“I guess I should be congratulating you,” Mike said when Angel finally ventured out of her bedroom. “I guess the stork’s bringing you something extra special for your sweet sixteen.” He looked at the swell of her stomach, his lip twisted in revulsion, and Angel wrapped her arms around herself.
Amadeo knew it was coming, but still, when Angel goes into labor, it’s somehow a surprise. There’s a window in the delivery room, but it seems to have been tinted with some UV protectant so that everything—the parking lot, the mountains, the sky heaped with clouds—is violet-blue, the whole world on the verge of evening even now, in the heat of the day. Angel is yellow and drawn, and her hair frames her face, frizzy against the pillow.
They’re waiting for her to dilate, the nurse tells him, which makes Amadeo think of a giant dark eye between his daughter’s legs, an infant bursting through the fragile, unblinking tissue. She’s resting, her belly a mound as high as her propped head, but it’s only a matter of time before it all starts. A nurse has supplied him and his mother with blue papery smocks and shoe covers like shower caps.
“Ungh,” grunts Angel as a contraction comes, then she relaxes. “Where’s my mom? Is she here yet?”
“We left messages, honey,” says Yolanda.
As if Angel has just noticed Amadeo there, she turns on him. “Could you say something at least? If you’re gonna be standing there? Tell a story? Crack a joke?”
A joke. Nothing comes to mind. “Why did the chicken . . . Shit, I don’t know, Angel.”
She pushes her face away in disgust and grimaces into another contraction.
Yolanda says, “I heard on the news where a little boy—” Her voice breaks, but is strong when she starts again. “A father shot his own son. The little boy was hiding in the closet. Seven years old.”
“What’s the punch line, well?” asks Angel.
“That’s just the story I heard. I can’t stop thinking about it.”
“God, Mom. Not the time.” Amadeo looks at his mother in surprise. Her judgment’s been a real issue lately. Just the other day she left the burner on under the kettle for four hours. The kettle was so hot the enamel flaked off.
“Well, it’s a terrible story,” says Yolanda. “Really terrible! Why shouldn’t we think about that poor baby? Terrible things happen in this world and we can’t just pretend they don’t. We can’t turn our backs on people who are scared and in pain.”
“Ungh,” moans Angel again.
Three hours they’ve been here. When he got the call this morning that Angel was in labor and was being driven to the hospital by the Family Foundations receptionist, Amadeo had to get Tío Tíve to give him the ride. It’s not the first ride Amadeo has had to beg from his uncle since the night Tíve bailed him out. Each time it’s a profoundly humiliating experience, having to wait outside the community center or probation office, and then climb into the passenger seat like a twelve-year-old. Generally Amadeo endures these humiliations in silence. Today, he asked, “Can’t you go any faster?” and his uncle growled, but sped up.
Amadeo was the first of the family to arrive, and was, gratifyingly, the sole beneficiary of the relieved smile Angel beamed onto him as he came toward her in the waiting room. She waved from her wheelchair.
“Why’s she in a wheelchair?” he asked the woman who drove Angel. The woman’s purse strap crossed her chest like a bandolier of bullets. “Why’s she need a wheelchair?”
He’d expected to be ushered into a sterile delivery room in time to see his scarlet screaming grandson lifted triumphantly over the doctor’s head. But Angel was still in her jeans and Pumas, her big gold purse hanging from her knee.
Angel shrugged. “They just gave me one.” She maneuvered forward and back, flexed her bicep. “I’m going to get me some guns, lose this baby fat.”