Page 30 of Water Moon

Chapter Thirty

Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth

One year ago

Keishin’s apartment building cast a welcome shadow over the street. He quickened his pace. His mind reached home ahead of him, hurriedly peeling off sweaty clothes and tossing them onto the floor. It hopped into the shower and stood beneath the stream of cool water, waiting for the rest of Keishin to join it. It was used to leaving him behind. His body was always trying to catch up with his thoughts. Later, when they were reunited, Keishin would pour himself a cold glass of white wine, put a record on, and fall asleep on the couch listening to his favorite song, his hair still wet from his shower.

Keishin rushed inside his building, his shirt clinging to his chest. Sunscreen and sweat stung his eyes. Luckily, Keishin didn’t have to see where he was going to find his way to the elevator. The tapping of his footsteps over the black-and-white marble tiles was enough. Next to the gurgle of his coffee machine, the little taps were his favorite sound in the world. There were exactly twenty-two of them. Each ferried him closer to a small metal box that whisked him from the noise of the day. He didn’t like sharing it.

A pregnant woman, vigorously fanning herself with a Chinese take-out menu by the elevator’s doors, crushed his hopes of solitude. The elevator doors slid open. Keishin threw a glance at the stairs and dismissed climbing up the ten flights to his apartment almost as soon as he considered it. The elevator dinged. Keishin met the woman’s eyes. She looked away, sending her thick ponytail swinging like a pendulum against her nape. She shuffled inside the elevator, stuffing the take-out menu into an oversized shoulder bag while cradling a box of jelly donuts. Keishin followed her in and pushed the button for his floor.

“Eight, please,” the pregnant woman said. “Thanks.”

Keishin pressed the button for her.

The cab jolted. The woman stumbled forward, sending her donuts flying and knocking Keishin into the elevator door. Metal slammed against his cheek. The lights went out, plunging the cab into darkness. An emergency light flickered to life.

Pain radiated through Keishin’s jaw. “Are you okay?” he said, trying to rub the pain away.

The woman clutched her stomach. “I…I think so.”

“Okay. Good. I’ll call for help.” He pressed the elevator’s emergency call button. “Hello?”

The speaker crackled to life.

“Hello?” Keishin said. “Can you hear me? The elevator’s stuck.”

“I can hear you. Is everyone okay in there?”

“We’re fine.”

“We’re calling the repair crew right now. They should be here soon.”

Keishin took a deep breath, telling himself that things could be worse. He could have gotten stuck in the elevator with Trisha, the neighbor he had made the mistake of sleeping with after a bad movie, a forgettable dinner, and too many bottles of wine.

“I’m Liz,” the woman said. “Eighth floor.”

“I know.”

“Right. I asked you to push the button for me. Sorry. Pregnancy brain.”

“I’m Kei. Tenth,” he said, not because it was necessary, but because it was polite. He expected their situation to be rectified soon and didn’t think that waiting for the elevator required conversation.

Liz lowered herself onto the floor and fanned herself with the Chinese take-out menu. “I hope they get us out of here soon.”

“They will.” Keishin sat opposite her.

Liz winced and rubbed her belly. “Oh god…”

“What is it? What’s wrong?”

Liz groaned, doubling over. Sweat beaded on her brow. “I…I think the baby’s coming.”

“What?” Keishin scrambled to her.

Liz clenched her teeth and grabbed his sleeve. “I don’t suppose that I was lucky enough to be trapped in an elevator with a doctor?”

“Er…yes, but the useless kind.”

Liz’s face crumpled in pain. She squeezed his arm and groaned. “I don’t want to have the baby in an elevator,” she said, breaking into a sob.

“We’ll get out of here. Soon. I promise.”

“No, not ‘soon.’ Now. We need to get out now.” Liz drew rapid breaths. Sweat dripped down her face and over her pale lips. “I can’t breathe. We’re running out of air. I’m going to die. My baby…”

Keishin clasped her hand. He didn’t know much about childbirth but was well acquainted with anxiety attacks. In the early months after his mother had left, Keishin found his father curled up into a ball, believing that he was dying, at least once every other week. Like Liz’s, his hands were cold and clammy, and they trembled against Keishin’s palms. He had held his father’s hand until his breathing slowed, trying to soothe him the only way he knew how. He lay next to his father and recounted, like a story, an inventory of things his young mind knew to be true. The sun is a star. The brain cannot feel pain. An elephant’s pregnancy lasts almost two years. Facts had always comforted Keishin. His mother’s love had once been at the top of his list, before any trivia about the earth or the moon. When she left, he collected as many truths as he could, having convinced himself that one day, he was going to have enough to fill a hole in his chest that had once been filled with certainty. He shared his collection of the unquestionable and the unchanging with his father, giving him something to hold on to whenever a current of doubt threatened to sweep him away.

Keishin squeezed Liz’s hand. “?‘Remember this, for it is as true as true gets: Your body is not a lemon. You are not a machine. The Creator is not a careless mechanic. Human female bodies have the same potential to give birth well as aardvarks, lions, rhinoceroses, elephants, moose, and water buffalo,’?” he said.

“What?” Liz panted.

“It’s a quote from the book Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth, ” Keishin said. “And a fact.”

“And you know that because?” Liz said, her breathing slowing down.

“Do you want the long or short story?”

“Short.” Liz blew out air in measured breaths. “Definitely short.”

“My father’s favorite price was free.”

“And?”

“That’s it. You asked for the short version.”

“Okay. I get it.” Liz wiped the sweat from her brow. “You’re trying to distract me from my impending doom.”

“Is it working?”

“Yes. Go on. Tell me the long story, or maybe the medium version.”

“Okay, but you need to promise me one thing first.”

“What?”

“You need to keep your baby inside you for a little longer, okay? I think this situation calls for a professional with a greater understanding of childbirth than someone who found Ina May’s dusty midwifery book in a box his father picked up from the side of a street.”

“Deal.”

—

Liz broke her promise.

Keishin clung to Ina May’s words as though they were the very cable that kept the elevator from crashing to the ground. Liz, he repeated to himself, was not a lemon, and with Ina May’s time-tested guidance, she was going to give birth as smoothly as any aardvark. “You’re doing great, Liz,” he said, looking over her bent legs. “Just give me one more big push, okay?”

Liz groaned, her brows meeting.

“We’re almost there. Deep breaths, Liz. This is it. I can see the head.” Keishin positioned his hands between Liz’s legs, cradling the baby as it emerged. “I got her!”

“Is…is she okay?” Liz sobbed.

Keishin gently ran his hand over the baby’s nose and mouth as Ina May had instructed, clearing them of fluid. A lusty cry escaped the baby’s lips. Keishin laid her in Liz’s arms.

“She’s beautiful.” Liz alternately laughed and cried. “Thank you.”

Keishin wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Thank Ina May.”

The elevator doors slid open. A man in a dark blue-gray jumpsuit stood outside, his jaw on the floor. “Holy shit…are you guys okay?”

Keishin glanced back at Liz. Her smile seemed out of place in a steaming elevator reeking of blood, sweat, and birth fluids. It was a smile that could belong only to someone who was utterly content to be stranded where she was. This, Keishin thought, was what happiness looked like: an exhausted woman sitting in a puddle of amniotic goo and smashed jelly donuts, a crumpled Chinese take-out menu at her side. Liz’s eyes saw only her daughter, and no one and nothing else mattered beyond the bundle in her arms. Keishin wiped the blood from his hands on his pants and walked out of the elevator, wondering if he was ever going to be happy enough to sit perfectly and quietly still.