Sam's Posthumous Poultry Potion

Story Sunday by Autumn Bettinger

Photo by Nicholas Ng on Unsplash

Place whole chicken in pot. Boil until meat falls away, tendons and connective tissue dissolve, and bones crumble when prodded (bone is good for the baby, for you, and eating dissolved bones makes you sound like a badass).

Bianca dipped her wooden spoon into the simmering broth, swirling clockwise, the way Sam had taught her. Infrequent contractions rippled along her stomach, tightening her skin and billowing pressure up her spine.

No need to make a fuss, despite Ellie’s insistence that Bianca call her the second contractions started. Her sister-in-law had shuffled all her birthing clients to other midwives for the weeks surrounding the due date. A due date that had come and gone. At this point, Ellie was stopping by daily, despite Bianca being a rational adult who could use a phone.

“You need to let me know when that baby’s coming,” Ellie would demand, walking in unannounced with a heap of raspberry leaf tea or an ointment for pregnancy-inflamed joints. “There will be things we have to do to get you ready.”

The only thing Bianca was interested in doing was finishing Sam’s perfected baby-welcoming recipe.

Add 1 tbsp slippery elm powder to gently cooking broth (it’ll help with the heartburn… and the other stuff. Heartburn and heartbreak are basically the same thing).

Finding out they were pregnant sent them bounding in different directions: Bianca began choosing paint colors for the nursery and Sam started a deep dive into the ancient culinary practices of midwives. He was determined to feed Bianca the very best he could offer. When Sam started recipe testing, he’d squeezed it in after nightly service in his restaurant, spreading ingredients over the line after his cooks had all left. He didn’t want to clutter up the counters at home with his various foraged greens and colorful tinctures. However, he took the assignment of nurturing his wife with a prolific seriousness that soon spilled into their own kitchen.

Add one tsp oat straw infusion (it’s the little yellow bottle that looks like… don’t be gross. You were going to say pee. We both know it. And dammit, you’re not wrong).

A stronger contraction ripped through her. Bianca gripped the edge of the stove. False labor. Braxton Hicks. She refused to have this baby without finishing this soup. She was going to cook it, eat it, and then she would grab that little doll Sam had bought at the hospital gift shop, the one now leaning against his old mortar and pestle, and she would give it to their baby. She kept the doll in the kitchen so it would soak up the smell of bone broth and herbs—the smell of Sam.

Slice the ginger thin, but make sure it’s big enough to see. Let it simmer with everything else. Use the whole nub (listen, stop laughing,‘nub’ is a culinary term).

Another contraction consumed her as she slid foraged nettles and dandelion greens from the cutting board into the pot. Her muscles recoiled, her fingers spasming as she moaned in pain. The cutting board—still littered with bits of greenery and unused stem chunks—dropped from her hands and hit the stovetop. The contraction passed, but the smell of burning wood intensified, thickening the air.

Grabbing a dishtowel, Bianca wrapped it around her hand and plunged through plumes of smoke to grab a corner of the board and lift. Flames licked along its underside and caught her towel on fire. Bianca sprang back, throwing the cutting board and the towel back on the stove. The board, sputtering with evaporating moisture and now fully aflame smacked into the pot, knocking it into the air. Bianca cried out, reaching for it just as another contraction hit and she doubled over. The pot hit the floor and Sam’s soup flooded the tiles. Bits of meat, oily slicks of sliced ginger, and clumps of greens lapped along counter bottoms and under the fridge.

The fire alarm bleated as Ellie let herself in.

“I heard a loud bang, is everything o—oh my god. Bianca!”

The contraction eased and Bianca clung to the countertop behind her. Ellie ran into the kitchen, nearly slipping on the soup-sheened floor. Bianca knew the fire was growing but her eyes were downcast, watching Ellie’s shoes splash through Sam’s last act of love.

Ellie grabbed the faucet’s moveable head and blasted the stove with water. Bits of sodden, black wood fell, contaminating Sam’s puddled broth. Ellie had almost pulled her out of the kitchen when another contraction bloomed in Bianca’s belly and her legs went limp.

“We have to get you out of this smoke,” Ellie said, continuing to pull Bianca towards the front door.

“The—” a guttural moan cut off Bianca’s words as the baby started pushing against her in earnest, “—doll.” She managed, pointing back towards the kitchen.

Ellie half-carried the laboring Bianca outside before sprinting back in. She reemerged with the little doll. Bianca reached for it and smelled for Sam. Smoke had laced its acrid scent along the cotton skin and button eyes, but a trace of soft herbs remained— tucked into the doll’s hair, sprouting from the soles of her sewn shoes, a living, vibrant scent that grew from the very stuffing.

I’m sorry I can’t be there. I’m sorry we caught the cancer so late. B, you don’t need soup to know how much I love you. Give our baby that doll. Take it easy on Ellie, she only wants to be there for you. Oh, and make sure you garnish with fresh parsley (the flat leaf kind, curly is for posers).

In the hospital, Bianca’s baby nursed, eyes fluttering open and closed in time to her mother’s breathing—the little doll tucked into her swaddle. Bianca dropped her head, pressing her lips against baby Samantha’s ear.

“When we get home, we’ll make soup. And don’t tell daddy, but we’re using curly because flat leaf parsley is for snobs.”

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Autumn Bettinger is a short-form fiction writer and full-time mother of two living in Portland, Oregon. She is a 2024 Fishtrap fellow, has won the Tadpole Press 100-Word Writing Contest, the Silver Scribes Prize, and has been highly commended in the Bath Flash Fiction Awards.