Page 10 of Lady and the Butcher
My Simone thing. Be the village. Be the ballast. Make her laugh between waves and make her wild within them.
I slipped into Suite B.
The room was a womb: low lights, the tub a moon of warm water, a strand of fairy lights draped around a ficus that had seen more primal noises than any plant should.
Talia stood by the bed, knees bent, hands braced on her husband Harry’s shoulders. She swayed like the tide. Sweat slicked her hairline. Her jaw was relaxed because she’d listened to me and was an A+ student.
“Hey, mama,” I whispered, sliding in behind her with a hand to her sacrum. “You look strong.”
She rolled her head toward me, eyes glazed with labor’s beautiful natural drugs. “I feel like a haunted house.”
“Good,” I said lightly. “Open the doors and let the ghosts scream.”
She huffed a laugh, then sucked in a breath as the next contraction rose.
We moved. That’s most of doula work: choreography with the ego removed. When her body said lean, I became a wall. When she said back, I receded. Counter-pressure with the heel of my hand, slow circles at her pelvis, cool cloth at her neck. Harry whispered I love yous against her hair. The tub steamed. Lexie’s assistant padded in and out, checking heart tones, the quiet beeping of time.
“You’re doing it,” I murmured into the space near her ear as a surge gutted her and passed. “Every wave ends. Every one.”
“I can’t,” she panted.
“You already are,” I said, because truth is the only thing that holds in this room.
Minutes turned to an hour and then to something that wasn’t time at all. Birth erases clocks. We tried the rebozo, the toilet throne of humility, the tub where she finally sighed like the water remembered her.
“I hate everyone,” she whispered at one point, forehead to tile.
“I’m honored to be included,” I whispered back.
Another surge bent her. She gutted out a low sound, the kind that vibrates your bones if you’re standing too close.
Perfect. Productive. My favorite song.
I held pressure and thought about my own body. About control. About surrender. How I spend all day teaching women to soften the parts of themselves that clench against pain. How I am so good at it for others and so terrible at it for myself.
I thought about my circle in the yard, all of us under the moon promising to let go. And then I thought about a letter that asked a stranger to take the letting out of my hands.
A knock of knuckles on the doorframe pulled me back. Lexie, eyes bright, chin set. “We’ve got a soft anterior lip. Baby’s coming down gorgeous. Talia, you want to try a side-lying release or keep loving on the tub?”
“Don’t make me leave the water,” Talia begged.
“Okay,” Lexie soothed, already donning another glove. “We’ll catch in the pool. You’re safe. Your body knows the way.”
No hospital in the world could ever sound like that. I loved them for what they were, the ones with bright lights and crash carts and miracles that stitched back the world. But this? This was where the sacred felt practical. Where the practical felt sacred.
Another hour, and the room changed. It always does. A gravity shift, a scent shift—the primal iron-sweet of near-birth, the electricity of a portal opening. Talia’s sounds went from wide to downward. My own spine answered, like some ancient string between us tugged tight.
“I need to push,” she said, shock in her voice, like it was a confession.
“Then bear down,” Lexie said. “With your whole body. That’s it. Again. Again.”
Harry cried. I braced Talia from behind in the tub, my forearms under her arms, my chest to her shoulder blades while she curled around her baby and became the animal she’d always been.
“Bring your jaw soft,” I murmured, and maybe I was talking to myself. “Let it be big. Let it be loud.”
She roared. The room smiled. You never get used to it. You never, ever should.
Two pushes later—a pause, a stretch, a holy burn—there he was. A baby boy, all vernix and indignation, stunned and furious and perfect. The world exhaled. Harry sob-laughed. Talia collapsed into him, tears and sweat and relief in a knot.
