Alijah Hill
In Cedar Ridge, not a single house had a backyard. The mountain, instead, allowed these tiny houses to exist and use her evergreens for curtains. It wasn’t so much a town as it was one long paved road with dirt driveways that snaked up to houses that made up Cedar Road. No one ever locked their doors because their homes were never theirs, just the space they were temporarily occupying until the trees outlived them. Smoke billowed from the chimneys of these houses in staccatos of uneven spacing and placement. The scenery’s complicated details were drowned out come January, when it only became a white sfumato of winter, when the first blanket of frost seemed to glaciate the town, freezing it into an amateur landscape painting. The power went out yesterday. The generators were hot.
The house was between two evergreens that had doubled in size since The Kramers moved in. The wind whipped the branches into a wild dance, clawing the window panes, demanding to be let in and spared from this arctic hell. First stepping outside, the wind roared like a mythical deity. But once the initial sound settled into white noise, the smaller gusts whipped through the foliage, softly howling a humming cry.
A smaller, sharper cry echoed from the nursery as Baby Boy Cramer shrieked his discontentment with his empty stomach. Get me the breast! Bring me the lady with the milk! he screamed. Kathy Cramer crawled out from the blanket nest at the foot of the bed, where she had been curled up in a ball for the past hour. It was close enough to quiet that she could finally close her eyes and pretend to sleep. She gripped the sides of the crib and stared at the fleshy pink siren before shoving her nipple in his mouth.
When he had trouble feeding the first week, Mark joked that the cold had frozen her milk, but the laughter stopped after the third day of dry feeding. She tried everything; she had even sat in front of the fireplace with her top off for an hour until her chest was bright red, but nothing would come out, or at least nothing sustaining. She had convinced herself that she was dead inside, the only explanation for how she could still be so cold. She winced at the pain of the dry suction and probably would have been holding back tears if she weren’t too exhausted to cry.
She stopped bathing. Barely ate. She thanked God that Lily wasn’t here to see her in this state. When the baby first arrived, her daughter had gone to stay with her grandmother while Kathy and Mark adjusted to the sleepless nights. The storm had blown in earlier than expected, and Lily was stuck there until it passed. Mark’s mother was more than happy to watch Lily; she insisted that she and Mark soak up all the newborn moments while they could.
The Kramer’s had inherited the house from Mark’s grandmother, and they decided to move out here to get away from the noise of the city— the people screaming karaoke to the musical score of honking; the chewing sounds from all the greasy customers of street vendors; the never-ending hum of unidentifiable machinery that made silence impossible.
Kathy’s mother had died some years ago, she had received notice by mail. She could hear her voice now, “Never have sex in the spring,” it said. “Winter babies always die, if not from the cold then from starvation.” Cows don’t milk when below freezing— when it’s so cold it isn’t even snowing anymore–the air is full of crystals that aren’t falling.
After the third sleepless night of Mark rubbing her back as she sobbed in bed while the sounds of the baby’s cries cut deep, she pleaded silently to God or any higher power to put her and the baby out of her misery. But she took it back when she remembered that the ground would be too frozen to bury them until the spring. In regular conditions, the nearest store was about a forty-five-minute drive. But the diesel in the truck froze when the temperature was half as cold as it was now, and the walk would be an act of insanity until the storm passed.
After the fifth sleepless night came acceptance; she would wake for every screeching demand, and eventually, the few drops here and there would be enough to sustain him until Mark could trek to the general store for formula without orphaning his children and widowing his wife. The days started melting together as Kathy alternated between waking up for meals, holding the baby to her breast until her skin ached for reprieve, and sleeping whenever he tired himself out too much from shrieking. She forgot what silence sounded like. Even when the baby stopped screaming, the wind’s shrieks never ceased.
She stared at the bits of frost bleeding through the window pane and collecting on the sill, bouncing the baby in her arms. Mark came in and asked about something. “Sure, sure, that’s fine,” she said, still staring out the window.
“What’s fine?” he asked, walking in front of her. She opened her mouth and then closed it.
“Give him to me. You need a nap.”
She protested a bit in her mind but all that came out was a monotonous “O.K.” Mark tucked her in and she listened to the sound of the wind and stared at the ceiling until the popcorn looked like snow.
❆ ❅ ❆
She’s having trouble feeling her fingers and toes, but when she looks down to make sure they haven’t fallen off, the white is too blinding to see anything. She tries to blink and squint her eyes, but they are frozen shut. There are whispers riding along the wind, and they snatch at her ears as they whip past. Have you forgotten? How could you forget? She ambles around in the endless candescent wasteland until it’s suddenly quiet enough that she can hear her heart beating–thank God it still is— and she makes something out in the distance. Run! Run! Oh my God! She’s not running fast enough. She’s already exhausted and only moved a couple of feet. She trips over something and crawls around to double back. She’s feeling around, searching like she’s just dropped her glasses, when she touches something cold, stiff, but velvety. Her heart is pounding faster and faster in her ears, deafening. She pulls it up. Flesh? But it’s solid. She runs her hands over it until she feels something cloth– little baby socks. She turns it over in her hands and sees his face. And she’s screaming, but she can’t hear it over the pounding in her ears and the screeching laughter of the wind. The pounding. The pounding.
Kathy bolted up in bed, and the sheets were drenched from her sweat. Someone was knocking at the door, and the baby was screaming.
“Mark!” she rasped out, scrambling to the crib.
Kathy stared at the baby as he twisted and contorted his face around her red and swollen nipples, and she shook the frost out of her mind. A horrible nightmare. A nightmare. A dream. Just a dream. Baby Cramer was no longer screaming, just a soft piglet-like grunt, and she could feel herself melt into the silence softly for a moment before there was another bang at the door.
“Mark! The door!”
There was no response. The baby was shrieking again; she was starting to become frustrated. She set the baby down for a minute to snatch on her dressing gown and she wrestled his flails into a swaddle. The banging was getting louder. “Give me a damn minute!” she screamed down the steps.
She fastened a makeshift sling to her chest and she could feel him kicking her ribs as she stomped down the steps. The fabric was rubbing against her breast but she was rushing too much to pay it mind. She ripped open the door and immediately felt the wind touching the inside of her bones. It was pushing up against her— demanding something from inside her. The cold shocked the baby into silence. There was only the sound of the wind; the porch was empty.
“Hello?”
Even if someone was there, her words were lost to the wind. She looked around, searching for any footprints. Everything started to go numb except for her chest. Where the baby was, it was warm. She could feel his little chest rising and falling pressed against hers. She looked down at him— there was frost collecting on his eyelashes where the tears once were, making his eyes look like a lake frozen over. Beautiful and blue.
There was suddenly a hand on her shoulder and she screamed and turned around to find Mark standing there. She had scared the baby back to crying. “Kathy, what are you doing? Get him inside!” he put his arm around her and guided her back in, closing the door behind them.
“You wouldn’t get the door! Someone was banging on the door!”
“I was checking the generator in the basement. I didn’t hear anything. Who was it?”
She paused. “There was no one out there.”
“Let’s get you back to bed,” he said tenderly, “You need some rest.”
❆ ❅ ❆
Baby boy Cramer threw up all over her. It was mostly spit. White and foamy, with traces of the milk-labored love, rejected. The last drops of her soul squeezed out, inadequate. All of her motherhood poured into this piece of her, this all of her, her child. Her baby. Grown from her body, her blood, her milk, screaming out, trying to reach the right frequency to shatter his fragile little body. Everyone in the delivery room kept telling her he had his mother’s eyes. Her fingers, her toes, her eyes; she was grateful none of her faulty reproductive organs made the cut for this copy.
Mark ran a bath for her. They didn’t speak. He wiped her down, washed her clothes in the basin, ran the water, and added the bubbles. White and foamy. The child began his demands again so Mark didn’t have time to check the temperature, he only shut off the faucet to prevent a flood while bouncing the baby. He helped her undress and step into the bath with his free hand. It was so hot that her legs were turning red, but she said nothing. She sank into it and watched it overflow, but she said nothing. He closed the door, and even though her internal organs were boiling, she said nothing. She sucked it up. Sacrifice. If she sat long enough, maybe her milk would unthaw. Maybe her heart would, too.
❆ ❅ ❆
Her water broke on a Sunday morning when she was making pancakes. The weather had already started to cool off and she had over scrambled the eggs. Mark couldn’t find his keys. She forgot her coat in the rush. Lily pitched a fit in the car about turning back for her American Girl doll. Kathy closed her eyes—inhaling—she felt the air tickle her nose and fill her lungs but the pressure in her chest remained even after she
pushed it all out. The second child was supposed to be easier. The second birth was supposed to be easier— she was supposed to know what to expect, but the feeling in her womb was foreign, and her stomach was overflowing with dread.
She was in labor for thirty-six hours.
Where is Lily? Who is watching her in the lobby? Mark, don’t let her see me like this. Mark, please don’t let go. There was something wrong with the baby. Everyone was whispering and pulling Mark out of the room, and then they were carting her bed. Lights streaked past so fast above her head that she thought she was having a stroke, but Mark squeezed her hand and whispered to her that everything was going to be okay. He’s just building anticipation for a grand entrance.
She felt the pinch of the needle but never felt the cut. She only knew they had opened her up because she could feel the pressure of tools and hands inside of her. They were moving so quickly that she saw flashes of blood and organs even past the sheet. Are those my insides? Her scream came out as a whisper. Mark just smiled. Everything is going to be okay. The lights were so hot, but her fingers were getting cold. She couldn’t feel her toes, or maybe she was just too scared to wiggle them. They carried something small and pink over to the table. Mark, he isn’t crying. Mark, why isn’t he crying? Mark squeezed her hand and pet her head. She screamed at the staff, but no one was listening. He’s supposed to be crying. Make him cry. There was some gargling, and his little shrieks came out in a symphony. She was the orchestra, and he was the choir, and as they put him on her chest, their cries crescendoed to the fourth movement. Everything in her body ached, Thank you, God, thank you, God.
❆ ❅ ❆
She could still hear his screaming from the nursery, even from underwater. She could hear her heartbeat echoing through the walls of the bathtub and the sharp pitches of his cries garbled and mixed in. The water burned her face, and the pressure was building in her lungs. The rest of her body had already gone numb to the heat, but she could still feel it against her eyelids. The wind had picked up pace outside and joined alongside the screaming. She felt like she was getting lighter. She gripped the sides of the tub; her joints were frozen, preventing her from lifting herself up. Her eyes were shut tight and burning from the suds, but she felt her vision going black. The wind was thundering, and the screaming was getting closer. Closer. She felt lighter. Everything was quieter, except the yelling closing in on her.
The door flung open, and Kathy bolted out of the water. She felt the suds drip into her eyes but was too frozen from fear to wipe them away, so she let them water. She let the tears flow. “Mark, I’m so sorry,” she began. But Mark was beaming. “Kathy, listen! Kathy, listen.”
She resisted the urge to plug her ears as Baby Boy Cramer’s cries echoed on the bathroom walls. Between the shrieks, she finally realized that he wasn’t just crying. Separated into two syllables and offset by the gasps for air, you could miss it. But once she heard it, she could never unhear it.
Mama, he called. Mama!
Mama.
I fell in love with writing fiction at Northwestern. I’m a senior now and grateful my work is commemorated in Helicon. This one is dedicated to my mother who was in labor for thirty six hours.
