Chapter 9: Ma Doula

We weren’t sure what she was trying to say. I was making a belly cast of her mama’s incredibly beautiful eight and a half-month belly and had invited Moriah, Dakota’s little five-year-old, to join us. Moriah hopped off the chair I had designated for her and asked, “Ma Doula, can I do that?” then “Ma Doula, I wanna help.” So I told her where to smooth out the plaster and gave her the job of holding up the gauze strips before I dipped them into the warm water to soften them. 

“Ma Doula, can I have a belly cast, too?” she asked. I told her she could when she was bigger and there was a baby in her tummy.

Then her mom said, “Baby, what’s you keep callin’ her?” Moriah ignored her mom, too engrossed in smoothing out microscopic wrinkles in the gauze as I laid it on, layer upon layer. Dakota and I let it go and kept chatting about finally getting to meet her son and how stressful the time had been, especially since she and Moriah were homeless. 

Dakota and Moriah had moved to Minnesota from Mississippi to be closer to family and friends, but had not been able to get an apartment in time for the birth.

“Ma Doula, how do I get this stuff off ma hands?” Moriah asked. I directed her to gently rub them together in the bowl of warm water until it all came off.

“Ma Doula, do I get tah paint it, too?”

Dakota had had enough. “Girl! What’s youz callin’ her, anyway?”

Before Moriah could answer, it dawned on Dakota. Talking to her mother and sisters on the phone earlier that day, and several times ­earlier in the week, she told them that she was “goin’ tah see ma doula.” Moriah thought it was my name!

I could hear Mary and Debby, my supervisors, giggling from their nearby offices every time Moriah called me that. It is ma new nickname at work: Ma Doula.

 

 

 

 

“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

~Maya Angelou