“The Birth” was shortlisted for the 2024 Best in Rural Writing Contest by judge Dr. Chea Parton. Learn more about the contest here.
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I met Aubrey at the big barn in the morning. It wasn’t our usual meeting spot, but Dubby was calving. She wasn’t supposed to be calving. It was July.
“No one has July calves,” Aubrey said as soon as she became aware of my presence, “this is so embarrassing.”
I looked through the bars of the rusted metal panel in front of us. Dubby was standing up and panting, the white of her midsection caked with manure, the black of her neck and hindquarters dripping. It was the wettest summer Aubrey had ever seen on the island. The ground beneath us was like pudding. I saw that Aubrey had spread out a bale of straw for Dubby in the corner, but it was untouched.
“She’s pretty far along,” said Aubrey. “Once she lays down you’ll get to see the feet.”
Dubby was angled so that I couldn’t catch a glimpse of her rear, but I could see a long strand of stringy mucus dangling between her back legs. This was the first calving I’d ever seen and I’d expected to walk in and see something gory or beautiful, but here we were staring at nothing but a very muddy, very violated-looking heifer.
“She also picked the worst possible day to do this,” Aubrey continued. “I had the neighbor bale up that whole pasture back there last night and we have to go out and pick it all up before all this fog turns into rain at one.”
“And we also have to do morning chores,” I contributed, unhelpfully.
“Right. And obviously we’re going to start feeding a lot later than normal.”
I looked over at Aubrey. She was wearing white cotton pajama pants with tiny cartoon wine glasses on them.
“We can’t just leave, do chores and come back and see where she’s at?” I asked.
“Nope,” said Aubrey. “We’re gonna have to pull it. Her water broke almost three hours ago.”
I stood awkwardly against the wall as Aubrey went through her calving supplies. She pulled out a few things I could identify but there was so much equipment—so many tubes and straps and clamps. Aubrey seemed annoyed, but she always seemed annoyed. I figured she must know that this was a funny and exciting situation, given Dubby’s origins. Dubby herself was a surprise to Aubrey, born to the pet calf of the previous farm manager who had left the island unexpectedly. Dubby’s mother was the only Belted Galloway in a herd full of rust red, white-faced Herefords and her daughter came out looking just like her—black front and rear and a bright white belt. Dubby’s full name was Double Stuf.
“You know what they say about teen pregnancy…” I said eventually.
“She’s not a teenager. She’s just really small,” Aubrey snapped without looking up from her tools. I shrunk into my jacket. After a few seconds of willing myself to disappear I reasoned that Aubrey was probably just scared for Dubby’s life. Dubby’s mother had been small, too—so small that giving birth to Dubby cracked her pelvis. Aubrey had to send her to slaughter. Animals should never have to live more than one bad day, she’d told me when she relayed that story, and she was going to live too many.
Aubrey pulled a pile of chains out of her calving bag and then stood up and unzipped her rain jacket. She let it fall into the mud and then turned to look at me for the first time that morning. I got the sense I was in her good graces again, like I was her fellow soldier. For a moment I couldn’t believe she was the only person I knew on the island—this strange, gangly, sunburnt woman only a few years older than me wielding a tangle of thick chains like she was about to imprison me and leave me for dead among the rats and the horse flies.
“Now we just have to wait until she lies down again,” she said. I nodded and turned to look at Dubby. She was sniffing the wall loudly and panting. A deep pocket had opened up between her hip and her rib cage. I knew what that meant.
“That’s got to be soon, right?” I asked.
“She’s up and down every few minutes.”
She went down soon after Aubrey and I fell silent. She looked nearly human propped up against the back wall of the barn, her eyes bulging, her legs tucked neatly underneath her.
“I’ll go in first,” Aubrey said. “She’s not gonna be stoked to have us in there with her.” No shit, I thought, watching Dubby’s ears flick nervously as Aubrey climbed over the panel and into her pen. I could smell her thoughts.
Aubrey was slow on the other side of the panel. She bent over and made herself small, walked slowly and talked in a voice I was sure didn’t belong to her.
“It’s okay, Momma,” she cooed. Dubby stared straight ahead as if pretending that Aubrey wasn’t approaching. When Aubrey got close enough to reach out to her, she swung her bodyweight up towards her front legs, preparing to stand.
“No, no, no, it’s okay Dubby,” Aubrey said, completely still. Dubby remained pressed forward, unsure if it was worth the effort to get up. “It’s okay, we’re here to help.”
Slowly, timidly, Dubby let her body settle back into its original position. She stretched a front leg out in front of her, shooting a jet of air out of her nostrils.
“Good girl,” Aubrey whispered. She took another quiet step and then knelt down at Dubby’s rear end, setting the chains down beside her. I placed a foot on the panel.
“Don’t come in yet,” said Aubrey, “she’ll freak out. Wait until the contractions start and then you can bring all the supplies in.”
I watched from the outside as Aubrey ran her big, chicken-scratched hands over Dubby’s back and flank. She pressed Dubby’s curly hair forward, following the grain. She whispered to her. I couldn’t tell what she was saying, but I knew it wasn’t for me to hear. This was between Aubrey and Dubby.
I knew that Dubby was Aubrey’s real tie to this place. When Aubrey arrived on the island, she’d never managed a farm as big as this one, and she didn’t know if she could do it all on her own. She couldn’t save Dubby’s mother, but she was proud to have saved her calf. Dubby was proof that she could make something live.
Eventually Aubrey let her hands fall still near Dubby’s hip. I braced for something to finally emerge.
“Bring that bottle of lube in,” said Aubrey. I watched for another few seconds. Dubby’s body rocked backward, constricting with effort.
“Was that a contraction?” I asked.
“The lube!”
I turned and grabbed the jug of lube from Aubrey’s pile of calving supplies. It was heavier than anticipated. I lugged it over the top of the panel and climbed down on the other side, being careful to land quietly so as not to scare Dubby. I made my way over to Aubrey and set the jug down. Dubby was unphased by my presence, consumed by what was happening inside her.
Huddled down next to Aubrey, I looked at Dubby’s vulva. I saw no feet, only a pronounced puffiness. I wondered if I would ever see anything from the inside come out. Next to me, Aubrey slathered lube up her right arm and between her fingers. She reached inside of Dubby as if she were a wallet. I imagined her whole arm disappearing in there, searching. Then her shoulder, her head, everything.
“There we are,” said Aubrey. Only her fingers and knuckles were out of sight, and she was clearly fidgeting with something not far from the open air.
“Feet?” I asked.
“Yep.”
Dubby inhaled and then contracted again, a little squeal escaping as she pushed. Aubrey pulled hard on whatever she had hold of, and then, finally, I saw something. Something gray and hard and glassy without any real shape. When the next contraction came, Aubrey pulled on it again, but her hands slipped off and she tumbled backward into the mud.
“Shit,” she said. “Okay, I think I can get the chains on now.”
“Really?” I asked, “I can’t even tell they’re…”
“We’ve got to do this now. If not, we might lose them both.”
It occurred to me then that I’d never seen Aubrey like this. I’d seen her confused, anxious, even enraged. Once when we were pulling chicken tractors through the field a broiler hen got itself twisted up in one of the wheels of the tractor Aubrey was pulling. She tried to push the mangled thing out, yelling, clearly angry at herself even though it was the bird she was cursing at. I could see the gears of morality turning in her mind even though she’d told me over and over again that she didn’t have time for the mushy-gushy stuff. In the end, she had to rip the hen apart limb by limb to get it out of the wheel. She’d been exasperated then, but now she was scared.
Aubrey lopped the chains around the gray thing. I waited for her to start pulling at them, but she held them slack, one hand on Dubby’s hip. Watching. When Dubby rocked backward again, Aubrey braced her entire body against the chains, teeth gritted and lips drawn back. When the contraction was over, I could tell they were feet.
“Okay,” Aubrey gasped, holding out the chains, “pull from behind me. Wait until the next contraction.”
I positioned my body behind Aubrey’s in the muck. I balanced on my shins, both hands wrapped around the chains. They were heavy but nearly new, reflecting the murky light that seeped into the barn.
“Pull!” Aubrey growled, her shoulders falling backward into my lap. I gripped the chains and hauled them backward. Ahead of me, the veins in Aubrey’s forearms pulsed aquamarine. Seconds passed as we scrambled in the dirt, and when Aubrey gave the chain a little slack I tried to pick it up, pulling harder than before.
“Stop!” Aubrey snapped, whipping around to glare at me. I dropped the chains. “Only pull with the contractions.”
“Sorry.”
“If you pull against her body, you’ll hurt her. Tear her uterus.”
“Sorry.”
Aubrey turned back around and I wondered if I should get up and leave. This wasn’t what I signed up for. I wanted to learn about animals, not suddenly become responsible for their deaths. I was only trying to help. I didn’t deserve to be snapped at—not when I was Aubrey’s only helping hand.
“Come on, pull!” Aubrey said. Dubby was contracting again. I picked up the chains and leaned backwards. I watched the muscles in Aubrey’s arms tighten and bulge against her skin, and when they softened, I let the chains fall loose in my hands.
“Goddamnit,” Aubrey breathed. The feet had not moved since Aubrey’s first crank at them. They were certainly attached to legs—long, dark, glossy ones enveloped in a cloudy membrane—but the legs weren’t long enough to be calf legs yet.
Aubrey crawled forward on her knees and wiped her hand against her now dark, sopping pajama pants and reached over the feet into Dubby’s birthing canal.
“Oh yeah,” she said, sweat dripping from her temples, “head’s almost there. It’s go time.” She got back into position and, as if acknowledging our readiness, Dubby contracted again. We pulled. Aubrey groaned with the effort. She leaned back so far that I could see her reddened face from above, her eyes squeezed shut, strings of saliva dangling from her lips.
“Come on,” she said when Dubby relaxed again. We had made little progress. “Come on, Dubby, come on.”
I felt the next contraction through the chains. It was a message, quiet but urgent. A tiny vibration, a little change in tension. When the contraction stopped, the chains told me. I didn’t have to watch Aubrey anymore. Dubby spoke to us both now.
A few contractions later my forearms began to scream with fatigue. I dropped the chains during the break and pressed my thumbs into my raw muscles, kneading them, shaking them. Aubrey glanced back at me and then quickly looked at Dubby again. The heifer had stretched out three of her four legs. When she contracted, she dug her feet into the ground, using the earth as leverage as she tried to crawl away from the unknown thing that lived inside of her.
Time passed, but I could only count it in contractions, in centimeters of membrane that we hauled loose, in sweat droplets that crawled down my back. I could feel myself fading. After one particularly difficult pull, Aubrey turned to look at me. Her shoulders were quaking, but her eyes hadn’t lost a bit of ferocity.
“I need you to pull harder,” she said.
“Okay.”
“I’m not fucking around, Harriet. I know you can pull harder than that. I’m not losing this calf and this heifer because my apprentice wants to half-ass it.” She turned back around. I watched the back of her head, dumbfounded.
Dubby breathed hard. The cream of her belt shone through the dirt and manure when she inhaled. Aubrey was so small compared to her. I pictured Aubrey alone with Dubby’s mother in this barn, having just inherited the responsibility of her life. There was no vet on the island, no one with large animal expertise except her. I was suddenly shocked that the burden didn’t crush her, that the death of Dubby’s mother didn’t send her right back on the ferry. I realized then that now, for the first time since Aubrey had become manager of the farm, the blame for birth, death and mishaps wasn’t placed squarely on her. She finally had another witness—someone who’s fault it would also be if Dubby and her calf perished. That didn’t make the load any lighter on Aubrey—she now understood that whatever she would experience should one of them die, I would experience it too. She was trying to protect us both.
Before Dubby could contract again, Aubrey slid forward and reached inside of her. Her face was cranberry colored and sour.
“Head’s stuck,” she said, looking just past me. “Shit. I can’t get in there.”
Aubrey twisted her wrist around, pressing forward, pursing her lips and grunting. I could tell she was digging around in there with her big fingers swollen from years balancing the wire handles of five gallon buckets.
“Shit. Shit.” I could hear Aubrey’s breathing now, coming faster and faster. “This is how I lost her mother,” she said, suddenly looking at me in sheer bewilderment. She was at a loss.
“Let me try,” I say. “I think my hands are probably smaller than yours.”
Stunned and maybe even a little grateful, Aubrey pulled her hand out of Dubby and moved to the side. I squeezed a handful of lube into my palm and reached between the lips of Dubby’s vulva. Once inside, pressed against her flesh, I felt my thoughts reorganize. It was as if Dubby was communicating with me through the walls of her uterus. All that mattered, suddenly, was digging this calf out. There was a sense of urgency without panic, a knowledge that pulled my fingers up over the hot, wet form. I slid my fingers over the hard mound that blocked her canal and felt where the top of the calf’s skull was lodged against the top of her pelvis. I needled my fingers in between the two bodies and felt Dubby begin to contract, right on time. I told Aubrey to pull.
“What?” she said, “your hand is in there!”
“Pull, now!” I ordered. I kept my eyes on Dubby’s vulva and my invisible hand. I felt Aubrey pulling from behind me. I pushed down hard on the calf’s skull and winced as my fingers were dragged through the narrow opening, my knuckles scraping against Dubby’s bones.
When the contraction ended I looked back at Aubrey and pulled my hand free. Hot, red human blood trickled from my knuckles down over my fingernails. Aubrey rushed forward and felt inside of Dubby.
“The head’s free!” she cried. Dubby contracted again and we fell into place, Aubrey behind me. I threw my body against the chains. Dubby let out a high pitched moan, and Aubrey scraped at the ground with the heels of her boots. I pulled harder than I’d pulled all afternoon. We all grunted and struggled and cursed each other until finally something happened and Aubrey and I fell backward.
“Get me straw,” Aubrey said, sounding nearly strangled.
I scrambled to my feet and propelled myself toward the pile of straw that Aubrey had laid down before I arrived. I figured she wanted to put something clean down for the calf to land on, so I grabbed a large flake near the top of the pile. I brought it back to Aubrey. A head was protruding from Dubby’s vulva. It was nearly shapeless except for the long, dripping ears. Through the membrane I could make out a stiff gray tongue plastered to its jaw.
I offered the flake of straw to Aubrey and she tossed it to the side, annoyed. She picked out a single long, stiff stem. I was almost embarrassed and then decided not to be. Aubrey cleared the membrane away from the calf’s face and inserted the piece of straw into one of its wet nostrils.
“Be alive, be alive,” Aubrey chanted under her breath. I stood over her, horrified and hopeful. The calf didn’t stir. The wet blade broke and Aubrey pulled it out, tossed the limp strand to the side. I handed her another one, and she jabbed it into the calf’s nose. She was met with a swift, damp jet of air and a weak cough from the little animal.
“Ah!” Aubrey clapped, pulling the piece of hay out. The calf dipped its head to the side weakly, trying to shake the wetness from its ears.
“Is it breathing?” I ask.
“Looks like it. Let’s get it all the way out.”
I took up the chains again and Aubrey pulled from behind me. On Dubby’s next contraction, the calf slid out as if we’d never struggled for it. Aubrey rushed over to it and began hastily stripping the membrane from its glistening pelt.
“Good job Dubby, good job Dubby,” she murmured under her breath. I watched, frozen. The calf was black except for a white belt that was broken near its spine and a white face with black patches around its eyes.
“Hereford cross,” I observed. “I wonder how that happened.”
“Guess one of the steers wasn’t really a steer. Never pay a vet to do what you can do yourself with a forty dollar bander.”
Aubrey got the calf sitting up and breathing shakily, its tongue still hanging out. She lifted up one of its back legs.
“Heifer,” she announced. I could hear the smile in her voice. “The great dynasty continues.”
Aubrey dragged the calf up to Dubby’s head. Dubby’s eyes were glassy.
“Here’s your baby,” Aubrey said to her. Dubby looked down at the little pile of flesh and fur in front of her. She sniffed weakly and licked the calf once, then promptly came back to life.
“There you go, Dubby,” Aubrey said as Dubby licked her calf so hard it rocked back and forth. The calf looked at us, terrified.
“You’ll be okay, Panda,” Aubrey reassured her.
“Panda? That’s her name?”
“Short for Panda Express.”
“Okay.”
When Dubby stood up and began cleaning Panda from above, we climbed back over the metal panel and stood in the light from the entrance to the barn. Our forearms were covered with dried mucus and blood still ran from my scraped fingers. The soupy floor had seeped through my pants and run down into my socks. We ambled out of the barn, anxious to breathe air that hadn’t been cycled between us and Dubby a thousand times. Outside, the island stretched out before us. Birch forests stood to our left, and to our right, the pasture. The square bales of hay lay scattered across it like futile little totems of human influence. After a few seconds we went back inside because it had already started to rain.
*
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(Photo: John McIntyre/flickr.com/ CC BY 2.0)
- The Birth by Pearl Benjamin - May 8, 2025