I sit in the bathtub my mother gave birth to me in and tuck my knees to my chest. It’s the kind of bathtub that has little feet. The room is small and echoing; my heartbeat clunks in my forehead. I once watched something on TV about a woman who said she remembered being born. She told the camera that it felt like being wrung out like a dishtowel. The woman paraded around doing interviews for a week or so, and then two doctors—one neurologist and one obstetrician—refuted her story as being medically implausible. Nothing more was heard from her.
Mercy, my oldest sister, told me I was a breech, which made the labor difficult. She was always our mother’s helper—the first person we reached for when we needed something and the last person we thanked. Her cheerful caretaking seemed natural and easy. She wore her responsibility like a silk shawl on a breezy evening. It was probably more like a wool coat in August.
“Mommy Mercy,” I used to plead in my wheedling child voice. “Mommy Mercy, can you make me another sandwich? A sandwich with just peanut butter?”
She never asked me what the magic word was.
Of the nine of us, Mercy said that Humility was the easiest birth. Before the bathtub was even full, Mother squatted down on the floor without warning and Humility slid out like a small wet pumpkin. Amnesty was the worst, which was probably why she was the last. Mercy doesn’t talk about it—not even when Amnesty asks. It was around the time Father began philandering. Neither of my parents had much interest in children beyond the boast of filling an entire pew in church, but Father was an ambitious man, and willing to make sacrifices for the sake of pollination.
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Mercy tried her best to help us with our homeschooling, but words squirmed away from her when she tried to read, so she resigned herself to assisting with times table memorization. She was especially good with the sevens and fives. Nines, too, because all her daily tasks were organized in nines. Nine pairs of sneakers to tie, nine Sunday dresses to iron, nine hands to hold while crossing the street, nine bedtime stories to tell. She could have just told one story to all of us, but I think it was fun for her to spin up a whole batch and deal them out like playing cards. I don’t remember the stories, except a few odd fragments—fairies sewing dresses from sunflower petals, wild horses jumping between stars. There was a vast imaginary world that Mercy dipped into at night, and she meted it out to us like little spoons of medicine.
+
The time came when I was called upon to help deliver my sister Chastity.
“I need all hands on deck,” Mother shouted from the bathtub.
Some of my other sisters and I had flocked around the television, watching a cartoon about Noah’s Ark and pretending we couldn’t hear Mother panting and grunting.
When I approached the bathroom door and gave a tentative knock, Mercy spoke to me through the keyhole.
“Sit this one out, Obedience,” she said quietly. “Go get Patience and send her in—she’s old enough. You don’t need to see this yet.”
+
The bathtub I was born in is streaked with dark blood. Not just mine. Mother’s many labors were never fully scrubbed out; not even Mercy with a bucketful of bleach could manage it. Stains in varying shades of pink spatter the drain. My bleeding started a few hours ago, just like the bottle said it would. Cramping, too. Not the worst I’ve had, but it’s still early. It’s going to be a long night.
Jeremiah, the boy I’m seeing, is very supportive. He wants to be an accountant just like I do. We sit next to each other in Contemporary Cinema 103—a class we’re taking to fulfill a gen ed requirement—and became fast friends by making snarky comments during movie screenings. Every time a female love interest says, What’s the matter? You never seen a girl shoot a gun before? we exchange tired looks.
He didn’t panic when I showed him the little blue plus sign, but he became very still. We both stared at it in fearful wonder, like a burning bush or a stone tablet on the mountaintop. It was confirmation that what we had done was real, capable of taking on a life of its own. Neither of us knew what we were doing in bed. At times, it had felt so shy and clumsy that I wasn’t even sure if it counted. Apparently, it had.
The decision was waiting for me as soon as my awe subsided. It wasn’t so much an active choice as a return to reality.
“I can’t fit a cradle in my dorm room,” I said. “And I can’t afford to drop out. I don’t know how to do any of the things Mercy did for me. I can’t even make a peanut butter sandwich as good as hers.”
“I think it’s a good call,” said Jeremiah. He looked like he was trying to hide his relief.
“You do?”
He squeezed my hand. “I think you’d be a good mother, Beady. Just not yet.”
We walked in quiet circles around campus until it got dark; then we kissed very carefully and said goodnight. I woke the next day with a tear-swollen face. It had been a long time since I’d cried, and I wasn’t sure what to do with myself. I scrubbed my face in the sink until I looked like a person, and I boarded the bus that would take me to where I’d left.
+
People at church were excited for Mercy to have children of her own. You’re a natural with the little ones, they’d say. She smiled politely and got her tubes tied as soon as she turned eighteen. I found out she had been saving up for the surgery with her waitressing tips.
“Why’d you do that?” I asked her as she massaged the scar on her stomach.
“It makes me feel safe,” she said. “I made a promise to myself, and I’m going to keep it.”
Boys used to flock to Mercy like an open jam jar, buzzing eagerly around her long legs and shiny black hair. But once word got out that she had shut down her factory, they stayed as far away as they could without being blatantly rude. They must have thought barrenness was catching.
Mercy, for her part, didn’t seem to mind the lack of attention. She was still very beautiful, and I once saw a girl wearing silver high heels climb down from her window one morning. She landed in the back garden without a sound.
+
Mother and Father don’t live in this house anymore.
They both left the church for their own reasons—Father so he could get divorced and Mother because the Buddha came to her in a dream and told her to follow the animals. By the time I was twelve, they had both wandered off in search of better things. I don’t think I ever had a full conversation with either of them. I rarely went to church once they were gone, and when I did, I went alone. At a certain point it just became muscle memory. Plus, I liked the singing.
In their absence, both the house and the daughters fell into Mercy’s possession. Mercy was a good sport about the whole thing. Reading finally made sense to her, and she had become a voracious consumer of beat poetry.
“I can’t promise you won’t go hungry,” she’d recite as she scraped scrambled eggs onto our breakfast plates. “Or that you won’t be sad on this gutted breaking globe. But I can show you, baby, enough love to break your heart forever.”
She worked a few different jobs to keep everything up and running. Dog walker, bakery cashier, dental secretary, Walmart shelf-stocker. Patience and Temperance left as soon as they graduated, but I wanted to defer my college enrollment so I could stay and help Mercy. She insisted that I leave. She told me—diplomatically—that it would be more helpful to have one less person under her roof. She had gotten used to doing things on her own.
I think she knew it was what I wanted to hear.
She slipped a note into my suitcase, and I saw it when I unzipped my bags in my dorm room.
Beauty stands and waits with gravity / to start her death-defying leap.
+
Mercy knocks on the bathroom door. The little ones are all piled into their bunk beds and trundles, and the house is warm with sleep.
“Want me to come in?” she whispers.
I’m hunched in fetal position, half-naked, doing a bad job of not crying. I want Mercy’s comfort the same way I did when I was first born, wrung out like a dishtowel and trying to land on my feet. I want her to tell me I’m doing the right thing. I want her to tell me I don’t need to see it yet.
“No,” I say. “Just stay by the door for a little while. Please?”
I hear the slide of her back against the wall and the creak of her legs as she settles in.
“This boy,” she says quietly. “He’s good to you?”
“Really good.”
“Where is he, then?”
“I told him I wanted to do it alone. With you.”
There’s a sage little thump as she nods her head. “Good.”
We ease into silence. Mercy suddenly feels like a mystery to me. I don’t even know how old she really is. Silver coils through her hair like tiny snakes.
“I’m gonna help you too,” I tell her. “When I’m an accountant, I’ll get you everything you want.”
She laughs. “I can take care of myself. I’m a mother.”
“I know,” I say. “But I want you to be a daughter.”
The cramp tightens and twists in my lower pelvis. I gasp, gripping the rim of the tub with both hands, squeezing hard. By the time the pain ebbs, Mercy has started talking again. She’s reciting a poem, a long one, with dips and dives and sounds that don’t make sense but belong together anyway. Where does she fit these words? I lean back against the tub, sink into the tide of her voice, remember what it felt like to be born.
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Sophie Hoss loves the ocean and is in bed by 9 pm every night. She has received a Pushcart Prize, and her words are scattered around in BOMB, The Baffler, Los Angeles Review, The Southampton Review, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. Also, she has a small dog named Elmo who likes to wear little sweaters. You can read more of her work at sophiehosswriting.com.