Under a Fire Sky: A Creation Myth by Catie Jarvis

"I want to tell you the story of our creation, our mythical separation, from one into two."

In the beginning, there was neither non-existence nor existence. There was no sky, nor the real of space beyond it. What stirred? Where? Under whose protection? Was there (celestial) water, deep and mysterious?

-Nasadiya Sukta (Hymn of non-Eternity, origin of universe) Rig Veda 10, Hymn 129

Dear Sky,

Before there was you, there was nothingness. Your nothingness and mine – remnants of that vast emptiness before the beginning of “time.” I was not Mother, and you were not Child. I had lost pieces of my family, my father, and sister, my wholeness. I felt like an orb cycling alone. But the universe swirls with beautiful chaos seeking to organize and cohere. What began 4.6 billion years ago with the formation of our universe, remains in motion. Right now. Within me. And you. Creation. From a single cell. Which became quickly two, and then four. The heat builds. The dust particles and gas collide and explode. I want to tell you the story of our creation, our mythical separation, from one into two. 

September 8, 2020, 2:11 AM 

It has begun. This long night is tinged brown with summer fire. California burning. Your father sleeps peacefully naked in our heat wave bedroom on 2nd Street in Santa Monica. I’m timing contractions in the dark kitchen. Eating cinnamon granola cereal with almond milk. Sweating in front of a beige stand-up fan. The contractions are long but mild, inconsistent, and far apart. When each one lets up, you kick and squirm as if you share my excitement. I step out on the alleyway balcony and gaze up at the rusty brown waning gibbous. Come soon, Sky. I can’t wait to meet you. Can you hear me?

September 8, 10:00 AM

I’m crawling around our apartment on all fours in a baggy Nike t-shirt of your father’s, attempting to get you to rotate. You are sunny side up. I want to offer us the easiest path.

As I crawl, I smell the earthy scent of forest fires consuming the dry life around us. On CNN there are videos of forests aflame in Los Angeles, houses burning to the ground. Then, back to the more pressing news. More than 28 million people have been infected with Coronavirus worldwide. Trump is “undermining public confidence” in the vaccine.  I mute the news because I’m tired of the death toll, the interviews with exhausted doctors, and the list of ever-changing precautionary measures. The burning. 

I remember the words of the renowned Los Angeles birth worker goddess, Doula Patti: “Auspicious souls are growing inside of you,” she said to our Zoom pregnancy group. “They are blooming into being in this time of change, bringing forth the energy of the future.” She seemed so sure. 

But isn’t it just bad luck to be pregnant during a pandemic? Isn’t it simply sad to bring a fresh soul into this decay? Wasn’t she only trying to make us feel better? 

The word auspicious feels too ethereal, or convenient. Mystical, pre-ordained.

I ask you: What does it mean to come to life in a burning world? A pandemic? A country spinning dissension and hate?

Quiet, you say. We will talk about that later. 

September 9, 12:00 PM

Your father and I walk slowly, endlessly, around the block, to the ocean bluffs, and back to our apartment. We are still in the opening act, it seems, and this feels too slow a start to our story. 

Your father has gentle sex with me from behind, it feels slippery, pleasant, odd. I eat dates and pineapple. We walk again. The contractions hit like a wall of cramps in my center. They squeeze and I must stop walking, lean over, and squeeze back. Call and response. I know the pain will eventually get much worse, but I’m not afraid of that. I’m afraid of other things. 

I’m afraid of being forced into medical situations I don’t want for us. I’m afraid that your father will test positive for COVID and not be allowed in our birth room. That our Doula, Amy, won’t be allowed because of the ever-revolving pandemic restrictions. I’m afraid that I won’t know how to be a mother. 

More afraid that I’ll never get to try. That our planetary forces will not be strong enough, will not have the perfect components, to burst you forth into existence. 

September 10, 12:00 AM

I know that I won’t sleep tonight. I crouch in the dark, holding the bed frame, my head on the mattress. The contractions come and go, they don’t seem to be letting up. Still, I decide not to wake your father. Doula Amy says to let him rest because I will need his strength in the hours and days to come. I am not resentful, only impatient. 

They say it will be worth it when I meet you. 

On my phone, I look up the word auspicious. I find that it originates from the Latin, auspex, which means “bird seer.” It refers to oracle types in Ancient Rome who would watch the patterns of the birds and from them make prophecies about what was to come. 

I like the simplicity of consulting the birds in the sky. My mother’s nickname for me is Bird and you are Sky. Perhaps you are an auspicious soul after all. 

With the next contraction, I let out a deep unintentional howl. At the peak of the thing, there is no thinking, only feeling. When it subsides, I whimper like a puppy, like a sick child. I long for my Mommy, who is across the country in New Jersey, too afraid of the virus to travel to be with me. She watches the news all day and waits for something to change. 

My scream has woken your father. “What can I do?” he asks. 

“Nothing,” I moan, but this is a lie. “Squeeze my hips,” I tell him. “Cut me up some fruit. Water. I need water. Stay up with me.”

The pain is deep, momentarily unbearable. Teaching me of its strength and perseverance, until I come to know it. 

“Should I start timing?” your father asks. 

He opens the app he has downloaded and tested. We have a system in no time. 

I say, “Start.” Some moaning ensues. I say, “Stop.” 

I sweat, the heat within me building like a supernova gearing up for an explosion. Your father observes and enters data. The differing duties of men and women in creation starkly contrast. I used to think it was “unjust,” but I’m beginning to see differently. His steadiness and clarity are needed, as I prepare to enter this portal of change. His hands upon me are the banks that hold the river, so that it may flow. I feel only gratitude that you, Sky, have called me forth to enter.

3:00 AM 

A wise woman walks through our apartment door, she has long straight straw-colored hair, big teeth, and warm-wide eyes. Doula Amy is a midwife and a nurse. She has pulled children forth from the womb. She examines me on our king-sized bed, under the painting of your father and me surfing in Hawaii. I’m six centimeters dilated and one hundred percent effaced. 

“Wonderful progress,” Doula Amy says, her voice calm and clear. “You are doing everything right.” She mothers me as I work my way towards motherhood. 

Your father puts on my labor playlist and lights candles. I lay on the couch, on my side, and Doula Amy squeezes my hips and rubs my sacrum when the pain swells within. I breathe in her knowing, her connection to the realm of birth. It fills me. 

“We are in the land of Active Labor!” Doula Amy assures me. 

I think of the phases of the earth’s formation and the stages of labor. Early labor, like Differentiation, sets the stage, the preparation. Active Labor, like Cratering, that tumultuous aftermath of the “big bang.” Transition like Flooding, water vapor, and lava rushing forth. And finally, Birth – the baby brought forth into the world to grow, like the long Surface Evolution, a forever changing landscape. 

As I move through the pain, I imagine all the women who have birthed before me. Their massive energy pulls me through each contraction to the other side. 

Do you feel this pressure too? This pain? The adrenalin of transformation? 

As morning nears, Doula Amy prepares us to leave for the hospital so that we’ll arrive before shift change. 

5:00 AM

We drive down dark and empty Santa Monica streets. A dusting of ash covers the parked cars, but the dry heat has finally broken. I wonder what the earth smelled like in its early years, I’m sure I can’t conceive of that molten acrid scent. On this morning of your birth, the air through the window is smoky and cool. It reminds me of the early dusks of childhood, camping in upstate New York every fall.

A contraction comes on hard as we turn onto Santa Monica Boulevard. I hate this sitting position in the car, the pressure all bearing down. I cry out like a dying animal in the night. The sound frightens your father. But to me, it feels right. Death and birth are so united, I can see it now. They are both ultimate forms of transformation.

I remember an old fear I had of my water breaking in the car and ruining the leather seats. I laugh. I remember fearing the screams of labor, embarrassed by who might hear them. These are not things I care about anymore. Bring on the water, the wild calls of birth! 

“Are you still sure of the natural birth?” your father asks. 

I nod. From here on out, I never doubt us, Sky. 

I think of my mom’s birth story. When her water breaks and my dad gets a stomachache. She rushes him off the toilet and then into the car. She screams at him when he stops at a red light. “Don’t stop! She’s coming!” Her scream is warranted, for I came out only one hour after they arrived at the hospital! 

My water hasn’t broken. Your father and I stop at red lights. 

5:15 AM

We arrive at the Maternity Ward entrance in our N95 masks. I walk slowly now; you are so low and heavy. 

A bold lady at the door says, “Only one birth person may accompany you in,” annoyed as if I should already know this. “Partner or Doula. You choose,” she says and seems to smirk. 

“This morning,” I stutter, “Dr. B told me this morning that doulas were officially allowed into birthing rooms at St. Johns!”

“You must have heard her wrong, Ma’am.”

I grab at my stomach, out of pain and indignation. I shout at her, “Where is your empathy?” and wonder if this is the beginning of everything going wrong. 

But when we enter the Maternity Ward, everything feels right. It’s calmly dim and quiet. The nurses in their bright pink garbs are gathered around the front desk expecting me, they know my name. They ask where Doula Amy is. They are expecting her too. They call down to explain the revised COVID policy to the woman at the front door. They tell me that I look too peaceful and joyful to be six centimeters dilated. They make me feel seen and strong. 

With so much death filling the hospitals, I can sense how the energy of birth excites the nurses, excites the very air. This is the balance our world creates. 

5:30 AM

A red-fire sun rises magnificently through the birthing room window. I feel like we are on another planet, Arrakis or Hyperion, in a future time, a dream. I look around to locate a cross or a creepy crucified Jesus. St. John’s is a Catholic hospital, so I’d anticipated religious symbols and decided I would take them down or cover them up. I didn’t want other people’s religions imposed on me, on us, in our moment of birth. To my surprise, I find no crosses in this room, only a large photograph of a blooming white lotus in a pristine pond. 

The lotus is a symbol I feel comfortable around, one of purity, enlightenment, and rebirth. The lotus rises from dark muddied waters into the light, and blooms to pristine beauty. It is your story, baby Sky, our story, all of our stories. 

Beside the bed, there is a clear plastic bassinet. Where they will place you. It seems impossible that on this day, in this room, you will come to be. 

5:45 AM

Things get “hospitally” right away and I’m longing for my peaceful living room, for a time when birth was not clinical. And yet, I am so grateful to be cared for with modern medicine, for the privilege of birth in this private hospital room. The dichotomies of the world. 

We take our Covid tests and pass. A huge relief.  

The hospital requires I get a hep lock, and when the nurse administers it, she blows my vein out. It swells, an immediate giant bubble and spreading bruise. I think it looks like a small planet forming on my arm, rather the opposite of a Crater. It hurts. The nurse apologizes profusely but I don’t have the energy to forgive her.

They put an uncomfortable baby heart monitor around my belly. It’s wireless so I can move around, but I don’t want it there. Doula Amy fidgets with it because it keeps sliding off the correct spot as I move around. Once, I slap her hand when she goes to adjust it.

“Sorry,” Doula Amy says. “But we don’t want them coming in to bother you about an irregular heartbeat.”

I imagine women at the beginning of time, birthing in nature, the dirt beneath their writhing bodies, under the blue of the sky. I close my eyes to find them and be with them. 

The contractions are full now. This is Transition. I have long wondered about this mysterious and magnificent pain that pushes a human from the inside, out. A big one comes on like a wave. I can feel it on the horizon. I throw my face mask to the floor. I will not be laboring in a mask. Let them try and make me!

The wave moves closer, and I have no choice but to catch it. So, I paddle to the best position, set up on my board, and power through the rising wall of water the best I can. 

THE RISE feels like cramping and a deep pain in the pit of the pelvis. I stand up off the yoga ball, sturdy my feet to the earth, lean forward onto the bed, and make sure that someone has me. Doula Amy is near, I look at her and nod. 

THE PEAK comes on like a strike of lightning. It’s take-your-breath-away pain. It’s hard to contextualize. I jumped into ice-cold water at the Ithaca Gorges during college in the spring. That took my breath away. This is like that, and much more. It’s like jumping into a gorge of pain. The most excruciating pain I’ve known before this was shattering my right heel bone. This pain has the same strength but instead of destruction, it vibrates with creation. The pain feels right instead of wrong. 

I sigh a deep low “ahhh” that reverberates in the depths of my belly. Moaning the pain down and out. The moaning helps me to soften, and open. I relax, against my instinct, for tensing makes me feel like I am fighting the pain, and I am not here to fight with you, my Sky. I’m here to let you in. The peak of the wave lasts twenty to thirty seconds. 

THE FALL lowers me gently down. I’m still submerged but the seas have calmed. There’s an aftershock, as your father rubs my back and I pant and shudder. Then, an elation. One more passed. One step closer. I emerge, sip water. Breathe. Talk. Smile. Look out at that blazing red sun, the cars passing through the LA morning streets having their regular days as my life prepares to so drastically change. I lay my head down and close my eyes for a rest. My contractions are still generously spaced, seven or eight minutes in between. These minutes of reprieve are essential. 

The hours pass this way. Your father, Doula Amy, and me. Dr. B has yet to arrive. I’m waiting and wondering why she has not come. Wondering how much longer it will all go on. 

Your father texts relatives awaiting news of your arrival. I sneak bites of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and granola bars, though eating in the hospital is “forbidden.” The food gives me strength. I lean on a rocking chair and rock it back and forth with my hands while a particularly hard contraction comes on. Some water trickles down my leg but not very much. I wonder if this is my water breaking. It’s not at all like the movies.

8:00 AM

My doctor finally arrives. 

“You’re looking great, and so happy!” She tells me before even examining me. 

I make her wait until right after a contraction to give me an exam so that I don’t have one unexpectedly while lying flat on my back on the bed, which sounds dreadful. 

I’m almost eight centimeters dilated, head position zero, one hundred percent effaced. 

“I’ll be back at Noon!” Dr. B says, as if this is the most wonderful news. 

My heart drops. 

I thought you were going to come fast. Like I did. 

I’ve already been here, doing this, for three hours. To labor for four more seems an eternity. I feel like I’ve failed in some way. 

Why haven’t I opened? Why aren’t you here? I’ve been trying so hard?

Think of the Universe, you say. Think of laboring for millions of years.

12:00 PM

Dr. B returns to find that my water sac is still intact. It must only have punctured, rather than burst, hence the trickle. She reaches in with a hook to break the water, and my primal waters flow. I feel the warm clear liquid spread beneath me on the bed, and like the mythological earth-diver, I long to plunge into the depths of this water and rise with the primordial sand which will create a world where you lay healthy and safe in my arms. 

I think of how Mother Earth must have felt when her waters burst forth with life. 

I wonder how she must have felt when some of her creations evolved into men with creation envy, who wrote their tales of how it was a singular male God who had created the world and then pulled woman from the rib of a man. How obvious a power play, a turn of truths. 

“The contractions will get stronger now that your water has broken,” Dr. B says. “This will be the hard part.”

She leaves. I cry with pain, joy, anticipation. Your father and Doula Amy hold me. 

1:00 PM

You drive down. At the peak of each contraction, I have the urge to push, it’s so hard to hold back. But Dr. B says that I’m only nine centimeters dilated. “If you push now, you’re going to rip. Don’t push yet. You need to wait.”

This is the worst news. This next hour is the worst part of our labor. 

The contractions come more closely now. I can no longer relax into them for if I do, I know that I will push you out. So I must resist your pressing down. I must hold you in. The pain of this is unbearable. Like holding in a lightning storm, the bolts explode inside. 

I scream “Noooooo…”, one long sound that lasts the entirety of the contraction peak. I’m determined not to tear, not to let you out too soon, but I don’t know if I can control it. 

“She wants to come now,” I whisper to Doula Amy. “Will you stay close; in case I can’t stop her?”

“I’m here,” she says. “If she needs to come, let her. I’ve got you.”

Doula Amy has her catching hands ready as I scream, and grab my vagina with both hands as if this may help to hold you in. 

I’ve never done anything as hard as withstanding the next half hour. Oh, how I want to push you out. But we must both be ready. I fight for our perfect timing.  

“Do you want another exam?” Dr. B asks, finally. 

I scream, “Yes! She is coming! Now!” 

“Fully dilated. Let’s have a baby.”

2:25 PM

There is labor. There is everything that came before. Then there is birth. Me pushing you out of my body and into your particular and unique existence. Your induction to life.

It happens fast. Dr. B and the nurses take off in a frenzied cyclone of tasks. A well-perfected costume change. Suddenly, they stand before me in full scrubs, with shiny metal trays and supplies neatly arranged. People are holding my legs, nurses, Doula Amy, and your father. It’s like they all knew where to go, but that can’t be right. No, I can see that Dr. B is conducting her seamless orchestra. She beats a strong pulse with her baton, and I trust her. Doula Amy got me through the labor and now it’s the doctor’s moment. I feel lucky to have two trusted women, two mothers, to guide you out of me and into the world. 

“Push out your baby,” Dr. B says. 

This is the best thing that anyone has ever said to me! 

I push with all the pent-up might that’s been building inside of me. A monstrous push. Your father holds my hand along with my leg. I squeeze him tightly as I bear down. The same way my mother squeezed my father’s hand when I was being born. My dad said it hurt for days. He said it was worth it.  

I scream. A classic heart-wrenching pregnancy scream. My eyes are closed, I go to a place of darkness. A deep, hot, vibrant place. I could stay here. Embedded with sensation. But then, the contraction is over. It is only then that I realize that you didn’t simply fly out of me. That I’ll have to keep doing this pushing until you do.

I open my eyes, my heart speeds up, and I think it may explode. The doctor rubs oil on me as a lubricant to prevent tearing. It feels like she’s rubbing sandpaper on a fresh fiery wound. 

Another contraction, already! They are close now and I’m ecstatic. This is the finale. I engage my core and squeeze every muscle in my body. I start to scream again but Dr. B interrupts me. 

“Try to put the energy into the push instead of the scream,” she coaches. 

I don’t know if I can do this, but I try. I focus my energy on my abdomen, I give it all my strength. It does help. I feel focused and strong. I get in a series of good deep pushes before the contraction ends.

“What does it feel like?” your father asks.

Another contraction comes on so fast I can hardly think to answer, I eke out, “I don’t know.”

I push. I push. 

“Oh my god, she has so much hair,” your father says. 

He pulls his phone out of his pocket and I swat it down violently, flinging it across the room. I thought he was going to text someone and tell them I was pushing the baby out. And I’m so annoyed by this. I can’t believe he is going to look at his phone right now.

“I thought you said I could take pictures,” he says, meekly, as he releases my leg momentarily to pick up his phone. 

“Oh yeah, I did. Go ahead,” I say with a laugh, that turns to a cry, and then back. 

We have one picture of your head emerging out of me, and I’m so grateful for this picture. 

I push. I push. 

“Feel her head,” Dr. B says. 

I reach down and there you are. The sensation of you jolts, almost scaring me. Your head is so soft, like a peach gone past ripe. The crown of it is stuck there in my blooming vagina. So warm and slimy.

“So much hair,” your father says.

“Why do you keep saying that?” I yell. 

He laughs. He is giddy with excitement to meet you. 

“Deep breath,” Dr. B says. “Now push!”

I push from a place that feels cosmic, the universe itself. I push with the strength of all the women who came before to build our world. Waves of energy and sensation wash over me. My eyes are squeezed so tightly closed; I am covered in a powerful inner darkness.

“Open your eyes,” Dr. B says. “Look!” 

It takes me a moment to comprehend her directions, I’m so far inside. I pry my eyes open and they fill with light as I witness your arrival. 

Dr. B reaches in and twists out your shoulders in this graceful and fast maneuver. There you are. Out of me, all at once. 

I don’t recall hearing you cry, but your father says you let out one perfect call into being. 

You are so human, so slimy, your features are big, dark, and perfect. You have slate blue baby eyes and so much dark hair! 

They place you on my chest. You breathe air and see the blur of light and shape, all for the first time. This new world must feel strange upon your skin. I thought you would be screaming, writhing, scared. But you lay so quietly, calmly upon me. I am still your home. You trust me. You know me. I don’t yet know you, but I know that you will teach me to. 

I don’t cry in these first moments as I expected to, but rather chant through fractured breaths, “Oh my god. Oh my god.” I have never had a god, but you invoke this word from my lips. As I gaze down at you, I tremble — a wild, hot, shaking. The moment of Earth’s creation.  

2:41 PM

You are born under a fire, Sky. Smokey brown haze and a deep red sun hanging like a foreign star on the horizon. You are born in an unprecedented time: global pandemic, racial unrest, the most abysmal governing body our generation has seen. You are born on a Thursday in September, a Virgo like your mom. 

Your vernix body lays upon me, miraculously earthside as your father cuts the cord to disconnect us, that last pulsing of our shared blood come and gone. You find your way to my nipple for the new sustenance that I have made you. Dr. B massages my stomach aggressively, to get the placenta moving, but it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but your warm body on mine. Your magical being. 

Out the long glass window, the palm trees sway and the gulls and crows caw, heading out to sea for cleaner air, spreading the word that the world must change, making way. 

Your omen. 

I know, at once, that you are nothing like the burning world.

I know the secret — that mothers, collectively, are the creators. It seems so obvious now, that this is the creation story, this very moment. Every birth is the story of how the world came to be. And how the world continues to be, despite it all. 

---

Catie Jarvis is a fiction author, English and Creative Writing Professor, yoga instructor, competitive gymnastics coach, surfer, wife, and mom. She received her B.A. in writing from Ithaca College, and her M.F.A. in creative writing from the California College of the Arts. She grew up on a lake in northern New Jersey and now lives by the ocean in Los Angeles. She believes wholeheartedly that writing and reading are gateways to human connection, compassion, and wisdom. The Peacock Room is her debut novel. Find her on Instagram @30inLA and her website catiejarvis.com  

Photo by David Kanigan

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