Household Gods

Fabia Ursa’s contractions continued. The other women had each got comfortable in her own way: some sitting on stools or on the tinker’s bench, some on the floor, and one leaning on the worktable with her arms folded under her ample breasts. The wine went round. It had stopped including Fabia Ursa. She was too busy, laboring in earnest. The contractions came closer and closer together.

Nicole had never thought of having a baby as a spectator sport. But here they all were, standing or sitting, drinking and chatting, chewing over gossip as Fabia Ursa so loved to do. She joined in when she could, distracted and clearly glad of it; but those intervals grew shorter as her labor pains grew stronger and closer together.

After what seemed like forever but was, from the angle of the light through the opened shutters, maybe three or four hours, Fabia Ursa began to curse her husband with concentrated viciousness. Nicole would have been horrified if she hadn’t done just the same to Frank when she was in labor with Justin. She had a vivid memory, just then, of how much it had bloody-bedamned hurt, and it was his fault. He had put that baby in her. He had stuck her in this place and made her go through this for his petty little ego. “Next time,” she’d snarled at him, “you have the damn baby.”

Frank had been shocked, too shocked to talk back. “It’s normal,” the nurse had told him. “They all do it sooner or later.”

“Ah,” he’d said in the knowing way he had, which she’d found more charming than not while she was dating him, but which made her hate him with rare passion in the middle of delivering his son. “Projection. Perfectly understandable.”

No one here knew anything about twentieth-century psychobabble. But from the looks they exchanged, this was nothing abnormal here and now, either.

Indeed, Aemilia seemed to recognize it as a sign of progress. She oiled her hand again, palpated Fabia Ursa once more, and nodded approval. “The mouth of the womb is open wide enough,” she said. “See if you can’t push the baby out. “

Fabia Ursa grunted and strained – and gave birth to a startling, and redolent, quantity of excrement. Nicole gasped and nearly choked on the stink. She’d had an enema in the hospital, a refinement that obviously had not occurred to the Romans.

Everyone else was taking this latest development perfectly for granted. With reflexes honed by now to a fine edge, Nicole did her best to do the same. Antonina scooped up the evidence with a scrap of board, and flung it out into the street.

Nicole’s eye was caught by that motion, and by a moment’s reflexive revulsion at the thought of walking in the street after this was over. Fabia Ursa’s shriek brought her back with a snap to the shop and the birthing chair.

“There,” the midwife was saying with rough gentleness as she drew her hands from Fabia Ursa’s body. “The baby was turned about a little. I straightened it. It should come out more easily now.”

“Straightened it?” Fabia Ursa gasped. “Was that all you did? I thought you were sawing me to pieces.”

Aemilia’s face didn’t change, either with annoyance or amusement. “The head is down, and it’s straight, as it should be. It’s all ready to go. You just have to push it out.”

“Push – “ Fabia Ursa looked suddenly exhausted. “I’ve been pushing.”

“Push harder,” Aemilia said.

Fabia Ursa pushed. She pushed till her face darkened to purple. Gravity helped, Nicole saw, almost in envy. The birthing chair was a better idea by far than delivering horizontally in a bed. The only advantage to the latter that she could see was that doctors and nurses had better access if something went wrong.

If anything went wrong here, Nicole didn’t know what Aemilia could do about it. Probably not much. That being so, the birthing chair had everything going for it.

“Come on,” Aemilia urged. “The baby’s head is right there. I can feel it. One more good push and you’ll be all done.”

She’d just given Fabia Ursa the best incentive in the world. Nicole remembered how it had felt. One last push. One last screaming pain. And then – done. Fabia Ursa put every ounce of effort into it. A groan wrenched itself out of her, as if she’d tried to lift a loaded cart – and had the front wheels off the ground.

And suddenly the baby’s head was out, wet and covered with cheesy-looking membrane and a little blood. The rest was almost too fast to take note of. Aemilia reached inside and guided the shoulders out. The rest of the baby almost squirted into the world. The head was the big part and the hard part, literally and figuratively.

“A boy!” Aemilia, Fabia Honorata, and Antonina said it in chorus, like characters in a play. Fabia Ursa let out a long sigh – more exhaustion, Nicole judged, than joy.

But Aemilia wasn’t about to let her rest. “Don’t quit quite yet,” she said. “See if you can push out the afterbirth. Believe me, it’ll be easier for you if I don’t have to go in and get it.”