TW: There isn't a graphic description but a woman does give birth in here, and some of the basic parts of that are talked about.
TW2:This is pretty heavy on descriptions of past child abuse and neglect.
Chapter 9: About Parents
"I've been thinking a bit," Cressie said the night after we left our guards behind.
Oh no, everyone seemed to think at once, shifting uncomfortably.
"Cass, when Mom pushed you over back in Colorado, I thought for sure you'd get out of there and fight back. I mean, you definitely could, and honestly, how was she able to knock you over, being you know, stick thin and you being jacked and everything?" Cressie rushed to explain, tears in her voice but dead serious.
Oh. What even did happen there?
"I mean, it's none of my business really, but I just remembered to ask and if you don't want to tell me-"
"Cressie, it's fine," I interrupted with a tight smile. I played with my silver ring, spinning it in place on my finger. "Well, the ground was slanted a bit and I wasn't used to all the extra weight up top, both of which threw me a bit off balance anyways, and she caught me by surprise," I admitted, joking, "You know we've always been about the emotional abuse and never the physical. Never expected her to shove me."
"Which brings up a big question for me- what did she do to you all?" Grandpa questioned incredulously.
For an awkward beat, my sisters and brother and I all exchanged uncomfortable looks. When I turned eighteen and entered the military, I had sworn to myself to never tell anyone about Mother and her cruelty. I pushed it to the back of my mind, never speaking of it except when one of my siblings was in dire emotional straits and needed confirmation that it wasn't just in their heads.
From what I knew, the twins and Electra had made a similar vow. Thankfully we had gotten Liam out before he had to do the same and he shrugged, saying, "Mom never hit us or anything. Well, I mean, except that time she was really high and Cass hid her meds, but that wasn't the norm."
"Meh, she was way too high and I caught her hands and knee then put her back on the couch. Nothing happened there either really," I added.
"She just really didn't like any of us girls. Spoiled Liam rotten because he was a boy and left the rest of us to fight over his scraps," Andy said bitterly, confirming thoughts that I'd wondered for years.
Briefly Liam bowed his head, looking more than a little overwhelmed and guilty.
"Honey, it's not your fault," I whispered to him and jammed myself alongside his longer frame in an effort to give comfort a bit subtly, "You couldn't have done anything about it."
All the while everything poured out of my sisters. Being lucky if we could get air mattresses for under our sleeping bags, rationing usage of the heater, having to get jobs as soon as we could to buy school lunches. Liam always got the biggest and first portion at the table, then Mother, then the rest of us took our turns on the rota of who wouldn't eat dinner that night. That went without mentioning the snide comments and ridiculous restrictions.
"When I needed to go bra shopping and I wanted a black bra, she asked who was going to be seeing it," Dezzie sniffled, "Right in front of the sales girl!" None of us had known what to say to that, just put the requested black bra in with the purchases.
Clearly taken aback by the utter wave of misery, Grandpa looked helplessly to his wife. Clearly he had expected a clear case of beatings.
Not that Gran seemed any less unsettled. "You're saying that you got thrown out for having a boyfriend?" she was asking Andy.
A short, jerky nod. "Kind of. My then-ex called Mom to lie about me sleeping around because we had a bad break-up and he knew that would hurt me. She didn't believe me and told me to not come back from school the next day," Andy explained.
"So I told her to her face that I had a girlfriend and she threw me out too," Mackey added.
"You go both ways?" Matt asked, eyebrows high on his face.
Mackey patted him patronizingly on the shoulder. "Really I wasn't seeing anybody and the girlfriend was at my last school but it was the concept of the thing," she said bracingly, "I wasn't going to leave Andy to be homeless alone." They had been sixteen at the time, and frankly I had never forgiven Mother for leaving them to fend for themselves like that. One of a long list of unforgivable things.
"Why didn't you tell anyone?" Gran asked, voice cracking, "We would've gladly helped, if we knew you needed it."
"Mom always told us that if we complained to anybody, the state would take us and they'd beat us and rape us," Electra said bluntly.
Logically, I was fully aware that the abuse within foster care wasn't the systemic, fully aware type that we had been threatened with. But people in fear don't always act rationally.
Grandpa let out a huge gust of a sigh and put his head in his hands.
A hand on his shoulder, Gran said, "I knew that Mary had some issues- being the only child then upstaged a dozen years later by a new baby does no one any good- but I thought it was all teenage angst and if she really needed help, she'd ask." She seemed as lost as everyone else.
"I'm so sorry that her resentment of me turned into something that horrible," Aunt Libby finally said, having listened quietly for the hour and some that we had all been babbling and crying, "We had a rather bitter feud over our parents and because I was younger and needed more care, I… won." She scoffed at the word.
"Mom?" Stevie whispered, eyes wide and face pale even in the flickering firelight.
"I don't think she ever got over that, and she had always said that she wanted a football team of boy children, so when I managed a son immediately, and she had you girls…" Aunt Libby shrugged, leaving the obvious conclusion to us: Mom had wanted a boy so much that she just kept having children until she got one. And she was resentful of us for not being those wanted boy children.
That certainly explained all the times she implied we were all prostitutes, I thought darkly.
"Just saying, it's turned out to be a pretty good thing so many of us are girls. I don't think Prince Theodred or Stithulf go both ways, you know," I teased.
"Besides, we're tougher than boys can ever be. You know what Betty White said," Andy added while her twin tried to get Cressie to quiet down her wailing screams of emotional distress.
I glanced at the forest to make sure that we were really alone, even with the noise Cressie was making, only to see human figures hovering at the treeline. Even in outline there was no way that they were the Rohirrim- I saw no horses and these people seemed built much burlier. "Just a sec, we've got visitors," I said casually and stood up.
Despite Cressie and Dezzie begging us not to go, Aunt Libby and I went to stand a few yards from the gathering. We put our hands up in a gesture of peace and Aunt Libby told the dark figures, "We are passing through. We mean no harm."
Cautiously a large man with a huge bushy beard edged out of the forest. "You are women?" he asked, clearly having trouble with his second or third language.
"We are," Aunt Libby answered, since she had the more feminine voice between the two of us.
A shorter man darted up to whisper in the other man's ear. He was tense, I noticed uneasily, and had a knife in his hand.
"You can birth a baby?" the bushy bearded man asked, hope in his voice.
"Is a baby being born?" I immediately asked, "Does the mother need help?"
Both men nodded emphatically. "You come, help baby, we…" The leader seemed to struggle with his words for a moment and finally finished, "We no fight, you help."
Looking to Aunt Libby, she shrugged. "Do you feel okay about it?" she asked.
"I've delivered babies in worse times," I reminded her. Like off to the side of an active battlefield.
"Aditi!" I called over my shoulder.
The men tensed up, clearly expecting an attack.
Instead my delicate little step sister joined Aunt Libby and me. "Yes?" Warily she kept one eye on the strangers.
"You said you wanted to be a doctor, right?" I asked.
She nodded emphatically. "Do they need help?" she asked, gesturing to the strangers with the tilt of her head.
"You want to learn how to deliver a baby?" I asked in answer.
Despite how she blanched, Aditi nodded. "May as well start somewhere," she agreed.
"Great. Let's get some supplies together real quick." I made sure to fill my canteen and bring some soap; at the very least we weren't going to be the ones to give the new mother an infection.
It was only a few minutes until Aditi and I were back with Aunt Libby, cautiously meeting the strangers in the middle between the encampment and the forest. "Will you bring them back safely?" Aunt Libby demanded sternly.
Immediately the lead man nodded emphatically. "They help, we do not hurt," he added.
It was good enough for me; I hiked my bag up my back in preparation for walking.
"The third morning from now, we'll continue to Tharbad. If you don't meet us in a couple weeks, we'll send a message to Rohan," Aunt Libby told Aditi and me in a low voice, "We need good relations with the locals but not at the cost of you two." She squeezed each of our shoulders.
"We'll be fine," I assured her, fingering the hammer still on my belt.
"Look after this nutter for me, eh?" Aunt Libby asked Aditi with a wink and a grin, barely seen in the starlight.
"Yes, of course."
Aditi and I set off with the strangers, occasionally waving back at Aunt Libby before we entered the forest. Then I became all business. "How old is the mother?" I asked the leader, hoping his English was good enough to answer.
He looked to a younger man with mystification, who translated the answer as, "Twenty eight summers."
Okay, not bad. Similarly to when I first began offering my services to Afghani families, I tried to keep my language simple. These people had no concept of blood pressure so I kept my thoughts of preeclampsia to myself for now and hoped that I didn't come across as creepy when asking about the woman's urine.
"Why are you asking that?" Aditi whispered just audibly over the crunch of leaves under our feet.
The translator asked the same thing but with much more suspicion.
"If the urine smells sweet, she has a disease which can make the birth difficult," I answered him, before adding for Aditi that, "If the urine is sweet, it's a sign of diabetes. They call it diabetes mellitus because 'mel' means honey, for the sweet smell." And taste, but I wasn't going anywhere near that far.
The village was reached within an hour, a poor little hovel of stick and bark shelters around a small stream. The shack where the woman was giving birth was obvious- it was where the screams came from.
Before I ran in like my instincts urged, I walked to the stream and washed my hands. The men didn't seem to get it and tried to urge Aditi and me toward the house, but they were ignored until our hands were satisfactory.
A little indent in the middle held a fire that allowed me to see the woman in question, her belly huge and legs spread with a blanket barely covering her modesty. She didn't look her age, dark eyes wide with fear as she looked to the new arrivals while she panted for breath.
The woman beside her took the opportunity to wring out what must have been a very sore hand.
"We are here to help," I assured the soon to be mum, "Can I look?" I pointed at the blanket thrown over her legs.
She let out a sob but nodded.
Figuring the tears were from pain, I looked to Aditi. "You cool with being my assistant?" I asked.
She nodded. "Take the blanket off?" she asked helpfully.
"Not fully, leave it on one leg so she feels at least a little covered," I answered.
Just saying, births are not pretty. They're not fun for anyone involved, including the baby, but they're unfortunately necessary if we want our species to continue. Or if someone wants sex but birth control hasn't been invented yet.
By the time we got there the new mum, Fedelmid, was pretty well on her way so at least there wasn't the tense waiting period this time. Instead when I looked, I realized with horrible certainty that we had a problem. "She's breech," I hissed to Aditi, "I've never dealt with a breech birth before!"
But thank the gods, my step-sister stepped up to the plate. "I saw one once, my cousin wanted someone with her but no men were allowed in the delivery room. The doctor felt around and moved the baby inside her?" she suggested quietly.
I swallowed down my fear, nodded to myself, and looked Fedelmid in the eye. "You're going to be just fine," I assured her despite my own insecurities.
Despite that she apparently knew no English according to her companion, the woman seemed to understand. Her tense legs loosened up and she took a deep, shaky breath.
"That's it, keep breathing," I assured her as I put my hands on her stomach. Praying that I would be able to keep that promise. Through her flesh and the amniotic sack I felt the little body and through the layers, began to guide its kicking wiggling mass into the correct position. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever felt, honestly, and took longer than I wish to admit.
But when I peeked back downward afterward, I was relieved to see the top of a dark head of hair getting ready to emerge. "Blessed be the Aditi," I joked.
After that, things were relatively smooth sailing. Aditi and I washed our hands again right as the final stages were coming up, and I more caught the baby than pulled it out. Him out. Aditi cut the cord and I gave him a check over while I wiped him with a damp cloth, finding a perfectly healthy little one sobbing all the amniotic fluid out of his lungs. "You have a son," I told Fedemid happily as I handed the baby to her, wrapped in a hastily provided shawl.
I could see the moment she fell in love with the new little one. Her eyes went wide and soft, her trembling limbs clenched him to her chest like her most precious possession even while his tiny screams echoed.
Would I have the capacity to love a child like that? I wondered with a sort of satisfied bittersweetness at the sight before me, then did my best to clean things up in the trauma site.
When I emerged from the hut, I was immediately seized in a bear hug by the burly leader of the village. "Whoa!" I shouted when my feet left the ground, only to start laughing at the sheer delight that I saw on so many faces.
"You eat," the leader insisted, herding Aditi and me over to a pot of some thick stew on the fire where we were given wooden bowls of it. Since everybody else was also eating out of the pot, I figured it was safe enough and shoved it greedily into my face. Deer, chestnuts, and root vegetables were an interesting mix but by then I was hungry enough to not care.
Conversations with the village lasted long into the night while they celebrated the birth of what seemed to be the headman's third son. Not to mention that I got an explanation why outside help was needed: Fedemid was the midwife. Everything gets screwy if it's the medical staff who needs help.
The little bit of sleep Aditi and I got that night was under our cloaks in the same hut where Fedemid had given birth. These were some of the poorest people I had ever seen, the headman embarrassed that he could offer shelter but had no spare blankets to loan us. They were built burly but to someone with any medical training, the signs of malnutrition were clear in the whole village; something kept them from developing trade or more agriculture than their forest gardens.
On the way back to camp, the headman explained in rough terms. Apparently the Rohirrim had driven his forefathers off their land centuries ago and any attempts to get some back were met with better weapons than they could muster. I was uncomfortably reminded of the plight of the Native Americans at home, despite the many differences.
At the edge of the forest we parted with smiles and words of friendship.
"Thanks for coming with me," I told Aditi as we crossed the field between forest and camp.
She smiled, rightly proud of herself. "Thank you for inviting me. I learned a lot," Aditi said, "It was a bit scary really, but I know more now."
I clapped her on the shoulder and pulled her against my side for a moment. "It really is scary the first time, but you did good. At least you didn't faint like poor Murphy." Ever since, I'd never let him live it down.
"Your boyfriend?" Aditi guessed.
"No, teammate in Afghanistan. Him, Martin, York, and I went through the blender in there," I reminisced fondly.
My step-sister smiled to herself and shook her head. "Before I never understood why all of you joined the military. But now that we know what Nan knew, I wish I had. It might make this easier," she confessed.
"It doesn't really, besides the whole accepting we might die early thing," I assured her, "You're doing just fine."
At that point our sleepy relatives finally realized we were there, which honestly shouldn't have taken so long. Rosie was the first to squeal out our names and launch herself at us, giggling happily as she was picked up and spun.
"I take it things went well with the natives?" Aunt Libby guessed.
"Thankfully. Aditi was a real gem, I probably would've lost my head without her," I announced.
Pitaajee puffed up with pride in his first daughter.
"I'm just glad you're alive, honestly. I really don't want trouble," Gran told us as she offered bits of cheese and fruit.
Mouth full, I could only nod vehemently.
Right then, life was good.