Mrs. B settled the babe into her mother’s arms, while Mary freed her bosom. The child was still, with so little breath.

“She ought to have a name,” said Mrs. B, ginger on the subject. “You can’t call her ‘little bird’ forever.”

“Why can’t I?” Mary said, soft-pressing her lips to the crown of her daughter’s head. “What name could possibly contain her?”

Mrs. B couldn’t bear to bring up baptism. A baptism at home could mean only one thing. The midwife had seen monsters born of normal people, and normal babies born of monsters, but the desperation of a mother to preserve and nurture whatever issued from her own body she had seen everywhere. If the child was loved before it was born, as this one was, its death was inconceivable. Even when she knew it was no use, Mrs. B had done everything to revive expiring life: light tobacco and hold onion juices under a newborn’s nose, frictions with hot cloths, rub cold brandy on the chest, and on and on, as parents grew frantic, peered over her shoulder, paced the room, or buried their heads in their hands.

At the sound of Mary’s cooing, the little one finally opened her beak, but turned away from her mother’s nipple, too weak to search for it. Mary lifted her chin to the midwife, her brandy-colored eyes deep with tenderness. “Don’t give up on us, Mrs. B. One more day.”

The way the light played, Mrs. B could see the room reflected in Mary’s eyes.

“One more day,” she said, and then under her breath, “God willing.”

When Mary took visitors in the parlor that afternoon, the midwife tried to rest on the settee while the child slept in its cradle, but her old legs throbbed and crawled with pins and needles. Her eyes, too, stung with tiredness, but she feared that if she closed them, the child might take a final breath and be gone. Mrs. B had faith, but she also had experience. She’d always thought it her duty to preserve the life of mother and child however she could, but she knew that death keeps no calendar. She felt desperate to baptize the little girl, before it was too late. An innocent babe, baptized, could alight straight to Heaven only if she had a name, so that God could hear it. But it wasn’t her place to do it.