by Lauraine Andren

Created on: March 19, 2010

"Pain"

The young woman's belly rippled in the candlelight.  With a last scream of agony her new-born son slipped from her warm body and lay in a pool of blood and dark stained fluid.  The midwife took the infant and with a rusty knife cit the cord that was attached to its small body and tied it closed with a piece of yarn from the basket at her side.  A chipped basin was filled with warm water from the kettle hanging over  the fire and the child was washed with a dirty rag on the back of her chair.  The old woman reached into the infants mouth and pulled a clot of mucous from his throat.  With a sharp crack she slapped a palm across the babies back.  The new-born sucked in its first breath of the smokey air and cried its distress into the cold night.

The toothless crome spat tobacco juice into a corner of the drafty cottage and with dirt encrusted hands reached deep inside the young woman;s body and removed the tissue that had cushioned the infant since its conception.

Inside the woman's now hollow belly something ripped and with the tearing sensation, pain came in crushing waves and once again her screams filled the quiet night air in an unending crescendo of misery.

The fluid of her life-blood began to drip from her torn womanhood,  then it became a thin stream and finally an unquenchable torrent.  The new mother knew that this would be her only child and prayed that she would survive to see her son walk in the sunlight with laughter on his lips.

With frightened eyes the mother reached for her son and held him to her full breasts to give him what little nourishment her failing body could give.

The child drank his fill then closed his eyes and slept.  Cradling the infant by her side the new mother also slept but hers was the sleep of utter exhaustion and a depleted body.  As the cool dawn of the child's first day approached the child's pink lips found his mothers breast once again.

The old woman awoke from her chair by the fire and hear the thin wailing of the hungry infant.  Rushing to the bedside she saw the infant trying to nurse at his mothers cold empty breast.  With a sigh of regret the midwife gathered the infant in her withered arms and plucked the silver coin that was her due from the table.  Closing the door on the house of sorrows, the old woman dropped the coin into the small sack tied to her waist where it joined the many other silver coins that was her due.

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