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"The baby."

"I don’t know."

"What does that feel like?" Luther asked Vi.

"Fuck you!" Vi roared.

"Boy, she’s a tad busy right now," Maxine said.

Vi looked up at the Kites, their faces eerily grotesque in the firelight. This must be hell.

"Get out!" Vi screamed. "Get out all of you!"

No one left, and the contraction intensified. Lifting her head off the pillow, she grabbed her thighs and groaned for all she was worth.

A bloody head emerged.

When it was out up to its bellybutton, the little boy screamed "what the fuck?" at the world—a scared, fragile bawling that filled Vi with the purest joy she’d ever known.

She pushed the rest of the baby out.

It lay facedown in the dirt, crying.

"What is that?" Luther asked, pointing at the bloody mass beside the infant.

"It’s the placenta, boy. What feeds the baby."

"They eat that in some cultures," Rufus said. "It’s a delicacy. Mm, boy."

"Would somebody cut the cord?" Vi asked, crying now. "I need to hold him."

"Luther, go fetch a pair of scissors from the kitchen."

Vi sat up. She reached down, lifted the tiny, wailing creature out of the dirt, and brought him into her chest. She kissed his slimy head and whispered to him.

"What’s today?" Vi asked Maxine.

"I don’t know."

"Please. I want to know his birthday."

Luther returned with a pair of scissors. He pushed by his father and told his mother to get out of the way.

"Boy, you let me—"

"I want to do it."

Maxine relinquished her place beside the young mother, and Luther knelt down.

"Turn him over," he said.

Vi held her son up under his arms, facing Luther. The infant and the monster stared at each other, the baby’s eyes rolling around in its head, Luther’s black orbs taking in this bloody little miracle.

"Be careful, please," Vi said.

Luther took hold of the umbilical cord and clipped it a half-inch from the bellybutton. Vi pulled her baby back into her breast.

"What’s its name?" Luther asked.

"Max," Vi said.

"After my mother?"

"After my husband. I need to nurse him now. Can I have some privacy please? Please."

Luther got up and walked out of the room. Maxine followed him and Rufus closed and locked the door behind them all.

Alone in the candlelight, Vi wept. She removed her T-shirt, wiped off the baby, and pushed back her blond hair that clung to her sweaty face. Then she took Max into her swollen breast and began to nurse.

The sucking of the infant produced the only sound in the cell.

Vi closed her eyes.

The soreness between her legs was nothing now compared to those contractions. Loneliness, joy, and horror came in equal measure. She looked down at her infant son, eyes open and shining, sucking away. She stroked his cheek, the firelight dancing across his face. All she wanted now was her husband, looking down on them. She was certain of it—Max would’ve cried.

Vi started to pray, but stopped herself. The fuck had He done for her? She should be grateful that He allowed her to give birth before an audience of psychopaths? Did He need to hear her say she wanted her child to live? How could He not know that?

Count your blessings. Look on the bright side. Fuck the bright side. This should’ve happened in a hospital with my husband. We missed sharing this together.

For the first time in her life, it occurred to her that she was all alone and always had been. She’d bought into the God of suburbia. Comfy, predictable, and manmade to revolve around man. The God of her Baptist upbringing was clearly unconcerned with her current predicament. He’d denigrated the birth of her son by allowing it to occur in a basement that she’d probably never leave.

Her God was fine on Wednesday nights and Sunday mornings when all was hunky-dory. And it was even possible to write off the tragedies that befell others as "part of God’s plan." But hold that sentiment up to the flaming knowledge that your newborn child will never see his father, that he might die horribly before he’s even a week old, and see if it doesn’t burn.

When life turns into a real horrorshow, the God she knew was about as useful as a water gun in a war.