The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,74

me and the bed up—though there was far less mess than I had expected. She sent Adam into the kitchen to make a tea from some herbs she pulled out of her bag.

“It’s got catnip and some other good stuff in it. Good for your blood and the baby’s.” She spooned warm drops of it onto Gracie’s lips.

She announced that she would be at my side until I could relieve myself. The four of us sat in silence, one new life among us and the odor of blood iron in the air. Granny Paynes eyed us as we gazed at the baby. She must have been surprised at our peculiar relief at having had such an ugly, sexually ambiguous child.

After she sent Adam out of the room and helped me with the chamber pot, she gathered her things and gave me instructions. She made me promise that I would drink more of her tea, take the baby to a doctor as soon as I could, and not let my man at me for six weeks. Then she gave me some homemade salve for the baby’s cord, lit a pipe of something foul-smelling, and walked out the door.

She and Adam talked softly in the kitchen. The tea tin where we kept the money since I’d broken the cookie jar clattered gently when Adam opened it to pay her. It was four in the morning on December 23, 1950. Almost four years since I’d found Addie.

“Merry Christmas! Jesus be with you,” Granny Paynes called down the hall to me before she left with Adam.

The next thing I knew, winter sun blazed through the bedroom window. I studied the baby’s sleeping face in the bright morning light. Already, she looked smoother. I remembered the shadowy, profuse genitals I’d seen earlier. I wanted to take her diaper off but the room was colder now, she was sleeping, and I wanted Adam with me when I looked. I ran my finger gently over her cheek, which felt smooth and soft as any baby’s. She grunted and turned instinctively toward my finger, her mouth open. Her eyes opened a slit, then wider. She focused.

In that simple, clear moment of focus, I saw Addie’s first glance.

I got out of bed stiffly and went looking for Adam, first thinking I would leave the baby asleep on the bed and then finding that the cord, though cut, remained strong. I turned, halfway down the hall, and shuffled back for her.

The clock chimed nine times. Everything had changed for me and Adam. Our child had arrived. I held my daughter up so she could get her first look at her home. I tried to imagine all that would occur in those rooms—the parlor, the kitchen, the hall. She would do and say and think things in those rooms that I could not imagine. She was the first daughter of Adam, who was not a man.

At the back door, I called Adam out of the barn. Our baby stared up blinking, undisturbed by the cold or my shouts to her father.

Adam came and stood on the step below me and I handed him his daughter. They were beautiful.

“Let’s do name her Grace,” he said. For weeks we had tossed names around. Grace had been his favorite.

“Let’s take a close look at how things are going first. Make sure that we don’t have a Gary,” I said. Adam took her inside and I followed, waddling down the hall, anxiety rising in my chest.

He laid her on the bed and unwrapped her, ceremoniously letting the diaper fall away. She kicked her spread legs and muttered at the cool air. We peered. Definitely a vulva, protruding and very ornate, swollen, open. At its peak, a mushroom nub of pink, covered in foreskin, too large to be a clitoris. Bulging skin, unmistakably scrotal, framed the outer labia. She was both.

I sunk down onto the bed.

“Give her time. Hold her close to you. She’s our daughter, I’m sure.” Adam took my arm to help me sit. “She’s perfect.” He beamed at me. Then he pulled his waistband out and looked down at himself. He lifted my nightgown and made a show of examining me. “Yep, I’m pretty sure we don’t have a doolywhacker here. She’s Grace. Our Gracie.”

I laughed and swatted his hand away, pretending that I shared his confidence.

We re-pinned Gracie’s diaper, then lay down, one of us on each side of her. After a moment, Adam pressed our daughter against me as he slipped