the lot of us in white. We were sitting on the ground like a little class. “One of you girls named Lacey May?”
I raised my hand. Rolled myself over to all fours and slowly got up.
“Come on with us.”
Another cop stepped in with a notebook and began writing down the names of the other pregnant girls.
“I’m named by my creator alone,” Denay told him. She stared at Vern’s body on the floor. She looked almost annoyed.
The cramping feeling continued. It burned and radiated through me. I held my breath and it subsided. All good. But then a crash between my legs, turning the dust into mud under my feet. “Can someone call my midwife?”
The cop glanced up from his pad. “I’m sure you’ve got a lot of feelings happening at once about all this, but that’s why there’s laws in place to make things simple. You can leave feelings behind and let the law do its work. We’ll get that baby delivered just fine,” the cop said.
“I want to give birth at the Farm of Spiritual Birthing and Uterus Celebration. I just need Hazel. She can help me have the baby.”
“There’s a lot of paperwork to be done before that can happen.”
Paperwork. What could the paperwork possibly say, I wondered. The cops were like another species to me, large men in the same suits, their faces so sure of what they were saying, able to make big decisions with confidence, like killing Vern.
“How did you know to come?” I asked the cop. He guided me toward a white square ambulance. I felt the wet of my dress against my legs. The cramping intensified, my bag of water no longer there to cushion it. “Who told you?” I held my breath and tried to focus only on him.
He helped me onto the small bed inside, then stood back. The paramedics began moving around me, wrapping things around my arms, holding a monitor to my stomach. He drew a thick finger under lines on his report. He hummed as he read. Finally, he looked at me as the doors to the ambulance were closing.
“Says here it was your mother.”
Chapter 26
Saint Agnes Hospital. The huge building, the clean laminate floors, the bright pink of the nurses’ smocks, heaven. They walked around in an orderly way, in a way that spelled routine, safety. This was a place where they knew exactly what they were doing and they were doing it with rhythm and function.
I went on a strange autopilot, morphing into a new self. They helped me off the stretcher and unhooked my IV and led me to a wheelchair and I sat down without question. The IV had made me feel suddenly alive again and the law was making decisions now. The clean sparkle of the hospital a blessing. The phones ringing and the people answering them. My mother never took me to the doctor after we were saved. The church would just pray over my sore throat, my cough.
A woman with long black hair, skin dusted in freckles, and large clean front teeth appeared at my side and wheeled me down a long hall where crucifixes hung and sweet pictures of Jesus smiling, kneeling before a crowd of children, His love gleaming from his hands.
“I’m Pam. I’m a labor and delivery nurse. How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said. I looked away from the Jesus pictures and swallowed my tears. Was this the God I’d been hoping existed? The kind face, the soft arms. He was nothing like Vern.
“No reason to hide your real feelings.”
“It hurts,” I said.
“Well, you’re still talking to me, so that’s a sign we’re probably still pretty early in the process, which is good. We can go find your room and get you settled.”
“I can walk,” I said. “I’d rather . . .” But the cramping feeling deepened, stopped my mind. Pam put her warm hand on my back and told me to breathe through it. “Okay, push me.”
On our walk she asked me questions about my prenatal care. Had I had an ultrasound? No. Did I know if I was dilated? No. Did I know if I was close to my due date? The Birthing Day was my due date. It went on like this, me answering everything wrong until she said, “Great. Well, it’s good you’re here. We have lots of room right now and you can use the Jacuzzi.”
“Will the other girls come here?” I said. “There are more than just me.”