The Secrets of Midwives Read Online Free Page A

children being carried by their fathers long after their mothers had lost the strength. Girls giving perfunctory, embarrassed pecks to their fathers’ cheeks at the school gates. Kids asking for—and receiving—wads of notes from their father’s wallets, together with a promise not to tell your mother . Endearments like “princess” and “honey.” Gestures and generosities somehow more special from a father than from a mother.
    When I was eight I spent a week with my friend Phyllis at her grandmother’s summer home. On the Saturday night, Phyllis’s dad was instructed by her mother to “wear us out.” He bustled us onto the huge green lawn and asked us to line up. From the way Phyllis’s sister and brother started to giggle, they’d clearly played this game before. I couldn’t see a ball or a Frisbee, so when he said “Go!” I remained where I was, even after the others scampered off in different directions. A split second later, I was flying.
    â€œGotcha!” Phyllis’s dad said, tossing me high into the air. His voice was animated. “That was too easy. What am I going to do with her, kids?”
    Phyllis shouted out from the tree branch on which she sat with her sister. “Tickle her, Dad.” She laughed hysterically. “You have to tickle her.”
    â€œDeath by tickling, eh?” He pinned me to the grass and observed me with mock seriousness. “I’m not sure Grace is ticklish. Are you, Grace?”
    â€œYes,” I said, already feeling giddy. “I am.”
    He waggled his fingers in the air, then brought them down on my stomach, my sides, my neck. Giggles rippled through me until my stomach ached and I thought I’d explode. I rolled around until my pajamas were covered in grass stains. I’d never experienced a greater feeling of content, not before or after.
    Eventually he let me go and went after the others. They sprinted away squealing, climbing trees and tucking themselves into small cavities under the house. I didn’t understand. Were they trying to avoid the tickling and the throwing? If it were my Dad, I would have just lain there, a sitting duck to his tickling hands.
    No, Neva didn’t realize what she was doing by keeping her baby’s father a secret. She had a doting father. She’d had shoulder rides and tickling and nicknames. She would have a Papa for her children one day and, if she chose it, she would be walked down the aisle.
    I knew what her baby would be missing out on. And I wasn’t going to let it happen.

 
    3
    Floss
    It was the same nightmare I’d had for sixty years. There were different versions, but they were fundamentally the same: I go into my baby’s room or pick up my little girl from school and she’s not there. Initially I stay calm; there must be some kind of explanation. She’s rolled under the bed. She’s hiding. It’s someone else’s turn to pick her up. But my neck already feels sweaty and I can’t hear my thoughts too well past the sound of my thundering heart. It’s not long before the hysteria starts. I start thrashing around the nursery or school parking lot, searching for a glimpse of that soft red hair or freckles. Instead I see another face. The face that is synonymous with the end of life as I know it. The end of life with my daughter.
    I jerked upward into darkness, my fingers twisted in the bedcovers. Lil was by my side, her warm body a stark contrast to my chilling dream. I lay down again, mimicking her slow breaths—in out, in out—until my heart began to slow. It felt like déjà vu. The situations weren’t exactly the same, but the similarities were striking. Neva was going to be a single mother. The father of her child remained under a shroud of secrecy. And if her reasons for this were anything like my own, well … that was what terrified me.
    I needed to go to sleep. But when I