I had never been so afraid of something as ordinary as feeding a baby.
Before Ada was born, I had assumed nursing would be one of the things motherhood taught me.
I had worried about doing it properly.
I had wondered whether it would hurt.
I had imagined holding my daughter until she was satisfied.
Those thoughts belonged to a woman whose child was still alive inside her.
The woman sitting in Caleb Foster's house knew something different.
A baby could want to feed and still be unable to manage it.
I had seen that happen.
I could not forget.
The child in the brown blanket moved against my arm.
I watched the small mouth.
I wanted to see a strong response.
Something that would tell me there was enough energy left.
Instead, the baby's movements were weak.
I adjusted my position carefully.
My body ached.
I had been walking through the cold.
The chair felt solid beneath me, but I could not seem to make myself comfortable.
Nothing about that evening was comfortable.
I was in a stranger's home.
I had left my sister's house against her husband's wishes.
And I was holding a child whose mother had died giving birth.
I thought of Lydia.
I knew almost nothing about her.
Only her name.
The ranch.
The twins.
And the terrible fact that she had not survived their delivery.
Yet I felt her absence everywhere.
It was there in Caleb's tired face.
It was there in the way he tried to manage both babies at once.
It was there in the green blanket and the brown blanket.
Two small children whose mother would never come through the door.
I had wanted to tell myself I was helping them for a simple reason.
They needed milk.
I had milk.
That was true.
But sitting there, I understood why Amos had been so unwilling to let me come.
Not because there was anything wrong with feeding hungry children.
Because the situation was complicated.
There were feelings in that room that neither Caleb nor I could easily speak about.
We had both buried people we loved.
He had lost Lydia.
I had lost Thomas and Ada.
Neither of us had come looking for another person's grief.
Yet there we were.
Bound together for the moment by the needs of two infants.
I looked down at the baby again.
“Come on, little one,” I murmured.
The child made another effort.
I brought the baby to my breast.
For a moment, there was only a weak movement.
Then the small mouth found its place.
I waited.
I was frightened to move.
I was frightened even to breathe too deeply.
There was an effort to suckle.
It was faint.
Not the steady feeding I hoped for.
But it was an effort.
I felt tears gather in my eyes.
I kept watching.
The child paused.
Then tried again.
I wanted to encourage every movement.
I wanted to tell the baby that help had arrived.
But I knew better than to promise what I could not control.
I had promised Ada things I could not give her.
I had told her I was there.
I had believed being there should be enough.
It was not.
I could not save her with love.
I could not save her by holding her closer.
And I could not guarantee that this child would live merely because I had reached Cedar Run Ranch.
So I remained quiet.
I let the baby try.
Caleb stood a little distance away.
The other infant continued crying.
Every so often, he moved the green blanket higher and gently changed the baby's position.
He did not ask many questions.
I was grateful.
I knew he wanted answers.
I knew he wanted someone to tell him the twins would recover.
I also knew that a grieving father might hold on to any hopeful word.
I could not bear the responsibility of offering him false certainty.
At last, I looked up.
“There's some effort,” I said.
His face changed.
“Is that good?”
“It is better than none.”
He nodded.
I could see how carefully he was trying to accept that small amount of reassurance.
He looked toward the baby.
“She's been so quiet.”
I looked down again.
Until that moment, I had not known which child I was holding.
A daughter.
A little girl.
The knowledge struck me unexpectedly.
I thought of Ada.
I thought of the name I had chosen.
I thought of how I had imagined calling to her from another room.
I had not expected to learn that the quiet twin was a girl while she was trying to feed in my arms.
Yet there she was.
Someone else's daughter.
Someone else's small, vulnerable life.
I looked at Caleb.
“She's very tired.”
He lowered his eyes.
“I know.”
The words sounded heavy.
I wondered how long he had been watching his daughter weaken.
How many times he had tried to feed her.
How many times he had hoped the next attempt would be different.
I remembered the helplessness.
It was a terrible thing to recognize in another person's face.
I looked at the child again.
She had stopped for a moment.
I waited.
Then she made another small effort.
I could feel my body responding.
For days, my milk had seemed like a punishment.
Now I was beginning to understand that it could still be nourishment.
The thought did not make me happy.
Not immediately.
It made me sad in a different way.
Ada should have been the child I fed.
I had imagined her in my arms.
I had been ready to give her everything my body could provide.
Instead, I was giving it to Lydia Foster's daughter.
I felt ashamed of the small stab of jealousy that followed.
The baby had done nothing wrong.
She was hungry.
She was alive.
She needed care.
Yet part of me wanted to cry out that this should have been Ada.
Looking back, I can admit that.
I did not want harm to come to either twin.
I wanted them to live.
But grief had not made me generous in every corner of my heart.
Sometimes it made me bitter.
Sometimes it made me selfish.
I had to recognize those feelings without allowing them to decide what I did.
The child continued trying.
I held her carefully.
I thought about the mornings at the basin.
I had treated my milk as something useless.
Something to be removed.
Something that only reminded me of what I had lost.
Now every small swallow mattered.
The change was almost too much to understand.
I wanted to tell Ada about it.
That thought came so naturally that it hurt.
I had spent months imagining telling my daughter things.
Little things.
What the weather was like.
What her father had been like.
Why a certain book mattered.
Now I was holding another baby and wanting to explain something to a child who would never hear me.
I pressed my lips together.
I was not going to cry loudly and frighten Caleb.
He had enough to manage.
After a little while, the baby seemed to rest.
I looked up at her father.
“She may need time.”
Caleb nodded.
“She's had a difficult day.”
I almost smiled at the understatement.
A difficult day.
The child had gone nearly without nourishment.
Her mother was dead.
Her father had been turned away from the place where he hoped to find help.
And now a stranger was trying to feed her.
But I understood why Caleb chose such small words.
Sometimes the truth was too large to say plainly.
I had done the same thing.
I had told people I was tired when I meant that I could barely bear to wake up.
I had said I was managing when I was not.
I had thanked Martha for supper while fighting the urge to leave the table and cry.
We used ordinary words because the others were too difficult.
Caleb looked at the child in green.
“He needs feeding too.”
I nodded.
There was no surprise in that.
The crying baby had been telling us so since I arrived.
But I had been afraid to take my attention away from his sister.
I looked down at the little girl.
She was resting against me.
Her face was still small and tired.
I could not tell how much nourishment she had managed.
I knew only that she had tried.
Caleb moved closer.
“Should I take her?”
I hesitated.
Not because I wanted to keep her.
Because I was frightened of losing the small progress we had made.
But the other baby needed help.
And Caleb had been holding him for a long time.
“Yes,” I said. “Carefully.”
He gave me a tired look.
“I've been doing little else.”
I understood what he meant.
For six weeks, his days had been filled with holding children.
Crying children.
Hungry children.
Children who could not understand why the woman who had given them life was no longer there.
He took his daughter into his arms.
I watched the brown blanket settle against him.
The baby made a small sound.
Then she was quiet.
I could not stop watching her.
Caleb noticed.
“She does that,” he said.
“What?”
“Goes quiet enough to frighten me.”
I looked at him.
He said it without embarrassment.
He had reached the point where fear was no longer something worth hiding.
I understood.
I had been there with Ada.
I wished I could tell him something more useful.
Instead, I said the only thing I knew.
“We'll keep watching her.”
He nodded.
Then he offered me the other twin.
The baby in green was a boy.
He was louder than his sister.
His cries came with more strength.
I felt relief at that.
Then immediately felt foolish.
Loud crying did not guarantee health.
I knew that.
But after watching the girl struggle, the sound of her brother's voice was almost welcome.
I accepted him.
He was warm beneath the blanket.
Restless.
His little face tightened as he cried.
I drew him closer.
“There now,” I whispered.
He did not calm immediately.
I did not expect him to.
He was hungry.
He had been trying to tell everyone.
I remembered how helpless I had felt when Ada could not cry strongly.
Now I found myself grateful for a child who was making his distress impossible to ignore.
I settled him against me.
He searched.
There was more force in his movements.
I felt the difference at once.
I held him steady.
Then he began to feed.
I waited for the weak pauses I had felt with his sister.
They did not come in quite the same way.
He seemed stronger.
More determined.
His little hands moved against the cloth.
I let out a breath I had been holding.
Caleb watched from beside me.
“Is he taking it?”
“Yes.”
He stared.
“Really?”
“Yes.”
For a moment, his expression became almost unrecognizable.
The fear did not disappear.
The exhaustion remained.
But I saw relief break through it.
He looked down at the girl in brown.
Then at the boy feeding in my arms.
I knew what he was thinking.
One child had managed to take nourishment.
Perhaps the other could too.
Perhaps neither of them had to face another night without enough food.
He lowered himself into a chair.
It was the first time I had seen him sit.
He held his daughter close and stared at his son.
Neither of us spoke for a while.
The room was still not quiet.
There were small movements.
Soft infant sounds.
The tired breathing of two adults who had seen too much death.
But the desperate crying had eased.
I looked down at the boy.
He continued feeding.
I felt something inside me loosen.
Not happiness.
Not peace.
Something smaller.
The knowledge that for this moment, I was doing what I had come to do.
I could not bring back Ada.
I could not give Caleb his wife.
I could not undo the three days since my daughter's burial.
But I could feed this child.
And I could try again with his sister.
I looked at Caleb.
He was watching the green blanket.
His eyes were wet.
He did not wipe them immediately.
I turned my attention back to the baby.
I wanted to give him the privacy of pretending I had not noticed.
After a while, the boy slowed.
His small body seemed less tense.
I adjusted the blanket around him.
I did not know how long he had been feeding.
Time had become strangely difficult to measure.
With Ada, I had counted every minute.
Now I found myself counting small movements.
A swallow.
A breath.
Another effort.
I wanted each one to continue.
When the boy finally rested, I looked toward his father.
“He's taken some milk.”
Caleb closed his eyes.
For one moment, he looked as though the relief might be more than he could bear.
Then he opened them.
His daughter moved weakly against his chest.
I saw his attention return to her immediately.
Mine did too.
The boy in green had managed to feed.
That mattered.
But the little girl in brown still needed us.
And I knew that one successful feeding was not enough to promise either child's safety.
Source: life5.aubtu.biz
