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Show Motherlunge a novel 118 "It's fast. It's fast," Pavia was saying again in a minute, shutting her eyes and lowering her head god-fearingly. "You know what's weird?" I asked her. I had just spotted the taxi, and I grabbed her duffel bag, then put it down again when I saw Pavia's face. I put both hands on her hips and pushed down as I had seen demonstrated in the Illustrated Guide to Labor Coaching: 200 Ways to Support and Sustain. I nodded wildly at the taxi driver, whom I hoped could see me in the window. "You know what?" I said again in Pavia's ear, grinning insanely through the window, "You've been saying it's fast for the whole nine months." And then she was through the contraction, and I grabbed her bag again and my backpack. Pavia bent again to stroke General's furrowed brow once, twice, thrice.... "Pavia. Taxi. Let's move it!" I screamed, and I pulled open the door. And outside in the big city, spring was apparently happening just at that exact moment. For the low morning light flashed in our eyes as the crisp air rushed into our lungs, and all the city birds hanging in all the branches and on all the dark wires and lamps were suddenly tweeting and warbling like groupies, like conventioneers, like Moonies at a mass wedding-cheering us, selling us, hoping for us keenly with full-throated, reedy song. When Dorothy was twenty-three and pregnant with her second child, she wanted things to be different this time around. With her first baby, she had been afraid. She hadn't known what to expect. The pregnancy was accidental, and then the baby had come |