The last dead baby had been full term. It was her eighth pregnancy. Eva had just turned two. She’d insisted on giving birth in the city hospital near Our Garden. The delivery nurses had looked at her funny—this white woman laboring among rows of black mothers.
She pushed for six hours. Jules kneaded the knots in her calves with his strong hands. The soil from Our Garden stuck under his nails. He counted her contractions until the numbers blurred.
The doctor who delivered the baby left when he saw it was dead. Leslie would never forget the swish of the swinging doors as the room emptied. The one nurse remaining—Margaret, her name tag read—urged them to take a photo with the baby. They may not want to look at it now, she said, but someday … The nurse swaddled their baby in a blue hospital blanket and he looked like he was sleeping. Like he’d open his swollen eyelids and blink hello. Crack open his blue lips and howl. They took turns holding him. Leslie asked Jules, You won’t leave me, will you? We can try again, can’t we? Repeated I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry until she choked on her tears and snot and threw up in a pan next to the bed.
The nurse finally found the photographer. The same man happy new parents paid to take photos of their sleepy babies. Baby’s first bottle. Baby’s first diaper. Baby’s trip home from the hospital. The camera flashed. The baby—they had planned to name him Linnaeus after Jules’s beloved botanist—was taken away.