In my dream, I am pregnant. I’m not exactly sure how far
along I am, but I know that my belly gets in the way of things like steering
wheels, tables, other people, and being close to anything.
Because of
this, the outdoor café table at which I sit is far enough away that I have to
look up from the book I’m reading to reach for my cup of tea. I notice a man in
a suit in the ironwrought chair across from me. His appearance does not stir
any emotional response in me at first except for a mild surprise. I immediately
understand why.
This man is
the devil.
He sits
straight-backed and still in the chair, one leg cocked and resting on the
other. His hair is
sleek, slicked, curly and dark. His skin is
pale but not noticeably so; the crisp cream-colored suit he wears compliments
his strong, sturdy frame nicely.
The only
inhumanity that betrays him is his eyes: they are bright bluewhite, as if his
brain were an electrical plant gone AWOL. His face is no face and every face;
handsome but indistinguishable. He does not blink. He does not smile.
I don’t
either.
“Hi,” I
say, closing my book.
“Hi,” he
says in a rich, silky purr.
I know this
man well. We’re past small talk.
He reaches
out an unblemished hand and picks up my teacup. He moves with a fluid, unbroken
grace that only exists for him. He sips, never taking his wild, lurid eyes off
mine.
Later, as
we talk, I realize that there is steam rising from my cup where there wasn’t
before. Every so often I check. The tea never cools. I don’t touch the cup
again.
“Your child
will have a good singing voice,” he says in his own sweet baritone that nearly
drove me out of my mind with need for him. “Your child will have good eyesight
and gentle hands. It will grow wise and compassionate. It will love easily and
be loved by nearly everyone close to it.”
“Nearly
everyone?” I ask, the answer dangling just out of reach on the hinge of my
mind.
He nods
once, slowly. For the first time since he sat down, his eyes stray from me. I
look at him now in profile. As he
speaks, I watch with interest the words riding out of his mouth on a heat
shimmer so intense it blurs the color of the space behind him into a watery
grey.
“Your child
has nothing to prove to you. But you won’t remember that.”
I cock my
head. I am not angry or defensive or even confused. I am curious.
The baby
kicks me high in the ribs once.
“I would
never ask it to prove anything to me. Unless I were teaching it how to argue.”
The devil
sighs. Twin blasts of heat billow out from his flared nostrils. The air
distorted by the heat is mesmerizing. There is no breeze in the cool spring
morning, but I catch a whiff of burning leaves.
He returns
his face to me, etched in lines of sadness. Those lines look foreign, alien, on
the plain white clay of his skin. His eyes spark with something that is not
sadness. It is not greed or rage or lust or envy or hunger or pride. It is not
human; it is not emotion. All I know is what it is not. His eyes spark and
glitter, and the not-knowing is the water that urges the feeling of unease into
full, queasy bloom. It is never outright fear, not around him.
“What do
you gain from having this child?” He asks.
“The knowledge
of another part of myself,” I reply.
The baby
kicks me again, this time low.
The devil
stands up, not even a whisper of silk on silk accompanying his movement. It is
then that I notice a song playing softly through the speakers on the café’s
eaves:
Time it took us
To where the water was
That’s what the water
gave me
And time goes quicker
Between the two of us
Oh, my love, don’t
forsake me
Take what the water gave
me
This song would be playing throughout the rest of the dream.
The devil
rests a hand on my shoulder. My eyes trail up the length of his arm. The suit
fits him so well there is barely a fold or a ridge. He’s got his eyes on me,
those cold-burning blue eyes, those eyes that have seen the firstborn chaos of
the universe, those eyes made of entropy. They uncouple me from the hook of
reality.
When I
surface from the moorless depths of disassociation, I am sitting at the edge of
a large lake at dusk. I breathe in the dimness, but my lungs cannot expand.
Partially
because the darkness is thick and sticky and it coats my lungs like tar. Partially
because the baby has grown so big that it presses against my diaphragm. I cough,
but it does no good.
Darkness
drops fully like water from a bucket and I look for the source of my
unease. To calm myself, I begin humming
under my breath.
Lay
me down
Let the only sound be
the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be
the overflow
It’s a struggle to stand. I keep stepping on the gauzy,
flowing dress I find myself in. It feels wonderful against my skin, but it’s
little comfort. With the smell of rotting lake all around me and cold mud
sucking at my knees and feet, I am immobilized by the mire in my mind.
The moon is
broken and sickly, gives off a drunken yellow light that does not illuminate
but confuses. I grab at something near me upon which the light sizzles like
sluggish oil. It’s an oar. I pry myself
out of the swamp by clawing up its length. My legs are rubbery and
uncooperative, so I stand swaying for a moment, resting a hand on my belly and
feeling the mud squelch up between my bare toes.
I can’t
catch my breath. But years of dealing with asthma have taught me not to panic
and gasp, so I don’t.
In, out,
in, out, in, out.
There are
soft voices behind me. Familiar familial voices.
Oh no.
The thought sparks in my head and
lights a flame of fear. I know what this means. When I dream of water, I dream
of drowning.
There is a
log cabin set several dozen feet back from the lake. Lights burn fitfully in
the windows, casting shadows that leap like rabid things over the walls. The voices
inside are risen in song. I open the screen door and the flickering candlelight
flays me. I cringe and squint and am assaulted by life, foaming at the mouth.
My family, extended, adopted, all, is crammed into the cabin. They are
exuberant, they are wild, they are loud and completely unlike themselves. They
dance as if there is nothing left for them in the world. There is gravity here,
and it grabs at my chest, wanting me.
“Hey!” I scream into the light, the heat,
the rush, the motion, the oppressing life. “The
water is rising! You have to get out! Get out! Get out!”
I lean as
far in as my arms will let me, my hands holding onto the outside edge of the
doorframe for dear life. For a moment, the terror of getting lost in the press
of bodies overwhelms the sick, sinking knowledge of the water behind me.
Nobody
hears me. Suddenly, my feet are cold. I jump and look down. Water, ankle deep.
Moonlight slathers itself on the little lapping ripples like rancid butter.
Still gripping the doorframe with both hands, I twist my neck as far as it will
go. The grass is gone. The gravel path from the lake to the house is gone. The
creeping fingers of the lake have taken it all. The darkness, I realize then,
did not grow down from the sky. It grew up from the water like vines and
infected the world. The smell of decay, of murky, evil water, gets thicker. I
feel it trickling into the hollow spaces in me, filling me, making me feel
heavy and awkward.
I hear singing in my head:
They took your loved ones
But returned them in exchange for you
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way
But returned them in exchange for you
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way
I rend myself from the doorframe of the cabin and shut the
door against the painful light inside, against the rising liquid darkness
outside. I pray that my family is safe from the water inside the cabin. I hope
that the energy they create will be enough to fight the water back. I cannot
help them now.
The water
is knee-deep. My dress is no longer gauzy and light but floppy and sloppy. I
slog back toward where the bank of the lake used to be. My leg bumps something.
I reach down into the freezing black, curving my back so that my chest doesn’t
touch the surface, and pull up the oar I used to help me stand. The water drips
off the oar onto my arm and it’s not water but a condensation, a concentration,
of the darkness. It leaves oily trails on my arm.
There is a
small wooden canoe to match the oar, but it’s way out on the lake. Yards away.
To reach it, I’d have to swim.
I lay my
hand on my belly. The baby has been quiet for a long time. I worry for it. Will
my heat be enough to keep it alive in the impossible cold of the water? Will
the weight of it, plus the weight of the darkness in my lungs and the weight of
the dress drag me to the bottom?
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
The
water reaches lustfully for my hips. As I wade toward the canoe, I keep an ear
trained back toward the cabin. The terrible cold rips the breath from my lungs.
It swallows my belly. The baby does not kick. The water licks my neck. I fight
the air for breath.
In, out,
in, out, in, out.
Kick.
I kick.
I’ve lost
the bottom; I float now, kicking to keep my head above the grabby little waves.
Soon, my legs disappear into the numbing black. So I wave my arms and, despite
what I’d feared the most, I reach the canoe. The devil is sitting in it. I know
it’s him because his eyes slice through the darkness like knives made of
electricity. They seem to scream at me. He sings:
Oh, poor Atlas
The world’s a beast of a burden
You’ve been holding on a long time
And all this longing
And the ships are left to rust
That’s what the water gave us
The world’s a beast of a burden
You’ve been holding on a long time
And all this longing
And the ships are left to rust
That’s what the water gave us
I know
better than to reach out a hand to him. I cling to the side of the canoe. I am
past cold, past shivering, and I know that if I don’t get out of the water,
both the baby and I will die.
“You remind
me of Ophelia in that dress,” the devil says. “Or the Lady of Shalott.”
“The Lady
of Shalott didn’t drown,” I say.
“I’ll write
your name round about the prow,” says the devil. “Then you can sing me your
last song.”
With some
untouchable force that is brother to the darkness, the devil pries my frozen
hands from the edge of the canoe. I swallow my panic, force it down into my gut
to warm me, give me buoyancy, buy me time.
The sick
yellow-grey moonlight wanes. Only the high edges of things are lit, and even
then they aren’t lit but painted with light. It drips from the tops of the
trees and falls thickly onto the devil’s shoulders and head. He chuckles deeply
as he carves my name into the inside of the canoe. That chuckle finishes what
the water started; it crawls into my ears and piles up at the base of my brain,
sinking me.
I sing with
the last breath I have:
She’s a cruel mistress
And a bargain must be made
But oh, my love, don’t forget me
I let the water take me
It’s
peaceful in the deep.
The
arms of the water are no longer crushing. They welcome now; they curl around me
protectively as I curl around my belly. The fingers of the water no longer
grope and want; they soothe me and smooth my hair and my dress.
I rest in
the black sanctuary. Now that I don’t have the sound of the devil or the cabin
in my ears, I can hear the singing:
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
It seems to
take hours to lift my head far enough to look up at the surface. The last bit
of moonlight is fractured by the waves and sluggish fragments float down at
me. They never reach me because I’m
sinking.
I look
forward to reaching the bottom. I’ll finally have somewhere still and quiet to
rest my head.
Is
this what it feels like to give up? I ask
myself.
The baby
kicks once, hard.
