The Birthday Room by Kevin Henkes

Author:Kevin Henkes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins

9

THE CAR WAS BACK, parked in its space, which meant that Nina was home from the midwife. And yet, on the porch, Ben felt a twinge of dread. Ever so slowly, he turned the doorknob. What would he find? Rooms of silence? A bitter argument?

What he did find, in the living room, confused him, and frightened him at first. One end of an ironing board was propped on the seat of the couch, and Nina was lying on the board, her knees bent gently up toward her swollen belly, her head near the floor, supported by a bed pillow. Beside her, Ben’s mother knelt, stroking Nina’s hair with one hand; in her other hand she held a piece of paper. Ian, it appeared to Ben, was lightly pressing the earphones from a portable CD player to Nina’s lower abdomen, directly to her skin. Her pants were pulled down, a wreath of folds around the tops of her thighs.

Feeling as if he were just a trace of himself, Ben hung in the doorway, watching. Was Nina having the baby right here? he wondered. Right now? Were they trying to stop the baby from spilling out? And was that why Nina’s head was down and the rest of her body elevated? Ben’s presence went unnoticed until he cleared his throat and blurted, “What’s going on? Is everyone all right?”

“Oh, Ben—” his mother said, her head jerking in an arc toward the sound of his voice. “Everything’s fine.” She rose and came to him.

“Hello, Ben,” Nina breathed, without changing her position on the board.

“Hey, Ben,” said Ian. “This must look very odd to you.”

Ben’s mother peered at the clock on the mantle across the room. “Time’s up,” she said.

Nina wiggled the elastic waistband on her light, stretchy pants over the bulge that was her baby. With a bit of difficulty, Ian helped her off the ironing board and onto her feet. “I don’t think it worked,” she said.

“Be patient,” said Ian. “This was our first attempt.”

Somewhat urgently, Ben said, “Would someone please tell me what’s happening?”

“The baby is breech,” said his mother.

When he heard the word breech, Ben immediately thought: The baby has some rare disease. He learned, however, that it meant that the baby was in a position inside Nina that was not desirable for an easy birth. The baby was sitting cross-legged, buttocks down.

“We were trying to turn the baby,” Ian explained. “Lying on the ironing board will, with luck, encourage the baby to float into a good position. Head down.”

Ben’s mother flipped and straightened the sheet of paper she had been holding so that Ben could see it. On it were illustrations showing the different types of breech presentation, and an illustration of a woman lying on an ironing board with arrows indicating the direction in which the baby should rotate.

“How do you know that the baby’s the wrong way?” Ben asked.

“The midwife suspected it right away, just by feeling my belly,” said Nina. “Then she sent me to a clinic with an ultrasound machine.

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