Is For Life: Chapter One: Jess

…Is For Life

‘For Christ sake, the dog’s giving birth on my bed. Don’t just stand there, bloody do something.’ Carla screamed at the top of her voice, even though Kyle, her son, was standing right beside her.

The dog, lying on the filthy bed, watched her mistress pointing at her as she screamed. Jess, flattened her ears against her head. Her eyes were soft brown pools of misery and she was terrified, both of the pain she was suffering, and of being shouted at. She looked at her mistress and trembled. A beating was bound to follow. Carla was yelling at her to, ‘Get down.’ The dog tried to obey, but she couldn’t move. As she tried to get up, Carla pulled a face because Jess’s sides visibly contracted as the labour neared the birthing stage.

Kyle turned to go downstairs. ‘Where the hell do you think you’re going?’ yelled Carla.

‘To boil a kettle.’

‘Does this look like the time to be sitting down to a cup of fucking tea?

‘I’m going to get some towels and boiling water, that’s what you do when someone’s having a baby.’

‘This isn’t someone, is it? You stupid moron, it’s the fucking dog. When I said do something, I meant get it off my fucking bed.’

Kyle sulked but went over and lifted Jess. She cried out in terror and pain, and as he pulled her, supported only under her forelegs, into thin air, a puppy, hanging half out from her back end, dropped onto the floor. It landed with a thump. Kyle screamed and dropped Jess. She lay where she fell, without moving. Her eyes went to Carla to see if she was going to be kicked and she whimpered. She had landed on a pile of filthy washing on the floor beside the bed. It was comfortable and when the foot didn’t land viciously in her side, she relaxed a little bit.

Carla bent down and, in rare a moment of tenderness, she picked up the puppy, still encased in its embryonic sack and put it down in front of its mum. ‘Is that your baby?’ she said to Jess, ‘Aren’t you a clever girl.’ She patted the dog on the head and Jess licked her palm, once, before Carla stood and moved away. She turned her nose up in disgust at the large, pink, wet patch on the bed, a mixture of diluted blood and amniotic fluid. With one swift movement she lifted the quilt, shook it out, making Jess jump, and then she turned it over so that the stain was on the underside of the quilt. ‘Get that light bulb out so that your dad doesn’t notice the stain when he comes in. I haven’t got time to be washing bedding today.’ Kyle did as instructed and stood looking at the dog giving birth.

'Well, get out then. She doesn’t need a bloody audience.’ She pushed her fifteen year old son in the back and grumbled all the way down the stairs.

‘Like we need anymore fucking animals in the house. And where is the money going to come from to feed the little bastards? That’s what I want to know.’

As the door closed, Jess felt her insides contract again. She held her breath and pushed hard, and then, as the contraction ebbed away and a second puppy prepared to be delivered, she bent her head and licked at the sack containing the dead first born.