UNFULFILLED- Twelve- The Birth

Neda believed she was a poet. She had a contract. There was no time limit on it. She would write and publish as long as she wanted. It did not matter that she was just a few days or a week away from delivering her baby. She wanted to end this long, painful, and out of ordinary pregnancy; and to began to move towards being an official poet of this magazine. She was not sure which one she valued more, the baby, or the contract? She thought the contract weighted more since it would open the future of greatness for her; if she could only know! She believed as a poet she had a quick mind and soul. Everywhere she looked, she knew that the poet in her was so fast to feel that ingeniousness like a hard playing with well ordered assortment on the strings of emotion, a soul in which cognition passed quickly and spontaneously into feeling which shimmered back as a new organ of knowing.

In the next few days, Neda was back to her old habit of not eating and being sick again. Her mother repeatedly told her that kind of sickness she had had because of pregnancy was very rare and unheard of.

"A pregnant woman only get sick for the first few months!"

Neda'a answer to her mother had always been the same:

"Do you think I'm faking my sickness?'

One morning, to be exact, April thirteen, Neda woke up not by a nightmare or wanting to write something, but by this excruciating pain that took her breath away. She sat on the edge of her bed. The physical need for sleep had over taken her the night before; when the abundance had validated and exalted her spirit and left her almost helpless and unresisting to the condition which surrounded her, the pain. But now, she was awaken by a pain unlike anything she had known for the last nine months! She put her robe on to go and call her mother. By this time the pain was gone. She got up anyway. Even with the exuberant sleep she had had the night before, she felt very tired. It was only five in the morning. She began making up her bed. But as she was walking around the bed to smooth out the bedspread, another wave of pain took over her. This time it was longer, harder, and more viciously unbelievable. It was so bad that she screamed but not loud enough for anyone to hear. Suddenly she recalled her aunt Zari's description of labor pain and delivery:

"The pain comes in intervals, first not real bad with longer distance between them, and then much harder pain with shorter distance!"

So this should be it. She ran down the stairs to her mother's room, opened the door. Her mother was sound asleep. She said in half whisper: "Mom, mom!"

Mehri opened her eyes. it seemed that she was dreaming. Suddenly she sat on the bed. Neda was standing in the middle of the room in the darkness before dawn and looking at her legs. Mother put the light on. There was this warm, bloody fluid running down her legs. She was shocked, sick to her stomach. She collapsed on the floor.

To Be Continued