“How did you know it was a girl?”
“Scissors,” Tillie said. “We need scissors. Clean scissors. And two clamps. Shoelaces. Something.”
He looked around the room as if he would find them there. Then, with a shake of his head, he raced down the stairs. He was back in seconds with a pair of scissors, two clothespins, and a bottle of alcohol. He opened the scissors and used the alcohol to sterilize them and the clothespins as best he could. Then he looked to her for further instructions.
“Cut the cord,” she instructed. “You have to clamp it first.” She showed him where and he did as she said. He was reeling from the fact that she had just had the baby. She’d had the baby right there in his house. A perfect baby girl.
* * *
Tillie looked down at the child she held in her arms. She did it. They had done it. She could still hardly believe it.
So it was true what they said, what the English ladies had told her about childbirth. She had expected to feel uncomfortable with someone else in the room, even worse if that someone was a man, and doubly worse if it was Levi Yoder. She had been reluctant at first, but that had soon disappeared as she labored on. All modesty seemed to fly out of the window in the face of the health and well-being of her baby.
She touched the infant’s tiny little nose. Perfect nose. She shouldn’t think her baby was perfect, but she was. The tiny creature had come out whole. Ten fingers and ten toes and a sweet little mouth that was eager for her first meal.
The embarrassment had returned a bit when she had to ask Levi to leave so she could pass the afterbirth. Having a baby was a messy business. But worth it. So very worth it.
And she knew then that she was right not to believe the baby was a mistake. How could she?
When it was all said and done, she moved into the chair still holding the baby while Levi stripped the bed and stuffed the sheets into a garbage bag. They were beyond washing, and she promised to buy him some new ones. It was a small price to pay for all that he had done for her. But he waved away her offer as if it was meaningless. Perhaps it was for him as well. After all, birth was truly a miracle.
A small knock sounded on the door, and she moved to cover the baby’s head with the sheet. It was more than awkward. She had a maternity dress, but not a nursing one. And when the baby wanted to be fed, she had to basically strip down to nothing. That was okay, she supposed, for a while anyway. It was starting to turn light outside now, and hopefully soon she would be able to leave. So it would only be a time or two. Maybe just this once.
Levi stepped into the room. “I don’t mean to bother you, but I brought you something to wear.” He approached the bed slowly. “The shirt’s mine. I’m not sure where this skirt came from. It must’ve been something of Mary’s.” Though she could tell from his voice if it was Mary’s, she had never worn it. For some reason that made her feel a tiny bit better. “This way you can . . . feed the baby.”
They had gone back to a little more of the awkward stage.
Tillie smiled at him. “Danki,” she said.
He laid the clothes on the end of the bed. “The weather report is not very good.”
“The roads?”
He shook his head. “There are trees down. A few of the roads are closed. Everything is still covered in ice. Some of the city streets got sanded and salted during the early-morning hours, but the back roads are pretty much impassable.”
“So what do we do now?”
“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I can go to the neighbors’ house about two miles down the road here. That’s my closest English neighbor. They have a phone. We can call for an ambulance or the fire department. Whoever we should call and tell them about the baby. I have a battery-operated radio in my workshop. I brought it in to see if there was any word about the storm. It seems there are a lot of accidents on the highway, so if it’s not an emergency . . .” He let his words trail off.
It wasn’t an emergency. She and the baby were fine. They had made it through the golden hour, that first sixty minutes after birth when things sometimes went wrong. That was not to say that something still couldn’t happen, but it didn’t seem likely at this point. There was no emergency.
She shook her head. “If no one’s coming, it seems a waste to have you tramp out in the ice and cold just to be told that no one can come.”
“I could call someone. Maybe your sister? The Mennonite one?”
Tillie nodded. “Or my nephew. They both have phones. We could tell them, but they wouldn’t be able to get word to the rest of my family.” Was it worth sending him out in the freezing weather just so two people wouldn’t worry when the remainder were probably beside themselves? A part of her wished he would go and tell Leah about the baby. But that was just the excitement that comes with birth. She wouldn’t ask that of Levi. She’d asked so much of him already.
“I don’t think it’s worth it,” she said.
He gave her a tentative smile, as if he could hear the sadness in her voice. He knew she had big news to share and no one to share with save him.
“Tomorrow,” he said.
