Madapple

by Christina Meldrum

  Rebekka slams the suitcase shut. “Let’s go,” she says. She walks toward the door with her legs spread wide.

  If only there were a tree of the knowledge of good and evil. I’d take a bite of the apple just to know the difference. Is it better to stay or go? Can I trust my own judgment on this? After I spoke with Sanne yesterday, I believed I should escape, for the baby; but now the door is opening, and I want to close it. For the baby? If I leave, I’ll deprive the child of love and family and roots. If I walk out this door, will I close more doors than I open?

  Rebekka opens the door. And when she collides with Sanne, I feel mostly relief.

  “Bekka?” Sanne says. She looks at me, back at Rebekka. “You should be resting, Bekka. What are you doing here?”

  “I heard her,” Rebekka says. “I got up to get something to eat, and I heard noise in here, saw Aslaug’s door was unlocked. I came in, and I found her. She’d packed a suitcase.” She holds up the case. “She was going to leave.”

  “No,” I say. “That’s not what happened.”

  But Sanne shakes her head. “No one’s leaving.” She holds a tray with tea; the tray is wet from the collision. “Go to bed, Bekka.”

  “I was trying to help…,” Rebekka says.

  “Go to bed, Bekka,” Sanne says again.

  After Rebekka’s left, Sanne directs me to sit down. I settle my bulging body onto the bed, and sink into the bed. Sanne hands me a cup of the tea. “I couldn’t sleep,” she says. “I made myself some tea to help me sleep, brought it downstairs, but then I heard commotion.” She takes a drink. “You were going to leave.”

  “No,” I say. My heart is beating too fast for the baby. I take a drink of the tea; I hope it will calm me.

  But it’s black cohosh tea; it doesn’t calm me.

  Mother referred to the black cohosh plant as snakeroot: its plumelike flowers fall away, exposing round seedpods that produce a sound like a rattlesnake. Mother would boil the black cohosh’s gnarled roots whenever she had a sore throat, and sometimes she would take a dose for energy if she was tired. And she had other uses for it—uses she didn’t discuss with me. When I was a child, I thought the snakeroot was magical; I convinced myself she was secretive about it because it had magical power. But when I got older, I realized she took the snakeroot when she was menstruating, and that its power lay in its ability to make Mother less irritable at that time. But Mother never told me of the snakeroot’s power to make babies. She didn’t tell me of the isoflavone in snakeroot called formononetin; she didn’t discuss phytoestrogen; she didn’t tell me how the snakeroot can stimulate the uterus, how it can play God, hasten birth. It’s Sanne who tells me these things after she’s given me the snakeroot tea. And I’ve drunk the tea before she tells me of the formononetin and phytoestrogen, before she tells me my uterus is going to start cramping, before she tells me she’s played God. “It was all in the notes Maren left,” Sanne says. “The notes explained everything. Where to find the black cohosh, how it works.”

  “But why would you give me that?” I say. “Why would you want to force the baby to come?”

  “It’s time,” she says.

  It’s not until after the birth that I realize what she means.

  SOLOMON’S SEAL

  2007

  —Please state your name.

  —Dr. Hilda Gunnlod.

  —What is your profession, Dr. Gunnlod?

  —I’ve worked as a psychiatrist for twenty-two years.

  —Have you met the defendant, Aslaug Hellig?

  —Yes, I conducted a psychiatric evaluation of the defendant.

  —When?

  —Two months ago.

  —What, if anything, did you conclude about the defendant’s psychological health when you conducted the examination?

  —Well, her case is a challenging one, I have to admit. Her psychological profile doesn’t clearly indicate she is suffering from any one particular disorder. She’s intelligent. Articulate. Very sensitive to others’ emotions. And she was pretty broken up about her mother’s death and the death of those two women in the fire. But the more we talked, the more obvious it became that her grip on reality is tenuous. I’m not saying she doesn’t understand the difference between right and wrong—I think she clearly does. She seems to have a strong moral compass. But she has these notions about her own birth and her childhood that seem delusional. And she told me she’d given birth to a baby, even though she claims she’s never had sex. And even though there’s no evidence of any baby ever having existed.

  —Is it your opinion she really believes these things she was telling you, or do you believe she was lying to you?

  —Objection. Calls for speculation.

  —Overruled.

  —Again, she’s smart—I think she has the ability to be fairly manipulative if she wants to—so it’s difficult for me to be sure. But my conclusion after spending a great deal of time with her is she truly believes at least some of what she’s saying. I think she thinks she did have a baby. My opinion is she had strong feelings for her cousin. Rune is his name, I believe. And I think she probably fantasized about having a child with him. And that fantasy became a reality for her.

  —You said she understands the difference between right and wrong, though. Despite her having a somewhat tenuous understanding of some aspects of reality, is it your opinion she would or would not have understood killing to be wrong?

  —She knows killing is wrong.

  —So if she poisoned those women, she would have known it to be wrong?

  —Objection. Argumentative.

  —I’m going to allow the question, provided the jury understands the doctor is not testifying Ms. Hellig did in fact poison anyone.

  —The defendant knows poisoning someone is wrong.

  —So if she tried to poison her mother, she would have understood this to be wrong as well?

  —Objection, Your Honor. Counsel is trying to mislead the jury here. This line of questioning is argumentative. And it’s leading.

  —I’m going to allow it, but it’s important the jury understand the doctor is only testifying about whether Ms. Hellig grasps the difference between right and wrong. The doctor is not testifying as to whether Ms. Hellig did in fact do anything wrong.

  —If the defendant were to have poisoned anyone, her mother included, she would have known that to be wrong. Her misconceptions about reality did not affect her understanding of right and wrong.

  —Thank you. I have no further questions.

  TWO-EYED BERRY

  2004

  I sleep; I dream of an island occupied only by robins and butterflies. The robins are unable to fly; their breasts bulge; the weight holds them to the ground. But the butterflies flit about in the air; the air jitters with them and seems alive. One robin cries out, then it bursts wide, as if its breast were too full, and the robin becomes a butterfly, and it flutters.

  I wake to this dream, and I think of flying, and then I hear myself cry out, and I realize I’m this robin about to burst: I’m in pain.

  The pain is the same as I’d had—the tightening—and yet it’s different, too. It seems embedded deeper in me, it’s pulling in more of me. I touch my mound of stomach; it’s rock-hard, and I feel the rock reaching around me as if with limbs, gripping my low back, holding on. And then it passes. The rock limbs drop away, the rock mound softens, and I think: Is this it? Is this labor?

  Sanne is balled and sleeping on the end of the bed. Her hair fans her; her mouth pulls tight; her eyes flutter behind her lids, as if she’s watching the same butterflies. Sanne gave me not only snakeroot but partridgeberry, too—the plant Mother called two-eyed berry. She’d been serving me the two-eyed berry in salads and soups for weeks—I’d no idea it was there. “Partridgeberry prepares the uterus to give birth,” she explained before she slept. She spoke as if I should be grateful for this, her meddling. “Your mother used it, of course, when she gave birth to you,” as if it were inevitable the two-eyed berry a
nd I would become one.

  My mother. Did she know this was my fate? Was my life leading to this, no matter? Did she know I would journey to the two-eyed berry?

  Another contraction strikes, harder, faster. The two-eyed berry. I imagine the berry’s eyes, one on either side of the plump berry flesh. If they had sight, these berry eyes, each would see so differently, looking, as they do, in opposite directions. Like me. It seems of my two eyes, one eye sees and feels, the other fails to see or forgets. Because the pain is the same that happened just minutes before, but in the moment of reprieve, part of me forgot. And this part of me again is surprised at this thickening and hardening and gripping all around, and another part of me thinks, Yes, this I know.

  As the contractions come and go and come, this pattern of knowing and not knowing, seeing and not seeing, continues. And as I watch Sanne sleep, her eyes still aflutter, the eye of mine that forgets sees me leaving. I imagine myself unraveling from this bed, gathering the suitcase, slipping out the door while Sanne watches butterflies. But then another contraction grabs me, and it is the contraction that unravels me from the bed. I find myself on my knees on the floor, then on my hands and knees. I feel the pressure, that bursting robin. My back feels both spread and squeezed, and my knowing eye—my seeing eye—again says, Yes, this I know, and I know: I couldn’t leave now even if I wanted to.

  The rain comes then: it gushes down my thighs, streaks my calves, puddles beneath me.

  “Your water,” Sanne says. “My God, it’s your water.” Sanne is awake, I realize: she’s passed from the birth of the dream butterflies to this birth. I wish her away; then I wish her near. Nearer. The pain seems to have washed from me with the rain, and I feel lucid in this moment. And I feel scared.

  “Mor,” she says. “Sara. I’ll get her?”

  I see what seems surprise in Sanne’s face. And I wonder: Did she think the snakeroot powerless? Is that why she’s surprised? Did she doubt the might of the two-eyed berry? Or has this pregnancy continued to be a fantasy—a game—and now she must face the reality of what was until now unreal?

  Sanne runs from the room, as much to get away, I think, as to get Sara.

  “The baby’s coming!” I hear. “The baby’s coming!”

  And I hear pounding, on the floor or in my head? Then my body starts to shake. I’m an emerald leaf quivering on Mother’s oak; I’m a windflower. I want to rest, but my body wants to shake. I want to float away in the wind, but my body wants to push to the earth, it wants to root itself here.

  And then I hear a voice. “Your baby is wearing a mantle of snow,” it says. “Your baby will have the hair of wisdom and will become the Word of God.” I look around me, trying to see who spoke these words. Sanne? The preacher? But I am alone; it seems the voice has come from nowhere, and everywhere. It’s in this moment I know: I have to push. And I do, I push. And now I hear people in the room. Sanne, yes. The preacher, yes. And someone else. A doctor, maybe. Or a midwife. They’ve brought someone to help.

  But the woman is no doctor. She is no midwife. She’s not here to protect the baby or ease my pain. She retreats into the background and seems to disappear, and I nearly forget she’s there. But after the pain stops, the woman reappears, and she causes far more pain.

  I feel the baby push through my bones; my body spreads and opens this door. I push again, and the baby passes from me, as simply as a pea from a pod. And as tortuously as a pod from a pea.

  “It’s a girl,” the preacher says, but it sounds like a question.

  I turn back and panic rushes over me, like that rain of water. I see the baby girl, and I forget the voice. The baby is small and still, and dead, I think. But the preacher scoops her finger through the baby’s mouth, and it’s as if she’s scooped in life. The baby goes from limp to electric: her body jolts and her little fists flail and she opens her mouth and wails. Her voice should be familiar, it seems—I’ve carried her in me for so long—but it’s not familiar.

  “Let me hold her,” I say, and I think, Will she seem a stranger when I hold her?

  “The placenta still needs to come,” the preacher says. “Lie down here on the bed.”

  I climb up to the bed, but my body trembles. And I see the red, the bright blood, so like that schnapps. It seems the Red Sea, and I carry it with me as I settle onto the bed. The bed becomes the Red Sea. And now my body jerks: a rhythmic beating; it no longer seems to know what it’s doing. The placenta passes, I think. But I’m cold. I’m so cold. I close my eyes. I want the shaking to stop; I want to be warm.

  “She should eat,” I hear the preacher say. “Come, Rebekka, hold her. See if she’ll nurse.” But I don’t know what she means. It seems my knowing eye can no longer see. Rebekka’s baby. Is this Rebekka’s baby? Yes, I think. That’s why I didn’t recognize the baby’s voice. This is Rebekka’s baby. And the nurse. Is there a nurse here? Why doesn’t she help me, this nurse? I need her to stop this shaking. I need her to make me warm.

  I wake to a room like the room I’ve come to know so well, and yet it is my room as it might exist in a dream. The same, and yet not the same. The bureau, the washbasin, the frame of the bed, all the same. But a different mirror hangs above the sink. A different makeshift nightstand sits to my left. And a chair sits in the corner, and the preacher sits in it, sleeping. Her mouth hangs in a frown, and her face hangs. She makes no sound at all. And I think, I didn’t go into labor; I didn’t give birth. Then my hand finds my torso, and plunges.

  “Where’s my baby?” I say.

  The preacher’s body jerks, and I remember the baby, the way its body came to life. And its cry. That strange cry.

  “Aslaug. Oh, thank God,” the preacher says. “Thank God.” And she rises from the chair as if from an egg or a chrysalis: all fits and starts.

  “Where is my baby?” I say again.

  “You scared us, Aslaug. You lost so much blood. I thought you might die.”

  And then I think, My baby died. It was Rebekka’s baby I heard. Not mine. “She’s dead?” I say.

  “What?”

  “The baby?”

  “No,” the preacher says. And she heaves, and my mind sees: the baby’s first breath, when Sara scooped in life. “The baby’s fine. She’s healthy. She’s lovely. She looks just like you. Like Maren.”

  I want to ask about the syndactyly. Does she have it? But then I think, Of course she doesn’t have it; Rune’s not her father.

  “I was expecting a boy,” Sara says, and I see the confusion that swims in her eyes, and the frown that remains.

  “A boy?” Of course she was expecting a boy: she was expecting Jesus. And I want to laugh, and then I don’t want to laugh: was I expecting Jesus? “I want to see her,” I say.

  Sanne opens the door, then, to this room that is my room and not my room. “Aslaug,” she says, and she walks in. “How are you? Thanks for scaring the shit out of us.” Her whole body seems in motion; she’s talking fast. “I knew you’d be okay, though. Thanks to Maren, I’d prepared the trillium tea.”

  Large-flowered trillium. Mother called it birthroot because, like Sanguisorba, it drinks up blood, but unlike Sanguisorba, it drinks up internal blood.

  “How do you like your new digs? We had to move you to the guest room. We’re cleaning your room….”

  The guest room. The green room. I think of finding my face there in the green room, and of longing for a different face, a different life. And now I have a different life with the same face. And now there is a baby with this face that is Mother’s face. As I think this, I remember the voice—the voice with no source. Was I hallucinating because I’d bled so much? “I heard a voice,” I say, almost without intending to. “Just before the baby was born. I must have imagined it.”

  “You heard a voice?” Sanne says.

  “It said something about a mantle of snow and hair of wisdom and the Word of God.”

  “It’s what Mary heard when she was about to give birth to Jesus,” Sanne says, and her girlish voice b
ecomes Mother’s claws across a canning lid. “White snow is the Essenes. The hair of wisdom is God’s wisdom. And the baby is a prophet—the Word of God. You heard the voice of God, Aslaug. That was the voice of God.” Sanne grips her own hands, lets go, grips, lets go. Her feet jitter beneath her. Her eyes can’t seem to focus.

  “I have to go,” the preacher says, and she stumbles, and I wonder if she stumbles from exhaustion or schnapps or awe at God’s power. “You’ll stay with Aslaug?” She doesn’t wait for Sanne’s answer. The door shuts.

  And my mind swings wide, because I remember: I read this passage in one of the less convincing sources about the Essenes; I read that Mary heard this voice before Jesus’s birth. But I’d come to believe this information was inaccurate—that the notion of Mary being an Essene was wishful thinking at best. As far as I could discern from the rest of my reading, the Essenes were all men. And yet, the voice. Why did I hear the voice? Maybe I just remembered what I’d read, imagined it was happening to me.

  “I want to see her,” I say. I try to sit up. Then I try again, and give up. “Where is she? I want to hold her. I need to nurse her.”

  “You’re too weak,” Sanne says. “You know that. We’re taking care of her. She’s being fed.”

  “Being fed? What are you feeding her? I should be nursing her.” And I see in the film of my mind a memory I’d lost, and now find: a feral mother cat in a field of downy brome, and five kittens latched in a fan, like sun rays. And I sense the feeling I had then: a longing to be that feral mother.

  “Mor hired Rebekka,” Sanne says.

  “Hired her?”

  “She’ll nurse the baby. Rebekka will.”

  “My baby?” And then I remember Rebekka’s words: “They’re evil. They’re awful. They’re going to take your baby.”

  “I want to see Rebekka,” I say.

  “She’s nursing Sofie,” Sanne says.

  “Sofie?”