He scrubbed his knuckles until they stung, and snipped his nails to the quick with the sterilized scissor, fighting down panic. Oh God, why hadn’t he gone against her wishes and driven into town for the doctor the minute she’d had her first pain? What if the cord was wrapped around the baby’s neck? What if Elly hemorrhaged? What if the boys came in in the middle of it?
As if his very thought conjured them, the pair clattered into the kitchen, calling for their mother.
Will went out to waylay them, soiling his sterilized hands as he stopped Donald Wade and Thomas with a hand on each chest as they charged for the closed bedroom door.
“Hold up there, buckaroos!” He went down on one knee and gathered them close.
“We got to show Mama somethin’!” Donald Wade held a bird’s nest.
“Your mama’s resting.”
“But, look what we found!” Donald Wade strained toward the door but Will tightened his arm.
“You remember when your mama told you about how that baby was gonna come out someday in the basket?” They stopped struggling and gazed at Will with innocent curiosity. “Well, the baby’s gonna be born pretty soon, and your mother’s not gonna feel so good while it’s happening, but the same was true when you guys were born, so don’t be scared, okay?” He gently squeezed their necks. “Now, I want you to be good boys. Donald Wade, you get some cookies and take your brother outside, and don’t come back in till I call you, all right?”
“But—”
“Now listen, I ain’t got time to argue, ‘cause your mama needs me. But if you do like I say I’ll take you to the movie house one day soon. Deal?” Donald Wade vacillated, glancing from Will toward the bedroom door.
“To Hopalong Cassidy?”
“You bet. Go on now,” Will gave them each a little shove toward the kitchen and the cookie jar. As soon as they were safely outside, he rescrubbed his hands, jogged back to the bedroom, closed the door with his boot and pushed it tight with a shoulder.
“The boys—I bribed them with a trip to the movie house and sent them outside with a handful of cookies. How’re you?” He moved to the side of the bed and sat on the hard wooden chair.
“I hurt.” She chuckled and cradled her stomach.
He reached as if to brush Elly’s brow.
“Don’t touch me, Will. You mustn’t.”
Reluctantly he withdrew his cleansed hand to sit in misery, waiting, feeling useless.
The next pain lifted her midsection off the mattress and brought Will from his chair to lean over her, watching her face contort as her knees parted and she reached up to grip the iron rails above her head. When she held her breath, he held his. When she grimaced, he grimaced. When she bared her teeth, he bared his. The sixty seconds during her contraction felt longer than his stint in prison.
At its end, she opened her dazed eyes and rolled her head to look at him. “It’s t-time, W-Will,” she managed. “Wash me with alcohol n-now, and h-help me find the t-tugs.”
His hands trembled as he moved to the foot of the bed, folded back her nightgown and stared. Oh, Lord. Lord o’ mercy, how she must hurt. She was swollen, distended, distorted beyond anything he’d imagined. He could actually see the bulge caused by the baby’s head just above the apex of her legs. Her genitals appeared inflamed, as if bee-stung, and they were seeping, staining the bedclothes a dim pink. He gulped, but came from his stupor when she reared up and a great gush of transparent fluid flowed from her body, wetting a wide circle on the sheet. The sight of it galvanized him into action. He knew what it was, knew it meant the baby was pressing low, preparing for its arrival into the world.
Suddenly his purpose here became crystal clear, and as it dawned all Will’s fears disappeared. His stomach grew calm. His hands grew steady. The jitters fled, chased away by the realization that he was needed by both the baby and its mother. But they needed him competent.
With a pad of cotton he generously swabbed her stomach, thighs and genitals with alcohol. It stung his own fingers where he’d broken the cuticles with the scrub brush, but he scarcely noticed. For good measure, he swabbed the tug straps before gently lifting her heels and slipping the leather loops snug behind her knees. Then he placed an additional clean folded flannel sheet beneath her.
“W–W–Will,” she panted as another contraction began.
“Yes, love,” he answered quietly, but stood at his post, eyes riveted on her constricting belly, watching it slowly begin to arch, watching her dilation grow with the pain.
“W–W–Wiiiiill!” It tore from her as a rasping cry while the contraction built and peaked. He placed his palms beneath her thighs and helped her through it, feeling her muscles tighten as she lifted. Only when she relaxed did he raise his eyes to her face. Beads of sweat stood on her brow. The fine strands of hair at her hairline were damp and darkened to the color of aged cornsilk. Her lips looked dry and cracked. She wet them with her tongue while he thought of the jar of Vaseline he dared not touch. Before her lips had dried, another pain arrived and with it the sight of the baby’s dark scalp.
“I see her!” Will cried. “Come on, darlin’, once more and she’ll be here!”
He waited with his hands spread in welcome, chancing not so much as a glance away from the dark hair now clearly visible. Elly’s womb arched, her legs tightened on the straps, her hands on the iron rails. A ragged scream rent the air and Will learned what perineum meant as he watched Elly’s tear. But he had no time to dwell on it, for at the same moment the baby’s head slipped through—facing backward, as promised, facedown and slippery in his waiting hands. Then, as if by some miracle, it turned to the side, following the normal course of events, and he cradled it on his palm, tiny and sleek and red.
“Her head is out, darlin’. Oh, God, she has dark eyebrows.” The distorted face was frighteningly dark and marked from the rigors of birth, but the warning in the book stood Will in good stead as he told himself it was to be expected; the child would not choke from the perineum drawn tightly about its neck. Don’t panic! Don’t try to pull her out! “Easy there, now, little one,” he murmured to the baby. “I got to clean your mouth out.” As if Nature knew exactly what she was doing, she allowed just enough time for Elly to rest and for Will to run his finger into the baby’s mouth and clear it before Elly bore down and the baby’s lower shoulder appeared, followed by the upper, then, in one grand release, the full birth happened. Into Will’s waiting hands spilled a creature with a dark face, connected to its mother by a thin, crimped lifeline. Slippery and wet she came, filling his heart with a wild thrum of excitement, his face with a wide beam of wonder.
“She’s here, Elly, she’s born! And you were right. She’s a girl. And... oh... lord, smaller than my hands.” Even as he spoke, he rested his precious cargo on Elly’s stomach while she panted in the brief natural respite following full birth. Releasing her grip on the headrail, Elly reached down to touch the baby’s head, lifting her own with an effort and smiling wearily. As her head fell back she laughed and tears leaked down her temples.
“Is she pretty?”
“She’s the sorriest mess I ever seen.” He laughed in relief. Until Elly was hit by an aftershock and grunted, straining until her face shook and turned purple. He laid the baby down and tried to help Elly through the second wave of pushing pains. But the afterbirth refused to come. She fell back, panting, near exhaustion, her eyelids quivering. Another pushing pain produced the same results, and Will swallowed the lump of fear in his throat, doing what he knew he must do. He rested one hand in the soft hollow of her stomach, fitting its heel at the top of her womb and manipulating it to create a man-made contraction. She moaned and mindlessly tried to push his hand away. He forced from his mind the fact that he must hurt her to help her. His eyes smarted. He cleared them on his shoulder and vowed he’d never make her pregnant. He reached inside her tender flesh, loosening the afterbirth while kneading her soft stomach. Suddenly he felt a change as her own body took over. Her abdomen contracted a
nd beneath his ministration the afterbirth pulled loose inside, dropping low to create a slight swelling beneath her matted hair. “Come on, Elly-honey, one more push and you can rest.” From some hidden source she found the strength for another mighty effort that brought a last gush as her body delivered the afterbirth, severing her completely from the life she’d supported for nine months.
Will’s shoulders drooped. He closed his eyes, sucked in a great lungful of air, dried his brow on a sleeve and praised simply, “Good, honey. It’s all done. Hang on now.” His hands were remarkably calm as he tied the first string an inch and a half from the baby’s body, leaving only enough space between it and the second stricture for the scissor to do its work. The silver blades met and the deed was done. The baby was on her own.
Breathe! Breathe! Breathe!
The word resounded through Will’s mind as he picked up the baby and watched it fold into a fetal position within his hands. Through his memory skittered the various directions for shocking a newborn into drawing its first breath. A smart smack. Cold water. Artificial respiration. But to do any of them to a creature so tiny seemed sadistic. Come on, girl, breathe!... Breathe! Fifteen seconds sped by, then thirty. Don’t make me use that cold water. And I’d rather cut off my own hand than slap you. He heard the boys come in and call from the other side of the door. They scarcely registered. His heart raced. Desperation clawed at him. He gave the baby a shake. Breathe, dammit, breathe! Panicking now, he tossed her a foot in the air and caught her as she dropped. A second after she hit his hands her mouth opened, she hiccuped, started flailing with all fours and began bawling in the puniest voice imaginable. It came in undulations—wauu, wauu, wauu—accompanied by a comical face with pinched mouth, flattened nose and the beat of her tiny fists against the air. It was a soft cry, but healthy and wonderfully vexed at being treated so roughly during her first minute in the outside world.
Will looked down into the bloody face, heard the welcome complaint and laughed. In relief. In celebration. He kissed the miniature nose and said, “Way to go, girl. That’s what we wanted to hear.” Then, to his wife, “She’s breathing, and beautiful and looks as normal as a one-dollar bill.” Abruptly his mood sobered. “Elly, you’re shivering.” During the minute he’d concentrated on his duty, she’d been gripped by natural chills. She lay now shuddering, her exposed limbs damp, the bedding beneath her soaked. Lord, a man needed six hands at a time like this.
“I’ll be all right,” Elly assured him. “Take care of her first.”
It was hard to do, but he had little choice, given the fact that Elly’s directive agreed with those he’d memorized. So far things had gone in perfect, natural order. He’d proceed by the book and hope their luck held. But he paused long enough to lay the baby down and gently remove Elly’s legs from the tug straps, lower them and cover her. He brushed a light kiss on her dry lips, and whispered, “I’ll be back as soon as I get her bathed. You be okay?”
She nodded weakly and closed her eyes.
He crooked the baby in one arm, opened the door with the other and found Donald Wade and Thomas on the other side, holding hands and crying pitifully.
“We heard Mama scream.”
“She’s better now—look.” Will knelt. The sight of the red, squawling baby stopped their crying with amusing suddenness. “You got a baby sister.” Donald Wade’s mouth dropped open. The tears hung on Baby Thomas’s sooty lashes. Neither of them spoke a word. “She just got here.”
As one, they resumed bawling.
“I wanna see Mamaaaa!”
“Maamaaa!”
“She’s fine—see?” Will held the door open a crack and let them peek inside for reassurance. All they saw was their mother lying at rest with her eyes closed. Will closed the door. “Shh. She’s restin’ now, but we’ll all go in later and see her, soon as we get the baby a bath. Come on now, you might have to help me.”
They followed as if mesmerized. “In the real bathtub?”
“No, the real one ain’t ready yet.”
“In the sink?”
“Yep.”
They screeched chairs across the kitchen floor and stood one on either side of Will as he lowered their sister into a dishpan of warm water. Her crying stopped immediately. Cradled in Will’s long hands, she stretched, opened dark eyes and peered at the world for the first time. Thomas reached out a tentative finger as if to test her for realness.
“Uh-uh. Mustn’t touch her yet.” Thomas withdrew the finger and gazed up at Will respectfully.
“Where’d she come from?” asked Donald Wade.
“From inside your mother.”
Donald Wade looked skeptical. “She din’t neither.”
Will laughed and gently swished the baby through the water.
“She sure did. Been curled up inside her like a little butterfly inside a cocoon. You seen a cocoon, haven’t you?” Of course they had. With a mother like theirs, the boys had been watching cocoons since they were old enough to say the word. “If a butterfly can come out of a cocoon, why can’t a little sister come out of a mother?”
Because neither could answer, they believed.
Then Donald Wade remarked, “She ain’t got no wink!”
“She’s a girl. Girls don’t have winks.”
Donald Wade stared at his sister’s pink skin. He looked up at Will. “She gonna get one?”
“Nope.”
Donald Wade scratched his head, then pointed. “What’s that?”
“It’s gonna be her belly button.”
“Oh.” And after some thought, “Don’t look like mine.”
“It will.”
“What’s her name?”
“You’ll have to ask your mother that.”
The baby hiccuped and the boys laughed, then stood by watchfully while Will washed her with glycerine soap. He spread it over the pulsing scalp, down the spindly legs, between tiny toes and miniature fingers that had to be forced open. So fragile, so perfect. He had never felt skin so soft, never handled anything so delicate. Within the length of time it took to bathe her for the first time the tiny being had worked her way so deeply into Will’s heart she’d never lose her place there. No matter that she wasn’t his own. In his heart she was. He’d delivered her! He’d forced her to breathe her first breath, given her her first bath! A man couldn’t have a heart this full and care about whose seed had spawned the life that was bringing this bursting sense of fulfillment to him. This little girl would have a father in Will Parker, and she’d know the love of two parents.
He laid her on a soft towel, cleaned her face and ears and dried all the nooks and crannies, experiencing a growing ebullience that put a soft smile on his face. She grew chilled and began crying in chuffy, hiccuping spurts.
“Hey there, darlin’, the worst is over,” Will murmured. “Get y’ warm in a minute.” He surprised himself by delighting in this first monologue to the infant. A person couldn’t not talk to somethin’ sweet as this, he realized.
Will carefully tended her cord, applying alcohol, and a cotton bandage, then Vaseline against her stomach before tying the bandage down and diapering her for the first time. She recoiled like a spring every time he tried to maneuver his hand into position for pinning. The boys giggled. She retracted her arms while he tried to feed them into her tiny undershirt and kimono. The boys giggled some more. When Will reached for one pink bootee, Donald Wade was proudly waiting to hand it to him.
“Thanks, kemo sabe,” Will said, and tied the bootee on a skinny ankle. Thomas was waiting to hand him the other.
“Thanks, Thomas,” he said, roughing the boy’s hair.
When the baby was ready to present to her mother, Will picked her up carefully. “Now your mother wants to see her, and in about fifteen minutes or so she’ll want to see you, so you both wash your hands and comb your hair and wait in your room. I’ll call you when she’s ready, okay?”
Pausing before the closed bedroom door, Will studied the baby who stared at him with u
nfocused eyes. She lay still, silent, her fists closed like rosebuds, her hair fine as cobwebs. He shut his eyes and kissed her forehead. She smelled better than anything else in the world. Better than sizzling bacon. Better than baking bread. Better than fresh air.
“You’re somethin’ precious,” he whispered, feeling his heart swell with love so unexpected it made his eyes sting. “I think you’n me are gonna git along just fine.”
Then he nudged the bedroom door open, stepped inside and closed it with his back.
Elly lay slumbering. She looked haggard and exhausted.
“Elly-honey?”
She opened her eyes and saw him standing with the baby in his arms, his shirt damp in spots, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, his hair messy and a soft smile on his lips.
“Will,” she breathed, smiling, holding out an arm.
“Here she is. And more presentable now.” He placed the bundle in Elly’s arm and watched her tuck the blanket away from the baby’s chin for a better look. Within him sprang a wellspring of emotion. Love for the woman, welcome for the baby, and in a corner of his soul, the lonely plaint of a man who would always wonder if his own mother had ever held him that way, smiled at him with such sweetness, explored his face with a fingertip and kissed his forehead with the reverence that brought a choking sensation as he looked on.
Probably not. He knelt beside the bed and folded aside the opposite edge of the soft flannel receiving blanket. Probably not. But he’d make up for it by watching Elly lavish this precious one with the love he’d never known.
“Oh, Will, isn’t she pretty?”
“She sure is. Just like you.”
Elly lifted her gaze and let it drop as the baby’s fist closed around her little finger. “Oh, I’m not pretty, Will.”
“I always thought you were.”
The baby’s other hand took Will’s finger. Linked by her, the man and wife shared an interlude of closeness. Reluctantly, Will ended it.
“I’d better tend to you now, don’t you think? Get you washed, and in some clean clothes.”