Crown of Stars

by Sophie Jaff

  The man leans casually against one such imploring figure, her arms twisting out, her mouth a dark gash of terror. He cocks his head to one side and whistles a lazy melody. He pares his fingernails with the curved blade of a sickle knife.

  “Not long now, pretty maid,” he croons. “You know why.”

  My eyes open. My heart pounds. He is coming.

  The Man in the Woods

  It’s time.

  She’s red, full-blown, the seed has burrowed deep and taken root, the bud begins to bloom into a rose of flame. You have waited, contenting yourself with lesser kills, lesser colors, lesser hues of self-pity and scheming and hope and yearning, and these have kept you at bay.

  But now her redness calls to you, sings to you its siren song, the ocean spray, damp loam digging between your toes, the salt of, and the sweet of, and the bite of and the scent, the holy human scent of redness

  As pleasure filled and maddening as a drop of sweat trickling its endless secret way between your lover’s upturned breasts, the silken pull of sheets, the glossy flank of a roan, the bite of bone against your teeth, the suck of red rich marrow, the sweet sad thin stringed song on echoing stone, her redness calling you, calling you, calling you home.

  You can hardly wait to taste it.

  18

  Katherine

  Katherine sits on a lavender mat in a purple room, although there are several large purple-pink rubber bouncing balls in case the floor proves too hard. At least two of the other women in the room with her are wearing tight V-neck shirts and tanks in various shades of purple, designed to show off their bumps. Clearly purple is the “in” color of pregnancy. Even the antenatal instructor’s hair is purple.

  Her name is Kate, and she’s telling Katherine, along with at least twelve other women, what this course of BellyWise Yoga and Birthing Meditation has to offer. Her eager, acne-pocked face reminds Katherine of an enthusiastic pit bull, and her decidedly violet hair shines every time she turns, expressively and meaningfully, toward each one of them.

  Kate has already instructed them to place one hand upon their chests and the other upon their babies.

  “Start sending a loving message to your child!”

  She informs them that they shouldn’t just think of this as a prenatal yoga class. “Consider this another tool to helping you on your personal journey to embrace motherhood and your ties to all women, femininity, and the female earth.”

  Katherine looks around, hoping that someone else will look as horrified as she feels, but everyone seems to be nodding, deeply and deadly earnest. There’s not even one disgusted eye roll. Oh my God, she realizes, I’m in a cult. It was Georgie who recommended this. That bitch. If I ever get out, I’ll kill her. The thought of it makes her smile, and Kate sees this and nods her approval, no doubt of Katherine’s warmth and general love.

  Now that their messages of positivity and joyous visualizations have been sent to their unborn children, Kate announces that the class will go around the room and introduce themselves: “Say how many weeks you are, mention a few of the symptoms you might be challenged with, and share your wishes or desires for your birth experience.”

  The first woman up is Sonia, who is twenty-four weeks and experiencing back pain and acid reflux.

  “Totally normal for the second and third trimesters,” reassures Kate. “When we do the open-heart chakras, we’ll make sure to keep your head raised and really concentrate on lifting and opening you up.”

  Sonia smiles gratefully. “That would be wonderful, and I’m having a home birth, so I look forward to a calm and comfortable delivery.”

  “Excellent.” Kate nods voraciously.

  Sonia has clearly passed with flying colors. Not that I should view this as a competition, Katherine thinks, but if I can’t win, I don’t want to come last.

  There’s another American here, Naomi, whom Katherine dubs “No-Nonsense Naomi.” She’s twenty-eight weeks and looking forward to really getting in touch with her primal animal roots by ingesting her placenta.

  Katherine blinks, sure she’s misheard, but Kate looks deeply impressed. “In what form?” she asks. “Pill or . . .”

  “Cooked,” says Naomi.

  Kate nods voraciously again, her highest hopes confirmed.

  However, the next woman somewhat lets the side down. She’s a classic English beauty called Fiona and thirty-two weeks along. “But I’ll have to do a C-section.” She drops her eyes.

  “But not by your own choice, surely?”

  “A breech position.” Her shame is overwhelming.

  “Ah, well, perhaps you can still have an intervention massage? Let’s talk after class.”

  Fiona seems almost in tears. Katherine feels for her.

  As the introductions continue, Katherine realizes that, along with not knowing about purple, she also never got the memo about black yoga pants and bright, clingy tanks or tees to highlight the belly. Without exception, all the women with long hair sport a single high sleek ponytail, and the women with short hair pin theirs back with adorable primary-colored clips. Katherine’s hand wanders up to the back of her head. The only hair elastic she could find broke earlier in the morning, so in desperation she twisted it into a bun and stuck a pencil into it. She also took the website’s advice and is wearing comfortable clothing, which means the most unattractive gray, saggy, pajama-type elephant pants and an old, stained Bart Simpson T-shirt. She resolves to burn them both the moment she gets home.

  There is a long silence that seems to grow longer. Everyone is looking at her. Kate nods encouragingly, and Katherine realizes it’s her turn.

  “Oh, hi, um, my name is Katherine and . . .” She’s blanked on how many weeks she is. She should have been figuring that out while the others were introducing themselves. Oh crap. “I’m, I’m in my second trimester, so I must be . . .” Second trimester means she’s over twelve weeks, so maybe it’s fourteen weeks, or is it thirteen, or “I think, I think I’m fourteen weeks, or no, uh, maybe fifteen?” The silence stretches out. “Sorry, I’ve never been good with math,” she offers by way of apology.

  At this point the silence is so great the chirp of crickets would be welcome. Katherine has no one but herself to blame. She should have expected that when one woman announced she was eighteen weeks, four days, and six hours. Katherine doesn’t think she was joking.

  “Your symptoms?” Kate prompts.

  “Oh, I don’t really have any symptoms.”

  “No symptoms, no symptoms at all? No back pain or heartburn or nausea or headaches or dizziness or dry mouth or acid reflux or frequent urination?” She reels off these complaints with dazzling speed.

  Katherine tries to smile. She’s pretty sure she can’t tell them about those strange encounters she had back in New York and on the plane. They’ve only been in London a few weeks, but thank God they seem to have stopped, at least for now. The thing is, she hasn’t had a single symptom. Secretly, she’s even wanted one or two. Perhaps, she wonders, it would make me feel more connected with my body, with the person growing inside of me. She read that morning sickness was a good sign, but there’s been nothing. Something tells her it will not sit well in this group. At the last moment she rallies. “I have had some really weird dreams, though.” She knows it’s a poor offering, but it’s something. Kate’s face momentarily softens; the other women nod.

  “And your wish for birth?”

  “As little pain as possible.” It’s out of her mouth before she can stop it. Good-bye, all chances at friendship and success in this class.

  “Well.” Kate is polite but firm. “Here in the UK, we try to let birth take its natural course, to limit the number of interventions. We consider a certain amount of pain to be natural and meaningful in the process.” Murmurs of agreement run around the circle. Many of the women look pityingly at her. “I mean, you don’t want to be numb to the experience, do you?”

  “Yes, but—” Katherine is trying not to get angry. But we live in the twenty-first
century, is what she wants to say. Why do we need to suffer unnecessarily?

  “After all,” Kate continues, “womankind has been giving birth for thousands upon thousands of years.”

  “The only problem is that many of them died horribly in childbirth,” an unfamiliar voice says.

  The observation comes from a small woman sitting in the corner. Katherine guesses she came late to the class. She’s got wild curly brown hair, green eyes, a freckled face, and a generous mouth. She looks like a woman who was probably insanely popular in high school, who would always sit at the back of the class and barely study and still manage to get As and nobody would resent her for it. She doesn’t drop her eyes from Kate’s annoyed ones. In fact, she seems eager for a confrontation.

  “Go on.” Her look says. “I dare you.”

  Katherine is in love.

  Kate narrows her eyes even more. “Well,” she says tightly. “We’re not here to judge.” And having off-loaded that most monstrous of lies, she moves on to the woman sitting next to Katherine, who is clearly far more deserving of her warmth and attention.

  Katherine is eager for details of her defender as they continue going around the circle. Her name is spelled “Niamh” but pronounced “Neeve.” “Irish names like to do that.” The information is delivered in a strong Irish brogue. She’s fourteen weeks.

  “I’d like to use the loo less than twenty times a day, and my birth plan is to give birth,” she concludes brightly.

  Katherine has to bite down hard on her lip to keeping from laughing. She manages it, but it’s close. Kate has to gather herself together and rise above this so she doesn’t turn human and say something truly nasty.

  After class, Katherine puts all her paraphernalia away and then looks around. Niamh is gone. Shit, she frets. You missed your chance. What if she never comes back to this class? Why would she? She really wanted to talk with her, at least to say “thank you.” The other women are in clumps now, phones are out, numbers are being exchanged. They’re networking, bonding, the very thing Katherine came here for, but everyone is avoiding her. Pregnant bitches. She hates them. She walks up the stairs slowly and into the lobby where someone rises from a bench.

  “Hey,” Niamh says.

  “Hey,” Katherine says. She feels like she may cry with relief.

  They walk outside together.

  “You know what I could use?” Niamh is solemn, earnest.

  “What?”

  “A drink, possibly a fag.”

  “Or maybe a big fat joint?”

  “Oh no!” Niamh looks shocked.

  Katherine kicks herself. You crossed the line.

  Then Niamh grins, and it’s marvelous. “That’s nowhere near strong enough. So seriously, fancy a pint?”

  “Can we?” Katherine decides to confess. “I never used to enjoy beer, but recently I’ve started to dream about it.” She wasn’t going to mention this specific dream in class.

  “Of course! We can drink anything!” Niamh pauses. “Well, probably not, but I like going into pubs just to see everyone’s expressions.”

  Katherine doesn’t hesitate. Mrs. Bailey—“Call me Mrs. B”—bless her efficient heart, will give Lucas dinner. Mrs. B, turned out not to be the plump, rosy-cheeked Victorian cook of Katherine’s imagination, but rather a thin, dour woman on the other side of fifty. However, she is as capable and domestically brilliant as Katherine had hoped for. Then Lucas will play with Cordelia, and Sael will work, and she really has no desire to go home at all. Not that it’s home anyway. “A drink, or a pretend drink, sounds heavenly.”

  They stride into the first pub they find. Katherine is still discovering the warm intimacy of a traditional pub’s low ceilings, the worn but still plush patterned carpet, its clusters of old wooden chairs and tables, the lush low jangling of a lone “fruit machine.” They end up getting cokes, find a corner table and sit. No one gives them a second look.

  “So, class went well,” Niamh begins.

  “Didn’t it?”

  Then their faces break and they almost kill themselves laughing.

  “Tough crowd. That instructor . . .”

  “What an eejit!”

  Katherine is delighted with the word. “She is an eejit.”

  “I can’t stand it when they start that natural giving-birth-in-the woods shite,” Niamh continues.

  “Shite” and “eejit.” Better and better. Like most Americans, Katherine’s a sucker for other accents. “I didn’t dare say the word ‘epidural.’”

  “They’re not that keen on them here.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup, but you do get given gas.”

  “Oh my God, they gas us?”

  Niamh grins. “They’ll probably make an exception for you. Don’t want to be sued by a Yank.”

  “Well, that’s something.”

  They talk and laugh. I haven’t done this in a long time, she realizes. It feels good to laugh. Katherine thinks of her friends in New York. They still “check in,” but it’s taken on a tinge of guilt and duty. There’s the time difference, and they all have their own lives. The things she had in common with them are now more and more in the past. She’s in the “here and now,” which at the moment is in a cozy pub, where a song is playing, something about our house being a very, very, very fine house. She’s sharing a pint and laughing with a new friend, while outside rain has started to flick and spit against the windows, where it gathers into sullen drops. There’s a drifting quality, as if they’re in space and gravity has no hold. Katherine feels an almost irresistible pull to let go and let all her worries fall away.

  “And you really have no symptoms at all?”

  “Not really, apart from the dreams.”

  “I have to say that I envy you.” Niamh is rueful. “I didn’t even talk about all of mine.”

  “Well, it’s actually not always great.”

  Katherine wonders how to put it. How to express her ambivalence, the blackness that sometimes comes over her. The strange surrealism of it all. There’s a pervading dissociation, as if what’s happening in her body is separate from herself. She can’t imagine what it will be like to be a mother. She’s scared that she’ll have the type of relationship with her own child that she has with her mother, cold and distant. Now she struggles to put it all into words.

  “It’s a little disorienting, you know? It’s probably good to get a signal or two from your body. I mean, apparently morning sickness is supposed to be a sign that the baby is healthy.”

  “In that case I must have the healthiest baby on the planet.” Niamh rolls her eyes, then smiles and knocks her fist on the wooden table. “You know what else I hate?”

  “What?”

  “How the moment other women see you’re pregnant, all these horror stories start to come out of their mouths.”

  “I know! It’s like you say, ‘I’m going to the dentist,’ and they’re like, ‘Let me tell you about this horrific root canal I had that lasted for thirty-six hours.’”

  “No, listen, the other day on the bus I sat down next to this woman who told me how her greatest moment in life was reaching between her legs to feel her son’s head crowning through!”

  “Get out!”

  “Yes, it’s true!”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said, ‘I’m not pregnant, I’m just fat.’”

  “Oh my God, what did she do?”

  “She got off at the next stop! Silly bitch.”

  Amazing! Katherine loves this girl. For a moment, she toys with the idea of telling her about everything that happened in New York, but decides against it. She’ll save those sunny stories for another day, or maybe never. She’s so happy to feel normal for once, as far removed from the madness and terror of New York as she can possibly be.

  Then Niamh glances at her phone. “Oh shite, is that the time? Cath will be doing his nut!” She answers Katherine’s unspoken question. “Cathal, my husband, poor man. He’s called several times.” She di
als. “Cath? Yes? Sorry, love. Yes. No. Just with a friend.”

  A friend. Katherine thrills at the word. The stars will shine a little brighter tonight.

  “Yes, from class, which was dire. Anyway, her name is Katherine, you’ll have to meet her.” She rolls her eyes again. “Yes, love, I’m coming. Yes, I know it’s raining. I’ll try not to melt. Jesus!”

  Niamh ends the call and looks up apologetically at Katherine. “The joys of being the trophy.”

  “What?” Katherine is startled.

  “I’m the trophy wife.” Niamh slyly dimples. “Or, as his first wife says, ‘the jumped-up little tart from the council estate.’”

  Katherine almost sprays her beer everywhere. “His wife said that?” she chokes out.

  “Not to my face. But I have it on good account from his daughter.”

  Niamh laughs at Katherine’s expression and gives a mock shudder.

  “Yes, I have a stepdaughter—very Wicked Queen of me, isn’t it?”

  “That’s terrible!”

  “I know, my husband and his ex-wife having sex, it hardly bears thinking about.”

  “No, I meant—”

  “I know what you meant”—Niamh shrugs—“but she’s fifteen. I was a right little madam at that age.”

  Katherine has to agree. “Yeah, fifteen was rough.”

  “She’ll probably come right given a year or so and hate her mam. Then I can be the nice one who understands her and buys her cool clothes.” She grins. Katherine grins in return but has an unexpected flash of pity for the teenager. Niamh is so pretty, so vivacious. It must be hard to be filled with pimples and rage and have to contend for a besotted father’s affection for someone like that.

  “It’s to my advantage anyway,” Niamh continues. “He concentrated so hard on his work the first time round, he’s determined to do things right the second time around. Of course”—her voice warms with real affection—“I’m mad about the daft old bugger even though he treats me like spun glass.”

  Katherine smiles back, but her heart hurts a little. It must be nice to have a husband, a partner so concerned about you. Chances are that if Sael even asks her how class went, he’ll be staring at his screen the entire time she responds and then will say something like Sounds great without ever lifting his eyes.