The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope - By Rhonda Riley Page 0,75
out of the bed. “I think she needs to be next to you now. That will help her be more girl. It worked with you and me, with Roy and me.”
I held my ambiguous daughter closer and, despite my anxiety about what I had just seen, I slept. I dreamed that I woke and found them both looking at me, one set of brown eyes, one of blue eyes regarding me with equal knowledge and wisdom.
I woke again with Adam offering me a cup of Granny Paynes’s tea. Gracie’s face seemed better. Her features were knitting themselves, her face seemed less flat, her skin smoother. Good enough to be just an ordinary ugly baby, I thought. I hoped the same was happening between her legs.
“Go get Momma. It’s time she knows Santa has arrived,” I told Adam. “Just Momma,” I thought to add before he got out the door. “Tell them just Momma tonight. We’ll all be down for Christmas.”
It felt wonderful to be moving, to have a much smaller belly, and be light on my feet again, but I moved slowly to keep from getting dizzy. I sat at the kitchen table, holding the baby and sipping a cup of Granny Paynes’s tea when Adam and Momma arrived. I handed my mother her new grandchild. “Grace Adele Hope,” I announced.
“Oh, my Lord,” she said, clutching at our arms. “You delivered her yourself, Adam?” she kept asking as if she could not believe a man could do such a thing. She fussed and went on about the fast birth and how good I looked and how pretty the baby would be as soon as she got a little older and “lost the newborn look,” as she kindly put it. I don’t know what shocked her most, Adam delivering Gracie or how Gracie looked, but she, uncharacteristically, did not seem to know what to do with herself.
Finally, she settled on making us a meal and starting on laundry. Soon the house filled with the smell of her corn bread and chicken soup. I napped again, curled up with my new baby in a warm bed, lulled by the voices of my mother and husband talking in the kitchen. There could not have been a better way to have a baby.
Christmas Day, Momma urged me to stay in bed and rest. Everyone could come see me, she insisted. But I didn’t want to miss Christmas dinner. I was tired, but not nearly as tired as I thought I would be. Finally, I convinced Momma that it would be easier on us and the baby if we did the visiting and came to Christmas dinner rather than everyone coming to see us.
By the time she met the rest of my family, Gracie looked normal. Only from certain angles did her skin have an unusual texture. Her genitals were more normal, less swollen. What had looked like a small penis had receded. The scrotal creases on the sides of her vulva had relaxed into a normal smoothness. She had a steady gaze, as intelligent as her father’s. Her fine down of hair glowed a faint copper in sunlight. We, of course, thought she was gorgeous. Still, I was gratified when Momma held her again and exclaimed, “Oh, her color’s better already. And she doesn’t look so newborn!” Gracie stared up at her grandmother. A calm, but very alert baby, she closed her eyes only to nurse and sleep. She went through all of the bustle and noise of Christmas dinner with those blue eyes wide-open, never complaining.
Again and again, I told the story of how fast she had come—told it at the supper table and then to everyone who came by from around the mill-village to see the baby and exchange Christmas visits. I didn’t like leaving Granny Paynes out of the story. She’d been good and patient with me. But I did, disloyal as it may have felt. It bothered me most to lie to Momma.
I did the majority of the talking. Adam basked quietly in the praise as he held the small bundle of Gracie upright against his chest.
“Why didn’t you just pick her up and cart her off to the doctor?” Uncle Otis asked Adam. “That’s what I’d’ve done. Just picked her up.” Being a bachelor, Otis was both squeamish and inexplicably knowledgeable about such situations. “Just hauled her out that door,” he added, “before she knew what was happening and got her to a doctor. A man shouldn’t deliver his