They had asked me if they could. After hours of pain, Doctor Freer had come into the room and said, “Rhoda, we’re going to have to take the baby. We’re going to do a cesarean section.”

“Does that mean I’m going to sleep? Does it mean it will stop hurting me?”

“Yes. In a few moments you’ll be asleep.”

“Good. I don’t care. Do anything you want to do.”

Then, what seemed an eternity later, I was alone in a gray room begging for water. By the time that night came I was sure the baby was dead. If the baby was alive they would have let me see him, wouldn’t they? Wouldn’t they? Then my mother was beside the bed and they moved me onto a stretcher and rolled me through the halls and Malcolm appeared and took my hand and kissed me and they lifted me onto a bed and someone tucked the sheets around my legs. Then a huge black woman appeared in the door with a tiny little bundle in her hand. She held it out to me. She put it into my arms and I looked down into the face of my first son. A little boy, so beautiful and perfect that forever afterward the thought of him could break my heart. A little five-pound preemie with a face so beautiful and perfect, with black eyes and golden hair, with such perfect little feet and hands, that I trembled with joy to touch him and I put him to my breast and let him suck. My milk came in very quickly. It seemed there was always milk for him and he knew how to suck it out. Later, with the others, I would have to coax and teach them, but not with this first perfect little boy. He knew what he wanted and he got it. He would suck fiercely at one breast, then at the other, and lie in my arms so quietly I was not certain he was breathing. He ate and slept, ate and slept.

“I didn’t know anything could be so beautiful,” I said to him. “How could you be so beautiful? Aren’t you glad we lived? We almost died, Little Malcolm. We almost died, you and me, but we didn’t, did we? We wouldn’t die. We wouldn’t let anything destroy us.” I whispered to him as he fed. I was overwhelmed with tenderness and a strange terrible unknown joy.