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“I can see the top of the head!”
Tamar nodded. Exhaustion was taking over. I could see it in her face. She was trembling too. I wasn’t sure if it was the cold or her body’s reaction to the pain.
“Clyde, try to see if you can find a knife or scissors. We have to cut the cord.”
He sprung to his feet and raced from the room like he was glad to have something to do.
“You know he’s scared to death,” Tamar said.
“Poor thing. He has to watch you endure labor when you’re actually the one suffering.”
Tamar shook her head. “Don’t be like that.”
“Like what?”
“He’s a good guy. He loves you too.”
I was too curious not to ask why she thought so. “What makes you say that?”
“He can’t take his eyes off of you.” Tamar grunted from her chest.
I pulled the First Aid kit Clyde located and sifted through it. “He’s never had a problem looking at me.”
“It’s not a lusty look. It’s love and heartache.” Tamar spoke through clenched teeth.
“We’ve already had enough talk about me and Clyde.”
“I’m trying to think about something other than this pain!” She screamed and thrashed her head around on the pillow. “Another one.”
“I see hair. You’re close. Push again.”
“Lord, please don’t let me lose my bowels. We’re making a big enough mess in your house as it is,” Tamar cried.
Clyde came back into the room with one of those multi-tool things. He pulled the knife piece out and put it down next to me.
“Get behind her. She needs support at the back.”
“No!” Tamar shook her head. “I need you to film. Stephen needs a video.”
Clyde blinked a few times before stuttering. “You want me to film?”
“Yes,” Tamar insisted. She shoved her phone across the floor.
“Tamar, I don’t...”
“Shut up and do it. You’ve seen a vajayjay before. Mine isn’t even sexy right now.”
Clyde picked up the phone and sat on the floor behind me.
“It’s coming!” Tamar propped herself up on both elbows and grunted and pushed.
I grabbed my bathrobe from the pile of clothes we’d assembled next to us. I remembered from the other time that the baby shot out like a rocket, so I was prepared. “Push, push, push, sweetheart.” Tamar kept pushing and groaning. I pushed her legs open and back as far as I could, but I didn’t have to help much. The baby slid out of her body. I caught it in the robe.
Tamar fell back. I looked at Clyde. I could see he was forever traumatized, but he was holding that phone.
Thank you, Jesus. A rush of emotion swept through me. I’d delivered a baby. I placed the angel on Tamar’s chest.
She cradled the slippery little body to her chest. “It’s a girl.”
I nodded. “It is.”
Tamar smiled. “I felt it.”
I picked up my robe and covered both of them. Tamar was shivering, and I knew the baby had to stay warm. I used a tissue over my finger to scoop the stuff out of the mouth. The room filled with the newborn’s wail.
Clyde got closer. He filmed the first few minutes of Tamar holding the baby.
“Stephen, you have a daughter.” Tamar positioned her like she was making a presentation. “We love you.”
Clyde smiled. Tears mixed with perspiration ran down his cheeks. “What’s her name?”
Tamar kissed the top of her head. “She doesn’t have one. We wanted to decide when we saw her or him.”
I touched her little foot. “Well, Baby Pierce, you are blessed no matter what your name is. You have been born in Bethlehem. Pennsylvania, but Bethlehem all the same.”
I gave them five minutes to bond and then said, “I need you to push again. We have to get the placenta out of you.”
“I’m tired.” She was still shivering.
“I know but give me one more really good push.”
Tamar raised her knees and pushed while I pulled on the long cord until the sack came out of her. Clyde looked like he was going to throw up. “You can look away now.”
“Too late,” he said. “I’m messed up for life.”
I reached for a piece of gauze I’d cut from the First Aid kit and tied the cord off at about six inches from the baby’s belly. I used the knife to slice below it. Mother and daughter were separated.
“How did you know where to cut?” Clyde asked.
I raised a hand and wiped the sweat off my forehead. Suddenly my body remembered how cold it was and I shivered too. “You don’t forget the details of an event like childbirth. I heard the nurse say, ‘catch the baby and tie off the cord at six inches.’” I raised a finger. “She told the women with her that the distance from the top of your pinky to the first line on your finger is about an inch.” My shoulders dropped. I was exhausted. “Catch the baby and tie off the cord. Get the afterbirth out. I’ll never forget that.”
I wiped the baby off with the cloth we’d had warming next to the heater. Tamar was trembling uncontrollably, but she pulled her close. I piled all the clothing we’d unpacked on top of her to try to warm her up. It took a few minutes for her body to relax.
I pulled the choir robes from under Tamar’s bottom and placed them in the wastebasket. I unfolded another and put it down. She was still oozing blood, but that was normal. Women didn’t have to wear those diaperish looking pads for nothing. The body was going to bleed.
“How are you feeling?” I asked.
“Grateful. Thank you.”
I smiled. “What are friends for?”
Tamar chuckled and tears sprang from her eyes.
I wiped up as much as I could while Clyde added more wood to the fire.
I stood. Tamar and the baby drifted off to sleep.
After washing up, I slid my coat on. “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I need some fresh air.”
“So do I.”
We stepped outside. I realized Clyde was right about the darkness. It never fully enveloped the sky. The low clouds hugged the snowy mountain caps in the distance and created a hazy light. It was breathtaking.
“You did an amazing job in there,” Clyde said.
“You helped.”
“I woke up this morning and I thought, I’ll work out, pick up Thai food, and binge on TV,” he said. “That was all my day was going to consist of. Nothing and now this...”
“Yeah.” I felt the same sense of overwhelm. “This.”
Clyde hesitated like he was finding confidence. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
He leaned against the wood railing. “What happened to you after the shelter?”
Today had already been an emotional day, but I cleared my throat and told him. “We lost everything, which wasn’t much. My mother and I moved to Atlanta. We stayed for four years, and then we went back to New Orleans. We had a hard time. My mother was different. Losing her stuff took everything out of her. I had to take care of both of us. I worked almost a full-time job and went to high school. I saved every dime I could until I had a car. Then I saved some more. I was going to move us to a better apartment, but before I could find one, my mother moved her boyfriend in. All he did all day was smoke weed and play video games. I couldn’t stand it. The day after my cosmetology school graduation, I packed the car and left to go back to Atlanta.”
“By yourself?”
“Yeah. I mean, I was twenty. I was all I had. I figured I could make it.” I shrugged. “I knew a few people from before, but no one I could go live with or anything, so I lived in my car for six months. I worked the worst jobs and dated worse men.”
“Men like Tony?”
I snatched my head back. “Tony came much later, but you knew?”
“The makeup was good, but there was one night you went a little light on it.”
“What night was that?”
He smiled like the memory was pleasant. “The night we went salsa dancing.”
I remembered. The perfect date. I looked into Clyde’s eyes. He’d been good to me. I’d been good to him. I’d been looking for a man like him my entire adult life, but...
“Can I ask you something else?”
I waited for his question.
“How did you develop such a close relationship with God when everything was so messed up?”
I took a deep breath. Not because it was a long story, but because he wanted to know. He’d never asked me anything like this before. God, what are you doing?
“I mean if it’s private...” Clyde’s words trailed off.
“It’s not, but you have to answer a question for me when I’m done,” I said, and he agreed. “During those years in Atlanta, I was working like four jobs. One of them was concessions at the Georgia World Congress Center. One weekend, I worked a church conference event. One of the local ministers invited me to his service. He told me to bring my appetite because there was dinner after for visitors.” I chuckled remembering it. “I went for the food.”
Clyde smiled, but I could tell he was inhaling every word.
“I kept going back for the food, or at least that’s what I told myself, but the teaching...it was good. I was soaking it all in. Before I knew it, I was in love with the word. I was in love with Jesus. I finally had the father I’d been missing my entire life.”
“Did you have a big conversion experience? You know walking down the aisle of the church and getting baptized.”
“Not really. I told the pastor I wanted to make a confession and I did. The church members had been seeing me every week, so they accepted me.”
“Interesting. I always imagined you would have a big to-do.”
“Nope, making confession to God can be as public or personal as you want. Getting to know him isn’t a moment, it’s a journey.”
Clyde was thoughtful. “What did you want to ask me?”
“How did you lose your way from the faith?”
Clyde’s intense brown eyes bore into me. “I don’t know that I was ever really there.”
I shook off the intensity of this stare. “I don’t believe you. I think something happened.”
A beat of silence passed before he said, “You know my mother was a single mom, like yours. She worked hard to keep our heads above water. She had trash jobs because she only had a high school diploma. A friend got her a position in a call center in Florida.” He smiled. “She loved Florida, and the office she was going to work in was two blocks from the beach. That was her dream.” He paused. “I’d just graduated college, but I had a big job interview, so I couldn’t ride down with her, and she wouldn’t wait until my interview was over. She drove down by herself. Straight through with only two short bathroom breaks. She was so proud of herself for being able to do that.” He got a faraway look. “Then a few days later, I got a phone call. I was told she was gone. Her landlord came to fix something. He found her.” Clyde disappeared in his memories. I took his hand as I waited for him to come back to me. “They told me she had a blood clot. It was most likely the drive.” His eyes filled with tears. He looked away.
My voice, heavy with emotion, failed me. “I’m so sorry.”
“That was the hardest time in my life, and I tried to make peace with it, but I couldn’t wrap my mind around God taking her away from me.” He stared in my eyes. I could see the pain. “I know things happen. I understand that, but she deserved better. She’d raised me alone and this move was something she was doing for herself. And don’t let me add the disappointment of her not being here to celebrate my success. I hate it.”
I raised a hand to wipe his tears. How had I not learned this in the seven months we’d been together? It was such a sad and tragic part of his life. We were silent for a few moments. “I complain about my mother all the time. I feel silly.”
Clyde shook his head. He chuckled. “You have valid issues with your mother.”
“Yeah, but my best friend lost her mother. I know how much it affected her. I should have been more empathetic.”
“You’re being empathetic now.” He smiled. His eyes lingered on mine until my heart smiled with his. “Stephen’s injury taught me a lot last year. What I watched him endure gave me some perspective. Everyone has pain. You lived in a shelter and your car. That was brave.” He looked out at the mountain. He seemed lost in his thoughts again. I figured they were about his mother, but then he spoke, and I knew he was thinking about me. “You’re still brave.”
“You do what you have to when you don’t have a choice.”
“Not everyone, Kim. Some people tap out.” He glanced at me and then turned to the mountain again.
I joined him in looking at the view. “I have to admit. It’s pretty here.”
“Gorgeous.” Clyde turned back to me. His eyes swept my body from head to toe. “There’s a lot of beauty here.”
I blushed. A shiver ran over my skin and my teeth began to chatter.
Clyde chuckled. “It appears you’ve had enough air.”
I nodded and pointed a thumb in the direction of the door. “We’d better check on Tamar.”
He pulled the door open and we went in. Tamar was still resting with the baby. She was also still bleeding. The entire choir robe was covered in it. I grabbed Clyde’s hand and whispered, “That’s too much blood. Something’s not right.”
