“You’re not listening to me. Listen. Please. Mom, Dad, I am here because I want to be. Ibrahim and I love each other, and we are going to have this baby. And we’re not going to give it away, we’re going to keep it and raise it together. In a family. And if you don’t want to be a part of that, fine, but don’t tell me what to do. I’m an adult.” But she knows that when one has to assert the fact of one’s adulthood, one hasn’t quite made it to that stage.
Silvia hears her mother inhale sharply. Then she hears her mother’s signature warbling sobs, soft at first but gradually growing loud as an opera solo.
“Silvia.” Her father’s voice sounds watery as well, but Silvia knows he won’t be crying—he never cries. “You don’t know what you’re talk—”
“I know exactly what I’m talking about. I’m sorry I didn’t turn out the way you wanted me to, but this is what I’m doing. We are going to have this baby, me and Ibrahim, and we’re going to love it with everything we have. And I hope you can find it in your big Christian hearts to accept that.”
Before they can say anything else she hangs up and walks out.
VI
HARTFORD IS PAINTING one of the closed-up spare rooms pink. The room is on the ground floor a few doors down from the library. It’s the colour of carnations and ballet shoes.
The first coat of paint goes on in a wide, porous stripe; the second fills the holes. He doesn’t make patterns with the roller, spelling out letters or anything of the sort. He doesn’t think to. He works steadily until a whole wall is covered, then starts another. He hums pleasantly, so fully absorbed in his task that he doesn’t notice Silvia in the doorway.
She stands for a while, listening to Hartford’s angelic melody. She recognizes the song but doesn’t know where from. The sound is pure and light; the ladder of scales turns into a descant, then words:
I see the stars, I hear the rolling thunder
Thy power throughout the universe displayed
As she listens, she notices that a patch of plaster on the wall outside this room is peeling, cracks emanating from a misshapen hole, revealing the brick beneath.
Hartford’s voice builds, tremulous but powerful, and Silvia feels overwhelmingly moved. She clears her throat to announce her presence, and Hartford jumps back, spattering paint from the roller onto the floor.
“Hey.” Silvia stands tentatively in the doorway. “Don’t stop,” she says. “You have a lovely voice.”
Hartford looks as though he’s been caught masturbating. He goes red, stumbles over his words, and ends up saying nothing.
“I’m sorry I surprised you,” Silvia says, getting closer, looking at the pink walls.
“Innocence,” Hartford says.
“Sorry, what?”
“The paint colour. That’s the name. It’s for the baby.”
“Oh, nice.” Silvia looks at the room differently now, thinking of her baby in here, and then two things hit her separately: “But why did you make it pink? We don’t know it’s a girl,” and then: “And why is the room downstairs and on the other side of the house from ours?”
Hartford shrugs. “Cynthia,” is all he says.
VII
SILVIA IS LYING on the floor of the library, trying to calm her stomach, Toby at her side. Ibrahim is sitting in the corner of the room, flicking through a book on Basquiat. She watches him, envying his raptness, then closes her eyes. Nausea punches through her belly before and after eating. At all times, really. And this fills her with a constant, watery sadness. Every time she moves she must be careful not to spill the liquid inside her, just barely held in by her skin. She is unable to think of the child inside, the food he or she (she, Silvia still hopes) hungers for, or the bones she is growing. Silvia can think only of her nausea. Of the nausea ending. Of feeling like herself again. She hopes that being horizontal will create a more stable, shallow base for all the water inside her. That it will calm the strange tides and warping undercurrents.
Toby has started delicately licking her fingers with his rough tongue when Cynthia appears.
“How are you feeling, Silvia?”
Silvia doesn’t know how to answer. She doesn’t want to undercut her response with qualifiers: “Okay but,” “Fine except,” “Good although.” If water could instantly turn into Jell-O, that’s what it would feel like. Aspic in her insides, holding together all the disparate parts. Good, is she good? Physically yes, maybe. Emotionally, no: this nausea is nearly spiritual. Instead of answering, making yet another hole in her body through which the water could come forth, she smiles with her lips closed. This seems to be sufficient.
“Are you busy?” Cynthia continues.
Ibrahim looks up from his book.
“I’m never busy,” Silvia replies.
“Oh good,” Cynthia says. “I haven’t any plans either. I was wondering if you wanted to—might want to watch a movie with me.” She holds out a box to show Silvia. Silvia moves only her eyes to find it. It’s got a black-and-white cover.
“Sure,” she says, still unmoving. It doesn’t matter to her what the movie is, so she doesn’t bother asking.
“Wonderful!”
“Now?”
“Or later, if you prefer.”
“No,” Silvia says, reluctantly pushing herself up onto her elbows. “Now is fine.” Toby bangs his head against her body in a self-petting technique he’s developed in recent weeks, nuzzling into Silvia’s ribs, full of the irrational affection of animals.
“Wonderful.” Cynthia helps manoeuvre Silvia into a sitting position.
Ibrahim gets up and comes over too, standing tall above her. “Can I get you anything, Silvia?”
She looks up at him, a giant. “I’m fine.”
He puts his hands in his pockets and looks out the window to see Hartford struggling past with a huge load of stuff—ropes, wood, tarps. “What’s Hartford doing?”
“He has to finish winterizing the hives,” Cynthia says. “Make them waterproof and warm for the bees.”
“Should I give him a hand?”
Cynthia brushes him off with a falsely high voice. “You’re busy with your own work. Don’t worry—that’s what you should be focusing on.”
Ibrahim starts to go towards the door. “It’s fine. I’m happy to help out.”
“Well, that’s very generous of you,” Cynthia says.
“Not at all.” He feels kind of guilty but can’t explain why. “You okay, Silvia?” he asks one more time.
“Mm-hmm.”
“Okay. I’ll be back in a bit, then.”
Silvia doesn’t feel a loss when Ibrahim leaves; she’s too busy working to stay as horizontal as possible as she moves herself from the floor to the corduroy couch.
And Cynthia is there, Cynthia will keep her company.
“Do you want a snack? Something to drink? Water?” Cynthia scans Silvia’s body as if to locate a particular need.
“No, no water.” She is already full of water and already has to pee every forty-five seconds; if she puts more water in her body it will rupture.
“May I?” Cynthia asks, her hand hovering above Silvia’s stomach.
Silvia looks down at her belly. It’s still fairly flat—you might think she was pudgy or maybe a little bloated—but to her it is enormous, unrecognizable. Her body is not her body. “Sure,” she says, tasting vinegar at the root of her tongue. When did she stop feeling like herself? What did her self feel like to begin with?
Cynthia presses her hand over the thin black cotton T-shirt Silvia wears most days. Her palm cups around the subtle curve of Silvia’s body. Her hard black eyes are cutting diagonals—the sign of someone listening closely. “I feel something!” she cries. “A beat, like a heart, or a kick. Oh!” Light comes from within her dark eyes.
“Let me,” and Silvia pushes Cynthia’s hand away to try to feel for herself. She pats her hands all over her abdomen as if she’s packing a suitcase. “I don’t feel anything.” She only feels jealous.
“Maybe she’s stopped.”
“She?”
“The baby.”
“Oh.” Silvia is gently, absent-mindedly, stroking Toby’s soft purple-grey fur as he purrs next to her elbow.
“Are you all right? You look a bit pale,” Cynthia says.
“I don’t understand.” Tears fill Silvia’s eyes.
“It’s all right.” Cynthia sits next to her on the sofa. She wraps one arm around the girl and pats her knees with the other. “I’m here.” Silvia looks to where Cynthia is patting and lays her head down. “Shall we watch the film?” Cynthia looks down at her.
Silvia nods.
Her hair is spread out on Cynthia’s lap like a mermaid’s under water. Cynthia looks at it, puts her hands out towards it. She hesitates for a moment, then picks up a lock of Silvia’s hair and twists it around her fingers.
VIII
WHEN SILVIA HITS the eight-week mark, Cynthia sets up an appointment with the county midwife. Just a routine checkup.
The midwife’s skin is rough and red, as if it has been scoured with sandpaper. The redness spreads from the apples of her cheeks to the jowly bits under her ears. It must be some kind of condition, Silvia thinks. The woman’s hair is dark, tightly curled but puffy. Like a brushed-out poodle’s.
“Hello, Cynthia.” The midwife greets Cynthia with a manly handshake. “Long time. You’re looking well.” She steps back, nodding appraisingly.
Cynthia smiles. “Meg, come in.” She gestures to Silvia, who is now sitting on the sofa just through the open library door.
Meg is squat and sporty in black tearaway pants, the kind that kids wore in Silvia’s grade school. She’s never seen an adult wearing them. Meg takes off her shoulder bag and black windbreaker and puts both on the back of a chair. There is something efficient and loveless in her manner; she’s the type of woman who wouldn’t coddle a baby but would make it stop crying faster than anyone. Silvia realises that it’s been weeks since she’s seen a human being other than Ibrahim, Cynthia, and Hartford.
“You must be Silvia.” Meg greets her with the same vigorous handshake. “All going well so far?”
Silvia nods.
“And how have you been?” Meg turns to look at Cynthia, standing with her arms crossed, overseeing.
“Me? Fine, thank you.”
“You know everyone wanted to help,” Meg says. “We just didn’t know how. We were all so sorry to hear what happened, and with the baby—”
“I appreciate the thought,” Cynthia says, cutting her off.
Meg rolls up her sleeves and pulls up a chair to sit beside Silvia’s belly. “Eight weeks, eh? ’E’ll be about the size of a kidney bean. Less than an inch, crown to rump.”
The softness of the personal pronoun Meg uses implies genderlessness. This must be practiced, so as not to give anything away; it’s all intuition at this point anyway. Silvia feels an immense swell of nausea at the thought of a kidney bean in her womb. She feels like a stranger in her own body.
“How are you feeling?” Meg asks, scanning Silvia from head to toe.
“Now or in general?”
“Both.”
“Fine.” She hopes Meg can’t read minds but wouldn’t be surprised if she could.
“No nausea?”
“Yes.”
“You do have nausea?”
“Yeah. But isn’t nausea normal?”
“Almost everything is normal these days”—she raises her eyebrows—“but we want you to be comfortable.” Meg takes two hard candies out of her pocket and pats them into Silvia’s palm. “Ginger. It helps.”
Silvia notices that Meg’s not wearing any makeup. Not that Silvia has worn any in months either, but still. This is a woman on the job. Silvia puts the sweets on the floor.
“Shirt off, please,” Meg says, rifling through her big black bag.
Acquiescing, Silvia pulls her T-shirt over her head.
“Bra too.”
Cynthia is standing right in front of her, Meg sitting at her side. Silvia avoids the women’s gaze as she removes her bra.
With Silvia naked from the waist up, Meg gives her another once-over. Navel, belly; she lingers on the breasts. She nods. Then she puts her right hand on Silvia’s stomach. Above the belly button, where it bulges. Meg feels her way along the flesh and taps the back of her right hand with her left. She explains that this makes an echo she can feel through all three of their bodies—Meg, Silvia, Baby. She tilts her head to listen to, to feel, the silent reverberations from her tapping hands.
Silvia can see the crosshatched shadow of a fine moustache on Meg’s upper lip. The sound her hands make is softer than a tap but less accidental than a thump: dump, dump, dump. Silvia makes a face.
“Hurts?” Meg asks.
“No.”
Then breasts.
“Swollen?” Meg asks, squeezing them as though testing for ripeness.
“A little.”
“Painful?”
“Not too bad.”
“Good.”
Silvia’s nipples have grown longer and thicker than pencil erasers and have darkened to the colour of milky chocolate. The colour of Ibrahim’s lips. Meg taps around the areola as though it were cookie dough.
“Everything okay there,” she declares bluntly. She goes back to her bag and withdraws a plastic, book-shaped device, what looks like a microphone and tape deck for children.
“Oh good,” Cynthia says, relieved. “Isn’t that good, Silvia?”
Silvia closes her eyes.
“This is a Doppler,” Meg says, “so I can hear the heartbeat.”
Meg presses the round plastic next to Silvia’s navel and listens for a while. “Would you like to hear the heartbeat?” she asks softly.
Silvia opens her eyes. “Me?”
A glimmer—condescension, amusement—crosses Meg’s matte-brown eyes. “Yes, you.”
“I’m sure she would!” Cynthia cries.
Silvia thinks about it, then nods. Meg unhooks the earpieces from her own ears and holds them up to Silvia, who looks at them, decides they look okay, then puts them in.
She hears the sudden rush of water, the sonic wallow of blood, thump-Thump, thump-Thump, moving at its private, rhythmic pace.
At that moment she doesn’t think of the thing inside her as a bloated bellyache or an unwanted grain that’s making her ill. It’s a tiny human baby. While this brings with it a sense of relief, the collision of their two heartbeats reminds her of the cacophonic skin-drum vibration of the frogs, and she realises that in a few months she will be no longer herself but a mother.
IX
“HOW DID IT GO?” Ibrahim asks, his voice on edge as he puts down his paintbrush. He had been forbidden to attend the checkup, but honestly, he hadn’t pushed very hard: the whole thing makes him feel a little queasy. He didn’t want to tell Silvia this, though—he knows how hard it’s been for her, and that he deserves no sympathy for his own nausea, vicarious or not.
“I heard the heartbeat!”
“Come here, come here.” He goes to her. “Let me hear.” He presses his ear to her shirt. Hearing nothing, he lifts it up.
“Do you hear it?”
“No.” He sounds annoyed. He’s on his knees, his ear tight to her skin.
“Oh, Ibrahim,” she says, her voice floating, “it was so . . . so good to hear it, to know that it is alive. A real thing.”
Ibrahim looks up at her, his face hot with love. He kisses Silvia’s belly. And again. “That one’s for the little guy.”
“I felt so much love for the baby then,” she says. “It was such a relief.”
Ibrahim stands up. To him, she still doesn’t look pregnant at all. Maybe a little thicker round the waist, but that could just be normal winter padding. “I’m so, so happy,” he says. “Hey, why don’t we go for a walk down to the lakes?”
“Now? Won’t it be cold?”
“It’s not bad.”
“Oh.” She isn’t sure how she feels about this; it
doesn’t seem possible, but she also doesn’t know any better. “Sure.”
Ibrahim cocoons Silvia in wool. He wraps scratchy scarves and his abouya’s sweater around her, ties a holey afghan he found in the candle cupboard round her neck, and insists that she wear three pairs of his red-striped work socks.
“Three? Ibrahim, my shoes won’t fit.”
“You can wear mine.”
He stashes towels and a thermos of hot chocolate in a borrowed backpack, tucks his red scarf into his sweater, and flips up the visor of his Raptors cap. “My little baby’s inside there!” he squeals, rubbing Silvia’s belly. He’s just finished a new painting, so he’s feeling particularly buoyant.
“Hey,” she says, “my baby too.” Silvia hasn’t finished anything of anything at all, and the sinking feeling inside her has become so habitual she can almost forget about it.
“Let’s go, baby,” he says, taking her hand.
THOUGH SUMMER is long gone, it’s warm for mid-October. By now, Hartford tells them, there’s often a foot of snow shielding the world, but the permanent layer of snow and ice they’ve been anticipating has not yet arrived. The drought continues. Anticipation magnifies everything.
Leaves crumple into mulch on the ground. Abandoned nests rest in the crooks of bare branches; knots in trunks are stashed with acorns to tide the squirrels through what is sure to be a long winter. More than this seasonal shift, though, there is a whole new climate in the forest: moss wraps the stones in green fur, and beards of lichen cling to broken bark. The air has the clarity of an ice cube.
“Careful,” Ibrahim says, putting out his arm like a mother would at a car’s sudden stop.
“What?”
“I just don’t want you falling. The ground’s all uneven.”
And for a bit they walk in silence, Ibrahim two steps ahead.
The Honey Farm Page 20