Wake, Siren

by Nina MacLaughlin

  But sometimes they can’t protect.

  There were four of us under our tent. My two sisters, my brother, Phaethon, and me. Our parents, Clymene and Phoebus, made six. I’m the oldest so I’m speaking on behalf of the three sisters. We were a gang, the four of us kids, and sometimes we kicked and punched each other and stole things from each other, and read each other’s private diaries, and there were tears and shouts and we were sometimes monsters in the way that children are monsters. It was a strange circus, with a faraway mom who lived in a nest of her own self-obsession and dread and a distracted dad who wasn’t around because he brought the sun to the world every day.

  We worried about Phaethon, we always did. He was sensitive and proud and defensive. He was sad but wouldn’t say so, maybe didn’t even know so, and he made all of us laugh when he wasn’t being sullen.

  Some so-called pal started teasing him, told him there was no chance Phoebus was his dad, that our mom had been lying all these years. Phaethon went red in the cheeks and pretended not to care. “You’re full of shit, Epaphus,” he said, “and all the girls talk about how your breath smells like a sewer.” But he came home and cried to our mom.

  If only he’d come to us instead.

  We would’ve said: “Who cares, Epaphus is a nothing, a jealous worm, you don’t need to listen to him, you know what you know and you are what you are. Trust us. We say the true things with force. Let’s play catch in the yard.” And five minutes later we would’ve been laughing. And the next day we would’ve found Epaphus and surrounded him and said, “Hey, little worm, are you so jealous, are you so small and jealous? If you touch him we will rip your fingers off and eat them.” And that would’ve been the end of that. He’s our brother and we’re ferocious and we protect each other.

  But he went to our mom. And instead of wrapping him in her arms and assuring him and telling him not to listen to jealous bullies, she took Epaphus’s words personally as though this child had insulted her. She read it all wrong. She thought: People think I’m a liar? That a god wouldn’t want to sleep with me? She didn’t try to calm poor Phaethon, not even for a moment. “You go up to your dad and you tell him to prove it to you. He’ll show you, I promise, ask for anything you want.” She riled him, fanned the flame of his hurt, showed him he was right to be upset.

  And up he went to find our dad, and Dad said, “Of course, my son, to prove that what your mother says is true, I’ll give you anything.” A vow we all wish he hadn’t made. No god can refuse what they’ve promised. Phaethon was excited but didn’t know what to do, he was too young to know anything, and he thought of how he could rub it in Epaphus’s face. And he saw Dad’s chariot and he said, “Let me drive.” And Dad said, “Oh no. No, no, no. I’m the only one. It’s too much for you. It’s too much for anyone but me.” But Phaethon loved the thought of zooming over Epaphus’s head in the chariot that brought the sun, and he persisted. Over and over our father tried to dissuade him. “Phaethon, no, not this. Jove himself can’t carry out this task. It’s too dangerous for you, a mortal, and young. Let my worry for your safety be proof that you’re my son.” But Phaethon wouldn’t be persuaded—once he’d had this idea he couldn’t give it up, stubborn and seduced by the danger, the power, the trying to do what only Dad could do. He insisted on exactly what he asked and our father had to agree. Phaethon hopped on and took off.

  You could say he lost control, but he never had it in the first place. The horses sensed a different pair of hands at the reins, and they tore through the sky. And what’s hard for us is thinking about him up there, getting dragged and tossed, and how terrified he must’ve been, so scared, maybe crying, maybe shaking, trying to pull the reins, not knowing what to do, regretting his wish and just wanting to be home with us in the backyard playing catch, just one more game of catch after dinner as the sun goes down. We think of him ripping through this nightmare, past the monstrous creatures who live up there, nearly gutted by the horns of Taurus, stung by the Scorpion’s tail, pinched in half by the Crab, clawed open by the Lion. Our brother, alone up there, so afraid he can’t even cry, gripping the reins as tight as he can, making small noises, whimpers. He must’ve felt so alone. This is the thought we can’t stand. Because we saw him as a baby and we saw him as a boy with his stuffed animal dog. And we heard his voice crack when he was growing into himself. And we saw when he wanted to be tough. We saw when he fought tears. We saw him sad and lonely, the three of us sometimes excluded him even though we loved him, and we wish we hadn’t left him out, and we wonder if maybe that’s what made him sad. We teased him and he teased us and we all laughed and played catch and it was nice because we could tell he loved us, and we loved him.

  Up there, he couldn’t stop, he couldn’t get control, the horses dragged him this way, that, up high enough so he careened against the stars, and low enough so that first the earth’s peaks lit fire, and then the heat of the sun burned away all moisture in the soil. Trees were cinders; fields were dust. Rivers, streams, and lakes boiled, evaporated to their beds. Whales wouldn’t breach; to surface was to burn. Towns, cities, the world became a furnace, smoke so thick Phaethon lost his way even more. Earth herself begged Jove to make it stop, and choked on smoke as she cried out. Jove did what needed to be done. He threw a thunderbolt at Phaethon, direct hit, and our brother fell through the sky like a shooting star, ignited by the bolt, all the way back to earth. Our father put his face into his hands and in his grief, for one whole day, there was not a single ray of sun.

  We three sisters found the place where his bones were buried and flung ourselves upon the ground. We lost ourselves in grief. We wailed and mourned and were helpless in our sorrow, our young brother gone gone gone. Who were we without him? Incomplete.

  Brothers go away sometimes. Our poor scared brother all alone in the sky where we couldn’t help him. Our poor sad brother who was urged on by a small-headed mom. And after a month of mourning at his grave, the three of us began to be rooted to the earth where Phaethon fell. In our grief we started to change into a three-tree grove of poplars. Mom rushed around and tried to pull our bodies from the trees we were becoming, and every twig and branch she broke was breaking off a finger, an arm. “Leave us, leave us,” we screamed, blood dripping from our branches. “You and Dad are both useless! You can’t do anything right! Leave us alone!” we yelled as we hardened further into our new forms.

  Now, just this once I will not speak for my sisters, because I do not know if they share this feeling that I have (but if I know them, which I do, I bet that I am not alone): I think about wrapping one of my branches around our mother’s throat and pressing there until she’s dead.

  We make a new tent with our boughs. It’s all that we can do. There will be no children here, not under this tent, only the small soft animals of the forest who take comfort in our shade.

  ALCMENA

  I did everything right. I took being preggers very seriously. You’ve got to! The way I ate, the way I exercised. Weights, yoga, and pilates for expecting moms. Lots of brisk walks. And foodwise, I probably caused an avocado shortage in Mexico. I’m not kidding! I was buying them by the case. Those omega-3s, baby. Lots of Brazil nuts, lots of those lush and leafy greens—kale, chard, collards, broccoli rabe—do you pronounce it rabe to rhyme with abe or rabe to rhyme with rob? Spinach, dandelion greens, jeez, if it was leafy and green, I sautéed it with garlic or made it into a smoothie. In the mornings I drank this superfood babybrainbuilder slurp. Homemade yogurt, peanut butter, grass, tinctures of nutmeg oil, anchovy oil, and, what else, cinnamon, boiled chicken chunks, dried myrtle root, powder of bear claw, and these pills my Chinese healer gave to me. Who knows what was in those! Whatever it was, it worked because I could feel this baby growing. I allowed myself to eat exactly what I wanted while also focusing on ingestibles with the highest density of nutrients. Like, if I wanted a bowl of peanut butter chocolate chip ice cream, I’d say hell yes, and get myself a spoonful of peanut butter and a square of vegan stevia-sweete
ned chocolate. I don’t want to say it’s about indulgence, but in some ways, that’s exactly what it’s about! But I did get a lot of comments. Because of how big I was. Most women go by that fruit-and-veg chart, like the little nugget is going from lentil to lime to bell pepper to spaghetti squash (love those!) to cabbage to coconut to pumpkin. For me, more like, watermelon to beach ball to hay bale. And people would see me on the street, taking my brisk walks, and be like, How many people you got in there? And You giving birth to a teenager? And Do you fall on your ass when it kicks? I usually tried to laugh. The kicking was an issue, to be honest. I mean, that kid was strong! I wouldn’t fall on my backside, but it could stop me in my tracks, that’s for sure. I tried to laugh those comments off. Probably people were jealous, is what I figured. Big baby, child of a god, Jove’s son, everyone knew, and my hair and my skin looked great. It’s a responsibility bringing any new life into the world, and that responsibility increases two million percent when it’s a demigod growing inside you. And believe me, I felt the weight of that responsibility in a literal way. There were mornings I’d wake up and think, How is this my life? How’d I end up here? And not in a grateful way, necessarily. And I’d think, Oh, one drunk night, one bad decision I don’t remember making, and my whole life is different. But don’t get me wrong. I also felt really proud, knowing that the person inside me had the potential to be something truly important, an actual hero of the world. And maybe all expectant mamas feel that way. I don’t know. But I guess feeling like a vessel of someone else’s potential felt, well, exciting on some days, most definitely, but also maybe a little isolating? Like maybe it felt a little harder to locate my own self? Also, there weren’t a lot of women I could talk to about it. There weren’t a lot of women who understood. I found the friends I had, the girls I hung out and partied with, well it felt like we were moving in different directions in life, and I wasn’t really understanding them and they weren’t really understanding me. And people get weird when they’re jealous. And then there were the people who touched my belly without asking. Like they’d place their palms on my body. Without asking! Strangers! I’d grab their wrists. “Do I know you?” I’d ask. I’d look right into their eyes. They’d blush, apologize. “Don’t you ever,” I’d say. “Do not ever.” “You think you can just touch me?” It’s like when you’re holding another human life inside yourself, suddenly you belong to everybody. I get it, I really do. It’s exciting, but it’s my body and you can’t just touch it because you’re excited. That’s just a rule of thumb. Don’t go around touching pregnant ladies you don’t know. For one thing, already, with a baby inside you, you sort of feel—I mean, I definitely felt a little like my body was no longer my own? That suddenly not only was I sharing it with someone else, I’d sort of given it over to someone else? If that makes sense? I didn’t feel that way all the time, but sometimes. But there was this one time, at the market, I was buying ginger root and chia seeds and, you guessed it, avocados, when he started kicking, and for once I wanted someone else to feel. And there was an old lady sniffing cantaloupes and I said to her, “He’s kicking. Do you want to feel?” And she looked at me and maybe because I looked so fit and my belly was so big she felt nervous. “It’s okay,” I said, and I took her wrist to place her hand on the spot where he was kicking. She snatched her wrist away. “What are you doing?” she asked. “Why would I want to touch you?” And she kept squeezing cantaloupes and sniffing them. Probably it was the hormones, but I started sobbing when I got outside. Pregnancy is a roller coaster, that’s for sure! I guess maybe in that moment, I just wanted to be touched. But I went to bed looking forward to my big morning babybrainbuilder slurp and told myself, new morning, fresh morning, there’s a baby of a god growing inside you. I don’t know, maybe every mama thinks their baby is going to be great, but I really knew it. I really knew that the force inside me was going to be great. And I still know it! Look at him! Little Hercules. He’s about eighteen months now. Sometimes I look at him and think, You came from me? He’s just that beautiful. His hair’s a little messy now—I need to give it a trim—but the way he romps around and he shares so well and has so many words already. Hercules, be careful on the slide, please! I mean, talk about good genes, right? Sometimes I see the other mothers and their littles and I think, How does she deal with that child, the way it grabs or tantrums or throws its little snack-pack container of Cheerios on the floor. I try not to be judgmental, but it’s hard. Or I see the parents giving their children M&M’s or those dried cranberries. I want to tell them, Don’t you know what’s in that? And sometimes I do tell them. But it’s none of my business and all I can do is control my choices. And I know my choices don’t involve sweetened dried fruits or, my gosh, industrial candy. It’s like, oh, yeah, good idea, let your baby play with the spray cleansers that live under the sink, or let them lick the subway poles, great idea! Herc only wears organic cotton. From a skin standpoint and an environmental standpoint, it’s the only thing that makes sense. Ethically. His toys are made of natural materials. Wood, wool. It was the same with breastfeeding. I mean, you have breasts, you have a baby, isn’t it obvious what you’re supposed to do? I shouldn’t be judgmental, but also, every study ever done says it’s so much better for the baby—nutrient-wise, allergy-wise, bacteria-exposure-wise, bonding-wise. And speaking of bacteria, that makes me think about natural childbirth. Honestly, I knew from the start that I wanted my birth plan to involve a natural, vaginal birth, even though I knew the size of him might do me right in. I wanted it in a bath. No drugs. No epidural. No C-section. Again, not to be judgmental, but everything the doctors say confirms that the baby needs to pass through the birth canal, like the process is incomplete if it’s just pulled straight through a slice in the abdomen. The baby doesn’t get essential bacteria that way, ones that keep it healthier, stronger, less allergic to nuts, less likely to get autism probably. I mean, I’m not positive about that, but it’s probably true. I get it, it’s a personal choice. One woman’s neighbor, when she heard the woman was getting a C-section, said, “That’s right, stay tight for Ted.” I mean, yeah, great. Stay tight for Ted, but what about the bacteria your baby needs? What about the most natural act a woman can take part in? Stay tight for Ted, but at what cost to your baby? It’s shocking. I was nervous for the birth, obviously. This was going to be a huge baby, and I wasn’t sure my body could handle it. I’ve told so many people the story of his birth, I hope I’m not boring people. I was walking downstairs into the kitchen when my water broke and I thought, Okay, here we go. And I called on Lucina, deity of childbirth, to come and help the process, standard operating procedure. I had a doula and a team of midwives, too. And as I waited for the contractions, I put the kettle on to make red raspberry tea and started humming my calm song, just like they’d taught me. And Lucina arrived, and she pulled a stool from the kitchen and sat down outside the door of my home birthing room. I was pretty distracted by the whole being in labor thing, so I didn’t think much of the fact that she was staying outside the birthing room, sitting there with her legs crossed and her hands clasped. I hadn’t done this before, so I figured that’s just how she did things. But eventually it became clear that this was not how she just did things. So I go into full labor. I’m sweating, I’m pacing, I’m lying down, I’m squatting, I’m trying to sing my calm song, I’m crying out, I’m wailing. I’m calling my herbalist in a panic attack. I’m feeling so deeply alone in the pain. Like I was entering some new realm. And it goes on and on and on. I try pushing. I push with every single muscle in me. All the muscles I’ve worked over years of running and yoga. Nothing. All the while, Lucina is sitting in the hall, her right leg crossed over her left, and her hands clasped over her right knee. She sat and sat and I thought I was going to die. I’m not kidding. At a certain point, I thought, I can’t do this. I’m not going to make it through this. The pain was—well my gosh—there just aren’t words for it really. If you know, you know. I’m serious when I say I was in full labor for seven days. S
even days! I laugh about it now, but it was no joke. Somewhere around hour a hundred and fifty of full labor, in a complete delirium, I finally realized what might be happening. Jove was the one who got me pregnant, it was just the one time, and I barely remember it. I used to drink a lot more than I do now. Though, these days, I have been drinking a little more again. But I wondered if maybe Juno was super jealous, which I get, her husband getting another woman preggers. Of course that’s not cool. And I began to wonder if maybe Lucina and Juno were in cahoots, and that she was trying to kill me because of loyalty to her friend. I couldn’t express anything at that point except grunts and howls, so thank god for Galanthis. She was this young woman on my midwife team and she was a sweetheart and tried to say all these kind, coaxing things, and she smudged sage around the room and fed me eggplant and had me do this bouncing thing, all to try to get that baby out. But nothing was working because Lucina was outside the room with one leg crossed over the other and her hands clasped. I was wailing, and honestly, I barely remember this point. I was totally delirious. Like honestly, maybe I was a little insane. But Galanthis knew about the whole deal with Jove, I’d confided in her, and she realized that Lucina was doing Juno’s bidding, and so she closes the door for a little while and I’m screaming away, who even knows at this point, and then Galanthis goes rushing out the door and says to Lucina, “Oh my gosh, great news! She did it! It’s a boy! She had a boy!” And Lucina, furious, unclasps her hands, and uncrosses her legs, and thereby undoes the lock that had kept me in labor for days, and that, for real, is when it happens. Lucina flies off, and right away I know it’s happening. I lay down in the bath and the pain of this baby rips me in two. Herc was just over fifteen pounds, and my body hasn’t recovered. Eighteen months later. I say ripped me in two, and I mean it. He tore me apart. But oh my gosh, it was so worth it. To see his head in the bathwater, with flower petals floating around? I’ll never forget that. I saw him and I was more in love than I’d ever been. Honestly, maybe it was the first time I was in love! It sounds ridiculous, like totally woo-woo, but I’m serious: it transformed me. Motherhood has made me something else entirely. I am the mom of Hercules. That’s not all I am, there’s other stuff, too. But a lot of the time, it’s all I feel like I am. A mother. Sometimes it’s enough. I mean, really, most of the time it’s more than enough. My body is still not my own, and it never will be, as long as he and I both walk the same earth. Total transformation. I look at him and I just feel awe. The one hard thing though, Galanthis, when she realized she’d really been able to fool Lucina, she laughed. And the gods can be so catty, you know? She shouldn’t have laughed. But she did. And before Herc was all the way out, Juno turned Galanthis into a weasel. A slim blond little weasel who slithers close to the ground. And, weirdly, when she gives birth to her littles, they come out of her mouth. I was grateful for what she did, so she lives here with me, I mean right here, on me. All of my clothes have a small pouch for her, so I can feel her sort of squirming around. She’s so soft. She really likes to be pet on her belly. I like having her. I take really good care of her. And she squeaks in my ear sometimes. She’s my friend. Honestly I’ve been a little lonely. I mean, I have Herc. But everyone needs adult companionship, right? A friend? She’s my friend, soft little Galanthis, aren’t you? Ouch, please don’t bite. Aren’t you?