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"He’s fine Just laying low, farther up in the h the open back door as she heads for the barn, gets her bicycle out, and walks it through the dry grass out to the road Part ofan infant when I don’t havemy uterus to contract, and I’ to do with you, Norma?" I release her little le her up and down "Your parents are on their way north to find a better life They just don’t have enough money, and there are three other children" Norma, as if she understands and is really ins to wail again What the heck, I guess I can stand it I put the baby back on my breast and pace back and forth to distracta foundling It just can’t happen!
Angel
As the sun reaches over the trees, Norain and I place her in her basket, tucking the blanket around her She keeps sucking the way infants do when they drea down at her Times are hard, but there must be some childless couple ould like to raise this beautiful baby
I consider the folks at Hazel Patch, a good-hearted community if there ever was one, but this child is white Would adopting a white infant be possible for black people? Therethe baby e? What would we do with Noro to a birth in bad weather? Take her out in the cold? I look down at the sleeping newborn again, touch her cheek with one finger
"How about Gladys and Ernie Mintz?" I wonder out loud It’s only been four months since the loss of their baby Maybe the woman could reestablish her milk supply
The Mintzes don’t have money, but they have their own farets ill or injured, their faeous, but it could be just what Mrs Mintz needsI run upstairs to put onto impress them this time, look more like Mrs Potts, a respectable midwife
At the last ht of the stocking tucked inside is reassuring, and Katherine’s gold-and-pearl pin plops out, along with Mrs Vanderhoff’s ruby ring I thread a blue hair ribbon through the ring and tie it around the baby’s neck Maybe the Mintz faton to trade it for cash, or ood-luck charet rid of it
An hour later, with the baby swaddled in a white sheet against my chest, I trot into the Mintzes’ yard and aardly slide off Star The three little boys are playing with bits of wood in the dirt next to the porch, and they stop to look up at hten my dress and pat the baby Albert, the oldest, comes around the side with a bucket of feed for the chickens
"Here goes nothing," I say under my breath as I approach the house "Don’t take it personally, little one, if they don’t want you I’"
"Miss Murphy," Albert says, tipping his straw hat and eyeing the bundle attached to my front
"Your ma home?"
"InsideShe’s poorly"