Then late in the morning, after long hours of tired bustle, the house went suddenly quiet. Lauretta had fainted. The doctor was working the child from her body. A reek of sweat and blood hung in the air of the room whose windows had been closed to guard Lauretta against chill. The cry of the newborn child sounded, angry and terrified, and Sarah was there. The clock in the upper hall struck and chimed, and she counted eleven.

“She’s a baby girl,” Juanita said as she smoothed the baby clean with hands that had been buttered as if she meant to pull syrup candy. Sarah stood looking at the squalling child, whose cries diminished, from exhaustion or acclimatization to the outer world. Lauretta slept, even as Lovey cleaned and tidied her and her bed. In their room, from which Selma had not stirred since hearing Lauretta’s ordeal begin the day before, Selma slept too, at last, Pauline holding her in her arms as if she were the child that had just been born.

Roscoe saw to it that work continued that day in areas he was accustomed to ordering it done. Lovey and Myrtis kept the household going, slipping away for cat naps when they could. Doctor Porterfield went back to Highboro with a rumbling belly and a tale to tell his waiting wife. After seeing her sister comfortable and asleep, Sarah went to her room, fell on her bed, and was asleep before she could bring herself to remove her shoes. Looking in on her a little while later, Lovey removed them, and lifted Sarah’s head to slip a pillow under it and drew the curtains against the light of day.

When Sarah woke, she found daylight nearly gone. She was still tired as she went to the washstand to bathe her face and hands. After brushing her hair and pulling it back in a knot, she went off to Lauretta’s room. When she entered, the room was shadowed, and Lauretta appeared to be asleep. Juanita, sitting beside the cradle that had rocked Selma and Leon in their infancies, smiled at her and put a vertical finger to her lips.

Sarah went to the cradle and looked down at the sleeping child. “Is she all right?” she whispered.

Juanita nodded importantly. “Lovey brought up that Fedora. Had her baby two weeks ago. Fedora fed her, and she didn’t even spit up once. This gonna be a good baby.”

“Oh, that’s good,” Sarah said gratefully. “Have you been to bed at all?”

“No’m.”

“You must be so tired.”