by Cheryl Reid
“No, binti.” She tried to smile, but her lips emitted a whimper that turned into a long, painful wail. It was almost five o’clock, the sky was still dark, and my father had not returned.
“Stand in front of me.”
She held onto my shoulders, and with her feet spread apart, she squatted near the edge of the bed. She pressed her weight on me and moaned. Her face was a tight knot and turning a terrible red, her temples throbbing as she bore down. I thought she might push me through the floor, no longer my gentle mama, but a writhing, twisting creature that oozed liquids and groaned in pain. I looked away from her face and that’s when I saw the crown of the baby’s head, but then it disappeared into her again. Blood fell in large drops onto the floor. I looked at her and was afraid. She let go of me and sank on the bed.
“Get a sheet, Vega,” she said. Thankful for any means of escape, I ran to the linen closet for the sheet. She covered herself. “Will you pour me a glass of water?” She gave a weak smile. I sensed she did not want me to see her suffering. I walked down the hall to the kitchen and drew the glass of water. I stood frozen to the spot, unable to will my feet to return to her. I waited for Papa and Thea and the doctor. I listened to Mama’s whimpering. A terrible battle raged in my head whether to stay put or go to her, until finally my father’s clomping feet sounded in the store below. He burst up the stairs and through the kitchen. “Your mother?” he asked.
I nodded, not knowing what to say.
He bounded down the hall. Thea turned the corner from the stairs. In her arms she carried a stack of sheets and a satchel. She had delivered Gus three years before.
“Where is Dr. Walker?”
“He’ll be here directly,” she said. She walked toward me. “Go on, now. You go to bed ’til I come and get you. It’s early yet.”
Thankful Thea was there to help Mama, I drank the water and went back to the room I shared with Gus. My bed was wet and so I lay down next to him. Morning light peeked through the curtains and I could see the stained sheets on my bed. Not sure what to do, I put on my day’s clothes and sat next to Gus. He snuggled close to me. I could see her across the hall, moaning, propped up on pillows with her eyes closed. Her black hair was matted to her head. I wanted to go to her and wipe her face and comb the tangles out with my fingers, but knew I could not get to her. Thea attended her—wiping down her body, wrestling the sheets from beneath her, changing her gown. Thea caught my eye and shut the door to my mother’s room. I turned away and cradled Gus in my arms.
I listened to the mournful moans and the coaxing for hours, until Thea burst in and roused Gus. “Get up.” She saw I was already dressed. “Help your brother with his clothes and come eat breakfast.”
“Yes, ma’am.” There would be no dawdling whenever Thea used that tone of voice. She fried two eggs and served them with cornbread from supper the night before. Thea pointed to the door. “You children go outside and play. I don’t want to hear from you.” She spoke to me, for Gus cared nothing about the indoors. “You watch your brother. Keep him away from the river. Thea has no time for a drowned boy today.”
She opened the balcony door and ushered us outside. The store would be closed for the day.
“Let him dig worms for fishing, pull weeds in the garden, play. Get food from the store when you’re hungry. But don’t come up here.” She shut the door on us. Gus heard “worms” and already had a bucket of empty tobacco tins and was headed out to the garden. I sat on the black iron steps and watched him dig with the persistence of a hound. He held up worm after worm to show me his success. I walked out toward the garden and stood a few feet from him. A sailboat tacked back and forth to make the curve of the river. A barge pushed slowly past. In the time I waited, two trains blared through town and then rumbled over the bridge.
I fixed my eyes on the brick store and on the second-floor corner window where Mama was. The sky was crisp blue. It was a warm fall day and the clouds sat like cotton balls over the dark river.
Dr. Walker drove up. Papa must have been watching from an upstairs window. He ran down, talking quickly at the doctor about her pain, her effort. Dr. Walker followed Papa and calmly listened. Soon they were inside. A formation of geese landed near the water’s edge. They honked to each other as they waddled onshore.
Thea walked carefully down the stairs. Her arms carried a load of stained sheets. She said, “Good girl,” noting all was well with Gus and me. At the water pump, she dropped the sheets on the grass and filled a large washbasin with soap and water, piling in bloodied sheets and rags to soak.
She hurried back in. I turned to check that Gus was occupied. Gus was building a castle of mud, rocks, and sticks. He paid no attention to me and I knew he would not venture by the water, because he was afraid of the geese. I opened the back door to the store. A feeling flurried in my stomach, and I was certain I would be punished for going against Thea’s orders, but worry for Mama made me brave.
I stepped in the door and slipped off my shoes. As I climbed the staircase, the house was eerily quiet. I was careful of every step and cringed at each sound. I moved so slowly that I thought I’d never make it to the top. But then Mama screamed, and the doctor said, “Bear down, Vega. Bear down.” His voice was calm, but she was not. She screamed, more horrible than I remembered from Gus’s birth. And then my father asked, “What’s happening? What’s happening?” His voice sounded like a child’s.
I held my breath and ran up the steps, not caring that noise would give me away. At the top, I ducked under a table with a lace cloth that hung low. Through the lace, I saw my father moving from room to room. He rubbed his forehead, and his shirt was marked with sweat rings at his armpits. He went downstairs into the store. His office door opened, then shut.
Bright light flowed through the hall windows and onto the wooden floors, making a grid of light and shadow. Mama cried out for Papa but he did not return to her. She needed me. If she saw me, I thought, that would help her, but if I went, Thea or Papa would punish me and I’d be sent away. She cried out again. The late-afternoon sun poured through the windows and cast long shadows of the windowpanes on the wood floors. I eased out from under the table and moved toward her cries, down the hall through squares of light.
Her voice was low, chanting, “Kyrie, eleison.” Lord, have mercy.
Downstairs, Papa’s office door opened. His steps fell on the stairs, and I slid into my room as my father rushed past me.
“What can I do?” he asked.
I crossed the hall, and from the doorway of Mama’s room, I saw Thea behind her, holding Mama’s knees close to her chest. Thea’s face was slick with sweat. Mama’s sheet stuck to her body. Her hair stood up in all directions. Her face was gray and her eyes darted like an injured animal’s.
When she saw my father, she cried out his name. With her hands tense and her fingers splayed, so that I could count them—one, two, three, four, five—she reached out to him. She grabbed his arm. She could not sob, for it seemed she could barely breathe.
“Can’t you help her?” Papa asked.
The doctor’s hands were between Mama’s legs. He did not answer. His sleeves were rolled to his armpits, and I could see his muscles tighten as he pulled. I motioned him to stop, but he did not see me.
The doctor yelled, “Push,” and Mama’s face seemed to fold in upon itself.
Papa held her hand and as she pushed, her face and her knuckles went white but my father’s face turned red.
“Thea, keep her up.” The doctor’s voice was strained, like he was lifting a hundred-pound weight. “Mr. Khoury, step out.”
My father hesitated. He stood beside Mama, looking back and forth from her to the man who had his hands inside her womb.
“Step out,” Dr. Walker said. “Now.” His voice was harsh.
Papa jolted and tripped. I leaned back against the wall. I was not supposed to see his confusion or her pain.
He walked past and took no notice of my presence. His footsteps stopped at the b
ack window. I followed him. He watched Gus dig in the garden below.
I moved swiftly in my bare feet down the hall. Thea cradled Mama’s head and prayed in a low, steady voice. “Be with us, Lord.”
The doctor did not look up, but said, “Thea, I need you here.” His voice growled like a bear’s.
Thea laid my mother down gently and took her place beside the doctor, pressing Mama’s knees apart. Mama let out whimpers. She was too weak to do anything else. The doctor pulled and there were sounds of heavy breathing and strain. “Get the warm blankets,” he said.
In his hands was one baby, small and blue, with a cord of flesh wrapped around his neck. In a few swift movements, Dr. Walker unwound the cord, wiped his body, suctioned his nose, his mouth, and slapped his bottom. No sound came. I felt sure the doctor had broken him. The doctor placed the still baby in Thea’s arms and she rubbed him for what seemed a long time. Mama was not moving, except for her eyes darting between the ceiling and Thea, who stood near her feet.
Thea’s face looked pinched. “He’s gone to heaven.”
“Put the baby down and help me, Thea.”
She did as she was told in a most solemn manner.
“This one is breech.” His face contorted, he seemed to be wrestling with Mama’s insides. She appeared to wilt away, but Thea tried to prop her up to help push it out. When it seemed the baby would not come, the doctor took large metal spoons, what I later learned were forceps, and put them inside her. I sank down and squatted on the floor. My palms were sweaty and what I saw sickened me. But then, there was a sound, like a late-night cat. “A boy,” Dr. Walker said.
Mama smiled weakly, and at least she had that moment of happiness.
Thea said, “Praise the Lord.”
I ran to the kitchen to give Papa the news. He rushed past me, and I followed, but in the short time I had left my watch, Thea’s face had turned grim. She rubbed the baby with warm towels and patted his bottom, all the while begging, “Little man, come on, now. Cry. Come on now, fella.” The baby gave tired whimpers, but he never mustered the cry Gus once had.
The doctor tended to Mama. He sewed stitches and packed her with compresses to slow the blood that flowed from her. Papa knelt beside her head. Her eyes looked wild and her breathing sounded strange.
I stood in the door. The light was dimming, and with each passing minute, I felt certain my life had changed for the worse. It was dusk outside and the room was dark. Dr. Walker and Thea kept on working as if they were blind moles digging a tunnel. The oil lamps had been snuffed out at some point in the day. I moved into the room and switched on the pink glass lamp on Mama’s dressing table. The rosy light that had once seemed cheerful burned my eyes.
I fingered the bone-handled brush that lay on the dresser. The tortoiseshell comb that once pinned her hair in place was propped against the mirror. It was a useless thing, now that she had cut her hair. I gripped the comb and thought if I squeezed it hard enough, she would stop bleeding and the baby would cry. Her hair would grow long, she would laugh again, and the baby would come back to life.
I turned to see Thea cleaning the babies with a sponge. Her apron dark and smeared with blood. The edges of her lips turned down and her eyelids seemed heavy. The babies did not cry or move or breathe. One was deep blue, almost purple in the dim light. The other, who had lived only moments, was pale in comparison. Thea saw me watching. She did not shoo me away, but gazed at me as if she wanted me to understand that life could be cut short, that blessings were special and rare. She wanted me to prepare myself for what she must have known was coming.
I remembered Mama’s warning that God might take babies for his own purpose, but I did not feel better knowing they were with God. Papa stood and walked past me as if I was not there. With purposeful steps, I followed him down the hallway, outside, and down the stairs where Gus sat on the bottom step, forgotten and surely hungry. Papa picked him up and carried him to the truck. He never looked back at me, nor told me where he was going, but I knew he was going to get the priest.
I returned to Mama’s room and stood in the doorway.
Thea saw me. “Come by your mama.” My feet were heavy. I felt that if I stepped across the threshold, my life would forever be changed. Mama’s weak eyes looked at me. She tried to lift her hand. I took it in mine and squeezed, but it was clammy and feeble, not her normal warm and strong hand.
The doctor was still working on her. “Thea,” he said. “Take the child out. She has no business in here.” He spoke to her sharp and angry.
Thea ignored him. She went about her work with Mama. There was lots of blood and Mama was pale. Her breath shallow.
The doctor told Thea twice more, “Take the girl out,” before she finally scooted me into the hall. She did not shut the door, and for the next thirty minutes, I watched him pull blood-soaked bandages from her and replace them inch by inch with clean white ones. A needle glistened in the dusky light. He gave Mama a shot in the arm and when my father returned with the priest, Mama’s eyes were closed and her breath shallow.
The priest was tall and thin and very pale. His voice had often lulled me to sleep in the hard wooden pews at Mass. His long, thin hands had placed the communion wafer on my tongue, had tousled Gus’s curly hair and shaken my father’s hand as we left church. I did not want him there, leaning over Mama, praying in his droning voice as the doctor worked on her, as my father wept, as Thea finally covered the babies with the blankets meant to bundle them.
The priest switched off the pink lamp on her dressing table near me and lit the wicks of the oil lamps on either side of her bed. The light from the flames danced on the dark walls and illuminated the priest’s pale cheeks. His dark clothes blended into the night. His face seemed to float above Mama. I watched his lips move and realized he was giving her last rites. Mama was dying. The sheet beneath her was blood-soaked. The men standing over her were as pale as she, though she had lost most of the blood from her body and they had lost none.
The doctor sent Thea for more clean bandages. I followed her and found Gus huddled in a corner of the kitchen. He was covered in filth from his day of digging. I took his hand and led him to the tub, where I bathed him as best I could. I dressed him in his nightclothes, brought him a glass of milk and some bread and butter, and put him to bed in our room.
When I returned to Mama’s room, she had stopped breathing. I stood in the doorway and watched the priest and my father kneeling beside her and praying. The doctor had left his post. I could hear the water in the kitchen as he scrubbed her blood from his hands and arms. Thea went around the house covering mirrors and stopped the pendulum on the tall clock in our family room. But all the fuss did not change a thing.
Thea made the praying men leave, so that she could clean the body and strip the bed. She had to push Papa out, and I followed him down the stairs and into Mama’s baking room, where he sat on a wooden bench. I stood beside him and rested my hand on his arm. He said nothing. The priest kneeled and prayed while holding our hands. Papa’s face was the color of ashes. He said, “What a horrible death,” as if the priest could undo her dying.
Thea tended to Mama until late and then solemnly stood beside my mother until her husband came to get her. He had to take her by the arms and lead her out. Only then did I hear her cry.
I tried to sleep next to Gus. No one had changed my bed, and I could not bear to do it myself. I took the pillow where her head had laid and breathed in her smell. This pillow had been the last thing she touched when we were a mother and her daughter.
All night Papa paced the floor, and once, I rose from my sleepless bed and followed him through the kitchen to the sitting room, down the hall past the flickering light of the oil lamps in her room and back to the kitchen again. He stopped and leaned against the doorframe with his face buried in his strong arms. I stood in the dark shadows of a corner and watched him. His breathing was regular and I detected no signs of sobbing or crying. He mumbled something. I looked closer. Wrapped aro
und his hand were glittering beads. Mama’s rosary. He was praying for her soul. I wanted to grab his leg, lift my arms so that he would pick me up and hold me close. But I was afraid he would walk away from me, if only because of his own grief.
The thought of him denying me, the grief for my lost mother, the loneliness of it all, let loose in me, and I cried as I never had before, nor ever would again. My wails startled him from his prayers, and in a few long strides, he swept me up into his bearlike arms. “Binti, binti.” He held me for a long time until my crying stopped and the sobs and hiccups passed. He carried me to my dark room.
I refused to go into my bed. “She was there,” I said.
A sigh from his lips and he tucked me in with Gus and kissed my forehead in a sorrowful way. “Your Aunt Elsa will come.” He touched my hair before he walked down the hall to the kitchen. A wooden chair creaked as he sat.
Across the hall, her body lay still, dressed in her sky-blue dress. I went to her. Her hair was no longer wild; Thea had brushed it softly around her face. She looked clean and peaceful, on a new mattress brought late in the evening to replace the one soaked in blood. She lay on the best linen sheets we had, the ones that took a whole morning to iron. The oil lamps burned on either side of the bed. The soft light glimmered on the walls and reflected in the mirror and shimmered on the ceiling. It was as if dancing spirits lit her room. The sight was oddly beautiful and terrifying. I left her to see if the light affected Gus, but he slept soundly, and I envied how he didn’t understand what was happening. I lay next to him again, but could not sleep for the flickering light bouncing across the hall. I took my pillow on which she had laid her head. It still held her scent.