(This short story was written in fulfillment for a class assignment for Midwifery Literature and Art.)
Another huge explosion pounded into the earth above, and sand sprinkled down the walls. Maria’s eyes darted around the ceiling. Would it hold?
Again. Again and again. It was relentless.
Hers were not the only wrinkled forehead and nervously wringing hands. She slipped her arm around her daughter’s shoulders that hunched over her enormous abdomen. Pregnant! And a child to protect! Woe to them that are with child in those days, flashed into her brain. An enormous boom landed overhead. She gripped Anya’s shoulders tighter, to comfort herself.
Peter, her everything Peter, had snuck out two nights before to check their apartment and search for food. He’d not returned. Maria desperately imagined him, out there, darting through the well-known streets, making plans for them to escape to safety. Safety.
The scraping of the door jolted all their heads up to the basement entrance. Tears sprang to her eyes. It was not Peter but an old neighbor woman. “A car is leaving; there is place for three, but they must hurry.”
The adults looked slowly around the room at each other. A man’s voice took charge of the decision. “Pregnant women and children first,” he declared.
Maria was not the only pregnant woman. Polina was also. “Quickly!” snapped the old woman.
Maria didn’t move, even though the whole room was looking at her, including little Anya. “But my husband,” she said. “I can’t leave without him!”
“Even if he were here, he wouldn’t go with you,” a woman’s voice reasoned. “When he returns, we’ll tell him that you’ve gone.”
Maria started to shift Anya and move her legs. “But how will he ever find us?”
The old woman at the door bustled over, taking Maria’s bag and blanket. “He’ll call you, don’t worry.”
Maria numbly followed the grey head through the cold cement basement towards the faint light coming through the doorway. Her body felt strange as made these familiar movements, like she was crossing into another dimension; a dull film settled over her brain. A dream, this is just a dream.
“You may just have to deliver this baby in the car, Maria,” Polina said matter-of-factly as they bounced over the potted road. Maria’s attention moved thickly, slowly towards Polina’s words. Some familiar part of her began to surface, the midwife Maria.
She began to make the familiar observations of the midwife: Polina’s face was tight and pale, her body rigid and uncomfortable. Maria heard the contraction begin in her neighbor’s switch to tight, distinct breathing.
Maria mind began to work at the speed of the car. Surely they should not stop for the birth; it was too dangerous. What could she use to catch the fluid and blood so they would not be cold and wet and filthy for the remainder of the trip? The heater eked out a tiny stream of faintly warm air.
It was dark out. Maria’s emotions were back in Mariupol, her beloved, beautiful city; back with her husband—had he returned to the basement already and discovered them gone?
Polina softly groaned and Maria set her lips in a straight line. No time to feel now. Numbness was bliss, survival, a friend.
“Do you have any newspapers or paper . . . for the birth of the baby?” she asked the driver. His nervous eyes met hers in the mirror for a millisecond.
“We’re coming up to another road block; it’s Ukrainian; I’ll ask them,” he said. Maria noticed his hand trembling as he moved it around the wheel. Not from the baby coming in his backseat, but from the terror of death that seemed to pursue them even here, when the explosions had become inaudible. The cars fleeing along with them were reminders that they were pursued by a pounding, monstrous creature, never satiated by any amount of bones and blood. The creature of war.
The man pushed down on the gas pedal and the little car pushed weakly forward.
Maria sat like a stone, not having strength to comfort Polina like she usually did a laboring woman. Contractions rolled on. Stone face, bleeding heart. The birth in front of her was not enough to save her. Tears threatened her vision. Her hands shook from a sudden surge of adrenaline. Anger rose to fight for its place.
I can’t leave! Her heart was screaming, dying. I must go back! What are we doing? These children! Mine, hers. They drag me away from what I love, from my own soul!
It was a rending Maria had never known. She held the anger and adrenaline out to protect herself, for if she felt the true pain of it, she would die.
After a brief stop, the driver stuck a wad of newspapers into the backseat. Anya moved to sit on the lap of the person in the front seat, and Maria awkwardly spread the papers around the seat and floor. A small task to live in, to save her from reality overwhelming her.
Dead. What if Peter is dead? So many dead. Why am I still alive?
The children.
But it was a bitter comfort. A sentence. To live in pain, to face so many breaths, though death would end this pain. To live a dead life for the sake of those who haven’t lived yet.
“God!” her heart gasped. She was in the dark, groping to feel something Living.
A head!
The baby came quickly, mercifully crying softly immediately. Maria crumpled some newspapers and wiped the baby off, getting it covered with Polina’s coat. They stopped to empty the wet newspapers, deal with the afterbirth, and settle Polina and the baby.
Poor Polina. A baby in the car. No smiles, no blankets, pillow, or bed, no gifts or flowers. Just a cold, terrifying ride into the dark.
Maria didn’t touch her enlarged abdomen and the baby inside. She was glad Anya was in the front seat.
She leaned against the window, the cold seeping into her skull, her soul. She saw the moon. The moon. Silent witness to millennia grief and unspeakable violence.
And with the moon her soul groaned the final prayer, “God.”
As her eyes closed, the whisper came, “It’s not your children, it’s my hand leading you.”
