Hey, Are You Awake?
I’ve been pregnant less than a week when the earthquake hits.
Dogs look like bathroom rugs on the side of the road. My house is caved in like a witch’s hat that was stepped on. All the neighbors are dead. All the cell phones are dead. This is horrible - how will I push this baby out when, looking down from the edge of the bed, I can see the hot liquid core of the earth?
“How will I give birth when there is no floor?” I ask my husband who is trapped beneath a bathtub. This isn’t complicated. This is an obvious issue of gravity. The baby will fall like a toaster from a kitchen counter and then will pull me by the umbilical cord down into the abyss of lava and dinosaur jawbones.
“I’m too tired,” he says. “Can we talk about it in the morning?”
He thinks we’re safe because we’re lying in bed. He thinks we’re safe because we spent the extra $79 on the premium goose-down comforter at IKEA.
Deep inside of me, an eyelid flutters open. Beneath Antarctica, a tectonic plate starts a long, slow crack.
About the author
Emma Pattee’s writing has been published in The New York Times and Carve Magazine and is forthcoming in Marie Claire. She was a 2019 AWP Writer-to-Writer mentee and leads the Portland chapter of Women Who Submit. She is currently working on a novel. You can find her on Instagram at @elpattee.