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dirty.
    I felt her body shake from sobs as Nana’s arm circled and rocked me. I was safe. I was home. Wherever Nana was, it was home.
    After what seemed like forever, I heard Nana call to Papaw.
    “Nathaniel? Nathaniel!” she said twice, and he was there crying with us a second later. The smell of his cologne made me cry harder. It was my favorite smell in the world. I felt wet spots in my hair from their tears and the pressure from their kisses.
    We had our private reunion for a while. I felt heavy with drugs. Absently, I knew there was no more bump in my belly. I’m not sure if I was sad, or relieved, but I felt that somehow evil was no longer in me. I would have recovery. Lots of recovering. I had not yet realized the damage that had been done to me.
    From the moment he stood waiting for me to exit the shower, Daniel had injected me with poison, a poison still swimming in my blood and my mind. It began working its way through me, possessing all parts of me. It would rob me of many things if I allowed it, but how do you say this to a twelve-year-old kid? How do you undo what has been done? How do you mend the aftermath of evil?

 
    chapter Six
    I was released from the hospital a week later on super-strong antibiotics. Nana wanted me to heal in her “birthing room,” where she practiced her midwifery. I loved the room and the hugeness of it. Tucked away were the instruments and items Nana used to deliver her babies, but it was a simple, pale yellow color, with all the comforts you could ask for. Nothing about it looked clinical.
    The room was surgically clean but was fit for royalty. Papaw had it built for Nana years before, so she would be able to stay at home and work. This would also have allowed her to keep an eye on the many children they once planned to have, but sadly never did. My dad was the only surviving child among three miscarriages and a stillborn baby girl. Nana could barely speak of the babies she lost. I always thought she blamed herself for not being able to have more kids. We had cousins that visited from time to time, but for the most part it was just Nana and Papaw.
    Just two weeks after being discharged from the hospital I was settling in the birthing room. I could move around in the big bed and oversized chairs comfortably. I slept a lot and when I was awake I stood in the streams of sunlight that filled the room, letting it drown me head to foot. I missed that, never knowing what a glorious thing sunshine was before I was forced to live in the dark. I watched the sun rise the fall day after day in silence. I could not speak. The doctors said I was shell shocked mute and would eventually speak again when my brain would allow it.
    Nana and Papaw never pushed me to say anything. They placed me in the birthing room and it quickly became more than a place of other’s births. It became a sanctuary where I could feel safe if only for a little each day. I could rock in the padded rocker, or soak in the birthing tub that was at least three times the size of a normal tub. I enjoyed the tub most of all and soaked in it often, placing my toes over the pulsing jets, breathing the warm mist that floated in the air while I soaked and felt almost normal.
    I sat, as always, in uninterrupted silence. Nana said silence healed the mind, and she allowed me to take my time in the healing process. As I soaked in the water my mind wandered over the bump that was now gone from my middle. I touched the puffy line under my belly button with my index finger, feeling the rigid thin jagged flesh where I know I was opened up and emptied of the baby.
    Nana watched me sitting on a stool, always within my reach to wash my back or hair for me.  I looked into her eyes after touching my scar and watched as an expression of the deepest pain entered her face. Her eyes crinkled slightly as if witnessing me thinking of surgeon’s hands inside me had somehow injured her. She got down on her knees beside me as I soaked in warm milky