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Jacob the Usher

My mother and I shared a seat near the back. We rode the bus down Suffolk Street to Pall Mall East near Trafalgar, and then up Whitcomb Street and over Panton to Leicester Square. Our plan was to make the one-thirty showing at Stargazer cinema.
At the bus depot a light wind swirled discarded newspapers and forgotten shop adverts across the ground. Expectant passengers waited in the shade with their briefcases and their bum bags. Homeless tramps, begging change, fished through empty pockets and stared into open dustbins.

The Stargazer specialized in second-run episodic movies and trilogies. Last time we'd gone, the cinema played four James Bond films starring Roger Moore. Whatever the string of movies, you paid a set price for the day and came and went as you pleased. My mother hates to sit in the dark for so long, but she had been bored at home and had said she needed fresh air. I did not think the air in a movie house would be any better, but I wasn't going to argue because this time the Stargazer was playing a Star Trek trio-the first three movies all in a row. This was the perfect afternoon outing, too, until the arrival of a third in our party changed everything.

After seventy-three minutes of labor, seventy-three minutes of the bus and its other inhabitants, he was dripping with dark color, slipping into the world. Blood purple gone red in the warm air. Mother was there above him, smiling at her new baby. Others were there, too, too close, passengers all gawking and muttering. The driver had walked back to help. He did not know what to do. It appeared no one but mother had any immediate ideas. She held my brother. She was busy wiping his face free of birth. Her legs were still apart and her dress all up around her waist, ruined. She did not seem to notice or care.

I remember her asking the driver to call an ambulance. The man had been on one knee at her side his face big and sweaty with kindness. He rose and departed the bus. Mother went back to her wiping and cooing. I sat quietly, watching. Her face was calm but her hands shook as if she could not control them. Brightness surrounded them both. His wrinkled baby face looked beautiful and fresh even through what was left of the blood. Their presence shadowed everything. The sight made me feel small, somehow humble.
I thought about the Star Trek movies.

I wondered if Captain Kirk had taken command of the Enterprise yet, if he and the crew had departed space-dock, had moved out through the stars.

The

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