Threshold

maybe their bodies knew to come home when they carried something extra

I’d only notice later that the lighting was always dim when a cow gave birth in the barn. If she didn’t accomplish the delivery in the meadow, that meant evening was coming on, maybe a sliver of sunset still on the western horizon percolating through the knotholes in the barn’s wood siding. But often lit only by the bug-flecked, white-wash coated bulbs in bare sockets tucked into the rafters, a cow would low in that possessed, trance-like state on the threshold of birthing. The times a cow needed me were these scenarios; maybe their bodies knew to come home when they carried something extra, like a calf in breech position or a set of twins. Jocelyn had been carrying on the heavy side to my eye, and when too many hooves began to protrude from the cow, our suspicion of twins was confirmed. I was no expert, merely a teenager who spent a lot of time at the backend of a cow doing the business of a midwife. But I also had the slenderest hands and the strongest stomach among us kids. At least that’s how everyone talked about birth, like you needed a strong stomach for it. I had yet to see anything about birth that made me queasy. The smell of iron, the pearly puddle of placenta, the sudsy ivory soap lathering my arms, only electrified me. I was always ready to reach in and turn a baby around. You want to come into this world headfirst.