Loving Chloe

by Jo-Ann Mapson

  “More good news.”

  “Dog, run and get sheets out of the cupboard. Those old soft pink ones. You,” she pointed to Oscar. “Call Dr. Lois and tell her we’re having a home birth.”

  “But it’s too early. She needs to be in the hospital,” Hank repeated, trying to push his way past Junior, who feinted this way and that, like a boxer, keeping the space between them clear and distinct. “Look,” he said, “it’s my baby.”

  “Then act like it,” Junior said.

  “We girls need a lot of things we don’t always get,” Corrine soothed, rubbing a washcloth over Chloe’s belly where the skin stretched tight. “Besides, it’s too late for wishes, Mr. Oliver. Your baby’s coming, early or not. Junior, remember when we used to yank calves for the McNellys? Remember Future Farmers classes?”

  “Sure, I guess so.”

  “Good. Because I’ve got a rash on my hands from silver cleaner. I don’t want to risk touching inside her. Somebody has to and you have the most experience. Go wash your hands and hurry back.”

  “Nobody touches anything,” Hank insisted, “until I call the hospital.” He yanked the wall phone from Dog’s hands, punching numbers crazily, getting them so mixed up he had to hang up and start all over again.

  “Mr. Oliver?” Dog said. “Say the number. I can dial for you.”

  Junior washed his hands at the kitchen sink, removing his rings and scrubbing hard with the dishwashing soap and scrub brush until the skin felt starched. He breathed slow and easy from his diaphragm, trying to steady his nerves. He kept waiting for the woman to cry out, thinking if she would just give in, the baby would come easily, and he wouldn’t have to do this.

  Corrine stroked Chloe’s arm gently. “It’s going to be fine,” she kept reassuring her, and every time Corrine said that, Chloe shook her head no, believing not so much as one word.

  Junior looked away when Corrine removed Chloe’s sweat pants and underwear, bunching them on the floor and covering her with a clean sheet, running a wet washcloth over her crotch and thighs. Corrine brought out the cloth stained with blood, wrung it dry over a bowl, and then made eye contact with Junior in a determined way. She held up a corner of the sheet, nodded her head, and Junior glanced down, seeing a smooth, ivory thigh with a trickle of blood staining it like a line on a topographical map. Between her legs, Chloe was swollen and damp with the birth process.

  He whispered, “I think she’s already tearing a little. Corrine, college was a long time ago. So was pulling cows. Give me some silver, I can make her baby a bracelet. What I can’t do is work a miracle.”

  “It’s exactly the same as it was with calves,” Corrine said. “Ease a couple fingers inside, get a feel, tell me what’s going on. I’ll talk you through it.”

  At the wall phone, Hank was yelling that having a baby was too an emergency, and Dog was calmly observing his teacher’s antics. Oscar brought the last of the towels from the closet and a ball of unwrapped kite string left over from springtime. Chloe pressed her chin to her chest, grunted, and Corrine reached up, grabbing her arms.

  “You concentrate on lying quiet. Don’t push.”

  “But I have to—”

  “Fight it.”

  Gingerly, aware that he could not be more intrusive, Junior steadied his fore and middle fingers and fitted them inside her. Vaguely, he remembered the school films, the book diagrams he always found more engaging than the text alongside them. Animals did just fine on their own most of the time. People had problems. He sought the lip of the cervix, and found none to speak of. If she was that stretched, the birth was imminent. He felt for the dome of head that by now should have been palpable in the birth canal.

  “Tell me,” Corrine urged.

  Behind the bulge of fluid-filled membrane, he could detect a round shape, but it was not the baby’s head, it was the butt end. A girl, he decided, noting the absence of male equipment. In horses they called difficult deliveries dystocia. Roughly it translated to, Wish it was another way. He eased his fingers back out. “Feels like a breech,” he said softly. “I don’t feel legs or knees, just bottom.”

  Corrine sighed, and Hank stretched the telephone cord as far from the wall as it would go. “Hey! What do you think you’re doing?”

  Oscar held him back.

  Junior dried his hands on the towel as he answered. “I’m trying to stay calm and help, which is a little more than I can say for you, buddy. Oscar, can’t you get this guy a cup of coffee or something?”

  “Come on, Hank. Corrine knows what she’s doing. Her and Junior there, they both yanked calves for the McNellys the whole time they were growing up. It’ll be okay.”

  “Chloe’s not a cow,” he said, and Oscar took the phone out of his hands, made space for him, let him kneel by Chloe’s head so that he could be a part of what was happening.

  Junior watched as Hank cradled Chloe’s face gently. He reached down to clasp her right hand in his, pressed his cheek to hers. She looked up at him, panic in her eyes. There was love there, too, but it was more definite on his part than hers.

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were having contractions?”

  She turned her face to the side, bit her lip. “I wasn’t sure that I was.”

  Junior wondered how she broke her front tooth, if some asshole had hit her or if she’d gone off a horse. Her brown eyes were full of tears, but she’d be damned before she let them spill over. With how much this had to hurt, her stoic demeanor intrigued him. White women generally went into hysterics over a chipped fingernail. Not this one. She acted like she was Indian.

  “All I knew was it hurt, and I thought it was because I rode the horse when you made me promise not to. I’m sorry, Hank. Lo siento. A lo hecho, pecho….”

  Hank looked up. “What is she trying to tell me?”

  Corrine elbowed him back. “She’s out of it. Quit asking her questions she can’t answer.”

  At the kitchen sink Junior scrubbed his hands for a second time, thinking hard. He checked his fingernails, then rolled his sleeves back and removed his watch and bracelets, scrubbing to his elbows. Dog handed him a towel and looked up into his father’s face, worried.

  “You give your mom this much trouble, Walter?”

  The boy grinned. “I forget.”

  “Later, when this is over, let’s ask her. I want to know everything I missed, enit?”

  “You think the horse lady’s going to be all right?”

  “Yeah, she looks pretty tough. But we could use some help. Think you could round up some other women who’ve had babies? The older ones?”

  Dog nodded. “Sure. I can get Ivana Yellowhair’s mom. And Robynn Cameron’s. They’re both grandmothers.”

  “Great. Run and find them. Bundle up. It’s cold out there.”

  Oscar repeated the instructions of the voice on the other end of the connection. “They want to know can you see the head?”

  Junior returned to Chloe, shoved the sheet back and quit acting polite. This was just another mare in trouble, a cow who needed a hand—and that hand happened to be his own. “Tell them it’s ass first. And,” he looked up over her knees to see Chloe press her chin to her chest involuntarily. “Tell them she’s pushing, and that it’s coming right now.”

  The second bag of waters broke over his hands, the smell thick, sweet, oceanic. No turning back now. Mentally Junior reviewed the facts: Baby a month yet from term. Labor rocketing along. When his fingers slid inside her, she’d felt dilated to the span of his palm, which, given the size of a newborn’s butt, ought to be wide enough. And the bottom was coming now. He felt it lightly graze his hands, move forward, the little bluish body coming toward him, pinkening in the air.

  “Here we go,” Corrine said.

  Junior readied himself to catch her, to turn the little body to either side to deliver her arms safely, so neither would catch behind her head, cutting off circulation either to a limb or the cord.

  Through clenched teeth Chloe cried out, and the tiny bo
dy nearly slid through his palms, a slippery little reed of a girl. The head was still inside. Hank sighed, and Junior wanted to. Hank figured the hard part was over, but Corrine, who knew better, was still holding her breath. “You see the cord yet, Junior? The head’s coming?”

  “Yeah, the head’s coming right now,” he said, and it was, the tiny wrinkled face and the cord pressing above her button nose. He tucked it away with his fingertip, and then he was holding an infant in his formerly useless silversmith’s hands, looking down at this underweight creation, still connected by a rippled cord of striped flesh to what had fed her the last eight months.

  “Take a look at your daughter,” he said to Hank, who lifted Chloe’s shoulders up to see.

  “Look, Chloe. It’s a girl after all. Oh, my God. She’s beautiful. She’s looking at us. Her eyes. Like whale’s eyes.”

  Chloe tried to raise her head from the jacket. She tried her best to smile, return the good wishes everyone was beaming her way, to say thanks. The baby began to make soft mewing noises, and Chloe’s smile drained of color. “Hank?”

  “She’s fine. It’s all over. We’re doing fine here. You’re a mother.”

  Now Corrine sighed. Junior wrapped the baby in a towel and handed her to Corrine. He wiped away blood.

  “Tie off the cord and deliver the placenta,” she whispered.

  He finished knotting the string. “Nothing’s moving.”

  “Come on, Chloe,” Corrine called out. “We need one more good push out of you.”

  Eyes closed, she lay back against Hank’s hands, her tired breathing slowing. “I’m gone.”

  “Chloe?” Hank said. “Open your eyes and look at me.”

  Corrine shushed him. “If she won’t push, then you got to give it a little tug. Clamp it off and let’s get it out of her. Her color looks bad.”

  Hank kept talking, shaking Chloe’s shoulders, but she only woke up enough to give them a half smile. Corrine held the baby close. “Do it, Junior.”

  Reluctantly Junior gave the cord the tiniest of tugs. The placenta delivered, the deflated basketball-size mass of tissue tumbling out intact. He thought, Thank you. Now maybe I can take a breath here. Then the blood started coming, not gushing, but steady, and more than there should be, soaking the towel.

  “Corrine,” he said. “What have I done?”

  Then the grandmothers were at the door, and the voice on the phone abandoned on the rug was calling out, asking what was happening now: Was the baby there? Behind the grandmothers Dog led the volunteer firemen in, suited up as if they were expecting a house on fire, not a tiny, troublesome black-haired baby.

  10

  Like an old Kodak slide forgotten in the projector, the blurry memory was cast in amber light, darkened at the edges as if the faces on film were overexposed. No seas payaso, buki. Out from under that table, ahora mismo! Mija, don’t you make me come after you like last time!

  But she wasn’t coming out. She planned to make herself so small she could slip into the cracks in the floor. I’ll ride away on my horse’s back, into the sky, hide behind the moon….

  From crest to hooves, Chloe ached. I’ll bet this is what dying’s like, she imagined, you see yourself someplace you’re not and more than anything—being held in Hank’s arms one more time, training Thunder to do everything Absalom could, seeing the baby—you just want to go where it doesn’t hurt. The nurse at her bedside finished checking her vitals and switched off the light. Dream-memory reached up and took hold of her again, the equivalent of her family album.

  The kitchen was her favorite room. The walls were yellow and shiny, same as the tablecloth it was okay to spill on. Under the table rust peeled off in interesting jigsaw shapes. The cupboard didn’t close all the way. She saw the Cheerios box peeking at her, and the C&H sugar cubes. When nobody was looking, she climbed up on the counter, took one, and sucked on it. Pretty soon she was going to be two, with a cake and presents. She was big. And she was wearing her good nightgown—with the real ribbon on the front. It was for summer only, but she wasn’t either catching another cold. Uh-oh. Somebody wasn’t careful with scissors. See the gashes in the floor? You don’t want that. They cost money to repair. She hid her pennies in there. She’d need a lot of money later when it was time to run away. Everyone ran away sometimes. Her daddy had. He’d be hungry when he came back. She would share her Cheerios with him. She was good at sharing.

  Even in her small history she understood that flight was essential. Sometimes when she rushed to hide under the table, her small toes caught in the buckled linoleum. If there was blood she might cry, but only softly and to herself. Worse than blood, the uneven terrain had kept her toy horse from proceeding at a smooth gallop to the pantry door. Now his leg was broke. If a horse broke his leg, he disappeared. In the pantry, among cans of tuna and vegetables, empty cardboard packing boxes, there was sanctuary. In the middle of raised voices and swinging fists, an almost-two-year-old sometimes forgot to be careful.

  The smells of the kitchen varied. The blue haze of tobacco smoke rising upward in dishwater steam. Bacon. Inches of yeasty stale beer forgotten in amber bottles. Burnt toast crumbs. Coffee nobody drank left too long on the stove, percolating into bitterness. Underneath all that a faint, comforting perfume persisted, so indistinct it might have been bath powder or a hint of bar soap clinging to skin. Chloe’d come to recognize the scent as the sum of her mother’s parts: that faceless humming figure standing at the sink. Over thirty-four years, this vision had focused down to a single, precious hand. Sometimes fingers patted her head when she accidentally got a bump, but if she got too near the stove—too near, period—the palm might deliver a swat that sent her to her knees, breath knocked clean out of her. It was all she had of her mother, that Jekyll-and-Hyde hand. But once upon a time, it had held a baby, freshly delivered from the depths of her own body, the same way she ought to be holding her own baby right now. She couldn’t hurt so badly down there without having given birth. So where was the baby?

  Half awake now, she lay in the hospital bed with her eyes closed. In the dark, when the pain had been overwhelming, a nurse came to replace the IV bag. Other than ask if Chloe needed another shot, she hadn’t said much. Was the baby all right? She tried to remember if it had cried, but of the birth in the Johnsons’ living room she recalled only bits and pieces: Corrine’s soothing voice, her hand on Chloe’s calf, the television on some game show, Hank’s face pressed close to her own, as she struggled to push out of her body what felt like a full-grown horse. That Indian with his hands between her legs—the one who owned the mare—Sally. Oh, God. Had she maybe lost the baby?

  She squinted. It was definitely day, bright lights and the resolute disinfectant smell purging whatever might have gotten soiled in the night. Nearby she heard trays clattering and smelled breakfast.

  “I know I’m in the hospital,” Chloe said to whoever was turning back her sheets and lifting tape from her belly. “Only question is, Which one and how did I get here?”

  “Flagstaff Medical Center. Ambulance. There. Now you’re all cleaned up. You want to try a little Cream of Wheat for breakfast? Think you can hold that down?”

  Chloe licked her dry lips. “I don’t get coffee? Here I’ve been good almost nine months, they promised coffee, and they were lying the whole time?”

  The voice broke into a familiar chuckle. “Can’t talk you into decaf?”

  Chloe made a face and opened her eyes. “Dr. Lois?”

  “Sorry to have missed the main event. Sounded pretty dramatic.”

  “The baby’s okay?”

  “Tiny, but a trooper.” Dr. Carrywater’s expression remained cheerful. Freshwater pearl earrings graced her ears, and she had her long dark hair twisted into a bun at the nape of her neck. Maybe this was her go-to-town look. She held out a plastic tumbler with a straw. “How about starting out on water?”

  Chloe leaned forward and cried out from the pain of using her stomach muscles.

  “You’re ready f
or your next shot. I’ll call the nurse.”

  “No.” Chloe swallowed the water, which tasted tart and clean, as if snowmelt had just sluiced down the mountain. “It doesn’t hurt so killing bad I need my head messed up as a bonus.”

  “You might not want it now, but in the next half hour you will. You had some emergency surgery last night.”

  “Surgery? I thought I had a baby.”

  “Well, you did that too, but you were hemorrhaging when they brought you in. We removed your uterus to stop the bleeding.”

  “Hemorrhaging? What are you talking about? Where’s my baby?”

  “Lower your voice, Chloe. There are new mothers here, trying to sleep. Rest, and I’ll stop by again later.” She turned to go.

  “Wait,” Chloe whispered. “Please, Dr. Lois. You can’t just tell me you cut my womb out and then leave. What about my baby?”

  “She’s here. Down the hallway.”

  “She?”

  “Yes, a little girl. Remember?”

  A minute went by, during which Chloe racked her brain for details, coming up short. “Well, do I ever get to see her?”

  The doctor’s pager beeped and she glanced at it momentarily. “They’ll bring her around when it’s time to feed her. For now I really think you should just rest.”

  “Oh, no. I’d better see her. Right now. So I can tell for myself what’s going on.”

  “Chloe, your baby’s sleeping, and you should be, too. You’ve been through a rough time.”

  It came to her then, that picture of the birth waters spilling down her legs in the school barn, Junior Whitebear carrying her to the Johnsons’, Hank screaming into the telephone. “I wake up here alone, my guts on fire, no baby, you tell me I had surgery, so please hear me when I say I need to see her. Hank’ll remember the details. Soon as he gets here, he’ll help me get it all straight in my head. Where’s there a pay phone so I can call him?”

  “Hank’s your husband, right?”