My Notorious Life by Kate Manning

overcoat, her fire gone out and the smell of gin strong about her so that if you had lit a match the room would kindle into flames. —Missus? I shook her, but she would not budge.
    —I’ll be along in a minute, she said, rasping, and opened her eyes long enough to wink one of them.
    Back upstairs I gave the news to my mother, who sat heavy in her bed with her bare feet out in front of her, the heels cracked and yellow as bars of old soap.
    —Well then, Mam ordered, —you’ll go in the other room and stay by the stove and wait till Mrs. O’Reilly comes or your Aunt Bernice.
    Years before when our Joe was born Dutch and me passed the day and night away with our Aunt Nance Duffy same as we did when Mam lost the two others. —Little lost babies, she said, —between the three live ones. But now Nance was dead and Mam only ordered me to go by the stove. —You shouldn’t mind if I cry out, she said, her face pinched. —Never mind it.
    —But I will mind.
    —You mustn’t. It’s natural. It’s pain to bring a child to the world. If nobody comes you’re to cut the cord yourself.
    —What will I cut?
    She did not answer but sent me to the kitchen where I passed the time sewing a bunting. I was nervous, about the cord, the knife, that the child would die or worse, that my mother would, and how would her baby get out into the world? A fairy would bring it, she had once explained, but I heard otherwise amongst my wild associates on the street, and while I did not wish to believe humans are born the same as cows or dogs, I feared it was true. Why else was I not allowed to see it?
    Soon enough, I heard her start her terrible noises. First they came soft, not worse than the moan of a mourning dove on the sill, but then high and stretched like something pierced her. I went to her. —Poor Mam, I said. She banished me back downstairs again to find Mrs. O’Reilly but the sot was out cold now and I could not roust her. Upstairs, Mam cried for a drink of water. I brought it. —Should I fetch someone? Mam? Should I? Anyone? The neighbors?
    —No, she said. One of the Duffys would be here soon. I brought her tea. She would not drink. I covered her. She was trembling. Her brow was knit and sweated. She threw the cover off and gnashed her teeth and huffed her breath and yelled at me to Get Back AWAY from her, and despite her telling me Don’t Be Afraid, I was afraid. She blubbered her cheeks and whickered like a draft horse and tossed her black hair to and fro on the bed and clawed her one hand of fingers at the covers. Stray syllables and curses came out of her mouth like hot coal was in her blood.
    —Son of a b****, my poor mother cried.
    She was up, then down, pacing across the floor while I cowered in the kitchen. Her hand was pressed to the small of her back, and she asked me, would I please push against the pain there? So while she braced herself one-handed against the doorjamb I leaned the heels of my palms hard intothe bony plates of her sacrum. —There’s a good girl, Axie, said she, with sweat running off her in the cold. How sorry she was, apologizing to me. —You shouldn’t see none of this, so you shouldn’t. Her head hung down for only a moment of respite before she arched it back on the stalk of her neck and cried out. She paced and squatted and lay down again. Long sounds like the bellows of a cow came from her throat. I stood terrified and useless, watching where she lay in her dark corner.
    —Oh motherf***, I am dying, she whispered in a gasp.
    —Don’t die, don’t die, I told her.
    Why did the Duffys not come? I listened at the door for the footsteps of Bernice, hoping to hear them, but two hours passed, and my mother called to me again, her voice sharp now and ragged with no breath to spare. When I went to her she was lying with her knees drawn up by the round of her middle.
    —The blanket, she said. She told me to put it over her legs, and I did. It made a tent when she bent them. —Get away now.