The Shadow Wife - Diane Chamberlain [127]
“Hair is about Vietnam, and love and diversity and people taking care of each other. It is decidedly not about a beauty parlor. God, I love you, Carly.”
“Now don’t start that.” Carlynn laughed. “I am not sleeping with you. No lesbian stuff.”
“Right, you’re a married woman.”
“Are you making fun of me?” Carlynn grinned. She was a fish out of water, but felt no discomfort at being the brunt of the jokes, as long as Penny was the joker. “Come here,” she said, pointing to one of the mattresses on the bedroom floor. “Lie down and get comfortable.”
Penny lay down and Carlynn sat on the mattress next to her, taking her hands. “Tell me about when it started.”
“Is this how you do it?” Penny asked. “You talk, like a shrink? I’ve been to a shrink already. He was useless.”
“I’m not a shrink, honey,” Carlynn said. “Now just talk to me. How did it start?”
Penny cried as she reported waking up one morning without a voice. Carlynn tuned out the outside world, the shouts of children, the occasional laughter from an adult, the guitar music that was floating in through the window from somewhere nearby. Closing her eyes, she let Penny’s words come inside her. This was going to work. She could feel it in Penny’s hands, in the absolute concentration in her face. Thank God. She did not want to disappoint her old friend. It might take some time, but Penny would get her voice back.
The next day, when the world was again white with fog, Ellen Liszt’s cries filled the commune, and everyone knew she was in labor.
“Should I help?” Carlynn asked Penny as she stared out the bedroom window in the direction of the cries.
Penny shook her head. “No. Believe me, they don’t want a doctor in there,” she said. “They don’t particularly trust doctors here.”
Except to hand out antibiotics when they contract a sexually transmitted disease, Carlynn thought.
She spent the morning working with Penny some more, listening to her and gently placing her hands on her throat. At lunch that afternoon, Penny said something in a perfectly natural voice and everyone turned to look at her. Instantly, the whisper was back, but Penny got up and did a little jig across the wood-plank floor of the cabin.
Walking back to Cornflower, they passed Rainbow Cabin and could hear an occasional cry, more of a scream really, from the mother-to-be inside. Johnny Angel chopped wood at the side of the cabin without seeming to notice the two women passing by.
“I thought you said the men help deliver their babies?” Carlynn asked.
“Most do,” Penny said. “But Johnny’s freaking out, I think. Poor kid.”
She worked with Penny’s voice for an hour, then sat with her on the sofa in the small living room, sewing patches on several pairs of Penny’s well-worn jeans. Suddenly, there was the sound of steps on the front porch, and Johnny Angel burst into the cabin. His face was ashen, his hands raised in panic.
“The baby’s not breathing!” he said.
Carlynn dropped her sewing and ran toward the door, Penny and Johnny close behind her. “Which way?” she asked as she stepped off the porch into the fog.
Johnny grabbed her arm and ran with her toward the cabin he shared with his young girlfriend, but he stopped, frozen at the front steps.
“In there.” He pointed inside.
Carlynn looked at him squarely. “Your girlfriend will need you,” she said, taking him by the wrist and nearly dragging him inside with her.
Felicia was on her knees on the mattress, crouched between the young mother’s legs, holding a bluish baby. Carlynn dropped to her own knees beside her.
“The cord was wrapped around her neck,” Felicia said, handing the infant to her.
Carlynn placed the baby girl on the bloodstained newspapers that covered the mattress, then bent over her to perform CPR, covering the tiny nose and mouth with her own mouth, gently blowing air into her lungs, then pressing with two of her fingers on the infant’s breastbone.
“I’ve tried CPR,” said Felicia, but Carlynn continued puffing and pressing. After a moment, she felt Felicia’s hand on her