Tears fill up to the rim of her eyelids. A girl. Silvia looks from Ibrahim to Meg and blinks, tenderness quickly turning to agitation. “And she’s with Cynthia?” Then: “Why are you checking on me? Why not the baby?”
“The baby’s doing just fine, love—Ibrahim’s right, she’s perfect. But birth isn’t always easy on the mother, you know. We’re just going to give you a look-over, make sure everything’s all right with you.” Meg doesn’t have any tools, no stethoscope or speculum, so Silvia wonders what she plans on looking over, and how.
“I’m so proud of you.” Ibrahim strokes Silvia’s hand, then places it back on the bed beside her mummified body. “You’re doing so well.”
Silvia looks genuinely perplexed. “What do you mean? Why?” She props herself up on her elbows, head approaching the sloping ceiling.
“Lie back, Silvia.” Meg eases her back down to a horizontal position. “Breast milk is coming, I see. How does that feel?”
Silvia just stares at Meg, eyes wide and hollow.
“It can be a strange feeling, I know.” Meg starts gently tapping Silvia’s stomach, working her way up to the breasts. “We’ll work on breast feeding soon, but in the meantime Cynthia’s got the bottles of formula going just fine.”
“Can you please get Cynthia to bring me my baby?”
“Let’s focus on you for a moment,” Meg says.
“But I haven’t even seen her yet. I’m the mother.”
“Do you know what you’re going to call her?” Meg asks, changing the subject and sitting down on the mattress by Silvia’s hips.
“Oh.” Silvia thinks. “I haven’t met her yet. And we haven’t really talked about it.” She looks at Ibrahim, hoping he’ll give her an answer, some kind of a clue, but he just smiles weakly.
“So how are you feeling, Silvia?” Silvia can see how Meg’s face changes, straightens yet tilts to assume her role.
Silvia looks inside herself, trying to see if she can identify a feeling in there. “I don’t know.” She tries to find the most benign of the multitude of feelings that present themselves. “Tired, I guess.”
“Tired is normal—isn’t it normal?” Ibrahim says to Meg.
Meg nods, dismissing him. “Are you in any pain?” she asks Silvia.
“Yeah.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, lots of places. Here.” Silvia points to her heart. “And here.” She points to her belly. “It hurts there, more than it did before. You know that thing when your leg is amputated and it still hurts?”
“You just had a baby, darling.” Meg’s face folds. “Some level of discomfort is normal.”
Silvia hears the sound of the machine again; it’s getting louder, nearer. In an instant she knows what it is. “Do you hear that?”
Ibrahim and Meg share another glance.
“Hear what?” Ibrahim asks.
“It’s the bees.”
“The bees?”
“They’re getting ready to swarm.” Silvia didn’t know that this is what was happening until she found herself saying it, but hearing it, she knows it to be true. Bees swarm in mourning, and in hope.
XXXI
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN? Where are they going?” Ibrahim asks, genuinely concerned.
“Here.” This too is a truth discovered only when speaking it. “The bees are coming here.”
“But . . . why?” Ibrahim’s instinct is to believe her, not just because he loves her but because she is acting differently than during her attacks, he realises: mainly, she is not afraid.
“They need a new queen.”
And now there are three of us, she thinks. This is when the fear comes.
Meg nods to Ibrahim. “Right, dear,” she says. “You get some rest.”
The two start to walk for the door.
“No, please,” Silvia says, “don’t leave.”
“I’ll be back soon, Silvia,” Ibrahim says, and even though he’s smiling, he sounds profoundly sad. “I’ll see if I can bring the baby.”
Meg and Ibrahim look at Silvia and smile, mollifying and veneered, and then Meg opens the door for Ibrahim. When she thinks they’re out of Silvia’s earshot, she says, “Bring her a cup of warm milk with a little honey.”
Ibrahim and Meg walk down the stairs in silence and find that Cynthia is no longer in the nursery but is sitting at the kitchen table, holding the baby, who is calmly sleeping in her arms. The sun has set and the dusk creeps in from outside, but only the hanging lamp above the table is on.
“Well?” Cynthia says, staying seated so as not to disrupt the baby but clearly wanting to stand, to get involved. “How did she seem?”
“A bit fragile, definitely,” Meg admits.
Cynthia’s expression discloses a certain satisfaction, which she is quick to erase before asking Ibrahim, with more concern in her tone, “And what did you think?”
“Yeah.” Ibrahim nods. He feels torn between telling Cynthia the truth and defending Silvia; at this stage, he doesn’t know which is best. “She said she was tired, but that must be normal.”
“Normal?” Cynthia’s face is angled towards the baby and so her eyes, looking up at him, are deeply hooded.
Ibrahim opens his mouth, then shuts it again.
“Physically,” Meg says, moving the conversation along, “she seems fine.” She pauses, and a but is implied. “I’m sure she’ll be better after a good sleep and a few days’ rest.”
“Thank you, Meg,” Ibrahim says. “Thanks so much for coming by.” He’s leaning towards her but his body is slumped, as though standing on his own two feet is too overwhelming at the moment.
“Yes, I’m very glad I did,” Meg says, looking Cynthia right in her black eyes. “Especially since it doesn’t seem possible to reach me by phone.”
Cynthia looks down at the baby, whose lips are curling into an unconscious smile; she can’t help but smile in turn.
“Goodbye, Meg,” Cynthia says, looking up in a state of detached bliss.
Looking at Ibrahim now, Meg says in a normal voice, “You know where to find me if you need anything, right?”
Ibrahim holds her stare for a second before nodding, understanding, and then Meg takes her leave.
“Hello, baby, baby,” Cynthia coos. “You haven’t thought of a name, then?” she asks Ibrahim. “I have a few ideas if you need any help.”
“Uh, that’s okay. I’m sure Silvia and I will come up with something. You know, once she sees the baby.”
Ibrahim looks around at the room, the shadows from the edges encroaching as night falls harder. “Do you want me to turn on the lights?” He goes to switch them on. “It’s so dark, but it’s only, what, eight o’clock?”
He goes around flicking all the switches as if the light will cast away all the darkness that troubles his world.
Cynthia continues as though he hasn’t spoken. “Postpartum depression is quite common, especially for younger mothers, and with everything Silvia’s been going through . . .”
“Post what?”
“It means loss,” she lies. “Latin.”
“Oh.”
“Silvia’s experienced such a huge amount of loss all at once. A lot of mothers feel this after the birth, when it all becomes real in a different way, but Silvia’s loss is, of course, compounded.”
“Right.” Though the word “loss” hurts him, making him feel guilty and that he is not enough, in a way this new term, “postpartum,” gives him reassurance. Naming the problem puts it into a box. It means other people have been this way too. “Does the birth have anything to do with the bees swarming?” he asks. “Or . . .” He trails off when he sees Cynthia’s reaction.
“The bees aren’t swarming. Why would they be swarming?”
“It’s just that, well, Silvia said she thought . . .”
“What did Silvia say?”
“I don’t know.” He tries to backtrack, but he doesn’t know where he took the wrong turn. “Just that she thought the bees were coming h
ere.”
“Why did she say that?”
“I don’t know why she said it.” He pauses, thinking. “Actually, she said she heard something, I didn’t hear it, though. And that the bees had lost their queen.”
Cynthia is silent for a moment, pricking her ears to see if she can identify a sound, and then the baby starts to cry, a gut-wrenching wail. It contains the pain of the whole world.
“Silvia needs help, Ibrahim.” Cynthia speaks through the screams, and though the strength of the child’s wail far surpasses the volume of Cynthia’s calm tone, the sounds are on two different wavelengths and so Ibrahim can hear both separately. “She’s unstable. It’s not safe for the baby.”
“If we just give it time, though, like Meg said . . .” His whole body moves towards the baby, wanting to take her for himself and hoping that his paternal connection will stop the child from shrieking, but he doesn’t reach for her, as Cynthia is holding her tightly.
Cynthia starts swinging from the legs up, twisting forcefully to rock the child from side to side. Not losing her rhythm, she continues: “Maybe in time she will be better, but right now she’s not capable.”
“But—”
“Think of your baby, Ibrahim.”
He is always thinking of his baby, he’s thought of her every moment since she entered the world a day ago, and he knows already that he always will, in every hour that lies ahead. No longer able to bear the distance, he reaches out to touch the head of his screaming child, wishing with his whole being that he had the power to make her stop, but the cries continue. “What exactly are you saying?” he asks.
“I’m saying that Silvia needs to be somewhere where she can be provided with the help she needs.”
“What do you mean—like, to go back home?”
“I mean a hospital or something.”
He puts his head in his hands, shaking. Words have become so weighted. First loss, now hospital. He feels the heaviness in his forehead and at the back of his neck.
“Don’t you agree?” Cynthia’s voice is oppressively rational; it doesn’t make sense to him that she is so impervious to emotion in this moment.
“I don’t know. This is all just happening . . . I think Silvia needs to see the baby before we make any decisions. I want to take her up.” He tries to impart the same strength into his own voice, and though he nearly manages, it wavers at the end.
Cynthia sighs. “Fine.” She slows her rocking and touches the baby’s peachy cheek; as if by magic, the screaming softens to a garbled cry and then down to a mumbling babble. “But I’ll take the baby up, all right? I think that would be better. We don’t know how she’ll respond to you, after last time.”
Ibrahim has no idea what Cynthia is referring to—he can think only of how Silvia responded to Cynthia just the other day, when her water broke—but he’s too tired to argue.
“Fine,” he says, sinking down onto the chair he found Cynthia in, feeling that though he’s taken one step forward, he’s ended up two steps back. “I’ll be right here.”
XXXII
NOW THAT ALL THE BEEHIVES are empty, the insides are a creamy colour: sunshine on fields of hay, or real vanilla ice cream. Outside, the bees have all gathered like a nimbus cloud, belly full of rain and ready to spill over.
From bed, with her eyes closed, Silvia watches them suspended and feels at one with everything. The strings that connect the bees also connect her—not just to them but to the trees, the sky, the water, the earth. She lifts the backs of her hands, as if the strings connect to the veins beneath her knuckles, and the cloud of bees moves.
Out of the dark, Cynthia returns: first her face, as before—it looks different, paler, younger—and then the rest of her body. Silvia notices that the clump of rags is still in her arms, but the baby has stopped crying now. Thank God, Silvia thinks; the love she felt from before mounts as the revulsion ebbs.
It’s pestilence, Silvia.
It’s a farm, Silvia.
Have you been praying, Silvia?
Different voices. All the same voice. Distorted and monotonous.
“Is it yours?” Silvia asks.
A smile, and then Cynthia, in slow motion, shifts the baby to her right arm and with her left retrieves a narrow, long blade from behind her.
“You must fear the Lord,” Cynthia says, singsongy and incongruously girlish, “and you must also love the Lord.” She lifts the blade high.
“Wait, no—” Silvia puts out her hand to try to stop what she knows by now, in this instant, is inevitable.
XXXIII
“IBRAHIM, ARE YOU AWAKE?”
Ibrahim sits up, startled. He hadn’t realised he’d dozed off, head on the soapy wood of the kitchen table. “Hello? I’m awake—what’s going on?” It’s completely dark all around him, and then Hartford steps into the light.
“I just wanted to say . . .” He takes a second to choose his words correctly. “I think you should be . . . careful.”
“Careful? What do you mean, careful?”
“Just, she’s affected by—she isn’t entirely stable. You should know.”
A pause. “What are you saying?”
“Cynthia doesn’t always say what she means. It’s not bad, necessarily, but she doesn’t always know.”
“Know what?”
“What’s best, I suppose. Before, with Hilary . . . it was hard.”
Ibrahim waits for a moment as this sinks in and then sets off all the consequences in his mind. “I’m going to go check on Silvia.” He gets up and goes, quickly, then turns around to look at Hartford, his disproportional face, his sloping shoulders, his disappearing hair, knowing that in telling Ibrahim this, Hartford has risked compromising his loyalties. “Thank you.” And then he hears his name being called.
XXXIV
THERE’S A KNOCKING at the door, and Silvia realises that this is the sound that woke her. The door opens, and when it’s ajar she hears another knuckle tap. Already her thoughts are starting to be reprogrammed and her list of half-second instincts upon waking are now Where is my baby, where is Ibrahim, where am I?
“Silvia? Are you awake?” It’s Cynthia voice, strong but unformed somehow; it reminds her of wet cement and brings Silvia back into a half-remembered state of panic, but she can’t place why. Maybe the voice sounds like her mother’s? She can’t remember what her mother sounds like; this is the only voice she knows.
Then Cynthia is there, holding the baby, a soft bundle of fabric. “Were you sleeping? I didn’t mean to wake you, I just wanted to introduce you to your little girl.” As she walks into the room she turns on the overhead light, and everything Silvia had been seeing in this instant looks completely different.
Girl sticks in Silvia’s head as an anomaly, as if she’s never heard the word before, as if she’s never known its meaning. Rhymes with curl, pearl, whirl, unfurl. Her girl. Her girl. A girl is a female child, a person’s daughter; hers.
And then her dream is back—she is awake in the dream and inhabits the blackness of it, sees the silver flash of light. The sound of bees like a growl, like an ache, like a hunger; it’s inside her ears and lungs and heart and brain, she is the sound and the sound is everywhere. She hears nothing but the bees, and they are coming; though it’s too dark to see, she can hear them like a storm on the horizon.
Silvia has yet to see her baby—how many days old now?—and she so badly wants to get up out of bed and see it—her—but suddenly fears what she might see. What will she look like? What if the baby doesn’t look like her? What if she looks like Ibrahim, or like Cynthia instead? Cynthia’s baby. Cynthia has taken the baby that she was responsible for making in the first place.
Silvia blinks. The blink lasts forever.
Eyes open, she sees Cynthia: a disembodied head, face pale, hands concealed. She doesn’t know what’s hiding in them. Her heart slips into her hollow belly while something else in turn fills her up: new purpose, sudden certainty. With an abrupt force, Silvia pulls herself out of be
d for the first time.
“Careful,” Cynthia says. “What are you doing? Silvia? Are you all right?” Cynthia’s voice floats above the sound of the bees. She goes towards the girl, who is holding the window frame as she finds her feet like a newborn deer.
Silvia’s face is pointing in a different direction from her eyes; she can’t seem to get them synchronized, as she’s trying to look in two directions at once—towards the floor, which has become as volatile as a squalling sea, and towards Cynthia and the baby. What’s her name? Does the baby have a name yet? She should name her now. She needs to give the baby a name in case something happens. It’s worse to leave a baby unnamed than unbaptized. She’ll call her . . . the first name that comes into her head is Cynthia, which makes her feel as if she’s going to be sick. No—she’ll call her . . . what should she call her, what are people called, what was Ibrahim’s mother called? She has no idea, doesn’t think she’s ever known but can’t believe she doesn’t know, she should ask him, maybe they could name the baby after his mom, maybe he’d like that, it might be nice, but then what if names contain the seeds of our futures and since his mother died, the baby will also die? She doesn’t want the baby ever to die.
“Give her to me,” Silvia says, standing, stumbling, pitching towards Cynthia.
“Silvia, be careful.” Cynthia leans back, avoiding the outstretched arm that flails her way. “What are you doing?”
“I want my baby,” Silvia says slowly, articulating each syllable carefully so as to be heard above the rising roar of the coming swarm.
“That’s why I’m here, my darling, to show her to you.” Cynthia speaks to Silvia as though she’s speaking to a crazy person. Silvia knows this, which only makes it worse.
The surface of the world disappears, and for a moment she can see what’s beneath it all. The whites of her eyes float as her eyelids flutter.
They’re here now, the bees, they’re at her bedroom window. Silvia can see their bodies beating against the glass like June bugs in the summer. She looks again at Cynthia’s hands and sees for the first time that there’s something clenched within the palms. Something sharp and silver that catches the moonlight.
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