“Jo—”
“No. We’re of no use to each other. That’s why I sit by this here vanity mirror and cry after we make love. It’s the least I can do.” Josephine patted at the sides of her eyes with an embroidered handkerchief. “Don’t try to console me. I won’t have any of it.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“You know the part that hurts me even more? Is that you never cried for any of the losses I had.”
“I wanted to be strong for you.”
“And the way that Laila was crying. I almost jumped outside of myself. I wanted to console her and bring her inside. I wanted to say I was sorry, but I couldn’t. She’s not the first woman, you know. She’s not the first woman to leave a baby by the doorstep. We’ve denied others before. Only difference this time is that she had a crowd with her. I’ve seen so many losses both inside and outside of this door that I see them in my sleep. I almost feel like Iris, and I can see them in the mirror when I’m brushing my teeth every morning or they’re floating at the end of the staircase, and I have to hold on to the bannister so that I don’t fall down and break my neck. Sometimes”—Josephine grabbed her throat with her right hand—“I feel like I’m suffocating in here. You got your wife and your children. What do I have? Besides the life I observe passing to and from the doors when I check in on the bodega, making sure everything runs smoothly, I have nothing. At least if I have a child, I got someone to love, someone to call my own, and I can ease Maman’s fears that her legacy won’t be for nothing.” She paused. “I’d be able to take a good breath every once in a while.”
“You may be able to soon.”
“What?”
“I know a girl. She’s pregnant and she has too much of a life to look forward to to have a baby right now. It’ll all be under wraps to protect her future. She’s not giving birth in the hospital, so there will be no record there.”
“We’ve been over this, Landon. My child needs to have a caul.”
“The caul protects people from harm, yes? Those who have it are impervious to it, yes?” He moved to the other side of the bed closest to her. “The girl fell down the steps, on her stomach, and nothing was wrong with her. No bruises, no redness, no scars, nothing. She walked out of there like she hadn’t fallen at all. Even after she left, she told me there was no bleeding. I gave her money to go to a clinic under a pseudonym. The technician did an ultrasound and the baby was all clear. Heartbeat strong and all. I’ve never seen anything like it. If that baby was unharmed, then there’s a chance that it’s a caul that’s protecting it.”
“Hmph. Stranger things have happened.”
“Have you heard of any pregnant woman falling on her stomach and neither her nor the baby being injured in some kind of way?”
Josephine paused then sighed. “No. No, I haven’t. Is her mother a caulbearer?”
“No.”
“Hmm,” Josephine said.
“What is it?”
“She has to be a carrier if that child is born with a caul. Maybe someone in her family, generations ago, was a carrier or a caulbearer too. It can happen, so I’ve heard. But that’s if—and I mean if—this baby she’s carrying has it.”
“Do not say anything to Maman. She’ll worry you even more.”
“There’s nothing to say to her. If Maman can’t see it, then she doesn’t believe it.”
“She’ll believe it. She will.”
Amara felt stuck. Her aunt Laila’s cries were bleeding through the walls every night. Her mother, Denise, was either weeping or playing cabaret songs as loudly as she could, trying to dissociate herself from the tragedy that had draped over her entire home. Amara sat huddled in a corner in the dark with both hands over her stomach. She used to be afraid to sleep without a night-light, but the pitch black now granted her the peace of disappearing. However, she was not prepared to be this deeply plunged into her most sinister thoughts. A pillow could do, she thought. A gloved hand, a pillow held over Laila’s face, her convulsing body slowly falling limp. Or she could stab her—put her out of her misery—but she did not trust herself to thrust hard enough into an artery or major organ, not while watching the light shrink from her aunt’s eyes. She didn’t hate her aunt Laila. She hated what her aunt Laila was enduring. The miscarriages were one thing, her stillborn baby—who could’ve been a bundle of joy had the Melancon women helped—wholly another.
Amara had heard of the power of the caul but thought it was a superstition that became real to some people when they were struggling with an illness or needed protection of some other kind. Now, it didn’t matter if she believed the caul was real or not. She wanted this belief to be extinguished as quickly as possible and questioned why no authorities had ever infiltrated and shut the Melancons down. No, they weren’t prostituting, technically, but they were selling their bodies. Someone had to do something about it. Being a lawyer was her dream, but maybe she needed to be more specific. She wanted them to be punished to the fullest extent of the law. Her murky cloud of a dream suddenly transformed into the sharp, narrowed end of a lightning bolt. But first, she had to deal with her
