Big Ammachi sinks to a squat with the baby. She feels she’s born again. What a perfect child! She exults in the peculiar, shrill, high-pitched newborn cry, a sound that signals the end of the solitude, the return of the mother to the world, the passing of mortal danger. What was within is now without, still just as fragile, just as connected to the mother, but for the first time, separate.
“Such a good-sized child, aren’t you? Praise God. I was worried that you’d be a tiny kitten.” She’s used to newborns squinting at the unaccustomed brightness, barely opening their eyes and if so only to peek out with an unfocused gaze. This baby stares directly at her grandmother with a serious expression.
Elsie’s breathing is regular, her eyes now gazing right. Still unconscious, but alive. The afterbirth emerges, soggy and heavy, its job done. Anna Chedethi replaces the soiled sheet under Elsie with a thick white towel. She wraps the afterbirth in newspaper.
Anna Chedethi comes over to squat by Big Ammachi, both of them grinning over the new arrival, their backs to Elsie. A shattering sound comes from beneath their feet. From the cellar. It startles them, makes them look down, then turn around. They both see it at the same time: a cherry-red stream of blood pours from the birth canal, soaking the white towel and dripping to the floor. Big Ammachi hurriedly swaddles the infant and eases it down onto the mat. Anna Chedethi spreads Elsie’s legs once more while Big Ammachi wipes away the clot at the opening, only to see another vile clot—the face of Satan—carried out in a steady, gushing river of red that joins the bloody lake under Elsie’s buttocks.
Big Ammachi has never seen anything like this, but she’s heard of it. So many ways for us women to die, Lord. If it’s not a labor that stalls, killing mother and child, then it’s this. It’s not fair! She massages the belly, because she’s heard it can help the flabby uterus get back its tone, and contract down, and stop the bleeding. But if anything, it makes the gushing of blood more pronounced. Big Ammachi staggers back, defeated, watching Elsie’s life slipping away.
Philipose’s voice calls from outside: “What’s happening? Is my son all right?”
They don’t hear him. They stare helplessly at the torrential hemorrhage. Anna Chedethi says, “Ammachi, let me try something.”
Anna Chedethi oils her broad hand and eases her fingers into the birth canal. Once she is inside, in the womb, she gathers her fingers in a fist and pushes up. Her other hand on the abdomen pushes down, so that between fist within and palm without, she sandwiches the flabby womb, compressing it. Blood runs down her arm, but then it slows . . . and stops.
Speaking in short bursts, her face congested from the effort, yet somehow grinning, Anna Chedethi says, “This white nun . . . up past Ranni . . . she was a nurse . . . She saved a pulayi bleeding like a river . . . by pinching the womb like this.”
“Were you there?”
“No . . .” she says, meeting Big Ammachi’s eyes. “But I heard of it . . . and it just came to me.”
Anna Chedethi’s arms quiver, the veins on her temples look ready to burst. Big Ammachi is the helper now, mopping her sweat. It’s a blessing that Elsie feels nothing. But her face is as white as a bleached mundu. Big Ammachi glances over at the swaddled newborn; the baby looks on as its mother fights for life.
“Ammachi,” Anna Chedethi says, “what was that sound we heard . . . from below?”
“A pickle jar must have fallen over,” Big Ammachi says. “Those old shelves are tilting.”
But Big Ammachi knows who it was and she’s grateful. Had they kept cooing over the baby, Elsie would have been dead when they eventually turned to her. “Anna, what if you let go now?” She’s worried that Anna Chedethi will pass out from the strain.
At first, Anna Chedethi seems not to have heard. Another minute goes by. Then she slowly releases pressure on the belly but keeps her balled-up fist inside. They hold their breath. There’s no new trickle. After another minute, ever so gently, Anna Chedethi eases her hand out, cloaked dark red from fingertips to elbow. Their lips moving, both women pray silently, eyes glued to between Elsie’s legs. Five minutes. Ten. Ten more. Gradually Big Ammachi feels she can breathe again.
She calls Elsie’s name. She is in a deep, unnatural sleep. But she’s alive. Dear God, can the poor girl survive after losing all this blood? Still the two women wait. They wait some more, now with the baby in her grandmother’s arms. At last Big Ammachi places a hand over Anna’s head, blessing her while looking to the heavens. “Thank you, Lord,” she says. “You saw this coming. You sent me this angel.”
Big Ammachi emerges from the bedroom, looking unrecognizable, wrung out, flushed and pale as if she, not Elsie, had just been through the ordeal. Her hands are clean, but her elbows are bloody, the front of her chatta and mundu is blood-soaked, and there’s a blood smear across her cheek. But she is smiling dreamily, holding the new baby. She looks up, surprised to see a small crowd come to their feet. Baby Mol, Shamuel, Dolly Kochamma, Uplift Master, Shoshamma, and the child’s father, Philipose.
“We almost lost our Elsie. Thank the Lord for bringing us through this. Such a difficult delivery,” she says to those gathered, her voice hoarse. “The baby came buttocks-first. Then Elsie had a convulsion. Somehow, we got the baby out. But then suddenly Elsie was bleeding, so much bleeding . . . We almost lost her. We still might. She’s very weak. Please pray she doesn’t bleed again. But the baby is well. Praise God, praise God, praise God . . .”
She takes small, tired steps to her son, smiling. He’d looked dazed as she spoke, but now as she approaches, his face lights up, and he extends his arms. Big Ammachi says, “We already have a name for your daughter.”
He blinks, drops his arms.
“Your daughter,” Big Ammachi says.
He stumbles back. Shamuel slides a chair under him. Philipose can only stare at his mother in disbelief, his mouth open, a stupefied expression on his face. He mumbles, “God has failed us again.”
She takes her time. She comes right up to his chair, standing over him. When she speaks, her words spark off her tongue, falling on him like hot oil onto water: “After the ordeal Elsie has endured . . . After what Anna Chedethi and I went through, that’s what you have to say? ‘God has failed us’?” Her voice rises. “A woman risks her life to give birth and at the end a man who’s done nothing—less than nothing—in nine months says, ‘God has failed us’?” If it were up to Big Ammachi, any man who said what her son just did should by law merit a caning. “Yes, God failed us,” she says. “When he was handing out common sense, he overlooked you. If he’d made you a woman, then maybe dung wouldn’t come out of your mouth in place of words! Shame on you!”
Nothing stirs in Parambil as her words hang over his head. Philipose looks up, bewildered, the disappointment now changing to hurt. But he doesn’t dare speak.
Big Ammachi glares at her son. He was once a baby like the infant she holds. Does she not bear some responsibility for what he has become? “Look, an hour ago I could have come out to tell you that Elsie had convulsions and died. Forty minutes ago, I could have told you that the child was stuck upside down and mother and child had died. And ten minutes ago, I could’ve walked out to say Elsie bled to death. Do you understand? But I said none of those things. I said your wife lives, but barely. And what you see here is God’s grace manifest in this perfect, perfect child.”
Philipose doesn’t say a word. He doesn’t look at the baby, his face so anguished that it’s as if Baby Ninan has died once more, the bloody corpse with its horrible entrails still in his arms.
“Mariamma,” Big Ammachi announces in a strong voice. Elsie wanted that name. She’s not waiting for her son to express an opinion. “The baby’s name is Mariamma.”
Yes, it is Big Ammachi’s very own Christian name. Mariamma. A name no one has called her in the memory of anyone present, a name that hasn’t been uttered since she came here as a twelve-year-old bride.
Mariamma.
CHAPTER 55
The Issue Is a Girl