"She’s fine-see?" Will held the door open a crack and let them peek inside for reassurance. All they saw was their mother lying at rest with her eyes closed. Will closed the door. "Shh. She’s restin’ now, but we’ll all go in later and see her, soon as we get the baby a bath. Come on now, you might have to help me."
They followed as if mesmerized. "In the real bathtub?"
"No, the real one ain’t ready yet."
"In the sink?"
"Yep."
They screeched chairs across the kitchen floor and stood one on either side of Will as he lowered their sister into a dishpan of warm water. Her crying stopped immediately. Cradled in Will’s long hands, she stretched, opened dark eyes and peered at the world for the first time. Thomas reached out a tentative finger as if to test her for realness.
"Uh-uh. Mustn’t touch her yet." Thomas withdrew the finger and gazed up at Will respectfully.
"Where’d she come from?" asked Donald Wade.
"From inside your mother."
Donald Wade looked skeptical. "She din’t neither."
Will laughed and gently swished the baby through the water.
"She sure did. Been curled up inside her like a little butterfly inside a cocoon. You seen a cocoon, haven’t you?" Of course they had. With a mother like theirs, the boys had been watching cocoons since they were old enough to say the word. "If a butterfly can come out of a cocoon, why can’t a little sister come out of a mother?"
Because neither could answer, they believed.
Then Donald Wade remarked, "She ain’t got no wink!"
"She’s a girl. Girls don’t have winks."
Donald Wade stared at his sister’s pink skin. He looked up at Will. "She gonna get one?"
"Nope."
Donald Wade scratched his head, then pointed. "What’s that?"
"It’s gonna be her belly button."
"Oh." And after some thought, "Don’t look like mine."
"It will."
"What’s her name?"
"You’ll have to ask your mother that."
The baby hiccuped and the boys laughed, then stood by watchfully while Will washed her with glycerine soap. He spread it over the pulsing scalp, down the spindly legs, between tiny toes and miniature fingers that had to be forced open. So fragile, so perfect. He had never felt skin so soft, never handled anything so delicate. Within the length of time it took to bathe her for the first time the tiny being had worked her way so deeply into Will’s heart she’d never lose her place there. No matter that she wasn’t his own. In his heart she was. He’d delivered her! He’d forced her to breathe her first breath, given her her first bath! A man couldn’t have a heart this full and care about whose seed had spawned the life that was bringing this bursting sense of fulfillment to him. This little girl would have a father in Will Parker, and she’d know the love of two parents.
He laid her on a soft towel, cleaned her face and ears and dried all the nooks and crannies, experiencing a growing ebullience that put a soft smile on his face. She grew chilled and began crying in chuffy, hiccuping spurts.
"Hey there, darlin’, the worst is over," Will murmured. "Get y’ warm in a minute." He surprised himself by delighting in this first monologue to the infant. A person couldn’t not talk to somethin’ sweet as this, he realized.
Will carefully tended her cord, applying alcohol, and a cotton bandage, then Vaseline against her stomach before tying the bandage down and diapering her for the first time. She recoiled like a spring every time he tried to maneuver his hand into position for pinning. The boys giggled. She retracted her arms while he tried to feed them into her tiny undershirt and kimono. The boys giggled some more. When Will reached for one pink bootee, Donald Wade was proudly waiting to hand it to him.
"Thanks, kemo sabe," Will said, and tied the bootee on a skinny ankle. Thomas was waiting to hand him the other.
"Thanks, Thomas," he said, roughing the boy’s hair.
When the baby was ready to present to her mother, Will picked her up carefully. "Now your mother wants to see her, and in about fifteen minutes or so she’ll want to see you, so you both wash your hands and comb your hair and wait in your room. I’ll call you when she’s ready, okay?"
Pausing before the closed bedroom door, Will studied the baby who stared at him with unfocused eyes. She lay still, silent, her fists closed like rosebuds, her hair fine as cobwebs. He shut his eyes and kissed her forehead. She smelled better than anything else in the world. Better than sizzling bacon. Better than baking bread. Better than fresh air.
"You’re somethin’ precious," he whispered, feeling his heart swell with love so unexpected it made his eyes sting. "I think you’n me are gonna git along just fine."
Then he nudged the bedroom door open, stepped inside and closed it with his back.
Elly lay slumbering. She looked haggard and exhausted.
"Elly-honey?"
She opened her eyes and saw him standing with the baby in his arms, his shirt damp in spots, the sleeves rolled to the elbow, his hair messy and a soft smile on his lips.
"Will," she breathed, smiling, holding out an arm.
"Here she is. And more presentable now." He placed the bundle in Elly’s arm and watched her tuck the blanket away from the baby’s chin for a better look. Within him sprang a wellspring of emotion. Love for the woman, welcome for the baby, and in a corner of his soul, the lonely plaint of a man who would always wonder if his own mother had ever held him that way, smiled at him with such sweetness, explored his face with a fingertip and kissed his forehead with the reverence that brought a choking sensation as he looked on.
Probably not. He knelt beside the bed and folded aside the opposite edge of the soft flannel receiving blanket. Probably not. But he’d make up for it by watching Elly lavish this precious one with the love he’d never known.
"Oh, Will, isn’t she pretty?"
"She sure is. Just like you."
Elly lifted her gaze and let it drop as the baby’s fist closed around her little finger. "Oh, I’m not pretty, Will."
"I always thought you were."
The baby’s other hand took Will’s finger. Linked by her, the man and wife shared an interlude of closeness. Reluctantly, Will ended it.
"I’d better tend to you now, don’t you think? Get you washed, and in some clean clothes."
Elly regretfully relinquished the baby, and Will laid her in the basket. Kneeling beside it on one knee, he adjusted the pink shawl around her tiny form, touched her hair with a fingertip and murmured, "Sleep now, precious one."
He rose to find Elly’s eyes on him and experienced a brief stab of self-consciousness. He was a man who’d had to learn how to talk to the boys, who’d taken weeks to feel comfortable with them. Yet here he was, after less than an hour, murmuring soft things to the baby girl who couldn’t even understand. His thumbs went to his rear pockets in the unconscious gesture that said Will Parker was out of his depth.
"I put her on her stomach like you said." Deep love softened Elly’s smile while he stood fidgeting. "I-I’ll get your bathwater and-and be right back," he sputtered.
"I love you, Will," she said. She knew the look well, the pacified one that overcame him when things got too perfect for him to contain. She knew the stance, the thumbs-in-the-pocket, still-as-a-shadow suppression that said things were working inside him, good things he sometimes failed yet to believe. That was when she wanted him close enough to touch.
"Come here first." He approached but stood a safe distance, as if touching the bed would damage her. "Here, beside me."
He sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress and she had to reach up and pull him down before she could give the hug she knew he needed.
"You done good, Will. You done so good."
"I’ll hurt you, Elly, layin’ on you this way."
"Never."
Suddenly they were hugging fiercely. He turned his face against her ear. "Jesus, she’s so beautiful."