"He came too late," I said, neglecting the modesty I had been taught in childhood by my parents. "I birthed the babies myself. It happened so quickly, you would call it a miracle."

"Miracles always happen in my absence," she said. "I have to tell Luis." She rushed out of the pantry, then came running back in. "First I must see the senora and the babies for myself."

I put my mango down. We walked to Senora Valencia's room. Juana burst into tears as soon as she saw the children: Rosalinda in her mother's arms and the little boy undergoing another close examination by Doctor Javier.

Senora Valencia held Rosalinda out towards Juana.

"Take her," she said. "Wouldn't you like to hold my daughter, Juana?"

"I'm afraid I will cry," Juana sobbed.

"You're already crying," Senora Valencia observed.

Peeking at the little boy, Juana approached the bed.

"I've named my daughter Rosalinda Teresa," Senora Valencia said.

"For your maim!" Juana sobbed louder now. "Oh, had your mother lived to see this day, she would have been so joyful."

"Then, why are you crying?" Senora Valencia said. "It's a happy day."

"Your mother would have been crying, too, more tears of joy than tears of sadness."

"I will go to the barracks to fetch Pico," Papi said. "I want to come back before dark."

"Don't go alone, Don Ignacio." Juana stepped in front of him with Rosalinda resting in her arms.

"No need to worry, I'll go with God," Papi said, a trace of impatience in his voice.

"Yes, please go with God. But also take Luis with you," Juana urged. "He's in the banana grove cutting a few bananas for me. I don't know how he missed hearing all of this."

"We'll try to return tonight," Papi said, kissing his daughter's hand.

"Senora, you rest," Juana said. "Amabelle and me, we'll look after everything."

"Don't spoil her too much," Doctor Javier cautioned.

"Valencia, don't let the kindness of these good women spoil you."

"Pobrecita, this is her time of risk," said Juana. "She must spend the necessary number of days lying in, resting, both for herself and for the children."

5.

Sebastien-who is from the north of Haiti like I am, though we did not know each other when we lived there-feels haunted by the crooning of pigeons. Their cry, he says, sounds like it's not meant for others to hear, but like each howling pigeon is trying to bury its head deep inside itself. He imagines that the way pigeons moan is the same way ghosts cry when they are too lonely or too sad, when they have been dead so long that they have forgotten how to speak their own names.

Sebastien's father was killed in the great hurricane that struck the whole island-both Haiti and the Dominican Republic-in 1930. He lost his father and almost everything else. This is why he left Haiti. This is why I have him. A sweep of winds that destroyed so many houses and killed so many people brought him to me.

Sebastien's mother is still alive in Haiti. Sometimes, when we are almost asleep together, Sebastien will hear a pigeon; the pigeons he hears-and I don't always hear them-tend to go on moaning night after night with their mysterious calls in their mysterious language.

The pigeons always make him draw in his breath, suck his teeth, and say, "Ay, pobrecita manman mwen." My poor mother.

6.

Doctor Javier went off to see a young man who was bedridden with chills and a fever. He promised to return to visit the children once more before nightfall.

Juana was in the pantry preparing chicken soup for the senora, a soup made from the meat of an old hen, and a stew for the rest of the household. The children were sleeping in their cradle as Senora Valencia lay in her bed, everything but her face covered by several blankets.

I walked over to look at the babies. Dwarfed by her brother, Rosalinda lay completely still. I reached in and picked her up. Senora Valencia turned over on her side and saw me holding her daughter.

"Amabelle, put her face on your breast," she said.

Rosalinda remained asleep while I unbuttoned my blouse and placed her tiny cheek between my breasts and collarbone. I could instantly feel the air streaming in and out of her nose, her breathing falling into step with the beating of my heart.

"Isn't it miraculous?" Senora Valencia's eyes traveled back between her daughter and her son as though there was nothing else in the world she could see. "Javier says that they can't see anything except the light and the dark for the first days. I don't believe him. They're too perfect."

Senora Valencia motioned for me to come sit on the bed next to her. I put Rosalinda back in her cradle and walked towards her mother.

"Amabelle, I must confess something," she said. "When I had you light the candle to La Virgencita after the children were born, it was really for my mother. I promised her I'd light her a candle after I gave birth. Last night when my first pains began, I felt like my mother was with me. I'd been having more than my usual number of dreams since I became with child, but last night did not feel like a dream. My mother sat here next to me, in this bed. She put her arms around me and touched my stomach. This is why I did not scream until the last moment. I never felt alone."

She turned to look at the white candle on the layette chest, the wick half buried in a mass of melted paraffin, the flame long since extinguished by all the movements in the room.

"I wish you had known Mami, Amabelle," she said.

"I wish I had known her as well, Senora." But her mother had died even before my parents had drowned, leaving us both to parent all our childhood dreams out of ourselves.

Juana walked in with a tray of steaming soup and a sweet tea brew and placed them on the bed, in front of Senora Valencia.

"Eat well, Senora," she said. "Remember, the children feed from you."

Tears began to stream down Juana's face again. She turned to me and said, "See that the senora eats," and then she ran out of the room.

"Juana was at Mami's side both times Mami was pregnant," Senora Valencia explained.

I placed an embroidered shawl around the senora's neck and handed her a spoon. After the senora had eaten a few spoonfuls, Rosalinda began to whimper. I picked her up and brought her to her mother.

"My tiny little one, she must grow strong, or how will she defend herself when her brother wants to tussle?" Senora Valencia said as she took her from my hands. "I can't wait for Pico to see the children. I hope he and Papi will return tonight."

"I know the senor will want to come," I said.

"My Pico is so full of ambition. He told me that he's dreamed since he was a boy of advancing in the army and one day becoming president of this country."

"And you the wife of the president, Senora?"

"I wouldn't like it," she said, wrinkling her nose, as though smelling something sour. "When Pico procures everything he wants, he might not want me anymore. As a boy, he was so poor. Now he can't accept that he has a bit of comfort and he doesn't have to fight to make the sun rise every morning."

"The senor's work is important." I told her what I knew she also believed.

"I wish I could see him more," she said. "I miss the dark taste of cigars in his mouth."

Senora Valencia raised the little girl up to her shoulder as if she had already been doing it all her life.

"I've thought of everything I want to tell the children," she said, "things they might need to know and other things as well, where I may have to hold my tongue."

"You know what best to do, Senora."

"What you did for me today, Amabelle, Mami should have been here to do, except she was like me and would have been screaming in agony, too." She threw her head back and laughed at the pain linking her with her mother. "Amabelle, after my mami died, Juana told me that in our faith if there is a choice between a baby and a mother during a birth, you must choose the baby."

"I am glad we never had to choose, Senora."

"If you'd had to make this choice, I'd want you to look after my children. See what we've brought forth together, my Spanish prince and my Indian princess."

"Wouldn't you like to be a princess?" Senora Valencia murmured into her daughter's face. "She will steal many hearts, my Rosalinda. Look at that profile. The profile of Anacaona, a true Indian queen."

"Juana and I will sleep in the house with you tonight," I offered to the senora.

"Juana will only drown us in more of her tears," she chuckled.

"I will ask her to call on the patron saint of tears to stop hers."

"I think it best if she sleeps in her own house and you in your room."

"One of us must stay with you, even if Senor Pico returns."

I left the senora to the care of one of her husband's girl cousins, who had come from the village with more old hen soup, eggs, nutmeg, money, and dog's teeth for the babies' protection, and went down to the pantry to find Juana.

Juana was sitting at the table, stirring a wooden spoon around the plate of stew in front of her. Her eyes were red from all the crying she had done. She got up and ladled out a bowl of stew from the pot for me.

"I think a tear or two might have fallen in the stew while you were cooking," I said as I sat at the table next to her.

I didn't realize how hungry I was until I saw the chunks of cabbage, yucca and manioc floating in my bowl.

"There are no tears in your bowl," Juana said. "I was careful. Nothing but what is meant to be there ever enters my stew."

"I was not serious," I said, patting the cushion of flesh on her back.

"Don't tease. What if the senora heard you?"

"Why are you crying so, Juana? I don't believe they're all for joy, your tears."

"It's a grand day in this house," she said, "a day that comes to remind me how quickly time passes by. A woman like me grows old while more and more children arrive m this world."

"Are you jealous, Juana? Do you want your own babies?"

"Jealous? Santa Ana, the Holy Mother who gives life, what if she heard you?" She rapped her knuckles on the four corners of the table, as though to test the strength of the wood, and then picked up a rag and wiped the already clean table legs.

"If she has ears, then Santa Ana, she's already heard everything I said."

"The sin's on your head, then," she said. "But you're not a believer."

"How do you know I'm not a believer?"

"Do you believe in anything?"

Juana rubbed her closed hands together as though washing in the stream. After years of working as a housemaid, it was hard for her to remain still.

"I remember when Senora Valencia's mother became pregnant with her," she said. "One day, she had no menstrual rags for me to wash. I said to her, 'Senora Rosalinda, could you be with child?' She said to me, 'Juana, I dare not even dream it.' I said, 'Why?' She said, 'It would be too miraculous.' She was with child indeed, and during the first and second months her body became so uneasy. She grew larger and larger until she was too wide for most passageways in this house. If anyone looked like they were going to have twin babies, it was Senora Rosalinda."

Juana stood up and poured another bowl of stew for herself. She'd had an enormous appetite over these past few months and had grown even broader, especially around her face.

"Now Senora Valencia has children of her own." She pondered the event out loud. "Look how quick the time has passed. It's not the time itself, but what it does to us."

"You're far from old," I said. She was at least fifty, twice my and Senora Valencia's age, but her body looked hardy and capable, like it could still bear many children.

"You don't know how long I prayed for a child myself," she said.

"I have no child, but even I know you must do more than pray."

"Sinner!" She laughed and playfully slapped the back of my hand.

"So you've wanted babies?" I asked.

"Babies always lead us to talk of more babies. Don't you want to have your own?"

I shook my head no. Perhaps because my parents both had died young, I never imagined myself getting older than I was, much less living long enough to bear my own children. Before Sebastien, all my dreams had been of the past: of the old country, of places and people I might never see again.

"I was close to becoming a mother once," Juana said. "My stomach grew for three months and nine days, then all at once it was gone. Adios bebe! This child was never born. It never had a sex. Never had a name. My Luis, he loves children. If they could grow out of the ground, he would have grown one for me long ago. At this moment in life, a woman asks herself: What good is all this flesh? Why did I have this body?"

Juana and her sisters had been raised in a convent school where their mother was the cook. She was going to be a nun like her two sisters until she met Luis. She and Luis left together and settled in the valley. Juana thought she couldn't have children because she had abandoned her calling. Even her lost pregnancy must have seemed like a deserved punishment from a God she had defied.

"Look at me," she said, rotating her arms as though she were ironing. "I have no need to cry for myself. I must cry for Dona Rosalinda, who died in the attempt to bring a second child into the family. And I must cry for Senora Valencia, who's without her mother on this day."

7.