As he walked back from Communion, he shook Laila’s hand. When Laila retracted her hand, she found a small note wedged in between her pointer and middle fingers. But by the time she could question if it was a mistake, Landon had already taken his seat alongside his wife, Valerie. She quietly opened the note: Stay after service lets out.
Laila waited until the rest of the congregation filed out, then the rector, then the organist. She waited with uneven breath, unsure if the note was a gentle wish or a threat. As the voices in the vestibule of the church dwindled, she gripped her rosary tighter but couldn’t steady her hands or thighs from shaking. Then Landon returned to the sanctuary and sat beside her. They both stared at the altar before she finally spoke.
“You know, you didn’t have to stare at me like I’m some zoo exhibit.”
“Sorry, Lay. I’m just happy for you—congrats.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Laila facetiously said. “What’s up?”
Landon took a deep breath and replied, “It seems you made quite the impression on Josephine.”
“Excuse me?”
“Josephine. Josephine Melancon.”
Laila blinked. “How do you know that?”
“Because she told me. We’re business partners.”
“Business partners? I thought you worked in the Financial District. Either I have pregnant brain or you’re just not making sense right now.”
Ignoring her question, Landon said, “There are two different kinds of people in Harlem—those who believe in the caul and those who don’t. Which kind are you?”
“It doesn’t matter which side I’m on. I’m not sure I want any part of that.” Landon was right in that the Harlem community was divided over the mystery of the Melancon women: one side believed the family’s power and owed their longevity—and greater income—to the caul. The other side banished the thought as pure nonsense, a fabrication brewed by old time Harlemites who could never trust institutions with their health and therefore needed another practice to get them by for the time being. Whatever root work that the old folks did could not be found in Harlem’s labyrinthine streets but in the South, where it belonged and flourished, the soil having absorbed blood and sweat from the enslaved.
Laila was readying herself to stand to her feet before Landon gently placed a hand on her wrist to lower her back down in the pew.
“I think you do want to be a part of it. She told me how much you were staring at her in the bodega. I know she’s striking, but she got the impression that you were holding back, like you wanted to ask her something.”
“Why is this any of your business?”
“She offered to give a piece of her caul to you in order to protect your unborn child, and I can make this transaction happen.”
Laila winced at the double-edged sword of a promise. Normally, superstition and folklore never appealed to her. She believed that the solution to most of her problems could be found in either a medical doctor, the book of Psalms, or anointed oil from a Pentecostal elder. Then again, that oil could be considered as superstitious as a caulbearer, or one who was born with the caul. And if she could place her Christian faith in an oil, why not place some secular faith in the caul? Even the saints of the Gospels stumbled in their faith from time to time—even while God was in their midst. And those saints were not women who bore children. Those saints may have seen many gone on to Glory, but none of them understood the grief of someone dying inside of their body several times. None of those saints knew death as neighborly and parasitically as she did. And besides, if this proposition was being presented to her now, within this sanctuary, what if God ordained it? What if what everyone suspected about those caulbearing women was true? She had to explore any and all possibilities for the sake of her child or the regret would splinter every last one of her nerves.
When they left St. Philip’s that afternoon, Laila asked for more time to think about it, but Landon was confident that delay did not mean denial. He told her that they would reconvene next Sunday after church.
That evening, Laila phoned Ralph while he was away and filled him in.
“Oh, Laila, come on,” he joked. “You never believed in this caul nonsense. You laughed it off before when friends brought it up at parties.”
“I know, I know. Believe me, I know it sounds crazy, but what if it’s true?” Laila asked.
“And what if it’s not?”
Ralph sighed. She pictured him extending his legs as far as they would go underneath the seat in front of him. His cool breath only seconds away from being coated with a shot of bourbon.
“Don’t you think you still being pregnant this long is proof that you don’t need it? Why don’t you just believe in yourself?”
“Because I can’t be too sure, Ralph. Even though the doctors say I’m fine, and I feel fine, I just don’t know. I’m scared.”
Ralph held the phone closer to his lips and said, “I’m scared too. I told you I can come home.”
“No, no, it’s okay. I just need to acknowledge my feelings and maybe be okay with it being this way till the baby comes.”
“But you don’t need that stress, Lay.”
“Then how about we just explore this option? If it fails, it fails, but at least we tried.”
“But you want help from someone you don’t even know. Don’t let that desperation lead you to another breakdown.”
Her heart stopped from that pointed statement. She wasn’t sure to which breakdown he was referring: the episode in college that led to a brief stint in Bellevue or the one in front of the relentlessly interrogative adoption caseworker that ultimately led to the rejection of their application. The specifics didn’t matter, for she quietly wept all the same.
“Lay, I’m sorry—I-I’m sorry. That
