I step forward, and making sure not to miss, I kick the phone out of her hand. As she screams, the phone flies away and lands somewhere in the dark behind us. She cradles her hurt hand in the other one and sits sobbing, pushing herself to and fro, telling me I have to believe her. I wander away some distance and find a place where I will be out of the wind. The next contraction will be coming very soon. I sit down to wait.
It’s very cold. As the hours pass, she calls out for me, urgently at first, with a note of hope in her voice that I might really come to her. Later she cries out in pure desperation. I hear her vomit. She tries to get up and come to me but collapses again and again. I grow used to the raging, gurgling cries and the teeth-gritted roars. The sound carries over the water and is lost on the wind. On and on it goes. I sit and watch the tide.
The struggle approaches its end, as it must. When I finally go to her, she’s on her back with her knees drawn up, and between her legs she’s split and bloodied and gaping, like a half-skinned animal. I lean down, and she clutches my wrist and won’t let it go. She’s babbling, and on her face is a look of disbelief and outrage. She is panting and straining down mindlessly, and eventually from between her legs there appears a glistening mound. She writhes and pushes, digging her fingers deep into my arm. I wrench my arm away, and with the next push she lets out a scream and now the baby’s head bulges out and wobbles in my hand, and as she screams again one shoulder and then the other come slithering bumpily out of her, and then its flailing stick arms appear, and all the rest, all the warm, bloodied tangle of it. There’s so much of it, now the unfolding legs and the feet trailing strings of stained slime and wet, twisted cord and, also, a surprising amount of dark blood. I let all of it slide into my hands. I cup the back of the baby’s head and rub its scrunched face, and then comes a crackle of mucus from its open mouth and a rush of air, a splutter and a wheezing cry. Annabel’s hands reach out. She’s crying. I am, too, as I draw the child into my own arms. Its little head lolls; it turns its face to my chest. Annabel strains forward but can’t get up.
“Let me see! Oh, let me see! Is it all right?” she cries. “Let me see! Give it to me! What is it?”
“I have to wrap him up,” I tell her. “He’s shivering. It’s a boy.”
And to you I whisper, though there is no need to whisper for she does not understand a word, that we have a son.
I pull a towel and a cardigan from her bag and wrap the baby up and lay him on the ground. She falls back, exhausted. I wait until the cord stops pulsating, and then I cut it using the string and scissors I brought. The child is now separate from her.
“Please. Please let me have him,” she croaks. But before I can answer she cries out and gasps. “Oh, God! Oh, God, what’s happening? I’m bleeding! Help me, I’m bleeding! What’s happening?”
Sure enough, blood is pouring from her, along with ropes of steaming membrane.
“It’s the afterbirth,” I tell her. “Push.” She obeys, still moaning to be given the child, and eventually the flabby, dark, veined sack is delivered. She tries to wriggle away from it, leaving a heap of shining pulp and a slippery trail behind her on the stones. The air is thick with the smell of blood.
“Give him to me, please,” she weeps. She is shuddering with cold and shock. “Let me have him.”
I did not expect this to be the hardest part of all. I imagined myself having a lot to say. How jealous I was that she was carrying her child after mine was lost, that I didn’t know what I would do when it was born and she took it away, when she left me to be with Ron and the child forever. That I dreamed of stealing it. That for a while stealing it was all I dreamed of.
Then how I was shown that it would not be stealing but only taking what is mine. I thought I had those words ready, too. How I forgive you for the existence of this child, but I will never forgive her, how unthinkable it is that she should have it to love and keep for herself when she killed the child who was mine and yours. I was going to tell her how I promise every day to come back to you, that I have stayed alive just so that I can take this newborn baby with me out onto the black rock and wait there until the tide rises and carries us both back to you. I want to tell her that she is going to watch her child disappear under the river and when she does she ought to remember that that is what she did to my Anna. She is going to know my sorrow.
My love, I know you are with Anna, waiting for me and the baby boy, and when the flow tide sweeps over the rock, we won’t struggle. I shall let it bear us down to the riverbed, and we shall all be together.
But when I try to say any of this, the words sheer off and crumble against my chattering teeth and I feel myself getting dizzy, falling and breaking apart. It’s like demolishing a wall and discovering I also am the wall. Every blow I inflict I also take. I’m made of it, I’m a part of it. I get to my feet and walk away toward the river with the little thing in my arms, taking Annabel’s bag with me. The screams that follow me now are more agonized and urgent even than the sounds she made when he was forcing her body to open and expel him, and now his fists beat the air and from his mouth comes wave upon wave of a bleating cry that answers his mother’s.
All this while the river has been rising and the boat is now afloat. I wade in, place him on the bottom, and push off into the current. The rock is almost half under the water, so I will be able to climb onto it. But it will be difficult, as there is nowhere to attach the boat. I bring it alongside and wedge the prow in one of the rock’s jutting angles. But it won’t stay there long. I have to find a place where I can grab hold and get out of the boat and onto the rock. I will need both hands, so I sling the bag over my shoulder and pull the child in under my clothes, against my bare chest, and bind him to me using a sweater from Annabel’s bag, tying him close with the sleeves. From the shore she is screaming at me to come back. I want her to be watching, but knowing that she is makes me feel sick and empty.
I use one oar to steady the boat as best I can in the current, then I count to three, drop the oar, and throw myself at the rock. I land on all fours and hang on until I am able, carefully, to move one foot, then a hand, then the other foot. I crawl forward. It’s slippery, and I struggle to keep hold but not cling too close, lest I crush the child. I crawl to the middle of the rock and lie on my back for several minutes before sitting up and unwrapping him.
His head drops back on his useless, flimsy neck; his eyes are closed. I feel his face with the back of my hand. It’s cold. I cradle his head and wail. I intended to take him with me when I drown, but now he’s dead, and his death pierces me to the heart. I clasp him to me, and from the riverbank Annabel screams again. Then he stirs, and before I know what I am doing, I am weeping and laughing and covering the top of his head with kisses. The little thing was asleep! He fell asleep against my breast, his face bloody and gluey with birth slime stuck fast to my skin. I wrap him up warm again and hold him close, and rock him back and forth. His mouth turns to my nipple, and he latches on and sucks. After a moment he tugs himself away from me, his mouth opens again and he screams. I hear Annabel’s voice calling back to him. I have failed him, for of course my breast is dry. I do not understand why it distresses me that I have nothing to give him. Just then a high wave hits the edge of the rock and rolls like a cold, wet cloth over it, soaking my legs. I do not understand why I lift him clear, taking care to keep him dry.
Behind me there’s a scraping noise, and I turn just in time to see the tide nudge the prow of the little white boat clear of the rock. It clunks two or three times as it goes, then spins free and is borne away upriver. From the shore, Annabel pleads for her baby. Holding him tightly to me with one arm, I use my free hand to reach into my pocket for my phone. Another wave sweeps over the rock, and he cries and cries for his mother while the wind cuts into my back.