And yet. Everything was bringing me to you, I thought with my hands on my stomach, with something approaching surprise. Everything, bad or good or neither, was bringing me to you all along.
20
The safe place was no longer safe; we had been there too long, outstayed our welcome. Valerie’s words filled the new silence where Therese’s chatter used to be. I couldn’t help but dwell on it when I woke early in the morning: Therese on the ground and the mud staining her makeshift pregnancy clothes. Even the comforting sound of the leaves had become sinister. The earth itself had turned on us.
We must remind ourselves of our purpose, said Marisol. Nobody will save us. We have to save ourselves.
We left the car where it was parked at the edge of the forest, emptied of food, and instead we walked straight on from the point of the cabin, when darkness fell. It was strange to be on the move again. My stomach had grown, and I felt weaker, as if my muscles were forgetting how to propel me. In the dark anything could be happening around us. We helped each other when we stumbled.
Morning broke and it started to rain. We pitched our tents—or rather I made up my own tent and Marisol unzipped it without asking, wriggling in next to me. We were too big to fit comfortably and I complained. She put her hand over my mouth. Hush, she said, her eyes burning out of her face, and I let her. Afterwards we fell asleep with our hands on each other’s stomachs and I woke disorientated, not knowing which body was mine, which baby was mine. I had dreamed about a white room and a large egg on a table and cracking it open.
I pushed her awake. Get out, I said, I need you to get out. What’s the matter? she asked, but I couldn’t explain, couldn’t articulate, there was a sticky fear all over me. Her hands tightened on my stomach until I prised them off. There were red marks from her fingernails on my skin.
None of us spoke as we walked onwards after sunset. Lila looked from me to Marisol from time to time, as if she wanted to ask something, then stared at the ground. The rain continued. The skin on my stomach smarted from where it had been squeezed, though the red marks had already faded to nothing.
On the second day Marisol left me alone. I slept with the knife in my hand, dipping in and out of consciousness. When we stuck our heads out into the twilight, Lila had gone. She had taken all the food. I kicked at the bare earth where her tent had been pitched.
Everybody leaves, Marisol observed, not morosely. She produced two cereal bars, one for each of us, that she had hidden in her sleeping bag. We ate them in silence.
21
We walked through the night. When we came to the edge of the forest, past dawn, we embraced, and for a second everything was back the way it was. Marisol barely showing, brushing against me in that first dark bathroom. Marisol against the pulsing broken lights of the arcade game, giving me the courage to pluck my own teeth from my gums.
We hid in the ditch at the side of the road. It was deep, enough room for us and our things. I was anxious, restless, hot prickles of electricity running over the skin of my bump. Every time a car appeared in the distance Marisol raised her head, squinted. No, she said, ducking back down. Not that one. Not that one.
Eventually a small yellow car came along. It was clean and its number plate indicated a town in the north. This one, Marisol said.
The woman driving screamed to see us moving out in front of her; our dirt-smeared faces, our bulging stomachs, our hands reaching out to tell her stop, stop, stop. It felt good to be the dangerous thing. She swerved the car and almost went off the road, but wrested it back. Marisol went up to the window. She pointed her pistol at the woman, who cringed and shut her eyes.
Wind this down, Marisol said, slamming the window with the heel of her hand. Her ruthlessness was incredible to see. It sent a shard of ice through me, both proud and ashamed.
The woman wound it down. You have to drive us somewhere, Marisol said. Open the doors, quick.
The woman pressed a button and Marisol motioned to me. In, get in, she said.
I picked up our things and opened the car door. Thank you, I said idiotically to the woman. Marisol opened the passenger door and got in next to her.
Drive, she said, and the woman did as she was told.
Marisol switched on the radio. I love this song, she said. She hummed along. I stared at the back of her head. I wondered how many Marisols were contained within her, if there was anything she could not transmit or reflect. The woman looked right ahead at the road.
Sorry about that, Marisol said, all charm again. We just needed your help. We recognized a fellow mother. We knew you’d be on our side. How many children do you have?
One, she said, not looking. Just one.
This is your family? Marisol said, pointing to a small photograph tucked into the pull-down visor on her side of the windscreen. A balding man and the woman and a small girl, with their arms around each other. They were on a beach somewhere. The girl in a red jumper, too big for her. Marisol took the photo to study it more closely and then passed it to me. The woman flinched, but didn’t say anything. I studied the girl’s gapped teeth, the man’s smile. I felt a profound, murderous jealousy.
Marisol opened the glove compartment. I watched her do it, watched the machinations of her thoughts. The woman’s papers. Her address, her name, her details. I watched her absorb the information, file it away somewhere. The woman was shaking. I could feel it where I sat, uncomfortable, in the back.
You are going to drive us where we need to go, Marisol said. You are not going to tell anybody that we were in your car. If you do, I will come for you. I will come for your child like you came for mine, like you came for hers. Do you understand?
Yes, the woman said.
We are desperate women, Marisol explained. We weren’t always this way. You can understand that.
Maybe, the woman said. Her eyes met mine, briefly, in the rear-view mirror.
I like you, Marisol said, stretching out her legs, fishing out the map from her pocket. Let me show you where you’re driving.
BEACH
1
It was nearly dark by the time she dropped us off. We had reached the coastline, a long stretch of it pale and flat against the sky. There was a small town along its edge, sand blowing into its roads. I felt safer in the dark’s blanket. Most things were shut. On the outskirts we reached a garage, neon pinks and blues, no cars at the pumps. I wanted to taste the petrol on my tongue.
Marisol spat on to a tissue and wiped dirt violently from my brow, tied back my hair so tightly that I winced. You want to look presentable, don’t you? she said sternly. She waited with our packs while I went inside to buy things, feeling clean and illuminated, like the inside of my skull was hollow. My thoughts were all visible and for once they were pure. They were concentrated in my stomach. Maybe cruelty was good for the soul.
Two pints of milk, pineapple in a ring-pull can. Tiny sweet oranges in a blue net. A sliced loaf of soft white bread. Bottles of water, the cheapest they had. I missed beer, I missed cigarettes, but only in the abstract. I was a walking miracle, and alive. A man in a stained khaki apron rang all the things up for me. I felt like I could destroy him with my eyes, break his arm if he questioned my presence. Anything was possible.
If I need you to, will you cut out my baby from my body? asked Marisol as we walked towards the sea, eating bread straight from the bag. Will you make sure the baby is safe even if I am not?
Yes, I said, thinking of Therese, knowing that I would if I had to, even though gore made me feel sick, had always made me feel sick, ever since the days of my growing up.
I would cut yours from you, Marisol said.
I know, I said. That’s why I didn’t ask.
In the dunes we pitched just one tent. Easier to hide, Marisol said, and I had to agree that mine was too conspicuous, the red flag of it stuffed deep in my backpack. The moon was bright and liver
ish. I sat with my body inside and my legs outside, folded up, watching the line of Marisol’s throat as she tipped her pint of milk up to the sky and drained it. Her mouth was pink and wet.
I went for a walk alone across the beach, asking Marisol to stay behind. Her eyes were on me as I made my way down the sand dunes, almost falling, not quite. My hair became loose and was blown into my eyes, grit against my mouth and I swallowed it, taking in the ocean. Out over the grey line of the sea, the sky was peach and crossed with lines of light.
Along the shoreline, the sand was wet and packed. When I looked down at my feet I couldn’t see them past my stomach, but I could see my footprints behind me, as if they were something independent, a ghost following my trail. I started to laugh at nothing, leaned over, my hands flat on my knees. In my pockets I put seaweed, shell, a piece of wood worn bone-smooth. When I looked back I was further than I’d realized and Marisol was a speck on the dunes, too far away to see if she were raising an arm to me. The horizon was golden, and where she sat was dark. I could have walked into the sea or just kept going on that sand, on and on following the coastline where it snaked around, but instead I started to return. Return was possible. The pockets of my jacket were full. They smacked against my body as I walked.
2
By dawn, the tent was milky with breath, strewn with pieces of orange peel. When she woke, Marisol’s eyes were swollen. My heart, she said, does it feel strange to you? I took her pulse and then pressed my hand to the left side of her chest. It was slightly faster than it should have been. I know too much about what can go wrong with bodies, she said.
We ate more oranges and slices of the packaged bread, but we were still hungry afterwards. Our appetites were raging, the babies telling us that they were almost ready. We stink, Marisol said balefully. Well, let’s go in the sea then, I replied, but she shook her head, listed the dangers. Rip tides, weevers, jellyfish.
We buried our evidence, fruit peels and the plastic wrapping of the bread pressed loosely into the sand. The sea had come much closer to us. As we walked along the beach, we stayed near to the dunes. I took off my jacket. The sun hit my skin, warmed it.
What’s wrong with you? I asked her.
She didn’t reply right away.
Some animals bury themselves in the ground when they give birth, she said eventually. Some animals leave their eggs in the sand. And others leave the baby alone to fend for itself. Did you know that a human child can’t look after itself for the first five years of its life?
That’s a long time, I said.
It’s what you signed up for, she said. And the rest of it.
She walked behind me. My neck prickled. Neither of us moved to touch, to hold the other’s hand.
Some mothers eat their young, she said. And others, the true mothers, are consumed by the children they produce. Spiders do it. They allow their offspring to swarm. They see themselves for what they are, which is sustenance. Meat.
We walked for a while longer. Why do you have to be so morbid, I wanted to ask. Why can’t you be happy that we got this far.
When we pitched the tent once more I could not sleep. Marisol was snoring lightly. It was lovely to watch her, despite everything. To see the flex of her toes as they moved in her dreams. But I was too restless to settle, so I crawled outside to where my rucksack was set beside hers, expectant. I found myself picking it up, heaving it on to my shoulders. It seemed a little less heavy than before, or maybe I was just used to the weight. Motion seemed important, suddenly. I decided to go for a walk.
I hadn’t got very far before I felt a loosening, an unslinging. In the base of my stomach, something was pulling or being pulled. A sharpness rushing and receding, like the tide, and in that moment of pain something opening me up, up and away. My legs were wet. Marisol had told me that when the baby was coming, the water it lived in would be released first. The small ocean in which the baby swam. The wide ocean behind me. I watched the sand dampen around my feet.
All right, I said. All right.
I didn’t turn back.
3
Sand gave way to a group of small houses, yellow-painted. Flowers and shells in the gardens, benches on which you could sit and breathe in the sea air. White-ticket. Looking in the windows was irresistible, looking in at the life I had been found unworthy of. Loving, and being loved. It made my heart beat quickly and bile rise in my throat. I wanted to transport myself to R’s future, to his own white-ticket home and his own fat baby in a pram, and push my face against his glass window, to hurt myself with it. The pain was good, distracted me from the other pain rippling through my body, periodically, building in tandem with my fear. I remembered the woman in the film, her mouth stretched open, the classical music masking her noises.
There was nobody awake in the first house, lights off as I tried to make out details—furnishings, ornaments, the colour of the walls. Same at the second, the third. It was the fourth house where I struck gold. A window at the back with one lamp lit. It was the kitchen, and inside it was a woman. There was no need to see her locket. She held a baby in her arms, nakedly vulnerable without the protection of the pram. The sight took my breath away. The baby waved a small hand towards her face, caught her lip and pulled it down. The woman kissed the top of the baby’s head and opened the fridge, searching for something. I cried a few hard tears, involuntarily, as if I had been punched, and then I pulled myself together.
It was easy to pick the lock. When I let myself into the house, I pretended for a second that it was my own, that I was returning to what was rightfully mine. Look: the warm wood of the floorboards, the table on which the telephone sits. I left my rucksack next to the coat rack, setting it down silently. I would have decorated differently, would have stripped the wallpaper and painted the floor. I was full of anger. This should have been mine. What had I done to be excluded? What was wrong with me? It was the question I had been asking my whole life. I stopped, crouched to the floor as the pain went through me again, hot and unfamiliar. I breathed, waited, stood. I went towards the kitchen. The woman was facing away from me, seated and holding the baby to her body. I put a hand on her mouth from behind her, wrapped my other arm around her waist, and she stiffened but could not fight me, not with the child in her arms. If anyone had seen us it would have looked as though we were locked in an embrace.
Don’t scream, don’t scream, I whispered to her, my mouth at her ear. Her hair smelled of honey and fresh linen. She juddered under my hands, tried to crane around and my bump pressed against her harder. I don’t want to hurt you, I promise.
The knife was still in the hand of my arm that was restraining her. I leaned forward and put it on the table, where she could see it, and she went limp.
I don’t want to hurt you, I repeated. But I need you to be quiet. Will you be quiet?
She nodded. I waited a few seconds, then let my hand drop. She stood up and immediately moved to the other side of the table. Her blouse was open. The baby stirred against her.
Please don’t take my baby, she said, her voice low and dark. Please, I’ll give you anything, just don’t take my baby.
I don’t want your baby, I said, and I pressed my hands to the swell of my stomach so she could see it properly. I’m like you, I said, even though it was clear I was not, and the obviousness of this filled me with a wounding shame.
Why are you here? the mother said. The baby began to fuss, picking up on the tension. Oh sweet, oh beautiful, she said to the baby, the soft language of it almost unknown to me, bringing me to tears again. I wiped them away angrily, picked up the knife.
I want to know what to do, I said. Something’s happening to me.
She was looking at the baby, not me. I don’t know what to tell you, she said. I don’t know where to begin.
Please, I said. Another bolt of pain. I closed my eyes, breathed through my teeth, and when I opened them she was looking
at me, at the wet patch on my dress, at my juddering chest.
Oh, she said.
I sat down on a chair and motioned with the knife for her to do the same, even though it was her house. She sat at the other end of the table, heavily.
Start from the beginning, I said. Start with the basics.
Her eyes were wide. You’re in labour, she said. The pain will get worse and worse. And then. She hesitated.
And then what? I asked. Quickly, please.
Well, and then you push the baby out. She motioned vaguely. The baby will come out on a cord, and you have to cut the cord, but not too soon. You have to wait until the placenta comes out, that’s the red thing on the end, there’s no mistaking it when it comes.
It was like she was speaking another language. The baby started to move against her blouse and she turned away from me slightly as she did something, gave the baby access to her body. She turned back and I realized that the baby was attached to her nipple, its mouth locked on to her flesh. I thought about the heaviness of my breasts, hard and blue when I undressed, and it made a terrible new sense.
Her eyes were shadowed under the light of the overhead lamp.
You’ll watch the baby every second of the day. You’ll be convinced they’re dying. You’ll hold them to your body and weep. Sometimes you will think of killing them yourself.
I put the knife down.
You’re not a white-ticket, she said to me. It wasn’t a question. I don’t think you really understand what you’ve done. What kind of trouble you’re in.
I can cope with trouble, I said.
I don’t mean the emissaries, though they will surely find you, she said. I mean the other trouble, the motherhood trouble. The trouble that doesn’t leave you.
She touched her baby’s head very lightly. Come with me, she said. Let’s put him to sleep.
Blue Ticket Page 16
