Chapter 17 #2
I lost the dream and jerked awake, bolting upright at the sound of Juniper’s yelling.
I’d positioned our oxcart mere feet from my sister’s to keep her in proximity.
I wanted to keep a watchful eye on her and be there should she need anything after she’d managed very little at supper, claiming it was too hot to even eat.
Ella and I had covered her evening chores and sent Lovie off to rest. Now, her eldest girl was screaming for me, distressed. “Juniper?”
“Mama’s breathing funny!”
I was off my cart and climbing onto Lovie’s within seconds.
“Lovie?” My sister lay on her back drawing long, labored breaths. The skin on her forehead and arms felt like fire when I touched it. I called her name again. She remained quiet. “Lovie!”
“Zinnie? Everything okay?”
I was too shaken by my sister’s stained shift to answer Ella. Night failed to conceal the dark, wet fabric the moon revealed as blood pooled beneath Lovie’s hips. “Ella, take the children.”
She did so without asking questions, summoning my nieces and nephews, carrying the littlest two from the wagon.
“Lovie… sister… you hear me?”
“Zinnie.” Her voice was faint. Still, my name on her lips was the sweetest. “I wanted to wait.”
“Wait for what, honey?”
“Freedom. Wyoming.”
“Sis, you know babies don’t wait for nothing or nobody.” I lifted the hem of her shift while positioning myself between her knees and widening her legs, gently. “Oh, Lovie…”
It was a lament I tried but failed to keep at the sight of the mass between her legs. There was no newborn infant. Only its empty water sac. And an ocean of blood that needed taming.
“Somebody bring a lantern and some rags!”
I couldn’t say who responded, but someone did, lifting light above my head, illuminating Lovie’s life force flowing from her body, taking its nourishing warmth from her unborn baby.
“Sister… can you push for me?” I hid the trembling in my voice, already knowing she was weak and that pushing was risky.
“Zinnie, you gotta do something!” Ella had returned from taking Lovie’s children wherever she’d taken them.
“You think I don’t know that?” I snapped, before praying for guidance.
Never had I experienced a woman’s water sac exiting the womb and leaving the baby behind, but I’d heard of it.
I’d delivered enough babies to know the longer the infant remained unborn the greater the detriment to both mother and child.
Ella was correct. I had to act despite a paralyzing fear.
I laid my hands on Lovie’s belly and felt about, locating the baby. Relief sped through me when I found it head down, in a proper position.
“Ella, sit behind Lovie. At her back. Facing me.” I continued when she sat in place, bracing my sister’s upper body against her chest. “We gonna push ‘cause she don’t have the strength.”
We worked in tandem while racing against mortality. Ella lifted Lovie towards me on my command while I pressed and manipulated her belly. Our every effort was met with the gush of blood and Lovie’s breathing lessening.
God, help me please!
“You gonna have to cut her, Zinnie.”
I’d never used a knife to extricate a child but knew it could be done and was desperate enough to try.
I scrambled from the cart and raced to my birthing supplies. With its silvery glint beneath the moon, I easily located my knife and rushed back to find tears bathing Ella’s face.
Everything in me went still when she slowly shook her head.
“Lovie?”
I scrambled onto the oxcart and froze. We’d worked to bring a child here; now its head emerged from its mother’s body. It was contorted in the face. Still. Silent.
My heart broke open and bled.
I gingerly pulled its tiny innocence from Lovie’s flesh and swaddled him in my apron. He was tiny, too precious for death. I longed to sing a song of sanctification over him, but the cart rocked suddenly with my sister’s violent shuddering.
“No, no, no!” My screams ripping the night, I thrust the baby into Ella’s arms and took her place, realizing what was occurring and needing to cradle my sister as she breathed her last breaths.
“Lovie, don’t you go nowhere!” I knew my pleas were futile. Still, I bargained and begged. “Please, sister. Stay with me.”
My sister chose one more powerful than me. When she accepted her invitation, I smelled the strawberry-scented breeze of my dream and knew the ethereal lady had come for Lovie.
I wanted to wail and scream but brokenness flattened my tongue beneath mountains of grief as I rocked side to side wishing I could give my sister back her life.
A strong hand fell gently on my shoulder. “Zinnie—”
“Don’t touch me!” It was Buck’s voice. Still, I jerked away and pressed my eyes tight against this new, cruel reality.
“Someone’s gone to inform Master Ryland. We’re gonna have to take her—”
I grabbed my knife that lay within reach. It was meant to open a portal to life. Instead, I waved it like a madwoman. “Go away! I don’t want nobody here right now. Leave us be.”
I ignored Buck’s soft reasoning, Ella’s pleading, and slid down inside myself to a place that insulated me from the cries of Lovie’s children.
This is my sister!
The only one I’d ever known. Now, she was gone.
“Zinnie…”
I was mute as Ella cautiously approached and tenderly laid the baby in its mother’s arms. She secured Lovie’s arms about him, and I held them in place, wordlessly moaning my grief.
When the Tollivers arrived and looked at me, they obviously saw the shell of a woman perhaps on the edge of insanity.
By the grace of heaven, they left me alone, leaving me to hold and rock my beloved sister and her son until Lovie’s flesh lost its warmth and her body turned cold. Only then did I kiss her face and permit myself to let go.
Her soul was home.