As her belly grew, he brought her big, billowy dresses she hated, and a pair of slippers she shed grateful tears over. He tacked a calendar to the wall, marking off the days himself so she watched the days of her life crawl by.
Surely he’d let her upstairs once the baby came. He wanted the baby, so he’d let her and the baby come upstairs.
And then …
She’d need to take time, Alice calculated as she sat in the easy chair near the stingy heater while the baby kicked and stirred inside her.
She’d need to make him think she’d stay, she’d be obedient, that she was broken. And when she got a good lay of the land, when she could plan the best way to get out, she’d run. Kill him if she got the chance, but run.
She lived on it, the baby coming, the baby opening the door to escape. A means to an end—and nothing else to her, this thing he’d forced inside her.
When she was upstairs, when she had regained her strength, when she knew where she was, when Sir’s defenses were down enough, she’d get away.
This Christmas she’d be home, safe, and the bastard would be dead or in prison. The baby … she couldn’t think of that.
Wouldn’t.
* * *
At the end of September, in her eleventh month of captivity, her labor started as a nagging ache in her back. She paced to try to ease it, sat in the easy chair, curled up on the bed, but it didn’t ease. It spread, rounding to her belly, coming harder.
When her water broke, she began to scream. She screamed as she hadn’t since the first weeks in the cellar. And, like those weeks, no one came.
Terrified, she crawled onto the cot while the pains came harder, closer together. Her throat cried for water, driving her up between contractions to draw some from the sink into one of the Dixie Cups he’d stocked for her.
Ten hours after the first pain struck, the door up the stairs opened.
“Help me. Please, please, help me.”
He came down fast, stood frowning before he shoved his hat back on his head.
“Please, it hurts. It hurts so much. I need a doctor. Oh my God, I need help.”
“A woman brings forth children in blood and pain. You ain’t no different. It’s a good day. A fine day. My son’s coming into this world.”
“Don’t go!” She sobbed it out as he started up the steps. “Oh God, don’t leave me.” Then the pain robbed her of anything but a wailing shriek.
He came back again with a stack of old towels more suited for a rag heap, a galvanized bucket of water, and a knife in a sheath on his belt.
“Please call a doctor. I think something’s wrong.”
“Ain’t nothing wrong. It’s Eve’s punishment, is all.” He tossed her dress up, stuck his fingers into her so fresh pain erupted.
“Looks like you’re about ready. You go ahead and scream all you want. Nobody’s going to hear you. I’m going to deliver my son into the world. Deliver him with my own hands, on my own land. I know what I’m doing here. Helped birth plenty of calves in my time, and it’s about the same.”
It would rip her in two, this monster he put in her. Mad with pain, she struck out at him, tried to roll away. Then simply wept, exhausted, when he left her again.
She fought again, screaming herself hoarse when he came back with a rope, tied her down to the cot.
“For your own good,” he told her. “Now, you start pushing my son out. You push, you hear? Or I’ll cut him out of you.”
Drenched in sweat, buried in exhaustion, Alice pushed. She could never have resisted the urgent need to even with the pain tearing at her.
“Got his head, look at that fine head. Already got some hair, too. You push!”
She gathered all she had left, screamed through the last, unspeakable pain. When she went limp with exhaustion, she heard a mewling cry.
“Is it out? Is it out?”
“You birthed a female.”
She felt drugged, out of her own body, saw through the glaze of tears and sweat he held a wriggling baby, a baby slick with blood and goo. “A girl.”
His eyes when they met Alice’s were flat and cold, and struck her with fresh fear.
“A man needs a son.”
He put the baby on her, dragged some twine out of his pocket. “Put her on the breast,” he ordered as he tied off the cord.
“I … I can’t. My arms are tied down.”
His face a cold mask, he yanked the knife out of his belt. Instinctively Alice arched, struggling against the rope, desperate to wrap arms around the baby to shield it.
But he sliced the cord, then the rope.
“You need to pass the afterbirth.” He fetched another bucket while the baby’s cries grew in volume, and Alice tucked hands around the infant.