Did these awful rumors reach any of her clients? Has it affected their trust in her?
“Are you ready?” Ghita presents a slim box tied with a glossy ribbon. Shay's hands shake so much, she nearly drops it. She's sure this can't be the first time she's received a gift, but she fails to recall a specific occasion that confirms otherwise. “Open it.”
The midwife smiles warmly, her eyes sparkling with an excitement that's contagious. Shay's worries don't ease so much as they sail out the window. Grinning, she tugs the bow, unraveling the ribbon, and whisks the lid aside to reveal the most perfect pair of new leather gloves.
She lifts them gently, inhaling a scent like burning oak, and slips her hands inside. The fleece lining kisses her skin like a delicate cloud. They feelexpensive. Unlike the common cow hide of her slippers, this feels like skin from the underside of a sheep or a young lamb, sanded to a soft buff and waxed to a subtle sheen.
On occasion, the husbands of Ghita's clients—be they bakers, butchers, or carpenters—offer her discounts out of gratitude for her services. Many consider her family. And that is the only conclusion Shay can draw as to how the midwife afforded such a luxury.
They fit perfectly. Shay blinks back tears, her throat closing, chest aching, like she's coming down with a case of sweats, only less unpleasant. Is this what it feels like to be loved?
“They're for foraging,” Ghita explains, perhaps sensing the apprentice's bewilderment. “To protect your hands from thorns. After all, a midwife needs smooth hands; they're the first touch a newborn receives coming into the world.”
“Khalti.” Shay stares at her hands, riddled with scabs and rough patches that even liberal amounts of Ghita's homemade argan oil haven't managed to soften. She fights the impulse to leap up and embrace the midwife. “You're going to make me cry.”
“Bah,” Ghita grumbles. “What good will that do but turn our tea salty?”
Shay's laughter is thick and strained. “Can't have that.”
“Certainly not.” The midwife winks, throws back a hefty swallow of tea, and plunks her glass on the table in front of her. “You did well last night.”
“This morning.” Shay shoves a date into her mouth to stop herself from speaking further. Part of her starves for the praise; another part insists it was Ghita's knowledge that saved the baby. Shay barely managed to follow directions she should have known from memory. Even the servants who were present came to that conclusion.
Incompetent.
Shay shrinks into her shoulders.
A look from Ghita alerts her to right her hunched posture, a bad habit—and a sign of sloth and subservience, according to Ghita's medical books.
“But today you are eight and ten cycles, Shuika Fulan,” Ghita continues.Fulan.A common placeholder name assigned to people whose identity is unknown. A name for the lost, the forgotten. “It is time to stop overthinking. Stop getting in your own way. You must be more confident. That's why I've decided you will catch the next baby on your own.”
Shay chokes, then guzzles tea until the half-chewed date stuck in her throat finally shuffles down. She knew this was leading to something. Her mind, so vacuous at the birth, now readily conjures a thousand scenarios to demonstrate the ways she could fail.
Shay carefully arranges the gloves back in the box and slides the lid on top, buying time to compose herself before looking at Ghita. “When is our next mother due?”
“Before the next lunar cycle.” Ghita refills Shay's glass with more tea.
Two moon quarters. Barely time to prepare.
The midwife folds her hands, resting them atop the mound of her belly. “The third glass is gentle. Like death.”
Shay wonders, not for the first time, if death was gentle to her mother. This is her chance to redeem herself. She already failed her mother; she cannot fail Ghita, too.
She sets her glass down and taps a nail to the side of it, considering whether she should inform Ghita of the servants’ gossip. Even if no one can prove she's a hizoura, the suspicion alone could stick to her like the smell of cooking grease on clothing. She'd have to work twice as hard to prove herself to the women of her medina. But really, the rumors should be easy enough to disprove. “Khalti, another benefit the gloves will provide is a barrier against germs …” Shay runs her fingertip around the rim of her glass and waits until the midwife hums in agreement, hesitant of ruining her good mood. Although, by all rights, this should be a day of mourning. “Perhaps I could wear them to visit my mother's grave?”
Anytime Shay has asked to pay her respects properly, Ghita has insisted that cemeteries are breeding grounds for disease. She watches the midwife's face, hopeful this time will be different, but when Ghita's expression darkens, Shay wishes she could retract the suggestion. It's a look she's seen once before and hoped to never see again.
She was nine. Ghita allowed her to play with a girl her age, the daughter of a laboring woman. Despite Ghita's instructions not to swim in the lake behind their home, the other girl convinced Shay it was safe. She didn't know Shay couldn't swim.
They only made it waist-deep before Ghita appeared at the shoreline, screaming for Shay to get out, tromping into the shallows, heedless of her long skirts, the same fear on her face then as now. As brief as her exploit was, Shay must have swallowed some of the water as she and the other girl exchanged playful splashes. She was sick the next moon quarter with severe diarrhea.
“I'm sorry, Lalla Shay.” Ghita looks down in a most un-Ghita-like fashion. “Your mother was buried in the part of the cemetery reserved for criminals. The part closest to Al-Ghaba Mayita and most vulnerable to bone-eater raids. Last I checked, her grave'd been dug up.”
“You mean …” Shay can't speak it aloud, but she understands. There is no body, nothing left for Shay to visit. Even this small connection to her mother has been denied her. And the lack of a proper grave site won't make the gossip any easier to refute.
The midwife goes stiff and sucks in a breath all at once, another look overtaking her face, more alarming than the one it replaces. Ghita has an extra sense, though nothing significant enough to be considered illegal. At least, not yet. She says midwives, as ushers of souls, have a special connection to the spirit world. Their ability—a sort of mental alarm that sounds when a laboring woman needs assistance—is one of the few remaining echoes of women's natural magic.
Under normal circumstances, Shay would eventually develop this echo herself, but the moon pepper will likely inhibit that, too. She realizes, belatedly, that in her excitement over the surprise festivities, she didn't add her daily portion of the herb to her tea. Her stomach twists, and she practically tastes the bitter residue on her tongue. She'll double up on her next dosage. She's already tired, and there's little time.
