Jane Smiley - Some Luck

“No one?”

Billy shook his head.

“Richard?”

Billy shook his head.

“Well, ‘Dick’ is a name. It’s the name of this boy in the picture. Dick.”

“Dick,” said Billy.

Then he said, “Go, Dick. Go.”

“Okay, turn the page. Jane? What does that say?”

Lillian looked at her page. It said, “Run, Jane, run.” Jane said, “Run jump run.”

“No, Jane. Look again.”

Jane looked again; then Lillian saw her face turn deep red. She muttered, “Run, Jane, run.”

“Better,” said Miss Grant. “Lillian?”

Lillian smiled her nicest smile, holding Miss Grant’s gaze as she turned to the back of the reader. Then she looked down. There were lots of words on the page. In an even and steady voice, Lillian said, “Oh, look, Dick. Here comes Spot! Run, Spot, run! What a good dog you are, Spot! Sally sees Spot run. Jane sees Spot run. Dick laughs.”

At lunchtime, Lillian shared her apple turnover with Jane, and Jane held her hand. The next day, Miss Grant put Lillian in a higher reading group, but Jane was now her best friend.

ROSANNA WAS SURE the due date was after Halloween, but on October 14, she was standing in the kitchen, doing the dinner dishes, when her waters broke — just rushed out of her and splashed on the floor — and when the first pain came, it was a sharp one, a real contraction. She was to the door between the kitchen and the dining room when the second one came, and at the foot of the stairs for the third one. There would be no climbing the stairs.

So she went into the boys’ room and looked at the beds there — she’d been too exhausted to change and launder the sheets for a couple of weeks, and it was harvest, and both boys were picking corn all day long instead of going to school — they were out there now, in a howling wind, along with Walter and Gus, who was helping them for a day. She paused for another contraction, then went to Frankie’s bed, which was the largest, and flipped the quilt so at least the cleaner side was up. Then she held on to the bedpost for another contraction. But her mind was working like a radio, telling her what to do with absolute clarity.

There were towels, clean ones. She made her way back to the kitchen and got two of those, and the rest of the water she had heated to rinse the dinner dishes. She also got a shoelace — her mother had told her about that years ago, about all the ladies who gave birth at home, and they always tied the cord with a shoelace until the doctor or the midwife got there to cut it. So Rosanna had a clean, new shoelace she’d kept wrapped in a drawer.

It was hard to carry the pot of water, but, slowly, she did. She went into the boys’ room and closed the door, and opened the window, just in case one of the boys or men walked by and she could call out to him.

She laid one of the towels on the bed, and bunched as many pillows as she could up by the headboard. When she lifted her dress, she could see her belly tightening and shrinking. Seeing it was more frightening in a way than feeling it. She said, “Angel Mary Elizabeth, look down on your mama and your new brother or sister, and help us make it through this, Lord preserve us, oh, my God!” After that contraction, she crawled forward onto the bed and knelt with her face in her hands. The door did not open, the wind howled through the window, no rain, thank Jesus, and the cold was good, for now — it kept her from passing out. She keeled over onto her side and tried it — she called out, “Walter, Walter! Ahhhhh! ” But the wind just rose with her voice. They were far away — she would be shouting to the west and the south, and the cornfield was to the east. She felt tears running down her cheeks, but, really, there was no time for that; the contractions were rhythmic, deep, and quick, and Jesus said to roll over onto her back and arrange herself sitting up on the towel, with the other towel in her hands, and she did. Her belly looked as though it was shivering and rippling, but, then, so did the curtains, and so did the ceiling, and she felt herself pushing — it only took one, and then she put her hand between her legs and felt the crown of the baby’s head and moist hair there, and she pushed again, and here was the whole head and face, and then the right shoulder and the left shoulder, and a boy slipped out onto the towel.

The labor had been so quick, the pains so sharp and definite, that she wasn’t at all exhausted, and the sight of the baby’s face was so enlivening that Rosanna simply did what she had seen others do, whether with babies or lambs or kittens — she gently wiped the mouth and eyes and nose, and then she picked up the shoelace that she had dropped on the bed, and she tied it around the cord, about six inches down from where it attached to the baby, and then she cradled it — him — in her arms. He was big — seven pounds at least, and blond. Rosanna said, “Henry, Henry, Henry, Henry Augustus Langdon. Wait till they see you!”

She was looking at Henry’s face. Henry had tried nursing and found it good — God be praised. He latched on like a trouper and got a good dose. Since he was big enough to be due after all, she must have calculated wrong, and she was thinking back when Joey opened the door — sent in for a handkerchief, he was sneezing so much with the harvest.

It was a blessing that it was Joey, given that he didn’t care about mess and liked baby animals — Frankie was more particular and was always complaining that Joey didn’t straighten up his things. Joey’s face lit up as if nothing strange had happened, and he said, “Mama! Is it a boy or a girl? I’ll run tell Papa.”

“Yes,” said Rosanna, “tell him that Henry Augustus is here and wants to meet him.”

Joey was out of the room and the house in about two seconds, and even over the wind, Rosanna could hear his shouts.

Henry, Henry, Henry, he was Lillian all over, a blessed boy for sure; if they had been twins, they could not have been more similar. Rosanna stroked his crusted hair and stared at his blue eyes. His head wasn’t misshapen at all, and all his little parts were perfect. A prayer just came out as she touched each perfect part — the nose, the eyebrows, the fine threads of hair, the fingers, the toes, the two little heels, which struck her as especially strange and miraculous. Thank you. The silent ecstasy with which she gave thanks reminded her of all the thanks she had given over the years while half thinking of other things or, sometimes, even when she didn’t really feel thankful. The curve of his ear, which she ran her finger along.

LILLIAN WAS WALKING with Minnie, as she did every day, back and forth to school, down the road toward their house, when Papa passed her in the car, and Granny Mary was in the passenger’s side. Lillian, who had her hand on the back of Minnie’s coat, which Minnie didn’t mind, looked up and said, “The baby is born.”

“You think so?”

Lillian nodded, and five minutes later they were standing on the front porch. Frankie came out and said, “It’s a boy. His name is Henry.”

Lillian was only momentarily displeased; obviously, it was a very good baby, because everyone had on such big smiles. She walked through the front room without taking off her coat, and straight into Joey and Frankie’s room, where Mama was leaning back in the bed, and Granny Mary was walking around with Henry in her arms. Lillian heard her say, “My land, cut the cord with the kitchen shears — well, I hope he boiled them first! Might as well be the Dark Ages around here,” and then they saw Lillian and zipped their lips, as they so often did. But Granny Mary said, “Come here, child,” and sat down on the corner of the bed with the baby.

He yawned. His fists clenched and his mouth opened wide and he even made a noise, and then his mouth closed and he looked at her a bit cross-eyed, and Mama said, “He can’t see anything yet.”