Free A Parchment of Leaves by Silas House Page B

broke the day before, but Serena had told me this didn’t really mean anything, since she knowed of women whose water had busted two weeks before the baby ever come. All at once a bolt of pain shot through me and I knowed this time Serena was wrong.
    I screamed out so loud that Esme dropped a jar onto the floor.Glass flew everywhere and hot water splashed onto my legs, but it somehow felt good. The next day my calves were blistered from the burns, but at that moment it seemed to spread stillness out over me. This feeling lasted only as long as it took for another pain to hit me, though.
    â€œGo get Serena,” I managed to say.
    Serena come before long, packing Luke on her hip. She handed him over to Esme like she was offering her a sack of sugar. “Whistle-Dick’s drunk, as usual,” she said, and then her eyes fell on me. I was sprawled out in the chair where Aaron had left me when he went to fetch her. “Why in the hell ain’t you got her in the bed?” she hollered to Aaron.
    She yelled through the whole birthing. She barked orders that I’m certain were the only ones Esme Sullivan ever obeyed in her life. After she had run Aaron out of the house and put Esme to work, she got me settled in Esme’s feather bed, which was so full that I felt like it was swallowing me up. But I was in no shape to be packed to my own house, where I had always imagined my child would be born. She put her hand between my legs, and I could see her face crumble.
    â€œWhat?” I screamed. I thought I tasted blood in the back of my throat.
    â€œIt’s turned,” she said.
    The next thing I knowed, Serena was putting my baby into the crook of my arm. I was so weak that Esme had to take hold of my elbow so I could hold the little thing.
    â€œGod,” I said when I looked down at her. They all thought I was just saying this in amazement, I guess, but I wasn’t. When I looked down at my baby, I felt like I was looking down and seeing the face of God. Peace washed over me. It is an unexplainable thing, holding your baby for the first time. It’s a feeling you can’t put a name to, so I won’t try. But I’ll say this much: I felt like we were the only people in the world that night. I felt like nobody else existedexcept for the people right there in that room. Even Saul was a ghost, steering his horse around steep mountain roads on his way home.
    The birth of my child made me believe in God full and complete all of a sudden. Before, God had been someone who I heard others discuss with great passion, but I had never thought much about Him. I had listened obediently while Daddy versed us in the ways of the Quakers, which mostly involved silence. I had stood silent with Mama when we went up on the mountain to hunt ginseng and she seen Him. We would be bent down, digging out the roots with wooden spoons, and she’d raise up real fast, her hands flat on her apron, and say, “Shh. Listen.” Her watery eyes would scan the treetops as a gentle breeze drifted over. “That’s the Creator passing through.” But bad as it is to admit, I had never thought a lot about the Lord. I did that day. I started believing the day my baby was born, because I could look right down and see proof of Him.
    When Saul finally did get home, he walked in like a man packing a heavy load. His face seemed much older to me. I sensed that new wrinkles and creases had pressed themselves out at the corners of his eyes and mouth. He fell on his knees by the bed and kissed the baby on the top of her head.
    â€œSo soft,” he said. He run his cheek across her thin hair.
    â€œI’d like to call her Birdie,” I told him. I knowed that his people cracked the Bible for names, but I didn’t care. I couldn’t see the joy in just getting a Bible, letting it fall open to whatever page it would, and giving the child the first name you happened upon. With my luck it would have fallen to