A/N: For RagdollPrincess! Thank you for the song prompt and the phrase to work around :) Especially thank you for reminding me of the fact that I am indeed bilingual :)
"Truck Got Stuck" by Corb Lund Band
The lilting voice of the yoga lady is floating above our heads, and I'm thinking there are about seven minutes before all the hell breaks loose. My wife is biting on her bright red lower lip. In the past seven months I have learnt that when the green eyes are narrowed like that, it is when everyone should hide under tables and pray for their lives.
"And then you need to embrace your inner mother…" My other half snorts, and I think I hear her mumbling under her nose. I can distinguish a couple of words. One is фигня, which is "poppycock" in her mother tongue, and then there is сдохнуть, which is an equivalent of "kick the bucket". I know that one well enough. It's never a good sign.
Her mom, who is the best mother-in-law a bloke can hope for, has moved here in the seventies but she is still struggling with the language. My wife's English sounds surprisingly posh, after a few years of internship in Leeds, which is especially stunning considering the words that sometimes come out of this glorious mouth. As a professor of comparative linguistics I have to say that her aspiration of the first consonant in cunt is alarmingly sexy.
My interest in Russian and the other Slavic languages is what got me in this aggro in the first place. I needed someone to read me the texts, she needed a ride home. The first time we shagged was in the back of my car, at the parking lot of my apartment building. We just couldn't wait another three minutes to get up the stairs.
My wife is a surgeon, which means she is a tough cookie and as ruthless as a Mongolian nomad. Apparently it is from them invading Russia in the 13th century where my wife and many other Russians got slanted eyes. Apparently the temper is from her BC Dad, but no way in hell a Canadian can be such a wild beast. Having grown up in Manchester, I have to say Canadians I've met are as fluffy as lab pups. All except for my fierce wife. And at the moment she looks increasingly irritated.
"Imagine you are a fish bowl, and your babe is swimming in the warm embrace of your love..." Wren is rolling up her eyes and then gives you a pointed look. "Давай пойдем, а? Это же явная чушь," she speaks in a low voice. She wants to leave, and I shake my head. She keeps on skipping these classes, and today I went with her to make sure she sits through at least one of them. She claims they are "бред" and then happily saunters to a nearest Tim's.
Even if the lady does sound like she is raving under a very high fever, there still might be something useful in her blabbering. Yes, none of us expected this New Age gibberish in a prenatal class in the best hospital in the city, but it is still worth looking into.
"When you push that beautiful baby out of your body, you will enter the most wonderful phase of your life..." Wren leans into me and whispers into my ears, "Когда я вытолкну этого огромного ребенка из моей вагины, в нашей жизни не наступит чудесный период. В ней настанет время, когда у меня на футболке все время будут пятна от молока, а ты забудешь, что такое сон." When I push this giant baby out of my vagina, there will be no wonderful phase in our life. I'll have milk stains on my tee on my boobs, and you will forget what sleep is.
And they say Russians are optimists. And then she strokes my thigh, "О, и не забудь про разрывы и трещины, ребенок у тебя будет, конечно, размером с пискап, так что никаких попрыгушек месяца три." And don't forget about tears and cracks, your kid will be the size of a pickup truck, so no sex for at least three months.
She calls sex попрыгушки, which literally means "hopping" or "bobbing", and you find it adorable. A woman who can pour a bucket of the dirties swearings there exist in English language, can't say "intercourse" in her mothertongue. I pat her knee.
And then they start passing some books. I groan internally. She can tolerate, though with difficulty, the droning at the background, she probably blocks it out and is thinking of an apple fritter, but once the rambling about fishbowls and meditative music during delivery gains a corporeal form of an actual book, there will be nothing that could mollify the fire tornado that is my dearest spouse.
She picks up a copy and wrinkles her nose. And then she shows me the cover: You, Nature, and Delivery. There is a picture of a happy looking lady is a lotus pose with a tiny baby drawn on her round stomach. The baby is a size of an apple. Wren lifts a brow, "Пикап, Джон, огромный грузовик. Полный привод." Pick-up, John, a huge truck. Four wheel drive.
Women and their exaggeratedly attentive husbands are studying their copies of the book. "Dodge Dakota, Ford Supercrew, GMC Sierra, Chevrolet Colorado..." She is murmuring into my ear almost erotically. Have I mentioned that my wife who looks like an Old English fay, speaks like the Duchess of York, swears like a sailor and cooks like the best of Russian wives, is also a pick-up crazy daughter of prairies?
"Let us talk about the incense that you want to accompany you into the magical words of delivering your child in our beautiful world..." That is the limit of Wren's patience. She slams the book into the carpet everyone is sitting on, in "a circle of acceptance and understanding", and jumps on her feet. She told me that everyone in the group hates her because she can still do it in her seven months. If others in the room knew the flexibility she retained in her small body and repeatedly showed in bed this morning, they would probably throw rotten vegetables at her and pull her copper hair out. Apparently, they were not very kind to her during the first class, suggesting she should come back in three months, or when she is actually pregnant. And then they hissed at her when she couldn't come up with a weird craving she had. She actually sniffed when telling this story, which had never happened before, crying is for wusses, and that's when I suggested to go with her.
"Alrighty, you can go on with this rubbish," she beckons me with a snooty waving of her delicate fingers, and I get up with a sigh. And then she looks around the room, into the eyes of other pregnant women and their probably hungry husbands, "And I am going to indulge in a maple glazed doughnut and some Timbits right now. Try getting this thought out of your heads."
She picks up her handbag from the floor and marches to the doors. All I can do is plod after her. Who needs the classes anyways, she is a M.D. and her Russian stubbornness will help her endure through pretty much anything. I catch up with her and see that the frown is already gone. She is smiling blissfully, no doubt daydreaming of Timbits. I swirl her around and catch her mouth. She hums and wraps her arms around my neck. "Люблю тебя." "I love you too, sweet. Let's get you your sugar fix." We hold hands and head out.