Dreamland City. Larina Lavergne

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      Dreamland City

      by Larina Lavergne

      Copyright © 2015 by Larina Lavergne

      All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review or scholarly journal.

      First Printing: 2015

      Aviator Publishings

      4562 Texas Street

      San Diego CA 92116

      Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com

       http://www.eBookIt.com

      ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2559-7

       www.larinalavergne.com

      Prologue: Water Birth

      I was born in water.

      I read recently in a fancy magazine I swiped from a bookstore that that’s what rich women in rich places are doing—natural water births in a special kind of tub with a birth coach and a midwife. Heck, maybe they even have a staff of nurses and doctors around to hand out cigars after it’s all done.

      The water is important physically and psychologically for the newborn, because it simulates the safe environment of the mother’s womb, thereby reducing the trauma of the transition for the baby.

      The woman who wrote that article has a Ph.D. According to the author’s bio, she is a professor, writer, pundit and apparently Super-Mom. Her name is Marsha Longfellow; she is pregnant again (six months) and has decided on a water birth for this lucky third baby of hers.

      It’s a nice thought, a nice idea, and I’m sure some women spend many hours thinking about and planning the perfect birth.

      My mother didn’t quite plan my water birth the way Professor Longfellow and her readers are planning theirs. She didn’t quite plan anything, actually.

      I’m listening to the story for the hundredth time. I’d come over to Skelly’s to bum a cigarette and to look for Tommy; I should’ve known Skelly would corner me and we would have to dance this sad, broken dance, in this sad, broken room of his sad, broken trailer.

      He tells me the story every time I see him, if he can get me to stay long enough. The words are the same each time; the set-up never changes. He’ll cough his way through a wheezing laugh, his lips will pull apart like the drying scab on a scar, and I will stare at his yellow, gritty incisors as he points out the window at the dirty hard plastic wading pool by his trailer. The pool is so old now, mold has blackened half of its bottom, and because Skelly never bothers to cover it, there are scummy things floating around in the rain from the night before.

      “We were sittin’ by the bonfire outside, though we sure as hell din’t need it cuz' it was so hot. Shuld’ve been cold that late in the year.”

      I can see his tongue peeking between gaps in those yellow teeth as he speaks and enunciates words differently from how they’re spelled, so different from the people I’m surrounded with now. The tongue disappears and reappears like magic, a little purplish rabbit in a moist red hat. “We just got the dang pool too, got it off Mr. Simmons in that house down the street who dun’ gone decided to get a bigger one in his backyard for next summer.”

      I really need a cigarette now, but Skelly will not be interrupted when he’s on a roll.

      “Yer mama, she wuz outta her mind with those damned drugs and drunk, running around and singing all night long at the top o’ her lungs, and everyone yellin’ at her to shut her trap, but she just kept on with that danged singing.”

      I concentrate on the flecks of spittle on the side of his mouth against the bristles of hair on his loose, mottled skin. They remind me of this poem I read recently about drops of dew on grass in dawn. It might be the same kind of texture, and it is pure poetry that Skelly is like Robert Frost.

      Skelly hitches up his pants and lets out a loud groan, rubbing his bad back. He’s distracted for a few precious seconds, and I seize the opportunity to inch away, but he anticipates me, moving with some difficulty to lean against his armchair and block my path.

      I sigh.

      He’s now at the part where he saw my mother stumbling over toward them.

      “She wuz so danged big with you, she looked like she wuz gonna pop any second now.”

      Skelly coughs again and can’t seem to stop. When he finally emerges from his ecstatic fit of wheezing, he looks at me with a dreamy gaze. “You know, you look juz like her when she wuz growin’ up,” he muses. “Hair so dark you could go blind looking, and eyes so big there warn’t hardly any room fer nuthin’ else.”

      I say nothing—it’s best to say nothing. Skelly blinks and goes on with his story.

      “I tol’ her she was gonna hurt herself with all that prancing around, but she juz laughed at me when I yelled at her to get her ass back home. Then she snatched my bottle and went and sat in the pool, and she just kept on drinking and laughing and singing in the water.”

      Skelly gestures at my birthplace but I don’t bother to look.

      “It was so dark after the fire went out, and she was still sitting there. I wuz done ready to go to bed, and I shouted at her to go back home, don’t let me catch yer tomorrow morning passed out in my pool like the last time. And as I wuz walking up the stairs, then she started screaming and cursing, and motherfucker can yer mama scream and curse.”

      I sweep my gaze around and finally catch sight of what I came here for on the kitchen counter. As he’s in the middle of a sentence, I sidestep him with a swift move and ignore his wounded look. I grab a cigarette from the packet of Marlboros lying on the counter and walk slowly back to him.

      Skelly digs into his trouser pocket and gives me a light. “Those things will kill ya,” he says gruffly, before coughing again.

      He continues, “She didn’t stop screaming and cursing, and we wuz like, ‘What the hell?’”

      I take a drag of the cigarette and savor the gritty smoke at the back of my throat. It’ll be over soon, I think. He should be almost done.

      “And I go over, I’m sayin’ to her ‘What’s wrong, Maddie? What’s wrong?’ And she just screamed and screamed, and I’m holding her. We’re both in the tub now. And she’s saying, motherfucker fuck fuck fuck, and Michael’s just standing there, looking like the screaming wuz hurtin’ his head.”

      Michael was my father, I think.

      “And then you popped out.”

      There’s a strange, terrifying note of tenderness in the old man’s voice.

      “I goddamned birthed you in water, right here, seventeen years ago,” he says. “Cut the cord with my own goddamned scissors. With my own goddamned hands.” He holds them up, displaying those marvelous birthing hands. I notice СКАЧАТЬ