The Book of the Unnamed Midwife (3 page)

Her feet tangled when she tried to get out of the bed and she fell out of it instead. She tried to stand and her knee found her still-open knife on the floor. It made a tiny cut in her skin and she mechanically walked into the bathroom and found the peroxide in the cabinet by feel. She opened the white cap of the brown bottle and poured it out over the tiny cut in her knee until the bottle was empty. The bubbling, cold liquid ran down her leg on to the tile floor.

“Blood borne pathogens,” she said in a completely neutral tone of voice.

She found another bottle under the sink, casually knocking unwanted things out on to the floor. When she found it, she opened it and upended it over her chest. She had forgotten the tamper seal, and nothing came out.

“Oh.” She pinched the plastic half-circle with her right hand and pulled. Peroxide poured out and she ran it over her arms and neck, washing blood off her body. She poured it over her panties, soaking the crotch. It puddled pink and foaming on the floor. It soaked the carpet at the bathroom door. When she was finished, she put the cap back on the bottle and dropped it neatly into the bathroom trash.

Cold and dazed, she walked back out into her bedroom and tried not to look at the body. She slipped into a pair of jeans she found draped over a chair. She threw the wet shirt she had been wearing on the floor and pulled another from her closet. She put on a hoodie over it, then found a pair of socks and tied up her shoes. She walked back to her bed and pulled the sheet over the face she had never really seen.

Her hands found her cellphone on the floor and slipped it into the tight back pocket of her jeans. She closed her knife carefully and slipped it into a front pocket. She picked up her journal out of the wreck of her nightstand and shoved it down the front of her hoodie. She locked the door to her apartment and left with nothing in her hands.

The lone woman walked out onto the street and saw the orangey-pink in the east that meant the sun would rise soon. She walked up and down the hilly streets of San Francisco, not precisely in herself and not thinking. She came to a place she knew. It was a café she had come to a few times. She walked in, numb and cold, and sat on an old leather couch.

There was no one on the streets to hear her wailing. She sobbed and shook so hard she thought she would break. Her head throbbed and her throat ached and she pounded herself in the chest with both fists. She held her face and screamed and asked questions with no answers. She begged and apologized and raged.

When there was nothing left to say, she got quiet and pushed herself into the corner of the couch. She pulled her legs up close to her, knees tight together. She wrapped her arms around herself and pulled the hood over her face. She thought she might fall asleep, but she watched the sun rise, husked-out and raw. When it was full light, she got up stiffly and walked out the door.

She wandered into the Mission District without any idea where she was headed. The sidewalks were covered with broken glass and garbage, single shoes and the usual piles of city junk. In the street, cars were parked neatly in some places and rose up on the sidewalks in others. The road was choked here and there with accidents both minor and severe. She saw that some of the wrecked cars had corpses in them, including one pinned to a motorcycle trapped between two small cars. She tried to stop looking after that.

The Mission was always dirty, it was always derelict, but it had formerly been teeming with life. Alarming and empty now. The windows of the stores and restaurants were broken and there was no movement. Above the stores, windows to flats were hung with blankets and flags rather than curtains, looking as unkempt as ever but deadly silent. The only thing she could hear in the cold morning air was the flapping and cooing of pigeons, with the occasional shrill seagull. The city was without streetcars or hordes of people, without dogs barking or music pouring out of windows and the small radios carried by the homeless.

She smelled the sea and the sweet odor of rot from both food and dead bodies all around. The corners and alleys smelled like piss, maybe they always would. Block after block went by and she hesitated, thinking of traffic and signals and safety. She had to force herself to stop worrying about being hit by a car and start thinking what she should do if she saw another person. This was the first walk she had ever taken in this neighborhood that had not brought with it the smell of a dozen people smoking weed, the haze drifting from windows and bold passerby. Her senses were ringing the bell; the city was dead.

A different smell was beckoning to her. As she came to a corner, she could hear a little noise and she hid in the eave of a theatre, under the marquis, listening. Somewhere on the other side of the intersection, someone was cooking. And singing.

She stayed there as the smell grew stronger. She could smell garlic and mushrooms, she was sure. She heard the singing only in snatches, but the voice sounded high. She thought she should turn around and go the other way, and she fought with herself on that for a long time. In the end, hunger and simple curiosity won out. She came out cautiously and walked into the intersection. With a glance in all directions, she crossed diagonally away from a liquor store that stank like someone had smashed every bottle inside. The wind shifted and the aroma came again. Garlic and corn and cheese. Her stomach growled.

She came to the busted-out windows of an old Mexican restaurant with faded signs. The door stood open. She didn’t see anyone. She walked through, craning her neck toward the sound. The song was clearer now; it was old with lyrics in Spanish. The person singing was doing a pretty good impression of the dead singer. She came through a short door into the kitchen.

A tall dark-skinned man stood at a gas grill, cooking an assortment of pupusas and sweating. He turned toward her with a smile, then goggled at her with his mouth open.

“Who the hell are you?” His accent made the last word joo.

“I’m… I’m… that smells amazing. I didn’t mean to bust in on you. Are you…?” She stood half in the doorway, deciding whether to run. She didn’t know what she should ask. Are you dangerous? Are you gonna eat that? Terror and curiosity fought hunger and disorientation. She stood, unable to obey any of them.

He put the spatula down slowly. “Look, I just wanted to make some food. I don’t want any trouble. I’m waiting for my friend, Chicken. If this is your place, I’m sorry.”

“No, no it’s not my place. I’m from across town. I haven’t seen anybody else on the street.”

“You and me both, girl. Me and Chicken thought we were the last two motherfuckers on earth.”

She watched him closely. She knew he was gay. It was in everything, the way he stood in a long curve with his hips forward at the stove, the way he held his mouth when he called her ‘girl.’ It was in his delicate but deft hand as he flipped the pupusas. It was in the way he didn’t look her up and down or linger anywhere but her face. She knew and she knew him immediately. It was a snap judgment to make, but she had lived and worked with gay men in San Francisco her whole life. Most of her best friends had been gay men, especially since after twenty-five most of her female friends had disappeared down the rabbit hole of marriage and come out mothers on the other side. She relaxed a little and came all the way through the door.

“You don’t look like a looter,” he told her, turning his attention back to the food.

“I’m not. I was sick with whatever the fuck everyone had and woke up at UCSF. Where did everybody go?”

“You were at UCSF, you tell me. The news said everyone was dying, especially the ladies. Some pundit asshole was saying it was an extinction event and all the women would die.”

She leaned against the wall, staring at the food. “It was really contagious. Airborne. It appeared everywhere at once. I knew it was deadly, but there is nobody anywhere. I can’t get over it.”

He switched the gas off and piled pupusas on to paper plates. The plates were the cheap kind, so he stacked up four or five to support the weight of the food. “I’m Joe. My friend Chicken is out getting us water. The water is off everywhere. I can’t believe the fucking gas is still on.” He carried the plates out into the dining room and swept glass and balled-up napkins off the table.

“Might as well sit down, have something to eat.”

She sat opposite him in one of the mismatched chairs. “I’m Karen,” she said as she moved pupusas on to her plate with a plastic fork. He hadn’t offered his hand and neither did she. He went back to the kitchen and came back with four different kinds of hot sauce.

They skipped the rest of the introduction because they both wanted to eat. She was starving, her mouth flooding at the sight of hot food on her plate. She shoveled in huge bites, the melted cheese scalding the roof of her mouth.

She was not Karen. Karen had died a week ago, still wearing her nametag. He wasn’t going to ask for ID. She decided to be Karen for now.

He poured out dots of bright red sauce on to his own pile of food and shoveled just as fast. When they’d both finished a plate full, they slowed down. She took one more, he took two.

She poured green sauce over the pancake-like pupusa in front of her. “I can’t believe this is all still good. All the fresh food I had had gone bad. I think I was at the hospital for ten days, maybe more.”

He talked with his mouth full, but held his right hand in front of his face as he spoke. “Almost everything here was bad. All the meat was rotten and most of the cheese. I used to work here. There’s an old icebox they store the mushrooms and onions and garlic in and it seals tight. I thought it might be ok, but there was wrapped up masa and some cheese in there, too. Still good, ‘cause the cheese is dry. It’s my lucky day. I knew the gas was on, ‘cause we passed a couple gas leaks over on Van Ness.”

“My lucky day, too. I’m alive.” It hurt to swallow, but she meant it.

There was a sound of commotion in the back of the kitchen, and Joe popped up out of his chair.

“Chicken?”

“Joe, help me! I got caught!”

Joe ran to the back and Karen followed. Chicken turned out to be a tall scared-looking black kid, no more than twenty years old. His eyes were huge and rolling and his broad hands seemed to be holding him up in the doorway. His left leg was wrapped in razor wire. It wound in and out of his jeans and the denim was purple with blood in a couple of places.

“Shit,” Joe said as he stared.

Karen pushed him out of the way. She put her shoulder against Chicken’s body and pulled his long muscular arm over her shoulder. Together, they hobbled out of the kitchen out into the dining room. She helped him ease down onto the counter and pull his legs up after him. He reached for his injured leg and she caught his hands.

“Don’t pull, you might make it worse. Let me help you.”

“You a nurse? Who is this chick, Joe?”

“Karen. She just showed up.”

“I am a nurse, I worked at the medical center. I can help you.” She turned to Joe. “There’s a drug store on this block, isn’t there?”

He looked out the door, unsure. “I think so?”

She looked back at Chicken. “Is it safe to go out?”

“Nobody is after me.” He gritted his teeth and looked at his leg.

“Ok. Joe, run to that drug store, and I mean run. Bring me back peroxide, in the brown bottle. You know that, right?”

“I know what peroxide is, Jesus.” He looked more annoyed than scared.

“Okay, peroxide and gauze and an ace bandage. Go quick.”

He was out the door without another word.

She pulled her knife out of her pocket and opened without looking at it. She couldn’t remember if she had cleaned it or not. She decided it didn’t matter and started cutting at Chicken’s jeans. She thought to try to cut the wire out but realized it was a waste and cut the jeans around below the knee. She pulled at the hem and watched him. If the razor wire was caught in his skin, any movement would make him jump. He didn’t, so she pulled straight down.