My Odds

THE VIGIL

I was born nearly two months premature. Tiny and motionless I lay silently on a pillow in the middle of the bed I had been born in. My seventeen year old mother had endured a long tortuous labor. She had gone into early labor after jumping from the porch to retrieve my brother after he fell from the four foot high porch. He landed in the dirt and bounced like a fat little rubber ball. My mother and I however, did not do as well.

I did not turn so that I could come into the world head first. Instead, I was coming feet first and not doing a good job of it. Finally, after twenty hours of labor, the mid-wife, fearing for my mother’s life and that of her unborn child, reached into my mother’s womb and pulled me out into the light of day. I did not take a breath, my face was covered with a membrane or a veil as it was called then. The mid-wife removed the veil, cleared my mouth and nose before placing me in a pan of warm water. After a second or two I took my first breath. The mid-wife placed me at my mother’s breast to nurse, but I lay silent and unmoving. “I don't think this little child will live out the day,” she said to my mother.

I was dressed in the beautifully hand crotched clothes made by my grandmother and aunt in anticipation of my birth I was placed on the pillow and the vigil began.

A sugar teat was prepared in the hopes that I would absorb some nutrition. A piece of pure linen was wound around a small amount of raw sugar then dipped in my mother's breast milk. The sugary milk was then alternatedly dribbled into my mouth or placed between my lips, a mixture of saliva, sugar and breast milk filled my mouth and dribbled down my throat. I received enough nourishment to keep me alive as I lay as still as death. The sugar teat was replaced with a new one frequently during the rest of the first day of my life and into the night. My condition did not change the next day. Silent and still as death I somehow clung to life.

Relatives and friends came bringing gifts for my mother. Along with home cured hams, and vegetables fresh from their gardens they brought homemade fruit pies and freshly made biscuits. They also brought prayers and sang gospel songs. They brought the gift of the milk of human kindness. They came to see me, the unnamed newborn, the little premature baby girl not expected to live out the day of her birth. As I struggled to live I was held in many loving arms, my cheeks were kissed and blessings were said over my head. They came to bless me and to give solace and strength to my mother to prepare her to accept God’s will and to thank Him for the life she was blessed with.

Men women and children came to help, to offer love and caring in the manner of Black people in those days down South in the country. The younger women washed and braided my mother’s thick hair, they rubbed her arms and legs with lotion and put a clean night gown on her. The older women bathed and changed and held me. There was no thought of a hospital’s incubator and intensive pediatric care for me, nor post-natal care for my mother. We were Negro and therefore shut out from the White hospitals and doctors in Arkansas in 1947. There were no Negro hospitals, clinics or doctors in our parish. The nearest one was in Little Rock, 45 miles away.

On the third day I cried for the first time. The mewling cry had an effect similar to a siren’s wail. Everyone stopped whatever they were doing and stared at each other then at me, then everyone began to move at once. Some sang songs of praise and thanks while others propped my mother up with pillows and others came to attend to me. I opened my eyes and moved my hands while mewling like a kitten. They placed me at my mothers breast to nurse while she cuddled me close and sang softly to me. A song I hear to this day.

Against all odds, I made it, I survived without a doctor, a hospital or modern medicine. I had beaten the odds, I would live.