Ancient, Ancient

by Kiini Ibura Salaam

  “Don’t be scared, little girl. Just hurry up and speak your mind. How can I help you?”

  When Marie didn’t respond, the stranger flicked a black speck from beneath a fingernail and watched as it arced over Marie, fluttering as it passed overhead. On the descent it whimpered quietly and fell behind Marie like a stone. Marie covered her face with her hands and shuddered.

  “Stop stalling! I don’t have time for this. Speak, lost one. You came to get something or leave something?”

  The stranger made a hissing sound with her teeth, and the hissing rattled something loose inside Marie. She felt the gurgling of an answer trying to erupt from deep within her.

  The stranger lifted her arms, and her hands floated in front of her. Her arms stretched forward, and she gently removed Marie’s hands from her face. The gleam in the stranger’s eye brightened as she stared at Marie. Their gazes touched for the slightest of seconds. Then the stranger gave two appraising nods and let her hands fall away.

  “So that’s why you’re here,” she said. The sound of the her speaking throbbed in Marie’s ear. “You’re here to get rid of that feeling.”

  Marie’s body vibrated as a sob rose to her throat. She felt the force of hysteria would strangle her.

  “I want to go home,” Marie managed to croak.

  “When you go, do you want to take this with you?”

  The stranger touched a hand lightly to Marie’s forehead. A familiar heat rose through her. It was the heat that flared every time her friends unleashed an insult, slight, or offhand shaming of black people. It accompanied the inside jokes, the dark derision, the knowing glances that characterized her people as less than. Marie called it her outsider heat, her imposter heat, and it burned whenever she was reminded that she didn’t belong.

  Marie retched. Her body pitched forward, but she kept her lips clamped tight. She felt an army of ugly words marching out of her memory, gliding into her viscera, then snaking up her chest, carrying with it the bitter taste of bile. The stranger’s cackle sounded like metal teeth scraping against concrete.

  “Don’t nobody ever admit to asking to come here, but once they here, they can’t deny the truths I tell. So tell me then, sweetie, what you gonna give me to get free?”

  Marie kept her head down until she started to feel the pressure of blood rushing to her scalp. A fine web of sweat covered her skin. She raised her head cautiously, and a wave of nausea crashed inside her.

  “It won’t hurt. Not less’n you keep dodging the truth. Now listen good; I will take all the hurt out your body, and you will pay me for it. You won’t pay me now, mind. I’ll come collect when the time is right. No matter how much you try to prepare for it, it’ll be something you never expect. And when I take it, you’ll remember that you promised to give it up. Deal?”

  Marie didn’t speak. She was too busy fighting for breath. The stranger placed her hand on Marie’s shoulder blade. The heat flushed through Marie’s body again, this time at triple the intensity. Marie cried out in anguish. She clenched her fists and teeth, waiting for the heat to pass, but the woman didn’t remove her hand.

  “Is it a deal, dearie?” the woman asked.

  “Yes, yes, whatever you want,” Marie yelled. “Take it. It’s a deal.”

  As soon as the words left Marie’s mouth, she heard a whirling sound. She lifted her head. The trees, the grass, even the crossroads beneath her feet began to rotate slowly around her. She stood and looked around. The nausea was gone—so was the stranger, though her soft, grating laughter lingered in the air.

  Marie’s body whipped around in a circle. Faster and faster, she turned. It felt as if the air were pressing against her. Then the ground beneath her feet crumbled away. She shrieked so hard she thought she’d taste blood on her tongue. Then just like that, the ground was solid again, and her body was still.

  She found herself staring at her own reflection in a darkened subway window. The subway car jerked around a curve, and she stumbled. When she regained her balance, she realized that she was on a full subway car. Her head was pounding, her throat felt raw. She checked her cell phone. What time was it? Where was she? Where had she just been? Where was she going?

  The subway slid to a stop, but Marie was frozen in a sea of amnesia and indecision. She could not muster the mental strength to decide whether or not she should exit the train. Through the subway window, she saw a hooded figure sitting on a bench at the station. A dark vision ruffled its wings within Marie’s subconscious. She blinked and leaned toward the window, struggling to remember. But then the doors closed, and the train took off before the memory could make itself whole in Marie’s mind.

  Labor was hard, much harder than they said it would be, and much longer than Marie and Steven had planned. After a day at home and a day and a half in the birthing center, Marie’s baby still had not crowned. Marie was so worn out by her unproductive labor that the words “birthing plan” lost their meaning. When she heard Steven asking the midwife for a few more hours at the birthing center, she squeezed his hand and whispered, “Let’s go to the hospital.”

  In the hospital there would be syringes and scalpels, exactly the instruments she had intended to avoid by choosing a birthing center and midwives over doctors and their medical approach, but after 36 hours of labor, Marie had reached her limit. Getting into the wheelchair was torture, but being wheeled past the bulletin board with snapshots of smiling parents caused a more haunting pain. Despite putting in so many hours of labor, Marie and Steven would not succeed at natural childbirth. They would have no right to count themselves as a birthing center success story.

  As she rode to the hospital, all she could think about was holding her child at last. She imagined sobbing, kissing him softly, and scolding him for being so stubborn and shy about coming into this world.

  The nurse who greeted them at the hospital was old, older than Marie thought nurses were allowed to be, but she could not dwell on that thought or any other. There were just too many distractions. There were the persistent but ineffective contractions that she had brought with her to the hospital, the cries of strangers that surrounded her as she rolled through the emergency room, the swarm of residents in white coats that moved around her room with clipboards in hand. Time was galloping by in odd, uneven clumps. A nurse wearing a shirt with bunnies and balloons printed on it seemed to be checking her blood pressure for hours, while another nurse attached a fetal monitor to her stomach so quickly it seemed as if it had always been there.

  In the sea of white coats and pastel cartoon prints, Marie could not see Steven anywhere. Just after an IV port was stuck into the back of her hand, Marie felt her abdomen tensing again. When the next contraction hit, a high-pitched beeping sound exploded from one of the machines.

  “What’s happening?” Steven asked.

  His voice, thick with worry, cut through all the noise in the room.

  Marie winced, smothering her groans, silently willing the doctor to answer. The doctor felt the sides and the top of Marie’s swollen belly with deft hands. He leaned over and pressed a stethoscope to her navel.

  “We shouldn’t push this any longer,” he said to no one in particular.

  When the contraction had passed, the beeping sound quieted. All the medical personnel turned their eyes to the fetal monitor.

  “The baby is stable,” a nurse with a high-pitched voice squeaked.

  “What’s… happening…?” Marie muttered through her exhaustion.

  “The baby’s heartbeat stopped, but it’s back on track now,” the midwife said patting Marie’s leg.

  “I’m going to set up an OR,” the doctor said and shot the midwife a decisive look.

  The midwife nodded to him ever so slightly.

  “Does this mean…?” Marie trailed off.

  Steven was finally by her side. He grasped her hand. “Don’t we get to decide?” he asked.

  “Something is happening during the contractions that is putting the baby in distress,” the mid
wife said. “I promised we wouldn’t put you on a timetable, but this isn’t about time, this is about your child’s life.”

  “Are you sure…”

  “The only thing we’re sure about,” said the midwife, “is that we don’t want to risk your baby’s life.”

  Another contraction rolled through Marie’s pelvis. Marie gritted her teeth and threw her head back. The fetal monitor squealed again. Steven threw his hands over Marie’s ears. Even with the sound muted by her husband’s palms, it sounded to Marie like it was their child squealing, like they were torturing the baby before it had a chance to be born.

  “The OR is ready,” Marie heard someone announce. The gravelly tones in the person’s voice shot straight through her and stripped away everything else in the room. Marie looked up and saw the old nurse standing in the doorway. Her gnarled hands rested on the handles of the wheelchair. She vaguely heard the word “epidural” and felt hands on her body, but nothing could break Marie’s fascination with the old nurse.

  She didn’t hear the rip of the wrapper as a nurse unsheathed a needle. She didn’t feel the grip of Steven’s hands on her shoulders as he engulfed her in his embrace. The pinch of the needle sliding into her spine barely registered. She heard her heartbeat thudding in her ears, she even heard her baby’s heartbeat fluttering rapidly next to her own, but she was completely estranged from the goings-on in the room.

  Two nurses eased her legs off the bed. Holding tightly onto Steven and the midwife, Marie pulled herself to her feet. She leaned on Steven as she hobbled to the wheelchair. There was another contraction or two in the hallway, but they had been dulled by the epidural.

  Marie began to lose sensation in her legs while she was being rushed down the hall. Although she had been unhooked from the fetal monitor, she could still hear it screeching in her ears. She could feel her body contract, but was unable to lift her knees or wiggle her toes. Panic pounded her ribcage. Pure terror invaded her.

  “Steven!” she yelled, and twisted around in the wheelchair. She was frantic to find Steven, but all she could see were harried nurses in quiet shoes.

  “You poor dear,” the old nurse said. The wheelchair made a sharp turn, and soon Marie was facing a set of gray double doors. The doors flew open on their own, and the nurse pushed Marie through.

  Marie gripped the arms of the wheelchair and looked back at the nurse. “Where is my husband!?” she asked.

  The nurse smiled. Up close, Marie could see that the nurse’s eyes were not symmetrical. One gleamed and reflected light, while the other gobbled it up, hungry as a black hole.

  “Where is Steven?” she asked again.

  The woman did not answer. She simply smiled. Her grin gave Marie chills.

  Marie tried to stand, but when she pushed against the armrest of the wheelchair, she remembered that her legs were dead weight. She fell against the backrest.

  “Don’t be difficult,” the nurse said, and the room went dark.

  The sound of the nurse’s breathing became amplified. Marie was—briefly—in three places at once. She was tearing through the bushes, yelling for her daddy as a lost three year old; she was standing barefoot and dusty-toed at the crossroads; and she was here now—at the hospital, her fears and history reverberating through her mind.

  “It’s time for you to pay,” the nurse said in the dark.

  Marie shifted nervously in the wheelchair.

  “I have nothing for you to collect,” she said, forcing her voice not to falter.

  A glow lit the room from above. The light gathered into a focused stream and showered down on Marie’s pregnant belly.

  “I don’t like liars,” the nurse growled.

  The nurse walked around the wheelchair and stood in front of Marie. She pointed at Marie, and Marie trembled violently. The trembling invaded every cell of her body. She wanted to plead for mercy, but the trembling had taken over her face, and she could not still her lips long enough to get any words out.

  The nurse smiled as if satisfied with her effect on Marie. She took Marie’s hand and leaned over until she was eye-level with Marie.

  “Do you want to push?” she asked gently.

  Marie shook her head, defiance burning in her eyes. The nurse extended two fingers and placed them on the side of Marie’s neck. Marie’s body jackknifed back, then she fell forward. Bent over her knees, she began to wail, but she could not form words. Her teeth chattered, and even her arms began to feel numb.

  “It’s time to push,” the nurse said, her gravelly tones cloaked in cool professionalism.

  The nurse grasped Marie under her arms and eased her to the floor. She manipulated Marie’s legs so that each knee was bent and each foot was flat on the floor. Marie squeezed her eyes shut and clenched her entire body as tightly as she could. The nurse walked around Marie and squatted behind her. She hooked her hands under Marie’s armpits and hoisted her into a birthing position.

  Marie took deep gulping breaths to keep nausea at bay. Her gaze skittered around the room. It was empty—the room—with no furnishings, no windows, and only one door. The walls glowed faintly in the dim light. Marie latched onto the floor tiles, losing herself in the pattern they made—a chaotic series of snaking lines that curved this way and that. When the floor went blurry, she knew another contraction had found her. She tensed her body, hoping to hold the baby in. When the blurriness passed, Marie heard the plink of dripping water and the raspy, ragged breathing of the nurse licking at her ear. She thought of Steven, desperately wishing that he was by her side.

  Instantly, as if triggered by her thoughts, dancing lines of light illuminated the walls of the room. The light was everywhere, as if being reflected by a pool of water, but there was no water—only the old nurse’s rasps, Marie’s pain, and the sound of dripping. The light on the walls twisted and undulated, twining to form images, and then unraveling into random patterns. For a few, brief seconds, the lines joined to become Steven—a frozen expression of false bravado contorting his face. The lights scattered, then rejoined to form the contours of the midwife’s face. Both she and Steven were looking down.

  The light built into a shimmering glow that was so powerful that Marie had to look away. When the lines took shape again, she realized that Steven and the midwife were looking down at her. She was lying on a surgical bed, and there was a curtain over her chest. Past Steven, she could see the doctor leaning over the lower half of her body, intently operating on her. Anger exploded within at the same instant that another contraction ripped through her. She yelled, the rage bursting out of her in wild, uncontrolled waves.

  The nurse’s voice rang out in her mind.

  “Push!!”

  Suddenly it was too late not to push. She couldn’t pull back her rage quickly enough. A ripple took hold of her torso and, before she could control it, it squeezed its way down to her hips.

  “Noooooooooo,” Marie yelled, tears slipping out of her eyes. The nurse laughed and let Marie go. Marie whimpered, then crumpled to the floor.

  Marie felt a stroking on her forehead, accompanied by a soft whispering. When she opened her eyes, Steven kissed her cheek and squeezed her hand. From somewhere in the room, she heard a dull thumping followed by a soft sucking sound. Then she heard three people counting in unison. “One, two, three, four…”

  She tried to sit up but she couldn’t feel her legs. She grabbed onto Steven’s arm. “The baby?”

  Steven turned away from Marie and clenched his jaw. “The umbilical cord,” he muttered, “was wrapped around his throat.”

  An icy dread dripped into Marie’s heart. “Is he…”

  “They’re trying… they’re trying to bring him back.”

  Steven’s face was wet with tears. Marie felt moisture on her face too, but she lacked the energy to fully cry. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a slow-moving shadow gliding by. She turned her head and saw the old nurse, creeping toward the door.

  “Time of death?” someone asked from the corner of the r
oom.

  Steven’s body shuddered as he broke under the weight of his grief. No emotion flickered over Marie’s face. She simply stared into the empty air where she could see the woman from the crossroads, protectively cradling a ghost baby—Marie’s baby—cooing at the infant as it lay nestled in the crook of her cruel arms.

  Ancient, Ancient

  The lamppost shimmered. Asima blinked.

  “So what’s this big secret you been keeping from me?” Roger asked and flicked the flame on his lighter.

  Asima didn’t respond. She stared across the street at the lamppost. Had the metal really moved before her eyes? An unlit cigarette hung from her dry lips. Roger held the flame steady before her mouth.

  “Well, ain’t you gonna light up?” he said. “My finger hurts.”

  Asima didn’t answer.

  “Damn,” Roger said and let the lighter drop to the ground. He shook his hand then looked at his fingers. Ridges from the lighter had cut into his skin, the flesh of his thumb was red.

  “You’re such a baby,” Asima said. She rolled her eyes and pushed past him.

  He bent down and scooped the lighter up from the concrete.

  “Asima, where you going? Asima?”

  Asima didn’t look back. She skittered across the street and stopped in front of the lamppost. She was standing before it with crossed arms willing it to move when Roger walked up behind her.

  “What you doing, girl?”

  Asima opened her mouth to respond, but no words—only sound—came out. Roger jumped back; Asima clapped her hand over her mouth. The lamppost undulated again—in laughter, it seemed.

  “Did you see it?” Asima wanted to ask, but what came out her mouth was: “rrrrrraaaaaaauuuuuuugggggggggghhhhhhhhh.”

  In the migration of ants, there is always one that can be distracted. One whose biological imperative hiccups, if only for a moment, and allows it to wander off the track, into some new delight or danger. What would call you from your daily grind? A herd of wildebeest thundering down the street during rush hour?