Free Sappho's Leap by Erica Jong

fool he was. An olive crown was symbolic of a son, while a tuft of wool meant a girl and her future toil at the loom.
    â€œI would much prefer a tuft of wool,” I said.
    Cercylas laughed, thinking I had made a joke.
    Pregnancy can be a time of troubling dreams. I had them all. The trip to Motya certainly hadn’t helped. Cretaea’s prophecy was also troubling. I dreamed again and again of a baby given up to the arms of a red-hot god and devoured by flames. I couldn’t banish the image from my mind.
    The last part of pregnancy is probably best forgotten. Birth is a battle to the death between two clinging souls. We come apart so we may come together. If women knew what birth cost, they’d forswear love forever.
    When my time came, it was announced by a fit of prodigious hunger. I remember eating a whole chicken baked in honey the night before my water broke.
    Praxinoa called the midwife as soon as my pains began. Then the pains stopped and Praxinoa foolishly let the midwife go. Of course, when I needed her, she was off delivering another babe.
    The women’s quarters of my house were filled with useless helpers—slaves, nurses, sweepers, cooks—but no midwife. Everyone had an opinion. I myself had no idea what to do, and my first taste of motherhood was a chaos of conflicting advice.
    When at last the midwife returned, I was given herbs to ease my pain—which again stopped the labor. Then the pains began again in earnest and I traveled to another world. Odysseus in Hades’ realm was not as lost among shades as I was, laboring to bring my babe to birth. I wailed until my throat was sore. I could not believe the pain! I was certain I would meet my own ghost among a crowd of wailing women who had died in childbirth.
    Every mother has experienced this—though none remember. Forgetfulness is the gods’ blessing. I do remember that finally two helpers seized me by the shoulder and two by the legs as if to shake the baby out of me! It didn’t help. Then I was seated on a birthing stool and told to push with all my might.
    â€œDamn you, Artemis!” I yelled. “Damn you more, Aphrodite!”
    When at last the head of the baby was seen between my legs, the women began to shout the ritual cry of joy—the ololuge —but the baby seemed to be stuck ! Was it bad luck to cry for joy before the birth was complete? Was I doomed? Was the child ? I hardly cared by then—if only the pain would stop! Another great wave of pain obliterated my mind—and suddenly, miraculously, I pushed the baby out!
    The midwife had prepared goatskins to place the newborn babe upon. It was customary that the goatskins be filled with warm water, then pierced so that water leaked from them. The idea was that the skins would slowly settle under the weight of the babe, extracting the afterbirth by tugging the cord of flesh. But this time the cord was wrapped around the infant’s neck! Once it was cut, the goatskins were useless. The midwife had to extract the afterbirth with her bloody hand.
    Covered in blood, looking more like afterbirth than baby, the child was put into my arms. It was a little girl! Her sea-blue eyes blurrily sought mine. Her little sex a pale pink shell. Her red, wrinkled feet had walked to us through the air. The midwife was strangely silent.
    Then I heard the old witch whisper to Praxinoa, “Don’t let her grow too attached—perhaps the father will not agree to raise the child.”
    â€œOut!” I screamed. “This child will be raised no matter what that idiot says!”
    â€œI promise you life,” I whispered to the most beautiful creature I had ever beheld. “It is all I can promise you.” I thought of the infant girls exposed on rocky hilltops and wept. “No one will sacrifice you for your sex, little stranger,” I sobbed. “And I shall call you Cleis like the one who gave me life.”
    I yearned then for my mother