Thirteen October 23, 2023 #2
As the disorienting wave of déjà vu hits, Elsie’s still standing in front of the workshop door, but it’s dark outside, night, and the room itself is dimly lit.
There’s music playing. Her prism, the one Crystal gave her so long ago, hangs in front of the window along with a string of patio lights.
All of John’s woodworking equipment is gone, though the unfinished kayak still hangs from the ceiling.
The old wood floor is clean and polished.
A desk and two chairs sit prominently to her right, the lights from the two monitors flashing.
There is colour everywhere: on the robin’s egg–blue walls and in the mural of the moon phases in the night sky that covers a partition.
(Elsie clearly painted it herself; it’s the same image as the cover of the atlas.)
Behind the partition, someone is groaning loudly.
Elsie steps to the side to see a woman with bright red hair that covers her face leaning on a blue exercise ball on top of a queen-sized bed, one leg lengthened as if she’s stretching, her bare ass exposed to everyone gathered around.
Three women in blue surgical masks are kneeling right below her at the foot of the bed.
The one in the centre, wearing a flowered kerchief over her hair, has her gloved hands at the woman’s crotch.
Two men stand behind the naked woman, in the dark of the corner.
Another man eats a sandwich on a chair. Two more women are hunched on either side of the exercise ball.
The naked woman lets out another guttural groan and something emerges from her nether regions. A head. A purple head.
“That’s it!” the woman in the flowered kerchief says. “The head is out.” She’s a midwife, then. The two women on either side of her are assisting. “You’re almost there, Elsie!”
And with that, everything shifts into focus: the woman giving birth is her, future Elsie, who has really packed on the weight. “I can’t do it!” she cries.
The woman mumbling in Elsie’s ear is Bailey, wearing jammies. She must have scrambled to get here in time. The woman on the other side of the bed, where her mother might have stood during this birth, is Crystal. Crystal. “One more push!” she says.
And one of the men behind her is Marcus.
She can see his face now, as he steps to the side to peer at the baby’s head dangling there.
But who is the other? Bailey blocks her view.
He’s a shadow standing back in the corner, as if he doesn’t belong.
The third man sitting in the chair is Travis.
He finishes off his sandwich and wipes a hand on his jeans.
Elsie, future Elsie, wails horribly as her body strains and then, sloop, an alien slides into the midwife’s hands. The creature looks like it’s a prop constructed of purple rubber, covered in blood and white goo, not even alive. Yet it howls and shakes its tiny fists in protest.
Future Elsie sobs, her face crushed, her whole body shaking, and the emotion ripples through the room, contagious, like a dancing plague.
Bailey, Crystal, Marcus, the midwives are all a tumble of heaving shoulders and bunched faces.
Even Travis wipes a tear from his eye as he ambles over.
And then the shadow man steps into the light, where she can see him: It’s Zander.
He stares down at the alien over Marcus’s shoulder and cries too.
And then Elsie (our Elsie), watching from the wings, inexplicably spouts tears herself.
The whole production was so much more intimate than sex, embarrassingly so.
And yet, fascinated, she couldn’t look away.
She’s never seen anything quite so grotesque and wonderful in her life.
In the future, the near future, she’ll have a baby!
A family of her own. Just as she’ll love the child unconditionally, this child will love Elsie as she is, without judgement.
Another human will accept her, like her mother did.
The midwife lifts the creature up to this future Elsie, the blue umbilical cord still attached and pulsing.
There’s blood everywhere: on the child, on future Elsie’s arms, her chest, and, as she brushes her hair away, her face.
With Bailey and Crystal’s help, the new mom lies back on the blue-and-white disposable underpad with the infant on her chest. Taking in air, the baby is already changing colour, from purple to a vibrant red, though her hands and feet remain blue.
The child squints at the world around her, as if she doesn’t know what to make of it.
Elsie doesn’t either. The date Zander gave her for the fifth house event was a little over nine months from now, in 2024. Her heart cartwheels. This is all about to happen soon.
As Mom puts the baby to her breast and Marcus, Zander, Crystal, Bailey and Travis gather round to coo, the midwife clamps the umbilical cord and offers Marcus a pair of scissors.
“Want to cut the cord?” He stares at them before finally accepting the challenge, then snips.
He steps back with a mix of pride and disgust on his face to wipe his brow.
Elsie shifts from foot to foot, unsure if she should intrude on the happy family scene but desperate to see the baby, her daughter. It’s then that Zander notices her standing at the door. “She’s here,” he says, clapping a hand on Marcus’s shoulder, and everyone turns to Elsie.
The future Elsie waves her over. “Quick. Hold her. You don’t have much time.”
Tucking the atlas under her arm, Elsie rushes to the bed, where the midwife swaddles the child in a blanket and offers her the bundle.
The child is so unbelievably small. And ugly, a goblin.
But—the smell of the child. She can’t get enough of it.
She sniffs the infant again and again, laughing and crying as she breathes her in.
The smell is intoxicating, inducing a high, like a sugar rush.
“She’s beautiful,” Elsie says, and now that she’s smelled the child, she means it. But there’s something more. It’s that feeling her mother described: Elsie knows this baby is hers, a part of her. There’s an immediate recognition, an absolute knowledge that she and this child are forever connected.
But then, too soon, this future Elsie reaches for the baby. “I have to take her now,” she says. “It’s time.”
Elsie doesn’t want to let go. She rocks the baby a moment longer, murmuring. Then, as she finally hands over the child, the atlas slides down from under her arm. Elsie fumbles for it, catching it before it hits the ground, but The Pocket Atlas of Nostalgia and Longing snaps shut.
All at once, Elsie is back in Crystal’s dead husband’s workshop. The work tables and machinery, the unfinished kayak over her head. The smell of sawdust and walnut oil. From between the woodworking machinery, Zander and Crystal stare expectantly at her, wonder illuminating their faces.
Elsie looks down at the atlas in her hands.
The baby, her baby, is gone. But that delicious new baby scent still lingers on her clothes.
And her desire to hold the child is a longing unlike anything she’s ever felt before.
It’s like hunger after a fast. No, like thirst after days without water.
She could die without it. She holds herself.
“Are you okay?” Zander asks.