Disclaimer: I do not own LOTR, nor The Red Tent, which inspired this and from which some of the names are taken.
Warning: Rated for more childbirth, more ways of how to get the baby out, what the baby's covered in when it comes out, what the baby does when it comes out etc. Midwife stuff. I've tried not to be too graphic, but basically it's talking about something spurting out of something else.
Also, apologies to any midwives, doctors, medical students and anyone else who reads this and sees that I've gotten something wrong. I've tried to be as accurate as possible, but I've never actually been present at a birth (thank goodness, and yes, I am aware of the irony) and have had to rely on reading various sources to get the right descriptions. If – heaven forbid! – I do make an error, please tell me so and I will gratefully correct it.
A woman in the village never gave birth alone, unless she was very unlucky. When the news was sent out that the labour had begun her friends and neighbours would come running to her side so that they could try to sooth her and give her courage, so that they could wipe her forehead and hold her hand when the pain came. The room could be so crowded that Kala would often banish all but the woman's closest companions so that she could do her work with more ease, and whenever someone left the room to get something she would be plied with questions. They would tug at her from all sides like dogs on a hunt ripping apart a fox, desperate for news of the mother and the baby and made savage by it.
There was always an order to the cluster about the women, I do remember that. If the woman's mother was still alive she would support her in her labour, if the mother was dead it would be her oldest sister, as Bilhah had done for Rookheeya when I was born. If the woman was a concubine she would give birth on the knees of the chief wife of her husband and the baby could by rights go to the older woman. And if the woman was too weak to stand upon the bricks, they all would group about her and hold her up so that she all but dangled from their hands like a doll. They would coo and cry with her and try to drown out her pain, and they would praise her and tell her how well she was doing, even if she had laboured for days and was screaming at them to go and throttle each other.
All mothers screamed at one birthing or another, certainly when it was their first time and their bodies forced their child out of them. There was so much that Kala could not do, for if we gave the women drugs strong enough to fully take away the pain then they would not push or do anything to help themselves. I learned to close my ears to their shrieks and think only of my task, but it was hard, so hard. They would howl and beg the goddesses to hear their cries and take away their torment. They would weep in agony, sobbing upon the floor, or they would curse and bellow and threaten all those about them. Some gritted their teeth, too proud to cry out, and fainted from the pain, and some poor women - exhausted and nearly dead from their agony - would plead for us to kill them so that they would suffer no more, and sometimes they would die from the torture with no aid from us. We would cut and pull their children from their twisted bodies and they would make no more complaints in this world.
But we did what we could. We would show them how to breathe in and out in the right way so that they would not gasp for air. We would pull their hair back and mop their faces. We would massage their skin to make it soften and grow suppler, so that it would not tear when the time came for the child to be born. We would make certain that they were not too hot or too cold and we would keep their lips wet with cold water. We would do everything to make them comfortable and calm so that they would not cause themselves pain or fear. We would talk. We were there for the benefit of everyone in the room, not merely for the sake of the mother.
Kala told me once, if I remember right, "We must be empresses when it comes to birth, priestesses, links between this world and the next. We have to act as if nothing surprises us, as if we always know what's going to happen next. I was taught that when I put on my midwife's wig, I should put on a mask as well. When you're attending a rich woman you must be her equal. Same for a poor woman. And we keep the other women occupied. If they're spoiled concubines and first wives they want to be entertained while they're there, and if they're peasant women they want something to take their minds off their neighbour's screams."
When Kala took me to my first birthing room, she told me quite plainly that I would do nothing unless she asked it of me, and that I was to sit and talk to the women and the mother that would be. I said that yes, of course I would, what else could I have said? But once we went inside the house of the wealthy family who had summoned us, and were shown into the bed chambers of the new bride of the family's son, we were met with the howls of the girl who was younger than me. I had seen her before in her riches when we had passed each other by in the streets, but I did not envy her now and I would never have changed places with her. I wondered how I was to talk quietly with her when she could hardly stop squealing enough to draw breath, and when she rolled about on the bed clutching her heaving belly.
It was quite terrible. It frightened me. I had never heard someone in so much pain before. She became less like a woman and more like an animal in her pain, an animal trapped by what was trying to come out of her. I wanted to help her, but I was not certain how, and I was afraid. I knew that she might die; it seemed to me that she looked like a goat or sheep about to be slaughtered. It was horrible. I tasted something harsh at the back of my throat, the iron taste of fear.
Kala was quite blunt about our calling, but I never stopped wondering at how she changed whenever she stepped into the room where a woman was labouring. She would kneel by the blanket or bed with such ease, and every gesture she would make with her long fingers would be elegant, as if she were dancing. She would speak in an archaic dialect, soothing and sweet, as if she brought a folktale into the room with her very presence. Even when she wielded the sharp knife or the forceps it was as if she handled the most precious of musical instruments, about to make wondrous music. I could only imagine how lovely and mysterious she must have looked when she was young and practiced her arts, in that great towered city which she never told me the name of. She did this now and I stared at my first sight of my teacher becoming this charming, enchanting creature, drawing the attention of the women who flocked to her side with relief.
She began to attend to the lower half of her body so that she could see how far along she was in labour and nodded me towards the top of the bed, so I swallowed iron and went and sat by the girl's head, beside her mother. Those two did not have much to say to each other, so I began to ask the trapped one questions; she ignored me at first to ask shrilly what Kala was doing to her but she had more reply from me than my teacher and so she began to listen to me. As her breathing grew calmer and her hand found mine, I learned that her name was Edira and that she would be afraid if she were not so filled with pain. I did not know what to say to this, but I could not lose her confidence when I had gained it so quickly. I was never good at talking, for I never knew what to say. I had never needed to know what to say, for I had always been surrounded by people who had loved me and who would not be offended by what I said.
In the end, I told her a story. It is not very well known, but I have always liked it and tried to tell it anew. I love to think of it still, even now. It went something like this:
There was the Sun, and there was the Moon, and each followed each other across the sky and lit up the land. And when their work was done they would sink down beyond the far off sea and travel under the earth to rise up in the East for their next journey across the sky.
Once the Blue Spirits had gone to the end of the world to see the Moon rise, because the Moon was an old friend of theirs and they had not spoken with him in a long time. They sat on the very edge of the earth and looked down into the darkness beneath it, and when the Moon sailed up out of it they greeted him with great cheer and asked him how he had fared since last they met.
The Moon greeted them, but very sadly, and when they asked him how he fared he said, "Oh, I am so unhappy! You do not know how lucky you are, to always have each other and to never have your love spurned!"
Well, the Blue Spirits were very curious when they heard this, and most of all when they heard that the Moon was in love. They asked who had been so cruel as to spurn his affection, and the Moon told them that he pined after the Sun. "How beautiful she is!" he sighed. "How brightly she shines! And how all those below adore her! But she will not listen to me whenever I try to tell her of my love, and she sails ever onwards and says that no one is good enough for her. She is so proud that she will not even stay in the same sky as me."
"Is that so?" said the older Blue Spirit, who remembered when the Sun, before she took to the sky, was but a spirit of fire and not so vain and haughty.
"This will not do," said the younger Blue Spirit, who remembered how the Sun, before she took to the sky, had sought always for approval and recognition.
They bade the Moon farewell as he set out on his journey, and they went together to the palace of the Sky King and the Star Queen and came before their thrones, and asked if they might teach the Sun a lesson so that she would not be so proud. This was because the Sun is their trusted servant, and even the Blue Spirits can not go against the Sky King or the Star Queen.
"You are right that the Sun has become proud," the Sky King and the Star Queen agreed. "And she needs to remember that there is such a thing as love, and that it can fade away as the ages pass to leave nothing but sorrow and shadow. So you may play a trick on her if it will make her less vain, but you must be sure that it will not hurt her or the earth or those who live there." And the Blue Spirits swore that they would not harm the Sun or the earth or those who lived there when they played their trick. And the younger of the Blue Spirits asked the Star Queen if they might borrow one hair from her beautiful head, to return to her later, and she in her generosity and kindness promised them not one but three with which to carry out their plan.
Then they travelled to the lands near the edge of the world which the Sun would pass over on the first part of her journey across the sky, and they took on the disguises of people of that land so she would not know them. The Sun had often watched and enjoyed their tricks from her lofty perch, so it would be very hard to deceive her, but they were confident that they could use her vanity to undo her.
At last the Sun rose up in her glory and her splendour, and all who lived in that land shielded their eyes as her light fell across them. Higher and higher she rose as she prepared to begin her voyage across the sky, but as she flew upwards she heard the Blue Spirits speaking together, for she was still near enough to the earth to hear their words.
"How wonderful the Sun is! How warm and comforting is her light! And how fierce is her golden gaze!" the older Blue Spirit said as they shielded their eyes like mortal Men to look up at her.
"Oh, yes! And how beautiful she is, so beautiful that we Men hardly dare look at her, for fear her loveliness will destroy our sight! I heard that even the Moon himself is pining away with love for her, but she will hear nothing of it!" the younger Blue Spirit added.
The Sun smiled when she heard this, for to her it was nothing but the truth; and what woman does not smile when she knows that a handsome man is a slave to her beauty?
"Really?" said the older Blue Spirit. "For I have heard that he has abandoned such a useless love, and he says that he has found a far better lady to admire, one who shines brighter even than the Sun and with more brilliance. She will travel across the sky tonight, and I plan to watch and see if such tales are true."
These words troubled the Sun, and as she went on her way she pondered them. It was not that she sought for the Moon's love, though it secretly flattered her, but she had believed that she was meant to be the greatest light in the sky above the earth. It was her duty, she thought, to shine the brightest and strongest so that darkness would forever be banished from the land. And then she began to think, "What if this new light captures the hearts of all that see it? They will think no longer of the glory and power that keeps the evil things away, but only of the next thing that has caught the Moon's wandering heart."
And as she travelled onwards she grew more and more worried, and as she grew more worried her pride grew all the greater and she became angry that the gods would send another light to the world to outdo her, though she told herself that she did not believe such a thing. And at last she decided that when the day was done she would stay at the edge of the world in the West and see what happened during the night for herself.
When the Sun left the sky she hid herself at the edge of the world and looked up at the sky as the Moon rose and the stars came out. And suddenly a great light shot across the darkness, white and blinding, and all those who lived upon the earth looked up in wonder and said what a sight it was, nothing like that had ever been seen before, the most beautiful sight of all time. And none of them knew that it was the three strands of the Star Queen's hair that the younger of the Blue Spirits had tied around a staff and carried quickly across the sky, and that it was the older of the Blue Spirits who exclaimed such things first so that they would follow.
I got no further than this, for Kala told me to go out of the room then and order for more clean linen. I saw no need for this, but I did as she said and walked outside and told the servants of the house what I wanted, and they hurried to obey. She made me do this twice more, and when the girl's husband came demanding news she sent me out to try to calm him and tell him that all was well. I spent all of that birthing on my heels by Edira's head or walking to and fro from the door, or talking to the women and trying to calm them, or staying by her side when we walked her about the room. When the baby began to come in great ripping pains all the women chanted a soothing song, and when we lifted her onto the bricks we whispered encouragement to her and called for the goddesses to bless her and keep her safe. Her mother sang lullabies and I sang children's songs and we tried to drown out her cries, telling her to breathe deep and push. We sang the birthing hymn in time with her breaths and pushes.
"You carry the goddess within you,
She cradles the child of your womb,
She gives of her strength and spirit,
She watches over you.
The lady's power runs through you,
Courage be with you, little mother!
The river of life has begun to flow,
She watches over you."
In the end her voice outdid ours as she roared and delivered her son, a squirming wet thing that fell out of her like a fish slipping through a man's hands. Kala caught him and held him up as he kicked and opened his mouth and wailed, and pronounced triumphantly, "Edira's son." It was the strangest sight I had seen yet, this wriggling bloody yellow thing, still connected to his mother by the fleshy cord that Kala soon cut off. He was ugly and beautiful, filthy but gorgeous and so alive it made me sigh. Kala put him to his mother's breast quickly and he knew what to do, suckling at once.
"Oh," said Edira, half in pain and half in wonder, sprawled on the floor and her arms about her bloody son as he took what he needed from her. "Oh, look at him. Oh, oh." She hardly noticed as the afterbirth fell out of her and Kala began to pack her womb with cloth to stop her from bleeding more, and her mother and aunts and mother by marriage all crowded about in delight. I went to the door and cried out to the husband that he had a son, and I heard him shouting the news joyfully to his father and to the servants, and the women outside began a triumphant song. And they both lived, and she called him Oaran, and he grew into a fine strong man. So there was happiness in that first birth.
There were others after that. There was a woman who bore twin girls, one living and one dead, strangled by the birth cord, and wept over one even as she suckled the other. There was a boy born who had the hair lip, and who was left out to die in the night despite Kala's protests and her anger. There were sons and daughters, and mothers and fathers, and the bereft. There were times when Kala would have to take a knife and open the way for the baby – and oh, how the women howled at that - and there were times when she used forceps to pull the baby out from its mother, both of them shrieking all the way. There were times when the bleeding could not be stopped and the mother's life was carried away in the black river, and there were times when mother or child would sicken and die in the days after the birth, away from the gaze of the Sun.
Sometimes the men would weep when they heard of the death of their woman, or they would ask for their child calmly, or they would turn and walk away to mourn her in private. They would dance with joy or merely nod and go back to their work. Men were as different as the women they bedded. One man even swooned when he heard that his wife and babe were safe, and we women all clutched our sides in laughter as I made certain that he still breathed and then held the scents we used to waken mothers who had fainted under his nose.
"Take me to them!" he demanded, once he knew where he was again, but Kala simply said that he'd have to wait to see his wife until she was clean again. I brought out the boy to him instead, and he took him in his arms and crowed with delight. "He will be the best man in all Rhûn!" he declared. And he took him out to the male relatives, and they toasted him again and again with water of life, saying 'Long legs to the baby!' Kala merely sniffed and said, "That baby will be the tallest man in all Rhûn as well."
He lived too, that boy, lived to grow tall and strong. It is good, how many of them lived.
The first time I actually took part in a birth was easy, for Kala had purposefully chosen a woman who had bourn three children and was used to pregnancy by this time. Under her watchful eye I knelt and placed the bricks on the floor and smiled my sweet smile and asked her how she felt, and how far along in her pains she was. She nodded to Kala; clearly I knew how this should be done. I talked easily as Kala and I attended to her, and we told each other tales and sang songs to each other, her voice deep and breathy and throbbing. When the time came I was the one who caught her daughter. I watched as she came out from her mother all bloody and wet and cried a welcome to her as I helped her out the rest of the way. My song turned to horror as I nearly dropped her, but I saved her from falling to the floor and cleared the muck away from her nostrils, and I gloried in her cry and held her up in triumph. She was soft and sticky and warm against my hands, and she was my joy. I almost hated to give her over to her mother. I yearned to hold her and never let her go.
It ached sometimes, as the ages went on, as I saw so many children born and pass through my hands to those of their mother or the one who claimed them. I knew all about the complaints of pregnant women, the sicknesses and the cravings, the swelling and the stretching of flesh, but I would never experience them for myself. I would never achieve what my body prepared for every moon, and what it mourned as I bled. I would never suckle a son or daughter, feeding them with my life. My waist and hips and breasts would stay slim and untried, just like Ishara and Werru, Benti and Kala, but unlike them I was a seal that had never even been cracked.
It was hard. I had not thought that such hardness could be in the world. Once when I visited my home, early on, I went to where my mother sat carding wool and sat down beside her as I had not done for some time. When she asked me what the matter was I put my arms about her waist and my head against where I had come from, and I told her how it felt to see the girls that I had grown up beside – but not with, never with – grow fat and bear their children. I told her that I was jealous of those who were rewarded with a baby's soft skin and their warmth, and their smiles. I knew it was selfish and silly, but I could not help it. I wanted that which I knew I could not have, and what is more pathetic than that?
"So you want a daughter?" she asked me, as she ran her fingers through my braids, her voice half smiling and half serious I did not look at her face. "You want to carry and bear a child? I warn you, it is not as pleasant as you might think. And you need to have someone to father her, even if you don't keep him around." Her fingers stilled against my skin as she said that. We never spoke of my father, I hardly thought of him, but still he had been there, he had been needed for my conception. I did not want a man, I could not have a man, and without a man I could not have a child. And what sort of mother would I be? My own desires meant nothing now; they were weak and foolish.
"No," I said, and again, "no. I do not think that I would be a good mother."
"You would be a wonderful mother," Rookheeya said firmly. "You're my daughter! I hope that we have raised you well enough to raise another as well." But there was no real belief behind her words; she knew as well as I that I had little chance to attract a husband and even less desire to do so. And I shook my head.
"No," I said again, and I knew, as surely as I had known what shade of blue I wore in my dreaming as a child, that I spoke the truth. "I will never bear a child." And I never did.
Dinah remained a child for two more months after Kala took me, but at last she bled and I hurried with my mother and Kala to Rodren's house, and I sat and smiled at her and she frowned at me as her mother pulled her hair back into the braids of a woman. We danced for her, teaching her the great dance, where to place her feet and how to hold her hands. We moved together with our hands joined, and our mothers danced in joy that their daughters were grown. I watched as Kala laid Dinah down to rest, and how my cousin fell to the smoke of the poppy. She slept only a day and a night, and when she told Kala whatever she had dreamt Bilhah wrapped up her head in her head scarf for the first time. But then my aunt did something to her that had not happened to me; she fastened a veil across her daughter's face, covering her mouth and nose from ear to ear.
Dinah's eyes looked at me from her hidden face, and I stared back at her. I could no longer see her smile or laugh or do anything but furrow her brow, and when she spoke she had to stop the cloth from going into her mouth. I hugged her once and then Bilhah led her and Daron off to the temple and out of our family's life. I was not to see her again for months and months, unless she was one of the temple attendants that I noticed as I went less and less to that great building.
The days went on, and on, and I cut apart the dead and pulled the living from the living. Alamon was learning his father's business well, and was already looking for a wife. I walked along the streets in my apprentice robes and through the market place behind my teacher and delighted that the people nodded to her and to me as well. I rejoiced to think that I was acknowledged and beyond hardship and danger for now.
And then. Oh, then. Something happened that I could not have dreamed of, even with what I was learning. Bilhah had decided to finish with bearing after having Rodin whom she had carried when I became a woman, but one day she surprised Kala and I during a lesson by coming to seek my teacher's advice and we knew that she had conceived once more. Kala was concerned but not too so, for Bilhah by now had ten living children and had survived many pregnancies and births. We thought that all would be well, and Bilhah planned to treasure her last born child. She was certain that it would be a girl, a fourth niece for my mother, a fourth female cousin for me. She asked for me to be the one to catch her daughter when she was born, and I gladly promised that I would do so.
But when her time came and the birthing pains started, the mother of ten and more knew as well as Kala did when something inside her went wrong. She clutched my mother's hand in fear and her gasps were more terrible than screams. There was too much blood coming from her and the baby was tearing, ripping, and Kala lost much of her grace as she worked so hard to save mother and child. I handed her what she asked for, praying silently to whatever god would listen, to the goddesses to spare her, to not let my aunt's life go. I did my best to keep the women singing to try and calm her, but it became impossible when she began suddenly to shriek for her children, calling out their names, crying for the goddess to take pity on her. I began to cry and could not stop even when Kala ordered me to. Rookheeya held her up upon the bricks and tried to calm her, begging her with wet eyes to be strong and not to give in, but towards the end I do not think that Bilhah could even heard her.
She died so quickly; she did not even have time to whisper the name of her secret god to the world as she left it. As Rookheeya began to keen Kala took the time to mutter "Tarak receive her; Warrior, receive your chosen," before she took a knife, a knife, to my aunt's body. I could not bear to watch but I could not turn away, and Kala pried the babe out of her and passed it to me while she cut the cord. It was a boy, not the girl that Bilhah had so wanted. He kicked and began to cry where his mother had left off. I felt as if I would choke on my sorrow, that it would block my nose and mouth and throat and strangle me with pain as surely as the smell of blood clogged my senses.
Rookheeya took him to his father, her face wet with tears. I did not go with her; I did not want to see Rodren's face when he learned that the woman with whom he had shared his bed, his home, half his life, was lost to him in this world. I heard my cousins begin to cry and I tried to stop my ears as the women began to sing a high wailing song for my poor aunt. Kala did her best to tidy her up and sewed up her skin once more, but I could not forget the sight of her wide eyes and her flesh parting like a bag being opened. I walked out of that room and fell to my knees and was violently sick. My mother came back to me and rubbed my back and her tears fell into my sweaty hair. It seems sometimes that in some corner of my mind I shall always be on my knees knowing that my brave and beautiful warrior aunt is dead.
It was just as well that the child was a son rather than a daughter. There was more chance of forgiveness for a boy.
We buried her in red, a warrior's right, a tribute to a lifetime of courage. We buried her with her three children, two girls and a boy, that had died before they had truly lived; Rookheeya put their dried bodies into her dead arms in her grave. I do not know if Dinah and Daron had been permitted to leave their tasks but they arrived as the ceremony was ending and joined in dropping soil on their mother. I embraced both of them, but they were cold even in the high heat, and Dinah would not pull down her veil for me to kiss her. That was another sorrow; that they had not been there when she had died, they had not known of it until Rodren thought to send someone to the temple to tell them. They moved with grief in their every step. I saw them turning inward and away from the world and to each other. When I saw Dinah dance at Naani's festival a month later – it was her, she was veiled from head to toe but I know it was her – she still moved with such heaviness that I thought in my dreaming she might break to pieces.
Nothing was safe after that, after Bilhah's death. My cousins had lost but one mother and that was terrible enough; I had four more to lose before my time was done, every one with a hold on my heart and a hook that would tear away a piece of it when they were gone. When my bond-aunt Werru and my bond-aunt Ishara and my bond-aunt Benti and my mother Rookheeya were dead, what would be left of me? How can I answer that? I did not know. In the nights after that terrible time I would dream of my friend, my Pallando – or was it another who was like and unlike him? – who cried for one who had passed beyond this land and to another. They wailed for their companion to come back, and if it had been in my power I would have granted their wish, I would have reunited them and nothing in this world would have kept them apart again.
Dreams! I woke in the mornings with sleep in my eyes and tears dried on my face, knowing that I was one day closer to that dark time when someone else would leave me.
The techniques of birth used in this chapter are based on methods used in Ancient Egypt, where a woman would give birth squatting on a pair of 'birth bricks'. This had been mostly replaced in the developed world by the 'lithotomy position' – the woman on her back in a bed with her feet in stirrups to support her – because it provides a better view for the doctors of what exactly is going on 'down there'; but this position is being used less because it impedes blood flow to the infant, possibly increases the chance of blood clots and haemorrhage, and generally makes it more painful for the mother. And this is childbirth
we're talking about here; it's painful by default unless you get painkillers injected at the base of your spine.Reviews for the half-Irish seamstress!