In a house in a neighborhood in a town in a place with skies that stretched over all with a matte coat dimpled with pieces and parts, they decided to have a baby. It was time, they thought, though they didn't say it to each other. Their wedding photos were framed with dust, smiles graying underneath, but their rings weren't tarnished. Dust always comes faster than one thinks it will. It isn't there until it is. She wore her ring every day. He wore his every day. Each night, they lay down to sleep next to each other, part and parcel, slotting into place.

“A baby would make it all complete,” she said.

“And we are getting older,” he said.

“But not too old,” she said.

“Not too old,” he said.

When her belly started to swell, they were overjoyed. They hadn’t done anything different; they had just been going along as normal. Date nights to keep the passion alive; picnics and hikes on the weekend to keep their spirits up. They were familiar with every crevice of each other's body. Now hers was changing. It was a surprise. It was a sign. Truly, a gift. A blessing. He might’ve scoffed when people said that in the past, but now he truly understood. Something was watching over them, giving this joy to them. She knew it too. Quickly, they both got to work. Buying pastel paint and rolling it onto the walls, picking through soft blankets and bath toys and swaddles. The collection felt gratifying; did they even really need the baby? Maybe the collection was enough. They hung pictures on the walls of the room, a mobile above the crib. Sometimes she would make her way into the nursery just to stand there, spinning the mobile, picturing the babbling baby underneath.

“Do you think baby will like it?” She picked up a teething ring. It felt too hard to her fingers; how strong could a baby’s bite be?

“Baby will love it,” he said. But he didn’t know.

They only called it “baby”, sure that when their eyes landed on the perfect creature of their creation, a name would come naturally. Secretly, as his wife slept, he would open his phone, scrolling baby name websites and reading meanings.

Ada: noble; of nobility.
Adam: Son of red earth.
Bailey: City fortification.
Caroline: Strong.
Darren: Great.

Nothing felt right as he touched his wife’s stomach, small movements below her skin. How surreal, how serene. He looked up at her face, no worries accompanying this sensation. How must it feel? He wished he could know. But his insides were full already. There was no room. So he rested his hands on her stomach and felt the life inside, closing his eyes and imagining it was his skin moving with the kick of life.

The itching was unbearable. As her skin stretched to accommodate the baby, she couldn’t keep her hands off of it, and he had to keep both of theirs away. The scabs and scratches across her belly were troubling; red and shiny, he tenderly coated them with ointment and plasters. How deep before they would have trouble? Absent-mindedly, she dug her fingernails in. Every scratch re-opened. Waking up in the middle of the night, he found his wife sticky with bright red blood, still running her nails over the scratches running up and down her round belly.

“Baby? Oh, god,” he whispered, pleading, gently shaking her shoulder at first. Then he shook her harder. “Baby, wake up, you’re bleeding. Please, baby, wake up.”

She awoke indignant, but the tack of drying blood on her hands told her something wasn’t right. They spent several hours bandaging her up. He wrapped her up with a long roll of gauze; a mummy, they joked, and laughed too hard. They laughed and laughed, doubled over in the bathroom. All they could do was laugh. The only thing they could do was laugh.

It itched. It itched so badly, her hands twitched over the raw skin of her belly. The blood was wiped away, crusted over into scabs that ran up and down the length of her torso, and she could hear them crisp against the fabric of her shirt as her hands felt over them. She wanted to scratch them, just once, just lightly. She needed to scratch them. But she knew it was bad. It would disturb the baby. She already had stretch marks running across her skin; she didn’t need to add scarring. The growing bump on her abdomen existed somewhere between her body and someone else's. When she looked at it, she knew it was her body. But it wasn't. She couldn't look at it and think about it for too long. She could think about the baby. But the itching didn’t cease. Different creams. Lotions. Oatmeal baths. Ointments. Home remedies from websites with more ad than article. Nothing worked.

“Please,” she asked, holding out the puffy mittens. A gift from his parents to her, last Christmas. “It’s the only thing I can do,” she begged.

He grabbed the tape. It was all he could do, and he wanted so badly to help. He woke up to his wife face down on the bed, writhing as she rocked her stomach back and forth against it. It looked like she was fucking it, a frantic sensuousness in the friction. The sheet was streaked with blood as each scab came off, the wounds opened and stretched. When he finally grabbed her, made her lay still on her back, she cried. She didn’t stop crying until she had fallen asleep.

The baby would come soon. They all knew it. Feeling her belly, the movement grew stronger day by day under her drum-tight skin; she would stand in the mirror, watching it move underneath like the ripples of an earthquake. The baby would be here soon. Her body would be wholly hers again, and in a secret, shameful way, she was grateful to have it back. When asked, she said it was amazing, and it was. But the baby would be here soon. She was happy about that.

“Are you ready?” Her breath was hot against his face. He didn’t know what her look meant, but he knew what to say.

“We’re ready.” He reached for her hand and found it clammy.

“We’re ready for this.”

“We want this.” She said it like a statement. He knew it was a question.

He nodded. “We’re ready.” He knew that was all she needed to hear. He would say it over and over until she believed it.

She woke up being torn apart. Her mouth wouldn't open through her teeth gritting themselves together, no matter how she willed herself to scream. Slowly she moved, though she couldn't say how. Her thoughts were a mess, organization and careful planning falling apart at the feeling of something inside her desperately trying to get out.

He woke up to blood and whimpers cutting through his sleep, and the sight of his wife in the early morning shocked him into a state higher than wake. He was somewhere else, floating above, watching his wife writhe on the bed as he jumped off and came to her side, kneeling next to the bed. She was on her hands and knees, and he called the hospital with shaky hands, grabbing the bag.

“We’re going to the hospital,” he said. Her face was slick with sweat. Was this normal? Was this ever normal? She didn't say anything, but she looked into his eyes. Her clammy hand gripped his clammy hand and they were together. They were at the hospital. They had gotten there, but he couldn’t say how. His wife was on her back in a bed with beeping and talking all around her.

“Deep breaths, mama,” a nurse cooed. “You’re doing so well.”

The baby’s head came first. Her bump grew red as the movement inside her increased. Then it breached through. She screamed, squeezing his hand as it ate its way out of her stomach. When it emerged, wriggling and pale, inch by inch stretching itself out of her body, he whispered in her ear.

“You got this. I love you so much.”

The baby seemed to stretch out indefinitely before curling on her deflated stomach, concertinaing into a chubby crescent. It left a crater behind in its mother’s torso. Yellow fat encircled the wound, layers deep under her skin. She reached out, stroking its blood-sticky skin.

“My baby,” she cooed. “My sweet, sweet baby.” The nurses started on relieving her pain, stitching her stomach back together, pressing globs of fat back inside. She barely noticed. Her eyes were only for their baby.

“Leave an extra stitch for me,” he joked, and the nurses rolled their eyes. Probably the thousandth time they heard that one, he thought. When they headed back into the world, outside the white-lighted hospital, baby swaddled in her arms as he wheeled her to the car, she felt the same movements that had been under her skin now on top of them, pressed against her chest. She needed to make baby feel as safe out here as baby had felt in there, but the air was unyielding. How did that feel? She wondered. To be so safe, and now so exposed. She thought about the first cold wind in autumn, the one that creeps around when you’re not ready for it. Maybe something like that, she thought, but not quite like that at all.

Back at home, they were so tired. But the baby ruled now, not the whims of sleep. Baby restless; baby wriggled in its wrappings. Not interested in breast or bottle. She couldn't sleep. One thought pierced through her mind, and in its precision she knew it was right. Her baby wanted the earth. She swaddled the baby, their baby, her fingers pressing gently into its soft skin. But it needed to be deeper, back deep underneath. The light was too bright; the air was harsh against its velvet. It needed time. It wasn't ready.

“How do you know?” He would say. She couldn’t explain it; she just knew. The baby was telling her. All day, constantly, screaming at her: this isn’t right. This isn’t right. She would hold her baby close to her chest: this isn’t right. This isn’t right. This isn’t right. Louder and louder, she heard it, felt it in her chest as it pressed harder and harder against her lungs. At the kitchen table, late into the night, she rocked the baby back and forth with numb arms, whispering, hoping to feel the baby still and sleeping. The more she rocked, the more she could feel it in her chest. This isn't right. Her husband would tell her to go to bed, pull the baby away from her chest, and she had no choice but to lay down and let sleep take her while the thudding pressure kept going: this isn’t right. From behind the closed door as he cooed and rocked, sang songs and muttered little words, thumping, aching for her to listen: this isn't right.

It only took a day before he knew. He could see. It wasn’t right. Maybe he was starting to feel it too; or maybe he was tired of seeing his wife shrivel just like his baby was—their skin dry and crepey, their eyes bleary with want for sleep, real sleep, real rest. His fingers left impressions in the baby's velvet skin, and nothing came to push the indentations back out. The baby was turning a jaundiced color. He cried in the bathroom. They buried the baby right then. He didn’t look. He dug the hole. He set the baby down. And when he started to fill the hole, he didn’t look. She didn’t stop crying all day, then the next, then the sun kept rising and falling and she kept crying. She didn’t say it, but she thought: we have to try again. She thought, we’ll do better next time. She thought, it will be right. She didn’t say anything. The words rotted in her stomach and even her breath was putrid with them. The wound on her stomach was healing faster than the scratches she inflicted ever did.

The house was very quiet now. The baby had only been with them a day, and it hadn’t cried. But the silence was stiller, now. It was stale. The baby had only been with them a day, but it had been with her for months. And now it was with neither of them. He changed the dressing over her wound and held ice packs over its slit, the dissolvable stitches the only measure of how long it had been. She stayed in the bed. He tried to sleep next to her, but his thoughts would grow louder and louder until he had to step out. He could hear the baby's cry echoing in his head: not right. Not right. Were they wrong? Did they misunderstand? Their baby was deep, deep down and maybe, he thought, that was wrong. The bed creaking and shifting as he gave up, left her behind. She was very still. It wasn’t sleep, but it was something. She lay there alone. There was no one anymore.

A month passed. He went back to work. He had to. She had already taken leave; they would understand. They had to. He had left for the day when she heard it. Trembling against the screen door, a tremor; she approached slowly. The wound still ached; feeling fabric flow over its edges, catching on the tape and gauze a constant prick of remembrance. Slow, she walked. The door was rattling now, louder as she approached. She peered around the corner into the foyer and her feet realized sooner than her head because she was running. She ran to the door, throwing it open and reaching out her arms.

“My baby,” she cooed, wrapping tightly around its fuzzy body. Its wings buzzed as she lightened her embrace and released, standing there looking at the baby. No, she thought; it was her baby. This was an adult. It happens so fast, she thought. Melancholy washed over her, leaving its film on her skin. They grow up so fast. Her baby, forever her baby, no matter what, flew beside her as they walked around the house. She remembered carrying her baby around, and now here they were, side by side. The house, her house, their house, looked new. Like someone else’s long-stored memory. She looked at it through her baby’s eyes, returning home with new sight. It flew from room to room, lingering on the places they had been. The table where she’d held it that first neverending night. Where she sat crying, nights on end, neverending in her grief. She smiled. It was all new again.

They didn't have long. It's a particular feeling, to outlive a child. To outlive one twice is something else entirely. But she looked at their baby, her baby, and she knew this was how it was.

"I can't wait for him to see you," she said.

They didn't have to wait long. He returned early with his ashy face, his sallow skin. Another day and she might have asked, venom in her voice. But today was different. She was just glad he was here. He barely looked up when he came inside, glance only pausing when he saw the tears in her eyes. The smile that came with it. He turned towards the strange sound he could hear, now that the fog had cleared from his head. He tried to speak. He tried to think of something to say. Nothing came to him. He held out his arms and their baby flew close to his chest, resting a sticky hand on his chest. He didn't need to say anything.

"I think it's time," she said. He nodded, tears hot and burning in his eyes. He took her hand. It would be his turn, they knew. It would be his turn to try. Already, his belly ached with emptiness. He clasped a hand over its vacancy. Soon, he thought. Soon he would know how it felt to be whole.

6 September 2023