I took off her sandals and placed them near the wall, their barely worn toes nosed into the skirting. She was dark where Samson was light, though they’d the same fine features, the same dusty shimmer in their eyes.
–Not the case.
She laughed again and I knelt down beside her. Her scent was like Samson’s, but sharper.
Her stomach was a high, hard mound. A slim-hipped woman who’d be a long time in birth. I started rolling up her dress and saw her thighs tauten, but someone must have told her what to expect because she lifted her hips and wriggled the dress up to her chest. The panties she had on were bright white, and the slim cloth bridge that covered her lips was only a little sodden and clinging. She must have bathed that morning, and been only a short while in her clothes.
There was indeed a bruise.
It started at the left hip and sprawled on her bump’s underside. I put a hand over it and my ears filled with a tearing sound. I reached across and slipped my other hand beneath her back where I heard only a dull whistle. A good sign.
I knew by now she’d be expecting me to speak.
–I’m sorry to hear about your husband, Mrs Claudette.
–Oh, thank you.
A glance at my hands as they moved around her. And then,
–I’m fine.
The weight of the milk-brew in her breasts made them pull t’ward her face, framing her chin with their topmost bit of bulk.
–I’m going to have a look at the baby now.
Though I only said this to avoid details that might worry her and keep her from sleeping, as I could tell already the baby was fine.
I put a hand over her face. The sweat of her nose and her little mouth, gathered unto itself like a stuffed pouch, left dewy marks on my palm. Without any struggle she was asleep. I ran a finger down the length of her stomach, and the skin was so pliant and young it needed only the gentlest pulling apart.
Her viscera, I could tell, were on a better day all chime.
They’d gotten a shock and the tissue surrounding her womb had grown crimson and tightly wound – but no, it wasn’t tissue. Running my fingers over the rivulet mounds I found it was a layer of tightly packed blood, deeply clotted and in some places already turning to dust.
At this point she took in a few short breaths, which was normal. The lungs raised and steadied but the breath stayed inside her.
Now that she was open the room had filled up with the tearing sound, and the clotting was giving off a smell of blueberries left too long on the stove. I started humming, feeling my way toward the pitch of her hurt. The baby was sleeping; I could see its little shoulders through the curtain of her womb when I lifted the bladder aside.
Once the humming and the tearing blended, I slipped my hand around the clotted blood and clucked at it until it shrank and slid away. It turned from crimson to purple in the shadow of my hand, and left her.
Quiet now, aside from the rain. I listened hard: I’d left a bowl under the couch, just in case, but hadn’t heard it land there.
I brought the skin back together, smoothing away any puckering with the flat of my hand. It pinkened some, once re-joined, and I waited for the rosiness to fade before waking her. I looked at the clock over the fireplace. It was two in the afternoon.
A very accommodating Cure.
Before coming to her elbows she stared a moment at her stomach in the usual dazed way, mute and uncomprehending, and I helped her roll her dress back down.
–You tore up some tissue, and it bled. You must have fallen or stretched your hip out too far.
She nodded, her mouth a little ways open.
Way, way too far, I thought, and noticed that in tugging on her dress I’d marked it with rusty stains. I wiped my hands on my legs when I hunkered down to pick up her shoes.
–Your baby is working fine. It’ll have big green eyes.
I looked her in the face before sliding her sandals back on, feeling the thin bones of her ankles working to flatten her feet. She had thick charcoal lashes and her eyes were the muddied floor of a summertime wood.
–Like its daddy.
She put her hands in mine and pulled, coming to stand. Her face had a hardness to it, all of a sudden. Like she’d had when I first came into the room. It stopped her looking like Samson. She said
–Harry didn’t have green eyes.
I dropped my hands from hers and opened the door to the hall, calling to Father. Mrs Claudette didn’t move, just stood where I’d left her, perfectly shapen and tall. She was so polished looking. As though her whole life she’d been tended to like a plant that must at all costs flower. And then she was lit up again, a candle flaring behind her eyes, her lips moved by a breathy smile.
–Oh Miss Ada, I know you know what it’s like when a woman’s told to earn her keep.
–Well, we all have to work.
–Harry’s seed may as well have been water out of the kettle.
She was speaking, rather than whispering, which struck me as strange. I could tell the look she gave me was a rehearsed one, that I was meant to find it hard to look away.
–Mrs Claudette, who do you think I’m going to tell?
Once they start talking heart and mind, you ask to be paid. So Father always said of Cures who thought us akin to their priests and in the habit of undoing such things as guilt and unseemly longing.
Her face softened and her mouth started moving with quick, unthinking laughter.
–Oh I know, I know! I’m all worked up – my brother says my hair will fall out if I keep doing the thinking for everyone around me.
–Will your brother be helping you with the baby?
Her eyes darting around my face.
–With your husband gone? Will your brother help you with the baby?
–Oh yes – yes yes. He has always taken the best care of me.
I made the shape of a smile. Wondered when she’d leave.
–He came here not so long ago. You’ve a very close scent. Usually takes twinning for siblings to have a scent so close.
But this was too much for her, as allusions to our strangeness often were. She was moving away from me now – carefully, like she’d just seen a spider, or something hungry peering at her from the woods. In my head I saw her hand as she’d have liked to hold it: sheltering her stomach with the fingers flared wide and the skin around the knuckles whitening. She spoke again in a tight little whisper:
–I can’t remember a time when we were apart.
By now I was weary of her moods, hopping on the left foot and then back to the right. Father had come out of the kitchen. He looked at me and I nodded and Olivia started asking how we wanted to be paid.
I went outside. A heavy rain had started. I held my elbows and looked out toward the woods from the porch. The rain was coming in straight lines over the edge of the roof and the smell of it soothed me. I could taste the wet bark, the sodden loam.
After a few minutes she came outside, walked down the steps, said some more nonsense I didn’t take heed of, turned one more time to wave. She eased herself into the truck, her belly high behind the steering wheel. I watched her drive away, feeling tired and squirmy.
When she was gone I stepped out from under the porch – just enough to feel the water – soft as milk – run down my neck.
In the pantry, picking out leaves to make tea, I found the clot on the third shelf. Shrunken into itself like a kicked cat. Had I been less distracted I’d have buried it properly, rather than taking it outside and simply dropping it on the grass.