Stork Raving Mad(3)

I saw this from upstairs, where I was in the middle of getting dressed, which seemed to take longer every day.

I sat back down on the bed and resumed trying to put on my shoes in spite of the fact that I couldn’t see my feet—hadn’t seen them in months. My cousin Rose Noire bustled in, looking, as usual, like a New Age Madonna, thanks to her long, flowing, cotton-print dress and her frizzy mane of hair.

“Look what I found for you!” she said. She was holding out a two-foot parcel wrapped in a length of mud-brown stenciled cloth and tied at several points with bits of raffia.

“What is it?” I asked.

“Open it and see. Oh, wait—it might be too heavy for you.”

She set it down on the table and began unwrapping it herself. Ever since she’d learned of my pregnancy, Rose Noire had alternated between urging me to exercise, for the good of the babies, and deciding I was too fragile to lift anything heavier than a teacup. As she struggled with the bits of raffia, I gave thanks that she was in the latter mood at the moment.

“Ta da!” she exclaimed, lifting a large object out of the cloth. It looked like a statue of a heavily pregnant woman with the head of a hippopotamus.

“What is it?” I repeated.

“It’s Tawaret! The Egyptian goddess who protects women during pregnancy and childbirth.”

“She looks like a pregnant hippopotamus,” I said. “A very irritated pregnant hippopotamus.”

Rose Noire, to her credit, refrained from pointing out that at the moment I looked rather like a hippopotamus myself.

“She takes the form of a hippopotamus to protect young children from demons,” she said instead, as she handed me the statue.

Yes, even demons would probably avoid tangling with a goddess who looked like that.

As Rose Noire swooped down to help with my shoes she chattered with enthusiasm about Tawaret’s powers, her importance, and even her marital history. Apparently, after first marrying Apep, the god of evil, then Sobek, the crocodile god, she became the concubine of Set, who must have been more important, since Rose Noire didn’t bother to explain who he was. And I didn’t dare ask, for fear of setting her off again. It was like listening to someone talk about characters in a soap opera I didn’t watch.

“Do you need anything else?” she asked.

I started guiltily. I’d been turning the statue around to study it and not liking what I saw. Tawaret was stout, with pendulous breasts, a bulging abdomen, frowning brows, and an open-mouthed snarl that revealed a large collection of sharp teeth. Her figure probably did resemble mine at the moment, but her expression reminded me of my Great Aunt Flo, who was so fond of telling me about ghastly things that had happened to women friends during childbirth and pregnancy. Not a happy association.

Perhaps my fleeting impulse to drop the statue showed on my face.

“I’ll just put her here where you and she can get acquainted,” Rose Noire said. She took Tawaret back and cleared a space for her on the dresser—which wasn’t an easy task. In addition to Michael’s and my relatively modest collection of grooming supplies, the dresser already held a large collection of pregnancy-related books, CDs, videos, statues, charms, amulets, herbs, organic stretch-mark creams, aromatherapy vials, and other gewgaws—most of them courtesy of Rose Noire, who seemed a great deal more enthusiastic about the whole pregnancy process than I was.

Of course, she wasn’t living through it.

“Meg?”

I looked up to see Rose Noire frowning slightly at me. I was zoning out again.

“Do I look presentable?” I asked. “I don’t want to embarrass anyone when I go downstairs to welcome our latest guest.”

Rose Noire tweaked, tugged, and patted bits of hair and clothing that had looked perfectly fine to me, then nodded her approval and flitted off.

On my way out of the bedroom, I waddled over to the dresser and grabbed Tawaret. Even after five minutes’ acquaintance, I’d decided she wasn’t someone I wanted to share our bedroom with. I’d find a place downstairs to stash her. Correction: display her. If Rose Noire objected, I could say I wanted everyone to benefit from her demon-chasing powers.

When I reached the front hall I could hear torrents of Spanish outside. I peeked out one of the front windows and saw Michael, my grandfather, Rose Noire, and several of the students chatting with Señor Mendoza. Why were they keeping him out in the cold? Not waiting for me, I hoped.

I glanced around the front hall and winced. It was almost completely filled with the coatracks and coat trees we’d brought in for the students, and the chairs we’d moved out of the dining room when we turned it into another temporary bedroom. When you added in the half a dozen bushel baskets we’d set out for gloves, boots, and scarves, what had once been a gracious foyer now resembled the entrance to a thrift shop.