“My cervix,” she says. It’s beginning to dilate. The opening is only as big as a little blueberry now. Eventually it’ll be…”

  I’m totally on edge with this fruit comparison.

  “It’ll be an orange, a grapefruit, a melon…”

  “Stop there.”

  I’ve never heard of this comparison before. But why would I? It seems like some bizarre take-off on the Magritte painting of the man with an apple on his face. Only now, in my mind, I’m seeing a vagina with an orange in front of it, next slide, a vagina with a cantaloupe, next slide… I can’t imagine what’s next. A baby. Please, God, a baby.

  “There’s something in my bag, a pill bottle with small blue pills. Get me one.”

  I rummage through the papers and pens and little kids’ toys, the Band-Aids and Kindle reader and Tic Tacs. I find a different plastic bottle labeled BENAZEPRIL.

  “Benazepril,” I say. “You have high blood pressure?”

  “When did you get your medical degree?” Betsey says.

  “Uh, we are both pregnant. And Dr. Craven prescribed this stuff for my high blood pressure,” I say.

  Great. A pause for a medication discussion.

  “What else do you take?” Betsey says. I think she’s struggling to distract herself from her labor pains.

  “Well, for a while I took a cup of Grey Goose four times a day. But then I wanted something gentler, so I switched to Stag’s Leap chardonnay, as needed for pain.”

  Betsey has positioned her hands flat against the sides of the tub. She smiles—well, not quite a smile, a grimace, not that I ever really understood what a grimace was.

  “Don’t make me laugh,” she says. “Let’s apply that rule to everything about to happen.” I’m not sure whether she means that.

  I find the plastic bottle of blue pills.

  “Good. Give me one,” she says.

  I hand her a tablet. “Let me get you some water,” I say.

  “Don’t need it,” she says.

  She takes the pill dry. She throws her head back and swallows.

  CHAPTER

  91

  APPROXIMATELY TWO HOURS LATER (or is it two weeks, two months, or two years later? I don’t know. This is agony) Betsey announces—now moaning and trying to inhale and exhale in a formal cadenced way—“I’m an apple or an orange. I’ve got to start pushing.”

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

  I so want to call some backup people. Someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. But as I look at the sweaty red-blotched mass of flesh in the bathtub I don’t dare make that suggestion.

  “Hold my hand!” Betsey shouts.

  I take her right hand and gently hold it.

  “Not like that,” she sternly says. She pulls her hand away and grasps the sides of the tub. She lets out a sound that is some combination of the word shit and the sound oomph. So it’s some loud intonement of “Shoooomp,” which, thirty second later, becomes “shoomph,” which, sixty seconds later, becomes “Oh, fuck.”

  “Take a look, Em. I think I’m there,” Betsey says.

  “You’re where?” I say.

  “Look down below. I think I’m a grapefruit or a melon or whatever the hell I’m supposed to be at, whatever the hell is supposed to be ten centimeters.”

  Still on my knees I slide to the foot of the bathtub. Betsey’s knees are bent and in the air. Her thighs are slightly spread. I look. Betsey is definitely dilated. But I am not confident that my grapefruit-melon-pineapple evaluation is accurate.

  And then I say, with absolute strength, “I think you’re ready to do it. What do you think?”

  “You must be crazy!” she yells.

  “I may be,” I say. “But I’m all you’ve got.”

  And the sheer authority of my voice seems to infuse me with confidence. Betsey’s liquid-y reddish crotch area looks magnificent to me. I think I see a baby’s head crowning, although I probably don’t. Probably I wouldn’t even know.

  Apparently, my confidence is contagious. Betsey still gets her words out with an effort, but her voice turns slightly sweeter.

  “The de-stresser breaths, Emily. Help me do them,” she says. I could swear she is now smiling. “Do you know what the de-stresser breaths are?”

  I snap back at her. I’m trying to be patient, not usually my strong suit. “Uh, lady. I was in the same Lamaze class that you were in,” I say.

  Now she is noticeably smiling. But… If I hoped that this smile might signal a permanent mood change for her, wow, am I ever wrong.

  She screams, “This hurts like shit! This sucks! I’m never doing this again!”

  “You’re ready to push,” I say.

  “Fuck you,” Betsey says. Then she says, “Shit. There’s something wrong down there.”

  I reposition myself for a clear view of Betsey’s cervix. This time—not more than a minute later—I see that there is some liquid on the floor of the bathtub.

  “I think it’s urine. But it’s sort of brownish… and it might be… well, this can happen. You know, it’s natural. They told us this in class,” I say.

  I make the return journey to Betsey’s head.

  I tell her to start breathing and pushing, breathing and pushing and counting, breathing and pushing and counting and screeching. And she does. And it’s feeling so right and healthy and normal and natural that I think for a moment that I, too, am feeling signs of labor. But, of course, I’m not.

  After a few minutes, I tell Betsey to rest.

  “The next pushing and breathing… you have to feel the air going through you. Think about it, Bets. Through your windpipe, down into your belly, the birth canal, out the vagina.”

  She rests. She cries. She screams.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” she says.

  Now I ignore her. Then I decide, Goddamnit, I’m not backing down from the job.

  “Bullshit,” I say. “Give me two short breaths. Then a big one.”

  She does. As the big breath comes to an exhale she breathes out with an enormous sound of a cow. A moo that seems to last for an hour.

  “I remember that from class. Good work,” I say. Emily the coach. Emily the midwife. Emily the doula.

  “Look down there again, Em. Something bad is going on,” she says. There is a touch of concern—not panic—in her voice.

  I move. I look. The first thing I notice—because I can’t help but notice it—is a partial view of the baby’s head.

  But before I can tell Betsey that it’s crowning, I see blood. Real blood. The blood is streaked with brown and mucus-y yellow. But blood.

  “There’s blood. What should I do?” I ask.

  “How much is there?”

  I panic. How much? A half cup? A few tablespoons? The amount of blood is increasing. Not a flood. But, my God, it’s blood.

  Betsey gives a big push. Then a breath. Then another push.

  I think that I see more blood.

  When I look up at Betsey’s face, I also see tears in her eyes. I see streams of sweat dripping down her nose, her cheeks, her neck.

  “Your eyes look better to me,” I say. They do look better. But the baby’s not exiting the eye sockets. I guess I am trying to be helpful?

  A short breath. Another short breath. A screaming huge push. “I’m really worried about the bleeding,” I say, almost at a screaming level myself.

  Then she sends me info meant to reassure me.

  “It’s nothing. That’s just the head ripping the skin. They call it nature’s episiotomy.”

  “That’s not nothing. Tearing. Ripping. Bleeding,” I say.

  A short breath. A big push.

  My God!

  CHAPTER

  92

  AMY IS IN THE HOUSE!

  In the room!

  In the world!

  Three people crying like babies. Betsey, me, and the baby.

  I keep doing what I’m told to do. A perfect warm wet linen towel washes this little bundle of warm skin and glop. The toes. The toes. These ten perfect pink dots. The minuscule nose. I am mesmerized.

  Betsey’s Amy. Our Amy. My Amy. Our Amy. Our wrinkled little flesh ball of perfection. She is, I think, minuscule. She must be a mistake. I shake with fear and fatigue. But she is perfect. What’s more, she’s a trouper.

  I place Amy on Betsey’s breasts. Amy reaches and tugs.

  “I think the bleeding has stopped,” I say.

  “Of course. The medication you gave me. It helped. I carried it with me the past few months. Because you never know. And, Emily, we didn’t know.”

  I smile, and I cry.

  The umbilical cord? Betsey told me that neither baby nor mother would feel the slice. Teeth. Knife. Scissors. Don’t ask which method I used. I might remember.

  “Call Frankie,” she says. “Call him.”

  “I’ll have to use your phone—mine’s not working. But… Bets… you… how are you?”

  “Fine. Great. Tell Frankie. Tell Juliet and Bobby.”

  I stand on my achy wobbling legs. I watch Betsey hold Amy in the air. My friend is so sure of herself with her baby. They seem to have known each other for years and years. Old friends. Good friends. This Amy baby is irresistible. I want one. I want one. I want one.

  And then—oh, good God, this is going to sound insane—I am sure I am having a labor pain. Yes, a sort of cramp that begins somewhere down—way, way down—in my belly.

  I glance back to see Betsey sitting up straight in the tub. She holds Amy tightly against her, and she tries to straighten up even more. She pushes her feet against the bottom of the bathtub.

  “Stop that!” I yell. “Lie back down. Lie down.”

  She slides down a bit, and I return to her side. I stand there and look down, and I swear, I know, I’m certain that Amy turns her head and looks at me.

  “Say hi to Emily, Amy,” Betsey says, almost in a hypnotic state. Then to me, “She knows you. You were the first person in the entire world to actually see her.”

  I would like to bathe in the comfort of those words. But the pain in my belly seems to be radiating to other places inside of me—chest, butt, legs, everywhere.

  “Frankie! Em, you’ve got to call him! Get me the phone!” Betsey says.

  I get myself to the bedroom and grab Betsey’s canvas bag. I find her phone on the bottom.

  I hand the phone to the crazy lady in the bathtub.

  “It’s not working,” she says. She hands the phone to me. I try to wake it up, but there’s nothing.

  “The battery is dead,” I say. “Where’s your charger?”

  “I… I don’t know if I brought one. I left the house in such a hurry… Frank must be sick with worry.”

  I feel a labor pain. But then, after a moment of torture, I’m fine—weak, unfocused, but fine. To distract myself, I take a clean white sheet from the linen closet and fold it to fit into the bottom of a rectangular laundry basket. I’ve just made a sort of wonderful bassinet. Amy’s crib!

  Then Betsey hands the baby to me. I take her. I hold her. Yes, heaven. Then a rumble inside of me, down deep and up, and I quickly hand the baby back to Betsey.

  She takes Amy, but Betsey’s face is slightly contorted.

  “I think the placenta is here,” she says.

  My labor pains—at least I think they’re labor pains—are so strong now that I must lean forward.

  But I still don’t tell Betsey about it.

  CHAPTER

  93

  THE ASTONISHING POWER of a newborn. That’s the power of Amy.

  She has completely hypnotized her mother and her (favorite) aunt in just a few hours. Betsey and I hover over her laundry basket bassinet. We barely move, but when Amy moves in the slightest, we become breathless and wide-eyed. When Amy stops moving, we become petrified.

  I know that Betsey is the perfect mother to her twins, Juliet and Bobby. Now I witness her being the perfect mother to a newborn. It’s comforting, but I am also running into my own distress.

  Damn it. Not now. Not yet. Why is this happening, this sudden mental and physical pain?

  I am feeling a nasty tightening in my lower stomach, just below what I think of as the womb. The sensation sits in that moment between almost-pain and extreme pain. This puts me in a frightening state of anticipation: waiting for my smallish stabs to turn into giant labor pains.

  I try to distract myself by saying something I’ve been thinking as we’ve been watching the infant. “She’s a peanut. Amy is an absolute peanut.”

  Finally, we both take our eyes from the baby and look at each other.

  “Peanut?” says Betsey.

  “Yeah, my little peanut.”

  “My Little Peanut?” Betsey says. “You mean like My Little Pony?”

  “I guess. Isn’t that adorable?” I answer, but my lower belly feels so twisted that I’m not really sure of what I’m saying.

  “You can call her whatever you like—we both owe everything to you,” says Betsey.

  Then she reaches across the laundry basket holding her newborn. She takes my hand. Then she looks back down again at her daughter. We both smile.

  I’d like to ride on the wave of this warmth. I’d like to say thank you. But instead I say, “Bets, I have to tell you something. I’m sorry. This should all be about you and Amy right now. But… I can’t deal with… I have to…”

  “What is it, Emily?” she says.

  “I think I’m going into labor.”

  Betsey shouts. “Stand up! Stand up right now!”

  We both stand up, and Betsey is all business.

  “Start walking!” she yells.

  “I don’t think I can,” I say.

  “Of course you can. I’ll walk with you.”

  “But we have to watch Amy,” I say as I struggle to my feet, “and you have to recover.”

  “Emily. We’re maybe walking ten feet.”

  She takes my elbow, and we begin to walk to the other side of the room.

  “Shit,” she says.

  “What’s the matter?” I say, assuming that “the matter” has something to do with me. But it doesn’t. Betsey has a problem.

  “I’m bleeding.” She has changed into one of the two hundred silk nightgowns that my mother owned. The problem is not bloodstains; the problem is blood.

  “Oh, my God,” I say as I stop walking. “We’ve got to do something.”

  “I’m fine. It’ll stop. Don’t worry. Keep walking.”

  We do, but I am a wreck about Betsey’s bleeding. At the same time, I feel like a thick belt is tightening around my belly where my waist used to be.

  “How are you feeling?” Betsey asks.

  “Awful. I think it’s labor.”

  “Let’s hope it’s not. Oh, and, by the way, if you think I look like a bloody mess, you should see yourself. You’ve got blood all over you, too. On your nightshirt, on your arms. You even have some on your face.”

  Betsey licks an index finger and presses it against my chin. “There. Let’s get back to the bathroom and get you changed.”

  We walk the tiny distance back to Amy’s bassinet. Betsey and I look down at her. I am momentarily distracted from my own discomfort by the beauty of my little peanut.

  God almighty, Amy is wonderful. How could I not be fascinated by the exquisitely tiny-teeny-weeny-tiny-adorable-minuscule little hands that occasionally reach into the air around her pinkish little baby face?

  Then Betsey suddenly puts her hands on my lower belly and pushes gently. Miraculously she touches the precise place where the tightness and cramping are coming from.

  “Describe the pain,” she says. Her tone is serious. She must be taking Dr. Jane Craven lessons.

  “Well, it’s not exactly pain pain,” I say.

  “Not pain pain,” she repeats. “You’re supposed to be creative. Come up with a real description.”

  “I can’t. It’s sort of like menstrual pain. It’s sort of like constipa… hell, I don’t know.”

  “Well, fortunately, I do know. They don’t sound like labor pains. They’re most likely something we call Braxton Hicks contractions.”

  I don’t know why, but Betsey’s use of the pronoun we, as if there’s the medical community and then there’s the rest of us ignoramuses, bugs me a little bit.

  “It’s just your uterus showing off,” she says. “I had BH contractions with Juliet and Bobby. But obviously I didn’t have them with Amy.”

  “So, does this mean I’m going to start getting labor pains now?” I ask, standing and wondering what in hell is going to happen. I just witnessed a birth—close up. It’s not necessarily pretty.

  “No,” she says. “When real labor pains start, you’ll know it. Right now, just lie down and keep shifting positions. That should help relieve them.”

  “What did you say these things… these contractions… are called?” I ask.

  “Braxton Hicks,” Betsey says. Having made her diagnosis, she now returns all her attention, understandably, to her baby.

  “Why don’t you get cleaned up?” she says.

  “I just want to rest,” I say. Betsey nods. We both are running on empty.

  I lay on the bed. The Braxton Hicks contractions continue. I turn my head to look over at Amy and Betsey. Then I laugh out loud.

  “What’s so funny?” Betsey asks.

  “I’m just thinking. Braxton Hicks. Sounds like the name of a guy I went out with at Princeton.”

  CHAPTER

  94

  I’VE GOT TO FEED the baby.”

  Betsey and I are stretched out, exhausted, on the bed. Amy is lying quietly in her laundry basket bassinet on the floor beside us.

  “Well, unless the little peanut likes low-fat yogurt or beef stew, we have a problem,” I say. “I didn’t prepare anything to feed a one-hour-old baby.”

  Betsey sits up in the bed and then leans over and lifts Amy. Betsey cradles the baby in her left arm and then lifts her left breast with her right hand. It looks to me like Betsey is actually pushing her breast into the baby’s face, but Amy proves me wrong. Amy only takes about a second to open her mouth—wide, in my totally ignorant opinion—and relax.