ONE
‘I don’t know if I’ve ever been more scared in my life.
‘I was terrified.
‘It was … the weirdest feeling. She was there and then, even though my body hadn’t changed …
‘I just knew she was gone. In a flash, in an instant, she was gone and I …
‘I guessed she’d shifted, but I was so confused. There are no shifters in my family.
‘Of course I knew she must have shifted, but I hadn’t expected it—I didn’t know if there were even any shifters in my family. Or in Jackson’s, for that matter.
‘I started to panic. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t even think.
‘The first thing I thought was, No! Dear God, no, not me, not mine.
‘And then I thought, I can’t do this. I mean, how was I expected to do this?
‘When I finally got my shit together the first thing I thought was that I didn’t know if I could do this. I was there, with my phone in my hand, and I was searching for the closest clinic.
‘I knew I had to have an abortion. It was bad enough that I was trying to have a baby alone, but to have this on top?
‘And then she shifted.
‘And then she shifted.
‘And I knew I was going to hold on to her as tightly as I could. And I knew I was going to hold on to her as tightly as I could.’
* * *
No matter how hard you try to keep your life tidy, your eyes focused forward, your goals in mind, sometimes you can’t help falling in love.
Lily fell in love when she was sixteen. She was on the train, on her way to school. It was hot, even in the early morning, and there was a dampness in the carriage as though the air itself was sweating. As the train pulled around a corner the sunrise blazed through the windows across from her and Lily turned away to shade her eyes. That was when she saw the girl further up the carriage. She didn’t know her, couldn’t tell anything about her from that first glance, couldn’t say if they would have the first thing in common, but she was pretty sure she had fallen in love. And when the other girl looked down the carriage and their eyes met she was certain. And then there was a shift and Canna, bag held tightly in her arms, found herself sitting on a bus. Canna shrugged, uncomfortable and cooling rapidly in her sweaty clothes. She was wearing a button-down shirt, and she flexed against it, finding it too tight and tidy for her taste. No time to head home and change, but she was pretty sure she had left some clothes in her locker at school. She looked out the window. It was grey and oppressive outside. She checked the number on the display at the front and was glad to see she was on the bus heading in the direction of her school. She usually was if she shifted at this time of day, but she knew from experience that nothing was certain.
Reassured that all was as it should be on this side of the shift, she looked out of the window and studied the passing cars and promptly forgot that Lily had just fallen in love.
TWO
‘I say that as though that was the end of the conversation. It was and it wasn’t. I was sure about it, but even at your most certain you can waver. You know?’
‘I make it sound like it was that easy. It wasn’t, not at all. There were times when the baby would shift and I would pray that it wouldn’t come back. I think some dark part of me … You see, I didn’t have much. I knew it was going to be a struggle. I mean, I was struggling just to keep myself, and to put a kid through that … So yes, I’ll say it, there were times when I hoped that maybe it might just stick. The baby would be gone, my body would adjust, change back to what it was before, I could pretend it hadn’t happened, and maybe in the future I might look back and think about it but it would have been for the best. I thought that. But I also really desperately wanted to hold on.’
‘I think it was one time when the baby shifted, I fucking lost it. I was bawling my eyes out. My body felt so alien to me, and to have the baby shift in the middle of this, I just couldn’t handle it. I started to rant about how we had time, I could still abort, and Jackson goddamn beautiful saint of a man was sitting with me, soothing me, saying, “Yeah, yes, if that’s what you need I’m with you, I’m always with you,” just so annoyingly understanding, and on my side and I just wanted him to be the one to make the decision! I didn’t want to have to make any decisions anymore. But then he said something … He wasn’t trying to convince me, you know, it just suddenly hit him and he blurted it out, he said, “So what will happen with the other one?” And I was like, Fuck. Because I hadn’t conceptualised that yet. So that kind of gave me my answer. Because I knew I could make the decision for myself, and I would have, if it felt too much, if it felt like I wouldn’t be the best for this, I would have. But I couldn’t make that decision for someone else. I mean, Jackson couldn’t make the decision for me, I couldn’t make it for some woman … I didn’t know what her circumstances were. What I did know was that she hadn’t done it. And I couldn’t. And when I realised that, I was so relieved, and I realised then that I desperately wanted to hold on.’
‘Once I decided I was going to have the baby, I was all in. I tried to think of the shifts as a game—a complicated version of peekaboo. I tried not to sink when the baby vanished, or get too excited when the baby came back. I wanted to be calm. I thought, this kid is going to have enough trouble in life, so I need to be calm. Still. It was hard. She vanished during my first ultrasound. Seeing her on the screen and then suddenly … nothing. It terrified me. And my doctor was clear when I decided to keep her. She said to me, “Sometimes shifters don’t come back.”
‘I guess, even though I was calm, there was always a knot somewhere inside—the thought that each time the baby vanished it could be forever.
‘I did a lot of research and found out that shifters settle between the ages of four and six. A few outliers keep shifting up to maybe ten. So I prepared myself. That was how many years I could have her for. Because I knew when she stopped shifting it would be in that other place, the world I couldn’t get to, and I would be alone. That was how things would turn out for me. That was how things always turned out.’
‘The pregnancy was difficult. I mean, I’m sure most pregnancies are difficult but this was my first one and I had nothing to compare it with and I felt like it was harder than it was for other women. Not because it was more uncomfortable, or painful, but because the baby wasn’t always there.
‘I don’t think many people can understand the shock of going for an ultrasound and having the baby vanish halfway through. The doctors and nurses were great though—all of them had stories about delivering shifters; they knew the score. They didn’t act like it wasn’t terrifying, though. And I had Jackson. Thank Christ for that. God, not just Jackson. My parents were amazing! I think they were surprised when they found out I’d decided to go through with having the baby, but they were one hundred per cent there for me. My mum … I mean, she was such a comfort. And Jackson didn’t have any family left, so she was there for him as much as for me, and I think as much as he was supporting me, he really needed some support himself. But he was with me at every single appointment. Every time the baby shifted away from us he was there for me, holding my hand, letting me cry, being my rock. I wonder if it was as hard for him as it was for me. If it was, he never let on. I don’t know if it ever could have been—he didn’t have a part of him vanish in a shift.
‘When the baby came back it was sometimes harder. I never told Jackson that…’
* * *
Canna texted her mother: I’m back. There was no reply. She hadn’t expected one—Georgia was usually at work by now—but she knew she had to text her all the same. She couldn’t quite understand the waiting. It wasn’t the same for her. But she understood the loss of time. Not knowing when she could get back to a project she had been working on, or a school drama that was unfolding. Not knowing when she would see her friends. Not knowing when she would be able to hug her mother. Her ever-working, always tired, ridiculously generous mother. So she texted to show her that they had time again.
When she got to school, her friends greeted her with well-practised ease.
‘You won’t believe what happened with Marta and Will,’ said Luca, jumping right into the gossip Canna had missed.
‘You don’t even want to know what happened,’ said June, rolling her eyes.
‘Who cares about them. Did everyone just see what I saw?’ asked Val.
All heads turned in unison.
‘Wow! Has Jessica just had a serious overnight glow up?’ said Luca.
‘Rude,’ said Canna.
‘You’re one to talk,’ Luca replied, poking Canna in the side. ‘Good to see you, by the way.’ On these words her three friends hugged her and Canna felt good to be back.
‘So. What did happen with Marta and Will?’ she asked, as they all trooped to her locker so she could grab her change of clothes. And as Luca recounted the trials and tribulations of the school’s most volatile couple, Canna felt deeply happy to be where she was.
THREE
‘Once we got over the shock of the fact that our first child was a shifter I got down to the brass tacks. I mean, the doctors were all very reassuring, and of course they had monitored and delivered shifting babies before, but they never seemed to be able to answer the questions I was really interested in.’
A murmur of agreement, a few dry chuckles fill the room. Everyone knows that feeling. Doctors know everything and they know nothing. The recognition in the voices around her gives Cynthia a boost, and so even though she doesn’t really like talking at these things, she finds she wants to talk more.
‘Yeah, you all know the feeling. I had such a long list of questions, I had to write them all down, but the moment I pulled out my notepad the doctor stopped me. Because if we know the feeling, they do too. I was politely told that she could only answer questions relating to my pregnancy and the birth, but she gave me a pamphlet that had some resources listed on it and said that I might find it useful. I’ll give them that. At least they had some reading material prepared.’
A few more chuckles rise into the air.
‘I bought every book on the list and every other book I could find, too. I read articles by doctors, psychologists, parapsychologists, physicists, astrophysicists, biologists, biochemists, ethnographers, hell even geographers. I don’t know how many of you have come across Palimpsest: Worlds on Worlds? It’s a really good read, but it’s also total bullshit.’
Proper laughter now, and Cynthia really warms to her topic.
‘Essentially I was looking for patterns. Through lines that would help me understand everything. I looked for books by parents of shifters and by shifters but they’re few and far between. I guess the lack is understandable. I found a book by a woman who had lost her son to the other side of the shift and I couldn’t actually read it. It was too raw and painful. Reading it felt like tempting fate. Whenever I saw a piece written by an actual shifter I would jump on it, but the details were always so sparse. I felt I got more information from all the specialists that didn’t really know anything at all than the people who actually lived it.
‘So I read books about how shifting is actually a shared hallucination. I read books that posited the idea that shifters are the only real people in the world and we’re actually a dream they’re having. When they disappear they wake up. I read books that posited the opposite of that. I read about bilingualism in shifters, and code switching and cultural differences. I read about DNA structures in shifters, how they’re all chimeras and what kind of practical applications could follow from this. And nothing I read told me what I really wanted to know: Where was she going?
‘I know a lot of people here have talked about the places their kids go to. They talk about their other families almost like they’re friends with them. Pen pals. Of course, you can’t do that during the pregnancy phase, but it was reassuring back then, to hear other people talk about the way their kids talked about the other side of the shift. Still. That was them. Not me, not mine. It was hard to wrap my head around it, and I was worried about that other family. Who were they? What were they interested in, what did they believe? How would they look after my daughter? What would they teach her?
‘Jackson kept telling me not to get ahead of myself, because I was driving myself crazy on that line of thinking. But it’s impossible not to wonder. And I was never prepared. Every time she vanished. But when she was born … that was the worst day of my life.
‘I had her. She was with me when I went into labour. Jackson bundled me into the car and took me to the hospital. We got there in good time and it was off into a room, lie down, breathe. I don’t know if I could really describe it. I think it’s true that giving birth is one of the most painful, frightening things a woman could do. You’re face-to-face with the beginning and the end, and your body is being ripped in half as if those two states are wrestling for it. But it’s also a pain that is so easily forgotten. I mean, I say those words now, I talk about the pain, but it’s distant from me. It’s another country. I think it has to be, otherwise why would women ever choose to have another child? They do. I have.
‘Sorry. I’m getting off the point. I think it’s hard to really think about the day Lily was born. You see, I had her. I had her for seven hours and thirty-seven minutes of gloriously ugly and painful active labour. And then she was gone. I didn’t give birth to her. I wasn’t the first person to hold her; I wasn’t the first person to feed her. She was stolen from me. That moment I should have had with her, as her mother…’
‘I had a lot to do. I was a pregnant woman, young and alone. I didn’t have any kind of degree—I’d scraped through high school if I’m honest—so finding a job was hard, and I needed to make sure I could look after the baby when she arrived. So I worked. I took all kinds of jobs. I worked all hours and I worked hard, far longer into the pregnancy than I probably should have. But I was terrified that once the baby arrived I’d be caught out with not enough money, without a safe place for her to grow up in. To come back to, when she shifted. To feel loved in. So I worked right up to it. Right up to the first contraction.
‘God, I was terrified by that first contraction. I mean, what do you do? You have a contraction but you know there’s nothing inside you. Your body is getting ready to push a life out of you but that life is absent. What was I going to push out?
‘My doctor had been pretty clear about it—she assured me I wouldn’t give birth to my intestines—but I was terrified.
‘I got the bus to the hospital, and the whole way there I was muttering to myself. I think I was praying, but I have no idea who I was praying to. I remember the praying because I remember looking up and noticing that people were looking at me like I was mad. And I was offended for a second, until I noticed the muttering. This just got me, and suddenly I was laughing and I couldn’t stop. At least I couldn’t until the next contraction shut me up. By that point some woman realised what I was going through and she sat down next to me and held my hand.
‘“First time?” she asked. I couldn’t even speak anymore. I might have nodded or something. I remember she squeezed my hand and I was just so … grateful. That’s when I started crying. The woman, I never got her name—I wish I had got her name!—rode with me to the hospital. She helped me off the bus and took me inside and she sat with me while I shouted and cried and sweated my empty body out. She stayed with me during the seven hours and thirty-seven minutes that I was nothing but a shell for an absent child. And she stayed with me when Canna was suddenly there, present, alive and kicking her way out of my body. And then the woman was gone. And I never got her name …
‘Shit. Sorry. I always get so sad when I think about her. I want to thank her so much. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking about her at all. I was so focused on Canna at that moment. She came screaming into me, and she did not hold back. She was out like a shot. I hadn’t been expecting it to happen so quickly, but suddenly there she was. They were handing her to me and her little lungs were full of air and the air was full of her and I was … I was overcome. This little life had just appeared right there, inside me for just one quivering moment and then in my arms. I got to hold her first. And I will always be so grateful for that. I guess whatever I was praying to that day was listening.’
Copyright © 2024 by Joma West
