Chapter Eight - A Family At Last
From the moment Elizabeth sucked air back into her lungs, Diego barely left her side. For over an hour after the baby’s birth, he remained glued to the chair beside the bed while Lolita and Soaring Bird continued their work. Though they mostly tended Elizabeth, they did bring the baby back in to clean her up and allow Diego to hold his little daughter. He kept begging Elizabeth, as he held the baby close by her, to hold on. Esperanza whimpered and Elizabeth groaned softly, almost in response to hearing her child. But she did not regain consciousness fully despite Diego’s attempts to reach her.
The first decision, forced on the family, was to whether or not find a wet nurse for Esperanza. Standing on the balcony outside the room where Elizabeth lay, barely conscious, Soaring Bird and Lolita both advised against it, insisting that her recovery would be aided rather than slowed by keeping the baby near her and suckling her from the start. Alejandro opposed it. Carlos only wanted what would help Elizabeth heal. The two women, after expressing their opinions, retreated back into the bedroom where Maria stood by with Elizabeth. It fell to Diego to determine what to do. Hours had gone by since the baby’s arrival. The decision had to be made quickly, for little Esperanza was hungry. After standing, agitated, on the balcony outside their bedroom door listening to his father press for the nurse, Diego went back into the room.
"Tomorrow we must try to help her into warm water, to help her heal," she told them. "I will have to send for Felipe, to bring herbs."
Soaring Bird nodded.
Elizabeth was still and pale in the bed. Diego thought he would collapse just looking at her. He knew how much she wanted the baby to nurse at her own breast, how clear she had been about it. They had joked and bickered over it, but she was unwavering. "You said you would share!" she kept reminding him. Now, he looked at the two women, making up his mind. He reached for his whimpering, hungry daughter.
"What do we have to do?" he asked, taking Esperanza from Lolita. The baby had fallen asleep briefly and was beginning to squall again, she was so hungry. He looked down at Esperanza. "Soon, my little one," he said, rocking her gently. He could not believe how small she was, and yet how fully herself. She was Elizabeth’s, and his. He felt his heart would burst in joy and pain, holding this tiny life in his arms.
"We will need to prop Elizabeth up at least some," Lolita said, "and one of us will have to hold the baby up against her since she doesn’t have the strength to hold her yet."
"But will the bleeding start again, if she sits up?" Diego asked.
"We cannot know for sure," Soaring Bird said. "She does not have to sit up fully, she only needs to be supported and the baby needs to be held against her."
"How long will she nurse?" Diego asked.
Lolita smiled at him. "That depends on Esperanza. I think she is very hungry right now."
Diego looked at his wife, and at the crying baby in his arms, and then back at the two women. "I will do this," he said. "I can hold both of them."
Thus it was that he returned his daughter to Lolita, stepped out of his shoes, and went over to the bed. Sliding over beside Elizabeth where she lay, he gently lifted her partway up into his arms, her back against his chest. The two women helped, keeping her as still as they possibly could. She stirred slightly, and moaned.
"Sweetheart," Diego said, "We don’t want to hurt you, we are going to help you feed Esperanza. I know that is what you want."
Elizabeth moaned again, her head falling sideways against his shoulder. Diego nodded at Soaring Bird to check, and she looked between Elizabeth’s legs.
"It is all right," she said.
Lolita reached down and untied the ribbons on Elizabeth’s gown.
Diego tried to help Elizabeth settle more against him. She seemed half-awake, but unable to focus. To Diego, she felt very tense despite her incapacitation.
"All right, let’s try this, give me the baby," he said, once Elizabeth was still again. Lolita handed Esperanza over, and Diego slowly introduced her to her mother’s chest. Through her squalling, Esperanza’s lips began to shake and pucker. He put her mouth up to Elizabeth "Suck, my little one," Diego said. "You know how to do that. It is the third thing for you to do in your life, after breathing air and crying." He moved her head slightly.
The baby’s mouth shook again and her lips wrapped over the nipple. Then her mouth puckered and she sucked. She sputtered for a moment, and then sucked again tentatively. Milk dribbled heavily over her lips. She gurgled a few times and then swallowed. It made her blink and move her hands, her mouth falling away. Diego helped her again.
"You can do this, Esperanza," he said softly.
Elizabeth moaned, leaning more heavily into his chest. Her hand fell onto his thigh lightly, and tried to reach up. Then it fell away again to her side.
"See, even your Mommie is encouraging you," he said, fighting his own impulse to start sobbing. He moved the baby’s mouth again. "You are hungry, and here is what you want, muchacha," he said to her.
Once again Esperanza’s lips trembled and then formed a pucker pressed against her mother.
"That’s right, my little sweetheart," Diego whispered to her. "You have to swallow it, too."
Finally the baby succeeded. The milk began to flow into her. In spite of the gravity of the situation, Diego smiled softly. Elizabeth’s head sank deeper into Diego’s shoulder. She seemed to relax. He looked down at the baby, whose little mouth was working hard, pulling the life-giving milk from her mother. Then he looked back up at Lolita and softly said, "I think we have managed it."
Holding his baby as she nursed for the first time, Diego’s anxiety over Elizabeth became suddenly mixed with the wonder of holding them both as Esperanza ate hungrily. The tenderness and oneness he felt with the two of them was unlike anything he had ever experienced before. Soaring Bird and Lolita left the room so that the little family could have this time alone. No one knew if Elizabeth would live or die. Once they were gone, Diego put his lips into Elizabeth’s hair, and kept his eyes on the tiny face at her mother’s breast. "Oh, Elizabeth,"’ he said softly, "She is so beautiful. She is perfect. You have given us a perfect little girl. Please, please don’t leave us now."
From then on, Elizabeth awoke, hazily, only when the baby was about to be fed. Esperanza’s urgent mewing sounds would bring her into brief consciousness. She would cooperate as the others helped position her in Diego’s arms to feed the child. As soon as Esperanza was pressed against her and gulping, Elizabeth would usually doze off again. She could not see Diego because he was behind her. She didn’t have the strength to turn her head and look up at him. But she could feel him holding her and their daughter, and she understood what was happening. She could barely talk, but managed to whisper "it’s little baby," to him late one night as he held them. It was then that he told her for the first time that he had named their daughter "Esperanza Matilde." It made Elizabeth nod weakly and smile, whispering, "a very good name." They were blessed in that their firstborn was a good sleeper, who would go down for a few hours at a time before awakening and crying for more. Soaring Bird later told Diego that had the baby been more wakeful, further exhausting Elizabeth, the young mother would certainly have died in those first few days.
Lolita stayed on with them, much to Bernardo’s happiness and Diego’s relief. Young Felipe, whose relationship to Lolita was still entirely unclear, was summoned from San Pedro and joined the household. Soaring Bird returned nearly every day as well, sometimes bringing little Willow along. The child played very happily in the stable yard with Felipe, while Soaring Bird tended Elizabeth. Both children formed a fast friendship with Bernardo and several of the barnyard cats. Soaring Bird, watching the curandera in action, continued to approve of Lolita’s talents. This reassured Diego greatly.
Still, the tension in the household remained high. No one really knew what would happen with Elizabeth after so narrow an escape from death in childbirth. Diego refused to leave the room no matter what was happening or how Elizabeth was being tended to. This left everyone except the two women caring for Elizabeth unsettled because it was so uncharacteristic for a man of his class.
As the week progressed, Elizabeth slowly began to regain color. On the third day they began carrying her to the tub for soaks in warm water. She managed, on the fourth day, to get briefly out of bed with a great deal of help from Diego and Lolita. She sat on one of the great overstuffed chairs before the fireplace and tried to hold the baby while Diego hovered over them, still terrified that something would go wrong. She did not have the strength to do it. When they helped her up they discovered that she was bleeding again, which caused Diego to carry her back to bed and summon Soaring Bird. Again Lolita declared that what was happening was normal, but the panic in the household temporarily rose. Alejandro sent out yet another servant to see if they could find the doctor on his circuit tour.
Once Elizabeth returned to bed after her failed attempt at getting up, she fell into deep slumber. Diego sat in the chair, holding his baby daughter, staring into the fire and fighting an overwhelming sense of doom. He felt as if he were living ahead of himself, and that sitting in that chair and looking at the fire, he was completely alone in the world even though he knew Elizabeth slept only a few feet away.
On their sixth night after the birth, Elizabeth was more alert, though she still had little to say. She could now help hold the baby when she nursed. She put what little energy she had into bonding with her daughter. Diego asked nothing of her, though he was always attentive. Nearly all their communication was physical as they dealt with the activities of feeding and transferring the baby back and forth in the bed. That night, the baby was wakeful after eating, looking up into her parents’ faces. "Sing to us," Elizabeth whispered to her husband. And so he sang a short lullabye, and they watched Esperanza’s eyes close and fall into her blissful sleep as he sang. He sang it again, and realized that Elizabeth, too, had fallen asleep. It was a moment of feeling that they were indeed a family at last.
The steadying presence in the household during this period was Soaring Bird, who after being such a skilled midwife proved to be equally adept at supervising the young couple’s traumatic initiation into parenting. She taught Diego what to watch for in knowing when Esperanza was hungry and what to do when she was finished eating. Much to Alejandro’s horror, she taught Diego how to change a diaper. To the surprise of neither Lolita nor Soaring Bird, Diego proved to be open and instantly adept with reading his baby’s needs. He held her often, and took the advice of the two women to let her sleep beside her mother rather than in the little cradle beside the bed. He slept very little himself, but would lie every night beside Elizabeth and the baby, instantly ready to take Elizabeth into his arms and hold Esperanza to her for feeding. His sleep deprivation mounted, but he was unshakeable in his determination and would listen to no one when they tried to persuade him to let others take over occasionally so that he could rest.
Finally the doctor arrived, coming from his circuit trip down to San Diego. He checked Elizabeth daily, and brought stories to the household about the gypsies in the cuartel jail.
"I think Sergeant Garcia will be paying them to leave," he joked. "They are hounding him all night long with their songs and shouts. He has threatened to box them up and ship them to the Mojave."
After two weeks he took Diego aside to say he expected Elizabeth to make a full recovery. He cautioned Diego to keep her from too much activity and said he would return in a week unless summoned earlier.
Diego watched him depart and felt overwhelming gratitude that Lolita and Soaring Bird had been on hand. He knew they had saved Elizabeth’s life. Now the baby was almost three weeks old, and at last the light seemed to be shining more surely on them all.
After the doctor left, Diego stood on the balcony for a moment, staring out across the hacienda walls at the western hills in the distance. Elizabeth was in their room, asleep again. Esperanza was in the bed beside her, also asleep. He took a deep breath, feeling that the bullet dodged in this experience had spared his own heart as well as Elizabeth’s life. He had never been more frightened than in the hour after Esperanza’s birth, and until now he had been unable to shake the sense of doom that haunted him. It was not his own life that he feared losing, it was not fear for his own soul that finally forced this confrontation with mortality. He had lost his mother, learning too early the terrible emptiness of someone he loved deeply leaving him forever. But Elizabeth, he saw now at a profound level, was truly his light and his song. The world was an unacceptable place without her. And he had nearly lost her.
His exhaustion finally took over, and every defense he had kept up for the last three weeks collapsed. He put his hand over his mouth, trying to hold back the sob welling up. It escaped, and another after it, as his tears of suppressed dread and relief finally pushed out with nowhere else to go. He leaned against the balcony rail for several minutes, unable to contain his weeping.
Then he felt a light hand on his arm, and turned to see Soaring Bird beside him.
"She will live," the Chumash woman said in her soft, low, slowly-spoken Spanish.
"I know," he nodded.
"Give her your tears."
Diego looked into Soaring Bird’s eyes, remembering what Windhawk had said when, at 16, he had told Diego he was going to marry Soaring Bird and that their days of racing on the Camino Real were over. "I cannot live without her," he had said, simply. At the time Diego thought it was nonsense, and was furious with his friend for abandoning their boyhood pranks and adventures for a young girl who said little and seemed so remote.
"Go, Diego," she said to him as they stood on the balcony. "I will take Willow and go home now. The curandera will stay a little longer. She is very good."
There was a silence between them. Then Diego said, "Tell Windhawk that I finally understand."
She nodded.
"Thank you, Soaring Bird."
She nodded again. Diego turned and opened his door, to hear Esperanza starting her mewing sounds. He went to the bed and bent over to pick her up. "Are you hungry again, muchacha?" he asked. He looked at Elizabeth, who was lying on her side. "Can we wake your Mommie long enough to feed you?"
"I’m awake," Elizabeth said softly. "Help me get up, Diego. Let me feed her from the chair."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, I think I’ll start to feel better if I try to move around a little more."
"All right," he said, placing Esperanza back on the bed, thus causing the baby to start crying.
He leaned over Elizabeth to pick her up, but she said, "No, help me up and help me walk over there."
"Sweetheart..." he said, but she interrupted with,
"Do you want both of us crying like that?" she asked, nodding in Esperanza’s direction.
This made Diego laugh for the first time since he’d first seen his daughter’s tiny body as she entered the world. He scooped his arm under Elizabeth’s shoulder and lifted her to her feet, saying, "You sound just like my wife!"
"Don’t make me laugh," she groaned, holding onto him with one hand and holding her stomach with the other. They made their way slowly across the room while Esperanza’s cries escalated. A knock came on the door.
"Don Diego, it’s Maria," came a voice. "Do you need help? Is Senora all right? Shall I find Lolita?"
"It’s all right, Maria, we’re fine," Diego called to her.
"Where is Soaring Bird?" Elizabeth asked, as he helped her ease down into the chair.
"She went home," Diego answered, reaching down again to lift Esperanza from the bed set her in Elizabeth’s arms. "Lolita is still here." He smiled. "I think she is with Bernardo at the moment." He watched for a moment. "Do you need help?"
Elizabeth shook her head. It took a few moments for mother and daughter to find their position, but at last Esperanza’s crying ceased. A look of bliss passed over Elizabeth’s face as the baby nursed. Diego sat in the chair opposite them. The sight of Elizabeth actually holding the baby completely on her own brought tears back into his throat and eyes.
"Oh, little girl," Elizabeth was cooing down at the baby. "You are so pretty, you are such a sweet little girl, with hazel eyes like your Daddy, and you have your Daddy’s hair...he gave you such a pretty name, Esperanza...oh, Diego, she is such a miracle," she said, and looked over at him. She saw what was happening and said, "Oh, sweetheart," and he slid onto the floor and put his head in her lap, suddenly unable to contain himself.
"I was so afraid you were going to die," he said, through his tears.
"I think perhaps I did," she said, stroking his hair with her hand. "But you made me come back. I was tumbling in darkness, as if I were falling through the night sky, nothing above me, nothing below...it was so strange, Diego, I really was somewhere else, I wasn’t here...but then I heard you saying my name over and over, and it pulled me back into the pain and into the light. And back to you, and to her. It was the strangest thing that has ever happened to me, to go away like that, and come back."
Diego was calmer, but stayed beside her on the floor. "You were on your way to a better place, I imagine," he said. "But..." he took a deep breath, trying not to break down again. "I am glad you stayed here with us."
She smiled, and ran her fingers through his hair. "I always do what you tell me," she said.
He smiled, too, at the mere thought of such a thing. He was so filled with relief, that she was at last fully awake and sounding like herself again, that he nearly resumed crying. Esperanza, however, put a stop to that by sputtering in a half-sneeze that made Elizabeth laugh softly and say, "oh, have you emptied that one out already?" It caused Diego to be lost instantly in the wonder of watching the tiny mouth quiver and find its new target. For all the days and nights he had held them against him while the baby nursed, he still found the sight both astonishing and heart-rending.
They waited for some time, while Esperanza continued and finally finished. After a good burp she fell asleep. They looked down at the baby where she slept on her mother’s arm.
"Let’s go lie in bed with her," he said.
Elizabeth shook her head. "It feels good to be out of bed, darling. Let me just sit here with her. I couldn’t hold her at all, at first." She looked down at her daughter. "Now we can snuggle up together all we want, can’t we muchacha?" She looked at Diego, smiling slyly. "Do you want to know what I would have named her, if it had been a boy?"
He frowned, knowing full well she had never given this a thought. "What?" he asked.
"Ishtar," she said.
Diego de la Vega threw back his head and laughed fully for the first time in weeks. What a woman, he thought. Then, overwhelmed with tenderness, he stroked Elizabeth’s cheek with the back of his fingers. "How blessed I am," he said.
"How blessed we are," she said back to him. She looked down at Esperanza, who slept through her father’s laughter. "I knew you weren’t a little Ishtar," she whispered.
Now it was Diego’s turn to grin slyly. He looked down at the baby, too. "I suppose I could have named her Carmen," he observed.
It made them both laugh, this time waking the baby. And then they shushed each other, and kissed sweetly.
Afterward, they looked back on that day as their turning point. Diego began to sleep more, often stealing an hour in the morning or afternoon while Elizabeth and Esperanza rested. He continued to stay with them all night and would let no one else help with the nursing once the sun went down. But the deeply haggard and broken look on his face lifted. Esperanza was growing, and Elizabeth was getting well.
To Bernardo’s disappointment, Lolita decided that it was time to return to San Pedro and continue her work as a healer there. Her month at Rancho de la Vega had given them wonderful time together despite her many duties in tending to Elizabeth and the baby. They had stolen walks together by the river, and sometimes when Soaring Bird was on hand they took Willow to the pond near the hacienda to chase the ducks.
As he put her into her carriage, Bernardo signed that he would come to visit her very soon. Felipe sat behind the carriage on his mule.
"Yes," she told Bernardo, "I will expect you on your first day off."
He smiled and shrugged, indicating he did not know the meaning of such a thing.
"Then you shall learn it," she told him. "Don Diego will give it to you, if you ask." She smiled at him. "He might even give you two days in a row."
Bernardo looked shocked at such a notion.
She leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You only need ask," she said.
Diego appeared at the gate at that very moment. "Ah, Lolita!" he said, seeming to have missed the exchange, "Maria told me you were leaving. I know you have already bid Elizabeth goodbye but I did not want you to leave without giving you my thanks. For everything. We could not have survived this month without you."
"I am glad you sent for me," Lolita replied. "And if I had a hand in helping Esperanza come to this planet, and keeping Elizabeth here, I am only glad, Señor."
Diego took her hand and kissed it. "Truly you have given us a great gift with your healing. This is the second time that I feel I owe you my life or that of my family."
She shook her head gently. "It is what I am here to do," she said.
Diego let go of her hand and looked sternly at Bernardo. "What are you doing here?" he asked.
Bernardo looked puzzled.
"Why aren’t you in the carriage with her, to see her home?" Diego nearly barked.
Lolita smiled. Sheepishly, so did Bernardo.
"What, you think you can’t take a day to see her back to San Pedro?" Diego asked. "We will be fine here. Go. Return tomorrow. Or even the day after."
Bernardo smiled more broadly, and held his finger in the air to Lolita.
"Si, get some clothing and your horse," she said to him.
They watched him leave, and Diego looked her in the eye. "It will not do for him to move to San Pedro permanently," he said to her with a smile.
"I understand," she answered. "But surely you do not mind if he makes the journey from time to time."
"No," Diego said, "I do not mind at all."
So it was that as Diego returned to the courtyard to go upstairs and see to his beloved and their baby, and Bernardo and Lolita drove away in her carriage, followed by Felipe on his long-eared, bony mount. Everyone was exactly where they wished to be.
Except, of course, for the King of the Gypsies and his strange entourage.
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