Red Lightning by Laura Pritchett Page A

holding her ribcage together. A simple fact: a dead woman, not newly dead, but not there long, either, not yet scattered by bobcats or coyotes.
    Oh, Amber, down low, by the pelvis, was an unborn infant. It was curled up, just like in the pictures. It had a huge skull and tiny little fingers and leg bones. Knees bent. Hands curled in. Just like you’d expect. Except the skull was bigger than you’d think, the rest of the bones smaller. A baby ready to be born. A baby never to be born.
    It stays on in the mind, you see.
    *
    I curl up in a fetal position in my sleeping bag, my cocoon, and hold my knees. No no no don’t ever tell Amber that, don’t tell anyone that .
    *
    I grab my head, dig my fingers into my scalp. But it comes, the details. Tiny handbones scattered. A shoe. I paused and searched for more— Why? Why did I do that? Why did I look? The arc of two beautiful arm bones, and then another pile of tiny bones, which must have once made up the other hand. But my eyes drifted back to the baby’s skull, right there, perfectly placed in the nest of pelvic bones, waiting for her chance to come into this universe.
    What did I do? What have I done? What have I neglected to do? I didn’t kill her. But someone did.
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  (an economy, a nation, a woman wanting work,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  a desert,
    Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â Â  a drought, a lack of water)
    I knelt down and reached my hand into the ribcage. Into the pelvis of this woman. I touched this baby’s skull. Wanted to pull it up, wanted to free it from the cavity, get it out in the space between ribcage and pelvis. Even if it meant all the other bones would crumble. I did that. I pulled hard. I freed the skull. I cradled it.
    At that moment, I thought of pushing my child out of my body. Screaming and yet so happy I’d soon be free of her. She slid from me, sweeping out of my body with blood and slick, slipping away from my nest of bones. I knew I’d check out of the hospital in the morning and flee this life and flee her. And there was a very brief moment when I looked at her damp, bloodslicked fuzz of hair, the back of her head, and I nearly let my heart unzip. Instead I shut it down for good until years later, when I saw this baby’s skull in its nest of bones. There, holding it to my chestbone, my heart snapped open of its own accord, and it is killing me.
    When I left that woman and that child, I was different. I went back to the truck, and I stared at Alejandra as if for the first time. As if seeing humanity for the first time. I began to mother her. It’s that simple: the sorrow and beauty of it cracked me apart. The whole thing was like a burst of red lightning that streaked through my body and tore my own nest apart. I was surprised at how fragile it was built, how everything was so loosely linked.
    *
    I climb out of my sleeping bag with throat closing and vomit rising. I’m not built for this. I am built for happy times, for partying and for strong men with sparks in their eyes. I am built for times other than these.
    I put on an old red pair of tennis shoes that Libby offered me and pace around the yard, sweating and freezing, wiping snot from my nose, digging my fingers in between the bones of my ribcage. How do stars burn cold? How do I burn so cold? I stumble into Amber’s little-girl bike. I walk it down the bumpy dirt driveway and past the cattle-guard and out onto the paved county road, where I start pedaling. My knees go up too far, my gut hurts, my head is pounding. The snot runs faster. The sweat pours. The temperature drops, and I begin to shake.
    In the moonlight, I singsong: Calm, Tess, calm. Try to calm. Stick like a bur to your body .
    The earth smells like rainmelt. Like coldwet dog nose. Like sage and yucca.