I have delivered more babies in the last six months than I ever did when you were here with me during the war. I do not know if it is a sign of hope or a sign of desperation, that our people have gone baby mad. I think there are now more colored people in Kings County than ever before. Sometimes on the street, I do not recognize a single face, and I think how this is both a good thing and very lonely-making.

The last woman I attended, it was not here in the hospital. She was a very poor woman. Her husband came and begged me to come to her. He said she had been in labor for many days and he worried that she might not make it. I was tired. I had thought I would go back to the house, for once, that evening, and try to sleep there. But the man came just as I was about to leave, so I followed him to his home.

They lived in Vinegar Hill, in a small wooden building beside a grog shop. The sounds of her laboring almost drowned out the sounds of the sailors singing shanties next door. She was a very small woman, but loud. I said to her husband, “It is good that she makes so much noise. It means she has fight left in her.”

She was doubled over, walking up and down the room, and so I walked beside her, holding her hand. She had been laboring so long her hand was wet with sweat and kept slipping from mine. I told her, over and over again, what a strong woman she was. What a wonder she was accomplishing. It was her first labor, and these were the things she needed to hear.

Towards the end of it, she screamed once more, very loudly. Then she lifted up her skirt, and what did I see, but the baby’s knee sticking out, foot dangling down, almost doing a little jig.

And the sight of it made me laugh, Libertie, the first time I had laughed since you had gone. I know it was a dire sight. A breeched birth is dangerous, and the woman could have died. But I heard the sailors singing that their love lived in the ocean, and I saw that baby’s knee jerk in time, and I saw the woman’s face, her blink of surprise, and I could only laugh. At the absurdity of the world. The ridiculousness of your absence. The foolishness of whatever I did to cause you to leave me.

You will be glad to know, the woman delivered safely. I had her husband hold her elbows, and I squatted down between her knees, and together we turned the baby until he was straight, and he was delivered, just two hours ago today, by the grace of God our Creator.