Clementine.
At the sound of Clementine’s voice it’s as though the invisible string has been cut—a sudden release fills me, and to my great relief, the pain evaporates. I don’t waste a moment. Two quick steps and I open the studio door, slamming it behind me.
Leaning against the door’s exterior, palms and forehead pressed into its surface, I try to catch my breath.
“Are you okay?” Clementine asks.
I take another couple of breaths, then turn when I know I can’t delay any longer. “Yes, honey, I’m okay.”
“You look sick. Like you’re fevery.” Clementine frowns. I’m sure I look awful.
A trickle of sweat drips down the side of my face, and there’s dampness under my armpits. “It’s hot in the studio.” I hear the flutter in my voice and hope Clementine doesn’t.
I can’t even think about what just happened. What I saw.
My daughter doesn’t look convinced by my explanation.
“It’s hard work lugging another person around inside you.” I smile at her, and she gives me a hesitant smile back. “Imagine carrying Stanley in a backpack, but on your front.”
She giggles, shakes her head. “Stanley is heavier than the baby, Momma.”
“That’s true,” I reply, taking her hand and leading her to the stairs.I have to get us away from the studio. She holds the railing with her other hand—I don’t have to remind her.
“Maybe not Stanley, then…Imagine a cabbage instead?” I say. “A cabbage in a backpack.”
More giggling. We’re halfway down the second set of stairs now. I hear Wyatt and Shelby talking, the sounds of dinner about to be served.
As we walk into the kitchen we’re discussing what Clementine might name her cabbage baby in her backpack (“Cleopatra”—her class is studying ancient Egypt at school this quarter), and I force my shoulders down. I have no clue how I’m going to have a meal with my family and pretend like nothing happened.
—
I’m inside the painting. No, Iamthe painting. My limbs confined by thick swaths of oil paint, dried into a fortress for my body. But my belly sticks out beyond the canvas, and when I look down at it (my eyes the only part of me I can move), I watch it ripple. The knuckles of the baby’s hands trace against me from the inside, creating an arc across my skin. My belly is painted a color I recognize as lampblack—and the paint film cracks with the movement. Suddenly, there’s a blinding pain near my navel and my vision swims.
Beyond the haze I see the reason for the pain. A tiny fist has broken through the paint, through my skin. It’s covered in glistening fluids. Bright red blood, and something else that is milky white, which begins to splash out of the fist-size hole and pool on the floor. Now another little hand, fingers with tiny but long translucent nails grabbing at the torn edges, stretching the canvas, and my skin with it. No sound leaves me, but I’m screaming nonetheless. As the baby’s hands rip at my body, seeking escape, her fingernails begin to pop off, one at a time, gathering in the fluid pool below.
I hear soft humming—the singing of a lullaby, maybe? One I can’t name, but it’s familiar. I’ve heard it before. But where?
The humming builds, and I look to where it’s coming from. The open doorway of the studio. A woman sits on a metal stool, the gauzy fabric of a paint-spattered, long layered bohemian skirt gathered between her knees. It’s Charlotte Leclerc.
In her hand is a paintbrush, and she’s applying strokes in the air, as though working on an invisible canvas in front of her. There’s a tickle in my center and another, along the side of my belly. My skin stretches more, seemingly in accordance with where the paintbrush goes. I feel the brushstrokes on my skin, but we’re six feet or more apart.
There are deep scratches on the woman’s forearm, angry and red. Her head is turned to the right, sharply, so I can only view her profile. Then she turns toward me, and I see she’s smiling as she hums. Her eyes meet mine, and something electric moves through me. With fresh horror I remember another nightmare—with the grotesque hand, and my unnerving reflection in the cracked mirror.
The humming woman isn’t Charlotte Leclerc, she’s…me.
It’s the eyes. Green with a gold ring around the pupil.It’s almost time, I hear her say—hear myself say—through tightly closed lips. The smile grows as though she knows a delicious secret she’s about to share.
There’s a sucking sound, a rip, and then a wonderful release as the canvas finally gives way. The baby tumbles from the hole in my center and starts to slither across the ground toward the woman on the stool. She sets her paintbrush in her lap and claps her hands delightedly, the way a mother does when her baby smiles or takes her first step or says “Mama.”
No! She’s mine!I think, but there’s no sound and the baby continues inching toward the woman, slithering slowly across the floor like a snail on a sidewalk, leaving a trail of thick mucus behind. The umbilical cord grows taut, pulsing purple as it strains. I’m tipping over—the canvas teeters on the easel.
The woman reaches for the baby, who is mere inches from her, and with all the strength I can muster I rip a hand from the paint prison ofthe canvas. With this freed hand I grasp the cord with desperate fingers, trying to hold tight to the slippery, bulbous rope of pulsating tissue.
The baby wails, so close to the woman, who now frowns when she realizes what’s happened, what I’m doing. She clucks her tongue, at me, it seems, then in a soothing hum says,“I’m sorry, my darling. Mommy’s here. Mommy’s here.”She croons as she holds her arms wide, ready to embrace the newborn.
I scream and pull the cord with everything I have left.
—
