THE WITNESS IN THE NIGHT

In the place where I was born, midwifery was performed by triplet sisters. People worried that such rarities would not appear to train the next generation. But like clockwork, three identical girls were born the year the midwives turned forty. When they reached school age, the triplets went to their elders to learn to ease the pains of labor, to give breath to stalled infants, and to prophesy a child’s traits. 

There were other things the midwives knew; that wisdom they held close to their hearts.

The midwives said I would have three voices with which to sing, but none of them came to me when I emerged, bloody and wrinkled, from the womb. 

The midwives pressed their fingers to my lips, trying to open them up. No one recognized a newborn who didn’t scream on the way out. My eyes were wide open as though I wanted to see it all: the red tunnel I was pushed down, the mucus that eased my way, the thighs that shuddered with effort.

The midwives put their fingers to my lips and I stared them down. They pushed on my mouth and I refused to open it.

They gave up, all three midwives, and handed me off to my mother. She held her nipple to my mouth, pressed on my lips as the midwives had, and still I wouldn’t open.

She was exhausted, she had little left to give, she had five children already who would swallow anything I would not. So she closed her eyes and pulled the soaked covers up around her neck and let the midwives wrap me for the forest.

I was bundled in a packet of wool scraps and torn lace, sealed at the edges with candle wax. The midwives tucked two pieces of bread near my ears. They carried me out of the cottage and down a trail lined with moss and bluebells. 

One midwife carried me for part of the way then handed me to her sister. That one carried me for a time and then handed me to her other sister. 

We rested by a stream. The youngest sister placed me on a flat rock next to her so she could dangle her toes in the water. A purple fish swam over her foot and she yelped. The other midwives laughed at her. She bent down to flick water at them and accidentally pushed me in.

The midwives shrieked but I still made no sound. When they dragged me out, my bindings all wet, I just looked at them.  

There was a little snail stuck to my chest. When the sisters tried to extricate it, it nuzzled farther into the lace crevasses. They were forced to leave it there. The snail snuggled deep down where its tiny two-chambered heart beat in tandem with my four-chambered one. 

The three midwives took me where the canopy thickened overhead. The eyes of shy animals glinted in the underbrush. The day was waning into evening air that glittered as it landed on the fern fronds and liverwort.

At last we came to where the sisters would leave me: a birch grove with a clearing in the middle. The bark flashed silver in the pink rays of sunset; the trees were like lighthouses, the undulating grass between them an ocean of insect and botanical life. 

An army of ants swarmed up in a circling pattern. As they rotated, blades of grass twisted along their legs until they had braided a green spiral mat. Hummingbirds opened their beaks and poured captured syrup that solidified in the air and spun into a sugar basket. Bumblebees shook the pollen from their stockings to make a soft golden cloud for a pillow.

The sisters murmured among themselves. The river snail nestled closer to my heart as though to ask if I could fathom how such wonder existed in the world.

The midwives placed me in the basket. The youngest sister began crying and the oldest hushed her. It is a miracle how a measure of just ten more minutes in the world makes a body harder.

The middle sister pointed at the darkening heavens and hurried her sisters along. The youngest paused, her face drawing closer to mine. Two tears dropped from her eyes and fell to my cheeks. But the oldest pulled her back and roughly wiped her face with her hem. 

The midwives didn’t turn back; even the youngest kept her eyes on the pathway. I could feel how much she wanted to return but tradition is a lodestone for the will to exist otherwise. 

The night cradled me in its damp chill. The tears turned to quartz and glistened at the horizon of my vision. Fireflies turned on their lights. Fox kits snapped at the frogs that bounded across the columbine. Nightjars churred, their wings slicing currents in the sky.

The river snail and I exchanged wordless messages. My heart learned to use two chambers, the snail’s to use four. 

But babies are not meant to last a night on their own. Some said that wolves would come to rescue a daughter like me and raise her as their own. Some thought the underground dwellers would take me to serve in their kingdom. And some knew that these were all just stories told to manage the harsh ways of the world.

I died that night in the woods. But I did not die alone. The snail and I died together, our hearts slowing over time as the night grew colder.

When I am born again, I will open my eyes at once, no matter the blood and bile. I will keep them open to search for my two friends: the youngest sister and the snail. And I will take their hands and lead us three to the house of the midwives where we will knock on the door and ask to learn the secret knowledge.