Chapter 30
At first my body just roiled, like the ocean was churning in my gut. I didn’t know if it was anxiety, or the swirling, sucking motion of life being made.
Then, I became a fertile, supernatural creature. My pubic hair grew into a long luxurious beard, and my nails grew into strong white talons. At night, I prowled around the neighborhood with my newly powerful nose, smelling desert jasmine, fresh mulch, meat charring on the grill.
When I saw the shadow on the ultrasound, batting at something unseen, it was difficult to grasp it was happening inside me.
When I thought about it too hard, I would sometimes seize up, imagining how claustrophobic it must be inside the tight, dark space of my body, and I would have to push the image away.
The doctor moved the wand around, and there was a flash of silver I couldn’t identify. She pointed and said, Look, right there. The little penis.
It was a boy.
When he started to kick, he felt like a dolphin flicking his fins against my insides.
He demanded food at all hours of the day, and I was happy to oblige him, cramming in stacks of banana pancakes and well-cooked cheeseburgers and heaps of vegetables whenever I could.
I was proud of how strong he seemed, my big, vital baby.
Perhaps my creature would make a good boy—the raw energy of it creating a powerful specimen in my abdomen.
But that wouldn’t be all he was—he was also half Micah, and so he would be sweet and contemplative.
Micah made a playlist of soft indie music for him—dubbed amniotic rock—and we listened to it in the car, imagining him floating in his little ocean with his arms waving in wonder, surrounded by the gossamer sounds of Fleet Foxes and Band of Horses.
I also played Belle’s music for him, running through her entire catalogue, from the Clayton albums to The Cursed Woman to Mile High Woman and her other pop albums. If he would never meet her, at least he would know her voice, and how she’d seen the world through her many transformations.
When I called Hess with updates, she was so happy that it was almost like getting to tell my own mother and feeling the warmth of bringing a new member of the family into the world. The pride of having fulfilled some sort of ancient duty, as archaic as it sounded.
I didn’t want to just pick a name out of a book.
I wanted to somehow discover it in nature—a name with a greater meaning that would root him to the world.
We thought of naming him after Micah’s brother Kenny, or perhaps Tate, after my father, but I worried it would be a bad omen to name a child after men who had died so young.
Everywhere Micah and I went, there were now the three of us, the little world I’d dreamed of just coming into being.
We talked about how we would do things differently than how we were raised—we would not shame him for his emotions.
We would encourage his talents. We would, above all, make him feel loved in a way that we were never loved.
We knew this was a futile exercise—there was only so much you could control, of course, we knew that—but what was the harm in fantasizing?
Sometimes it felt like the baby was creating me, rather than me creating him—I was calmer, happier, less prone to anxiety and dread.
As unnatural as it was for me, I was able to lean into the joy without reservation.
When I was twenty weeks, I dreamt I was back on that rocky cliff in California with Shelli, except this time there was a crowd of people there both alive and dead—Hess, Martha, Micah and his brother, Dinah—and we were all passing the Mad Dog bottle and having a wonderful time.
When I walked to the tip of the ledge to jump, they cheered me on.
This time the quarry water was warm, and I sank instantly into that sliver of night beneath the surface. I floated serenely until my foot kicked against whatever that slick, solid thing had been. I tried to swim to the surface, but this time it caught my ankle, and it started to pull me down.
I looked beneath me and saw the man in white from my mushroom vision, his skin glowing in the murk, his long, thin fingers wrapped around my ankle like jellyfish tendrils.
I could see the outlines of his face rippling in his own light, fine-boned and feminine at one angle, then almost brutish in another.
For a moment, we stared at each other, unmoving.
Then from up above, breaking through the surface, I heard a scream. It was happening again, I needed to save her, but the man in white began to pull me down once more, tugging me down deeper into the darkness below.
I woke with a start in bed, still feeling the water on my skin. I ripped the covers off, and blood soaked through my underwear, pluming around me in a large, lurid blot.
Micah rushed me to the hospital in silence as I panted in the passenger seat. I was grateful for the unrelenting pain; I clung to it. I wanted more, and more.
At the hospital, the doctor said I’d lost too much blood, and they needed to get me into surgery right away. Through the haze of the pain, it seemed we’d skipped a few steps and I asked, “Is he gone?”
The doctor and Micah exchanged charged looks, as if this had already been discussed. Micah tried to answer, but then his face twisted up and he couldn’t get the words out. He turned away, and the doctor took my hand instead. “I’m so sorry. The fetus didn’t make it.”
In the operating room, as the nurse counted back from one hundred, I didn’t feel myself falling into blackness as I’d expected; I could still see her and the flurry of activity around me, but now I couldn’t move or speak, as if I was trapped in my own body.
My old claustrophobic panic rose up quicker and hotter than I’d ever felt it before, flooding my insides, making my very being scream with pain.
The beige walls and the masked people fell away, replaced by the wood panels of a cabin room. It was the same cabin from my mushroom vision.
My mother suddenly approached and crouched in front of me as she had before, eyes bloodshot and lips cracked, grabbing my arms. I could feel how rough her grip was, my wrists pulsing between her fingers.
Again she said, “Rhea. Angel. I need you to listen to me.” She squeezed harder, and I winced in pain. “What I’m about to tell you is the honest to God truth. People will tell you it isn’t, but don’t listen to them, you hear me?”
Again, my head nodded of its own will.
“All right.” She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
“Many years ago, when your great-great-great-grandmother was 33, she made a deal with the devil. She traded her soul for a beautiful singin’ voice.
But he played a trick on her. He didn’t tell her that for the rest of time, her female descendants would inherit this deal, this curse, and die from a tragic accident at 33. ”
She searched my face, making sure I understood. “My mother died on her 33rd birthday, hit by a truck while crossin’ the street. When my grandmother turned 33 she fell from a bridge and drowned in the river. Do you see what I’m sayin’? It ain’t just a story. It’s real, angel.”
I felt my head nod.
She took a deep breath. “My birthday is real close—”
“But your birthday was in May,” my little voice chirped.
She waved me away. “I’m talkin’ about my real birthday, darlin’. Now, listen. I don’t got much time left. But we are gonna stop this thing, okay? Me and you.”
I could feel myself shaking now, a warm sob rising up in my chest without resistance in a way I’d never felt before. “I’m scared, Belly…”
Her mouth screwed up, and she squeezed her eyes together. “Oh, angel, I know, I’m scared, too.” Her eyes watered, and her grip loosened on my arms. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted this to happen. But I’m gonna make it right—”
A pounding came from the door, and she jerked her head toward it. She let go of me, crept over to one of the curtained windows and peeked through the slit between the fabric and the frame.
She gasped and stepped back quickly, bringing a hand to her chest. The pounding came again, shaking the wood in its hinges.
She ran over to me and pulled me up from the couch into her arms. “There’s been a change of plans, angel.
I don’t think I can take you with me. It’s too dangerous.
So, just listen to me now. When you get older, and things start goin’ bad, remember this: You are not crazy.
You are cursed. And remember what I’m about to tell you, okay?
” Her face was stern and focused now. “A few months before—”
The pounding came again, this time even harder and more brutal against the wood. She cried out in frustration.
“Okay, okay, never mind.” Her eyes darted around the room.
“We’re gonna play a game,” she said, as she carried me over to a large wooden trunk in the corner.
“There’s a monster comin’, and I need you to hide from him.
” She opened the old-fashioned padlock with shaking hands and frantically pulled out the afghans, leaving a hollow space.
She picked me up and placed me inside. I instinctively crouched down, and she tried to smile, but I could see the fear pulling at her features.
“Stay very, very quiet, and the monster won’t find you. All right?”
I heard my child’s voice say, “But what about you, Belly? Where are you going to hide?”
She almost smiled at this. “I’m gonna fight the monster, angel. Now, remember…” She put a finger up to her lips and closed the trunk lid over me. It was dark and cramped inside, but there was comfort in it. I felt safe and contained.
Outside the trunk, I heard the door open, and then footsteps so heavy they rattled the roots of my teeth. I could hear her voice, like she was pleading for something, but I couldn’t make out the words through the thick wood.
Footsteps, movement, her voice, too much to isolate and discern what was happening. Then, the door shut once again. Silence.
Endless, stretching silence.
I thrusted up on the lid to open it, but it didn’t budge. I heard the padlock jangling against the outside.
My breathing quickened and my body warmed as I tried to force the lid open with my small hands. I thrashed around, going dizzy, not getting enough air. I screamed for my mother, hoping she or someone would hear me, but there was no answer.
Then the lid was opening, flooding the chamber with blinding light and cold, raw air.
I was in a hospital room, and Micah stood over me, his face drawn in concern. He seemed to have aged five years in the last five minutes. He tried to smile when we met eyes, but I could see how forced it was. He started to tell me the operation was successful, but I wasn’t listening.
All I could hear was the monster’s hooves against the floorboards, my own shallow breaths reverberating against the tight space. And my mother’s voice like sweet, smoky music, whispering,
Remember this.
I held my breath.
You are cursed.