Chapter 11
I dreamed I was giving birth on a farm in the middle of nowhere.
No—not right.
I dreamed I was giving many births—all the labor of my life—at once.
A doctor and a husband and a midwife stood over me. They shouted, PUSH.
I was terrified and calm and euphoric and regretful.
The baby wouldn’t budge; the baby slipped right out.
I felt the earth-shattering horror of the first time—on my back, staring wildly at an antiseptic ceiling—and the easy chemical slip of the following three, and the roaring triumph on all fours of the fifth—finally at home, finally in charge—and then dozens of babies were pouring out of me, one after another after another after another, crying and gasping on a dirty hardwood floor, bloodstains on my thighs, years of them, caked in sedimental layers on my skin—
The doctor and the husband and the midwife had mouths but no eyes. None of the babies had feet. MAMA! everyone cried.