Little Boy Blue

Every muscle was taut and the sweat that had formed four hours before dripped, like melting icicles. Her shirt soaked through, the sheets soaked through, she began to shake. Knees knocked together, teeth chattered, her heart pulsed in her ears, a hundred horses running on a cobblestone street thundered past her eardrums. Lungs that had been panting moments before gave way to gasps as her heart wretched in her chest. Panic covered her like a cold pillow pushed against her face, she fought for breath under it as her mind reached up. Her thoughts, like a thousand hands stretching for heaven, beseeching angels with fingertips, screeched to God with her very skin. Not him, Not Him, Not HIM!

At her ankles Eva was holding her baby. Eva’s face was red. The infant’s face was blue.

An iron bell hung in an ancient church that heard prayers of people for hundreds of years, tolled twice. Somebody somewhere was baking bread and the smell of yeast twisted with the scent of coal had pulled itself up through the floorboards of the rooming house. Shouts from across the street were heard through tall, arched windows, opened an hour before for the laboring mother as she sweat, as she burned from the inside. Raindrops were tapping against the glass now, like a blue bird pecking for beetles, insistent, hungry, relentless.

Eva was rubbing the back of little boy blue vigorously, her mouth was moving yet no sound pendulated. Silent prayers chattered through thin lips clicked like rosery beads. Heaven held its breath and watch the midwife work. Thin fingers, a pinky twisted with arthritis worked quickly over the still infant. The contrast of aged skin working on new skin would have been striking if one had time to notice. There was no time to notice. Gentle thumps, and flicks on the soles of tiny feet had grown in pressure and in urgency. Lips a moment ago moving in prayer were now pushing quick short breaths into tiny lungs that refused to cry. Terror was staring at her from the other end of the bed, blue irises pleading. Terror that had moaned deeply in labor now arched its back and screamed heaven ward, “Not this one! You took all the others! Please! GOD! One! That’s all I ask, for this one!” She shrieked madly, writhing against God. Thin slices of hair had escaped the braid that lay on side of her head, whisps stuck to her forehead, to her cheeks, glued to skin in fatigue. Six pillows behind her back pressed against the bed to raise her up fell short of heaven. Spittle spewed from her mouth. She screamed her supplications in one moment, they settled into quiet sobs, and pleas and begging’s seconds later. The groan of a grieving heart quivered atop thin strings of the violin and then pulled across in a long, aching, moan. The room trembled in anticipation.

Eternity sets itself in seconds. Eva silently praying heard the wails. She closed her eyes on what was before her, the mother in anguish, trembling under wet clothing, blood dripping down her thighs toward her ankles then falling, scarlet drops crying onto the floor. The limp infant, still blue under Eva’s fingertips, his own eyes covered with lids that had yet to open. Eva drew air deep into her own lungs and held it there while panic, scratching her steel demeanor, gasped under it.

 Voices that walked the cobble stones that morning had left their complaints on the streets and moved indoors to fill themselves with coffee and bread and slices of cheese. Dry from the rain and oblivious to eternity hanging from a thread above their very heads, they lit cigarettes, inhaled, laughed. Someone heard a distant moan, another heard a scream, nobody felt the floorboards tremble.

The wind tugged at the window; its sound opened Eva’s eyes. Curtains with scalloped edges fluttered. A flurry of air leapt off the wind and pulled itself into the room. She felt a breeze on the back of her neck and the fine hair on her forearms stood, she shivered, exhaled, and arose as if commanded by God. Bring him to the window, an obscure and peculiar thought tapped along her spine. The room quivered invisibly. Heaven, holding its breath, waited to see if Eva would respond, when she rose carrying the lifeless infant to the window it exhaled, she lifted the baby and held his face toward the minstrel. The world sighed. And then, it was as if an angel leaned in and kissed the infant awake. The lifeless boy gasped as if stung by a bee and then screamed with the pain of it. Eyelids the shade of purple lifted and fluttered and eyes, unseeing just seconds before rolled forward and stared into Eva’s own. She smiled. One single tear pulled from the corner of her eye furled downward landing on the baby’s forehead, she lifted her thumb to it and pressed it in. Sealed in a single tear. Eva walked to the bed and placed the crying infant on his mother’s chest.

From grief to elation in a single second pulled gratitude from her soul. Joy rose slowly. A rising sun after a winter storm; new and bright and clean and good. She leaned forward and breathed in her son and the seconds of discovery glittered on her spirit, her heart leapt into her throat. She kissed his forehead; she placed her index finger into his wee hand and he hung on as if he knew he’d almost missed the chance. He cried, she laughed and raised her head heavenward whispering, "thank you, thank you, thank you."

Eva left the work that still needed to be done, undone for the moment, and watched the new mother before her rejoice in the life of her son. Tears fell freely now, and she allowed it. Thanksgiving has a way of seeping out when words just cannot be found.

“Well,” Eva sniffled watching the two, her wrinkled hands pulling a fresh blanket over them, “what will you be naming your son?”

“Ah…” she was tracing his skin like a feather from his head to his cheek with her the tip of her finger. His crying had stopped, and his little body trembled under her hand, his lower lip shivered, and big eyes absorbed new surroundings unblinking. He mewed like a kitten and then yawned. She could feel his breaths, short, quick, and strong against her own. She sighed contentedly and whispered, “Alois says if it is a boy, then his name shall be Adolf.”

“Klar, I agree,” Eva said, “that is a good strong name for a good strong boy Frau Hitler.”