by Jan Baross

Miguel steers my pregnant stomach, swollen as wet wood, to his carved doors at the entrance to the church. His critical eyes appraise his version of Heaven carved on the left, his Hell on the right. Heaven is in perfect symmetry, with bearded saints in square robes. Their hands are folded, their eyes cast heavenward, faces rigid with redemption. But I am drawn to Hell. It is more like my life: fluid with tortured figures, edged with the unredeemed, a rough-hewn monument to the cursed.

I have always hated Miguel's Church of the Virgin. Gold-leafed and filigreed, wall to ceiling: altars, pews, alcoves. I prefer the simplicity of my old white church in El Pulpo, with one silver cross on a pale altar, a vase of flowers. At least there, if I had a problem to discuss, God could find me.

Miguel and I walk down the aisle of resentful stares, boos, and hisses from the villagers in their pews. Miguel is used to the status of outcast and oblivious to everything but my stomach. After nine months, I should be used to both. I did my best, diving again and again, trying to find snails. But without the help of Gabito, it was hopeless.

Rosa pretends that covering her new daughter, Rosita, with her shawl takes all the concentration in the world. She cannot spare a moment to greet me. Next to her, Auntie Patina bounces her freshly christened baby, the gray-eyed Gloria. Fecunda is too busy suckling her latest, Pilar, a stiff baby named after salt. Señor Domingo holds Albino and looks up at me with a patient smile. Mimosa entertains her clubfoot infant, Poncho, with her emerald snail necklace.

From these people I have learned the equation of life in Las Mujeres: no snails = no wealth = no friendship.

Little José splashes inside my belly, stirring a monsoon of gas. I am so tired of being ignored that I want to fart out loud. Passing Mayor Perfecciona, I let one loose, loud and sharp. The sound spurts into the farthest shadows in the church. Miguel's face turns the red of a bishop's robe, but Mayor Perfecciona still does not turn in my direction.
"Was that you, Señora Perfecciona?" I say.

Miguel muscles me into our pew in the first row where the cursed are closer to God. We sit alone except for Olivita, the cloth-wrapped leper, at the end. The barrel of my body lowers onto a fat yellow pillow that Miguel had the seamstress sew for me. My bottom spreads on the embroidered flowers with the delicate pink slogan, "Trasero de mi esposa", for my wife's ass.

On the main altar are inlaid red letters, a smug thought floating above the Virgin that Miguel carved: "PERME REGES REGNANT, Through Me Kings Reign." The Virgin's fingers are raised as though all suffering were eased by a small gesture. The Virgin's calm blue eyes seem barely aware of the spikes through her son's crusted palms. He hangs in the alcove to the left, the crown of thorns clinging to his brow. The broken bones of his feet are nailed under him. If she could not help her own son, what can she do for me?

Behind us, Señor Domingo leans forward in his pew.
"How are you feeling today, Señora Svendik?" says Señor Domingo.
Fecunda kicks him. Miguel puts his arm around my shoulder and turns proudly.
"The Hermit rolled the bones and said my son will be here within the week."
"Congratulations," says Señor Domingo.
When he sits back, Fecunda hisses furiously at him.

I press the discontent of my back into the pew. My belly is so big, I cannot see my toenails. There is no maternal bliss in being bloated. José strains and turns like a trapped fish in the gauzy liquid of my stomach.

Padre Monástico flips through his Bible, and the villagers shift into quiet. I let my eyelids drop to nap position for the sermon. Instead of veins floating in darkness, I see José's face, red and water-wrinkled from my fluids. He touches the wall of my belly.
"Is it time, Mamá?"
His fingers feel the curve of my belly.
"It is never a good time to be born," I say silently to José. "This would be a particularly bad time. Why do you ask?"
José's hands clutch the edge of the prenatal abyss.
"Mamá, something is changing in here!"

Sweat soaks my white maternity dress to transparency.
"Not now, José! I am in church!" I say.
Miguel lifts his hand from my steaming shoulder and wipes it on his pant leg.
"Tortugina, what is it?"

Without warning or pain, a pale waterfall pours out from between my legs. I clamp my thighs shut, but the liquid soaks the down pillow and drips from the pew onto the floor.
"Lord, we thank you," reads Padre Monástico, "for the blessings of the stars and the sea . . ."
"Help!" I yell. "My water broke!"
Padre Monástico looks up from the dry pages of the Bible.
"Holy Mother of God!" says Padre Monástico.
I cover my crotch with my hands. The trembling Padre crosses himself.
"Padre Monástico, my wife needs the doctor!" shouts Miguel.
Unaccustomed to staring between a woman's legs, Padre Monástico grabs the shoulders of a choirboy. "Where is the doctor?"
"He is delivering a calf for the cripple's wife," says the choirboy.

There is a terrible cramping in my belly, worse than food poisoning. A jagged shard of pain cuts across my back. Miguel Svendik kneels beside me and lowers my rigid back to the dry planks of the floor. He carefully places the Wife's Ass pillow of soaked goose-down under my head.

Below the Virgin's gaze, we are a wet nativity, not unlike her own emergency in the manger. More comfort should be coming from her painted eyes. I double up and roll the pain from side to side. Fecunda is suddenly there with her hands on my knees.
"Ah, cousin," she whispers. "Lie still. With a birth in the church, all betrayals are forgiven."
She raises her head and shouts to the back of the church.
"Señora Comadrona! Get your old bones up here. My cousin is having a baby!"

The floor creaks as the villagers rise and chant, "Señora Comadrona!" Their voices urge the old woman up. Her stork-thin legs flap around the corner of our pew. Her leather pockets are full of small stones, one for each child she delivered in the last fifty years. As she lowers herself between my legs, Señora Comadrona's knees pop like firecrackers. She clucks to herself, "A new one. A new one!"
She spreads her shawl over my bent legs and removes my wet underwear.
"Bring water and wine!" yells Señora Comadrona. "Water and wine!"

Behind the Señora's stooped shoulders, Fecunda whispers to Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina. The altar boys, drunk on the blood of Christ, do not move. But Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina know where to go.

Another painful cramp, worse, tears through me. José's tiny fingers feel their way along the jellied lining.
"Ow!Ow!Ow! Mamá," says José. "I'm afraid!"
"Get out here, you little coward. You're killing me!"

Waves of cramping sweep the pain in like a storm. Above me Miguel chews on his stained handkerchief. Suddenly, the pain washes back, a receding tide. All the muscles slacken, off duty for a few minutes.
My head rolls, my cheek rests against the cold floor.

A yellow cat pads under the dusty pew, followed by three orange kittens. Their fur is stained red from the colored glass of the window. The last kitten shrieks as a child steps on its tail.

Mimosa lowers a large bowl of water next to Señora Comadrona. The old woman takes the bottle of wine from Rosa and drinks a long drink. The rest she pours on my woman's mound. My stomach and back muscles are strained down to the bone. José must be as big as a calf. If only the small slit between my legs were a door with a simple latch.

Señora Comadrona kneads my belly with her palms.
"Push!"
José moves to escape, a fish paddling madly upstream. My ears are full of his pounding blood. I tighten every muscle to push him out into the world.
"You are no longer a welcome guest, José!" I say. "Out! Out!"
"Push!" says Señora Comadrona.
"I am pushing!" I yell.
José's head slips forward in my womb. The old woman's dry fingers stretch me.
"Mamá!" says José. "Make her leave me alone!"
"Oh, he is coming fast," says Señora Comadrona. "I have never seen a child come so fast. Your next child will be like spitting."

I would die now if I believed there was more of this to come.
"A few more pushes and he will be here. Push!"
There are no more muscles left to tighten. I bare my teeth at her to show I am working.
"Push harder, you lazy girl!"
If I were giving birth out of my nose, it could not be more painful.
"He is almost here!" she says. "Give me a rag to catch him!"
Miguel takes off his white embroidered shirt and drops it in the Señora's lap.
"Mamá," says José, "what do I do now?"
"Follow the water, José!" I yell. "Follow the water!"
"My head is in a vice!" says José.
"Get out here now or I will make you wish you were never born!"
"Push!" yells the old Señora.
"Shut up, you old witch!"
"PUSH!"

My muscles squeeze the soft bones of José's skull. His slick head slowly slides outward against tearing flesh. We are hurting each other for the first time.
The pain makes breathing impossible. His head rips through. Shoulders, stomach, ass, rubber legs. The last things to swim through are his tiny toes that feel like a trickle. Señora Comadrona cradles José in Miguel's white shirt, like one of her precious river stones.

Olivita the leper stares over her collapsed nose at my perfectly formed baby. Fecunda, Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina pass the bottle of wine with happy tears.

Old Señora licks José's eyes clean and puts one finger in his mouth to clear out any evil he sucked from me. There should be a lot.
"Mamá!" José screams as Señora makes a knot and cuts his umbilical cord with her old fisherman's knife.
Blood sprays over her old face and Miguel Svendik's chest. José waves his tiny fists in the air.
"Mamá!" yells José. "The old woman cut off my penis!"
I am too exhausted to explain.
"You have another," I whisper.

"Tortugina, he is beautiful!" says Gabito.
Gabito, with golden epaulettes, hovers next to me and kisses my cheek. I burst into tears.
"Gabito, bastardo," I say silently to him. "Not a word for almost nine months?"
Dark hair is combed, he looks rested and almost normal.
"Forgive me," says Gabito. "I am sorry it has taken me so long to forgive. Let José's birth be a new birth for us, too."
I am too tired for a fight. His invisible voice is soft, tear-broken with longing.

Miguel reaches through Gabito and picks up José, wrapped in the bloody shirt.
"What lungs!" says Miguel. "Listen to my son! Listen to my son, everyone!"
"My son!" says Gabito.
"Our son!" I say aloud to whoever is listening.

Miguel lifts José into the air. The villagers can see my son's perfect body, the promise of his manhood, the flaccid, blood-streaked umbilical cord dribbling pink liquids on Miguel Svendik's bare chest.
"This is the happiest day of my life, Tortugina," whispers Gabito, and his breath touches my ear.
"This is the happiest day of my life!" shouts Miguel. "Let this birth remind you to temper your anger at my snail-less wife. Come to the taverna, and I will buy everyone a drink!"
The village cheers happily for the new baby and louder for the wine.

Padre Monástico waits until José is lowered then makes the sign of the cross over the tiny limbs. "This boy is a child born in church on the day of the Virgin. No child can be more blessed."
José reaches up and grabs the old Padre's finger. The Padre and José both gurgle.

Señora Comadrona pushes once more on my belly. Out slides a translucent red and brown mass with slippery sides. She drops it into the bowl of clear water.
"The placenta will tell us the boy's fortune," she says. "Then you must bury it under a tree and watch how the plant grows."
Padre Monástico looks down at the floating mass and claps his hands. "It looks like a church! The boy will enter the priesthood."
Miguel's tired smile turns to a frown. "That is a chisel if I ever saw a chisel. My son will be a carpenter like me."
Señora Comadrona shakes her head. "It looks like the head of a goat. He will be a shepherd."
She tips the bowl toward me, and I lift my head.
"It is a star," I say.
"A star," sighs José.

Señora Camadrona whispers a prayer and pats my face with her bloody hand. I feel her sticky print on my cheek. Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina help the old woman to stand, unbending her popping knees. The baby stones shift in her pockets.
"Pay me now," she says. "I must go to the river to find a special stone for José."
Miguel Svendik slips several coins into her stained hand. Then he kneels beside me and lowers José onto my wet breast. My little boy's bird-heart beats outside of me. His skin is softer than warm air. I cannot feel it with my fingertips. My little son, what is he but a piece of meat hugging a soul?

"You see," says Miguel Svendik. "Making love every night did no harm. We made a perfect boy. Look at the size of his balls."
"Hold on to our precious son," says Miguel. "I am taking you home."
I wrap my arms around José as Miguel lifts us both to his bare chest and carries us down the aisle.

I am sleepy with José's soft snore. His tiny fingers curl and uncurl on my chest. I am his blue sky. He is my little spider building his unbreakable, silken web over my heart.

José's scream wakes me.
Miguel draws back a soft layer of mosquito netting around the four-poster bed. Señora Comadrona is behind him holding the lungs that woke me.
"Tortugina," says Miguel, "your son needs you."
José's musical voice that has been floating silently from my womb for nine months now sounds like a wounded crow.
"Feed me! Feed me!"

It is well known that new infants do not need to eat. New mothers are given a day of respite before they are sucked dry for the rest of their lives.

Señora Comadrona's stork face pokes through the mosquito netting. Her smile has almost no upper teeth and even fewer on the bottom rung. She unravels José from her bloody shawl and puts the screamer on my breast.
"José, don't be such a baby," I say.
"Feedme, feedme, feedme!" José screams.
"What happened to your vocabulary?" I say.
"Cousin," shouts Fecunda. "Stick your nipple in his mouth."

Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina giggle and drink wine as they nurse their own infants. I had not even noticed them sitting with me like good friends.
"Thank you, cousins, for coming," I say.

I push José's tiny face into the dark brown nipple of my breast. Though it is not bloated with milk like my cousins' breasts, he fills his mouth with me. The slippery start and pull of his soft gums tugs softly into the rhythm of a heartbeat.
José chokes on his saliva and spits me out. Drool turns his tiny chest slick. His impossibly small razor-sharp fingernails squeeze my breast.
"MILK! MILK! MILK!"
Miguel plugs his ears, but there is no barrier against the lungs of a hungry baby.
"Do something!" shouts Miguel.
"José," I say. "If you suck, it will come."
José tries again. The suction of his mouth could carry a heavy chair across the room. I clutch handfuls of sheets from the pain. He spits me out again.
"MILK!"

Señora Comadrona lays one cool hand on my breast and elbows little José off to the side. José is outraged.
"MINE!"
The old woman's thin fingers squeeze my nipple so hard the pain sickens me. But still there is not even a drip of white liquid. The top of her old head leans over, her coarse gray hair rubs my chin. The almost toothless Señora sucks me so hard my toes curl.
"Help!" I yell.
"Dry chichis," she says, licking her lips. "I will go to the Hermit."
The old Señora winds a damp lock of my hair around her finger and cuts a curl. It disappears into her beaded pouch. She sticks her palm under Miguel's face.
"I must pay the Hermit for his remedy," she says.
"You cannot even breastfeed without costing me money, Tortugina." He flips the Señora a silver coin.
Señora Comadrona's stork legs carry her out the door, where she will tell everyone about my dry chichis.

"MILK! MILK! MILK!" screams José.
Miguel rips the mosquito netting open. He sticks his calloused finger in José's mouth to shut him up. I grab the sleeve of his shirt.
"Chichis are like people," I say. "They get frightened. Give them more time."
"His crying makes me crazy," says Miguel. "If you cannot provide for my son, Fecunda will."
"Milk is not the measure of a mother, Tortugina," comforts Gabito, as he settles next to me.
"How long have you been here?" I say.
"I never left your side," he says.

Fecunda undrapes her bright shawl with tiny silver bells on the fringe to reveal little Pilar feeding on one enormous breast. Fecunda has two huge troughs on her chest with enough milk to feed all the children, a herd of calves, and most of the dogs in Las Mujeres.
"Holy Mother of God, look at those," says José.
He holds up his little arms to Fecunda's great dripping breasts. "Take me!" he screams. His fingers unclench toward her breasts.
"This is too much noise," says Miguel. "Teach this woman of mine how to be a mother, Fecunda. I will be in the backyard planting José's placenta under the banyan tree."

Fecunda gloats as she sits down on the bed with Pilar sucking gently on one breast. Fecunda's light-skinned newborn has a body as rigid as an ironing board. Pilar releases a man-sized belch.
Fecunda nestles José into position against her unused breast. José grabs her, sucks and roots.
"Gently, José," I say. "You are only a guest!"
José cries tears of relief with the abundant warm milk that spills into his mouth. Pilar takes delicate mouthfuls. José's cheeks bulge like coconuts as he gulps. As she looks down at José consuming her in great draughts, Fecunda shakes her head.
"Your boy is a greedy little feeder," she says.
José drains her limp while Pilar is still sucking delicately on the other half-full breast.

"Tortugina," says Gabito, "look what our son did!"
"Are they not supposed to do that?" I ask.
Fecunda picks up her empty breast and waves it like a slice of ham.
"After eight children," she says, "I have never seen such an appetite."
"MORE MILK!" cries José.
He plants his tiny feet against Fecunda's fat and lunges at Pilar on the other breast. Pilar spits milk at him to defend her territory.
Fecunda lifts José and drops him on my chest wet and wheezing from the short flight. His mouth opens and closes, reminding me of Señor Domingo's perch deprived of the sea.
"That beggar needs another breast," says Fecunda, "and it is not going to be mine."

The bed rises a few inches as Fecunda stands.
"Here we are!" say Rosa, Mimosa, and Auntie Patina, herding themselves over to the bed with their new babies. Infants are crushed between rolls of cousin fat as the women exchange places.

Rosa puts little Rosita down on the bed. She opens her blouse and draws out one enviable breast. She has small purple nipples shaped like lily pads. Her cheeks, covered in peddler-cart rouge, curl into a wide grin as José reaches for her.
"It usually takes one lullaby per breast to put Rosita to sleep," she says.
She begins a lullaby, but José drains Rosa flat so fast there is no song left in her eyes. Rosa's painted green lids drop tears on José's head.
"Look how ugly the little beast has made me," says Rosa.
"With this kind of appetite," says Fecunda, "he will be so fat in a week, you will have to diaper him with a tablecloth."

The women all laugh. Mimosa with her clubfoot infant, Poncho, takes a turn and is sucked limp as a wet sock. With Auntie Patina's contribution from her multicolored breast, José's tummy finally reaches maximum bulge. He settles into sleep with white bubbles drying on his open mouth, snoring like an old dog.

The women pass the bottle of wine to replenish themselves. Rosa is drunker than the rest and bangs the bottle down on the nightstand.
"Shall we see what this little beast has to recommend him?" says Rosa.
She unpins José's diaper. As she pulls back the flaps, the cousins whistle.
"Oh, he will be popular with the women," says Rosa, licking her wine lips.
"Balls like a ripe peach," says Mimosa.
Fecunda pulls José's penis, stretching it as far as it will go. José awakens with a contented gurgling smile and returns to his slumber.
Gabito, who has been silent through all this, winces.
"Tortugina, it is not a toy! Give my son's penis some respect!"
I push Fecunda's hand away from José.
"What are you doing to my son?" I say.
"A man needs all the help he can get," says Fecunda. "You must do this for him. It is our gift to the daughters of Las Mujeres."
José's little member is straight up like a vote.
"When the boys get older," says Mimosa, "they tie on stones to lengthen themselves for marriage."
"I have never done such a thing!" says Gabito.

In his sleep, José pees against Fecunda's chins. The women laugh as she wipes herself with a clean diaper. They bundle their infants quietly so as not to wake José and his appetites. Fecunda with Pilar, Rosa and fat Rosita, Mimosa with club-footed Poncho, Auntie Patina and Gloria of the gray eyes disappear out the door.

A scent rises off José, as though he had been stored separately in soft cheese. His little lips against my breast stir such quiet pleasure that I never want to move from the warmth of this position. Is it possible that I, Tortugina, can be distracted from my dream of being a diver by this wondrous delivery? Gabito wraps his arms around us as we nestle into the sheets, and it seems almost possible.

A breeze from the garden's tangled scent floats through the window. I kiss the top of José's head, lightly layered in golden-brown hair. My mouth fits over his tiny fist. I count his fingers with my tongue. He gurgles and smiles with a little sigh.
"Oooh, Mamá," says José. "So far, I am very pleased with life."

José is happy.
I am exhausted.
"What do you know of life, José?" I say. "Feeding at the breast of women, the feel of sex."
José burps. "There's more?"

As long as my little José lies in the arms of a woman, he will be content.
I close my eyes and I am inside his baby dream. He floats in a woman's arms. Her vast face that is mine looks down at him, and he looks up at me and sees a human landscape. Clouds of black hair over soft dune shoulders, my smile, longer than a coastline. I have cliff-white teeth, and my nostrils are sea caves. He opens a hinged door in my womb and climbs in.

Someday José will have his own moustache, and what will be my compensation, my prize, for bearing the tyranny that loving him will have over my life?

As the world grows older and no wiser,
High-stepping to the same ruined tune,
What can we do but dance together
And repeat the insanity of love?

To be continued

**************

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