Talking About My Baby. Margot Early

down there, while lies did; they increased the odds that the person who told them would live to see the next morning.

      Now, even glowing in the first stage of labor, Julia’s eyes were desperate, and they did not distinguish lie from truth. Every word from this woman’s mouth would be a lie, perhaps even into transition, perhaps through the birth of her child.

      She was not afraid, either.

      Tara held her hand because it would have been natural for a girl this young, maybe sixteen, to be afraid—but where Julia had come from was so much worse.

      “Promise me,” said Julia. “Promise me that if I die you will take my baby and raise it. Swear on your mother’s grave.”

      “My mother isn’t dead.”

      “On your father’s grave.”

      Tara grinned. “He’s around, too—and so will you be.” She sobered. “Julia, there are adoption services. Are you worried you won’t be able to care for your baby?”

      “I would never give my baby to someone else! Not unless I was dead! I will take care of my baby. This baby’s father is a diplomat. He is descended from Pancho Villa. My mother... My mother’s family was very wealthy in Mexico City.”

      “Relax,” murmured Tara. She smoothed Julia’s hair. “I’m on your side.”

      The touch electrified Julia. Eyes round and dark, she clutched Tara’s fingers, tightly enough to make the bones crunch. “Then, promise. Swear you will keep my baby.”

      “I’m divorced. No man. Always broke. Midwives make no money.”

      “You’re rich.”

      You’ll lose this argument, Tara. Where she comes from you’re filthy rich, like all Americans. Just drop it. She grabbed a blood pressure cuff and fit it around the girl’s arm. There had been no protein in her urine, but Tara checked for edema anyway. Julia’s hair looked dry and dirty, without luster.

      “Promise, please, that you will care for my baby.”

      I have to get away from the border. And she was going, going north to Colorado to help her mother—at least that was how Tara saw it. In any case, she was going just in time. The desensitization was happening. Another midwife at the clinic had told her, You give and give and give, and then suddenly it’s gone. It wasn’t gone yet, but...

      But I look in this girl’s eyes and see only deceit.

      Only pointless lies instead of survival lies.

      “Okay. Okay, I promise.”

      “Swear.” She radiated strength, powerful already in labor. “Swear on the names of your mother and father.”

      “I swear on the name of my mother, Francesca Walcott, and my father, Charlie Marcus, that I will care for your child in the event of your death.” The words sent a chill over Tara.

      Especially because Julia still squinted at her with dissatisfaction.

      

      TARA STAYED AT THE birth center for forty-eight hours, catching sleep when she could in the sleeping nook off the staff room. She attended eight births; four of the mothers had arrived with preeclampsia. These were not the uncomplicated births that her mother, Francesca, saw in her midwifery practice in Colorado. Even working in rural West Virginia, Tara’s sister, Ivy, had the opportunity to give prenatal counseling.

      But when women crossed the Rio Grande and arrived at the birth center to have their babies, they were often visiting the United States for the first time. They had risked their lives to cross so that their children would be born in the U.S.—and become citizens.

      Like Julia.

      Julia had left the clinic that evening, with her baby daughter, Laura Estrella. She had departed without telling anyone, as though afraid she’d be held to pay for the services she’d received.

      You couldn’t allow yourself to wonder where she’d gone or if she and her child would be safe.

      The sky was starry, and as she walked to her car, a rusty dark-green Safari station wagon bought from a local rancher, Tara could make out the lights of the border patrol stations just a mile away—as well as the neon from the bars in town. In Colorado, it would be cold now. But October on the border—balmy.

      Her car looked just the way she’d left it when she came out the day before to throw soiled clothes in the back seat. Bats fluttered near the parking lot’s lights. One winged close to her ear as she casually checked the station wagon and got in.

      Music... Rock and roll to take her home.

      Jackson Browne. I love you, Jackson. Her fantasy man. She sang with him as she backed out of her space, ready to head home to the trailer. Her heart pounded the lonely rhythm of her nonworking hours:

      I wish the best for Danny and Solange; I do not resent their love for each other, I do not resent that they have a baby. Little Kai...

      It was two years since he’d told her. It didn’t help that he and Solange hadn’t consummated their desire for each other at the time, that they hadn’t physically betrayed her. Sometimes, she wished they had. Instead, they both expected her to appreciate their selfrestraint.

      Now they were living in Hawaii—where Tara and Solange had practiced together, where Tara had married Danny, where Tara had been born—with their new baby.

      The road to the trailer court was dark and poor and unpaved, and as she reached the turn, a low-rider spun out of the drive, spitting dust in the night. It backfired, and a cat meowed.

      No, not a cat. Not a meow.

      The short hairs under Tara’s ponytail lifted.

      She should pull over.

      The baby cried again.

      The baby was in her car.

      And she didn’t have to look over her shoulder at the back seat to know whose baby it was.

      CHAPTER ONE

      In Hawaii, I kept chickens. I had free-roaming

       chickens that came into the pen to roost at night or if they had problems outside. Once in a while, one of the free-range chickens—never a rooster, always a hen—would not want to roost in the pen and would find herself in a tree. If she was not lured back into the pen and retrained to come in at night, she would never return; she would go wild. She would join the group at a safe dis- tance in the daytime, hide her nest from every- one, and climb higher and higher in her own roost so no one could get her. Somehow, in Tara, I have raised a wild hen.

      

      —Francesca Walcott, CNM

      

      On the road again

      

      IT WAS PAST MIDNIGHT. Driving north, out of Texas, Tara chased off night memories and twilight ghosts, excluding everything but the road and Laura. In slumber, Laura opened and closed her soft tiny hands, holding them close against her blue sleeper.

      Almost safe.

      She had made it out of Sagrado. In Colorado, she would live with her mother, Francesca—and maybe make ends meet as a midwife. She wouldn’t enjoy living with Francesca. But she had to give Laura the best life possible.

      She was trying.

      No one at Maternity House had questioned her buying a supplemental feeding system or taking donated breast milk from the breast bank. The birth center sometimes helped an adoptive mother get started inducing lactation. But Tara had told no one about Laura Estrella. Not then, not during the two weeks that followed. Laura would have been given to social services, and...

      No way. She’s mine.

      Hours after finding the baby in her car, Tara had returned to Maternity