The Secret to Hummingbird Cake

by Celeste Fletcher McHale

  Ella Rae looked exasperated. “Is there anybody in this room who hasn’t seen you naked?” she asked.

  Everybody looked at each other and then all looked back at me.

  It’s one thing to go to the girl doctor by yourself, you know? It’s uncomfortable, and it’s always cold and always humiliating. But imagine if you had the doctor, his nurse, and three other people in the room with you. See what I mean?

  “How can you ask me to leave when I’ll never witness anything like this again?” Laine said.

  “Really?” I glared at her. “Did you just play the death card so you could stay in here?”

  She smiled smugly. “I did.” Of course Ella Rae wasn’t about to leave if Laine was staying. Jack argued he put the baby there in the first place and he certainly wasn’t going anywhere. So I lost the round and everybody stayed. I could have gone out to the highways and byways and compelled the widows and the strangers to come in, I guess. I could’ve gathered people off the street. Doctor Davis’s rules seemed to fly out the window when we arrived.

  At least Jack had the good sense to turn his back during the actual exam. But I’m pretty sure the other two would’ve taken pictures if Doctor Davis would have let them.

  When the exam was completed, Laine jumped right in. “Well?”

  “Well,” Doctor Davis said, “anytime now.”

  I struggled to sit up and reached for Jack’s hand. “What do you mean, anytime? I’m not due till next week.”

  “Babies have a way of showing up whenever they want to.” He smiled. “You’re three centimeters dilated. You could stay there for hours or for days. Call me when you go into labor or when your water breaks. You have my cell number and home number, right?”

  I nodded. It just got real in here.

  Ella Rae was dancing up and down in place and Laine was grinning from ear to ear. Jack was silent and squeezing my hand so hard it hurt.

  “Jack.” I wriggled my hand around. “Ouch!”

  “I’m sorry, baby.” He picked up my hand and kissed it. “Better?”

  I made a face at him. “What am I, five years old?”

  “Next time I see you, we’ll fetch a baby, okay?” Doctor Davis said.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thank you.”

  “Can I see you outside a minute, Doc?” Jack asked.

  “Sure, Jack.” He slid open the door. “Laine, you be sure and call me if you need anything.”

  Doctor Davis and Jack disappeared into the hallway, and Laine and Ella Rae both started squealing and asking questions.

  “Are you scared? Are you freaked out? Does it hurt? Can you feel it? What’s it like?” They fired off round after round so fast I couldn’t tell who asked what question. But I could tell them, for sure, the answer to each one was an emphatic, Yes!

  “I just wasn’t expecting him to say . . . you know, I mean, I thought I had a week or two . . . Yes, I am freaked out.”

  “It’s okay.” Laine handed me my pants. “We’ll be here, I promise.”

  My heart was filled with gratitude because Laine would be here to see my baby, to hold it, love it. On the other hand, I was so terrified I found it hard to complete a sentence. I wasn’t afraid of having the baby, but I was suddenly quite intensely aware that I would be its mother. What did I know about a baby? They had bobbleheads and they made puppy sounds. That was the extent of my knowledge on the subject.

  What had I been thinking? I couldn’t be anybody’s mother. I had just learned how to be a wife fifteen minutes ago. I’d been living in la-la land for the past seven months. As long as the baby was inside me, I was mother of the year. But it was coming out now, and they were going to deposit it in my lap. I had to take it home with me. Its little life was in my hands. It would look to me for food and safety and guidance. I was an idiot! And my hands were shaking like leaves.

  “I’m good.” I faked a smile and slipped on my pants. “It’s all good.”

  “Great,” Laine said, “ ’cause I am starving. Let’s eat.”

  Music to my ears. She ate like a bird now and any declaration of hunger sent us all scrambling to fetch food for her. The announcement also temporarily distracted me from worrying about dropping my baby the first time I held it or forgetting where I put it. Jack was waiting for us in the parking lot and we drove over to our favorite Mexican place, Simpaticos. We were seated at the table before I even thought to ask Jack why he’d spoken to Doctor Davis.

  “What was that all about?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  “Something,” I corrected.

  “I was just asking about anesthesia,” he said. “Nothing special.”

  “What? Are you serious?”

  “Look, Carri,” he said, “that film we watched was bad. It was bad.”

  The girls and I began laughing.

  “I don’t want to take anything, Jack,” I said. “That’s why we watched the Lamaze DVDs.”

  “We’ll see.” He took another drink of his beer. “I’m just making a backup plan.”

  I shook my head. That was my Jack. Always a backup plan, no matter what the circumstances.

  Ella Rae gave Laine the eagle eye. “You don’t have to lick the bowl, Laine. They’ll bring you some more.”

  “Shut up, Rae.” Laine scraped the bottom of her salsa with a chip. “You complain if I don’t eat and you complain if I do.”

  Ella Rae flagged down our server. “Excuse me,” she said. “Could we have some more chips and salsa? Thank you.” She turned to Laine. “Slow down, Porky, help is on the way.”

  “They’re just so good today,” Laine said, licking her fingers, and pointed at my salsa bowl. “Can I have yours?” I slid my salsa over to her. “Knock yourself out, girl,” I said.

  “I feel great today,” Laine said. “Like I could run a marathon.”

  Ella Rae snorted. “Please. You wouldn’t run thirty feet when you didn’t have cancer.”

  In some social circles a statement like that would undoubtedly be rude, even cruel. But in our circle, it was hilarious. Laine laughed so hard I thought she’d choke on her chips.

  Jack shook his head. “You three have the most unusual relationship.”

  “Yes, we do,” Laine said. Just then the fresh chips and salsa arrived. “Ahhhh, finally.”

  “So,” Ella Rae said, “let’s talk baby names. And I want answers this time, not any of that ‘we haven’t decided’ crap. It’s bad enough you won’t tell us what flavor it is.”

  “I don’t know what flavor it is.” I smiled and looked at Jack. “But Jack knows.”

  “What?” Ella Rae and Laine said in shocked unison.

  “When did you find out?” Laine crammed her mouth full at the same time she tried to ask the question.

  Jack smiled but remained silent.

  “This is wrong,” Ella Rae said. “Why does he get to know and we don’t?”

  “You know, Rae,” I said, “I don’t know why my Baby Daddy should know and you shouldn’t. He wanted to know, so he called and Doctor Davis told him.”

  “That’s so unfair,” Laine said. “Wait . . . I see a light.” She grabbed her chest and rolled her eyes back in her head. “This could be it. I feel myself slipping . . .” She looked back at Jack. “That didn’t work, did it?”

  “Not even close.”

  “Please tell me you don’t know, Carrigan,” Laine said to me.

  “I don’t. I swear,” I said. “And don’t do that fake dying any more. I don’t like it. He won’t even tell me what it is. I
guess I could ask, but we’re this close now, I’ll just wait.”

  “What’s happened to you?” Ella Rae asked. “Who are you? The whole time you’ve been preggers, you’ve either been mad as an old wet hen or chilled out like a glaucoma patient in California. I never know what I’m gonna find in the mornings.”

  I laughed. “Have I been that bad?”

  Nobody answered.

  I laughed harder now. “Sorry, I thought I’d been a picture perfect pregnant person.”

  Ella Rae contorted her face and put on her best whiny pouty voice. “It’s hot. It’s cold. I want a popsicle. I hate popsicles. I’m sleepy. I can’t sleep.”

  “I’m hungry. I’m nauseated. It’s too bright. It’s too dark. I want pizza. I hate pizza,” Laine added.

  I was cracking up and so was Jack. “Stop,” I said. “I get it.”

  “I’m never getting pregnant,” Ella Rae said. “It makes you a nut case.”

  “That ain’t why,” I said. “You can’t leave alcohol alone for nine straight months.”

  “That is a lie!” she said.

  “We all good here?” our server asked, appearing at the table.

  “One more margarita,” Ella Rae said.

  “See!” I shouted.

  “Nothing says ‘I mean business’ like a shopping cart at the liquor store, Rae,” Laine said. “I was mortified.”

  “It was for a party,” Ella Rae defended.

  “A party of one,” I said.

  “Okay.” Ella Rae stopped laughing long enough to pretend to be offended. “Is this some kind of intervention? Because I gotta tell y’all, I’m not fixing to be intervened. Besides, drinking rum before ten a.m. doesn’t make you an alcoholic; it makes you a pirate.”

  Laine spewed iced tea through her nose, and I had to hold my belly under the baby, I was laughing so hard. Jack said nothing, just shook his head. The truth was Ella Rae didn’t drink nearly as much as we teased her about it. And she absolutely didn’t drink before ten a.m. But when she did drink, she was loud. That had earned her the reputation. She just never bothered denying it. Ella Rae was one of those people who never worried with what other folks said about her. She only cared about the opinion of her family and what she called her “inner circle.” I had always admired her for that.

  “Girl, stop,” Laine said. “You’re killing me.”

  Laine felt good, and she wasn’t faking it. I could always tell when she faked it. But there wasn’t an imitation smile or reaction in her today. It was all authentic. She didn’t look great, but she felt great, and I’d take that any day. It made me feel like the whole world was perfect. We’d laughed so much the past hour and a half, I hadn’t even thought about the cancer or what a terrible mother I was going to be. I looked around the table at everyone, so happy and relaxed, and wished I could bottle it, save it, preserve it.

  “Enough,” Laine said, wiping the tea from the table. “Let’s go buy something for the baby. Of course, if we knew if it was a boy or a girl, it would help the selection process tremendously.” She looked at Jack.

  He grinned. “Not a chance.”

  “You are mean as a snake, Jack Whitfield,” Ella Rae said.

  I stood up to go. Immediately a whoosh of warmth ran down my legs. I stood still, looking at the puddle I was now standing in.

  “My water just broke,” I said.

  Leave it to Ella Rae to sum up a situation: “Well, this ain’t good.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “Push, Carri, push!” Laine yelled in my ear. “You’re almost there! Go! Go! Go!”

  I felt as if I’d been pushing for hours. If Jack or Laine told me to push one more time, somebody besides me would need a doctor tonight.

  At least Ella Rae wasn’t trying to pull that rah-rah crap with me. The last time I had seen her, she was in the corner of the room gagging. She bugged out at the first sign of blood. I would’ve laughed about it if I weren’t giving birth to what was surely an alien baby, ripping its way into the world. I gritted my teeth and pushed again. Sweat dripped into my eyes, and I gripped Jack’s hand so tight I thought his bones would break. The contraction finally subsided and I flopped back down on the bed.

  “Great job!” Laine, ever the cheerleader, patted my shoulder.

  “Shut up, Laine, and get out of my face.”

  “I know you don’t mean that.” She smiled and wiped my forehead.

  “Oh, yes, I do mean it.” I caught my breath, waiting for the next contraction that was about forty-five seconds away. I tried not to watch the fetal monitor, whose waves alerted me when another contraction would begin. Why did they even have it pointed in my direction? I sure wasn’t likely to miss it.

  Why, oh, why had I wanted to experience natural childbirth? It was like saying you wanted to experience someone peeling your fingernails off or having a root canal without the gas. Doctor Davis should have told me I really wanted the epidural when I assured him repeatedly I didn’t. This was excruciating. It was worse than any injury I had ever suffered on the softball field. Worse than torn ligaments and pulled muscles and a bloody nose. I could have all of those at the same time and not even touch this pain.

  Surely something was wrong. This couldn’t be normal. Jack kissed my hand.

  “Don’t kiss me again. Not ever!” I snatched my hand away. But then the contractions returned, and I grabbed his hand back as quickly as I’d discarded it. I pushed and pushed until I couldn’t push any more, then fell back against the bed.

  “You’re making progress, Carrigan,” Doctor Davis said. “Don’t quit on me.”

  “I can’t push again.” I grabbed the front of Jack’s shirt. My breath came in gasps. “They’re coming too fast. I’m too tired. I can’t take another one. Please don’t make me push again. Make it go away.”

  He looked so pained and pale I felt sorry for him. He kept telling me I never had to do this again, that he never wanted to see me hurt this way again. That he’d get a vasectomy tomorrow. That was the best idea I’d heard in years. I even offered to perform it myself, only my version involved a rusty hatchet and some rubbing alcohol.

  “It won’t be long now, baby, I promise. Just try again, okay? Just a few more times—”

  “Go to hell.” I flung his hand away and turned to Laine, who was on my other side. “I know you have drugs in your purse,” I said. “I know what they are. Give me something, anything, please!”

  Laine looked dumbfounded. “Carri, I can’t give you cancer drugs!”

  Great. Here I was, stuck with Susie Sunshine. All she was missing were pompoms and a short skirt.

  “Useless . . . Get out of my sight.” I turned back to Jack. At least it gave me some small amount of satisfaction to see the pained look on his face. I wanted him to suffer. He had killed me!

  “Carrigan,” Doctor Davis said, “if you will give me one more hard push, I promise you I’ll hand you a baby.”

  My eyes pled with Jack. “Please, just leave it in there. I can’t,” I said. “Too tired, I can’t do it again.”

  “Look at me, baby,” Jack said, wiping my face with his hands and kissing me. “You are the bravest, most beautiful girl I have ever known, and I love you so much. Please, just one more time and you can stop. I promise. Just one more time.”

  I looked into his eyes, so full of love and concern. He was so good to me. Even when I didn’t deserve it, he was good to me. But I still wanted to kill him.

  “Once more and that’s it.” I ground the words out through gritted teeth. “That’s it, you hear me?”

  I looked at the monitor. The last
wave of contractions was almost here. I took a deep breath and prepared to push. If it didn’t happen this time, I would just go ahead and die on this table. I was remarkably all right with that.

  I shut my eyes tight, locked my jaws together, and pushed. I felt the scream through my clenched teeth, felt the release, and then relief came at last as I collapsed on the bed.

  I had done it. I opened my eyes and saw tears roll down Jack’s face. I heard Laine gasp in awe and heard Ella Rae hit the floor when she fainted. Then I heard my baby cry.

  “It’s a girl!” Doctor Davis said. “A very mad little girl with a whole lot of red hair!”

  “Is she all right?”

  “She is perfect,” Doctor Davis said. “Give me a couple of minutes and she’s all yours.”

  I was crying, Jack was crying, Laine was crying, and Ella Rae was being helped into a chair by two nurses. We watched as they cleaned the baby, weighed her, and wrapped her up tight in blankets. Doctor Davis brought her to me and put her in my arms. “Congratulations, Mama and Daddy,” he said. “She’s an eight-pound beauty. You did good, Mama.”

  All I could do was stare at her. Perfect, indeed. A perfect little beauty with pouty pink lips and a tuft of red hair. I knew as soon as I touched her that my life would never be the same, and I didn’t want it to be. This soft little helpless creature wiggling and squirming in my arms tugged at my heart in a way I had never felt before.

  How could that happen in thirty seconds? Surely there was a word for this stronger than love. Holding her made me feel like I had come home after a very long trip that I hadn’t really wanted to go on. I couldn’t take my eyes off of her. I hadn’t even known I wanted her, but her existence somehow soothed me. My life up until this very moment seemed like a series of hits and misses. Then someone had placed this gift in my arms that I didn’t deserve, and now my life made complete sense. Just like that.

  I’d heard the word miracle thrown around all my life. But tonight my infant girl changed my whole perspective on the world just by entering it. If that wasn’t a miracle, I didn’t know what was.