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I gazed up at the stars, hot tears still streaking down my cheeks; and then my heron appeared out of nowhere, it seemed, and landed on the railing. He lifted his wings and did a small jump as if to amuse me. I laughed.

"What are you up to tonight, Mr. Heron?" I asked. He bobbed his head.

Then he turned and soared off into the night.

My animals had no false faces. They were exactly who they appeared to be. They broke no promises. They lived in a world without any false hope. Maybe I should have been born a heron. Right now it seemed a better thing to be.

I sighed and sat back, and then I felt the strange twinge in my stomach. I felt it again and my eyes brightened, my tears fell back.

It's the baby, I thought. It was the first time I had felt it move within me.

And suddenly all the dark clouds lifted and a ray of sunshine brightened the dark corridors in my heart, causing it to beat with a joy I never felt before. The pain I felt now was the pain that came from having no one with whom I could share this new excitement.

Loneliness was just as difficult to withstand when you had happiness as it was when you had sadness, I thought, for you needed to share it. I began to understand what loving someone really meant. It meant sharing every discovery, every realization, every tear, every laugh, every dream, and even every nightmare.

It meant having someone to trust with your fears and your hopes.

It meant so much more than the people in this house thought it did. Maybe the birth of the baby would bring them the understanding they lacked. The Tates might stop doting on themselves and their problems and dote on the child. It could bring them together in a good way. They would share the baby's development, laugh at its smile, be in awe of its growth, its first steps, first words. And then maybe Octavious would prove to be right: Gladys would want more children, children truly of her own.

When something bad happened, Mama, quoting Scripture, often said, "To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven . . . a time to rend and a time to sew."

The baby kicked again.

I had passed through the season of rending. Now I was about to begin the season of sewing.

7

A Friend Appears

.

Now that I had felt the life stirring within me,

what remained of my pregnancy seemed less terrible to endure. Starting my eighth month, I felt as if I had rounded a long, windy bend la the road and could see my destination looming just ahead. Despite her unhappiness over my being kept secretly in the Tates' house for months and months, Mama seemed pleased with the progress of my pregnancy and the baby's development. Now, during most of the time Mama visited with me, I would ramble on about how the baby had kicked and jumped, how it felt to have a living thing turning and twisting, anticipating its own birth, forgetting for the moment that Mama knew all this better than I did. After all, she had been pregnant with me!

"The baby kicked so hard last night, I nearly fell out of the bed, Mama! I had to sit up and then I spent most of the night rubbing my stomach and talking soothingly to him or her. I wish I knew whether it was a boy or a girl."

"It sounds like a boy to me," she said. "That's what I thought," I whispered. "I just feel it's a boy and I've been talking to the baby assuming it's a boy. It doesn't feel like I'm being kicked with a dainty foot," I said, and la

ughed.

Mama listened with her face frozen in a wise smile that gradually turned into a look of concern and worry. I was so wrapped up in my excitement and fancy that I didn't notice for a while, and then I felt my heart skip a beat when I saw how her eyes had darkened.

"What's wrong, Mama?" I asked. "Has Daddy done something?"

"Your daddy always does something to curl the hairs at the back of my head, but no, it's not him I'm thinking of right now."

"Then who? What?"

"It's time we talked about what it's going to be like afterward, honey."

"Afterward?"

"Something magical happens when a woman gives birth, Gabriel," she explained. "There's all those months of discomfort, labor pain and the birthing pain, of course; but once the baby emerges and the mother sets eyes on this wonderful creation that took shape inside her, all the agony slips from her memory and she is filled with a joy beyond description. I seen it hundreds of times, honey. Especially with first births, the mother can't believe her eyes. I couldn't believe mine when you were born." She sighed so deeply when she paused, I had to hold my breath until she continued.

"That's going to happen to you, Gabriel, and then, in the same instant, the baby's going to be ripped away from you. You got to prepare yourself for it, although, to be honest, I don't know what to tell you, what to do for you to make that ordeal any easier."

Mama held my hand while she told me these things, and I could see from the grimness in her face that she had already seen my future misery and was feeling sad for me.