“No.”
“What about her immediate family—the grandmother, aunt?”
“None are.”
She did a double take at Landon. “Interesting. It’s rare to have only one caulbearer in an immediate family. Very rare indeed. Must be somewhere down the line but very, very rare.”
Josephine returned from the kitchen with the knife, and Maman snatched it from her hands, causing Josephine to retreat to a back corner to watch.
Maman spread the cover on the dining room table and placed Hallow on top of it. She scrutinized the newborn’s entire body, turning her over, to the side, peeking underneath her arms, and in between her small legs. Hallow began to fuss. Maman moved quickly, raising the utility knife in the air and inspecting it to confirm that its point would shine. That shine could sting the eyes when it was directly placed under the light. Landon focused to remain stoic. The vast wrinkles like river streams webbed from Maman’s eyes, multiplied throughout her neck, and coursed through her arms and hands. The caul was a thin layer above the epidermis. One incorrect movement, one misstep in coordination, could affect future measurements of strips that could later be sold. Maman placed the tip of the knife in the middle of Hallow’s forehead and then carved around the nostrils. The sound of the incision was akin to slicing through a gelatin dessert. Next, Maman had to delicately cut the part in her lips, ears, the hair, the spaces in between her fingers and toes, legs, vulva. Maman cupped some boiling water into her hands, and Josephine and Landon immediately averted their eyes from what was to come. She splattered the boiling water onto Hallow’s body and the baby wailed as Maman pressed the caul firmly into the skin so that it would remain attached.
The caul from Hallow’s face was then steeped into the remaining boiling water in which lavender, half a banana, and milk were the additives.
“Have you named her?” Maman spiritedly asked.
“Hallow is her name.”
“Hallowed be thy name,” Maman said reverently. She stroked Hallow’s chin and clicked her tongue at her. “Yes, we’ll keep that name.”
The caul tea cooled in a small bottle, and Maman motioned for Josephine to give it to Hallow.
“Me?” Josephine asked, pointing at herself.
“She’s yours to raise, and when she gets older, you’ll homeschool her just like you do Helena. Treat her as if she were your own daughter.”
Josephine and Landon locked eyes and inched toward Hallow. Josephine outstretched her arms and cradled Hallow, who shifted in her sleep to find the most comfortable position. She held the bottle to Hallow’s lips and exhaled when the child began to suck. “Hallow,” Josephine repeated. She quickly wiped the tears from her eyes so that nothing could obstruct the view of what she always wanted.
Josephine cradled and rocked Hallow from side to side, and everyone filed out of the dining room except Helena, whose own world as she once knew it was subverted. Helena used to be the miracle child. Before she was born, Iris used to harness her intuitive gifts by practicing as a medium, setting up a shop near their bodega to keep her occupied. Until one day she turned up pregnant like a stray dog. Didn’t say nothing about the father. Joked about the spirits impregnating her, since they hadn’t left her side since she was born. When Maman was in labor with Iris, there was a hurricane, and its warpath wiped out the gas and electric. It wasn’t until days later, as Maman remained in a hallucinogenic-daze from birth, that she realized she had forgotten to boil some of Iris’s caul for her daughter to drink in order to keep the spirits away, causing her to be touched for the rest of her life.
The stress that Maman endured over whether or not Helena would be a caulbearer was so intense that she lost all her hair. It grew back in short stubs, and only after Helena was born, forcing Maman—a woman unaccustomed to ever feeling forced to do anything—to wear turbans for the rest of her days. When Helena was born with that veil over her body, she was spoiled and deified—though confined to the brownstone—until the accident happened.
Unlike Maman, Iris didn’t want Helena to be a caulbearer. She wanted her child to be free, even if she had to put the wheels in motion herself. Maman used to take afternoon naps around the same time that she concluded her lunch: one thirty p.m. One day around quarter to two, Iris lured Helena outside and took her to the Bronx Zoo. The crowds and the abundance of animals distracted Helena at every turn. So much in fact that when she looked up to ask her mother if it was okay to feed the penguins, Iris was already en route back to Harlem, and she continued to smack her face so that she would not cry. Hopefully, Iris thought, another family would see Helena by herself and take her with them. Any alternative would be better than the environment she’d grown up in. And at the very least, Iris had a photo of Helena to immortalize their last moment together. She had captured the image with a Polaroid camera while Helena was busy learning about the different species of birds, and it would now be the last snapshot she had of her.
When Iris arrived home, Maman shook her into a concussion over where she’d gone and what had happened to Helena. “I lost her,” Iris said, and then she was slapped onto the floor. Josephine tried and failed to break up the fight between Maman and Iris, and soon all three women were wrestling on the ground until they got tired.
The phone rang. A nurse from Bronx-Lebanon Hospital urged the Melancon women to come immediately. Helena had been found wounded. After Iris disappeared, Helena searched high and low, and in her searching, she stumbled into an enclosed gorilla pit. She was dragged across the dirt, the gorilla biting her and whipping
