All Fall Down Read online

  The baby is coming. Fast. She tries to find the strength to scream, but all that comes out is a whistling gasp. It chokes her. She turns her head to the side, trying to cough, but all that comes up is a thin runner of spittle.

  “Mama…” Her mother is out somewhere, maybe the garden or doing some sort of yard work.

  Where is anyone else?

  Sunny, groaning, manages to get to her feet. Careful not to slip in the puddle on the floor, she makes it to the sink. Breathe in. Breathe out. She pants through another wave of contractions, but the urge to bear down and push is overwhelming. She can’t stop it. She squats, her body huge and unwieldy, and everything inside her stretches and surges, trying to get free.

  Sunny puts a hand between her legs. She feels the softness of hair, not her own. The firm lump of a baby’s head. Another pain cycles up and up and up, and from someplace inside her she finds the voice to scream.

  She screams as loud as she can, and her voice echoes off the tile walls. It tears out the bathroom door, down the hall. There is the sound of running feet, loud cries. The bathroom door flies open, startled faces appear, there is someone on her knees beside Sunny, and on the other side, too. Joy and Willow. They each take an elbow, trying to help her, but Sunny can’t move.

  “I want my mother.” This is what she thinks she says, but in reality all she manages is a series of grunts.

  They are women, though, and they understand. Willow shouts out for someone to go get Trish. Joy gets a thick pad of wet paper towels and presses it to Sunny’s forehead.

  Sunny does not want to have her baby on the bathroom floor, but there’s no stopping it. The women of her family, her sisters and finally her mother, crowd around her. They bring towels, a blanket, some cool water to bathe her face. They bustle around her, each of them with a purpose. This baby is not the first to be born here in Sanctuary, and they all know how to handle it.

  “Sunny, hold on, one more time and you’ll have to push,” her mom says.

  It’s all she can do. There’s no holding it back, even if she didn’t bite her bottom lip and bear down, this baby would come. But Sunny waits as she breathes through the pain for her body to tell her its time, and she works with the contractions, not against them. Her body does what it’s meant to do.

  Something tears. More pain. There is blood, lots of it, but nobody seems alarmed even though the heat of it, the sudden bright red gush, has Sunny choking on her breath.

  The baby is not coming out.

  She can’t stand the pain any longer, and the world grays out for a second or two. When she’s clear again, Josiah stands in the doorway. Far enough away that his white shirt is at no risk of being stained, but even so…men don’t usually attend the births. Even Papa wasn’t there when his true sons were born.

  Nobody else notices him.

  They’re all talking to her. Urging her though this. Wiping her brow. Joy is between Sunny’s legs, fingers probing.

  Sunny should be embarrassed; from his vantage point in the doorway, Josiah can see everything. He is silent, watching, but his gaze snares hers.

  He smiles.

  And Sunny finds the strength inside her to push again. To push hard. She bears down, pushing the baby inside her out into the world. First the head, shoulders, and finally in a great, huge gush of fluid, the entire body. The baby slips from inside her and into Joy’s hands so fast she cries out, startled.

  No fear, though, she’s delivered babies before. She doesn’t drop Sunny’s newborn. There is an instant relief, the pressure gone at least for a minute or two. A certain grateful numbness.

  Then the pressure of Joy’s fingers inside her again, her palm pushing on Sunny’s belly. Push again, she says. The afterbirth has to come out.

  Someone has taken Sunny’s baby to wipe her off at least a little bit before she’s handed to Sunny. It is a girl, just like she knew all along. Sunny holds her brand-new daughter to her chest, not caring that her dress is stained or that the baby is still slippery with blood and that white coating.

  The women around her are crying, the way most of them do when a baby’s born. The baby is silent, wide-eyed. Sunny doesn’t cry either, she’s too tired. She has nothing more to give but this. She wants to close her eyes and sleep forever, but she can’t. They have to take her out of this bathroom and into her own room.

  Later, when she’s been cleaned up and stitched—it’s her second baby but the first time she tore—Sunny rests in her bed with the baby tucked up firmly against her. Her milk hasn’t let down yet, but that doesn’t stop the infant from suckling greedily. Her nipple is already sore, just one more ache along with most of the rest of her, too. Bruises on her knees she didn’t notice until now. Pulled muscles in her arms and shoulders.

  Sunny dozes, but wakes when a shadow falls over her bed.

  It’s Josiah, and he smiles again. His hand touches the baby’s head softly, softly, fingertips barely brushing the head of soft blond fuzz. He touches Sunny’s head, too.

  “What’s her name?” he asks.

  “Patsy. I want to name her after my mother.”

  Josiah’s smile doesn’t falter, but he does shake his head. “You should name her Peace. Because that’s what she’ll bring you.”

  And that was what Sunny named her child, because Josiah, Papa’s second true son, had said she should.

  It had not occurred to her that Josiah would remember that story, but when he asked her how Peace was doing, Sunny said, “You named her.”

  He was silent for a moment, only the sound of his breathing through the phone. “I remember.”

  “Now that my mom’s gone, I sort of wish I’d named her Patsy the way I’d intended.”

  “Because you think it would be honoring your mother?”

  “Yes.” Sunny turned on her back in the cool, smooth sheets. With the window open the temperature in the room was perfect. She could hear crickets from outside. Occasionally a firefly flashed.

  “Because she’s gone,” Josiah said.

  Sunny hesitated, then thought there should be no point in lying. “Yes.”

  “Your mother’s not gone,” Josiah said. “Not really. I mean, you know that, don’t you, Sunny? None of them are really gone. They’re just on another plane.”

  Josiah had called her every night since he’d driven her home. Always when everyone else was asleep. Josiah had turned out to be the one thing she could count on to make her feel better.

  “That boy. From the coffee shop,” Josiah asked. “How’s he?”

  She was ashamed Josiah knew about Tyler. “He doesn’t talk to me anymore.”

  “Not at all?”

  She was silent for a moment, thinking of how he barely even looked at her now. “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “He wanted me to be like those girls he talks to in the shop, the ones who go to college and wear their hair loose. They wear jeans. Lipstick. They don’t have children. He wanted me to be like those girls,” Sunny said. “And I’m not.”

  But it wasn’t Tyler who wanted her to be like those girls, she thought. She was the one who wanted to wear eye shadow and glittery earrings and slim-fitting T-shirts. To paint her nails. To be someone she wasn’t.

  “I’d say I’m sorry, but you know I’m not.”

  She thought of Josiah’s touch, his kiss, the warmth that had spread through her, and it made her feel hot now, though the breeze from her open window was cool enough. “I shouldn’t have gone with you the first time. Liesel and Christopher wouldn’t like it.”

  “Because they don’t understand. I don’t blame them. You could bring them, too, Sunny, you know we always have room at our table for more.”

  Sunny tried to think of her father and his wife sitting with Josiah and talking about goi