Birth Story by Andrea Holck

Shortlisted for the first Lunate 500 competition

“One of the most purely gripping pieces of flash fiction we have ever received. The richness of the storytelling is a mini-masterclass in how to densely pack a mere handful of paragraphs with large-scale events, a deeply characterised narrator, tone (an expertly managed skip from coal-black comedy to an unexpected and shuddering emotional climax.) Re-reads reveal its carefully embedded riches. Spectacular writing.”

Lunate judges

***

I’m on your dad’s couch watching porn when my water breaks. It’s some really messed up shit about a woman who works in a greenhouse. There are garden tools involved and unwashed vegetables pulled straight out of the planters. I’m wondering what possessed him to purchase this on DVD when all of the sudden I’m sitting in a patch of amniotic fluid worrying about the upholstery.

Right away I’m embarrassed and annoyed that your birth story will have to be a lie, as if the circumstances aren’t bad enough as it is. What a way to start out in the world, your mother watching your dead dad’s vegetable porn at 10AM as though there were nothing more pressing to look into. Like the rotted floorboard back in my own neglected apartment. Or the fact that there are no diapers, no bottles, no mobile with animal cut-outs dangling above your crib.

I cross my legs and focus on the cabbages, because I’m just not ready for you yet. The man on screen is peeling off the outer leaves. Napa cabbage, I think, oblong with thick white stems. Watching what comes next is vaguely hypnotic and gives me the idea that maybe it won’t be that bad. The birth, anyway.

His parents asked me to go through his apartment, take whatever I wanted. They texted it, actually, which wasn’t surprising from what he’d told me about them. Designer glassware and second homes. Disapproving comments. Of course I wasn’t good enough to be involved in anything but the cleaning part, despite the fact it was me who found him and called them. I left a message at the beep: “Sorry to call so late, but your son is dead.”

I squat down on the bare floor when the pain comes, pulsing downward through my femurs, and I have to get low to the ground like an animal. After it rinses through me, I flip over and close my eyes. I don’t know how long I lie there like that, but soon enough someone’s knocking at the door, the porn’s over, and the light outside has changed.

“Coming!” I yell, holding my belly as I stand. The knob turns and a voice says, “Hello?” Then she’s there and she’s nothing like he said, and I start laughing when our eyes meet, because it’s like someone’s held up a giant mirror. There I am, naked except for this filthy housecoat hanging about my person like the pelt of a dead animal. And though I haven’t seen it for a while, I’m pretty sure there’s pubic hair sticking every which way like twisted fishing wire and around the nipples too, and I’m laughing, but then I realize that no, this is crying. This is weeping, and she has her arms around me and she smells so good, nothing nauseating at all about her, and she’s saying, “My god, my god, I had no idea. I didn’t know, forgive me, I didn’t know.”