Livebearer
By Jeneé Skinner
Here is a world, black and body,
a mother who is protected and timeless,
a father who is her husband and stays.
a midwife with hands worth more than a lover’s
because she catches life and gives it back.
Here my children swim,
their streams just beginning.
The birthing pool fills most of our living room. The warm water smells of minerals. Our midwife said that a small amount of iodized salt would be fine, but not too much because my birth canal would be an open wound that brackish water would attack. Your father, Ife, and I decided that we’d transfer you to the backyard pond once you become fingerlings ready for a more alkaline setting.
Smooth pebbles roll underneath my feet. Water lilies float on the surface, reeds bend even though there’s no wind. Bog bean, yellow flag, and mud sedge decorate your new home and invite the outside in as much as my nausea will allow. Turtles and frogs swim around lazily. Dragonflies sparkle along with the sunlight, which penetrates the stillness.
Ife sits underneath me in the pool, islands in a body of water. His flesh calms mine. So does his breath as mine doesn’t feel like enough for you wriggling inside me. The contractions grow like a garden of thorns that I imagine in the same shape as my stretch marks. It’s the day my universe expands. It’s hard for me to imagine a world that vast, one that lives in bodies other than mine, so I don’t let my mind travel past the pool, a distance I can swim with ends I can see.
Our midwife ducks her head underwater and looks between my legs. Her touch is as soft as the ripples. She tells me I’m fully dilated and ready to push. For the first time fear rushes through me. I remember each moment leading up to this. The evening when Ife and I were bored with the movie and decided to fool around. I remember being a week late for my period, taking a home test, then going to the doctor’s to confirm I was pregnant. I thought about the statistics I’d read. How Black women experience higher mortality rates than all other racial/ethnic populations. I imagined death woven into each disease and how they targeted bodies like mine. Cardiomyopathy. Thrombotic pulmonary embolism. Hypertensive disorders. How doctors saw the disparities and did nothing. But then Ife was so happy, kissing and resting his head on my belly as if he could hear an echo as the cells of you began stitching together inside me.
Inside me, you were invisible, more of a concept. Then the curves of you came, forming like words. I drew cursive on my stomach that I thought resembled you. Aid. Said. Cloud. Across. Words are important to me, as is my body. I wanted a Black nurse-midwife, a woman I didn’t have to explain my existence or anatomy to, who knew to expect my pain as much as my joy, prepared for the danger as well as the precious that erupted from me. The risks didn’t scare me. For the first time, I would be needed and the instinct to watch over you would bewitch me for the rest of my life.
Ife runs his fingers along my hips, stomach, and back, trying to sense where he is needed. I move his hands to my breasts, which feel like boulders against my stomach. I tell him to gently lift them as he had my stomach when the weight became too much to bear. Whenever the midwife taps my thigh, I push, feeling a levee slowly release inside me. My lips part like waves as my water joins the pool’s. My head leans back against Ife. He tells me to push into him as much as I need while stroking my swollen breasts.
The midwife tells me I’m almost there. My vagina feels like it’s turning inside out, my skin melts with sweat. I barely have enough energy to moan. Time is foldable. Suddenly, webbed feet caress my hips and I see the turtles and frogs leaning on me and my womb is grateful for their presence.
The flood follows between my legs and all of you surge out, racing to see light. You paint the water an array of colors: tiger striped, red and white spots, pink fading into blue and silver, black, white and orange, tan. A beautiful school of fish. You swim around my legs, smelling the familiar in my skin. Ife kisses my arm then slips from beneath me and goes underwater to get a closer look at you, while I rest and wait for the afterbirth then watch it float amongst the water lilies, plum colored and veined.
The midwife towels off my sweat, then leaves the pool to give us a few minutes alone. I want to sleep, but I also want to see your faces, so I duck into the water. The sun’s warmth is still strong, everything is warm. Your scales sparkle as you all dart toward me, crowning my body with yours. I look at your wide eyes, gaping mouths, visible spines. A mixture of guppies, mollies, platies, swordtails, and split fins. I swim out to the middle of the pool. Many of you trail along my breasts, while others make their way to the placenta and nibble on its edges. I’m happy that home is the meal that feeds you most. I softly massage one breast, then the other, and let the milk flow out in a white haze for you to breathe in. You wriggle around, excited in the haze for a minute, and I return to the surface with your father to catch my breath and rest against his chest. Many of you follow after you feed, laying in the lines of my legs, stomach, and hands. I fall asleep dreaming of how I can’t wait to know you.
About the author
Jeneé Skinner
Jeneé Skinner’s work has appeared in the Catapult, Roxane Gay’s The Audacity, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere. Additionally, she was a finalist for the Marianne Russo Award for a novel-in-progress and received an Honorable Mention for the Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellowship. She’s received fellowships from Tin House Summer Workshop and Kimbilio Writers Retreat. Currently, she’s the Writing in Color Book Project Fellow for the Lighthouse Writers Workshop. Her work has been nominated for Best Microfiction, Best of the Net, and a Pushcart. She’s an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. She can be found on Twitter @SkinnerJenee or Instagram @jskin94.
