Morning Glory (33 page)

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 unfocused 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.”

Elly regretfully relinquished the baby, and Will laid her in the basket. Kneeling beside it on one knee, he adjusted the
pink shawl around her tiny form, touched her hair with a fingertip and murmured, “Sleep now, precious one.”

He rose to find Elly’s eyes on him and experienced a brief stab of self-consciousness. He was a man who’d had to learn how to talk to the boys, who’d taken weeks to feel comfortable with them. Yet here he was, after less than an hour, murmuring soft things to the baby girl who couldn’t even understand. His thumbs went to his rear pockets in the unconscious gesture that said Will Parker was out of his depth.

“I put her on her stomach like you said.” Deep love softened Elly’s smile while he stood fidgeting. “I—I’ll get your bathwater and—and be right back,” he sputtered.

“I love you, Will,” she said. She knew the look well, the pacified one that overcame him when things got too perfect for him to contain. She knew the stance, the thumbs-in-the-pocket, still-as-a-shadow suppression that said things were working inside him, good things he sometimes failed yet to believe. That was when she wanted him close enough to touch.

“Come here first.” He approached but stood a safe distance, as if touching the bed would damage her. “Here, beside me.”

He sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress and she had to reach up and pull him down before she could give the hug she knew he needed.

“You done good, Will. You done so good.”

“I’ll hurt you, Elly, layin’ on you this way.”

“Never.”

Suddenly they were hugging fiercely. He turned his face against her ear. “Jesus, she’s so beautiful.”

“I know. It’s a miracle, ain’t it?”

“I never knew I’d feel that way when I held her the first time. It didn’t matter that she wasn’t mine. It was as if she really was.”

“I know. You can love her all you want, Will, and we’ll pretend that she is. A year from now she’ll be callin’ you Daddy.”

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his mouth to Elly’s temple, then forced himself to sit up. “I best get that warm
water now, little mother. The boys are waitin’ to come in and see you.”

With a soft cloth and the baby’s soap, he sponged Elly’s tired limbs and sore flesh. Of the comfrey he fashioned a poultice, laid it on her torn skin and secured it with a cotton pledget and her plain cotton undergarments. He helped her don a clean white brassiere, clasping it for her before holding a fresh nightgown and watching her slip it on. He changed the bed and lifted Elly back into it before carrying out the soiled sheets to soak and finally going to fetch the boys, who’d waited in their rooms with the mysterious docility lent to children by solemn occasions.

“Ready?”

They nodded silently. Will hid a smile: Donald Wade had combed his own and Thomas’s hair, slicking it down with water until both heads looked flat as wheat in a cyclone.

“Your mother’s waiting.”

They paused inside their mother’s bedroom door, holding Will’s hands, glancing up at him questioningly.

“Go on then, but don’t bounce on the bed.”

They perched one on each side of Elly, studying her as if she’d turned into a character from one of her own fables, someone magical and shining.

“Hi,” she said, taking their hands.

They stared as if mute.

“Did you see your li’l sister?”

“We hepped Wiw give her a baff.”

“And we helped him dress ‘er.”

“I know. Will told me. He said you both done good.” They smiled, proud. “Would you like to see her again?”

They nodded like horses making a harness jingle. Elly told Will, “Bring her here, honey.”

She was asleep. When he laid her in the crook of Elly’s arm her fist went to her mouth and she sucked hard enough to make noise. The boys laughed and Will knelt beside the bed, leaning forward on his elbows. For minutes they all studied the baby while awe stole their voices.

At last Elly asked, “What should we name her?” She glanced up. “You know a pretty name, Will?” But his mind
went blank. “How ‘bout you, Donald Wade, what do you wanna call her?”

Donald Wade had no more notion than Will.

“You got a name, Thomas?”

Of course he didn’t. She’d asked him out of courtesy, so he wouldn’t feel left out. Touching the baby’s hair with a knuckle, Elly said, “I been thinkin’ about Lizzy. What you all think o’ that?”

“Lizzy?” Donald Wade scrunched up his nose.

“Lizzy the lizard?” Thomas put in.

They all laughed. “Now, where’d you get that?”

Donald Wade reminded her, “From the story you told us about how the lizard got bumps.”