“What?”
“Take off your skirt and panties, and lie beside her,” she ordered.
“What?”
“Don’t you see what’s happening? She’s constantly watching you. She keeps waiting for you to scream in agony.”
I looked at Sylvia, who was staring at me now. “But—”
“You have to give birth, too,” Mrs. Matthews declared.
“Give birth, too?”
It was one thing to placate Sylvia and keep her calm all these months, to go along with her belief that I had to be as pregnant as she was and that Papa had declared
it in one of those mysterious rocking-chair dreams, but to actually act out a delivery beside her . . .
The look on Mrs. Matthews’s face was frightening and maddening. For a few moments, I wondered if she didn’t believe Sylvia’s dreams, too.
“But I can’t—”
“Do it!” she cried. “It will be your baby, won’t it? Deliver it!”
My heart was pounding, just as I imagined Sylvia’s was. I looked at the space beside her, looked at Mrs. Matthews, who was poised and waiting, and then took off my skirt and panties and slipped onto the bed. Sylvia grasped my hand immediately. Mrs. Matthews nodded with satisfaction and then, shockingly, lifted my legs, spread them, and looked between them. I felt her fingers on the insides of my thighs.
She is mad, I thought, as mad as a hatter.
I looked at Sylvia. For a moment, though, she suddenly seemed to have no pain. She smiled at me and then turned to Mrs. Matthews and began to follow her orders. When she groaned, Mrs. Matthews looked at me expectantly, and I groaned, too. When Sylvia cried in pain, I did. It was a duet of agony.
“Push!” Mrs. Matthews cried. “Push! I can see the baby’s head.”
Suddenly, seconds felt like minutes. I felt my cheeks and realized I was breaking into a sweat. My heart was pounding. I took deep breaths. Did I feel pain? Maybe I was going mad myself, but I realized I was actually pushing. All I had read about giving birth ran through my mind. This was how it went; this was what to do. Finally, Sylvia and I let out a last, almost primeval scream, and then Mrs. Matthews lifted the baby, with the umbilical cord still attached, and placed the newborn girl, crying and covered in blood, on my stomach—not Sylvia’s. Mrs. Matthews expertly cut and tied the umbilical cord. I couldn’t move. Sylvia was just as quiet, watching.
“I need to suction out her mouth and nose a bit,” Mrs. Matthews said.
Both Sylvia and I watched her bring the baby to the table she had set up beside the bed. After she did the suctioning, she weighed her.
“Six pounds four ounces. Being born early didn’t do any harm.”
She began to wash her. I was frozen, unable to move, until we heard the baby cry again.
“Adelle,” Sylvia said.
Mrs. Matthews brought the baby back to me. “Newborn babies’ bodies don’t have the ability to control their temperature well. We want to keep her warm and dry.”
She continued to dry her while the baby was lying on me. Then she put the blanket around her carefully, leaving some of her exposed skin against me.
“Your body will warm her, and this is the first opportunity to bond with your baby,” she explained.
“Is everything all right with her?”
“I’ll do a full Apgar assessment shortly, but I think she’s just fine. Right now, I need to do some stitching on Sylvia. There are some nasty tears.”
“What’s an Apgar assessment?”
She looked at me, disgusted. “You clearly didn’t read the pamphlet I left for you. I will judge the baby’s color, check her heart rate, reflexes, muscle tone, and respiratory function. I don’t just pull them out and leave for dinner,” she added, and turned back to Sylvia.
I gazed at the baby. The little hair she had was similar to Sylvia’s and mine. And she looked like she had Sylvia’s eyes.