Godshot

  Pam took me to a room and I remembered I didn’t have any of the little socks or the baby balm or the moon phases blanket. It was all at Cherry’s, my precious little things, the only things that made me a real mother.

  There was a huge tub in the bathroom and long windows looking out on the town, palm trees in rows and little square houses, 7-Elevens and delis. The morning in Fresno was as still and hot as in Peaches and I could see the waves of heat rising off asphalt.

  Pam helped me into the tub, guiding me so my IV didn’t get wet. “Can I cut this off?” she said. My gown. I let her.

  Then the water. The sweet water. Nothing had ever been so luxurious. The bubbles surrounded me and I laughed. It surprised me even, to be laughing, but this tub—if nothing else, I would always remember this tub and find joy. A contraction took me over and I let out a moan, long and deep.

  “That’s it,” Pam said, massaging my shoulders. She wiped my back with a washcloth. It only occurred to me later that she was cleaning me. I was filthy and had been for a long time. “You’re a strong one, I can tell.”

  We stayed like that, the contractions coming a little faster then, about three minutes apart, I was told. In moments between them, she told me stories. First of her daughter and how she was almost five. How no one thought she would amount to anything when she got pregnant but her daughter made her want to be better. She wanted to inspire her. And her daughter had just got the highest grade in her class on her math test. So it was working.

  I turned and held Pam’s forearms and braced. The pain was suddenly not like the pain before it. This new pain bucked from the deepest part of my insides, ragged and mean. I could feel that it would adhere to no law. I did not know why this design was so violent. Why each woman had to be ripped apart to bring forth another.

  “I can’t do this,” I said.

  “Let me tell you about Saint Agnes,” she said and looked out the window, beyond. “This hospital is named after the patron saint of girls just like you. Girls who have been through it. Survivors. Saint Agnes was desired by so many men, and she wouldn’t have them, so they turned her in as a follower of Christ. Her punishment was to be dragged naked through the streets to a brothel. But any man who tried to rape her was struck blind. She prayed and prayed and hair covered her body.”

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “Well, in the end it’s no surprise that they finally found a way to put her out. But she fought. And now she lives on as a protector of young girls like you, Lacey. Her bones are still somewhere, I think. I’m not too religious myself but I do like to pray in the chapel here.”

  “I didn’t fight like Saint Agnes,” I said as another contraction speared me, harder than the last. I bore into Pam’s shoulder and she held me, her pink smock wet in a map of my screams. I saw my mother then, cradling the Turquoise Cowboy’s head. I saw myself under Lyle. Under Stringy.

  “Seems like you’re fighting right now,” she said.

  I vomited onto the floor and it sprayed Pam’s shoes. She cleaned it up with ease and another nurse came in and said it was time to check me.

  They wrapped me in a warm towel and led me to the bed, a twin with soft white sheets, slightly pilled flannel that smelled of the cleanest detergent. The other nurse was older with whiskers above her lip and she was rougher than Pam but I could handle rough. I smiled. They had no idea who I was, I thought, and before I came here I didn’t know either. But now I did.

  I was one of Saint Agnes’s girls.

  Something sharp stabbed deep into my crotch and I let out a low growl. Each contraction had its own personality. First there was the fear of the pain, then there was no room for fear inside the storm of it. Inside was acceptance. Each wave felt like its own death.

  “Five centimeters. Five to go. Baby’s heart looks good, Lacey’s heart looks good. I’ll be back in a while.”

  “That’s Bee,” Pam said. “She doesn’t mess around.”

  I GOT OFF the bed and on my hands and knees and began a kind of dance. Pam and I moved around the room, from bouncy ball to bed, to the floor and back. Finally I sat on the toilet and screamed through the contractions. They were on top of each other and I couldn’t see, I could only sense that she was with me. And there was someone else. An angel maybe, God. Agnes. Floating around over my head, directing me. I imagined gold God glitter falling from the ceiling but then I wiped that vision away. God didn’t need glitter to be God, to be with me, real as anything. I vomited again and made my way to the bed, where it seemed I would either live or die.

  I heard myself asking for drugs. I didn’t even know what that meant exactly but I wanted them. It’s too late for that . . . someone answered. Of course it was. This was what Hazel warned about. The moment that would bring me to my knees and I would meet myself in that space. And there I was, alone, but not for long.

  I PASSED INTO dreamful places. I saw my mother in her yellow bikini driving us to the pool. The sweat sparkling off her, the sun a constant blanket. She had been the one to call. She had tried to protect me. She turned the whole thing on its head and now everything was different. I thought about what I had always wanted more than anything and I knew then immediately in my haze like the surest thing. I wanted unconditional love from my mother, and I was not going to have that. But somehow I held unconditional love for her. Perhaps giving it away could be its own reward.

  I went to outer space looking for Artichoke. I flew through galaxies past heaven, looked for her little foot to pull her to earth. Where are you, baby girl?

  And then something happened. I opened my eyes and my leg was hitched over Pam’s shoulder, and there were blinding lights and the outlines of many people crowded around the bed and I screamed high in my throat and it felt like knives.

  “All right, Lacey,” Bee said. “We found some meconium in your fluids. It’s time to get this baby out. Focus with me now. I want you to push down deep.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Pam said, “The baby pooped a little and so it’s time to get her out now. It’s okay, love, it’s just time to get her out.”

  I had died, I felt certain then. The figures around me, angels. Of course. I’d been dead for a while.

  Bee snapped her fingers in my face. “Get this girl a popsicle, for Pete’s sake.” A moment later a purple popsicle appeared in my mouth and the zing of it, the way the ice melted to water on my tongue, brought me back.

  I pushed. My body did it for me, like Hazel said it could, like the books reported. I couldn’t breathe anymore. I only screamed. Golden threads wrapped a cocoon around me and then broke. I backed away from my own body toward the wall. Screamed. I tried to leave myself like I’d done before with Lyle, but Artichoke commanded all of me. She pulled me into her life.

  “Throat’s gonna be sore tomorrow,” Bee said.

  “My throat?” I snapped. “You’re worried about my throat?”

  “Long and low, long and low,” Pam said. “You’re doing it.”

  “There’s the head,” Bee said. “Oh, lots of hair. Want a mirror?”

  I reached down and touched. The soft peach of her, there she was. Her head was out of me now, in the betweenlife. I convulsed again and threw my head back and wailed and she was out in a gust and everything was slippery and fast. They laid her on my naked chest and she screamed along with me, a scratchy cat cry.

  “All good,” a man’s voice said, and the figures cleared the room and Bee worked between my legs and Pam put a tiny pink-and-blue striped hat on her. The baby, a real baby, crying into me, bobbing her head around, now wearing a hat just like a person. No longer me, but her own.

  “She’s perfect, she’s perfect,” I repeated over and over. My voice shook, I could barely speak but words flew from me anyhow. “She’s perfect.”

  Bee pushed the weight of herself onto my stomach. “Here comes the placenta.” I barely felt anything come out, but there it was. She held it up and showed me, a thick slab of meat, red and blue-veined with roots lik
e a tree. “Happy placenta.” She flopped it into a basin and went back to work between my legs. “Just gonna sew you up a little here. Few small tears.”

  I felt a prick and sting, but I wasn’t with them anymore. I was only with this baby as Pam helped guide her to my nipple and her little eyes were open, glassy dark blue worlds, and her face red and dry, not purple and covered in clotted cream like I’d seen in pictures.

  Pam looked at her. “You did real good, mama.”

  Mama, like in the magazines.

  Chapter 27

  I was full of sharp energy, tending to the baby when she cried, putting her to my breasts, already red and chafed, one nipple ringed by a crust of blood. A shallow latch, they said. Each time I guided her toward me I braced with fear. The pain seemed to go beyond my breast and through my chest down deep into my core. But I told myself it didn’t matter. I’d keep trying and trying. I wouldn’t give up. If I couldn’t breast-feed they would surely take her from me. They would know I didn’t deserve her and that would be the reason. She couldn’t even nurse the baby. So I kept trying and Pam helped each time, applying cool gel packs to my nipples and telling me to drink water, so much water, and they brought me a milkshake, strawberry. Had I ever tasted anything so beautiful? I had not.

  The sky out the window faded blackish but it was still alight with artificial life. It was not the true dark of Peaches and it kept me awake. The nurses came in and out, checking and poking. I tried to will sleep, but none came, and then the next day arrived and the social worker came in unannounced as I held a sleeping Artichoke. I pulled her closer to me. I covered my bleeding chest. She sat near the bed and hardly looked at me at all. She was a small frizzy-haired woman in a rush.

  “This shouldn’t take too long,” she said.

  She summarized everything that had happened, telling me my own story. In her version my mother was an unfit alcoholic. A neglector, an abandoner. Stringy was a child rapist, a pedophile. Vern was a cult leader, a manipulator. Cherry was an accomplice to child rape and an unfit guardian. But the one thing she wasn’t clear on, she told me, was the Lyle situation.

  “He was following God’s orders,” I said. “Well, Vern’s.”

  She smiled. “You gonna protect the guy who did this? I see it all the time. Honey, he’s a minor. He won’t get it too bad, if he gets anything at all. Don’t you want to tell the truth?”

  The truth. And so I told her the truth in every detail. I told her of the shed, of Vern and his endless tentacles spread throughout the church Body and of Sharon Stam and of Daisy and Reno and the Holy Ghost machine gun and of saving graces, of the ocean. Of Hazel and Daisy and Florin and how they didn’t know all these truths about my real life, that they knew only snippets but never everything. That I had kept the truths deep inside me, wrapped in shame.

  “So this Daisy has been a real safe haven for you, would you say?”

  I nodded.

  “And you want to keep this baby? It’s okay if you don’t. There’s lots of options,” she said.

  “She’s with me.”

  She wrote more and cocked her head to one side. “It’s best to keep the child with the mother when we can. But you’re a minor and can’t be on your own. I’d like to keep you out of the system, considering what you’ve been through. We’ll try this for a while and I’ll keep checking back in and if we think it’s not going well, other measures will have to be taken.”

  “Try what?”

  “She said you’d discussed it. That you and the baby would stay with her. She said she’s been a real steadfast for you, having you work at her fruit stand and everything. Good for a kid to work a little. After school, of course.”

  I smiled. Fruit stand. “Daisy Darnelle.” This meant she was alive. This meant she had not been burned.

  “Am I free to go?”

  “Well, you’ll have to give another statement about your situation and then, depending on what charges are pressed against this Stringy person and the rest, you’ll have to deal with some of that, but for now, sure. You can breathe a little and know that you won’t be dealing with any of them for a very long time.”

  “What about my mother?”

  “Your mother isn’t the worst I’ve ever heard of. You would not believe some of the stuff I have to see. But if you want the truth, you’re better off without her.” She looked at her chart. “I know it’s emotional but you have to think about your future. And you can’t take any prisoners. Leave them all behind. Right now. Believe me. You hold on to them, you’ll end up the same. This baby doesn’t deserve that.”

  “Is Vern really dead?” I asked.

  “It’s very clear when someone’s really dead, I think. Once you see a dead person you understand that right away. It’s not an easy look to achieve if you’re still alive.”

  I shifted the weight of Artichoke in my arms. Who was this baby? Her little circle face, soft as a petal. So long inside me and finally here. My mind could hardly accept it.

  “You’re a classic resilient,” she said. “My number one tip for you? Don’t skimp on therapy. All the resilients think they don’t need it, but let me tell you. Oh, let me tell you. You will.”

  She edged toward the door as Pam came in and told me it was time for another feeding.

  “Oh, and she’s cleared for these visitors now.” She handed Pam a list. “They’re all waiting out there. Basically don’t let in anyone blood related to her. Seems safest that way.”

  Pam nodded. “You do have a few visitors anxious to see you. But baby first. Feed that little baby. Drink drink.”

  She squeezed my breast and yellowish milk oozed out. Finally, the baby latched on, eyes closed, and it didn’t feel like my tit was being stabbed. It felt okay, not great, but doable. “I think I’m getting it,” I said.

  “That’s better,” she said. A rush of warmth became me.

  A few minutes later Hazel burst through the door. “Oh my god,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me in here, but I was sending in so many energies. I kept telling them, I’m her MID. WIFE. So typical of a hospital. They can’t stand us. I’m gonna get your placenta for pills, don’t you worry. Even if I have to steal it.”

  She hugged me and plucked the sleeping baby from my arms, danced her around the room, cooing in a light voice. I worried for a moment I would never look so natural holding my own girl, no matter how hard I tried. I pushed the thought back. Remembered Saint Agnes.

  Behind her, Daisy and Florin held a vase of sunflowers, tears running down Daisy’s perfectly drawn-up face.

  “The red house,” I said. “It’s gone.”

  Daisy nodded. She wore a cream birdcage veil, like a bride. She came close to me and whispered, “So is the church, but that’s between us.”

  “You burned it?” I said.

  She shrugged. “Town needed a fresh start anyhow.”

  Hazel handed back the baby. We all stared at her in my arms.

  “Your mother would be proud of you,” Daisy said.

  I nodded, though I wasn’t sure it was true. Would she? It was the nice thing to say. I left it alone.

  Daisy asked for some private time with me, and Hazel led Florin out to the hall.

  Daisy sat next to me, and told me what I’d need to know. She talked about the bassinet sleeper she’d been researching for the baby, and the room I could have in her new place. She wanted to relocate to Oregon, a wet and green place where Florin would be going to school, and she didn’t want me to worry over anything, and she’d love to work toward adopting me if it was all right, she kept saying that, if it’s all right with you, if it’s all right with you, and my eyes filled with tears and I remembered what the rushed woman just now had said, she had said to think about my future, to do the right thing. To take this blessing. To think about this baby and what was best, and I nodded along, imagining our new life in the trees where water would fall endlessly from a heaving sky, far away from the deadlands, from the scent of my mother rising from my pillow.

&nbs
p; And for a moment, I was free.

  Chapter 28

  Sometimes now I pass by churches. I park my car in the back rows of lots and watch the bodies file in. I don’t follow. It doesn’t mean God is nothing to me now. It means I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to figure out belief, and if the good I know of God is true, there is time enough.

  BEFORE WE LEFT, Daisy took me to the small hospital room where they had placed Cherry. She told me she was claiming mental disorder so she could stay out of that hell-house jail. I sat with her while she complained and bemoaned her life and I waited for her to ask about the baby or me or say something, anything about sorryness or Lyle. What do you think became of him? I asked her. And Cherry threw up her hands. “They won’t even bring me my animals! Can you believe that?”

  I got up to leave and Cherry snatched at my arm, pinching the back of it. She pulled me close and the bristles of her shaved head scratched against my cheek. I thought of asking her if she had called my mother and told her about the Birthing Day, if it was her who had saved me in her own way. But I didn’t. I realized looking at her that I didn’t want to know. I wanted to go on living my life believing it was my mother alone.

  “Never forget who you are,” Cherry said. As if any of us ever can.

  WHAT SPREADS OUT past Peaches? For so long I was liable to think nothing at all. Nothing could be past there, for it was the world. Now I watch my daughter playing under the shade of Oregon Douglas firs on the land Daisy bought, land where we run a Christmas tree farm in the dark unforgiving winters, leaving the Diviners in the past, and my daughter and I ring up customers and she hands them candy canes.

  The seasons run through us, my Peach and me. She tackles our husky dog on the lawn, sprays water from the hose. We drink iced tea, cool lemonade, warm turmeric tea. I find purpose in drinking the things I am supposed to drink. I can do that. I can go to co-op grocers and buy whatever I want, look up health benefits on my screen, search what other good mothers buy for themselves and their children: kefir water, pressed ginger juice with cayenne, organic watermelon already cut into perfect spears, elderberry syrup to ward off colds. My Peach will never see me nurse a beer, she does not worry that I might slip away. I can accept I may never writhe and fall in a fit of spirit speak, that I will never be covered in gold glitter from thin air, and I take all of this to mean I am well blessed.