When we knew the day was getting close, I pasted strips of cloth in the room’s one small window. I cut feed bags in long, thin strips and soaked them in flour and water I mixed up on the porch. It’s meant to keep out the cold, cut the draft, but even as I lower myself onto the stool, cold air settles in around my ankles and brushes past my cheeks.
“You’ve got to push harder,” I say, and silently, I count to ten. “Keep on. Keep on pushing.”
The room is like a box, sealed up tight so no one can see inside. But really it’s not so tight. Streams of icy air stir up the flame in the lantern, scattering its yellow glow. It moves across Juna’s face, lighting up a sliver here and a sliver there. First her left eye. It catches the light, reflects it back. Then the side of her face, the hollow in her neck, the strands of hair clinging to her forehead.
“I’m too cold,” Juna says, dropping her hold on one knee so she can wipe the hair from her eyes. “God damn this cold.”
“That don’t matter,” I say. “This baby is coming.”
It’s too early, far too early. That’s what the women said when I told them I thought the time was near. They shook their heads, counted on their fingers, discussed the last full moon and when we’d expect another. Too early, they said. So early it might be a blessing. Just over five months, they counted. Five months since Joseph Carl planted the child. Too little time. If it is to come, it’ll never draw a breath. Too tiny. Not yet ready for this world. It might be a blessing.
Behind me, the bedroom door opens. The rest of the house isn’t sealed up, and cold rushes into the room. The small lantern dims. Juna falls back on her elbows. Her face disappears in the weakened light and appears again after the door closes. Footsteps cross the wooden floorboards.
“Not fitting for you to be here,” I say, knowing it’s Daddy without looking.
He doesn’t answer, but a few more steps cross the wooden planks that run the length of the room and then fall silent. The cigar crackles as he sucks on its end and smoke settles in over Juna and me. A single chair is pushed up against the wall, yet he doesn’t sit. Instead, he stands, arms crossed, feet spread wide. It’s what he does, what he always does. Next to the other men, he’s not so large and not so smart and not so good with his crop. He’ll stand like he thinks a man should.
“I’m seeing something,” I say.
I can smell him. In the small room, closed up tight with floury strips of cloth, his odor takes no time reaching me. Even over the cigar smoke filling the air, I smell him. I close my eyes as if that will stop me from breathing him in. It’s sweat, sour and moldy; damp socks rinsed and pulled on again before they’ve dried; strong coffee warmed over two, three, four mornings until the pot is empty.
“It’ll be harder now,” I say, lifting my head until my eyes lock on Juna’s.
It’s what the women told me. When you see the head, they warned, she’ll want to stop. Make her push harder. Make her push until it’s out.
“Harder you push, quicker she’ll be here.”
“She?” Juna says. “You said she. Can you see?”
With that one word—“she”—the baby is real. She has tiny fingers with paper-thin nails, pink skin, and clear eyes.
“Haven’t gotten to that end yet,” I say. “But won’t Abraham be proud? You’ll be his special girls, the two of you.”
The smell of Daddy is stronger. I taste him in the air. Juna begins to pant, and I know with every short breath, she’ll be tasting him too. I think she’ll look at him in that way she does, that she’ll tilt her head just so, raise a brow, make him afraid so he’ll leave. But she does nothing, says nothing.
“Push,” I say again.
The women told me to make Juna push or she’d starve the baby of her air.
“Push, Juna. She needs you to push.”
There it is again—she. Every week and then every day, Juna grew larger as the baby grew. She plumped up to look more like me, softer, rounder. Her upper arms grew so large we cut the seams in each sleeve of her cotton blouses, and her cheeks and hips rounded out in a way that will probably stick with her long after the baby is born.
The shadow on the west wall shifts. Two heavy boots rearrange themselves.
“Push, Juna,” I say. “You have to push.”
The women told me all that could go wrong. If it’s coming feet first, you’ll be without hope. If the girl won’t push, can’t push, you’ll be without hope. It’s a wicked time of year, they had said, to be giving birth. She was meant to come in the spring. It should take nine months, maybe ten, the ladies had said.