The Lit Report (11 page)

“Nothing like that,” I assured him. “ Just taking a break. Swimming, hiking, hanging out. Just the two of us, right, Ruth?” Ruth grunted from the backseat.

“What did you say, little sis?”

“Nothing.” Even to me, Ruth sounded odd. Breathless, as if she'd been running a marathon.

“You okay back there?” I asked. “If you're carsick, we can trade places.” I was so anxious I felt like I was going to puke all over Pastor Pete's camo seat covers; in my head
I was pleading: Please, please, please Ruth, don't have the baby now. Not in the car, not with Jonah. Hold on just a bit longer. Cross your legs, Think good thoughts. Pray.

“I'm okay,” Ruth mumbled. “I've got a, uh, charley horse. In my leg. I've been getting them every ten minutes, Julia. For, like, three hours. And I really need to pee.”

“Every ten minutes?” I squeaked. “For three hours? Why didn't you tell me?”

As I turned around to talk to Ruth, I heard the click of the turn signal and felt the van move to the right and slow down. Jonah was pulling over. Oh, God, he was pulling over. He couldn't pull over. We had to get to the cabin—and fast.

“Why are you stopping?” I said. “She's fine. Aren't you, Ruth?”

Ruth moaned.

“See, she's fine. Let's just keep going. We're almost there and then I can massage her charley horse and maybe run her a hot bath. Just keep going.”

By this time the van had rolled to a complete stop, and Jonah was staring at me as if he had just picked up the psycho hitchhiker from hell. He got out of the car, went around to the sliding side door and pulled it open. Ruth was lying on the floor curled up in a ball, panting.

“Charley horse, my ass,” he said. “What's going on, Ruthie? What did you take? Do we need to go to a hospital?”

“Nooooo,” she managed to say in between puffs. “Didn't take anything. Cabin...gotta get to the cabin.”

Jonah turned to me. He was frowning, which did nothing to diminish his charm.

“Wanna tell me what's going on?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said, sweat trickling down my spine. It wasn't my secret to tell, but the sight of Ruth in labor, even if it was false labor—please let it be false labor—made me want to cling to Jonah's fabulous biceps and beg him to stay with us and help with the birth.

“I'm not stupid, you know,” he continued, “and neither are you. Whatever's going on, I figure you've got a plan—a good plan. But I'm her brother, and I'm here, and I want to help. I'm not going to run to Pete and Peggy. You should know that.”

Another groan and a gasp from the backseat clinched it for me.

“She's in labor,” I blurted out. “At least she thinks she is. We need to get to the cabin and get set up. I've got it all under control. She's not due for a few days, but we can't take a chance. So let's go. Now.”

Jonah didn't waste any time arguing. “Get in the back with her,” he barked as he jumped into the driver's seat and revved the engine. We laid rubber as he got back onto the highway. Ruth cried quietly on the floor of the van.

“It hurts so bad,” she whimpered. “So bad.”

“I know, sweetie, I know.” I crouched down behind her and rubbed her back. The stopwatch I'd bought for timing her contractions was buried in one of my bags, so I tried counting seconds, but my brain had frozen. If she'd really been in labor for three hours, and her contractions were ten minutes apart, how long did we have before she was fully dilated? It was like one of those ridiculous math problems: John and Jim are going to Moose Jaw from Winnipeg. If John takes a train going ninety-seven miles per hour and Jim rides his bike at fourteen miles an hour, where will Jim cross the tracks and get flattened by the train? She could have the baby in ten minutes or ten hours. I prayed for ten hours.

“You okay back there?” Jonah's voice floated over us.

Ruth yelped and started to pant. I panted with her. And counted.

“She's having another contraction. I think it's only been about seven minutes since the last one. How close are we?”

“Twenty minutes, maybe fifteen, if we're lucky,” Jonah said. “Are you sure about the hospital?”

“No hospital,” Ruth wailed as the contraction carried her away.

Three contractions, one bruised shin (she kicked me), eight blasphemies, seventeen obscenities and numerous blows to my upper body later, we reached the cabin. Ruth managed to walk as far as the front steps, where she collapsed in tears.

“I can't do this. It's too hard,” she sobbed.

Without a word, Jonah put down the stuff he was carrying and scooped Ruth up in his arms. I unlocked the door, ran into the cabin ahead of him and found a bedroom that looked as if it had been decorated by a blind nun obsessed with New Kids on the Block. Wood paneling, orange burlap curtains, lots of crucifixes, a single bed and at least ten posters of
NKOTB
. The most attractive thing in the room was a stupid poster of a kitten that said
Hang in there
. It was taped up next to one of the crucifixes. A deeply appropriate thought, all things considered.

We manhandled Ruth onto the bed just as another contraction hit. Jonah stayed with her (she didn't hit him at all) and I lugged all my crap in from the van. I dug my stopwatch out and handed it to Jonah.

“Time them,” I said. “How long, how far apart. Rub her back. Remind her to breathe. Don't let her push. And put these rubber sheets on the bed.”

Jonah nodded and grinned. “You're hot when you're bossy, you know,” he said.

“Save it,” I replied, grinning back. “We've got a baby to deliver.”

No one remembers her beginnings.

—Rita Mae Brown,
Rubyfruit Jungle

I bought a water-damaged copy of
Rubyfruit Jungle
from a thrift store when I was thirteen. There was a pretty red and purple flower on the cover, and above it floated the words
A novel about being different and loving it
. At thirteen, everyone thinks they're different, but they usually don't love it. I thought I might learn something from Rita Mae Brown, whoever she was. And learn I did. For about six months after I read
Rubyfruit
, I wanted to be Molly Bolt—gay, unashamed, opinionated, artistic, original. I wanted, like Molly, to have sex with a hot cheerleader and inspire the adoration of rich and powerful women. I hadn't bargained on my unremitting crush on Jonah and the fact that no cheerleader in our school seemed to be a closet dyke. I gave up on trying to be gay, but I've never forgotten how
unapologetic Molly was about the circumstances of her birth. She says, “Who cares how you get here? I don't care. I really don't care. I got myself born, that's what counts. I'm here.” I hoped and prayed that Ruth's baby would feel the same way. And I knew Ruth and Jonah and I would never forget this baby's beginnings.

Ruth's baby was born just before midnight, six long hours after we arrived at the cabin. Jonah stayed with us the whole time, after phoning Pete and Peggy to tell them he'd decided to go on retreat with us. Of course they were thrilled. Obviously going to Bible boot camp had worked some sort of miracle. They wouldn't have been so thrilled had they known there were only two beds in the cabin and their pregnant daughter was about to give birth to their first grandchild on one of them.

It turned out to be a pretty straightforward birth, although I certainly didn't realize it at the time. My head was full of disastrous scenarios: breech birth, strangulation by umbilical cord, hemorrhaging, loss of bowel control, stillbirth, birth defects, vaginal ripping—the list went on and on, but none of those things happened. The labor was longer than any of us liked—Ruth kept moaning, “You never told me it would take this long”—but shorter than a lot of first births. Jonah and I moved every possible projectile away from the bed when Ruth was in transition. I did everything I could to keep her comfortable and calm:
I gave her ice cubes to suck (she spat them at me) and juice to drink (ditto); I turned on the music she had chosen for the delivery (she yelled at me to turn it off); I wiped her face with a damp cloth (she bit me); I rubbed her feet (she kicked me); I left the room (she called me back); I came back (she yelled, “Get the fuck away from me!”). Jonah massaged her back and crooned old jazz standards to her. I thought for sure that she'd belt him when he sang “What a Wonderful World,” but she just sobbed and bleated, “You're the best brother ever.” Every few minutes I checked her dilation, and when I finally saw the baby's head (at about the same time that Ruth screamed, “My crotch is on fire!”), I let her push and the baby entered the world. In a few seconds she too was screaming at the top of her lungs. Like mother, like daughter.

Jonah caught the baby, and I think it's safe to say that we all experienced that moment of utter awe that I had felt at Boone's birth. Awe and joy and, for me at least, terror. But there was no time for anything but making sure the baby's airways were clear (although I already knew that from all the screaming) and that she had all her bits. Fingers, toes, eyes, ears. All present and accounted for. I did a quick test called an Apgar, something Maria had done right after Boone was born, to check the baby's heart rate, breathing, movement, skin color and reflexes. All excellent. I showed Jonah where to clamp the cord, and I cut it.

“Give the baby to me.” Ruth pushed herself up onto her elbows and glared over her knees at Jonah and me. “And get me something to eat.”

“Cool your jets, Ruthie,” Jonah said. “We're cleaning her up a bit.”

“Now,” Ruth bellowed, and I hastily wrapped the baby in a flannel baby blanket, popped a tiny hat on her head and handed her over. If she crapped all over Ruth, so be it. Ruth lay back on the pillows and clutched the baby to her chest. Tears slid down her cheeks and into her ears.

I couldn't stop to enjoy the moment though. The placenta had yet to arrive and, while I was massaging Ruth's back, I heard the sweet, snuffly, sucking sound that could only mean one thing. Trouble.

“Ruthie,” I sighed. “We agreed. No nursing. I'll give her a bottle in a minute. No attachment, remember?”

“Fuck that,” Ruth replied. “She's hungry. I'm hungry. And my tits hurt. And you told me it would help deliver that placebo thing.”

I giggled and nodded. The placenta took its sweet time, and it was predictably gross when it finally slid out into the soup pot I'd found in the kitchen. No way I was touching it, let alone cooking it. “Bury it,” I said to Jonah, who blanched and hurried out the back door, soup pot at arm's length. I wondered if he was regretting his decision to stay. I cleaned Ruth up with warm washcloths and double-checked to make
sure she hadn't torn during the delivery. She was so preoccupied with the baby that she didn't even seem aware that I was staring at her vagina. It's not something I ever want to do again, believe me. Sorry, Rita Mae. I stuffed all the bloody cloths and sheets into a black garbage bag. Was there a washer and dryer at the cabin? I couldn't remember, but if I had to I'd wash everything in the lake. I hated the idea of dumping the evidence of the baby's birth in some gas station dumpster on the way home.

“What's her name?” Ruth asked. She'd stopped shivering, and the baby was still sucking like a mini-Hoover.

“Oh, you know...I thought I'd call her Zanzibar. Place names are huge for babies right now. But then, so are food names. How about Zanzibar Gumdrop?” I grinned at her and peeled off my surgical gloves. “If she'd been a boy, I would have named her Rataxes, after the rhino in
Babar
. But seeing as she's a girl, I thought Myrtle might be better, or Beryl.”

Ruth looked down at the baby and shook her head. “No way. She's not a Myrtle or a Hortense, and no way is she going to be named after some South American country or a stupid candy. She's more, I don't know...she's...”

“Jane?” I said.

At that second the baby pulled away from Ruth's breast, and I swear she looked up at her mother and smiled. Yeah, I know, babies that age don't smile, but whatever
it was—gas, a full tummy, the warmth of her mother's body—it did the trick.

“Jane? Just Jane?” Ruth turned the name over in her mouth like a Werther's caramel. “Jane,” she repeated. She looked up at me; tears streamed down her cheeks. “Jane,” she said again. A shudder ran through her then and she held Jane out to me. As I wrapped my arms around the warm damp bundle, Ruth lay back in the bed, rolled over on her side and pulled a pillow over her head. Her shoulders continued to shake, and the muffled noise of her sobs filled the room. Was it a bad thing for a baby to hear her mother cry? I didn't want to risk it, so I took Jane into the kitchen, where Jonah was making Ruth her favorite sandwich: peanut butter and mayonnaise with iceberg lettuce.

“She's pretty upset,” I said as I put a microscopic diaper on Jane and eased her into a tiny sleeper decorated with teddy bears.

“Understandable,” Jonah replied. He cut the sandwich into triangles and put it on a bright green tray, along with three Oreo cookies and a Pepsi. “Let me talk to her.”

He took the tray into Ruth's room and shut the door behind him. I was alone with Jane, who lay quietly in my arms and squinted blearily at me, her eyelids puffy, her perfect lips opening and closing like a goldfish. She seemed fine, but what did I know? It had been so much easier when she was safely tucked away in the small wet universe inside
Ruth's belly. But now that she was here, whole new vistas of accident and pain and illness crowded my mind. What if I dropped her? What if she wouldn't suck from a bottle? What if she had an invisible illness that had to be diagnosed and treated immediately so she didn't die before her first birthday? What if she ended up with people who burned her with cigarettes and starved her and locked her in a closet?