| OCR Text |
Show Motherlunge a novel 127 Pavia would look at Jack wearily, maybe trustingly. She would close her eyes again. And I lifted my sister toward her husband as she fought in ten-second bursts to get out of the way of that baby, who was coming, who was coming, who was coming down like something hammered from above, something driving through and splitting her open. Then the doctor was telling her the baby's head was crowning. Pavia clung to the bar and drew in her breath for one last push. I was leaning into my sister, lifting her up-and I felt the baby leave her body all at once. Jack yelled "Oh!" as fluid rained down on the linoleum at the end of the bed. And my sister's back was heaving like she couldn't breathe and I was thinking put it back! put it back! until I heard that hackneyed newborn cry and Pavia-with the sound of bellows opening up wide-took a filling breath between my hands at last. I looked over my sister's shoulder. Ellen was lifting the baby up in two gloved hands, the little culprit. Covered in blood and smeared white and yellow with vemix, the baby was moving, undeniable, raw and unprocessed. Suddenly wild-eyed, it jerked and swiped a tiny red fist at the doctor, whose name none of us remembers now. The doctor clamped the umbilical cord and invited Jack to cut it. "Feels like cutting a fruit rollup," Jack sobbed to no one in particular, and handed back the scissors, handles first. Thus my nephew was bom on April 10, 1994. His mother and his father named him Xavier Alva, and we all upticked one notch toward death-Pavia, as usual, a step or two ahead of me. |
