The Widow Jane’s daughter Posie was assigned by Deborah to assist Lovey with the little boys. Afraid of them, she found eager assistants in the adolescent girls who were suddenly discovering the wonder of birth and babies and who, when Lovey was out of the room where they were, found entertainment in undiapering the infants and tickling their genitals until erection occurred; whereupon the girls, shrieking with laughter, declared that all males, young and old, had but one thing in mind. Then rediapering the boys with suddenly harsh, punishing hands, they sang them lullabies half remembered and half invented.

That summer Ezra rigged padded pillow cases as swings on the thick-limbed fig tree that grew near the kitchen door. Floyd and Leon, when other matters claimed Lovey’s attention, were set safely upright in the padded swings, swaddled like papooses. They slept and woke, and seeing each other, laughed, as the wind swung them to and fro in the fig-scented air.

3

Deborah’s second, and as it transpired, last child was born in March 1808, and named Selma for Arnold’s mother, long dead. There were five fingers on each of the infant’s hands and five toes on each of her feet. Her legs were two, eyes two, arms two. Head and trunk were what is expected of a baby. Yet from the first she seemed an alien creature. In a lap, on a bed, in her cradle, she did not move or cry. Picked up, she appeared startled. When the time came that she should smile, she would not. She looked at every face that drew close to hers as if it had materialized from the spirit world.

Deborah gave her mainly into Buttercup’s care, but that one was afraid of babies like her sister Posie, especially when she was alone with the little girl.

Lovey miscarried twice again, but in 1809 conceived, and in June of 1810 bore a daughter she named Pauline. Pauline’s tiny hands closed like traps on whatever finger came within their range, and her unblinking wet eyes were dark with distrust. Lovey laughed and shrugged and said she must be Ezra’s, for she could see nothing of herself in the baby and could not fathom her mystery. Ezra laughed, and forgot about her most of the time, Floyd being more glory and wonder than he had ever dreamed possible.

4

“Floyd! You Floyd! Le-on! Where you hiding? Come when I call!”