Hello Beautiful

Rose nodded, but Julia knew that she hadn’t heard her, couldn’t hear her. Rose had failed, and so she was a ruin: a cracked statue like the Virgin Mary leaning against the fence in the corner of the yard. Julia wanted to say, Don’t worry, Mama. I’m going to get pregnant. I’ll make sure our tree branches remain intact. But she couldn’t say that. Her plan was just that, a plan. Not yet an answer to her mother’s heartbreak. Julia thought about Cecelia’s baby and how, unless she fixed this, that child would arrive the same way she had, on the heels of scorn and outrage. With a mother and daughter’s separation. She felt a warmth toward Cecelia’s baby, a kinship, for the first time.

When Julia left, she was worn out, as if she had grabbed a shovel and assisted her mother in the garden. On the bus ride home, she wondered what the point of her own life was. She’d never considered it in those terms before. Her father had called Julia his rocket ever since she was a little girl—I can’t wait to watch you fly, he’d say — and she was the one who fixed problems. A large challenge lay before her now, though: her largest yet. It was a ball of yarn with her entire family woven into it, which meant everyone she cared about was at stake. Her sisters, her parents, William, the babies who weren’t yet here. Julia felt a wave of fear that she wouldn’t succeed, and then quashed it. She had never failed at anything she’d put her mind to, and this would be no different. It couldn’t be any different.

—

Cecelia went into labor in late October, when Julia was almost four months pregnant. Mrs. Ceccione drove Cecelia to the hospital, and her sisters met her there. Only one person was allowed into the delivery room during the birth, and the nurse, gowned and masked, announced to the waiting room that the young mother had asked for a woman named Julia.

Thrilled, Julia tugged on a hospital gown and did her best to contain her hair beneath the shower cap she was handed. When she entered the room, she found Cecelia crying. “I want Mama,” she said. “I want her so much, and you remind me of her.”

“Baby girl,” Julia said, and smoothed Cecelia’s hair off her flushed face. This was what Rose called her daughters in times of sickness or sadness.

“I miss her so much.” Cecelia looked wild-eyed at her sister. “You wouldn’t believe it. Every day, I’ve had to fight not to go home. It’s like the baby wanted to see her. My body hates being away from her.”

“Do you want me to call her now?” Julia said. “She would come.” She wasn’t sure this was true, but she knew it was what her sister wanted to be true, and in the face of Cecelia’s anguish, Julia would try her best to alter reality.

Cecelia twisted her body under the sheets and cried out. She grabbed Julia’s hand and squeezed so hard that Julia gasped. How was her sister this strong? Julia experienced the waves of contractions with Cecelia for the next twenty minutes, feeling the magnitude of creating and meeting a new human wash over her. She wiped sweat off Cecelia’s forehead with a cloth and allowed her hand to be throttled. She was certain their mother was wrong to turn her back on this: on her own baby, on the arrival of her first grandchild. Julia promised herself that she would never be that stubborn.

“I feel like I need to poop,” Cecelia said, in a loud whisper.

“That means it’s time to push the baby out.” This came from the bored-looking nurse in the corner, whom Julia hadn’t even noticed was there. “I’ll get the doctor.”

The infant arrived — yelling, pink, wrinkled — so furious that Julia and Cecelia both cried in relief.

“She’s here,” Cecelia said, when the baby was lying on her chest.

The infant patted her fist against her mother’s skin. Julia watched her take in quick breaths and then let them go. This brand-new being seemed to be concentrating all of her tiny form on the act of living.

Julia said, “Look at her.” She wished everyone they knew was in the room with them to look. In fact, she wished thousands of people were crowded in here with them — all of humanity — because the sight was so amazing.

“Isabella Rose Padavano,” Cecelia said. “We’ll call you Izzy. Welcome to the world.”

“Mama’s not going to be able to resist her.” Julia stared in wonder at the infant. Her perfect eyes, perfect tiny nose, perfect pink mouth. “She’s irresistible.”

—

Later that night, after Julia and her sisters left the hospital, Charlie visited. Mrs. Ceccione must have told him the news.