For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whomsoever believes in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. – John 3:16
Though Elnora sat on the foot of her bed, Rebekah could not see her mater. It had not taken long for Thomas to return with her, which told Rebekah her mother was nearby, too. However, once Elnora had come upstairs, she was no longer her sweet, gentle, and meek mother. She spoke harshly and expected to be obeyed at once.
In seemingly no time and probably also in thanks to Thomas, Heloise also joined them and took her place near Rebekah’s head.
“On your back,” Elnora said, “knees up and nice and wide apart.” As Rebekah complied, Elnora had draped a sheet there, thus completely obscuring her from Rebekah’s view. “Just breathe deeply,” Elnora said. “When a pain comes, breathe deeply and most important of all, do not fret.”
Having her mater nearby helped ease the worry that had appeared with the sudden onset of intense pains, and her reassurance that the bopplin was coming made the agonies almost bearable. Almost.
“With each pain, your bopplin is a bit closer to being born and in your arms.”
Something sounded off in her voice, and Rebekah would have liked to read her expression. However, as her mother was obscured by the sheet draped over her knees, Rebekah had to be content with only her mater’s words.
“When was the last time you felt the bopplin kick?”
She thought for a moment. Was it today that I noticed he was still? Or was it yesterday? She knotted her hands together as another pain sliced through her middle from between her legs and threatened to split her in two. Or even the day before? Time really had taken on an entirely new meaning since she never left the bed, much less the bedroom. “Maybe it was today? Or a few days ago?”
Joseph’s mater, Heloise, dabbed at her forehead with a cool cloth. She blinked her eyes and offered Heloise a smile. “Danki, mater Graber.” Rebekah had forgotten her mother-in-law was there until she dabbed her with the coolness of the cloth.
It seemed between the birthing pains, the world around her fizzled into darkness, and she passed into a fitful sleep, her arms and legs jerking, and she herself powerless to stop them.
Heloise nodded. “Welcome back, Rebekah.”
“Welcome, from where?” Confusion muddled her brain. “From where had I gone?” Her sentence made no sense, but she did not care.
“The contractions are hard for you.” Heloise’s red hair peeked out from beneath her black covering, giving her a radiant look.
“Joseph?” Rebekah asked.
“Outside with your fater. Waiting to hold his kinskind, Lil’ Bit.”
The world around her grew fuzzy as another pain hardened her stomach. Rebekah breathed harder and her room grew smaller until everything around her was black and the only pinprick of light was the size of the eye of a needle. As the pain ebbed and passed, even that light extinguished into darkness.
In the darkness, she stood next to a woman. A woman who looked like her, only older. Long, blonde hair and big green eyes. She smiled at Rebekah and reached for her hand.
Who are you? Though her mouth moved, her words came out as a thought. It was very otherworldly and strange.
Your mother.
Rebekah went to embrace her, but the woman disappeared. A moment later she reappeared, farther back.
Not yet.
I am scared. I want to be with you.
I am always with you. Her radiant smile lit up the darkness. We will be together someday. But not today.
A splash of cold water brought Rebekah back. However, everything was distorted and nothing in her vision was as it should be.
“Get her on her knees,” Elnora said. Despite her words coming out in a whisper, her demure mater’s brash tone made her blood go cold within her body. “The cord is coming first.”
Heloise yanked and pulled until Rebekah was on her side. “Up now, Rebekah. Up now and onto your knees.”
Rebekah did as she was told, her head hanging helplessly. “It feels like I am ripping in two, but from the inside.” She sucked in a hard breath and her arms shook. “What is wrong?”
“Lil’ Bit wants you on your knees.” Heloise stuffed the pillow under Rebekah’s chest. “Maybe this will help.”
“I cannot do this.”
“You can.” Heloise rubbed Rebekah’s lower back. “And you will.”
Another contraction made Rebekah whimper.
“Now push your bopplin into the world.” Heloise rubbed harder. “And you will be a mater today.”
Rebekah felt the world begin to go away again and she wondered if she was dying. Another stabbing cramp, right on the heels of the last one, assured her that she was still very much alive. She groaned.
“None of that,” Elnora said. “No more noise. Now, take that breath and use it to give birth to your bopplin.”
Rebekah closed her eyes, in too much pain to be hurt over her mother’s scolding.
Gotte, help me. I cannot do this without you. I do not think, if I am being honest, that I can even do this with Your divine help. My first job as a mater, and I am already failing. Please, help me.
“Gute.” Elnora’s voice was brighter than before. “Like that Rebekah, on the next pain.”
Beside her, Heloise began to chant. The words muddled in her ears, but their strength was there. Ancient, low, and strong. Elnora joined in from somewhere, and Rebekah remembered at once where she had heard this chant before when she helped deliver her mater of bopplin Beanie, her tiniest bruder, in the hallway of her childhood home.
“Come, little one,” Elnora said. “Komme to your family.”
A final pain of biblical proportions relieved Rebekah in a strange and unexpected way. Voices sounded far off and very excited, but a peculiar, black exhaustion ensured she stayed apart from it all.
Rebekah’s eyes fluttered, then opened.
Joseph’s face, though blurry, was there. He was talking, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“What?” Her voice sounded far off to her own ears. Foreign.
“We have a sohn.” Joseph’s words finally began to make sense and his face began to grow less fuzzy. “Wake up, Rebekah, our sohn needs you to wake up.”
Her hand flapped nonsensically on top of the quilt. “What happened?”
Joseph’s hand found hers and stilled its flapping. “When Lil’ Bit was born, you gave us a scare. Seemed you couldn’t hardly stay awake during the birthing process, then when he was born, you started shaking. A moment later you were just…gone.” His hand stroked hers and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I was afraid.”
The world around her threatened to revolt, so she did not move.
Joseph continued. “Mater allowed me to come in to be with you so she could help Elnora with the bopplin.”
“Help?”
“Yes. Like his mater, it seems he does not want to wake up, either.”
“Did you? Him?” Groggy, Rebekah gave Joseph’s hand a weak squeeze. Finally, her command over her own faculties was beginning to return. “We have a him?”
Joseph chuckled softly. “Ja, we have a him.”
“Did I ask if can I see him?” Her words came out jumbled, but she hoped Joseph understood her meaning. She attempted to sit up, but the world began spinning. She let Joseph, who was still talking, lay her back onto her pillow.
“So much blood. You may not feel yourself for a while,” Joseph said. “Dat left for Montgomery a while ago to get the Englischer doctor.”
Rebekah suddenly felt sheepish. “Oh my, that is too much fuss. I will be fine.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Though I feel as if I could sleep for a week. Maybe two.”
“I need you to listen to me closely.” He leaned in close and stared hard into her face. “I will take care of you, Rebekah. I will let you sleep as long as you need. But the doctor is not for you. Elnora sent for the Englischer doctor for Lil’ Bit.”
***
Until that moment, Rebekah hadn’t noticed the shroud-like silence that had descended over the room. Suddenly very much awake, she turned her head this way and that. “Where is he? Please, I must see him. Joseph, please?”
She breathed deeply and looked down into the beautiful, handmade cradle. It was empty. Oh no. Everything in her vision swam, but she did not care. She clawed at the bedclothes until, with Joseph’s help, she managed to get semi-upright.
Then, she saw it.
The huddled mass of shoulders, their backs to her, across the room, beneath the far window. Elnora, Heloise, and Samuel. Their quiet prayers, rhythmic, low, and solemn, filled that corner of the room with love. And hope.
Rebekah listened hard.
A sniffle from outside the room punctuated the somber affair. Thomas’s head appeared around the corner. “Am I an aendi or an oncle?”
Rebekah flickered a smile at her little bruder.
Joseph nodded at him. “Komme in, Thomas.”
He dashed to Rebekah’s side and hugged her head hard. “Schwestie,” he whispered into her hair. “I thought you were dead. Then, when you were not dead, I thought…I thought you were going to die.”
“I was not too sure about the ending to this story, myself,” Rebekah muttered. Words were still not behaving correctly in her mind, but at least they sort of made sense as she spoke to Thomas.
Her gap-toothed brother continued. “I know I am supposed to have faith and not worry. That Gotte’s will is always right, and it is my job to always accept, not always understand.” His little voice was only a breath above a whisper in Rebekah’s ear. “But I still prayed hard for Gotte to make you oll recht whether it was His will or not.”
Joseph chuckled.
Thomas looked at him, his eyes wide with worry. “I thought Gotte might just need a little help making the right decision is all.”
“I love you, little bruder,” Rebekah whispered back. “I know in my heart that it was that very prayer from you that saved my life. Danki.”
“I cannot live without you, Schwestie.”
“Neither can I,” Joseph said quietly.
“I love you both, too,” Rebekah said. Tears filled her eyes. “Joseph?”
“Yes?”
“I need you to do something. Right now.”
“Anything.”
“Take Thomas to see Lil’ Bit. Please.” Rebekah hiccupped back a sob and turned her face to Thomas. “You are Lil’ Bit’s oncle, but I planned to, no, I will raise you both as bruders.”
Thomas’s freckled face shaded red, and his lower lip quivered. Tears hung from his fringe of dark lower lashes.
Joseph held out his hand, and slowly, Thomas took it. He looked back at her, but let Joseph lead him across the broad expanse of the room. Once there, Thomas looked down at the silent baby, then up at Joseph. “Oh no, Joseph.”
Still, the adults were chanting their syllabic prayer.
Thomas too innocent and curious to know better, tugged on Joseph’s hand. “Why is Lil’ Bit so blue?”
Joseph started to answer, but a sob closed his throat.
Samuel, sitting in the chair, patted Thomas’s shoulder. “He was born not breathing, sohn. The cord was born first. And that is no gute,” Samuel said. “That is why he is blue.”
Rebekah balled her fist and stuck it in her mouth. She bit hard to stem the hot tears that wanted to be set free. “No.”
Elnora and Heloise’s continuous chanting soothed the painful air that had overtaken the room. In a tub that had appeared from seemingly nowhere, the grossmammis shared the task of blessing their first kinskind with his first, and last, bath.
Downstairs, the front door opened and closed. A thunderous din of footfalls on the steps preceded Lucas Graber’s thunderous entrance. “I have the doctor from Montgomery. I pray I am not too late.”
Heloise dared a peek over her shoulder and gave her husband an infinitesimal shake of the head. Lucas took off his hat and trudged over to join the rest of the grandparents around Lil’ Bit’s blue, lifeless body.
The doctor was not the same nightcap-wearing doctor who had saved Samuel’s life when he had his heart seizure. This doctor was younger and fresher faced.
“I’m Dr. Williamson from Boston, new to Indiana Territory and certainly new to Amish life,” he said. He offered Rebekah a smile and patted her blanketed foot. “I hear you had a hard delivery following a complicated pregnancy, with possible toxemia, little lady. I can check you over momentarily, to make sure more children are possible in the future for you and your husband, if you like?”
Rebekah stared into his young face. “Doctor, please. Save my sohn.” She gasped. “Please. He will live. I know it.”
Still, Elnora, Samuel, and Heloise chanted the old-world prayer, now joined by Lucas. Thomas’s and Joseph’s shoulders shook in tandem as their quiet sobs spoke volumes.
Dr. Williamson produced an instrument from a black case. On one end, the instrument was split in two, which he placed into his ears. The other end was a single piece that he placed against Lil’ Bit’s chest. He moved it around to several different places, then removed the instrument and put it back into its black case. None of these things were the likes of which Rebekah had ever seen.
Dr. Williamson slicked his case closed and shook his head. Slowly he turned to face Rebekah and Joseph. “I am so sorry, folks. This baby is dead.” He turned back to the grandparents. “I suggest letting his mother see him and say goodbye. That way, she can commence to grieve, and then you, as a family, can carry on however you see fit.”
“No!” Rebekah pushed herself onto her elbows. The world pitched and rolled, but she did not care. “No!”
Dr. Williamson paused and adjusted his spectacles. “The sooner you grieve, the sooner you can heal.”
In a very un-Amish-like fashion, Rebekah began to pray. Loudly.
“Dear Gotte! The Almighty and ever-loving fater. Danki for the gift of my bopplin. Danki for the trials and suffering from the pregnancy that I was blessed to have, especially when it hurt, for through this, you have made the way for something wunderbaar. Something wonderful gute. Please look down upon my family now Gotte, do not forget us in our moment of pain. In our moment of need. We are your kinder, and right now we are in pain! Right now, we are in need!”
She was shouting, but she did not care. Somewhere behind the prayer, in the deep recesses of her mind, Rebekah saw the blonde woman who claimed to be her mother. She was holding Lil’ Bit, swaying in a long, white gown against the pitch blackness.
“Please,” Rebekah said aloud, “breathe life into Dawson ‘Lil’ Bit’ Graber. A kinder of Gotte who fought so wonderful gute to be born. Wake him up, Gotte. Wake him up! It is time for him to live!”
The room fell silent, even from the grandparents’ changing prayers. Together, as a family, they waited with bated breath to see what would happen. To see what Gotte would choose to do.
The image of her Englischer mater, holding her bopplin, in the back of Rebekah’s mind fizzled from blackness into the brightest light.
At once, a shrill shriek pierced the stunned silence that followed Rebekah’s outburst. All heads turned from Rebekah to the writhing, pink body, moments before blue and lifeless, in Samuel’s arms.
Rebekah collapsed back onto the pillow, her eyes fixed on her squealing, newborn kinder. “Danki, Gotte. Danki wonderful gute.”
Dr. Williamson’s mouth hung open. “I have heard it said that a mother’s love can cure all ailments. Now I know that it is true.”
Joseph accepted the highly agitated Lil’ Bit from Samuel. Slowly, he made the walk across the room to where Rebekah waited, with Thomas on his heel. “Mater,” Joseph said. “There is somebody that I would like for you to meet.”
Bleary-eyed, Rebekah accepted her wriggly boy. “You just needed some time and a little reassurance from Gotte, didn’t you, Lil’ Bit.”
“Just like we all do,” Thomas agreed. “Do not worry, Lil’ Bit. We were not going anywhere. We were all here, waiting for you.”
A chuckle, soft and sweet, rolled through the room.
“Danki, Thomas, for the courage to tell Gotte what we need and when we need it.” Rebekah winked at her fater. “You gave me the courage to pray to Gotte in such a manner. Seems as though you saved us both tonight.”
Samuel clapped his hands together. “How about we try my kinskind in his cradle?” He bent with a grunt and retrieved Lil’ Bit from Rebekah. Still, the skinny baby shrieked and shrieked.
It wasn’t until that moment, with the sun across his face and him holding Lil’ Bit, that Rebekah realized just how much her fater had aged, seemingly overnight. She sucked in her lower lip and her heart thwapped in her chest at the sudden realization.
With his trademark gentle smile on his face, he leaned down and placed Lil’ Bit in the tulip tree cradle, made especially for him. The tiny infant arched his back and squealed an even more piercing squeal than before. Samuel jerked him up with trembling hands. “Joseph! Please,” he cried, “search the cradle for splinters!”
Rebekah’s heart sank as her fater’s excited face fell in disappointment. He looked down into the empty cradle and handed the wailing infant back to her. Samuel forced a smile that was nowhere near genuine. “Perhaps it is as you say. He just needs a little time.”
Still, his grossdaddi face, moments before shining with hope and lieb, did not shine as brightly as before. In fact, it did not shine at all.