Fullepub 
Chapter Twenty
chapter twenty
February 11, 1930
Lanesborough, New Hampshire
There is nothing quiet, clean, or easy about childbirth. It is like being cracked open like an egg. No one warned me about the pain. I have never known such pain.
Margaret Joy surprised us by coming three weeks early. She was born in our bedroom at seven-nineteen this morning. She is a tiny thing, like a little doll. Five pounds, three ounces.
I am Mrs. Monroe and I am a mother now.
I was home alone yesterday watching the sky grow darker and darker as a storm gathered. The clouds were thick and tinged with orange, and the very air had a weight to it. I spent the day cleaning the house, scrubbing the floors, filled with an odd nervous energy. I was vibrating like a tuning fork. It was the coming storm making me feel that way, I imagined. And then, in the late afternoon, a fog rolled in. I have never seen such a fog before. It crept up from the river and seemed to blanket the whole town. It curled around the windows, seemed to drift in through the cracks, filling the house with damp, making my bones ache. I had a sense, silly I know, that it had come for me; that there was no way I could hide from it.
I stuffed towels in the cracks along windowsills and the threshold of the front and back doors.
I turned up the lamps and was at the kitchen sink washing vegetables for dinner when there was a terrible crash against the window. Then another. I looked to see that birds, lost in the fog, were crashing into the windows of the house. There must have been a flock of them, because one after another smashed against the windowpanes, then fell to the ground. I raced around the house putting out all the lights, thinking that was what was drawing them in. When the birds stopped falling at last, the snow and sleet began.
Will arrived home soaked to find me sitting in the dark, crying over the birds. He’d had to leave the car across town at his office—the roads were impassable already, so he’d walked home.
I didn’t eat dinner. Just didn’t have an appetite. Around seven my water broke and the contractions began.
“It’s too early,” I said.
“Babies come when they’re ready to come,” Will said. “And little Brunhilda is eager to meet us.” He smiled and began making preparations to deliver her at home.
“I’ve delivered many, many babies,” he said, kissing my head. “Trust me, darling wife. We’re going to be just fine.”
After twelve hours of labor, I pushed her out into the world. I was exhausted and delirious when Will put her in my arms.
“She’s so delicate,” I said to Will. “Like a tiny little bird.” I kissed her damp, downy head. “A sparrow. My little sparrow child.”
She is tiny, but perfect. Her skin is porcelain white. Her hair is dark as a raven. And her eyes are like a stormy sea. She has such a serious, almost worried-looking face—so odd to see on such a tiny baby. I see no resemblance to either myself or Will. She is a creature all her own.
Our eyes locked, mine and hers, and it nearly took my breath away.
In that look, we each seemed to say: Here you are, at last.
