“Agua?” Emma said.
The mother reached into the back of the stroller, found a pouch, and revealed a red and black sippy cup. Apollo didn’t have hands free, so he looked to the only boy who hadn’t been given a job yet. The kid almost looked grateful for the simple task. He brought it back and set it down on the floor.
“Ohhhhhhhhh!”
Emma’s hands slipped off the pole. They were already too sweaty to hold on.
“Hands and knees,” Emma said to Apollo. “I have to be on my hands and knees. Get me down.”
“Fellas,” Apollo said. “I’m going to need you to hold her up a little longer.”
“Where you going?” Cowboy asked, panicked, stricken.
“I’m going over there to get my coat.”
“I don’t need the coat!” Emma shouted.
But Apollo couldn’t stop himself. He got the coat. He laid it flat. It wasn’t much. It wasn’t much. He wished he’d kept the loaner jacket they’d given him at Bouley. He leaned in close to Emma again. “I’m going to have to take down your tights,” he said apologetically.
“Well get on with it,” Emma growled.
Then the rumbling roll of the car door opening. The fourth boy returned with the conductor, who looked almost as young as the dancers.
“God damn,” the conductor said.
“Any chance we’re going to move soon?” Apollo asked.
“God damn,” the conductor repeated.
The mother reached over her son’s stroller and pinched the conductor on the leg.
“Lost power to the third rail,” the conductor explained, coming back to himself as he rubbed his thigh. “This train ain’t moving. I’ll go back and radio this in. They’ll send EMTs. But even that’s going to take awhile.”
“Ohhhhhhhh.”
Apollo told him to make the call, but knew no one could arrive in time. The only help Emma would get was already in this train car. The conductor left, and when the door of the next car rolled shut again, the glass filled with faces. Spectators. Folks who’d figured out something big was happening in this car. At the other end people in the next car were gathering, too. Now they had a viewing public. Even worse, Apollo could already see the light of cellphones held up to record the event.
“Cowboy! Could you and your team keep all those people out of this car? Block the windows?”
The kid looked to both ends. “We could do that easy.”
There were a lot of folks at both doors, and many more behind them. “You sure?” Apollo asked.
The one who’d run to the conductor laughed. “Most of these people shrink up as soon as we step on a train.” He clutched his hands to his chest and shivered. “Those black boys are so intimidating!” The others laughed.
“We’ll keep them out,” Cowboy said, smiling.
And with that they broke off, two boys to a side.
“No showtime for you, ladies and gentlemen!” Cowboy shouted.
“No showtime for you!” the other three called back.
Apollo got down on his hands and knees and crawled around close to Emma’s face. Her head was down, hair like a shroud and matted flat from perspiration. He brought the sippy cup of water closer and lifted her head. He tilted the cup and let her have two sips.
Apollo set the bottle down. He didn’t know how he could post up behind Emma to receive the baby but also keep giving her sips of water, keep up reassuring contact. He looked over Emma. The mother watched them. When they’d first boarded the train, she and Emma had seemed to share a powerful moment, locking eyes to communicate something Apollo knew he could never understand. He gazed at her, pleading. After a moment the woman patted her daughter and rose from the seat. She pushed the stroller closer to the little girl, who peeked in on her brother.
The mother took the sippy cup and spoke quietly, in Spanish, to Emma. The woman’s tone seemed soothing, and maybe that was all Emma needed. Emma even leaned forward and touched her forehead to the woman’s shoulder, intimacy so acute it appeared mystical.
Now Apollo looked over his shoulder, the boys had their backs to the scene, their arms up and flailing to reject all attempts at a shot. He pulled off Emma’s shoes. He slipped her tights down to her knees. He brought his hands to either side of her hips and pressed gently, something that soothed her in the third trimester. He spoke now not to his wife but to their baby.
“We can’t wait to meet you,” he said.
THERE IN A stalled A train in the bowels of the earth, Emma bled and bore down. Apollo called out the two commands Kim had told him were always appropriate, Slow down. Just breathe. Apollo focused on nothing but his wife and their child. When Emma arched her back and grunted, he pressed his thumbs into the small of her back, just above the tailbone, until her back went straight again. When she bled and pushed harder, he pressed her thigh and said, Slow down. Just breathe. When he saw the baby crowning, he had a moment of confusion. There was the baby’s head, but it looked like it was wrapped in bubble tape. The amniotic sac hadn’t burst yet, and it served now as a thin layer between the baby and Emma’s pelvic bone. For all the agony she might be feeling, this little miracle—that her water didn’t break right away—was what spared her just enough pain to survive this.
Apollo watched his hands stretched out now, ready to catch their child. He felt like a witness and a participant. Their child teetered between his mother and the world; in one place and another; alive and in that ether of the womb. Apollo felt as though he, too, balanced on this threshold. Its head nearly out but body still hidden, his child seemed like an emissary of the divine.
“Can you see his head?” Emma asked.
Apollo tried to answer but only stammered.
Then Emma’s water broke, and she cooed with relief, and their child slipped right out, and Apollo Kagwa caught the baby before it touched the floor of the train.
“It’s a boy,” Apollo said.
“A boy,” Emma whispered.
Emma leaned forward into the woman. The woman kissed Emma on the top of her head. Emma had to stay on her knees for a few minutes more until the placenta passed.
This meant that for a short while Apollo remained alone with his son. Apollo unbuttoned his shirt so he could hold the boy directly against his skin. The baby didn’t cry, didn’t flutter his eyes yet, only opened and closed his tiny mouth. Apollo watched his son take his gasping, first breaths. He watched that little face for what seemed like quite a while, an hour or an eternity.
“Can we call him Brian?” Apollo croaked. He hadn’t meant to ask that right now, at the moment of birth, hadn’t thought he’d ever want to name his son after his missing father. The question, the desire, simply slipped out; it was as if it had been hiding—biding time on his tongue for years.
“I like that name,” Emma finally said, turning now, hands open for her child.
Apollo brought his cheek to the baby’s.
“Hello, Brian,” he whispered. “I’m so happy to meet you.”