“Gute.” Elnora’s voice was brighter than before. “Like that Rebekah, on the next pain.”
Beside her, Heloise began to chant. The words muddled in her ears, but their strength was there. Ancient, low, and strong. Elnora joined in from somewhere, and Rebekah remembered at once where she had heard this chant before when she helped deliver her mater of bopplin Beanie, her tiniest bruder, in the hallway of her childhood home.
“Come, little one,” Elnora said. “Komme to your family.”
A final pain of biblical proportions relieved Rebekah in a strange and unexpected way. Voices sounded far off and very excited, but a peculiar, black exhaustion ensured she stayed apart from it all.
Rebekah’s eyes fluttered, then opened.
Joseph’s face, though blurry, was there. He was talking, but she couldn’t make out the words.
“What?” Her voice sounded far off to her own ears. Foreign.
“We have a sohn.” Joseph’s words finally began to make sense and his face began to grow less fuzzy. “Wake up, Rebekah, our sohn needs you to wake up.”
Her hand flapped nonsensically on top of the quilt. “What happened?”
Joseph’s hand found hers and stilled its flapping. “When Lil’ Bit was born, you gave us a scare. Seemed you couldn’t hardly stay awake during the birthing process, then when he was born, you started shaking. A moment later you were just…gone.” His hand stroked hers and his voice dropped to a whisper. “I was afraid.”
The world around her threatened to revolt, so she did not move.
Joseph continued. “Mater allowed me to come in to be with you so she could help Elnora with the bopplin.”
“Help?”
“Yes. Like his mater, it seems he does not want to wake up, either.”
“Did you? Him?” Groggy, Rebekah gave Joseph’s hand a weak squeeze. Finally, her command over her own faculties was beginning to return. “We have a him?”
Joseph chuckled softly. “Ja, we have a him.”
“Did I ask if can I see him?” Her words came out jumbled, but she hoped Joseph understood her meaning. She attempted to sit up, but the world began spinning. She let Joseph, who was still talking, lay her back onto her pillow.
“So much blood. You may not feel yourself for a while,” Joseph said. “Dat left for Montgomery a while ago to get the Englischer doctor.”
Rebekah suddenly felt sheepish. “Oh my, that is too much fuss. I will be fine.” Her eyelids fluttered. “Though I feel as if I could sleep for a week. Maybe two.”
“I need you to listen to me closely.” He leaned in close and stared hard into her face. “I will take care of you, Rebekah. I will let you sleep as long as you need. But the doctor is not for you. Elnora sent for the Englischer doctor for Lil’ Bit.”
***
Until that moment, Rebekah hadn’t noticed the shroud-like silence that had descended over the room. Suddenly very much awake, she turned her head this way and that. “Where is he? Please, I must see him. Joseph, please?”
She breathed deeply and looked down into the beautiful, handmade cradle. It was empty. Oh no. Everything in her vision swam, but she did not care. She clawed at the bedclothes until, with Joseph’s help, she managed to get semi-upright.
Then, she saw it.
The huddled mass of shoulders, their backs to her, across the room, beneath the far window. Elnora, Heloise, and Samuel. Their quiet prayers, rhythmic, low, and solemn, filled that corner of the room with love. And hope.
Rebekah listened hard.
A sniffle from outside the room punctuated the somber affair. Thomas’s head appeared around the corner. “Am I an aendi or an oncle?”
Rebekah flickered a smile at her little bruder.
Joseph nodded at him. “Komme in, Thomas.”
He dashed to Rebekah’s side and hugged her head hard. “Schwestie,” he whispered into her hair. “I thought you were dead. Then, when you were not dead, I thought…I thought you were going to die.”
“I was not too sure about the ending to this story, myself,” Rebekah muttered. Words were still not behaving correctly in her mind, but at least they sort of made sense as she spoke to Thomas.
Her gap-toothed brother continued. “I know I am supposed to have faith and not worry. That Gotte’s will is always right, and it is my job to always accept, not always understand.” His little voice was only a breath above a whisper in Rebekah’s ear. “But I still prayed hard for Gotte to make you oll recht whether it was His will or not.”
Joseph chuckled.
Thomas looked at him, his eyes wide with worry. “I thought Gotte might just need a little help making the right decision is all.”
“I love you, little bruder,” Rebekah whispered back. “I know in my heart that it was that very prayer from you that saved my life. Danki.”
“I cannot live without you, Schwestie.”
“Neither can I,” Joseph said quietly.
“I love you both, too,” Rebekah said. Tears filled her eyes. “Joseph?”
“Yes?”
“I need you to do something. Right now.”
“Anything.”
“Take Thomas to see Lil’ Bit. Please.” Rebekah hiccupped back a sob and turned her face to Thomas. “You are Lil’ Bit’s oncle, but I planned to, no, I will raise you both as bruders.”
Thomas’s freckled face shaded red, and his lower lip quivered. Tears hung from his fringe of dark lower lashes.
Joseph held out his hand, and slowly, Thomas took it. He looked back at her, but let Joseph lead him across the broad expanse of the room. Once there, Thomas looked down at the silent baby, then up at Joseph. “Oh no, Joseph.”
Still, the adults were chanting their syllabic prayer.
Thomas too innocent and curious to know better, tugged on Joseph’s hand. “Why is Lil’ Bit so blue?”
Joseph started to answer, but a sob closed his throat.
Samuel, sitting in the chair, patted Thomas’s shoulder. “He was born not breathing, sohn. The cord was born first. And that is no gute,” Samuel said. “That is why he is blue.”
Rebekah balled her fist and stuck it in her mouth. She bit hard to stem the hot tears that wanted to be set free. “No.”
Elnora and Heloise’s continuous chanting soothed the painful air that had overtaken the room. In a tub that had appeared from seemingly nowhere, the grossmammis shared the task of blessing their first kinskind with his first, and last, bath.
