Dark Hair

It’s hot in here, and too noisy. The women’s voices rise around me, a soft chant that is still too loud for me, after the days and days of silence. In the corner of the room there’s a bloodstained sheet, bundled and tossed there, from when the waters broke. I hadn’t noticed it before.

The room smells too, the air is close, they should open a window. The smell is of our own flesh, an organic smell, sweat and a tinge of iron, from the blood on the sheet, and another smell, more animal, that’s coming, it must be, from Janine: a smell of dens, of inhabited caves, the smell of the plaid blanket on the bed when the cat gave birth on it, once, before she was spayed. Smell of matrix.

“Breathe, breathe,” we chant, as we have been taught. “Hold, hold. Expel, expel, expel.” We chant to the count of five. Five in, hold for five, out for five. Janine, her eyes closed, tries to slow her breathing. Aunt Elizabeth feels for the contractions.

Now Janine is restless, she wants to walk. The two women help her off the bed, support her on either side while she paces. A contraction hits her, she doubles over. One of the women kneels and rubs her back. We are all good at this, we’ve had lessons. I recognize Ofglen, my shopping partner, sitting two away from me. The soft chanting envelops us like a membrane.

A Martha arrives, with a tray: a jug of fruit juice, the kind you make from powder, grape it looks like, and a stack of paper cups. She sets it on the rug in front of the chanting women. Ofglen, not missing a beat, pours, and the paper cups pass down the line.

I receive a cup, lean to the side to pass it, and the woman next to me says, low in my ear, “Are you looking for anyone?”

“Moira,” I say, just as low. “Dark hair, freckles.”

“No,” the woman says. I don’t know this woman, she wasn’t at the Centre with me, though I’ve seen her, shopping. “But I’ll watch for you.”

“Are you?” I say.

“Alma,” she says. “What’s your real name?”

I want to tell her there was an Alma with me at the Centre. I want to tell her my name, but Aunt Elizabeth raises her head, staring around the room, she must have heard a break in the chant, so there’s no more time. Sometimes you can find things out, on Birth Days. But there would be no point in asking about Luke. He wouldn’t be where any of these women would be likely to see him.

The chanting goes on, it begins to catch me. It’s hard work, you’re supposed to concentrate. Identify with your body, said Aunt Elizabeth. Already I can feel slight pains, in my belly, and my breasts are heavy. Janine screams, a weak scream, partway between a scream and a groan.

“She’s going into transition,” says Aunt Elizabeth.

One of the helpers wipes Janine’s forehead with a damp cloth. Janine is sweating now, her hair is escaping in wisps from the elastic band, bits of it stick to her forehead and neck. Her flesh is damp, saturated, lustrous.

“Pant! pant! pant!” we chant.

“I want to go outside,” says Janine. “I want to go for a walk. I feel fine. I have to go to the can.”

We all know that she’s in transition, she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Which of these statements is true? Probably the last one. Aunt Elizabeth signals, two women stand beside the portable toilet, Janine is lowered gently onto it. There’s another smell, added to the others in the room. Janine groans again, her head bent over so all we can see is her hair. Crouching like that, she’s like a doll, an old one that’s been pillaged and discarded, in some corner, akimbo.

Janine is up again and walking. “I want to sit down,” she says. How long have we been here? Minutes or hours. I’m sweating now, my dress under my arms is drenched, I taste salt on my upper lip, the false pains clench at me, the others feel it too, I can tell by the way they sway. Janine is sucking on an ice cube. Then, after that, inches away or miles, “No,” she screams, “Oh no, oh no oh no.” It’s her second baby, she had another child, once, I know that from

the Centre, when she used to cry about it at night, like the rest of us only more noisily. So she ought to be able to remember this, what it’s like, what’s coming. But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.

Someone has spiked the grape juice. Someone has pinched a bottle, from downstairs. It won’t be the first time at such a gathering; but they’ll turn a blind eye. We too need our orgies.