"You're going to do this now."
I felt the wordnorise up in my throat. I felt the wordcan'tpush against the back of my teeth. But I looked at Bella's face—the dark curve of her eye, the wet flare of her nostril, the way she was watching me like she'd been watching me my whole life—and I swallowed both words down.
"Tell me what to do."
My mother guided my hands into the warmth.
I won't pretend I wasn't afraid. I was. The heat inside Bella was like nothing I'd ever felt—a living heat, pulsing and shifting and full of sounds I could hear through my palms. The calf's legs were slick and small, and when I found them, they twitched against my fingers like they were trying to kick me away.
"Push the legs forward," my mother said. "Toward the head. Then hook your fingers around the hooves and pull them toward you. You're going to feel something pop. That's the hip. Don't stop when it happens."
I did what she said. My fingers found the bend of the knee, pushed forward, felt the joint slide into a new position. The calf kicked again, harder this time, and something deep in Bella's belly shifted. I hooked my fingers around the hooves and pulled.
The hip popped. It felt like a knuckle cracking underwater—muffled and wrong and absolutely correct all at once. I kept pulling, and the legs straightened, and suddenly I could see what I was doing. The calf was turning. Not all the way, not yet, but enough. The hooves were pointed toward the light.
"Now the other one," my mother said. "Same thing. You have time."
I didn't feel like I had time. I felt like the world was contracting around me, shrinking to the size of Bella's body and the small space inside her. But I found the other leg—bent atthe same angle, tucked the same way—and I did it again. Push. Hook. Pull. Pop.
The second hip released with a sound that made me grit my teeth.
"Good," my mother said. "Now pull. Gentle. Steady. You're not pulling the calf out. You're helping Bella push it. You're dancing with her. Feel the rhythm."
I felt it. Bella's body clenched around my arm, a wave of pressure that started somewhere I couldn't see and ended at my shoulder. I pulled. The calf moved. Bella pushed again, and I pulled again, and somewhere in the middle of that strange, ancient dance, the calf's head appeared.
It was small and wet and perfectly formed, and for one terrible moment I thought it was dead. Then it blinked. Then it sneezed.
My mother laughed—a real laugh, bright and sudden and so out of place in the bloody straw that I almost looked around to see who'd made the sound. But it was her. It was my mother, laughing like she was watching something beautiful, and the sound of it made my chest ache in a way I didn't have words for.
"Pull the rest," she said. "Slow now. The shoulders are the widest part."
I pulled. The shoulders came. The rest of the calf slid out in a rush of fluid and blood and something that looked like smoke in the lantern light, and suddenly my arms were full of a wet, trembling animal that was trying very hard to breathe.
"Put it in front of her face," my mother said. "She needs to lick it. That's how they bond."
I dragged the calf—she, I saw now, a she—through the straw and placed her in front of Bella's nose. Bella's tongue came out, rough and dark, and she began to clean her daughter with long, patient strokes. The calf shivered. Then she shivered again. Then she opened her mouth and made a sound—a small,indignant cry that was almost a moo but not quite, like she was practicing for something she didn't understand yet.
I sat back in the straw and watched them, mother and daughter, breathing together in the lantern light.
My mother put her hand on my shoulder. Her fingers were still wet, still warm, and I could feel the shape of them through the thin cotton of my nightgown.
"You did good, Moni."
"The calf," I said. "Is she going to be okay?"
"She's going to be fine." My mother knelt beside me and tucked a strand of hair behind my ear. The hair was damp with sweat and something else, something that might have been blood or might have been water, and I didn't care. "You want to name her?"
I looked at the calf. She was still shivering, still making those small, indignant sounds, but she was pushing herself up now—front legs first, then back, wobbling like a newborn deer. Bella was still licking her, still murmuring in that low, rumbling way that cows have, and the sound of it made something in my chest loosen.
"Mercy," I said.
My mother tilted her head. "Mercy?"
"Because she could have died. But she didn't. Somebody gave her mercy."
My mother was quiet for a long moment. The barn was quiet too—the kind of quiet that comes after something important, when the world is catching its breath. Even Bella had stopped her lowing. The only sound was Mercy's small, wet breaths and the distant hum of the propane heater in the corner.
"That's a good name," my mother said finally. "That's a very good name."
