Phantom

Chapter 5

And so, for a week, life went on, sweetly, smoothly, with a new friend, a reborn lover, and a baby growing inside me. A daughter, I am sure, even though I pray to God to make it an absolute certainty. Yet fifty centuries cannot be forgotten. History cannot be rewritten. I live in the suburbs and abide by my country's laws. I have a new library card and am thinking of buying a little dog. Yet I have murdered thousands, tens of thousands, brutally and without mercy. That is a bloody fact, and perhaps there is such a thing as karma, of sin and judgment. I wonder if I am being judged when I begin to have trouble with the baby.
It is not normal trouble.
It is the worst kind. The supernatural kind.
The baby is growing much faster than she should. As I said to Paula, I can only be two months pregnant, and yet, one week after I meet Paula, I wake with something kicking in my abdomen. After hurrying to the bathroom and turning on the light--for I cannot see very well in the dark anymore--I am astounded to see that my stomach bulges through my nightgown. In the space of hours, even, the baby has developed through an entire trimester. This does not please me.
"Ray," I say. "Ray!"
He comes running, and takes forever to see what the problem is. Finally he puts his hand on my belly. "This is not normal?"
"Are you nuts?" I brush his hand aside. "She can't be human."
"We're human," he says.
"Are we?" I ask the empty bathtub.
He puts a hand on my shoulder. "This accelerated growth doesn't have to be a bad thing."
I am having trouble breathing. I had put so much hope in the past being past. But there is no future, not really. It is only a phantom of what we want to deny, a dream in a time that will never actually be.
"Anything abnormal is bad," I say. "Especially when you have to answer yes to the question on the medical form: Have you ever been a vampire?"
"The child cannot be a vampire," Ray says simply. "Vampires cannot reproduce this way."
"You mean they haven't done so in the past," I say. "When has a vampire ever turned human again? This is new terrain." I lean over and spit in the sink. My spit is bloody--I bit my lower lip the instant the light went on. "It's an omen," I say.
Ray rubs my back. "Maybe you should see a doctor. You were going to start looking for one anyway."
I chuckle bitterly. "I cannot see a doctor. We're in hiding, remember? Doctors report local monsters to the authorities. Young women who have babies in three months." The baby kicks again. I stare in the mirror at my bulge. "If it even takes that long."
My words prove prophetic. Over the next four days the baby grows at an insane pace, a month of develop?ment for each twenty-four-hour period. During this time I am forced to eat and drink constantly, but seldom do I have to use the rest room. Red meat, in particular, I crave. I have three hamburgers for break?fast and in the evening four New York steaks, washed down with quarts of Evian. Still, I burn with hunger, with thirst, and with fear. What would an ultrasound show? A horned harlot grinning back at the sound waves?
During this time, I avoid Paula and the world. Ray is my only companion. He holds my hand and says little. What is there to say? Time will tell all.
Five days after waking in the middle of the night to see my swollen belly, I awake again in the early morning hours in horrible pain with cramps in my abdomen. Just before Ray wakes, I remember when I had my first child, five thousand years earlier. My dear Lalita--she who plays. That birth had been painless, ecstatic even. I had intended to name this child by the same name. But as another spasm grips me, seemingly threatening to rip me in two, I don't know if such a gentle title will be appropriate. I sit up gasping for air.
"Oh God," I whisper.
Ray stirs beside me. His voice is calm. "Is it time?"
"It's time."
"Do you want to go to the hospital?"
We have discussed this, but never come to a deci?sion. I can withstand tremendous physical pain, and of course I have delivered babies many times and know human anatomy inside out. Yet this pain is a thing of demons. It transcends any form of torment I have ever experienced. Literally, I feel as if I am being ripped apart, consumed from the inside. What is my child doing to me? I bury my face in my hands.
"It feels like it's eating my womb," I moan.
Ray is on his feet. "We have to get help. We have to risk the hospital."
"No." I grab his hand as he reaches for the car keys. "I won't make it. It's coming too fast."
He kneels at my side. "But I don't know what to do."
I fight for air. "It doesn't matter. It's all being done."
"Should I call for Paula?" Ray approves of my relationship with Paula, although, for some strange reason, he has avoided meeting her. How I long for her company right then, her soothing smile. Yet I know she is the last person who should see me like this. I shake my head and feel the sweat pour off my face.
"No," I say. "This would terrify her. We have to face this alone."
"Should I boil some water?"
For some reason his remark amuses me. "Yes, yes. Boil some water. We can put the baby in it when she comes out." I snort when I see his stunned expression. "That's a joke, Ray."
Yet he stares at me strangely. He speaks to me as if he is speaking to a third person in the room. "Some?times I fed I came back just for this baby. I don't want anything to happen to her."
Another spasm grips me, and I double up and ignore his serious tone. The agony angers me. "If anything is going to happen to anyone," I whisper, "it will happen to me."
"Sita?"
"Get the goddamn water."
My daughter is born fifteen minutes later, and she puts a nice rip in me as she comes into the world. My blood is everywhere, even in my hair, and I know I am in danger of hemorrhaging to death. It is only now I let Ray call for an ambulance. But before he gets on the phone, he puts my bloody child on my chest. He has already cut the umbilical cord with a sterilized knife from the kitchen drawer. Cuddling my daughter as I lie on the verge of blacking out, I stare into her dark blue eyes and she stares back at me. She does not cry nor make any other sound. For the moment I am just relieved she is breathing.
Yet there is an alertness in her eyes that disturbs me. She looks at me as if she can see me, and all the books say a child of five minutes cannot even focus. Not only that, she stares at me as if she knows me, and the funny thing is, I do likewise. I do know her, and she is not the soul of my gentle and joyful Lalita returned to me from the ancient past. She is someone else, someone, I feel, they may have constructed temples to long ago, when mankind was closer to the gods in heaven and the forgotten creatures beneath the earth. I shiver as I look at her, yet I hold her tight. Her name just springs from my cracked and bleeding lips--I do not bring it forth consciously. The name is a mantra, a prayer, and also a name for that which cannot be named.
"Kalika," I call her. Kali Ma.
Not she who plays. She who destroys.
Still, I love her more than can be said.