I Will Build You a Bridge

Drowning is the risk you take. The descent into dark water pulls the breath out of you. In, you will your body and the lungs obey, filling with artificial air carried through a tube leading to the surface. Out the waste gasses go in bubbles that effervesce against your helmet's narrow visor. Your legs find their footing and your body re-centres under this new gravity. Your blind hand reaches out with a spark. 

She lays her fingers across the scrunched forehead. “Hot.” But not terribly so. The little mouth tightens and his face is etched in hollows and crags. Then the seam of lips splits open and a cry erupts. The sound, high and sharp and incessant, pierces through the eardrum to spike the amygdala into action. She lifts the squalling body out of the bassinet, left hand cradling the neck and head, the right supporting the bottom. She presses him close. Her chest absorbs the blows from flailing arms, the tiny hands clenched into fists.

The world under the waves is an alien one and you, the intrepid astronaut. One small step for man into a boundless current and it is only the weight of your suit and your resolve that keeps you in place and your foot on its forward path. The depth is not too great in this section of the strait; no more than 25 metres. The late season and the overcast sky high above reduces the visibility here in the cold waters of the Atlantic to near zero. Caution is needed lest up become indistinguishable from down. The three hour window allotted to the repair job ticks on and you rotate to the task.

Time no longer holds much meaning for her. The days measure instead in feeds and diaper changes, and in the calm before the storm of crying rages. She counts the number of spit ups and the tiny outfits soaked through in excrement she hadn't known occurred in that vibrant shade of yellow. The laundry piles up in the corners; the nursery is a precarious landscape in near-constant flux. She sweeps a stack of clean burp cloths off of the rocking chair and sinks into its soft cushion. He buries his screams against her shoulder and it feels like a reprieve.

Luck and a mulish nature have carried you here, a woman working on the construction of the largest bridge in the country. There aren't much jobs for people like you. Not ones you could call good with any degree of conviction. Small-town born and raised, the high school diploma you scraped together and that stint cleaning rooms at the Sunset Motel don't count for much in this adult world. But you're young still and wiry with muscle. You don’t get into drugs past the occasional party toke and you keep your binges to the weekend. People dressed up in shiny suits blew through the area advertising the trades, selling the need for women out on the shop floors and job sites. They never mention that most will wash out, or be pushed out, long before they get even a hint of dust on their safety boots. You find that out soon enough, but hey, you're a bit of a stubborn bitch. Or maybe there's just no other option.

The shirt she's wearing is days old and a dribble of milk crusts the left sleeve. Curdled breast milk has a distinctive smell: a sweetness gone sour, a soft sort of rotting. She's come not to mind it too much. It's either that or get up and do something about it. So she sits in her stained top with her nest of hair shedding strands like dandelion fluff. The nursery is dark and the world beyond the window is darker still. From where she rocks him, if she tilts her chin high enough she can see the stars. It isn't their faint pricks of light that set her eyes to burning.

The stinger you use is made of lightweight plastic. Anything to lessen the strain and reduce cramping and fatigue. It's a whole body effort to steady your float, to keep the lines of your arc smooth and straight. Half the window has closed and you estimate a little more than half the job remains. Time to quicken the pace. The shakes will come later; you know this from experience. Preferably in the locker room where no one else will bear witness. You will not be accused of not being able to handle the job.

He's gotten to work and made a mess of his diaper. She carries him to the dresser and feels only grateful for this problem with a clear-cut solution. Hope swells that a change will be what pacifies him. Before that though comes more wailed discontent. The tiny body is laid out upon a rubbery surface with the cocooning cloths stripped away and his vulnerable parts bared. “Cold.” It is a warning that contains no apology. She captures his legs and wipes at him with a moistened cloth. This series of steps has repeated many times before. He bellows with all his breath nonetheless, completing the pattern.

You are alone in the water and the isolation creeps up in minute degrees. The vastness of the ocean stretches out on all sides, direction and distance rendered meaningless without an endpoint. What you touch is real. What you see in front of you exists. You refocus there, reining in your mind lest it wander too far along infinite paths. Something brushes against your back and your muscles seize. Careening around, you spy nothing in the black. Your scope is limited though. How can you trust it?

Soft strains of music fill the nursery, flowing from the speaker next to the rocking chair. She hums along to her itsy bitsy spider, her black sheep, her little star. He is clean and dry and still he howls as she sways. The next shriek drowns out the lullaby; her grip tightens upon his vulnerable back. His last feed finished no more than an hour ago, but there is nothing left to try. So she sits and each of her fingers loosen with deliberate effort. Girding her spine, she lifts him to the breast. The agony from raw skin cracked open over and over again crashes down on her. He draws deep from the well and she bears him up to her flayed flesh against all instinct. The next notes play and the wash of pain recedes to a dull ache.

The water coils around you. Your suit feels tight, constricting, and the tips of your toes no longer burn. A flicker in the corner of your visor draws your gaze. A sinuous form weaves and gleams, like writhing obsidian scales. Your left hand, so feeble and clumsy, splays out in front of you as you thrash backwards. But there is nowhere to go. You are a human suspended in an alien world and you are alone. Peace lies in surrender and the twisting tendril beckons you to accept, but in your right hand is a weapon. You inhale past your chattering teeth and raise your arm in readiness. A voice in your ear calls you back.

London Bridge is falling down,

Falling down, falling down.

London Bridge is falling down,

My fair lady.

"Mama worked on a bridge before," she tells him. He suckles peaceably enough. Perhaps he listens. Four years of her life passed by on that project; she was there from its beginning and almost made it to its end. Then she had him and everything shifted. The bridge is finished now. Open to the public, but she hasn't seen it yet, not in its completion. She could go visit any day now, now that the birth is mostly a memory and the tears have scarred over enough. Stop by as a tourist. Wander about like a stranger. She'll take him along and show him what she has done even though neither of them will be able to see what lies under the waves.

The top-side crew pulls you out at 2:50. They wrestle the tool from your right hand and the braided umbilical cable from your left before they detach you. You lay spread out on the concrete, real air flowing past your bluish lips, and stare up at the sky. Smoky clouds drift by in more shades of grey than you can name. The fog begins to lift. Cold stress, your tender scolds as he rubs needles of life back into your limbs. Stubborn. A shake of the head followed by a laugh. You got it done. Other voices chatter around you, melding into a chorus of sound that welcomes you back to the surface. Lower in the sky, not yet at the horizon, is a glimmer of sun.

It's an old superstition, that in order for a bridge to remain standing, its foundation must be built upon human sacrifice. She gives of her breast, gives up the dream of rest, and the night passes in swallows and the back and forth glide of the rocker. Satisfied at last, his mouth slackens and slips off. The lips close around sweet, shy huffs. The eyes follow next, sliding into slumber. Hers remain open as she holds him aloft, cradled in the bow of her body, sheltered in the edifice of her love. She counts his breaths while watching the sky and waits not for a morning that will dawn all the same.