Arms Wide Open

by Patricia Harman

  I find my stack of torn white cloths, folded in a shoebox under the sink, and hand them over. Mara sits down on the window seat, watching me wrestle Mica into his pajamas.

  “You like having a baby?”

  “I do. I don’t know what I expected. I was never one of those girls that couldn’t wait to be a mom, but it’s comfortable.”

  “I’d like to have kids, but I’d be afraid to give birth. The whole idea . . . a baby coming out of my vagina! Maybe I’ll adopt. Did it hurt? They say it’s terrible.”

  I shake my head. “I haven’t had much pain in my life, but it’s not like getting your arm cut off. It’s a different kind of pain, and if you know what to expect, it’s not bad. . . . I mean, my labor was long and hard and it hurt more than I imagined, but I survived. You could do it . . . . You just have to get your mind out of the way; your body knows what to do.”

  “Get your mind out of the way?”

  “Yeah, don’t think too hard. Stacy and I spent months of preparation, like we were working out for a marathon. I must have read ten books, everything from Thank You Doctor Lamaze to Childbirth without Fear, and we went down to the Twin Cities for childbirth classes eight times.

  “I looked everywhere for a midwife, but the only one in the state is eighty years old, charges four hundred dollars, and won’t leave Minneapolis. I visited the director of nursing at both of the hospitals in Duluth but neither allow the father to be present or let you deliver naturally, so we drove thirty miles to a little hospital up the coast.

  “In the end, we didn’t get a perfect birth but a good one. Stacy was my rock, and I know, for us, all that preparation was worth it, but if we’d just had a midwife, someone to be our guide, I bet we could have done better. Like I said . . . you just have to get your mind out of the way . . . the body knows what to do.”

  Mara leans over and gives Mica a hug. “Maybe . . . Maybe I could do it. I guess I could. He looks worth it.”

  Later, lying on my back under the quilts after I’ve tucked Mica in, I smile, hearing voices rise from the clearing and remembering the relaxed, hopeful faces. There is a season, turn, turn, turn . . . I can just make out Mara’s soprano, Kaitlin’s alto, Tristan’s bass, and Colin’s tenor. Stacy and Tom are both baritones. A time for every purpose under heaven.

  Baptism

  At breakfast, the kitchen smells of oatmeal, cinnamon, and maple sugar. There’s a body on every surface in our little log house, the window seat, the four chairs, even the floor. Sunlight streams through the west window. Morning has broken, like the first morning, Mara sings as she wipes off the kitchen counter. Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird . . .

  I study these people carefully, wondering what it would be like to live with them. There’s no doubt we all care about building a new world, but what kind of builders would they be? Would they tirelessly cut and drag wood from the forest? Dig holes for fruit trees? Climb up in the wind to fix the roof? And what are they like when they’re hungry? And what are they like when they’re tired and hot?

  For lunch, after working on the root cellar, we arrange a picnic on blankets down by the swimming hole. The day has turned warm and it’s fall equinox, though it still feels like summer. Cumulus clouds float overhead and the leftover maple leaves glitter in the midday light. Winter will be upon us soon, but Stacy strips off his clothes and dives, with a shout, into the chilly water.

  The rest of us follow, pulling off jeans and T-shirts. Our bodies are thin and muscular, some tanned, some pale as a ghost, but no one’s too shy to go skinny-dipping. I realize, once more, how lonely I am for community.

  Mara and Kaitlin break out into song, an old spiritual. As I went down to the river to pray, studying about that good old way, and who shall wear the robe and crown . . . We all pick up the gospel song and pretend to baptize each other, playing like kids. I push Tom’s head under the water. Then he dunks me.

  I let myself float on my back with my arms wide open and the current carries me downstream, away from the voices. The Lester is clean and metallic. Above me the branches bow over my head. It’s a river of light, I think, a river of rainbows.

  Summer Camp

  By the end of the week, a stack of split logs as high as my chest is piled against the side of the cabin. The root cellar now has shelves, a roof, and a door. Our friends are leaving in the morning and our last bonfire is like the closing session of summer camp. We sit in the grass or on logs, in a tighter circle now. Mica is wrapped inside Kaitlin’s jacket so only his blond head peeks out under hers, his white fuzz surrounded by her long dark hair. Tristan lies on his sleeping bag with his head on Mara’s lap. Tom has taken up whittling.

  Colin speaks for us all, like the camp chaplain. “This has been a good week, a time for reflection and labor, a time to get to know each other. I hope we can continue this fellowship and work together in the future.” He’s referring not just to the chopping of wood, the singing of songs, and the frolicking in the river, but the meetings we had, each day, to discuss our dreams of community and how we might actualize them.

  “Amen,” Kaitlin whispers. I peek over at Stacy to see what he’s thinking. He rests next to Mara, smiling into the flames. Golden sparks shower up like fireworks when Tom carefully drops another log on the flames.

  Later, in bed, I pull up the quilt against the chilly evening, curl around my lover, and whisper into the dark. A shaft of silver moonlight comes from the window. “They’re nice aren’t they?”

  “Mmmmm.”

  I can’t tell if that’s a yes or a no. “I really like them. Don’t you?” I want Stacy to answer, Yes, these are our people. But he rolls on his back and stares up at the beams.

  “Tom and Tristan seem to be hard workers. Colin has the vision.” That’s all he says, then his breathing slows and I know he’s asleep.

  In the morning, frost covers everything. Cobwebs are beaded with tiny balls of ice and the berry bushes sparkle. Every leaf and blade is rimmed with white. As Stacy, Mica, and I help our friends roll up their tents and then escort them to their truck at the end of Dahl Road, we walk on crystal.

  “Well, good-bye, man.” Stacy offers Colin one of those guy hugs. They pat each other’s backs.

  With wet eyes, Colin ruffles Mica’s corn silk hair. “ ’Bye, little buddy.” When my turn comes, I hold Colin fiercely. His beard smells of soap and the campfire. I have loved him for years, loved his body, loved his mind, loved his courage, maybe not the way he loves me, but no matter. He returns my squeeze and gives me a buzz on the neck that gives me goose bumps.

  Tom helps Mara climb into the bed of the pickup, where they settle against their packs. Kaitlin, Colin, and Tristan scramble into the cab. “See you at the Peacemakers conference in Cincinnati,” Colin reminds us, leaning out the passenger window.

  “We’ll see . . .” Stacy responds. “I doubt we can both come. I hate to leave the homestead for long. Last winter we had those vandals . . .”

  Kaitlin blows us a kiss. Mara waves and Tom reaches out as the truck pulls away. Our fingertips touch.

  Then Stacy and I, hand in hand, with Mica swinging between us, walk slowly down through the swamp, where dried ferns catch in our bootlaces, up through the tiny, now naked, orchard, past the beehives, and finally into the clearing, bigger than when we left, emptier.

  Fall Again

  CHAPTER 13

  Dilemma

  “Sorry I got here so late,” Wren apologizes when she meets me at Leif Erickson Park. When I saw her at the food co-op she asked me to meet her here alone on this warm autumn day, so I knew something was up. The tall twenty-eight-year-old pulls her one long braid back and refastens the rubber band. She’s a thin woman with shiny dark hair, a wide smile, and straight teeth. “I just needed to talk to you alone. I found out last week that I’m pregnant.”

  “Yeah?” I bend down
and take Mica out of his baby carrier so he can run around. Wren is a senior at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. We haven’t seen that much of each other since she went back to school to major in early-childhood education. I can tell by her voice that this is bad news.

  “I think I should get an abortion,” she continues. The word sounds like metal dropping down a laundry chute. I watch Mica chase a flock of pigeons across the lawn, his fine blond hair blowing.

  “You think?” Politically I’m pro-choice, but I’ve never really known anyone who’s had a termination, don’t even know where they go. How do I reconcile abortion with my pacifism? Fortunately Wren doesn’t ask me what she should do or what I would do if I wore her shoes. “Who’s the dad?”

  “That’s part of the problem. I don’t know. I broke up with John. I told you about that. He was fooling around with that waitress at the country club where he works as a cook. Then I got together with Louis, a guy in my psych class. I really liked him, but John started calling, wanted to make a new start, and you know, we’d lived together for four years, so I thought I should try. Somewhere during that time I must have forgotten one of my birth control pills . . .” There are tears in her brown eyes. I reach over and take her hand as we follow Mica down the gravel trail toward the gazebo.

  “I don’t know what else to do. John and I weren’t back together more than two weeks until we started fighting and he moved out again. He’s not daddy material, that’s for sure, and I hardly know Louis. I don’t have any money and my parents told me when I left Kansas that I was burning my bridges. If I have the baby, I won’t be able to finish my degree. I’ve gone over the whole thing three hundred times and don’t see any other option. I’ve weighed everything back and forth and I feel like I’m going crazy.”

  All around us the last roses of summer bloom in the formal gardens, red, yellow, and peach. I don’t find anything surprising about Wren’s behavior or how she thinks. I’ve had more than one lover at a time. I’ve done my share of dumb things. I just wish she didn’t have to face such a decision. Wren would make a good mom . . .

  “Have you talked to John and what’s his name, Louis?”

  “No. Can you imagine how complicated that would be? I was only with Louis a few times, and John will freak out, just make things worse. He’ll want to take responsibility, but he’s such a flake. I’m alone in this.”

  We lean against the rail of the gazebo, watching the water of Lake Superior lap up on the shore, white foam like lace on the sand. I frown, thinking of Stacy and what a good dad he is. How would he feel if I terminated his baby without even telling him? Mica is arranging stones along the gazebo steps. Once he was only a few cells in my womb. Where does life begin and end?

  Despite the beauty around us, the roses, the light, the sound of the waves, this day has turned dark.

  There’s no scale of justice in our hearts to weigh a decision like this and I have no wisdom to offer, no lifeboat in a storm, nothing but my body, so I take Wren in my arms and rock her, rock her back and forth like a baby, while she looks down at Mica and cries. A seagull cries with her, high in the wind.

  Lost

  Hard freeze, last night, but it warms up fast. After a lunch of lentil soup and homemade whole-wheat bread, Stacy and I go up to the big clearing to tend our remaining fall crops: kale, cabbage, and a few drooping rutabaga. We sit Mica down at the edge of the garden, in the tall yellow grass, where he can entertain himself with his bag of blocks and sock monkey.

  I stare at the ring of dirt and burned branches where our campfire was three weeks ago, a charred reminder of our new friends, a wound in the soil, but more than that, a wound in me, a hole where there wasn’t one before. My loneliness seems deeper since Colin and the others bumped away in the pickup. I think of their voices, singing around the flames, and start to cry. I’m so sensitive. Something is wrong with me.

  Stacy seems as stalwart as ever. Though the day has a chill, he’s thrown off his shirt, and his bare, tanned back gleams with sweat. He churns through the soil, singing with pleasure. I’m gonna jump down turn around, pick a bail of cotton. Gonna jump down turn around pick a bail of hay . . . Chop. Chop. Chop. I pick up my hoe and join him. It’s hard to be sad on such a beautiful day, with such a joyful companion. Gonna jump down turn around . . .

  A few minutes later I lean back, wipe my face, and glance around. “Where’s Mica?”

  My companion shades his eyes. “He was over by you playing in the dirt a minute ago.”

  I drop my garden tool and move around the near end of the clearing. Stacy goes back to tilling the soil. Chop. Chop. Chop.

  “Mica,” I call, stooping to peer under the sumac bushes, with their burning red leaves. “He’s not here, Stacy.”

  “Well, he’s probably back at the cabin.”

  I trot back through the balsam grove and circle our house. “Mica!” I call again. At first, like Stacy, I’m not worried. Our little boy has never gone away from us before. How far could a two-year-old go? Then I think of the river. I race around the two-story building, peer between the trunks of the maples into the nearly naked woods, and run down the hill to the Lester. The ripples glint sinister in the harsh afternoon sun, slash me like a sword. Shit. I can’t find him! He’s vanished. Now I’m sick to my stomach.

  “Micaaa!” I shout. I’m not sure what to do, so I run back up the hard dirt path, through the balsam grove to the meadow.

  “Stacy!” He’s only thirty yards away, but the wind blows in the wrong direction. “Stacy!” Finally, he turns. “Mica’s not at the cabin. Come on. You’ve got to help find him!”

  “What?” Still he can’t hear. He drops his hoe and ambles barefooted toward me, the legs of his jeans rolled up to his knees.

  “You’ve got to help me find him.”

  “What?”

  “Mica’s gone, I tell you. I can’t find him anywhere!”

  “Where’d you look?”

  “All around both clearings, in the chips by the woodpile, and down by the water.”

  When I mention water, Stacy immediately understands the danger and sprints for the river. The Lester is now five feet deep in front of the house, even deeper down by the swimming hole. If Mica slipped off the bank, he could be a quarter mile downstream by now, lifeless as the deer trapped under the logjam.

  “Mica! Micaaa!” we both scream.

  “OK, let’s not panic,” Stacy says when he comes back to the cabin. “He could be anywhere. Let’s be systematic. He’s never gone near the river by himself before. What’s most likely?”

  I stare wildly around, trying to think. How could I let this happen? I should have been watching my precious boy! A mother always knows where her baby is. I should have been watching.

  “He can’t be in the house, the door is too heavy and the handle too high, but I’ll look anyway.” When I come out without Mica, Stacy is pacing back and forth on the trail.

  “Let’s check along the riverbank again,” he barks. “Except for the bear, that’s the most dangerous.” The Bear. I hadn’t even thought of the bear! “You go downstream as far as the swimming hole, then cut over to the orchard. I’ll run out toward the swamp. He wouldn’t have time to get farther.”

  “If he hasn’t fallen in the river already.”

  “Patsy, don’t even talk like that! Don’t even think like that.” We both run off, barefoot, just as we were when we worked in the garden. I’m sending a prayer out to the universe, Oh little blond boy, be safe, be alive!

  “Micaaa!” I cry over and over. I hear Stacy’s voice shouting too, getting farther away. As I come up the orchard rise, greenbriars snatch at my jeans. Stones cut my feet. My voice is hoarse from yelling but I can’t give up.

  Be here! Be here! Be here! I pray with each ragged breath, hoping to find our little boy in the bee yard, covered with honey. I don’t care if
there are bees crawling all over him, just so he’s safe.

  At the top of the knoll, the four bee houses squat in the sunlight, but there’s no Mica anywhere. From the hill I can see into the birch grove, where the narrow white trunks stand like a Greek chorus, accusing me. How could you let this happen, a mother always knows where her baby is!

  “Micaaa!” I call, turning in the four directions with my hands cupped to my mouth.

  “Micaaaaaaa!” No answer.

  When I stop, the silence engulfs me. There’s only the placid buzz of the bees as they come and go with goldenrod pollen covering their legs, and a pileated woodpecker up in a pine, laughing like Woody Woodpecker.

  Now I move more slowly, and for the first time notice my feet. If I knew what to do next, the pain wouldn’t matter. I’d run on until I dropped. Our little boy has bare feet too, I remember, and swipe my eyes with the back of my hand.

  By the time I stumble down to the cabin, I’m not even yelling Mica’s name anymore. I’ve moved on to thinking what to do next. We’ll have to walk out to Rob’s and call someone, the police, I suppose. They’ll send out a search team, maybe the National Guard or soldiers from the air base, the men I curse when they roar over the farm in fighter jets.

  The authorities will glare at us through their metallic shades, thinking us the worst kind of hippies, child neglecters, too stoned or high to take care of our kid. They’ll see the primitive way we live, our clothes, the dirt on our faces. They won’t understand that losing my child is like losing my soul, like my heart torn out of me. Then I hear voices.

  “Ila gives me cookies,” Mica explains, cradled safely between Stacy’s knees, his overall jeans rolled up like his father’s and his long-sleeved red T-shirt dribbled with food. He kicks his bare feet in the water. “I visit Ila and Barney.” Stacy lies on the riverbank, resting back with his head on his hands, gazing up at the last few leaves.