The Tiny Caps I Knit for the Nursery
Lord, whoever she is, keep her warm.
“Is she in there?” I said.
“She’s in there. She’s awake. She’s had her eight o’clock feeding, so she’s in a good mood.” Rosa took my arm and helped me up. “Jenna’s in there. Caleb ran home to shower. They’ve been waiting on you.”
“Did you tell them? About the cap?”
“I didn’t tell anyone. It wasn’t mine to tell.” She picked up my box from the radiator and put it on her hip. “I figured you ought to be the first to know.”
The special care nursery at Haven County has six places for babies, three along each wall. It is a small room with a window to the west, a rocking chair that has been there since before the renovation, and a bulletin board covered in photographs of babies who have gone home.
There were two babies in the room that morning. One was asleep in a crib on the far side, a sturdy little fellow with a shock of dark hair. The other was in the corner by the window, in a clear bassinet with a heating lamp over it.
Jenna was in the rocking chair beside it, in her flannel pajama pants and Caleb’s old Kansas State sweatshirt, with her hair in a clip. She looked up when I came in and she did not say hello. She put a finger to her lips and pointed.
I walked over. I washed at the sink first. It is a habit now, and nobody had to remind me. Thirty seconds, to the elbow.
Then I looked in.
Josie was on her back with her arms up beside her ears, in the way babies sleep when they have not yet learned they are supposed to curl up. She was wearing a diaper the size of a playing card and a small white shirt. A thin feeding tube ran from her nose.
She weighed four pounds, two ounces. About a four-pound sack of sugar, and not as much as that, because the sugar sack does not have a face.
And on her head was a cap.
It was cream. It had a ribbed brim that came down just over her ears, with a little gather at the top. In the lamplight I could see the green thread in it, every inch or so. It looked a bit large for her. It looked, in every way, exactly like a cap I had knit.
I did not touch her at first. I did what I always do with a finished cap, and what I was too stunned to stop myself from doing. I leaned close and I counted the rows of ribbing at the brim with my eyes.
One, two, three, four, five, six. Six rows. That is how many I do.
“Mom,” Jenna whispered. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” I said. “I’m checking the brim.”
Jenna looked at me for a second. She is my daughter, and she knows my face. Her eyes went from my face to the cap and back again.