MAY 21, 1957
Baby B—
A girl-child. That’s what slips from between my legs. Slips—how quickly we use that word! How easily it slides off our tongues. And you do—slip—after eight hours on my hands and knees, of mouth to the moist armpit of the earth—moss, leaves, ash, dirt—beside the outhouse and north of the trash pit. I don’t have time to run down the hill. No way to call for help. I say, Here baby. A car slamming into my abdomen, time and time again. Ripping my dress off my shoulders. Weeping. Sweating. Swearing like a sailor. You goddamn bloody cunt of a god, and also, Here baby. Here baby. Here baby, come.
Otie hopping around in the leaves, frantic, warbling his throat-call of danger. The radio playing quietly in the cabin: Patti Page, ridiculously jaunty. Me thinking of all those heifers in the barn I’d seen, their arching backs and quaking legs. Their low bellows. Thinking, sure, we were born for this, but I’ve seen too many stillborns to count. Plenty of heifers who didn’t survive: bled to death or gave up on the trying. Thinking, goddamn cunt of a god. Thinking, Lex, goddamn you, this is what it costs me. Not you. Costs you nothing but pleasure. Your live dick and quaking back, but this—this—this! Goddamnit—is what it costs me and women everywhere.
And then another wave, and I’m on the ground, cheek pressed to dank earth, teeth clenching, arms shaking, spit rising from deep in my throat, thinking, Breathe, breathe, open, breathe, and Come baby, oh god, dear baby, come. Otie—hello. I’m okay. Oh, god.
And then he finds me.
Lex.
“Lena,” he whispers, putting his hand on my back, saying into my ear, eyes wide, “Hold on. I’ll be right back, with help.” Turning and running, and then my sister, strong and loyal-as-an-ox sister, Hazel, who has done this before, who has helped hundreds of times with the cows in the barn, is beside me. Those strong, capable hands. Breathe. She commands. Body smelling of flour, of butter, of barn. She says: Lex. Truck. Soon. But there is no soon. There is my back, rising, arcing. There is a sound escaping my lips. And my sister’s astonished gasp, a gush of water and gush of blood, and my hand reaching down and oh, there, the wet soft bulge of a skull, and then you are in my arms, there in the dirt, blue-green-eyed, blood-smeared, blue-limbed, breathing.
And I am breathing, too. Good Lord. I am alive. And I am breathing. And you are breathing, too.
“Bring her to your breast,” my sister commands, and I do. You leaf-flecked squalling thing. My sister takes off her sweater and rubs down your bloody face and limbs, covers you. Brings a blanket and covers me. A girl. A daughter. “Hold her there, until she gets it,” my sister says, and I do, this bird mouth, open wide, reaching, craven, baby bird eyes, brown or blue or green, I can’t tell, and then you’re there, latched, sucking.
Otie watches us from a nearby tree. Heartbeat in your little neck. Heartbeat in your bare blue shoulder. Heartbeat to the right of your visible eye. Translucent skin. Sucking. Oh, B. We are alive! Tears on my cheeks. Blood and shit on my thigh. We are alive. You and me. And you are fine: leaf-flecked, blood-speckled, perfect. I put my face against your girl scalp, still bloodied and blue and unbearably tender. “Bonnie,” I whisper. Bonnie for beautiful, for the Bonnie month of May, for the tune my mother sang: my Bonnie lies over the ocean. “Bonnie May Starkweather,” I say out loud, baby girl I bring to my chest again when you lose your latch, pulling my blood-smeared shirt away from your face, my whole body shaking, your little body against mine.