The Dinner She Was Told to Skip

“Okay,” I said. “Okay, okay. I hear you. Mama’s coming. I’ve only got the two hands, you know that.”

I got the nursing pillow buckled on. I got Ben, eased down into the rocker holding him, then leaned over and scooped Lucy out with one arm, the way the hospital nurse had taught me and I still couldn’t do without holding my breath against the pull of the stitches.

“Ow,” I said. “Ow, ow. All right. There we go.”

They latched. The crying stopped like a faucet shut off. In the quiet I could hear laughter come up the stairwell, a man’s, not Chad’s.

“Hear that?” I said to them. “That’s Daddy’s party. Daddy’s got important company tonight. So we’re going to stay up here and be quiet as church mice.”

Lucy’s hand opened and closed against my collarbone.

“I know,” I told her. “I’d like some brisket too. He’s bringing a plate. He said seven.”

The clock on the dresser said ten past.

I talked to them all day. They were the only people I saw.

“Mama’s not fit for company yet,” I said. “That’s all it is. Mama’s not back in shape. So we stay upstairs till the nice people go home.”

I heard my own voice crack on that, and I didn’t want them to hear their mother cry, three weeks old or not. So I did what my mother did, and her mother before her.

I hummed.

It was “Children of the Heavenly Father.” It’s an old Swedish hymn. Half the Lutherans in Iowa have had it sung over them at a baptism or a funeral or both. Grandma Ruth hummed it over the dishes. I only hummed it, slow, rocking, with a baby on each side and my eyes shut and tears running down into the collar of my robe.

Downstairs, Connie told me, nobody had lifted a fork since “I’ve only got the two hands.”

Chad had gone for the monitor the second it crackled. He half stood and reached across the rolls for it.

“Sorry about that. Let me just turn this down.”

“Leave it,” Connie said.

She said it pleasantly. Kim told me it was the most pleasant voice she had ever heard stop a grown man’s arm in midair.

“I raised four,” Connie said. “I haven’t heard that sound in my own house in twenty-six years. Let me enjoy it.”

So he sat back down. What else could he do? And the five of them listened to me say ow.

They listened to me say the plate was coming at seven. Kim said Mr. Lindgren turned his wrist then and looked at his watch.

And then they heard the rest. Mama’s not back in shape. We stay upstairs till the nice people go home.

Kim said the room went so still she could hear the candles.

Then the humming started.

Connie laid her napkin on the table. Her mother had hummed that same hymn over six children in a farmhouse outside Stanton, and Connie had hummed it over her own four.

“Chad,” she said. “Where is your wife?”

“She’s resting. Like I said. The doctor…”

“She is not resting. I can hear her. She is feeding two babies by herself, and she is crying while she does it.” Connie’s voice never rose. “Did the doctor tell her to stay upstairs tonight?”

Chad looked at Mr. Lindgren. Mr. Lindgren was looking at the white box.

“No ma’am,” Chad said.

“Who did?”

Nobody helped him. Jeff studied his plate. On the speaker I hummed my way into the second verse.