Maude Read Free Page B

her
head and saw me. She gave me an accusing look, as if
I was what was hurting her. I caught Helen’s hand in
both of mine and squeezed it a little. “It’s going to be
all right, the baby’s coming. Tommy went to get his
Aunt Deborah and the doctor is on his way.”
Helen pinched her eyes shut, threw back her
head and screamed again. I was terrified. I didn’t know
what to do. Helen pulled her knees up, pressed her chin
down, and gasped for air.
“Oh, no, oh, no, here it comes now,” Helen
hissed from between her clenched teeth.
I pulled down the covers and looked. The baby’s
head was sticking out of her. It was covered in blood
and ooze. My stomach churned. I held onto Helen’s
hand. It was all I could think of, I didn’t have the
slightest idea what I should do. Then I heard the screen
door slam again and the doctor came in the room
carrying his bag.
I looked up at him, and I know I must have
looked scared to death. “It’s coming out already,” I
said.
Doctor Wilson pushed me aside. He laid his bag
on the bed next to Helen and flipped the top of it open.
He spread out one of the towels I’d brought in earlier
over the table next to the bed and began pulling strange
looking tools out of the bag, lining them up on the
towel.
“Get one of those other towels and hold it open,”
the doctor said to me. I shook out a towel and held it
out to the doctor with one hand.
“No, I’m going to put the baby into it, drape it
over your arms so you can take the baby and wrap it
up.”
I did what he said with the towel and stood there
holding out my hands. I watched, scared to death, as
the baby’s shoulders and arms came out. It was
horrible and terrifying and like I was in some sort of
spell. I couldn’t turn away. The doctor held onto the
baby’s sides and pulled gently until the rest of its body
came sliding out. It had a long, rope-like thing on its
stomach, with the other end still fastened inside Helen.
The baby looked very small to me, but I had no idea
what it was supposed to look like. I saw the private
parts and realized it was a boy. I had never seen a
human boy’s parts before. The only babies I’d ever
seen were already dressed, and much larger, but they
were at least a few weeks old and born after nine
months and not just seven.
I waited for a cry, but it didn’t come. The doctor
held the baby upside down and shook it a little. There
was still no cry. He slapped it smartly a few times on
the bottom, then patted it firmly on the back. Nothing.
He put it on the towel I was holding, wrapped it and
took it back from me. Cradling it in his arms, he blew
into its mouth several times. He held it up and pressed
his ear against its chest.
Then he sighed and laid it down on the bed. He
tied some string on the cord and then cut the baby
loose from Helen. He folded the towel up over the
baby’s body and then handed it to me. I reached out
and took it and cradled it in my arms the way I had
been doing with my dolls only a few days before. The
doctor had just turned his attention back to Helen when
Tommy and Aunt Deborah came into the room. She
saw the wrapped up bundle in my arms and must have
understood what had happened.
Aunt Deborah took my arm and pushed me
toward the door. She said, “Tommy, take this girl out
of here. The doctor and I will finish this up.”
Tommy obediently put his hand on my shoulder
and steered me out of the room. We walked into the
kitchen. I stood there with the tiny bundle in the crook
of my arm.
Tommy looked at me. “Did it cry a lot?”
“He didn’t cry at all,” I said.
Then what I was saying struck him. He sat on a
chair and reached out his hands. I handed the baby to
him and he laid it on the table. He pulled back the
towel and stared at it.
He reached out and touched his fingertip to the
little face. Tears ran down Tommy’s cheek. “Look
what we had, Maude. We had a little boy. Helen said if
it was a boy, she would let me call him Henry Mathias,
after my