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Rome strides up the rickety steps on the outside of the closest trailer and knocks on the door. A pair of footsteps move quickly across the floor inside, and then the door swings open.
Rome’s dad used to be a high-powered businessman. A power broker in Verona. The kind of guy who shaved twice a day and never wore a suit with a mark on it. He was just like my father, until he wasn’t. This guy has the same face I recognize from my childhood, only it’s hidden by a cropped beard and a deep suntan—the kind you get from working outside all day. He has a large metal pot in one hand.
“You’re here.” He blinks at us, and then a smile breaks over his face. “Things must’ve gone okay, then, Rome?” He seems at home here, which is more than I can say for myself.
“You’re in an excellent mood for this early in the morning.” Rome’s expression is half-disbelief, half-resignation. “Something going on?”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rome’s dad looks distractedly back into the trailer. “My wife’s in labor.”
It’s too quiet in the trailer for that.
“What? Where?” asks Rome.
His dad lifts the pot and uses it to point behind us, toward a large rainbow-painted yurt between the trailers and the rest of the landscape. “I was about to boil more water for the birthing tub.” He smiles again, looking like an old hippie version of a first-time dad. “A lot of us are there. You two are welcome, if you’d like.”
He goes back into the trailer and comes out again with a larger pot—a spaghetti pot—balanced in his hands by way of two oven mitts. This one is full of water, steam pouring off the top. “Hey, Avery. Rude of me back there. Can you get the door?”
I pull the door shut behind him and Rome and I trail after him, exchanging incredulous glances. This is not what I expected to walk into when I was imagining heaven.
“Have you ever seen a birth?” Rome asks me. He’s lit up by the sunrise and all of him seems like it might catch on fire.
“No. I haven’t.” I haven’t, and I’m nervous as fuck. This isn’t a hospital. If something goes wrong—when something goes wrong—
“Do you want to leave?” Rome catches my hand and pulls me to a stop. “We don’t have to go in if you don’t want to. I know this is a lot. Especially with your brother and everything.”
“No.” Rome’s dad disappears inside the tent with his big spaghetti pot of water and I fight back the urge to chase him. Hard as it might be, I want the full weird commune experience. I’m not leaving any part of it behind. “I’m good. Let’s stay.”
So we go into the yurt.
If the ragged wilderness of Joshua Tree was insane for a spoiled city princess like me, this is even more so. The whole yurt is hung with bright fabrics, cozy and warm like something out of a movie. I can’t decide whether it looks like medieval times or the seventies. Rome’s father carefully tips his pot of water into a big blue plastic birthing tub in the center of the tent, where his wife, a woman who can’t be more than thirty, labors. Twenty-odd people crowd the rest of the yurt, all of them talking softly among themselves. It’s a crowd.
She wears a bright green sports bra and nothing else, and as Rome’s dad adds the water, she moans through a contraction. One of the other women from the commune presses against her lower back, whispering something to her. Then, abruptly, the moaning tapers off, Rome’s stepmother opens her eyes, and holds her arms out to us. “Rome!” Joy suffuses her face.NowI think we should get out of here. Nobody in the throes of delivering a baby should be that happy. “Come here. I’m so glad to see you. And you brought a friend. Welcome.”
How the fuck is this woman talking in the middle of this?We start our full commune experience by accepting wet hugs from Rome’s stepmother, who goes immediately into a fresh contraction as soon as we step away.
“These people,” I whisper to Rome. “They’re on something.”
He guides me to a cushion at the edge of the yurt. “They’re on magic mushrooms.”
“Why am I not on magic mushrooms?”
A man next to us stands up and hurries outside. The next sound is his vomit hitting the ground.
“Okay,” I tell Rome. “I’m good without that.”
His dad comes to crouch down next to us, eyes shining. “Now, everybody joins in here. It’s not like a hospital birth.” His eyes flick toward me. “The birthing ceremony on the commune includes any member who wants to participate by having a spiritual experience in support of the birth.”
The spiritual experience of throwing up outside? I nod instead and hope I’m wearing a placid expression to disguise how fucking crazy I feel right now.Is this even real?
The laboring woman’s contractions intensify, getting closer together. People take turns stepping out to throw up and come back in with varying expressions of ecstasy on their faces. Only a few of the women get close to the one I’ve since learned is named Indigo—they must be acting as her midwives. The rest utter soft words of encouragement from their places at the edge of the tent.
The longer it goes, the less sure I am that I should be watching this. Rome’s stepmom hunches over the edge of the tub and her moans morph into weird, guttural screams. If she weren’t actually in labor, she’d probably be embarrassed. Or maybe not. I’m new to commune life. What do I know? The energy in the room intensifies along with her wails. Rome’s dad goes to hold her hand, whispering encouragement over the side of the tub. Two small boys—her other sons, I guess—run into the tent half-naked and hang over the side of the tub. Would I want my young children watching me give birth? Probably not.Full commune experience, I remind myself.
“Oh,” Indigo says suddenly, almost languidly. “Fuck.” She turns over onto her back and spreads her legs wide in the water, a wave sloshing over to the edge. Impending doom comes down over me like a heavy cloak, or a bad magic mushroom. I don’t realize I’m turning until Rome catches me with his arm.
“She’s okay,” he says. “Look.”
I do look, and what I see is the new mother with her chin down to her chest, red-faced and gritting her teeth. One other woman has put a pair of gloves on—good—and reaches down into the water. “Almost there!” she’s saying. “Almost there, almost there—yes!”
