Growing Grounds

Chapter 8: Crazy Crows

In the days that followed her revelation to Matt about the pregnancy, Tammy experienced the highest emotional ride of her life. Her life had been riddled with emotional highs followed by lows, and she seemed always to be fighting to keep on an even keel. Not now. Carrying drop plastic into the soon-to-be-nursery room, she felt the movement in her abdomen again. Stopping just inside the doorway, Tammy instinctively put her hand over the spot where she had felt the movement.

It's too early to feel movement. That can't be the baby. If it is the baby, I'm much farther along than anyone could imagine. After a full minute of waiting for more movement and with her hand still pressing on her belly, Tammy gave up and took the plastic to the farthest corner of the room. Of course there's no more movement. That was just a muscle spasm or something anyway. Though she thought she was probably right, she decided to talk to Matt about it if it happened again before she was at least three months along.

It was still early and the sun brightened the room so much that there was no need of any false lighting. Tammy liked that; natural lighting had to be healthier for the baby. Matt had gone out for breakfast at Mom-N-Pops, which meant the food was going to be delicious. Food that good was always slathered with way too much butter and salted to the hilt—not healthy, but still delicious. Tammy dropped the folded, super-thin plastic into the corner and patted her belly.

“I'll have to start watching what I eat now. Many trips to Mom-N-Pops and you might be born with cholesterol problems, or worse.”

Eyeing the room for the hundredth time, Tammy mentally arranged the unbought furniture in the room. The rocking chair for mom and baby would sit next to the window that looked toward the woods. Looking out that window, all she could see was the greens and browns of the trees and the ground, and the blue of the cloudless sky above the forest. It had a calming effect on her and she supposed the baby would feel the same peacefulness upon seeing the scenery later.

Her cell phone vibrated in her pocket and she startled so badly that she actually became dizzy. Holding onto the window frame for support, she fished the cell phone out of her hip pocket. It was a text from the paint department at Gold-Acre Hardware. The paint she had ordered the day before was ready for pick-up.

She could barely wait to see the customized colors on the walls, ceiling, door, and window frame of the nursery. Opting for the warm color palette of nature, Tammy had designed the colors herself, at the store, without talking it over with Matt. The colors were, of course, lightener and softener than those in nature—she did not want to overwhelm the baby with stark colors. Her intentions had been to replicate the view from the window, mirroring it in nearly pastel colors.

Quickly, she confirmed that she would pick up the paint later that day and then she typed out a text to Matt, meaning to have him pick it up on his way home. Gold-Acre was just a mile farther into town than Mom-N-Pops. After typing the message, she read over it to make sure auto correct had not put in strange words and then she paused over the send button. It might be better to talk to Matt about the paint first. Make sure he is okay with the color scheme and then tell him that it’s ready. Yes, she thought it would be best to wait. Maybe she could talk to him about it after breakfast. That would at least give her time to think how best to persuade him to agree with her color suggestions.

With the message erased, Tammy slid the phone back into her hip pocket and walked downstairs. The downstairs baby room needed drop plastic, too. Humming a nursery song, or at least Tammy was pretty sure that tune was from a nursery song, Tammy took a left at the bottom of the stairs and headed to the mud room just off the kitchen. Matt had placed the drop plastic and several plastic paint trays, cups, paint stir sticks, and a lid opener in there. It was Tammy’s job to split these between the two rooms and prep everything for painting. Matt was not so keen on the idea of Tammy actually doing any of the painting.

Laughing at the way he had acted when she stepped on the little A-framed ladder to reach the stack of cleaning rags earlier, Tammy stepped into the empty room, flipped on the light, and dropped everything in her hands. The laughter died, her knees buckled, and she hit the wooden floor hard enough to knock the breath from her lungs. Pain wrenched her guts from her navel to the bottom of her pelvic bone. She opened her mouth to scream but nothing came out, the pain was too intense to draw a breath, let alone scream.

Oh, no! Not again! I’m losing the baby… The room tilted slowly. The numbness and tingling started in her midsection and quickly took her whole body into its grasp. Then, she was on her side, curled into a semi-fetal position, facing the window. A few crows streaked across the otherwise unmarred blue of the sky. The pain was gone, replaced by that numb, tingling sensation that made her feel as if her midsection were a great empty hole—a hole through which cool air passed.

Tammy blinked. Once. Twice. Three times. No other muscles would obey her, though. Her body had turned traitor and left her lying helpless and unmoving on the floor. Instead of the panic she had been about to give in to, Tammy now felt a sense of serenity. A feeling that everything was going to be just fine. Nothing to worry about here. Just a pregnant woman lying on the floor, enjoying the scenery from a new perspective.

The overly loud sound of her breath whooshing into and out of her lungs relaxed Tammy and she stared at the sky through the smudged window. Distantly, she wondered if this was how it felt to die. Making a conscious choice not to worry about it, she waited for Matt to come home.

What seemed like hours passed and Tammy, still unable to move even her fingers, began to doze. From her near-sleep state, she heard what sounded to be someone rapping at the window glass. Fighting to open her eyes and pull away from sleep, Tammy heard the rapping again. This time, however, it sounded like a tree branch tapping at the glass. Why would someone be knocking at the glass?

Peeping through the lashes of her still mostly-closed left eye, Tammy could see the blue of the sky and the smudgy window. Squeezing her eyes shut hard enough to see red and silver dots dance behind her lids, Tammy concentrated on wiggling her eyebrows. They moved so minutely that she thought it would be useless to try to open her eyes wider, but she had to try.

The sharp rapping came again—yes, it definitely sounded like a tree branch against the glass. There are no trees close to the house, though. Something scratched at her brain, some factoid that refused to surface although she knew it to be of importance in her current situation, teasing and just under the surface of consciousness.

This time both of her eyes opened—and much wider than she had expected. The sunlight pierced her eyes, shooting pains all the way through her head, and made her eyes tear up. Pain is good, that means I am getting some of the feeling back in my body anyway. Willing her eyes to remain open and focused on the window, Tammy listened for the sound to come again. This time she would see what knocked at the window. Maybe a neighbor. Maybe just a nosybody trying to peep inside. At this point, Tammy didn't care if it was Casper the Friendly Ghost as long as he could dial a phone for help.

The earlier feeling of serenity had disappeared and was being replaced by a slow, hot panic. How long had she been on the floor? It was impossible to tell, but surely it had not been very long—Matt was due to be home with breakfast soon. Even if they had to cook everything he ordered fresh, it would not take him longer than thirty or forty minutes to get there and come home again.

This time when the tapping came at the window, Tammy was looking straight at it. There was no nosy neighbor or tree branch blowing against the window. It was a crow. He flew straight at the glass and attacked it. Tammy would have yelped in surprise had she been able to, but she had no voice still. The crow pecked and clawed at the window for about two seconds and then flew away.

Now the panic became a living thing, clawing its way deep into her brain, planting crazy ideas in its wake, as she lay helpless on the floor. Another crow, or maybe the same one, she could not be sure, flew at the window and attacked again. This time it was there for at least five seconds before it dropped out of sight.

That factoid that she had tried to dredge to the surface of her consciousness came to her then. The window to the room was too high for anyone to knock on, or to see into. The windows on this end of the house were 9 feet from the ground. Matt had said that he could hire someone to come in and back-fill that part of the yard, if she wanted. She had not. The lay of the land was pretty and she liked the dips and knolls; it reminded her of a fairy tale land where magic might still happen and where elves and sprites and other magical woodland creatures might live.

Another crow dashed itself against the window in a fit that Tammy was sure would break the glass. This crow dropped, also and she wondered if the ones that dropped down out of sight had broken their wings, or possibly their necks, in their efforts to…to what? Break in? She didn’t know. Why would birds do such a thing? Another crow, this one gained purchase on the window ledge for a few seconds but soon knocked itself loose and flew away.

As she willed her hands to move, Tammy watched in fascination and horror as crows crashed into the window and flogged it in quick succession. She was certain that if she remained on the floor much longer, one of the black devils would come crashing in on top of her and shred her face with its beak and claws.

Finally, there was movement from her right hand. It was just two fingers, but that was a start. Working harder, she breathed deep, held the air in her lungs, and concentrated all her energy toward those twitching fingers on her right hand. Soon, her chest began to burn and then to ache. Silver dots played around the periphery of her vision; she was close to passing out. One last mighty effort and she moved her whole hand.

The pent-up air came whooshing out of her burning lungs. She dragged in a ragged, seemingly very cold breath and let it out slowly. The silver dots cleared from her vision and she felt warmth flow into her right arm and hand.

The crows kept hitting the window as if they were lined up just waiting for their turn. It reminded her somewhat of an old Alfred Hitchcock movie about birds. She had never really liked scary movies but her mother had a penchant for the macabre and so, Tammy was exposed to more than her fair share of them growing up. A shiver ran up her back to the base of her skull.