before her brain can even process what is happening.
And then, it is as though she is in a dream. There is a sound like an explosion, like a bomb has detonated. The river expands, and then there is a wall of water rushing downstream. It seems to be a living thing, a wild beast set loose from its cage.
“Run!” she hollers to her mother as she claws at the muddy embankment to get to higher ground, and she watches as her mother scrambles away from the river’s edge to higher ground as well. Soon Ruby is high enough up that it is as if she is only watching a film. Looking down from above like some sort of god. As if this is only some kind of amphitheater.
She and her mother remain in their respective posts and watch in wonder and horror as the river rips through the earth below them, as it thunders and pillages, as it tears. They watch the bridge, which splinters and shatters and is carried downstream, the barrels and boards as they drift away, and it feels as though she is dreaming. As though she might open her eyes and find herself back in her bed, staring at the owl’s piercing black eyes. But she is not dreaming, and the river rushes onward, intently, intensely, pulling trees from their roots and earth in its wake, toward the house.
They both watch as it approaches the trembling house, through the blur of night and water and tears. They watch as it grabs the unfinished room first, the timber snapping like pick-up sticks. They watch as it tugs and pulls at the foundation, loosening the house as though it is nothing but a child’s baby tooth. A white bit of bone to pluck from the soft gums of the earth.
And then it is gone.
The house is
gone,
swallowed up by the giant tongue of the river, the lapping, thrusting mouth, disappearing into its dark throat. But strangely, the contents of the house linger, bobbing and dipping before disappearing. The birds, freed of their glass cages, seem to fly across the surface of the water. All those sad birds and their hollow chests. It is beautiful. It is terrifying.
“Oh my God,” her mother might be saying, though her voice is lost in the steady thrum of the river. “Oh my God.” But Ruby is rendered speechless. Words failing. Her own voice seemingly sucked away with the house into the surge before them.
And still the river keeps moving. It is merciless, unrepentant.