Kalila Read Online Free PDF Page A

the windmill and flung Rosella, suffocated Betty in the woodbox. Marigold and I held funerals on the cellar stairs, which made great church pews. Iris and Rose joined in when they had exhausted themselves in tag, anti-i-over, and scrub. The coveted roles gravitated between the grieving mother and the chorister. It was heart-rending to quaver,
    Our path strewn with stones, We cry in despair
    Lord do not forsake us, Oh Lord, are you there?
    So thrilling that by the chorus end, the Watson girls were sobbing,
    Kneel at the cross and feel His arms embrace us
    Kneel at the cross and our burdens He’ll bear …
    The lovely melodrama. Mom would appear at the head of the cellar stairs, Och, what do I do with the lot of you? Assuaging the headaches and achy throats that accompanied such blasts of grief. She’d make us honey ginger tea and vinegar punch. I’ve never seen the like, she’d scold. I’ve never seen the like. And my sisters and I, delighted we’d played our parts so well, would dash off for a game of alley alley home free on the front lawn, leaving little stashes of soggy tissues on the cellar steps for Mom to scoop up when she went to the basement to fetch a jar of peaches or to check the cheese. That fall, I raised every doll from the dead.

The baby is seven weeks old when we attend a party for Brodie’s high-school staff. Maggie, Brodie begging. Please? We need to get out.
    A woman at the party pops a strawberry in her mouth, says, Well, I would have sworn someone said you’d had a baby.
    I did, I say. I do.
    You’ve had a baby? The woman stares at my flat stomach. God! Milt. Come look at Brodie Solantz’s skinny wife. She’s had a baby!
    I say, I have the afterbirth to prove it.
    The woman loses her next sentence, has more wine.
    I stand alone on the edge of the dance floor, reciting book titles in my head: My Heart is Broken, Setting Free the Bears, Politics and the English Language, The Angel in the House, October Light, To All Appearances a Lady . I think of fairy tales, where good mothers die before the story starts.
    Unmother. I spilled my blood onto the birthing table, then someone whisked away the baby: nineteen hours and I haven’t seen her. The first fourteen strapped to my bed by two intravenous needles, one in each hand, to stop the bleeding. There are babies everywhere. I peer beneath small blankets on the rolling cribs that cruise the hall. People steal babies from hospitals. Mothers stare. I’ve taken two sitz baths today. I feel a fraud when I occupy the sitz bath, when I enter like a thief its enclosed heat. There are the mothers, and then there’s me. Nothing dislodges their identity. What right have I to complain of bleeding stitches in my episiotomy? Mothers have episiotomies. I’m an aberrant, like being two sexes at once. A mother, not a mother. A nurse buzzes my bedside. The intercom crackles. Your kid’s crying in the nursery, a frazzled voice comes through. A small intake of breath. Sorry. Wrong number. Could you tell your roommate her kid’s crying in the nursery?
    Here comes Brodie across the gymnasium floor, heading from the bar carrying an offering of translucent garnet punch. My breasts sting. Guest. Host. Parasite. The doctors the host, me the parasite. Kalila, their unwanted guest. I can hear her hoarse and whispered cries over the slap of the woman’s slippers from the adjoining bed as she pushes past her husband.
    Well, why don’t I just do every goddamn thing myself? The woman flings over her shoulder and sweeps out the door.
    The husband shoots me a look of such resentment. Maggie Watson, hospital soap star. My body tightens around a cramp. It’s too late for love at first sight. How sick is my baby?
    A nurse checks the drip. Come on now, Mrs. Solantz. You’ll be back to normal in no time.
    Normal. My pleasure body has brought everything to this.
    Roses. Brodie brings me roses. Their sad and choking