The shrill voice of the blizzard shook the small birch bark house. Misko-amik lay wrapped in warm furs as close to the fire as he could get. Wiinizik sat propped clutching her stomach. Her face was flushed and her eyes brightened and darkened with the tide of her pain.
On the fire a small pot of water simmered. With nervous fingers Ajijaak put the medicine the sisters had given to Wiinizik into the pot. The steam hissed and rose.
Wiinizik barked at him, “Take it off now. It must cool quickly.” She clutched her stomach and groaned. Ajijaak had never felt so helpless in his entire life. He longed for his mother more than he had ever longed for anyone. She had helped birth many babies as had his grandmother and he had heard the old women whisper stories to one another about births gone wrong. Every muscle in his body was tense. He took the pot off the fire and sat it down beside the bag of birth tools. There was moose bone knife. Its blade was long and very sharp. Wiinizik had told him, “This will sever the baby’s cord.” Beside the knife was a bone needle threaded with deer gut. He would use this to tie up the baby’s cord and anything that needed sewing up on Wiinizik. He shuddered at the thought of pushing that sharp thing through the skin of any living person. At the foot of Wiinizik’s pallet was a basket filled scraps of suede and cattail fluff, to soak up the blood.
As Ajijaak watched his woman’s labored breathing he wondered, how much blood there would be? He had slaughtered many animals, and seen much blood, but the thought of his woman’s blood only intensified the queasy feeling in his stomach. Still the worst tool of all in the birth process, at least to Ajijaak’s mind, was the stick, the stick with teeth marks from Wiinizik’s mother. The marks were deep and clearly defined. Wiinizik’s mother had not lived long after Wiinizik’s birth. He hated the stick. He hated what it stood for and he did not understand why Wiinizik wanted it.
Wiinizik demanded, “Give me some medicine!”
If he could speak he would tell her it was too hot. Signs were a slow way of communication in birthing. He picked up a wooden spoon and blew on the liquid, when it was cool, he poured it down Wiinizik’s throat. She gasped as she swallowed it and then demanded more.
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Ajijaak’s mind was a jumble. What had she told him the sisters said? She was to sip it slowly? He must not give it to her too fast. By the time he gave her another sip she hated him and told him so, then after she had swallowed the medicine she repented in tears and sobs. He saw a wave of pain seize her body. All of her muscles became taut. She cried out, the sound was more piercing than that of the coyote or even the wolf. Her hand groped for the stick. He pushed it toward her grasping fingers. She clasped it and put in her mouth. She bit down so hard Ajijaak feared she would break her beautiful teeth.
The sounds that came from his beloved were more animal than human. It seemed life required something deep and basic to come to fruition. Misko-amik seemed untroubled by noise or the fear that was taking place behind him. The old man kept his back firmly to them. What Ajijaak could not hear or see were the moving lips of Misko-amik as he silently chanted. Ajijaak’s entire focus was on Wiinizik. Her removed the stick from between her teeth when her body relaxed. Quickly he spooned some of the sisters’ mixture into her mouth. This continued until all the medicine was gone and still the baby had not come. Panic that he had just been able to keep battened down took hold of Ajijaak. Why would this child not enter the world? Did it know who had fathered it and wanted no part of him? His thoughts became wilder and wilder as he clung to his woman’s hand. She was so pale, and her body was being rocked by waves of pain like the Great Sea during a violent storm. He was thankful it had taken so long to plant a baby in his woman, he wished he had never done so in the first place. As all reason began to leave him, he hear Wiinizik murmur, “I feel the baby sliding out of me. Soon, be ready, her head will appear.”
Within moments just as she had predicted, a small baby came into the world. Only the baby was not a girl, but a boy. So sure had Wiinizik been of this child’s gender, her sureness had convinced Ajijaak of its validity. The boy let out a loud squall, a sound like the wind that shrieked outside. The ugly after birth spilled out. Ajijaak handed the baby to Winiizik. With the deer gut he tied off the baby’s umbilical cord and then with sharp knife severed the child from the afterbirth. While he cleaned up the messiness of birth, Wiinizik gently wiped off the frothy substance that clung to the baby with a suede cloth. Misko-amik had come to her side. His fingers traced the tiny hand of the new boy. A huge smile split his face when Wiinizik said, “We have a boy.”
Ajijaak did not hear any disappointment in his woman’s voice. Her eyes were full of her son. Carefully she wrapped her boy in soft blankets. A strange coldness swept through Ajijaak, loneliness he could not understand. Wiinizik looked from the face of her child to her man. She smiled at him, and the cold loneliness vanished. She held the baby out to him.
He took his child into his arms. How wobbly and tiny this creature was. His eyes seamed shut like those of a baby rabbit. His skin was the softest skin Ajijaak had ever touched. This child was part of him. A male child. He felt the weight of this burden. He had not had a good father, but he prayed with his whole spirit that somehow he could be a good father.