The contractions are intense. I can barely stand. I cannot speak. I clutch at the kitchen sink on one side and Darko on the other. He wants me to walk, he keeps telling me to come with him, but I can’t move. Because it’s coming. It’s coming!
“Catch the baby!”
He crouches down just in time to stop our slippery infant from hitting expensive tile. There is blood and water everywhere, the fluids of life, and there is a little human in Darko’s big hands.
“Oh, my god…”
“Sit down. Sit down!” Darko urges me onto the floor, and places the baby in my arms, pulling my top down to expose my breast. The wriggling little creature freshly emerged from my womb begins to wail, his mouth crinkling open to reveal the tiniest pink tongue curled in primal rage.
“It looks like an alien,” I whisper.
It is strange. It came so quickly. I don’t feel as if I have had a moment to process any of this. Practically from the moment I met Darko, this little creature has been in the works, growing inside me. My pregnancy was strange. I got bigger and bigger. I felt the kicks. I swelled. I ached. I farted. A lot. But on some level, I never really believed it was true, and now, this little person creature is on me, needing me.
I touch the baby’s head softly, take its little hand. “Hello,” I say softly. “I’m your mom.”
Tiny fingers curl around my finger, and in that moment, my heart flowers. It has lain dormant since my father’s passing, becoming nothing more than a vestigial organ, but those little fingers, those eyes still closed, that mouth open wide in a scream that pierces the air, they are suddenly the most precious things in the world. This is my baby, but more than my baby, this is the baby of all those who have gone before. My father. My mother. My grandparents, and all of Darko’s. This baby is a triumph.
Maybe it is just the hormone rush of birth, a heady hit of pure oxytocin, but it doesn’t matter, because in this moment, I know love again. I look at Darko, and I see him transformed the same way. I have never seen such softness on his face, such wonder, such gentleness.
“It’s a boy,” he says. “We have a son.”
“We have a son,” I repeat wonderingly as the baby lets out a shriek at a pitch that would shatter crystal if I hadn’t thrown it all at Darko at various points in my pregnancy. “He needs a name.”
“Miloje,” Darko says. “It means love.”
At any other time, I would find that unbearably sappy. So would Darko. In this moment it is perfect. Miloje. The one we both love.
“Congratulations, madam.”
I look up to see Miles standing there with a proud, pleased look on his face—and a mop and bucket in his hands. I’ve made a mess of his floor, and in the midst of new life, he still cares about doing his job. It’s so mundane, so pedestrian, and yet, there is love in it. Miles does what is simple. He does what is necessary. He keeps the household running, and that is all we need.
Suddenly I know, inexorably, and for absolute certain—everything is going to be okay.
Epilogue
Darko
“You said having a baby would slow her down.”
“Yeah?” Roland is on the other end of the phone laughing at me. Six months on, my life has become more domestic than I thought possible. We are indistinguishable from every other couple with a new baby. We eat too much takeout. We walk the stroller down the street just to get out of the house. We argue, but not about life and death. We bicker about who was the last to change the baby. Where his pacifier is. If he should even be using one. I’m not telling Roland any of that. Don’t want him thinking I’m losing my edge.
“She’s worse, if anything. She’s a maniac with an infant strapped to her back. I can’t keep track of her.”
“Has she tried to kill anyone lately?”
“No, but she’s organized three birthday parties, a bridal shower, and she’s put the baby on a waiting list for everything from pre-school to post-grad. She’s like a hit-woman, but for mom things.”
“What did I tell you?” He chuckles. “Are you happy?”
“Are you pretending you give a shit?”
There’s a sigh of disappointment. “I took a beating to tell you to do what you should have done in the first place,” he says. “So you better be happy.”
“Yeah,” I admit. “I’m happy.”
“And is she happy?”
“She doesn’t tell me she hates me anymore.”
“Well, that’s progress.” Roland chuckles again.
“So when are you getting married?” I ask the question all married people have to ask unmarried people by law.
“Me? Quarter past never. I’m not the settling down type.”