“Hey!” Melinda clapped her hands simultaneously. “I need you to focus, okay? But I don’t need you to be scared. Your body is going to do exactly what needs to be done. Do you understand?”
Amara nodded.
“How old are you? You seem young.”
“Old enough.”
“Hmph. You’re very young, then. I’m impressed you chose to go outside of the hospitals for this. A lot of them are death traps anyway.” She massaged Amara’s thighs and continued, “But don’t let me scare you. You’re doing great. Are you stressed at all?”
“How can I not be?”
“Give me your hands.” Amara placed her hands in Melinda’s palms, and Melinda cupped them and gently tugged forward until both hands were underneath her breasts. “Remember, your body is going to do exactly what it needs to do.” No sooner did Melinda continue to reach her hand deep into her sex than Amara felt another contraction coming on and clenched.
“No, no, no, don’t do that! Don’t grit your teeth. Let it out.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
Amara looked out the windows. The sun was beginning to set. More people would be out in the streets as they returned home from work.
“I just can’t, okay?” Amara snapped.
“Then I need for you to focus on your breathing. Don’t hold it in. Keep pushing it out. Try with me.” Melinda poked out her chest as she inhaled then made an oval shape with her arms to accentuate the exhale. “Again. Again.” This was a birth like no other for Melinda. In her experience, the laboring processes were always filled with laughter and light and music, not dimness, silence, and solemnity. Melinda looked underneath the sheet draped over Amara’s legs. The gaping sight made her immediately roll back her sleeves and tuck any flyaway strands of hair behind her ears.
Amara got on all fours and started to grunt. The pain created comets and balls of fire out of the darkness. The bedroom walls were closing in on her, and Melinda’s body ballooned. Amara felt so small and vulnerable, but her body was reacting at a speed quicker than her mind could process. Every part of her was on the verge of exploding, and she began to panic.
A gasp. A large splash. As Melinda was pulling the baby out from between Amara’s thighs, Amara closed her eyes so as not to form a bond. With soft weeping and a cracked voice, Melinda congratulated Amara and extended her arms toward the child. Her fingers grazed over the baby, and her smile flattened. A transparent, plastic-like sac veiled the baby’s body, which was still curled into a ball. Its face was pressed against one side of the sac. A surreal portrait, the baby was peaceful within that sac, calmly opening and closing its eyes. Melinda called for Landon to come quickly. He opened the door and his prediction was confirmed. The baby was indeed born of the caul. The flicker in Landon’s eyes and his deep-set grin unsettled Melinda, and she nestled the baby closer to her breasts.
“Let me hold her,” Landon said.
“The new mother should hold her baby before you,” Melinda quipped, and turned her nose up at him.
“I don’t want to hold it.”
Melinda’s jaw dropped. “Don’t you want to at least—”
“Do not pressure her, Melinda. Now give it here.”
Melinda pulled away and walked closer to Amara’s side. “Sweetie, do you want to at least give her a name?”
“Her?”
“Yes.” Melinda inched closer with the baby and leaned in toward her. “A girl. Give her a strong name. A difficult name. Not one that’s too easy on the tongue. This baby’s special.”
Amara took a beat, heard the sounds of chattering trick-or-treaters outside, and said, “Hallow. Call her Hallow.”
Hallow. Hal-low. The high and the low. All Hallows’ Eve. A night for sainted souls. A night for a new birth. Halloween. Hallowed be thy name. Make her holy. Make her sanctified. Make her loved.
“Hallow,” Melinda repeated. She made the sign of the cross over the child’s body. “Maferefun Yemoja.” She glared at Landon, who was delirious with glee over the baby, and then at Amara, who was still on all fours, her sweaty hair over her face, shuddering. Melinda wasn’t sure what she had gotten herself into on this night. None of the other births were like this. She couldn’t quite place why, but the translucent beads of her eleke became clouded, and that was enough for her to gather her things. “I should be going now.” She took one last look at Amara and placed a hand over her chest before leaving.
“I’ll have Valerie clean you. You don’t worry about a thing. You’re going to get well. You’re going to do well in school and you’re going to be what you always dreamed of. Everything is still going according to plan.”
“Is she alive?”
“What?”
“Is she alive? I haven’t heard her cry.”
“Yes, she’s alive.”
“Then why didn’t she cry?”
Landon thumbed Hallow’s caul and said, “Because she knows exactly where she is. She’s at peace.” He covered Hallow with his trench coat and called Josephine. She had been waiting since the early morning for any updates and tried her best to extract any information out of him. He would not budge. He only told her to bring everyone down into the dining room, and that he would be over soon.
3
Maman had been crunching numbers in the crook of her office all day long. Her eyes were not what they’d once been, and there were always miscalculations somewhere, even with the help of her bifocals and megawatt overhead light bulbs. Long passages of notes were strewn across her cherrywood desk. Crumpled pieces of paper overflowed the waste bin near her feet. The B.B. King that crooned from her vinyl record player, usually a balm to her anxieties, made her back tense up and her knuckles flare. Maybe, she thought, in hindsight, she should have ignored Iris’s premonition and
