Godshot

by Chelsea Bieker

  But my waters had not broken. I could still move and think and be present. Still time, I thought. I remembered what Hazel had said about sphincter law, how if a woman wasn’t comfortable in her situation, the holes of her body would clench, prevent release. It was the body protecting the body within it. I thought to the books I’d read that showed labor, black-and-white pictures of women with their knees hitched up in the hands of mustached husbands, or squatting by riverbanks, or bent over a bouncy ball, openmouthed in purposeful force, with another woman behind squeezing hips. The smiles that spread across their faces as the heads of babies crowned impossibly from their open, diamond-shaped caverns. “Sarah later described her birth as painless,” one caption read. “She felt pressure, but not pain.”

  A shot rang out and it jolted me alive. I lurched up onto my knees and watched as Vern danced in his gold robe, jubilant now, pointing the Holy Ghost machine gun to the sky, where he sent a rain of bullets. Where the bullets would fall was God’s decision, is what Vern would say. We might never know.

  Cherry spun in circles like an overgrown toddler. She was in the God zone now. The body chanted around us. Spirit song. Vern’s voice. God rain down on us, as we offer ourselves up to you! We are the wise, bringing hope to the land!

  There was one comfort and only one: We were women together in our suffering. I watched us all together on the tarp. Our short hair matted to our faces. Our bodies weighed down with our purpose. We seemed so weak like this, but then Denay surged up to a stand and screamed in pain and I thought then she seemed stronger than she ever had, her eyes full of rage toward something, perhaps just rage against her pain.

  I vomited onto the tarp, the wine rich and unwelcome. The tarp was not pure anymore. Taffy had turned gray and was slumped like a tired doll. Her stuffed belly was down between her legs now and she sweated in streams. No one seemed to notice her. She kept murmuring, Vern? But everyone, even Vern seemed to be separated from us by an invisible wall. They hovered like a committee of vultures, but they did not touch our blessing.

  HOURS OR MINUTES passed. Time was nothing. The sun moved slowly over us and then it began to set. Perhaps the rains were nigh. The clouds were eating blue, peeling back the sky. No one was pushing a baby out yet, but my stomach cramped over and over, my spine a dull throb. I closed my eyes and I saw Revelation’s great white throne. I saw the book of life. I saw God’s hand upon it. And then I saw clearly what I’d never wanted to again. My mother, our apartment. The time I’d told her about Sapphire Earrings, told her I didn’t like being alone with him. She talked to him about it. They screamed and yelled. You’re no mother to that girl, he had said. At least I care. He packed his things and didn’t come back. I was overjoyed thinking a new life could begin, a better life, but she lay crumpled in our sheets. “Who do you want to live with?” she’d asked me.

  “What do you mean?” I’d said. I curled my body next to her but she didn’t reach out to me.

  “When I’m gone,” she said.

  “Where are you going?”

  I begged her. I wept. Still she was cold. I saw the empty pill bottle. I watched the sleep greet her.

  “Go play outside,” she had murmured. I touched her hand and she flinched.

  I had run from her down to the canal. I thought of jumping in and letting the cool blue water take me. The undertow was a strong pull, I knew, though the surface was placid. Valley kids were raised never to go near the canal. Someone always did though, the lure of it too much. I sat on the edge, tempted my toes in the rush. I felt the forceful carry of it. I lowered myself down so both ankles were covered. I couldn’t see anyone around. The water was cool but not cold. My hand slipped and then I was in. For a moment my breath caught, my body froze, and I went under. This is how it happens, I thought. This is how to drown. I heard the rush of the water, my own blood pumping in my ears. But then there was the sun above me. My face broke the top. I felt a hand grab my own, pull me up and out. The hot bake of the dirt was beneath me again. When I looked up I was alone. The sun dried me and I walked back to the apartment in a trance.

  I had tried to prepare myself for what I would find. But she wasn’t there. The Rabbit was still in the parking lot. Inside, furniture had been moved around in a rush. A streak of vomit by the bedside. I lay in the empty bed and waited. In the morning she returned beaten-looking and half gone. But alive. I let myself think she had not gone through with it because of me and I loved her more. That was only a month before Vern brought the rains and saved us and put light in her eyes and I let myself forget the whole thing. We never talked about it and soon I knew that hand that had pulled me out of the canal was God’s.

  A black sky became the world around the birthing tarp and things were silent for a time.

  I WOKE TO Vern’s voice. He screamed up into the star-born sky: “We throw our earthly deeds before you and humble ourselves, Father! Send relief! Send your children forth.” He had begun to look tired and frazzled. No babies had arrived yet and the girls of blood were ill. I was so hungry I imagined myself eating a stick of butter in two bites. Water. Just water.

  The Body was on their knees begging in tongues. Trinity Prism wore white lace and twirled a crisp white parasol in the darkness, nervous. Derndra was still as a statue with one arm raised in a godly salute. The Body bowed toward us in a wave. Another pain stabbed at me.

  “It’s not working,” Wiley Stam said, slurring from the crowd. “These girlies ain’t doing what they ’posed to.”

  Lyle came to me and brought the cup to my lips. “Please,” I whispered, but he wouldn’t look into my eyes.

  “Feed her, child!” Pearl screamed from the crowd. Her face red, eyes bulging.

  “One more chance, Lacey,” Lyle said. “Do the right thing. Tell them the child was from my quiver and I’ll spare you for now.”

  Somehow my shame was his pride. “Fine,” I said.

  “Church!” he cried. “Listen to the spirit speak!”

  He pulled me up. “The baby is from his quiver,” I said lowly. “Forgive me my lies.”

  The Body cheered and whooped. He tilted my head back again but made sure the cup wasn’t leaned far enough for liquid to meet my lips. I pretended to drink. He walked away from me without letting on and the kindness felt like a light coming in under the door of a very dark room; not enough to see by, but something.

  Denay drank a long thirsty gulp from the cup and bore down in a squat. Her eyes were flying. She didn’t look like the women in the books. She hadn’t entered the transition I’d read about, where a self-doubt would come over her and she would beg for life and then it would be time to bear down. She was pretending. Her eyes were only fear. “Try pushing, Lacey,” she gasped. “Hold my hand. We can push together.”

  I crawled to her. “You’re not in labor,” I said. “I bet you’re not even dilated.”

  “What’s that mean?” she hissed.

  Cherry yelled out of the crowd to Vern. “Do it like you did before! Just do it again. We’ve all been so loyal.”

  Vern ignored her and began to preach. He commanded God to act out his promises but God was silent. With each proclamation he fired the gun into the sky. Was he trying to shoot God? The Body stirred. I looked at their hungry eyes turning tired. Turning doubtful. Sharon Stam’s mother was lying down, her arms wrapped around herself. How long could this go on? I felt myself lapse into daydream. I saw my mother parting the crowd on a Clydesdale horse. I imagined her handing out cups of ice water to everyone, tri-tip sandwiches from Mike’s Meat Market. I lay on my back and closed my eyes. No such meat angel arrived. Denay struggled to push next to me and nothing came from her except piss.

  Then movement, feet stepping toward Vern. I turned and saw him put the golden gun to his side. It was Derndra. She put her hand on his shoulder and whispered something in his ear. He craned his head over the crowd and looked to the distance. My eyes followed and there was a flash of red lights approaching.

  “It’s time,” he said. “
God has spoken to Derndra. He said he will not bless us until we are in the new place. In the new kingdom. Don’t waste time mourning this place. Girls of blood, in the vans! Everyone else get in your cars and follow. Take nothing with you. They can’t do anything to us if we all band together.”

  Derndra grabbed my wrists and led me to a black van parked behind the red house. “You get the cops to come here?” I whispered to her.

  Her mouth tightened. She wouldn’t look at me. “Blasphemy,” she said, snapping her fingers in my face. If she had told the cops, she was a brilliant actress against it. “Get with it. You’re too heavy for me to lift.”

  She thrust me up into the van and I crawled to the back and pressed against its empty steel interior. Where had it come from? There was a rush of bodies entering behind me, the full-bellied being pushed up and in, gray-faced, white gowns messed and wet and filthy. Some were almost passed out. Denay pulled herself together, turned to me, and said clearly, “Don’t ruin this for us.”

  “Fuck you,” I said. It felt great.

  The door closed. Sirens cut through the black space around me. I thought of Geary, how he was just one of the Body. How he would sooner die than betray the church, condemn us to the laws of the world. Then came a voice on a speakerphone. “Hands up. Where are the minors?”

  “Officers, you’re intruding on a perfectly legal religious ceremony,” I heard Vern say, pyscho calm. “You can go home now. It is well.”

  “We’ll need you to step over here and get in this car, sir.”

  “This is the Devil at his best!” Vern assured the Body. “Every holiness will be met with resistance. Have faith.”

  “We’ll need that van opened up,” the voice said.

  “Is there water in jail?” Taffy said.

  “Shut up!” Denay said. “You should be praying for our pastor right now.” She lapsed into her spirit voice, humming and tapping against the walls. My stomach quaked again, this time with a sharp pain that radiated down my legs. I held my breath. I beat the door. “Please!” I cried. “Help! In here!”

  Outside I heard a man say, “Put the weapon down. On the ground. Show us your hands. Down on the ground. Now!” Then a shot sounded. I couldn’t tell if it had come from the Holy Ghost machine gun or from the police. Derndra screamed. The van door slid open and Taffy fell out onto her back.

  “Oh, Jesus,” the cop said. He helped her up and a long string of drool hung from her lip, her fake belly up under her breasts. “Call medical.”

  The cop guided us all out one by one. “They’re all . . .” He trailed off and stared at our pregnant stomachs in horror. I stepped out of the van and it was then that I saw Vern lying on his back on the ground as if asleep. His chin was scruffy and unshaved. His cape had come off and he looked ordinary in jeans and a T-shirt. There was still color to his cheeks, still life in the way his arms spread away from his body, reaching out toward something mysterious. His mouth hung open and I thought I saw those silver fillings twinkle way in the back.

  A crowd of police stood over him talking into walkies, one made notes on a clipboard. But no one was really looking at Vern. Not a one of them knew they had taken down our leader. He was of no importance in their world, I realized. They did not look at him and see God. One cop held the golden gun. “Where’d he get a thing like this? Never seen something like it in my life.” Vern’s dirty tennis shoes were pointed oddwise and helpless. I always thought there would be more serenity on the face of a man who was now meeting his maker in paradise, who was finally, by his steadfast belief, going to meld with God forever. But something was pinched about his eyes like he was willing them shut, bracing. I thought they did not look like the eyes of peace. There was only fear there. The baby moved hard into my bladder and I peed a little.

  The night was ending, the sun was rising over the flatland. Most of the Body had run, but not everyone. There were some on their knees in prayer. Some stood motionless as statues in shock and I caught a flicker of movement in the distance. Past the red house ran a man. He was tall and thin, a flash of sand-colored hair. I knew that gait. It was Lyle alone. I looked around to find the rest of the boys’ club but they were gone, too. I didn’t have the energy in me then to wonder what life awaited them. What things they would have to put away deep into themselves. Inevitably, some would lie each night next to a future wife and that wife would have no idea what they had done, the things they had found themselves a part of. A chill whipped through the valley, the first cool breeze I’d felt here in so long.

  “Is there a Lacey May Herd?” a dark-haired officer said, looking at the lot of us in white. We were sitting on the ground like a little class. “One of you girls named Lacey May?”

  I raised my hand. Rolled myself over to all fours and slowly got up.

  “Come on with us.”

  Another cop stepped in with a notebook and began writing down the names of the other pregnant girls.

  “I’m named by my creator alone,” Denay told him. She stared at Vern’s body on the floor. She looked almost annoyed.

  The cramping feeling continued. It burned and radiated through me. I held my breath and it subsided. All good. But then a crash between my legs, turning the dust into mud under my feet. “Can someone call my midwife?”

  The cop glanced up from his pad. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of feelings happening at once about all this, but that’s why there’s laws in place to make things simple. You can leave feelings behind and let the law do its work. We’ll get that baby delivered just fine,” the cop said.

  “I want to give birth at the Farm of Spiritual Birthing and Uterus Celebration. I just need Hazel. She can help me have the baby.”

  “There’s a lot of paperwork to be done before that can happen.”

  Paperwork. What could the paperwork possibly say, I wondered. The cops were like another species to me, large men in the same suits, their faces so sure of what they were saying, able to make big decisions with confidence, like killing Vern.

  “How did you know to come?” I asked the cop. He guided me toward a white square ambulance. I felt the wet of my dress against my legs. The cramping intensified, my bag of water no longer there to cushion it. “Who told you?” I held my breath and tried to focus only on him.

  He helped me onto the small bed inside, then stood back. The paramedics began moving around me, wrapping things around my arms, holding a monitor to my stomach. He drew a thick finger under lines on his report. He hummed as he read. Finally, he looked at me as the doors to the ambulance were closing.

  “Says here it was your mother.”

  Chapter 26

  Saint Agnes Hospital. The huge building, the clean laminate floors, the bright pink of the nurses’ smocks, heaven. They walked around in an orderly way, in a way that spelled routine, safety. This was a place where they knew exactly what they were doing and they were doing it with rhythm and function.

  I went on a strange autopilot, morphing into a new self. They helped me off the stretcher and unhooked my IV and led me to a wheelchair and I sat down without question. The IV had made me feel suddenly alive again and the law was making decisions now. The clean sparkle of the hospital a blessing. The phones ringing and the people answering them. My mother never took me to the doctor after we were saved. The church would just pray over my sore throat, my cough.

  A woman with long black hair, skin dusted in freckles, and large clean front teeth appeared at my side and wheeled me down a long hall where crucifixes hung and sweet pictures of Jesus smiling, kneeling before a crowd of children, His love gleaming from his hands.

  “I’m Pam. I’m a labor and delivery nurse. How are you feeling?”

  “Fine,” I said. I looked away from the Jesus pictures and swallowed my tears. Was this the God I’d been hoping existed? The kind face, the soft arms. He was nothing like Vern.

  “No reason to hide your real feelings.”

  “It hurts,” I said.

  “Well, you’re still talking to me, s
o that’s a sign we’re probably still pretty early in the process, which is good. We can go find your room and get you settled.”

  “I can walk,” I said. “I’d rather . . .” But the cramping feeling deepened, stopped my mind. Pam put her warm hand on my back and told me to breathe through it. “Okay, push me.”

  On our walk she asked me questions about my prenatal care. Had I had an ultrasound? No. Did I know if I was dilated? No. Did I know if I was close to my due date? The Birthing Day was my due date. It went on like this, me answering everything wrong until she said, “Great. Well, it’s good you’re here. We have lots of room right now and you can use the Jacuzzi.”

  “Will the other girls come here?” I said. “There are more than just me.”

  “Let’s worry about you. They’re getting situated where there’s room and it’s probably likely that you’re the only one in active labor. The rest are pregnant but it would be a real strange thing if you all were pushing babies out on the same day, wouldn’t it?”

  “He made us drink wine or something to make the babies come out.”

  “When did you last drink it?” she said. Her face retained a cool calm which I was thankful for.

  “A while ago. Hours.”

  She asked if I’d vomited. Yes. If I’d resisted the drink. Yes, but was only partly successful. What did it taste like? My mother. Rotten grapes. Blood.

  “I’m fifteen. The baby is mine and I’ll raise her. Write that down. No one can take her.”

  “Well, you’re right. It’s your choice.”

  “It is?” I asked.

  “Of course,” she said.

  Another contraction, tightening, flames down my thighs, wrapping around my back. I screamed long and loud in her ear but she didn’t pull away.

  We finally arrived at the maternity ward and she typed something into a keypad and the door opened. That door and its safeness filled me with joy. I didn’t know I could love a place in this way. I wanted to melt into the walls.