At the edge of town just beyond the last sprinkle of houses was a small field. Stevie walked to it, her mind as dark as a seabed. Why me? she thought. Why have I been picked out? I wanted just one thing, never asked for anything else. And it’s taken from me.
The small herd in the field was turning, having heard the farmer’s call, fifteen or so beasts clumping slowly through the wet grass towards him.
She’d had two miscarriages. The second had been an ordeal with two follow-up visits for surgical procedures to ‘extract’ retained tissue. It was as if her body didn’t want to give up the baby. ‘Miscarriages are quite common,’ she was blandly informed, ‘more so now you are in your thirties.’ That meant a good chance of repeated distress if pregnant again.
Following the second failure she and John were numb. They lived in the same house but mentally inhabited separate buildings. She wasn’t intended to have children, that was her conclusion. The years ahead that she’d dreamed of – with John and two kids – she’d best forget that. She couldn’t go through it again, hopes rising, then being dashed by the picking out with sterile instruments of the tiny bits of dead life within her. Stop hoping and you’ll stop hurting, it was obvious.
She looked up. One cow remained in the field, watching over a tiny calf which lay on its side. Every so often the cow turned to the exiting herd, its instinct to join them, but the desire to be with its infant stronger. Was the calf asleep? It was so still Stevie begin to think it was dead. More death? The mother seemed unable to accept her loss. Was she going to stay with her offspring and wait for a resurrection, let the farmer call all he may?
/
The next May John pulled the car up at the gate to the field. ‘I want to take a peek,’ she said.
There were more animals now, perhaps two dozen, some calves with the cows. Was ‘her’ cow back in the field now with a new infant?
She felt a kick within her. Life. Her daughter was due next month. There was nothing wrong, not with her or her child. You could say it was a miracle; she could dream again. Like? Well why not bring her daughter here, sit her on the stile, and look at the herd? Wouldn’t that be something, showing her farm animals chewing grass, stock still, just rubbery gums moving? She’d tell Zoe how last year one of the mummy cows had lost a baby but this year she’d been blessed with another. And, do you see Zoe how the baby cows keep close to their mothers, for protection and for milk to help them grow?
The farmer was calling and one by one they departed till the field was empty. They’d be back soon. She would too.
