We watched her carefully and saw her relax as the pain eased up. “How often are the contractions coming?” Alana asked.
That impressed me. I didn’t even know the word contraction.
“I’m not sure,” my mother said. She turned to face the little digital clock on the bedside table. “Maybe you’d both better go wash your hands,” she said.
Nobody had ever washed better than we did that morning. The longer we soaped up our fingers and rinsed them off, the more likely it would be that the people from the medical center would arrive at our house. What did we know about delivering a baby? Nothing. N-o-t-h-i-n-g. Suppose we messed up. What would happen to Mom? And what about my baby brother?
I don’t remember either of us saying a single word to each other the entire time we were scrubbing our hands. I guess Alana felt just as frightened by the responsibility as I did. Finally we dried our hands and returned to the bedroom. Mom had changed back into her nightgown.
“Adam, fill the teakettle with water, and put it on to boil,” she told me. “And the big spaghetti pot too,” she added. I was relieved to run out of the room. If only there were many things I could do away from my mother, yet still help her during this terrible period. When the teakettle and pot were filled with water and on the stove, I stopped to check on April. She was completely absorbed by the crazy antics of Fred and Wilma Flintstone. She had no idea that anything else was happening in the world.
I couldn’t stall anymore, so I returned to my parents’ bedroom. There was loud music coming from the radio, but I could still hear my mother’s voice calling out, “Oh. Oh. Oh.”
I looked at Alana. Wasn’t there anything we could do? “How about aspirin?” I said.
Alana turned and saw me. She came toward the door and said, “Go call the medical center again. And call your father too. Maybe you’ll reach him now. Tell them that the contractions are only five minutes apart.”
“Is that good? Or is that bad?” I asked helplessly.
“It’s fine,” Alana said. “It’s just happening much faster than you’d expect. They say that for some women each baby comes faster than the one before.”
I was in awe of how calm Alana sounded about all this. Maybe the girls had seen a different video from the one the boys had, I thought. Or maybe it was in the female genes. After all, female cats and dogs and horses know what to do. Maybe girls and mothers do too.
I started to go into the bedroom, toward the phone near the bed, but Alana pushed me away. “Do it in the kitchen,” she shouted to me. “You’ll hear better.”
“Oh. Oh. Oh,” my mother called out once again over the sound of the music.
“Oh. Oh. Oh.” I heard it again. This time I didn’t know if the sounds were coming from me or from my mother.
I felt like a coward, leaving Alana alone with my mother, but I was thrilled to have another assignment out of that bedroom.
Back in the kitchen the air was all steamy, and there was the shrill whistle of the teakettle. The water had already boiled. The spaghetti pot was beginning to boil too. I turned the two gas burners down very low. I glanced at the kitchen clock and was amazed to see that it was almost ten-thirty. Dad would certainly be at the store by now, I thought.
But then I decided I’d better call the medical center first. Luckily the number was right there on the wall next to the phone. I punched in all the numbers and waited impatiently as the phone rang six times before someone picked it up. Six rings? What were they doing there?
“Deerfield Valley Medical Center,” a voice finally responded.
“When are you coming?” I asked. “The contractions are every five seconds. I mean minutes. But maybe by now they are seconds!”
I know I sounded all rattled and confused. But that’s how I was.
“Who’s calling, please?” the voice at the medical center asked.
“It’s me. Adam. Adam Fine. My mother’s having the baby. Right this minute. Why aren’t you here?”
“Adam, please keep calm,” the voice said to me. “An ambulance is on its way to your house at this very instant. It may be turning into your driveway even as we speak.”
I pulled on the phone cord as far as it would go and looked out the kitchen window. “There’s no ambulance in our driveway!” I shouted into the phone.
“Then it will be there any minute. Just relax. Everything will be fine.”
“Fine? Fine?” I wasn’t fine at all even if that’s my name. I began giggling at the thought. Adam Fine isn’t feeling fine.
I turned on the kitchen faucet and filled a glass with water. My mouth felt dry from all the tension, and I gulped it down quickly.
Then, forgetting to call my father, I ran back upstairs to see how my mother was doing. It was awful that I’d abandoned her and Alana. But over the noise of the music I could suddenly hear another sound. It was a baby crying. How could that be?
My mother and Alana were not alone. Half-wrapped in a towel but still attached to my mother by the umbilical cord was my baby brother. At least I thought it was a brother until Alana gave me the news.
“Adam,” she said in voice filled with emotion, “you have a new sister. And I helped deliver her!”
The baby was covered with blood and seemed as wet and slippery as the muddy roads outside. But she was so beautiful, with tiny features and limbs, that I wasn’t even disgusted by the sight. When we saw the film at school, we all said it was gross. But here in the room with Mom and the baby it was the coolest and most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my life.
I leaned over and wiped the baby’s face with a corner of the towel. I couldn’t believe that this crying baby had arrived magically into our home and into our lives while I was talking on the telephone in our kitchen.
“Now you have to cut the umbilical cord,” said Mom. She was half sitting up, leaning on a pair of pillows. Her eyes were shining, and there was a happy smile on her face.
“Cut?” I asked. I looked at Alana, and she looked at me. I didn’t think either of us could cut anything. The umbilical cord was about as thick as my middle finger. How in the world could I cut it? Could Alana do it?
“Take the shoelace out of your sneaker,” Mom said to me. It sounded crazy, but there amid the noise of the crying baby and the loud music I kicked off one of my sneakers and took the lace out of it.
“Now tie the lace as tightly as you can near the baby’s navel,” she said.
I did that. “Doesn’t it hurt?” I asked.
Mom shook her head and smiled. “No. Now go downstairs and get a knife from the kitchen,” she said. She was cradling the baby in her arms. “Get a sharp one. The one I use for slicing—”
Thank goodness I didn’t have to cut anything. At that moment April came running to the bedroom.
“There’s people outside the house,” she said, standing in the doorway. Then her eyes grew wide with disbelief. “When did the baby come?” she asked us.
“In the middle of The Flintstones,” I shouted, running down the stairs to let the public health nurse in the door.
After she had attended to my mother, the nurse turned to Alana. “Did you realize what you were doing?” she asked as she patted Alana on the back.
“Yep. But don’t worry. I won’t take your job away. I don’t make house calls like you do,” she said.
“Why didn’t you call me?” asked Dad, who had suddenly arrived home.
“We did. Twice. You weren’t there.”
“I’m buying a car phone,” said Dad. “Tomorrow.”
The rest of the morning became a blur. Alana and I were exhausted from the experience, and Mom was too. So was the baby. Mom and the baby both slept, but Alana and I had to keep answering questions from everyone. Somehow another phone chain started, and neighbors called for hours to offer congratulations and to marvel at what had happened.
“Were you freaked out?” asked Justin. “Was it disgusting?”
“No,” I said. I didn’t try to explain things to him.
He’d seen the film the same as I had. But seeing a film and seeing the real thing are as different as Vermont in mud season and Vermont in July.
Later in the day, after Alana’s parents had returned to town and picked her up, things began to calm down. But poor April was still confused about the arrival of the baby, and I couldn’t blame her a bit. I was confused, and I’d been there the whole time.
“What’s our baby’s name?” asked April.
“Well. We can’t call her April, even though she was born in April,” said Mom, leaning over to kiss April. “One April in a family is enough.”
April’s birthday is in July, so Dad said, “We could call her July. That would really confuse people!”
“We need another A name,” said Mom. “It’s three years since Grandma Gussie passed away, and it would be a tribute to her memory to use her name, or at least her first initial.”
Grandma Gussie was my father’s mother. Her real name was Augusta, and she was the one who cooked chicken livers.
“If we had an Augusta and an April in our family, it would sound like a calendar,” Dad said, forgetting that two minutes before he had joked about naming the baby July.
“How about Arlene? Angela? Annette?” Mom continued.
“Didn’t you think about names before this?” I asked with disbelief.
“We talked about names, but it’s not the same as giving a name to a baby in your arms,” Mom explained. “Before you were born, we called you Peter and Gregory and Matthew. Then, when I saw you for the first time, I said, ‘Adam.’ And you became Adam ever after.”
Even though my mother claims she named me Adam on a whim, I also know that she was very fond of her Grandfather Avram, and the A initial of my name is in his memory.
“I know an A name that we should use,” I said slowly.
“What is it?” demanded April.
I blushed a little before I said it. “How about the name Alana?” I suggested. “We wouldn’t really be naming the baby for Alana, but we’d be borrowing her name and honoring the memory of Grandma Gussie at the same time.”
“Of course! Why didn’t I think of it myself?” said Mom, looking down at the baby “In fact it’s perfect.” She looked at Dad to see if he agreed.
“I like it too,” he said. “And it’s a wonderful thank-you to Alana Brown for her help in delivering this young lady.”
So that is how we came to have Alana in the family.
One more thing happened as a result of Alana’s birth. A photographer from the Valley News arranged to take a picture of Alana Brown holding Alana Fine. It was on page three, and just in case there was anyone left in town who hadn’t heard the story of the home birth assisted by a fifth-grade student, there it all was spelled out in great detail. The picture is great, and I have a copy of it hanging on the bulletin board in my bedroom. But I was a little disappointed that the photographer didn’t want me to be in the picture too. After all, I’d been part of all that action even if I hadn’t been in the room at the exact minute that the baby was born.
There’s one more thing that bothers me. I never found out what were we going to use all that boiling water for anyhow.
10
A Llama in the Library
So suddenly I was among the older people in my family, with two little sisters to watch out for. It made me feel much older, even before my birthday added another year to my age. And now it was spring again too. Baby Alana was almost a month old, and we’d all started calling her Lani so as not to confuse her with the other Alana. One evening the phone rang. My father answered it, and then he called to me.
“Your books must be terribly overdue,” he said. “It’s Ms. Walsh from the public library asking to speak to you.”
I hadn’t been to the library in weeks, and I didn’t have any books out at all, so for a fraction of a moment I couldn’t imagine what he was talking about. But then it came to me.
“You didn’t forget that you offered to have your llamas come for the grand reopening of the library, did you?” she asked me.
“Of course not,” I said.
“We’ve set the date for the ceremony for Sunday, May nineteenth. Even though we’re not usually open on Sunday, it’s a day when the largest number of people will be able to attend. Besides, I’m hoping that sometime in the not-so-distant future I will be able to offer library service seven days a week.”
“We’ll be there,” I said. I was really looking forward to showing off Ethan and Ira Allen to everyone.
“Great,” said Ms. Walsh. “I’m going to print a flyer and get a press release out. It will make a big difference if I can count on the llamas being there.”
“Almost as good as the president coming,” I said.
“Adam, you’re brilliant. Why didn’t I think of it?” she shrieked into the phone.
“What did I say?” I asked. Then, remembering, I said, “Oh, forget it, Ms. Walsh. There’s no way the president of the United States will come to the library reopening.”
“I know that,” Ms. Walsh said. “But I’ll invite the president of every local organization. I can advertise that ten or fifteen presidents will be present. But you also gave me another idea. This is an election year. I might be able to get the governor to come.”
“You really think so?” I asked. I was very impressed.
“It doesn’t hurt to try. And I wouldn’t even have thought of it if you hadn’t given me the idea.”
It was nice of Ms. Walsh to give me credit. But I couldn’t really see the connection between my few words and her big plan.
Just as she promised, Ms. Walsh began publicizing the reopening. There was an article about the ceremony in the weekly paper and also one in the Brattleboro Reformer, which is published every day. There were signs up everywhere: in the supermarket, gas station, post office, Laundromat, bank, bakery. If you knew how to read, you knew about the celebration.
“What costume are you going to wear?” Justin asked me. Even though his interest in ghosts seemed to have faded since he’d been trapped in the secret stairway at the White House, he decided that he’d put a sheet over his head. “It’s the easiest costume in the world,” he said.
“Boring,” I told him. “I thought we were going as book characters.”
“We’re too old for that Humpty Dumpty stuff,” he said, referring to a pair of costumes our mothers made for us one Halloween when we were little.
“Why don’t you go as Johnny Appleseed?” I suggested. “There are a couple of books about him in the library. You could wear one of your mother’s pots on your head and carry a sack of apples. That’s pretty easy, and it will look more interesting.”
Justin liked the idea of the pot. “I’d be able to see better without a sheet over my face, and I can eat better too,” he admitted. “What about you?”
“I’m thinking of going as a gaucho,” I told him.
“Huh?” Justin responded.
“That’s a South American cowboy,” I explained. “One of my mother’s friends gave her an old straw sombrero as a joke. And with a bandanna around my neck and holding on to a rope attached to the halter of one of our llamas, I’ll look perfect.”
“What book is that in?”
He had me there. “You can hold the other llama even if you’re not a gaucho,” I offered, ignoring his question. “My mom will have Lani, and Alana said she’d an keep eye on April. My dad will probably want to go around talking to all his friends. They’re really expecting a mob at the library.”
Alana said she had a red cape that she could wear and be Little Red Riding Hood. If any other fifth-grade girl had said that, I would have thought it was babyish. But I knew she’d look more beautiful than ever.
“Great!” I told her.
All the local restaurants and inns were donating cakes and cookies. There would be fruit punch for the kids and coffee for the adults. It was going to be terrific as long as it didn’t rain. Even with the expanded quarters, there was no way the library cou
ld hold everyone plus the llamas. And maybe even the governor. Ms. Walsh told me that she had received a call from his office saying he would make every effort to attend the event.
Luckily, on Sunday, May 19, the sun was shining. After breakfast I brushed both llamas so they’d look their best. Then I went into the house and took a shower. I wanted to be extra clean in case I got a chance to shake hands with the governor. April, on the other hand, had green paint on her fingers. She had spent the morning helping my father paint the fence along the edge of our property. Now she was wearing her Raggedy Ann costume, left over from Halloween.
“Ethan Allen looks funny,” she announced to me.
“Don’t be silly,” I said. “I just brushed him. He looks wonderful.”
“He’s turning green!” April insisted.
Something inside me said I’d better go check. I stuffed the remains of the sandwich I was eating into my mouth and ran outside.
I could hardly believe my eyes. April was right. Since the time I’d groomed him, Ethan Allen had gone to inspect the freshly painted fence closely. Now there were bright green stripes going down one side of his body.
Any other day I would have laughed at my llama’s attempt to disguise himself as a zebra. But not on the day of the reopening of the public library. I wanted Ethan Allen’s white wool hair to gleam. He looked ridiculous with green stripes.
I could think of two alternatives—paint remover or a scissors. A scissors would be faster and smell better too. But how would my llama look with a haircut on just one side of his body?
I ran to ask my parents for advice.
“You don’t have enough time to give Ethan Allen a haircut or to try to remove the paint,” Mom commented, looking at the clock. She went over to a chest of drawers and pulled out a red-and-white-checked tablecloth. “Fold this in half and put it over his back,” she instructed me. “It will hide the paint.”
My dad drove us into town in our pickup truck. My mother and the baby sat in front with him and April, and I rode in the back with the llamas. I’d tied the ribbons from Alana around their halters, and what with the red-and-white tablecloth over Ethan Allen, they were looking really fantastic. Maybe we’d have to start putting tablecloths over both llamas whenever my mom went on one of her treks. The cloths could also be used when the tourists ate their picnic lunch.
A Llama in the Library Page 6