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Spanish Bow: A Book Excerpt

I was born almost happy.

Literally, Feliz was the Spanish name my mother wanted for me. There is a surname, not a local name, just a hope, stated in the most far-reaching language she knew - a language that once reached around the world, the Netherlands, Africa, America, Philippines. Only music has reached farther and penetrated more deeply.

I say "almost born Happy," because the name attached to me instead, thanks to a careless bureaucrat bias toward Catalan saints' names, "was Feliu. Just one letter changed in my death - Yes, death - certificate.

My father was abroad that year, working as a customs officer in colonial Cuba. The afternoon my mother's pain delivery began, the older sister of my father changed into a dress better for the church. Mom bent over a chair near the kitchen door, legs apart, ankles inward, as the weight of my body pulled her pelvis down on the floor. As she begged him not to be the aunt, mother knuckles paled against the back braided straw chair.

"I'll light the candles for you," said the aunt.

"I do not need prayers. I need -" My mother complained, Fishing his hips from side to side, trying to find a position in which the pain subsided. Cool water? A urinal? "... Help," was all could say.

"I'll send Enrique to get the midwife." Tía pushed the ebony combs in large masses of gray fringe. "No, I I go on the road. Where's Percival?

My older brother had slipped out of minutes earlier, bound for the bridge and beneath the dry cleaning it, which the shepherds brought their local flocks. He and his friends hid there frequently, playing cards amid orange peels and staves rotating barrel smelled of vinegar.

Percival was old enough to remember the previous disasters in detail, and he did not want to witness another. Mom last baby had died a few minutes after birth. The former had survived only a few days while my mother hovering close to death, tortured by infection-induced fever. In Campo Seco, which was not just bad luck.

My mother blamed the midwife who had moved to the village four years before, accompanied by her husband, a butcher.

"They do not wash their hands," Mom gasped. "The last time I saw the clips used. Roto on the hinge. Flakes "- she twisted and jammed the heel of your palm on the back -" flakes of rust.

"Ridiculous!" Aunt drew the lace mantilla over her head. "You are worrying for nothing. You should pray instead."

My two other brothers, Enrique and Luisa, remained stoic front of the farm of my mother complains, the stain of straw-colored amniotic fluid on the floor, five-year-old Luisa dried, the smear of blood on the wet towels, which twisted Enrique seven years of age and are immersed in a wide porcelain bowl. By immersion in third place, flowers painted blue on the bottom of the cup disappeared, hidden under a layer of smoke rose-colored water.

Thirty minutes after Tía departed, the midwife arrived. Mom gasped and struggled from his bed, pushing with all her might as she struggled to keep his eyes open. She peered into the dust under the midwife crescent fingernails. She twisted her neck to follow every step of the midwife took, to catch glimpses of the toolbar that appears in a square of cotton fabric covering the night table, and the coil of gray cotton thread, which brought to mind the butcher roasts leaking, covered networks. When the midwife's hands came up, Mom tried to close the knees, to protect me from bad luck. But the urge to push could not be stopped. I was coming.

And then - as suddenly - left me come. What had moved too quickly once they stopped moving at all. mother's womb and excelled hilly one last time, then hardened in a long, continuous contraction. His jaw went slack. A blue vein stood out in his temple. Enrique, lingering on the open door, trying not to look between her legs, where the combination of taut flesh, pearl and wet hair made him think of jellyfish failed, collapsed against the weed from the shore. The midwife Catch looking and broke the blade in place, on Mom's lap, high, round abdomen. That gesture hid a disturbing point of view, but only attracted more attention what remained visible: my mother's red face, beaded with sweat and contorted with pain.

"Here," Mom would say later in the count story of my birth, "is where you decided to rebel. Every time someone pushes you too hard, do the opposite."

In fact, I have been trapped: twisted feet up to my neck, looking back the only way. A living churro tied to a bow.

The midwife growled as his hands shoved push, and a massage under the sheet loosely tent, a question obscuring his face. Forget Henry, who took the sheet and groaned when he saw a small scrotum that appear purple in the place where a paramount chief should have been. He saw that place for ten minutes, twisting the fabric of her red apron with the fingers. Then he panicked. Enrique Ignoring unbeliever, up the face and eyes round with Luisa, pushed past the two and down the stairs, missing the last step of all.

The midwife had gone to find her husband, who was two blocks away, wiping his own stained hands. She could have sent my brother called from the balcony or one of the fleet-footed sons of our neighbor. But she was not a brilliant woman. And I knew that third child death in a family would invite gossip expensive. He could imagine the sea of dark scarves health from now on --- the back of the head to prevent all women from the neighboring and rounded shoulders, snubbing her if I died, and my mother with me.

Left without help, my mother called her decision and tried to breathe more deeply. He felt safer with the midwife had gone, ready to accept what happened. Luisa asked to retrieve a bottle of wine and keep it on the lips, although nausea allowed to drink only a little. Enrique called to come and take the forceps and brush to dip into a bowl over hot water, to be ready.

"They do not open very well," he said, struggling with oval handles. They were constructed of twisted steel and filled with small pieces of leather sewn dark reminded Henry of a saddle horse stained with sweat. "Is that supposed to separate the pieces?"

"Forget it. Put them down. Use your hands."

He blanched.

Mama Luisa ear begin to mourn, and ordered him to sing - anything, a popular song, or "Vamos a la Mar" a round that had sung happy all day in field trips to the Mediterranean coast.

"... Eat fish on a wooden plate..." He sang Luisa, again and again, and then: "I see something, here is a foot!"

Another push. A strong back. With Henry for help, a shoulder. My mother lost knowledge. I have been told that hung there for a while, the picture of indecision blind head by refusing to follow my pasty body. Until Henry, sufficient determination for both, stepped forward and pushed a small hand in the darkness, hooking your finger around my chin.

Following my final appearance, slippery I laid on my mother's womb, still attached by cord to the placenta inside. There were no spanking, no bawling crying. Mom appeared briefly in the consciousness once again with instructions on how to Henry to tie the cord with gray chain in two places, and how to cut the purple wire flattened in the middle.

I moved over the breast of my mother, but I do not root. One of my legs hanging out of steam more than the other, the hip joint tenderness concern. No one cleared the white residue plugging my nose small. mother's arms lay on the sides, too tired to hug me. There was no point. My eyelids do not twist. My chest does not swell.

"It's cold," said Luisa. "We have to wrap."

"It is cold-corrected Enrique.

"A boy." My mom played both pleased and resigned, her cheeks wet as he revived what had happened before and will again happen: the increasing pain as the adrenaline was flowing, debilitating fever, falling deep in confusing the dream that I could not return. "Tell the midwife it was not his fault. The notary arrives at the door. There is a blank card with an envelope in the drawer with the money. Write the name down to it, so there is no error: Aníbal Feliz DeLarge Domenech. "

He gritted his teeth, waited for a spasm to subside. "Is it cold here, Louise?

"It's hot, Mom."

"The notary shall inform the priest" - She inhaled a deep breath, then bit lower lip - "and the recorder."

"The recorder?" Asked Louise, but Mama did not explain.

"Enrique - you know how to write Hannibal, as his uncle. "

Henry shook his head.

"As the victor of Carthage, the man elephants. "

"I do not know how," my brother protested, the more alarmed by the request to write my name in what had been by the drama of pulling a baby from the womb reluctant.

But the long list of tasks ahead and imagined - a letter to Santa, a visitation, a funeral - Had exhausted the last of resistance mother. He closed his eyes and turned his head from side to side, trying to catch an elusive breeze. She began, "Anib. . . "And then he lost consciousness again.

Copyright © 2007 Andromeda Romano-Lax

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission of the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work must be submitted online at www.harcourt.com / contact or mail to the following address: Permissions Department, Harcourt, Inc., 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

This is an excerpt of the book Spanish Arch by Andromeda Romano-Lax
Published by Harcourt, Inc., September 2007, $ 25.00US; 978-0-15-101542-9 Copyright © 2007 Andromeda Romano-Lax

Author
Andromeda Romano-Lax has been a journalist, a travel writer and a serious amateur cellist. The Spanish Arch is his first novel. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska, with his family.

About the Author

Visit www.RomanoLax.com.

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