Under Shifting Glass Read Online Free PDF Page A

And that’s scary. Or maybe it’s actually me who doesn’t quite belong anymore, as though a chunk of what I thought of as family has somehow slid away. And that’s even scarier.
    So I’m going to call them brothers—my
brothers
.
    Mom looks up, shifts herself up on her pillows a little when she sees me, although I can tell it hurts her.
    â€œJess . . . come here, sweetie.”
    I come and she puts her arms right around me, even though it’s difficult leaning from the bed.
    â€œLook.” She nods toward the incubator. “Here they are. Here they are at last.”
    They lie facing each other, little white knitted hats on their heads, hands entwined. Yes, they’re holding hands. Fast asleep and tucked in under a single white blanket, they look innocent. Normal.
    â€œAren’t they beautiful?” says Mom.
    â€œYes,” I say. And it’s true, too, though there is something frail about them, two little birds who can’t fly and are lucky to have fallen together in such a nest.
    â€œYou were a beautiful baby, too, Jess.”
    She is making it ordinary, but it isn’t ordinary. Somewhere beneath that blanket, my brothers are joined together and I want to see that join. At least I do now, although for months the idea of the join has been making me feel queasy.
    There, I’ve said it.
    The truth is, when Mom first told me she was pregnant I felt all rushing and hot. Not about the join, which we didn’t know about then, or even about them being twins. No, I felt rushing and hot about her being pregnant at all. I can’t really explain it except to say I didn’t want people looking at my mother, I didn’t want them watching her swelling up with Si’s baby. It seemed to be making something very private go very public. And I didn’t like myself for the way I felt, so when it turned out to be twins, and conjoined twins at that, I hid myself in the join. I made this the secret. I didn’t want people to know about the join (I told Zoe, I told Em), because of all the mumbo jumbo talked about such twins across the centuries. I didn’t tell them that I wasn’t so sure about the babies myself, that the idea of the join actually made me feel sick to my stomach. I kept very quiet about that.
    Am I a bad person?
    A nurse is hovering and sees the babies stir.
    â€œDo you want to hold them, Mom?” the nurse says as if my mother is her mother.
    â€œYes,” says Mom.
    Si helps Mom into a comfortable sitting position while the nurse unhitches one side of the incubator and adjusts some tubes. Then he stands protectively as the nurse puts a broad arm under both babies and draws them out. Si never takes his eyes off the babies. There is something fierce in his gaze and something soft, too, which I’ve never seen before.
    â€œThere now,” says the nurse as she gives the babies to Mom. They are in Mom’s arms, but they are still facing each other, of course. The nurse has been careful to keep the blanket round the babies as she lifts them and she’s careful now to tuck it in.
    One of the babies makes a little yelping noise. Mom puts a finger to the baby’s lips and he appears to suck.
    â€œThey’re doing very well,” says Mom, and then she loosens the blanket.
    The babies are naked, naked except for oversize diapers that seem to go from their knees to their waists—where the join begins. Mom leaves the blanket open quite deliberately. Gran turns her head away, but I look. I look long and hard, as Mom means me to do.
    The babies’ skin is a kind of brick color, as if their blood is very close to the surface, and it is also dry and wrinkled, as if they are very old rather than very young. Aunt Edie again. But the skin where they join is smooth and actually rather beautiful, like the webs between your fingers. It makes me feel like crying.
    Very gently, Mom strokes the place where her children