The contractions came faster. They clambered one on top of another until there was no space to breathe. Rosa tried to recall her labor with Emma. Had it been this bad, this unrelenting and furious and uncontrollable? She couldn’t remember, couldn’t concentrate. The pain was so big it filled her up. It left no room for a lungful of air or a cogent thought.
She shouldn’t be having this baby at all, and certainly shouldn’t have come back to Michigan for the delivery. But from the beginning, she had a deep, scared feeling about this pregnancy and she needed Maggie with her. The midwife kept checking Rosa’s cervix, but Rosa watched Maggie’s face for clues. And Maggie’s face was grim.
Even with Maggie looking so gloomy, Rosa was glad to let someone else be in charge. Being underground had sounded so romantic, but living on the run with a fifteen-month-old child was lonely and hard: temp jobs through a different agency every couple of weeks. Changing apartments and day care centers every few months. Not being able to get deeply involved in any political group—not beyond being a follower, a member of the crowd. Never getting close enough to anyone for them to start asking questions about where she came from or why her baby’s skin was dark. Following the rules about what was safe and what was not. Rosa had never done very well with rules. She was breaking a major one right then—never return to your hometown.
Having this baby was breaking another rule. One nobody had bothered to tell her because it was so obvious, so basic. Even if Rosa hadn’t understood for sure how risky, how dumb it was to continue the pregnancy, Maggie’s response would have made it clear.
A month after Pop’s death, Maggie visited Rosa and Emma in their one-room apartment in Ohio. Rosa wore baggy clothes all weekend and waited until Sunday afternoon to make her announcement.
“You’re what?” Maggie put her elbows on the Formica kitchen table and leaned close to Rosa.
“You heard me.”
“Who’s the guy?”
“No one. A mistake.”
“Do you want me to arrange things?”
“Nah, I’m going to have this baby.”
“Are you crazy? You can’t take care of two babies.”
“I can’t explain it, but I need to do this.”
“You’re nuts. Listen, I’ll go with you. We have better contacts now than the Butcher.”
“It’s too late.”
Maggie raked her fingers through the short stubble of her hair and muttered that she’d never understand straight women.
“One more thing,” Rosa said. “I’m coming home for the birth.”
“Not Detroit. You know that, Rosie.”
“Okay. Compromise. Ann Arbor.” And Esther had always claimed that Rosa was missing the gene for compromise.
“That’s not much of a concession. I know a great midwife there, but it’s awfully risky. You’re too well-known in Michigan.”
“I’m tired,” Rosa said. “I want to go home.”
Tired and lonely. Tired of following the rules to avoid getting caught, tired of living a half-life. Some days she just didn’t have the energy to take care of herself and Emma. Maggie didn’t know any of that because Rosa hadn’t told her, hadn’t told anyone. She was just tired of running away. She couldn’t do it anymore.
Maggie was worried about it, but she talked to the midwife, borrowed an apartment, and made the arrangements for a home birth.
It was hot for June, and the State Street apartment was steamy and close. Emma sat next to her on the mattress on the floor jangling a set of keys. Rosa smiled at her in between contractions when there was an in-between. She rumpled Emma’s dark curls with hands damp from sweat and fear. Sometimes Emma wobbled away to find her stuffed armadillo or the yellow metal truck that dumped crumpled paper rocks onto the floor. Maggie kept an eye on Emma. She bathed Rosa’s face and belly with a cool washcloth and conferred in whispers with the midwife.
Rosa spiraled her fingers over the taut skin of her belly and watched Maggie get Emma ready for bed. At sixteen months old, Emma had just two words, “Mama” and “Didi,” her name for the armadillo. Rosa knew she had placed her daughter’s well-being in danger by returning to Michigan, but she needed to be home. Whatever happened with this birth, with everything, Maggie would take care of things. Maggie would make sure Emma was safe.
Besides, she couldn’t stay in Ohio. It wasn’t safe after the shootings. Her job at the campus cafeteria was okay, and she helped write anti-war leaflets in the evenings. It wasn’t a bad life, and the women in the university day care center were kind to Emma. But when the National Guard troops started shooting at students on the Commons on May 4, Rosa had been on lunch break, sitting on the steps of Taylor Hall, eating her sandwich. “They’re blanks,” the students near her yelled, but Rosa knew they weren’t. She walked back to her cash register early, trying to look uninvolved. She wanted to stay, to help or riot. But her eight-months-pregnant shape made her stand out too much in the crowd of students. And what would happen to Emma if she got arrested, or hurt? She packed up their clothes and they were on a bus out of town within hours.
Rosa turned onto her side. She grimaced, dug the heel of her hand into the sore spot on her back. She wished Mama were there too, fussing and making her phuff noise and taking charge. Funny, when just a few years ago, she had felt wondrously free to be finally away from parents and home.
To escape the pain, she made herself remember the autumn when Esther finally joined her in Ann Arbor for college. The four of them worked so well together, the sisters and Allen and Jake. They were finally adults. They helped organize the very first teach-in against the war. That night, drunk on the energy of their success, the four of them renewed their camp vows, this time forming their circle in the center of the Diag in the heart of the Michigan campus. Again, the ring of sparks fused them together. Rosa felt so alive and full of hope.
“Hey, Rosa,” Maggie said, her face close. The midwife squatted at the foot of the bed looking grim. “You’re bleeding too much. Hemorrhaging. We have to transfer you to a hospital.”
“I told you. No hospital.” The contractions were less intense, but Rosa’s head was caught in a cyclone. Dizzy, from the idea of a hospital, or maybe from the bleeding. She could feel the stickiness under her bottom, the warmth seeping up her back. “Please.”
She had broken the rule against returning to Detroit once before, in March when she went to the hospital to visit Mama. Another stupid move. She didn’t go home when Pop was buried because she knew the Feds would be staking out the service, but when Mama collapsed a few weeks later, Rosa couldn’t stay away. Maggie gave her a set of soiled scrubs and snuck her into the hospital.
Mama had been sprouting monitor wires, tubes in her nose and both arms. Deep pencil-thin creases circled her mouth and nose, tracing the inward collapse of her facial bones. She wanted to ask Maggie if those lines meant anything about how sick Mama was, but she wasn’t sure she could bear the answer. Mama was sedated but seemed to listen to Rosa talk about Pop and Emma, and then Rosa slipped out of the hospital without being caught.
Rosa couldn’t count on luck like that again, even now when she badly needed it. She looked at Maggie’s face and knew there was no choice about the hospital. The pain was still there, but it had retreated far away. Rosa closed her eyes. Maybe she could rest for a minute, though it was hard with all the shadowy images hovering in the mist behind her eyes: National Guard troops on the campus with bayonets. Brown-rumped horses rearing up. A luminous circle with Allen and Esther and Jake on the Diag. Thousands of cranes bursting into the air from a bed of daylilies.
“Wake up.” Maggie held a drowsy Emma over her shoulder. “Say goodbye to your mama,” Maggie whispered, holding Emma’s sleep-flushed cheek to Rosa’s sweaty neck for a nuzzle and a kiss, and then against Rosa’s bare belly for just a moment. “And to your baby brother or sister.” Then Maggie held Rosa’s chin in her free hand. “The ambulance is on the way. I’m taking Emma to Allen. I’m so sorry, Rosie.”
Rosa kept her eyes open long enough to see Maggie open the door to the back stairs with Emma cradled in one arm, whimpering. Maggie’s other hand towed a plastic garbage bag spilling diapers and baby clothes and the stuffed Didi. Rosa could hear the thump of Maggie’s shoes and the garbage bag going down the back stairs. The crescendo of Emma’s crying. Maggie knows something she’s not telling me, Rosa thought. She dozed as the distant whine of the ambulance grew louder.