“Was pregnancy interesting or was it half vile, half boring, like a rash or someone else’s long and disturbing dream?” Read a short story by Kate Ristow
Photo: Kristin Kastein They were enormous pills, speckled brown, oblong, and chalky. But they came in a pretty blue jar, and the woman at the health-food store said they were better than the other vitamins. Those, she said, contained sugar and dye, carcinogens that were illegal in Europe. She was an unsettling woman in a long, mauve sweater. She stood close to Greta. She said her name was Bonnie.
In the car, Greta opened the bottle and swallowed one of the pills. They smelled awful, like dirt and ammonia. She took another one. It was the second pill that lodged immediately and resolutely in her esophagus. All through the day she could feel it — a bitter lump of folic acid and herbs coming apart inside of her. It wasn’t totally unpleasant, she decided, though it was distracting. She kept putting her hand to her chest, trying to coax in downward.
His oldest daughter, he said, had four sons. So that kept her busy. Another was a lawyer, a third did something improbable and creative with metal, another was a podiatry resident. There was one daughter who he always skipped over. Was she dead, Greta wondered. Was she hooked on drugs or stuck in one of those cults, waiting on enlightenment with glassy eyes? She tried not to think about that fifth daughter.“Blame it on hormones if you want. You might lose your voice.
He didn’t know. This wasn’t the kind of thing he was interested in. They’d met at their college library, where they’d both had work-study assignments. Later she’d joke that this is why she became a librarian. Back then, she’d liked his confidence, his focus and optimism; those things that were the antidote to dread.
The next morning Greta went back. That was a mistake. The store felt darker, weirder, more unkempt. Bonnie was there, but this time she had a little girl at her side. They floated toward her, in the same pale linen.“Did you take the vitamins?”“Those are very easy to swallow. If you’re choking it’s negative emotion and stress. Magnesium deficiency, probably, which is common. Stress, depleted soil … Bad for baby. I hear it in your voice, actually.
All of this might have been a funny story, such whimsy is a pregnant lady’s brain, but then one day Bonnie showed up in the children’s library where Greta worked. Bonnie was smiling, wearing a wide blue hat. “Anyway,” she went on, “I’m going to tell you something for your benefit. If you insist on giving birth in the hospital you are putting your baby at risk. You don’t have to let them rub poison on your baby’s eyes. You don’t have to let them stick your child with their needles. Actually, you never have to do that.” She took Greta’s hand and pressed a shining black stone into her palm.Greta said nothing. Was it fear or globus hystericus that lodged in her throat? Either way, she couldn’t talk.
Greta was weak, hurriedly injected with something. Her husband’s eyes were concerned, and then the doctor’s eyes were concerned, and it became obvious then, how little anybody really knew. A couple of months passed hazily. Greta’s voice did not return to normal. She emailed the doctor but got a note from Roseanne. He retired, it said in all caps. Your birth was his last birth. You’ll just have to be patient. You can gargle with salt water if you want. This also helps with bad breath which is more common than people think.
“Where did you go,” Greta said when he got back. “Where have you been?” Her voice was supposed to sound firm, but it did not, it wavered, traitorous.Greta developed the unfortunate habit of pondering the future. There were things she was certain about and things she was not. Her husband would go on to do things, publish things, win things, become a handsome grandfather with a big chair on a big deck that looked out at a big sea. He’d never lose his hair, never grow one of those big hard bellies.
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