The Rock Child (23 page)

From here your choices were to cross westward for forty miles across terrible, waterless desert to a river coming from the west, or cross southward across terrible, waterless desert to a river coming from the south, she forgot the names. Apparently, even in recent times the drive had been a formidable
jornada,
as they called waterless stretches of travel. No more, said Muley, not for light wagons pulled by mules, plenty of water aboard.

A blue shadow marked the horizon on the west. The mountains of California. The two rivers came from those mountains. Yes, they also ran into the desert and didn’t come out. You could walk up the rivers, though, into the mountains. Grass, trees, birds. Crisp air in the mornings and evenings. Cold, clear water to drink. Wildflowers, some times of year.

She thought especially of the wildflowers, and felt homesick. She
pictured in her mind the Flower-Viewing Festival, the grasslands spread out like beautiful carpets, green but laced with floral colors. They reached in every direction to snowy mountains under a high, infinitely blue sky. From those mountains gushed water, measureless water, bringing life to the grasslands, supporting plants, birds, horses, yaks, every kind of animal you could imagine. Marshes so fertile with life you could smell it—fecundity, creation, the fruitfulness of life teeming, swarming, bursting, singing its song over and over, I am, I am …

The Humboldt Sink was marshy, too, but its life was thin and poor, compared to her homeland. Deer, coyotes, foxes, birds that ran on the ground and were good to eat, and pack rats. The one pulse of life was lots and lots of water birds. This virtue seemed to Sun Moon undone, though, by the many vultures, creatures that fed on death. All around lay the signs of their scavenging.

The trail leading to and from the sink, and around the sink, was littered with thousands of carcasses, now no more than bleached bones and a few pieces of dried, hairy hide, too ruined even to offer anything to the vultures. The carcasses had once been horses, mules, oxen, and cattle. People had crossed the trail to California, but their animals had died of thirst, starvation, or exhaustion. It nearly amounted to killing animals, and it turned Sun Moon’s stomach.

Mahakala,
she said to herself,
in your honor I should learn to love these birds that take the flesh of death into their bodies, and live on it
. But she could not, not yet. Her homeland was fruitful with life, and her heart still loved it.

At a stand of stagnant-looking water stood a low, mean-looking hut. Here goods could be bought, all the usual sorts of trading-post items, Sun Moon supposed. Sir Richard and Harold marched in excited as children, to see what they might acquire. She was not interested in buying anything herself. She’d deciding working in Tarim’s store that white people’s interest in things-things-things-things was their most foolish notion. Harold emerged with a compass, and Sir Richard a bottle of whisky. Then they made camp in a spot with good grass a few hundred yards from the hut, near a single emigrant wagon and a single milk cow, grazing.

There Sun Moon heard it right away, the low moaning, the sound of human misery. She looked at her male companions. They barged on with setting up the camp, aware of nothing but stakes, hobbles, a cook
fire, and tasks. She walked across to the other camp, toward the lone wagon.

A middle-aged man and three youths were gathered at the front of the wagon, shuffling their feet and looking helpless. They brought their eyes up to look at her as she approached, some uncertain, some hard. She slipped around them, pulled the curtain away, and looked inside, knowing what she would find.

Her eyes took a moment to adjust from the harsh desert sunlight to the shadowed wagon bed. A slight creature who looked just past the age of monthly bleeding, half-girl and half-woman, sprawled on thin ticking. Her legs were spread wide, skirt above her knees, trunk curled forward in pain. She clasped her swollen belly. She moaned like a wounded and angry beast, then suddenly stopped. Her eyes raised toward Sun Moon. Sun Moon felt a pain in her own belly, where the eyes stabbed her.

“Can you help us, Ma’am?”

She felt a flash of anger but didn’t look back. These men standing in the sunlight were helpless, all their muscles and their brains weak as damp paper, because a woman was giving birth and maybe in trouble. They assumed that because Sun Moon was a woman, she would know everything—how to bear a child, how to deliver one, how to preserve the life of the mother, how to bring breath to the child, how to clean up, how to make everything safe and healthy, how to bring the goodness of the spirits to this place, this event, these people.
But I am a nun. You submit to the endless circle of procreation. I stand outside it
.

She refused to look at the speaker. Her feet wanted to move away, to take her away from this shadowed birth. Before her yawned the grossly corporeal. Another way to put it was, Before her yawned the pain of becoming.
Do I want to leap into the sea of blood and birth fluids?
Enmeshment, it felt like. Not so much enmeshment in the tortured feelings of all these people as in a process both awful and awe-inspiring, a soul’s strapping onto the Wheel of Life, coming into the world to suffer all the turnings of another incarnation. Her feet wanted out.

The woman’s eyes held on Sun Moon’s belly. Sun Moon held her breath against the pain the eyes caused. They protruded, as though trying to leap at Sun Moon. They looked straight into her barren belly, yet they didn’t seem to see it or anything of Sun Moon but something beyond her, something invisible to anyone but the becoming-mother. The eyes
spoke fear and they spoke pain, great pain, the pain of physical existence itself. Somehow they transported that pain into Sun Moon’s gut.

I must stay. Compassion
. Compassion for all sentient beings, understanding of suffering, a fundament of the Buddha’s way of seeing human existence. Compassion, yes, and something more held her, something … whatever.

She climbed into the wagon.

“Can you help us, Ma’am?”

She turned, blanking the anger out of her face. The voice sounded educated, as she understood American voices, but it was also pathetic. This middle-aged man had fading red hair and a pointy goatee. “I’m Rutherford Swaney of Lynchburg, Tennessee, Marybelle’s husband. I’d be beholden for anything you can do.”

Sun Moon closed the curtain on him.
Husband? That old man?
“Marybelle?” she said into the shadows.

The girl just crouched there. She was slender, wispy, and the deep shadow made her look more insubstantial. Sun Moon wondered whether her hips were so narrow they’d make things hard.

Sun Moon had never seen a baby delivered. Since she had gone to the convent as a child, she lacked the experience most nomad women would have. The proper mantra had not been said for this birth several weeks ago, as it should have been said. If anything went wrong, life would leak through her hands like blood.
But I am not as helpless as those oafs outside
.

She looked into the woman-child’s eyes. Two pairs of eyes met, held, negotiated, reached agreement, recognition.

Suddenly the eye clasp broke. “Ooh-oh-o-o-oh-oh-o-o-oh-oh-oh-oh-oh.” The bearer of life hunched over hard, gripping herself, moaning, endlessly moaning.

“Marybelle,” said Sun Moon, “get on your feet. On your feet.”

The bearer hunched motionless, moaning.

“Marybelle, on your feet, squat.”

No movement, only endless moaning.

Sun Moon bent, trying to look directly into the eyes, to make contact. Impossible. Marybelle’s head was down, eyes open but focused on nothing, or something beyond everything.

Sun Moon clasped Marybelle’s elbows and tried to raise her. No response. She lifted hard. The child-woman was far too heavy.
I must get
her on her feet. The lying position is too difficult
. Another pull didn’t help. Moaning, endless moaning.

Sun Moon sat down beside Marybelle and hugged her with both arms. The child-woman seemed not to notice. Sun Moon held her firmly, as though forever.

Moaning, endless moaning.

Sun Moon thought of the breach through which life would enter.
Mahakala dancing eternally,
she thought,
conveying life into death, and back to life
.

The moaning stopped. Marybelle’s body softened. Sun Moon held her closer. Perhaps Marybelle’s muscles became a little pliable, and her body took a little comfort from Sun Moon’s.

After a long while Sun Moon said, “You must get onto your feet.” Marybelle stirred. She shifted her feet around. Sun Moon pushed on her shoulders, and the weight rolled forward. “There,” said Sun Moon. “Now we can do it.”

She made sure Marybelle was steady. Then she opened the curtain and spoke to the circles of males congregated there. “I need a small piece of butter.”

They looked at her as though stupefied.

“Isn’t the cow giving milk? I need one bite of butter.”

“Of course,” said Mr. Swaney. He jerked his head at one of the young men, and the fellow ran off.

Sun Moon was concerned. She knew the
nakmar
but had never said it. The child-woman would have no faith in its power. The butter did not even come from a yak.

She held the soft mound to her mouth and blew on it. Slowly, ritually, she murmured the words of the mantra in her own language, blessing the butter, letting herself feel spiritual power as she spoke.

She held it out to Marybelle. “Here, eat this.”

Passively, Marybelle opened her mouth. Sun Moon put the butter on her tongue. Starting to chew, Marybelle made an awful face. “Yech!”

Sun Moon caught the butter as Marybelle spat it out. “You must eat it,” she said. “It will help the birth.” She put the yellow glob back into the girl’s mouth.

Marybelle closed her mouth, worked her jaw, swallowed.

Sun Moon nodded to herself. She wondered whether the butter would pass through the mother and emerge on top of the baby’s head,
unmelted, as it should. Or would the mother’s lack of faith undo the blessing.

I have done what I can
.

Time circled in its forever way. The sun moved from high to low. People walked, stooped, sat, worked, rested. Insects whirred and buzzed. Plants breathed. Animals waited for the cool of evening.

Outside the wagon under the desert sky a man approaching old age waited, sometimes with companions.

In the wagon, in the half dark, two young women waited. The older held the younger. Bronze hands helped a white body to rise onto splayed feet, knees askew, and to lie back. Silence alternated with moans, vast laments issuing forth, sometimes sounding like primordial wails, sometimes barbaric yawps. In the silence their breathing synchronized, so the twain were one. During the moans the breathings were two, and Sun Moon could not help.

The heat eased a little. Trees painted shadows on the white canvas. Sun Moon thought how the air would redden the canvas as the sun set, and then turn it gray-blue as evening came.

The change came indetectably. Marybelle was squatted, bottom hanging between her feet, moaning. Suddenly she said her first word, or Sun Moon thought she did. The moan changed quality a little, transforming itself from OH to OW. “
Now,
” thought Sun Moon,
she’s saying “now.
”

Pain twisted in Sun Moon’s belly, like hands wringing blood from her guts.

“Push,” urged Sun Moon. This single word constituted nearly her entire fund of knowledge about how to bear a child—push it out. Marybelle grimaced, pushed, and groaned louder. “Now” wasn’t right—it was in fact not yet. “Push!” hissed Sun Moon. Her own belly ached sharply.

The time seemed not to be yet. The sun sank from its zenith. Behind its brilliance the stars crossed the sky invisibly. The moon circled on the dark side of the globe. For some further ticks in the motions of the universe, pushing was not enough.

Finally, it was. Sun Moon put her hands onto the breach and felt a hard, fuzzy ball. “Push!” she cried. Though spoken softly, in intensity the word was a shout. Sun Moon watched Marybelle grimace, groan, and focus all her being on expulsion, on thrust.

A form emerged from the breach. Miraculously, the ache in Sun Moon’s gut eased.

Mystery,
thought Sun Moon. Her own breaths rushed, intoxicating as wine.
Mystery, come into my hands
.

In this fullness of time the mystery came forth, and displayed itself in the shape of a boy-child.

Sun Moon helped to draw it forth the last inches into mortality. She held it high for Marybelle to behold, and for herself to see. It was bloody. It was wet with exotic liquids. It was alive.

Sun Moon breathed from her mouth into the boy-child’s nose. No response. She breathed into him again, and again. On the fourth time she saw the tiny chest heave, and could nearly see the air flow into the lungs. Once more she murmured the blessing of the
nakmar
in the Tibetan language.

She looked at the top of the baby’s head, and saw no butter.

She handed the boy-child to Marybelle.

Now the girl-woman’s eyes changed. They refocused from eternity to the here and now, to her son. Her arms opened gentle as flower petals. With infinite tenderness they folded and brought him to her bosom. She looked into his face and received the blessings of his being, like a gift of rain from an infinite river of sky.

Sun Moon cut the cord and tied it.

She lifted the draping cloth and stepped out onto the wagon seat and to the ground. Rutherford Swaney looked at her clothes and arms and hands, and then up into her face with a world of question.

Sun Moon saw that she was bloody, fabric and flesh drenched in crimson. She felt exhausted, sweaty, brought to earth.

Swaney bolted by her without a word. In a moment she heard his exclamation of delight, and the soft, affirming response.

Sun Moon faced the setting sun. It colored the sky ruby, maroon, and orange. She held her arms up into the evening air, and they added yet one more red, scarlet. She beheld. With her eyes she saw that she was part of the sunset. In its wild colors she pictured the child-woman, bloody of leg, bloody of belly, bloody of breach. For once in her life Sun Moon thought no words, she only looked. And looked, and felt.