Dominion by Calvin Baker Page B

room Sanne screamed back at him. “Don’t you dare leave me out here in the middle of creation”—she added, “just because you’re scared of a birthing.”
    Merian walked out of the house and all the way to the road with worry, before turning back to the house, trying to figure out what he was supposed to do, either leave her for help or stay there helplessly while she cried out in pain. Finally he made his way back to the other house and pushed at the door. It was fastened from the inside, and he was forced to shove his shoulder into it with his entire might until it budged but only the smallest bit. Through the crack he could barely make out her form but saw that she stood in the middle of the room, holding on to the halfborn violently.
    He thought then, that this was how she escaped her prior marriage childless, by killing them off as they came into the world. He yelled at her to stop as he rammed his frame into the door again.
    The rough-hewn door was swollen with dampness and cleaved to its position. Merian threw himself into it again with greater and greater force, until the wood began to creak and splinter. Still Sanne said nothing to him nor made any motion to let him into the room; rather, she continued on in her task and the sounds of pain she had emitted before.
    Finally he rammed the door with his foot and succeeded in making it give way. He entered the dark room and rushed toward his wife, as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. When he was upon her he saw that she held the newborn creature with all the gore of birth still attached. She looked up at him with an implacable face.
    â€œHe came first by the feet,” she said, telling him to get her a towel. “What is all the commotion you are keeping up?”
    He said nothing, ashamed of his former suspicions.
    She took the child then and moved sorely to her side, where she reached a basin of water and began to clean it. When she had finished, and he could distinguish the baby’s human shape, she held it out to him. He, for his own reasons, looked on the creature but did not move to receive it.
    * * *
    For days after the birth she stayed in the other room with the newly repaired door still barred and forbade him entrance. She sat then with her child and talked to him and sang to him the songs that had been sung to her when she was small, but for the father she gave little thought except when he came around to bring or retrieve something at the door.
    In all the two of them, mother and son, were sequestered nearly a fortnight in the other house, and Merian began growing used to their absence. When they finally did emerge, he was at work mending the chicken coop and did not see them until he returned to the house later in the day, when he entered the room to find it hot as the oven could make instead of cool as he liked to keep it. Sanne sat in her chair by the little window cradling the boy and, when she saw her husband, held his son out to him. Merian looked at the child a second time but did not take him in his hands.
    â€œDon’t you want to hold your boy, Jasper?” she asked. “What is the matter?”
    He said nothing but went over to the fire to get his lunch, his hands trembling as he poured the soup he had prepared days earlier into a bowl.
    â€œWell, have you thought about what you want to call him?” Sanne asked, as Merian took a bit of the watery broth and looked over at the child’s hovering eyes.
    â€œI thought you might of named him already,” he answered her.
    Sanne did not respond, as he sopped at the bowl with a piece of hard bread and stared straight ahead of himself. When he finished he stood up and went back to his work outside, leaving the two of them alone as they were used to being.
    When he returned at dusk Sanne had baked new bread and prepared their dinner. Merian, still sulking, did not take his accustomed seat but avoided the common table.
    Seeing that he was