The couple so eager to adopt Tilli’s baby rush to the St. Margaret Home but must wait outside the infirmary.
“A very hard labor,” Sister Franziska whispers, “because Tilli is still a child herself.”
Herr Lämmle groans. “And if she can’t?”
“Kaiserschnitt.”
“Cut her open?” Frau Lämmle cries.
“It may not be necessary.”
“I have to see Tilli,” says Frau Lämmle.
Sister Franziska hesitates.
“I won’t do anything to upset her,” Frau Lämmle promises, and already she’s at the door, tiptoes in, crying without a sound.
Sister Franziska follows. “But if I ask, you must leave right away.”
Tilli is screaming, throwing herself from side to side.
“Does she have to suffer like this?” asks Frau Lämmle.
Tilli waves her close. “What if it’s born without a face?”
“It’ll have a beautiful face.”
“What if it’s born with a harelip?”
“Oh, Tilli—” Sweaty curls stick to Frau Lämmle’s temple. “My husband and I will love our baby, no matter what.”
The Lämmles used to visit the St. Margaret Home, holding and rocking babies. Wrapping them and unwrapping them. Practicing so they’d be competent once they found the right child. Yet always leaving without one. Until they met Tilli. They’re old enough to be her parents, at least thirty, apricot freckles and hair so much like Tilli’s that she can picture the child they’d make if they could.
“Yours is one of the lucky babies,” they say to Tilli.
“Already chosen before birth because you have good posture.”
“And good sense.”
It matters to Tilli how much the Lämmles want her baby—no matter how hideous. “What if it’s born … with just one arm?” she asks Frau Lämmle.
“We already love—”
“I want it to be a boy. I’ll name him Alfred. You can change the name. But not right away. Where will you take him?”
“Oh … three hours on the train from here. That’s why we arrived early. To be here when our baby is born.”
“But where do you live?”
“Hush now … hush…” murmurs Sister Franziska.
“South,” says Frau Lämmle.
Tilli wheezes.
“And a bit to the west. I’m not supposed to tell you.”
Then the pain again—a spooked horse into white-blinding ruckus that slams you to the ground—
“I wish I could suffer this pain for you,” Frau Lämmle cries.
That’s when Tilli knows the woman is crazy or lying because no one sane chooses—
—to ride your pain that rears up like a spooked horse and lets you crawl into your exhaustion before it rears up with you again and again till a rag on your nose your mouth—nasty nasty—spins you into disgust and fury spins you spins and—
—in that twilight of retching and spinning one fist one empty fist empty clenches your insides with each heave and the taste as nasty as the smell retching from the empty—
All St. Margaret Girls have been forewarned not to see their newborns, but when Tilli pummels her breasts and howls till she can’t breathe, Sister Franziska brings a red-fisted baby wrapped in white—
—when did that happen? when—
“If you promise to calm yourself, I’ll let you hold her.”
Her— As if the two of us were not enough, Alfred, there has to be a third. A girl—
“You are very brave, Tilli.” Sister Franziska wishes she could do so much more for her Girls. First teach them to prevent pregnancy. And then not wound them again by taking their babies away. Still, it would be worse for a baby to be raised by such a young mother. Sister Franziska understands about succumbing to the urgency of her body—to passion and to shame; understands about being banned from her newborn. Forty-one years since—
Tilli gulps and sniffles and lifts her arms to her baby. To the sweet weight. Oh— But the generations are all mixed up. How can my own girl look like the Lämmles? We will raise your child with love, they’ve promised. But Tilli knows once she lets go, they’ll take her own girl and not return. If only my baby had a clubfoot. A clubfoot and a harelip! Then the Lämmles won’t want her.
Tilli holds on to her own girl who wiggles her tiny body against her. Roots about. Bumps one cheek into Tilli’s collarbone. Tilli pulls her lower, against her breast; but Sister cups the baby’s head, gently, guides the rooting mouth away from Tilli.
Girls who give away their babies for adoption right after birth don’t get to nurse. Still, their breasts make milk that distends them. Some get blocked milk ducts. Sister Franziska is meticulous when she binds their breasts. Some homes won’t bind unmarried Girls, let them suffer for their sins. Like the home in Bonn forty-one years ago. Sister has never spoken of her son, not even in confession; yet, she holds him with every newborn who passes through her hands—that swirl of hair on the back of his neck, that tiny pucker of lips, eyes ancient and wise imprinting her on his memory—only to release him anew, with grace. This path toward grace exhilarates Sister Franziska with depths of faith she couldn’t have imagined in her prayers when he was taken from her.
She wishes she could imprint this grace on Tilli, temper her wild grief. “Tilli?” She caresses the Girl’s shoulder.
But Tilli hides her face against her newborn. Hide her hide her—
“Do you believe everything happens according to God’s design?”
Hide her where? Tilli grunts.
“If you can believe in God’s design for you and your child—”
A flutter of breath against Tilli’s throat and her own girl has a face and flawless feet and no clubfoot. Tilli tugs the bedding into a cocoon with space for her own girl to hide and breathe, locks her arms around the cocoon. You must grip what you cannot bear to lose.
“—then no one can shame you for having this child.” Shame. The poison of shame. Sister Franziska shivers and is fourteen again, still fourteen, and must confess, run away before her parents notice. At the first church beyond her village she stops, anxious to have it over with—confession followed by absolution. That’s how it’s been every time since she was seven and taught to examine her soul for sins, to be ashamed and ask God’s forgiveness. After her first confession: lightness where the burden of the sin was before. I could be so fromm. Pious. It’s that very lightness she yearns for as she waits on the stone steps for a priest who’d rather die than reveal her sin. It’s like that for every priest, part of his vows. Some of the martyrs were priests—beheaded or strangled or burned or drowned—because they wouldn’t betray a confession.
As Sister strokes Tilli’s shoulder, Tilli imagines rising in the smell of her own girl who is without sin, rising from this bed—oh, I can be cunning, can run so fast—and escaping. She must not fall asleep. Must stay watchful until she’s alone with her own girl—oh, we can be cunning, can run so fast—
—awake, she’s awake—still? again?—and the infirmary is dark and keening and she’s terrified of the keening and of the empty where her own girl—
is?—
was?—
how did they get you away from me?—
“Ssshhhh … Ssshhhh…” Veronika climbs across Tilli, spoons her.
Tilli keens and the keening funnels from her baby to her brother always curled around one another in the womb in the wicker cradle in the first bed in the hayloft curled and nothing changes as they inhabit one another and they never expect it to end and Veronika scoots her bony knees into the backs of Tilli’s knees, rubs the sides of Tilli’s belly while Tilli keens.
Keens.