Vote Then Read: Volume III

by Aleatha Romig

  “It’s the newest female Transformer,” I whisper. “Vulvatron.”

  “But what does it transform into?” Josh asks, whimpering as he puts his hand over his mouth and grips my arm.

  “Do you like the painting?” says a cloud of patchouli oil. “It’s one of mine.”

  We turn and look to our left to find the last hippie in all of Boston. No, really. She looks like someone age-lapsed a picture of one of the flower children at Woodstock and handed her a plastic baby doll with a...pelvis?

  “Hi. I’m Sunny.” She reaches out to shake Josh’s hand. “Congratulations on your blessing.”

  Her smile is radiant as Josh lets go of my elbow and shakes her hand. “I’m Josh. This is Amanda. My, uh, wife.”

  That just sounds creepy now.

  He puts his arm around my shoulder and looks at the wall labia with enormous eyes. “That’s quite a display.”

  “Pussies usually are,” she says, reaching to shake my hand. “So powerful. So divine. So innately in tune with the essence of life and the spirit of oneness.”

  I’ve read the Hypnotic Childbirth manual in preparation for this mystery shop, and while I know that the program encourages couples and teachers to use “natural” language, this takes me by surprise.

  “P—P—P...” Josh sputters.

  “Marie calls it ‘Chuckles’,” I whisper to him.

  “That really doesn’t help,” he hisses back. “Now I won’t ever be able to look at that stupid cat without thinking about—” he flails his hands toward the painting “—that.”

  “It looks like everyone is here,” Sunny announces, holding up a clipboard. “My hospital board corporate overlords insist I take attendance.” No one laughs except for Sunny, who thinks her own joke is hilarious.

  I realize that underneath the patchouli there is a distinct scent of something a little greener.

  “We might have some mild interruptions from a big tour going on with the mucky-mucks,” she adds as she briefly goes through calling out our names. She waves toward the window to the hallway. “Hospital donors. Something about a new cancer wing.”

  We all turn to see a janitor pushing a mop bucket along.

  “If they pop in here, just moan like we’re pretending to do controlled breathing for contractions and they’ll go away,” she says, drawing titters from the crowd.

  “Please have a seat,” Sunny instructs us. I look around. There are no seats. Only backjacks, like at a meditation retreat, and a giant pile of pillows in the same shades as the labia on the wall.

  “Partners, take a seat at the backjack. Mamas, grab as many pillows as you need to get comfy and sit between your partner’s legs.” I dutifully grab a pillow as I watch four other mamas in various stages of pregnancy waddle over and grab four or five pillows.

  Josh snickers. “This’ll be the first time I’ve had a woman between my legs.”

  I whack him with the pillow.

  “That’s right,” Sunny says dreamily. “This is all about fun. You had fun putting the baby in there, and we’re gonna make sure you have fun getting the baby out. It’s all a dance, people.” She shimmies her hips. “We’re dancing that baby out.”

  Josh looks up at me, his back nestled against the backjack, his legs scissored open like he’s taking a yoga class and starting to stretch.

  I look around the room. There are a total of five couples. One lesbian couple, and four pairs of one man, one woman.

  I climb between his legs and as I bend, my pregnancy pillow shoves up between my breasts.

  “Breastfeeding comes after you’ve given birth,” Josh hisses.

  I turn toward him and hide my wardrobe malfunction, reaching up under my skirt to pull the pillow down. As I get it back in place and pull my arm out, I lose my balance and fall face-first into his crotch.

  “I know I need to be a convincing hetero here, but you’re taking this a little too far, Amanda!”

  I scramble up—to the extent that you can scramble with fifteen pounds of pillow attached to your belly—and as I turn around, I see a wall of suits in the window. Must be the mucky-muck tour. As I straighten my dress and prepare to sit down, I make eye contact with a man in the crowd.

  It’s Andrew.

  Who looks right at my belly.

  And smiles.

  “Sometimes the universe works in mysterious ways,” Sunny says, opening the class. “We can’t know what the divine goddess is thinking when she sends messages our way. All we can do is enjoy the journey.”

  Andrew looks at me and arches one eyebrow. Then he mouths the word “Work?”

  I shrug.

  He nods. The suits go by en masse, like a herd of gazelles.

  I hold up my hand to my ear and pretend it’s a phone.

  He nods and turns away, talking to someone who looks like he belongs in a Fidelity Investments commercial.

  Josh yanks my hand.

  “Get between my legs,” he murmurs. “We’re supposed to be pretending.”

  “If a woman’s between your legs, you’re definitely pretending.”

  “Was that Andrew out there?” he asks, wrapping his moist arms around me. I lean back. Resting against his chest is like leaning back against a line of horizontal marshmallow roasting sticks.

  “Do you have an ounce of body fat on you?”

  “No!” he crows. “Thank Crossfit. Isn’t it great?”

  “You’re about as comfortable to snuggle with as a croquet set.”

  “That’s not what my boyfriends say!” he retorts, a little too loudly. One of the other dads gives him a funny look.

  Josh kisses my temple and says loudly, “I love you, honey.” He strokes my hair like he’s petting a chinchilla, then reaches down to stroke my belly.

  I shiver.

  “You’re a really bad actor.”

  “You’re a really bad pregnant woman. I wouldn’t trust you to raise a Sea Monkey.”

  “Let’s go around the room and introduce ourselves, now that you’re snuggled into the arms of your love muffin,” Sunny announces.

  Muffin. That’s what Josh reminds me of. He’s starting to shake, and he is about as soft as a hairless Chihuahua.

  “I’m Sunny. I’ve given birth three times and have two sons and a daughter. I had water births for all three, and my youngest was born in the ocean, with two dolphins as midwives.”

  “How do you get medical insurance to cover dolphins?” one of the expectant mothers asks. I snort, loving the sarcasm.

  Everyone stares at me.

  Oh. She wasn’t joking.

  Sunny just laughs and smiles beatifically at her. “It’s your body. Your baby. You can give birth wherever and whenever you like.”

  “Can you get an epidural in the parking lot?” another expectant mother asks.

  I can’t tell if she’s joking or not, so I don’t laugh.

  Everyone else giggles.

  Andrew’s in the window again. He waves. I swoon.

  Josh kisses my temple again.

  Andrew glowers.

  Introductions are made and Sunny moves on to the always-present birth video. You know the kind. The video of the couple arriving at the hospital, the mother wearing makeup and feeling twinges that will soon erupt into controlled groans of intense concentration, the cries of joy, ending with a baby at the breast and the requisite Mylar balloon bouquets brought by happy grandparents.

  At least, that’s my understanding of birth from cable television reality shows.

  The lights dim, and the movie starts.

  “Why are we looking at someone’s toupee?” Josh whispers at the opening frame.

  “That’s not a—”

  “Aieeee!” Josh squeals as it becomes apparent we’re looking at a crotch shot from 1973.

  The frame changes and focuses on the silhouette of a very ripe, pregnant body, the woman wearing a diaphanous gown, her hair long and ribboned with white flowers.

  If she weren’t pregnant, she’d look like an ad fo
r a douche product.

  “Childbirth is as natural as time itself,” the narrator declares.

  “That makes no sense,” Josh complains in a whisper. “Who writes the scripts for this shit?”

  “You’re going to blow our cover,” I hiss. “You need to look like all the other partners.”

  Josh pretends he’s a deer caught in headlights.

  “Perfect.”

  “I love you, sweetie,” he says in a stage whisper, kissing my temple again.

  “You touch my belly with that moist hand and I will make you massage my feet,” I declare.

  Josh flinches. He hates feet. It’s an anti-fetish for him.

  A guy behind us taps Josh on the shoulder and says, with sympathy, “Pregnancy hormones are a bitch, dude.”

  Josh nods and returns his eyes to the movie just in time for the frame to change to an anatomy drawing of a woman’s genitals.

  Then a live-action picture of the same parts.

  “Is it always so pink? And wet?” Josh asks under his breath. “Where does the wetness come from? Is it pee?”

  “The moistness, you mean?”

  Now I’m just being mean. I blame all the fake pregnancy hormones.

  “Stop saying moist!” He looks like he ate a bad peanut. “Why is it so wet?”

  “The vulva?”

  “The vagina.”

  “You’re looking at the labia, the vulva, and the clitoris. The vagina is the tunnel where the baby comes out.” I feel like a tour director on the Vagina Express. Greg does not pay me enough to provide sex education to co-workers. I should put out a tip can.

  “Where, exactly, is the clitoris?” Josh questions.

  “That’s what every man asks.”

  “How in the hell am I supposed to know? I’ve never seen one of these,” he bites back. “By choice.” He wrinkles his nose. “And now I know why.”

  I snort. “As if penises are aesthetically pleasing.”

  He looks offended. “What’s wrong with penises? Penises are awesome.”

  “They have two looks. Deflated fire hose or Washington Monument wearing a firefighter’s hat. While they’re certainly useful and sensual and exciting under the right circumstances, they’re not exactly works of art.”

  Josh ponders that for a minute, chewing on the inside of his cheek. He tilts his head back and forth as if weighing out my words, then finally whispers in my ear. “I’ll give you that.”

  “Shhhh,” someone rasps from the back of the room.

  We go silent.

  Silence is pretty much the only rational response to what we watch for the next ten minutes as the video describes the process of the development of a baby from conception to birth.

  “You can grow your own organs?” Josh whispers in my ear, his hot breath frantic and punctuated by weird little hitches. Is he on the verge of hyperventilating?

  “Women can. Not men. Hah! Isn’t that cool? The placenta gets built from my body. Breast milk, too.”

  “You realize you’re not really pregnant, right? You didn’t build a placenta from spare body parts and cells inside you. And it’s an organ that just goes to waste after the baby’s born.”

  “Unless you eat it,” I say, distracted by the sight of a baby’s foot pressing up against the thinly stretched wall of the mother’s huge belly on screen.

  “Eat what?”

  “The placenta.”

  “People eat it?” he shrieks. “Isn’t that a form of cannibalism?” His eyes search the perimeter of the room for available exits. “I had no idea how violent childbirth is!”

  “Shhhh,” Sunny says, her eyes glazed. “We’ll talk about how to desiccate and eat the placenta later, after I teach perineal massage.”

  “What’s a perineal?” Josh asks, suspicious.

  “It’s part of the woman’s neck,” I lie.

  “Whew,” he says, his shoulders relaxing. But he’s still shaking, and now his arms are covered with a thin sheen of cold sweat.

  He is the very definition of all the reasons the word moist is so disgusting.

  “Would it kill these women to try a little with their appearance?” he whispers as we watch more of the video presentation.

  “What?”

  “I mean, look at them. No makeup. No toenail polish on those feet.” He makes a sour face. “Hairy legs. Bushes that look like they spread chia seeds on their—” he waves his hands vaguely around the crotch area “—you know.”

  “Mons.”

  He shivers. “That word is worse than moist!”

  “You expect women who are experiencing the most painful and athletic event of their life to put on makeup?”

  He half shrugs. “Just saying. A pedicure or some eye shadow would at least show they tried. The poor baby’s going to be born and mama will be in all the pictures looking like a Jersey Devil with an overdue mani-pedi.”

  The slide changes to an image of a woman’s legs spread wide, with a baby’s head crowning.

  “Oh, my lordy lord it’s got hair teeth!” Josh screams. His eyes roll back in his head and bam—he’s in a dead faint, falling on the floor and rolling on his side on the industrial carpet.

  “He acts like he’s never seen a vagina before in his life,” one of the dads murmurs. His words carry throughout the room, and all eyes are on me. “How could she be pregnant and he’s never—”

  “We’re strict Mormons,” I lie, grasping at straws.

  All the expressions soften into understanding, as if that explains everything.

  “He’s bleeding!” someone gasps. I look at Josh’s head and yes—he is.

  The next few minutes are a blur of activity as the class teacher administers first aid, someone is pulled in from the emergency room, and a nurse assures me that lots of husbands faint during class from nervousness, though “never quite this early in the lesson.”

  As Josh comes to, he looks around the room, wild and unfocused.

  “Labia is a lovely name if it’s a girl,” he whispers, then faints again.

  I like him better unconscious.

  The wall of suits appear, because it’s not enough to have my gay, unconscious co-worker who is my fake husband bleeding all over the floor of a conference room where a baby’s head emerges from a woman’s vagina and—ouch!—we see the evidence for why stitches have to happen after birth.

  Let’s throw in a few grey-haired CEOs and their bean counters. And one delightfully delicious CEO who has most definitely seen a vag before.

  Mine.

  “You have quite the track record with fake spouses,” Andrew says quietly in my ear as people in the crowd either fret over Josh’s prone body or murmur about liability issues.

  Sunny lights a sage smudge stick and starts muttering something while waving the burning leaves over my “husband”.

  Andrew looks at my belly with a mixture of amusement and protectiveness. I want to touch him but I can’t. He has, obviously, figured out the ruse. While I technically can’t tell him that Josh and I are working, he clearly knows.

  “Are you stalking me, Mr. McCormick?” I murmur, rubbing my pretend bump. “You appear in the most unusual moments in my life.”

  “I’m on the board of directors of the hospital, Ms. Warrick,” he replies with a smile. “We’re doing an annual walk-through.”

  “I’m preparing for the most precious moment I never expected,” I answer, giving him a wink.

  He smothers a grin.

  Sunny glides over. She smells like roasted chicken, which makes my tummy growl. I am eating for two after all.

  Me and Josh. He’s so green there’s no way he’ll be able to go out with me for dinner after this.

  “Your husband is down for the count, I’m afraid,” Sunny says sadly.

  A warrior’s cry erupts in the tiny room. We all turn toward the source of the sound.

  A bloody baby’s head emerges on screen. Sunny pauses the video right there, the frame frozen in graphic detail.

  “The mira
cle of life,” Sunny calls out. She claps her hands. “Let’s resume class now that Amanda’s husband is feeling better.” I shiver at the words Amanda’s husband.

  “I’m not feeling better,” Josh argues as two nurses help him stand.

  “We’re going to take him into the ER for a quick eval,” one of them tells me.

  “But Amanda needs a partner for the next lesson!” Sunny says with a loud, slow sigh. “Who will help her to make the clay molds of cervixes that we’ll stretch open to welcome the baby?”

  Josh retches violently as they lead him out the door.

  “I guess I’ll handle my cervix by myself,” I say pleasantly to Sunny, who gives me a funny look.

  “I can help you with your cervix,” Andrew replies. He catches the eye of one of the receding suits and gestures that he’s staying in the class.

  “Don’t you have evil corporate overlords to entertain?” I ask, trying desperately not to lunge at him and kiss him silly. After more than a week apart, I can feel the pulsing parts of me trying to attach to him like suckers on the ends of tentacles.

  “Who are you?” Sunny asks Andrew.

  Oh, boy.

  “This is my, um...brother,” I mumble.

  Andrew’s shoulders begin to shake with repressed laughter.

  She gives him a once-over, then looks at me. “I see the family resemblance.”

  What?

  “Let’s try to resume some semblance of normalcy,” Sunny says, dimming the lights again and pressing Play on the video.

  “I think that shark got jumped a while ago,” I mutter. Andrew looks around the room, tugs up lightly on his trouser legs, and bends to sit on the floor.

  He looks up at me with an expression of expectation.

  “What are you doing?” I ask.

  “Waiting for you to get between my legs.” His hand is extended toward me. I take it and bend down.

  My fake pregnant belly goes right up between my breasts again.

  “Now there’s a look,” Andrew says, staring at my boobs.

  “Pregnancy does strange things to a woman’s body.”

  “I heard that breasts get bigger, but this is something else.”

  I reach under my skirt—again—to pull the belly back in place.

  A warm, helping palm slides up my leg.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I’m assisting you. Remember? I’m your birthing partner.”