The Changeling. Victor LaValle

would get was already in this train car. The conductor left, and when the door of the next car rolled shut again, the glass filled with faces. Spectators. Folks who’d figured out something big was happening in this car. At the other end people in the next car were gathering, too. Now they had a viewing public. Even worse, Apollo could already see the light of cellphones held up to record the event.

      “Cowboy! Could you and your team keep all those people out of this car? Block the windows?”

      The kid looked to both ends. “We could do that easy.”

      There were a lot of folks at both doors, and many more behind them. “You sure?” Apollo asked.

      The one who’d run to the conductor laughed. “Most of these people shrink up as soon as we step on a train.” He clutched his hands to his chest and shivered. “Those black boys are so intimidating!” The others laughed.

      “We’ll keep them out,” Cowboy said, smiling.

      And with that they broke off, two boys to a side.

      “No showtime for you, ladies and gentlemen!” Cowboy shouted.

      “No showtime for you!” the other three called back.

      Apollo got down on his hands and knees and crawled around close to Emma’s face. Her head was down, hair like a shroud and matted flat from perspiration. He brought the sippy cup of water closer and lifted her head. He tilted the cup and let her have two sips.

      Apollo set the bottle down. He didn’t know how he could post up behind Emma to receive the baby but also keep giving her sips of water, keep up reassuring contact. He looked over Emma. The mother watched them. When they’d first boarded the train, she and Emma had seemed to share a powerful moment, locking eyes to communicate something Apollo knew he could never understand. He gazed at her, pleading. After a moment the woman patted her daughter and rose from the seat. She pushed the stroller closer to the little girl, who peeked in on her brother.

      The mother took the sippy cup and spoke quietly, in Spanish, to Emma. The woman’s tone seemed soothing, and maybe that was all Emma needed. Emma even leaned forward and touched her forehead to the woman’s shoulder, intimacy so acute it appeared mystical.

      Now Apollo looked over his shoulder, the boys had their backs to the scene, their arms up and flailing to reject all attempts at a shot. He pulled off Emma’s shoes. He slipped her tights down to her knees. He brought his hands to either side of her hips and pressed gently, something that soothed her in the third trimester. He spoke now not to his wife but to their baby.

      “We can’t wait to meet you,” he said.

      THERE IN A stalled A train in the bowels of the earth, Emma bled and bore down. Apollo called out the two commands Kim had told him were always appropriate, Slow down. Just breathe. Apollo focused on nothing but his wife and their child. When Emma arched her back and grunted, he pressed his thumbs into the small of her back, just above the tailbone, until her back went straight again. When she bled and pushed harder, he pressed her thigh and said, Slow down. Just breathe. When he saw the baby crowning, he had a moment of confusion. There was the baby’s head, but it looked like it was wrapped in bubble tape. The amniotic sac hadn’t burst yet, and it served now as a thin layer between the baby and Emma’s pelvic bone. For all the agony she might be feeling, this little miracle—that her water didn’t break right away—was what spared her just enough pain to survive this.

      Apollo watched his hands stretched out now, ready to catch their child. He felt like a witness and a participant. Their child teetered between his mother and the world; in one place and another; alive and in that ether of the womb. Apollo felt as though he, too, balanced on this threshold. Its head nearly out but body still hidden, his child seemed like an emissary of the divine.

      “Can you see his head?” Emma asked.

      Apollo tried to answer but only stammered.

      Then Emma’s water broke, and she cooed with relief, and their child slipped right out, and Apollo Kagwa caught the baby before it touched the floor of the train.

      “It’s a boy,” Apollo said.

      “A boy,” Emma whispered.

      Emma leaned forward into the woman. The woman kissed Emma on the top of her head. Emma had to stay on her knees for a few minutes more until the placenta passed.

      This meant that for a short while Apollo remained alone with his son. Apollo unbuttoned his shirt so he could hold the boy directly against his skin. The baby didn’t cry, didn’t flutter his eyes yet, only opened and closed his tiny mouth. Apollo watched his son take his gasping, first breaths. He watched that little face for what seemed like quite a while, an hour or an eternity.

      “Can we call him Brian?” Apollo croaked. He hadn’t meant to ask that right now, at the moment of birth, hadn’t thought he’d ever want to name his son after his missing father. The question, the desire, simply slipped out; it was as if it had been hiding—biding time on his tongue for years.

      “I like that name,” Emma finally said, turning now, hands open for her child.

      Apollo brought his cheek to the baby’s.

      “Hello, Brian,” he whispered. “I’m so happy to meet you.”

      THE BABY CAME on Friday night. The EMTs arrived twenty-two minutes after Apollo and Emma met the kid. As Emma predicted, they took her directly to Harlem Hospital, where she and the baby were kept under observation for two days. Though they assured Apollo he could go home without them, he spent both nights upright in a chair in Emma’s room. By Monday morning, they were home in a taxi, and Apollo got them both into bed. He’d already given the boy his first name, and now he suggested a middle name.

      “His middle name is not going to be Cowboy,” Emma said as she prepared herself for the climb into their bed. Apollo held Brian as if the boy were made of Baccarat crystal. His eyes were open. He looked at nothing and everything.

      “Give him,” Emma said. She’d propped pillows behind her. Apollo handed her their child, and she leaned close to his face and blew gently on his head.

      Brian came out totally bald. He had a faint overbite and a small chin. He looked like a turtle. In the full light of the hospital room, they’d both seen it, laughed about it.

      “Brer Turtle,” Apollo said. “I’m going to get your mother some food.”

      Emma brought her breast to the baby’s face. She stroked his cheek, as she’d been taught to do, but when the baby opened his mouth, she stuffed so much of her breast inside that he coughed and turned away. Emma curled forward and stroked Brian’s cheek and tried again, but it was another failure to latch. Emma had been trying to get this since late Friday night. At the hospital every nurse, and both doctors, had offered differing opinions about what she was doing wrong.

      In the kitchen Apollo found the breakfast dishes they’d left before going out for work on Friday morning. He’d been expecting to wash them after dinner with Nichelle. They’d been a family of two just that recently. He already had a hard time remembering that ancient age, Before Brian.

      He washed the dishes. Lillian and Kim were both scheduled to arrive this morning. Maybe while they were here, he could make a supermarket run. Lillian and Kim had both come to the hospital, but the visits weren’t long. Even Nichelle made it on Sunday morning, though she had a flight back to Los Angeles in the afternoon. She’d entered the room horrified, as if Emma were still down in that subway car giving birth. She