Free Tree Girl by Ben Mikaelsen Page B

shouted.
    Trembling, I reached out my hands. Suddenly the head of the baby popped out, then one shoulder, and then the next. With each grunt the baby slid farther into my hands. After the chest and stomach squeezed out, I helped pull. Slowly the legs slid from the mother, and suddenly I found myself holding the whole baby, a baby girl. Bloody birth fluids and white paste covered the wrinkled little body, and a long twisted cord ran from between the mother’s legs and attached to the baby’s stomach.
    “What do I do?” I pleaded. “She isn’t breathing.”
    The woman forced her head up and looked. “Clean her mouth with your finger,” she grunted.
    Afraid the baby was already dead, I ran my finger through its mouth. My finger pulled out thick slime, but still the baby didn’t breathe. I wasn’t surprised. The baby appeared dead from the beginning, like the dead lambs our sheep aborted in the fields.
    “Hold her upside down and hit her backside,” the mother grunted.
    I lifted the slippery baby up by its ankles, afraid I might drop it. Awkwardly I swatted its back and bottom. Still it hung motionless, but suddenly it gasped and a loud urgent cry pierced the air.
    I jumped, nearly dropping the baby. Nervous fear and relief made me laugh. “What now?” I asked.
    Again the woman strained to raise her head. “Cut the cord,” she whispered, her voice weaker. “And tie a knot, or the baby will bleed to death.”
    I looked around me. “How do I cut the cord?” I asked.
    The mother was too tired to answer me. I lookedaround. Alicia sat quietly, watching me with big eyes. I laid the crying baby on the corte between the mother’s legs, and then stood. What could I use to cut the cord if I had no machete?
    All I could find was some
magüey
, a broad-leaf cactus. I broke off a stiff leaf, careful not to cut myself with the sharp ragged edge, and quickly returned to the mother, who had closed her eyes but still breathed fast like a tired cow.
    The baby cried with such a loud voice that I feared soldiers would hear us. Using the jagged magüey leaf, I sliced through the cord. Blood leaked from both cut ends, so I pinched the mother’s end while I tried to knot the baby’s cord. It was hard, because the cord kept slipping from my shaking fingers, but finally I made a knot and reached down with my mouth to bite onto the bloody end to pull it even tighter.
    After I had knotted the mother’s cord the same way, I picked up the baby and laid it against the mother’s chest. The tired woman opened her eyes and stared weakly but couldn’t lift her arms to hold her baby. Her face was pale and she looked ill. The baby stillscreamed, so I opened the mother’s huipil and placed the baby’s mouth against the nipple of her swollen breast. The baby wanted to keep crying, but when it felt the nipple against its lips, it caught its breath and began to suck.
    I sat beside the exhausted mother and held the uncleaned baby as it nursed. The child was all wrinkled and smeared with blood, birth fluids, and white sticky paste, but still she was beautiful. The magic of what I had witnessed robbed me of my breath. It both frightened and thrilled me. At a time of so much death, new life had been born.
    The baby nursed briefly but then cried loudly once again. I forced her mouth back against the mother’s swollen breast, but she turned stubbornly away from the nipple and screamed even louder, her piercing wails like a squealing rabbit alerting a hawk. The hawks that I feared wore uniforms and carried guns.
    I wanted to ask the mother what I should do with her baby, but she had fallen unconscious. Her breathing was shallow. I glanced fearfully over my shoulder. There across the valley, crossing a sloping field a kilometeraway, walked forty or fifty soldiers in uniform, single file. They couldn’t hear the baby crying yet, but their trail would soon lead them past the mother, who lay still in the grass as if dead.
    I dared not think what