Creation

 Creation

The pain was so much worse than the time she had fallen carrying wood and the bone in her arm, so white, had ripped through her dark skin. Her arm was still bent there and it oftentimes still pained her, so she grabbed it now with her hand and relished the shooting sting—anything to distract her from the feeling that her pelvis would at any moment explode.

Wrinkled Woman pressed down on her enormous belly. “Push!” the gesture said. She clenched her teeth and pushed and pushed and gripped the small sapling next to her with her left hand and pushed even harder and it was no use. She looked down. The dirt underneath her had turned to mud. It was blood in that mud. It slithered across the scorched earth in tiny rivulets, settling at the foot of Big Woman, who held down her ankles. She screamed and felt in her legs the urge to flail but Big Woman held them down, pressed against the dirt.

At that moment the only thing she wanted was for the pain to stop. Her whole being was dedicated to this desire. She thought not of what was happening or what was going to happen or what had happened—they had been alone together, for the first time, by the river collecting water and had followed what their bodies had done so naturally. She felt no shame, lying in this way as a woman never should, being held down and touched and prodded in a way a woman never should. There’s something about pain that so fully trumps everything, even dignity. She was nothing more than her body in its most elemental form, the same as she had been when this creation had taken place.

The pain built. Her mouth wailed. Wrinkled Woman pressed down on her belly, hard. She released the sapling and reached for Big Woman’s hand and they held each other firmly, resolutely. She pushed the hardest she had this whole time, which had felt like days but which she knew was only one day because she had watched completely the sun’s movement. She pushed the hardest because she was certain she would die if she didn’t. The thought of being stuck in this inertial state of uncontrollable pain was so terrifying and unthinkable that it drove her body to action despite feeling so weak and helpless.

She felt it happening, felt its movement and felt Big Woman’s hands aiding the movement and her eyes were closed and her tongue was bleeding from having bitten down on it and then it was done.

No pain.

Nothing.

And then Big Woman was holding something out to her. It was screaming and it was so small. She took it in her hands and it was slimy and warm. It—he—opened its eyes and looked at her.

She had never loved something so strongly and so immediately. Everything about him could not be any other way, like how his hands were clenched so strongly and his thighs were so big that the fat folded up in wrinkles and his hair was in little matted clumps at the top of his head. It was so different than when she had seen Mother make Little Sister. Everything was bloody and horrifying and she had hated Little Sister for making Mother scream like that and when Mother had held it out to her she had shaken her head. No, she didn’t want to touch it.

But now she understood. She understood about the time there was no food for so long and yet Mother was never hungry and handed her food to them. She wanted to give everything to him because she was so in love. Just moments before, everything had been dictated by her body and its most basic, simplistic needs. Now, she knew she would starve to death for him.

This was what everything was for. She was made to make him. She was nothing more than a bead in a necklace, and if you take one bead away no one notices because the necklace is still there. In her life so suddenly taking on meaning she was also overwhelmed by the comforting meaninglessness of being one of many, of doing something that everyone before her had done and everyone after her would do.

Love creates love creates love creates love.