Blood Sisters
I grew up in a five bedroom house--each one packed two to a bed except the oldest, who had earned the honor of not sharing a room with one of her sisters. As number five out of seven siblings, I knew it'd be a long time before I got the single room.
Truth is, I didn't want it. I liked sharing a bed with V, the youngest daughter of Pastor and Mrs. E, who claimed she couldn't stand sharing a room with me. From the moment she was born, V knew she was a princess who'd been misplaced by a drunken stork. Blond and beautiful, her face belonged on a Gerber jar and her body in a room without a skinny older sister who never shut up.
But we made do. After my parents made the round of bed-time prayers, V and I set about playing made-up games to pass the time before sleep stole our whispers and we curled up like little teacups, one nestled inside the other. Some of the games involved story-telling or playing leap-frog-hands on the bedrails. Other games were rowdier, like the one where we each clung to opposite sides of the bed then, on the count of three, rolled toward each other until we crashed together. The sister who managed to trade places by rolling over the other was the winner. The older and larger of us, I usually won that one.
Some of our games were downright bloody. One, two, three, Go! We'd scratch at each other for about ten seconds, then look to see who had done the most damage to the other's arms and legs. Since I bit my fingernails to the quick, she usually won that one. I woke many mornings with the sheet stuck to bloody scabs that I later picked just to watch them bleed. On the upside, V gave a better back scratch, another of our pre-sleep rituals.
Finally, after Dad had yelled up the stairs with his last warning to "Quiet down and go to sleep or I'll come up there..." we'd settle down under the light that shone between the wide window blinds, painting the covers with moon stripes. What came next was always the same. V would turn her back to me, pull the covers to her shoulders, and sigh into her flattened feather pillow. That was the unspoken signal: I'm going to sleep now so leave me alone.
On cue, I would start to sing softly, usually a hymn, because those were the songs I knew. My favorite was, "In The Garden."
"Shut up."
"I just want to sing for a little bit."
"Dad said to be quiet."
"I'll put my head under my pillow so it'll be soft."
Silence.
(Muffled) I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses...
I would wake the next morning with my pixie hair sticking out like Alfalfa on the Little Rascals. She woke looking like the angels had carefully arranged her long, lovely locks on her pillow during the night.
It's a wonder I didn't suffocate, falling asleep each night with my head under a pillow, singing until my voice ran out. Many years later, when I got married and V finally got a room of her own, she wrote me a letter that made me cry. In it she confessed that, as much as we fought as kids, "I couldn't fall asleep unless you sang." At that moment I realized how much I loved my bratty little sister and how lucky we were to have been crammed in that little green room together, year after year. It's been almost 30 years since we've shared a room, but we will always have the secrets that passed between us under those blood-stained sheets.
And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known...
What Depression Looks Like:
I grew up in a five bedroom house--each one packed two to a bed except the oldest, who had earned the honor of not sharing a room with one of her sisters. As number five out of seven siblings, I knew it'd be a long time before I got the single room. 
I had to leave the theater midway through the movie because my elephant was hungry. As soon as I arrived home, I spread honey on a stick and shoved it up his trunk while my teacher scolded me for being late. As she rattled on about neglected obligations, I accidentally lost my grip on the stick and it slid down the trunk into the elephant. I worried it might puncture his intestines. More guilt. I woke scratching my head--which was still full of bizarre images of an elephant with a black man's head. 
When the phone rang that summer morning I already knew who it was on the other end. Earlier in the day, when my belly seized up with week-early menstrual cramps, I knew it was because our uteruses were talking to each other. Here, this is how it’s done, mine said to hers. In the background I heard the bustling of impending birth. I could almost smell it.
“How’s she doing?”
“Pretty good. She’s already at six centimeters so it won’t be long, Mom.”
He calls me Mom, this pink-faced boy who loves my daughter as much as I do.
“Well, you best stay close to her, honey. She’s not exactly the independent type when it comes to pain.”
As if on cue, I hear A let out a moan to wake the dead. As much as I make light with her husband, I want like everything to be there in that room, holding her hand and wiping her brow as she propels my grandchild into the world.
“Okay, Mom. I’ll keep you posted. Love you.”
“I love you, too. Take good care of her.”
“You know I will,” he says, and I do.
Here's where I'm tempted to describe my own three babies' births, but like dreams, delivery stories are only interesting to the people who experience them. Unless it’s your baby tunneling its way out of you or your partner’s body, the whole thing is quite repugnant.
But there are exceptions to every rule, and L is one of them. Her story is one that begs to be told every time the subject of childbirth comes up. No matter how horrendous, how long the labor, how terrible the pain, L's story always wins the prize, leaves every eye glistening.
It was in the middle of a particularly cold Michigan winter, three years after I’d opened my massage practice, when her mother called me. “She won’t talk and she won’t leave the house except to follow me wherever I go,” she told me on the phone. “Maybe a massage will help.”
“Bring her in,” I said. “I’ll do my best.”
A week later, they stood in the doorway, L hiding behind her mother, fierce brown eyes as wide as a bush baby’s. “L,” the mom said to her daughter. “This is Ellie. She’s going to help you feel better.”
The girl looked from me to her mom, clinging to her mother’s shoulder bag like a guide dog’s harness. She looked barely sixteen.
“Hi, L,” I said. “Why don’t you come into the other room and we can talk?” When she didn’t move, I
reached out and gently took her hand. “It’s okay. You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to. I’ll just see what I can do to help you, okay?”
I knew she wouldn’t answer and she didn’t. With a gentle nudge from her mother, she was in my massage studio, staring at the table as I closed the door.
“Your mom tells me your pregnant.”
L immediately dropped her chin to her chest, below which, the beginnings of a bulge pushed at her red sweatshirt.
“You know, expectant moms who get massage are more relaxed and often have easier labors than those who don’t. I’ll just give you a little back rub. How would that be?”
She glanced toward the door.
“Your mom’s right on the other side, Hon, but she can’t hear us, so if there’s anything you want to ask or tell me I promise it’ll stay between us. I’ll just step out for a minute while you get undressed.”
Her voice surprised me. “Please stay.”
“Sure, L, of course. I’ll stay right here.”
Sensing her shyness, I turned my back and fussed with the music while she disrobed. When I heard her climb between the sheets, I sat on the stool and pulled the rubber band from her dark hair. L’s body was stiff, as if rigor mortis had set into her bones. She fixed her eyes on a spot on the ceiling and disappeared into it, the way a frightened child leaves their body during the violence of abuse. For the first several minutes, I made tiny circles with my fingers on her scalp before moving to her arms and legs.
“It’s okay, sweetie,” I whispered. “Just relax. I’m going to try to help you feel better. I promise not to hurt you. Do you trust me?”
She nodded.
“Then close your eyes, all right?”
She complied, and eventually her breathing slowed. By the time we finished she was nearly asleep.
“Feel better?” I asked, after she was dressed.
“Yes. Thank you.”
She nearly knocked me over with her next question.
“Can I come back and see you again?”
I hugged her. “Of course you can. As often as you like.”
Her mother brought her every week after that. Over time, L began to talk. She told me about the boyfriend who’d forced himself on her and made her promise not to tell. When he threatened to hurt her family if she didn’t comply, she became his regular victim. Unlike most girls her age, L was an innocent who knew very little about sex or her body. She once shocked me by asking if the baby would come out of her belly button.
Not unlike the day of my first granddaughter's birth, I sensed the impending delivery even before I got the call from her mother, wondering if I’d come to the hospital. “L's asking for you,” she said.
I cancelled my afternoon clients and drove forty miles to the hospital, where I found my young client in the midst of hard labor. As soon as she saw me, her already-wild eyes widened even further. Having visited that primal place beyond the limits of tolerance three times over, I recognized the ferocity in her pupils.
I touched her cheek. “Hi, honey.”
She tried on a smile but another contraction gripped her body, and she squeezed her eyes shut. I rubbed her back until it passed. A young doctor strode into the room, confident but gentle in his approach to L. Her mother introduced us and he nodded at me, smiling.
“I’ll take all the help I can get,” he kidded. “Right, L?”
She smiled weakly.
Although I’d worried L might not be able to deal with the loss of her modesty during childbirth, she proved me wrong. When she became hot and sweaty, she threw off her gown and kicked it away; exposing dark areola like tarnished silver dollars and a swollen belly streaked with the roadmap of pregnancy’s betrayal.
She never screamed—not even after she’d pushed for over an hour with little progress. As she became more exhausted, the doctor got nervous and whispered for the nurse to prepare for a c-section. Not wanting L to miss what I knew could transform her suffering in a single miraculous moment, I became proactive. When the next contraction curled itself around her, I grabbed her delicate hand and squeezed it.
“Look at me, L.”
She looked.
“I want you to get pissed off, do you hear me? I want you to think about the asshole who did this to you and use the force of your rage to push this baby out right now!”
Before she had time to respond, the doctor yelled push! and every woman in the room—her mother, the nurse, her counselor, and me—took a deep breath and pushed right along with L. She grabbed the bars at the side of the bed, her face turning the color of wild strawberries as she strained and grunted. In a rush of blood, water and tears, CR slithered into that holy room and blessed us all with his first cry. Every single person in there joined him, including the doctor, who begged our forgiveness for the deeds of his gender as he repaired L’s torn flesh.
While L held her newborn son, I leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Honey, you did it. You used your anger to get this baby born. Good girl.”
“I did use my feelings,” she said, caressing the waxy head of her new baby. “But not the ones you said.”
I stood up. “What do you mean?”
Her eyes filled with liquid light. “I looked around at your faces and felt all the love in this room and, well, how could I possibly let anger get in the middle of that? My son may not have been created in love, but he was born into it.”
Despite her naiveté, L’s wisdom collided with innocence, forcing pride and betrayal into the corners of the room as she made way for her precious child. It was a time for renewal, not hatred, and she knew it. The rest of us knew it too, and saved our anger for depositions and letters to the court, although we’d never be able to take back the violence that would likely scar L for the rest of her life. However, I will never, ever forget her great courage and how she became my teacher in the midst of suffering.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When the phone rang again I heard my new granddaughter's cry as soon as I picked up.
“Hi Sweetie,” I said. “How’d you do?”
“Not bad, Mom. Only two hours. We’re all doing great.”
“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry I missed it. I thought I got my tickets early enough, but apparently E had other plans.”
“Mom. You were here. I felt you with me the whole time.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
I heard a whimper, then the sweet suckling noises of an infant nuzzling his mother’s breast and instantly, I was there in the hospital room. Except it was me in the bed and her sweet-smelling head under my chin, twenty-four years ago.
Men have a lot of advantages over women in this world, but there is one arena in which they got the shaft: friendship. Heterosexual guys just aren't allowed to touch each other, save for a handshake, the occasional pat on the ass, or a friendly hug. I'm told that in the Middle East men often walk down the street hand in hand. How strange a sight that would be here in America! Except for a few pockets of openly gay communities, our society simply doesn't allow for affection between men and for that, I am sorry.
Before I agreed to Tuesday's procedure, my doctor made it clear that not only would it cure my dysmenorrhea, it would render me infertile. Two days ago I still had a nice warm bed waiting, should a fertilized egg happen to need a long-term motel while multiplying its cells a bazillion times over. Actually I locked the eggs out via a tubal ligation after my third child was born, but technically, until 48 hours ago, I would have been able to support life in my womb.
I'm supposed to be at the hospital in 90 minutes yet here I am, writing instead of getting ready. I'm anxious about being "put to sleep." Lately my dreams have been disturbing. What if I have a nightmare and can't wake? What if something goes wrong and I never wake? I sleep-walked for the first 30 years of my life. At 44, that makes me a teenager in this conscious life. I revel in each waking moment, even the bad ones. Especially the bad ones. I don't want to lose consciousness now.