The Resurrection of Joan Ashby - Cherise Wolas

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comforting something inside of themselves. She couldn’t help wondering what the Pregnant Six said about her when she was not among them, when they were massed and crooning together.

      They practiced ujjayi breathing, their exhalations out of sync, until Lannie said, “Okay. Good enough for the first time. We’re ready now for our first asana. Virabhadrasana I, a standing posture, the first of the three warrior poses.

      “Yogis are known for their nonviolent ways, but the Bhagavad Gita, the most respected of all the yoga texts, is actually a dialogue between two famous and feared warriors that takes place on a battlefield between two great armies spoiling for a fight. What is commemorated in this pose is the spiritual warrior who bravely battles against the universal enemy, avidya, which is self-ignorance, the ultimate source of all our suffering. What you all want to work at battling in yourselves.”

      It was obvious to Joan that Lannie had memorized her yoga patter, but into Virabhadrasana I Joan went. Then Virabhadrasana II and III, Tree, Downward Dog, Cat-Cow, and good old-fashioned squats, out of place when Lannie was talking on about the meditative benefits of yoga, silencing their inner dialogues, and learning just to be.

      Joan found she was curiously limber and graceful doing the poses, that she enjoyed heeding the instructions, ceding control for the hour, focused not on her novel’s unfolding story, as she did when she swam, but on the mystical way she was contorting her body, watching herself in the mirror transitioning easily from one pose to the next, despite her belly, and the sloshing, along with a kick or two, from inside. When she looked at the others, she was surprised by their precious way of holding themselves, mincing through the poses, hands rarely straying from their cargo, as if they were vessels for the world’s next great philosophers.

      “Time for Baddha konasana, sometimes known as cobbler’s or tailor’s pose,” Lannie said. “Drag your mats to the wall. Backs up tight and straight against it, put your soles together and let your knees fall apart—

      “Meg, you’re not grounded. Get grounded. Yes, spread those ass cheeks apart so you’re stable.”

      At last, they were told to lie on their sides on the mats. “Time for a pregnancy-modified Shavasna, corpse pose. Get comfortable. Eyes closed. Arms and legs relaxed. Palms facing upward. Now, inhale. Pull that breath into your lungs. Now, exhale. Force all that air out of you. Now, everyone, tense your entire body gently. Hold it. Hold it. Hold it. Now, let go. I’m going to shut off the lights and you can stay as long as you want.”

      When Joan opened her eyes in the darkened room, she was alone, her mat the only one left on the floor. The clock above the door read 3:05; the class had been over for more than an hour. She felt happy, hazily happy, a feeling that lasted as she drove home, and through two more hours of writing, and through dinner with Martin, laughing when he told her about the day’s mishaps made by the residents assigned to him, listening carefully to him describe the initial steps for a radical surgery he was conceiving that might be able to restore sight in a permanent way for certain ocular diseases. Through it all, she honestly felt the glow of pregnancy; she had not felt it, not truly, before.

      In bed that night, lying on her side with her back to Martin, straddling the body pillow as if it were a horse, she said, “I liked the yoga a lot. I’m going to do the classes with Lannie, but after the baby comes, I’m going to find a real yoga teacher and real yoga classes, even if I have to drive to another town.”

      Martin yawned and said, “Sounds good. Whatever you want to do sounds good to me,” and then he was lightly snoring.

      Joan thought about her old neighborhood in New York, the yoga studio she had often passed. Not once had she thought of opening its door, going in, checking it out. She felt her heart softening toward the baby a bit more; the way it was offering her something new in exchange for room and board.

       3

      Silas and Abe were left in a wicker basket at a firehouse, to the right of the red bay doors, found by the captain, who looked beneath the tattered blanket and discovered twins, nametags pinned to their onesies. A cooler bag was next to the basket, diapers on top, nursing bottles below. When the captain pulled out a bottle, it was full. All the bottles were full, each one labeled Fresh Breast Milk in fluorescent pink ink, and dated; the one in his hand dated that day.

      The captain carried the basket and bag into the house, and his husky men, who threw themselves into fires, cooed over the babies, made goo-goo faces and trilling sounds, changed them and fed them while he called Children’s Services.

      The woman from the authority arrived and said, “At least they’re infants. That’s the key. They’ll be placed in a heartbeat.”

      The captain said, “Please make sure they’re kept together. Hard enough start to life, without them having to go it alone. They’ll always be looking for each other, if you don’t do the right thing.”

      It wasn’t what the woman wanted; separating them would make her job easier, but the captain made her swear, and she, a failed mother herself, agreed.

      During the following years, as infants, toddlers, young boys, then teens, Silas and Abe moved across the Midwest, from Kansas to Iowa to Indiana, coming to rest in Illinois. Their various foster parents, four sets in total, all of good cheer, made sure the boys had plenty to eat, warm comforters on their beds, books to read and television to watch, basketball hoops for H-O-R-S-E, and the benefits of fine public-school educations. And they were good boys—both blond, sunny, and light—handsome boys popular at the schools they attended, and with the girls who sidled up. Sweet and shy girls liked them too, not just the fast ones whose hips molded early into sensuous curves, whose breasts jiggled inside red or black bras.

      For the past five years, Silas and Abe had lived in a three-story house in Chicago. Of all the houses they’d lived in, this one felt most like home. Their foster parents were an accountant and his piano-teacher wife. Short people from hardy stock, although the hardy stock was unclear because both wore thick glasses, were blind without them. The boys called them Frederick and Shirley, but when talking about their days at school, about their nightly and future dreams, sometimes their minds slipped, and to themselves, they replaced Frederick with Dad, Shirley with Mom. That was how close the twins felt to them.

      On their eighteenth birthday, they crashed down the stairs for Shirley’s annual birthday-king breakfast—pancakes, waffles, omelets, thirty strips of bacon, and fresh-squeezed orange juice. Bottles of boysenberry syrup and maple and a jar of Marshmallow Fluff on the dining-room table, along with an enormous sheet cake sprouting twin sets of eighteen candles. Streamers decorated the room, and from the ceiling, a homemade sign read: HAPPY BIRTHDAY! YOUR FUTURE AWAITS!

      When the platters were emptied, the orange juice finished, the cake plates smeared in frosting, Shirley shooed them into the living room. Silas and Abe resisted. They had been raised well by all their fosters, to bring their manners with them wherever they were, to help out. “We’ll clean up,” the boys said, and Shirley shook her head. “Not necessary. We have a gift for each of you, the kind of gift that gives and gives.”

      Under the arch that led into the living room, they slipped off their shoes, Shirley’s rule: No shoes on the carpeting. But she surprised them. “Not necessary this time. Tie those tennis shoes back up right now. Keep ’em on, you’re going to need them. Now go and sit on the couch.”

      The boys retied their laces and tiptoed over the carpet, looking at each other sideways, acknowledging silently the freakishness of being allowed to do the forbidden. They sat on the couch, just inches apart, and in came Frederick and Shirley, both barefooted, each wrestling a large present in their arms. They placed the wrapped packages just beyond Silas and Abe’s tennis-shoed feet.

      Shirley sat down at the baby grand and played the birthday song. Frederick clapped his hands and sang along. Then Shirley twirled around on the bench and said, “Ready? All right,

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