Orleans Read Online Free PDF

shadows I don’t recognize and move on.
    She not in her tent. Not in the talking circle. I run to the latrine. Not there, either. Everyone be running and running. Children brush past me, getting snatched up by strangers and parents alike. My vision gone narrow as I hunt for Lydia.
    I finally find her, crouched like a possum, behind the scrap heap where we collect things for trade on Market Day. She look beyond me when I say her name. Proud, beautiful Lydia. She so tall and calm most days. But not now. I take her arm and she shake her head, moaning. I look down and see why: She squatting in water. Her own baby water. She been betrayed by that baby. It coming right now, whether she ready or not.
    “No,” I tell her. “You got to walk.” But she don’t move. “Stay there, then,” I whisper. I run back to my hut and it be burning. I duck inside anyway to grab my emergency pack—but it already on fire. Instead, I grab the sheet off my cot. At least it still in one piece. Then I hear voices. I freeze, even though the fire be rising around me. I hear a woman cry out for O-Neg Davis, and I think it must be Natasha.
    Suddenly the leaves of my hut flare up. The voices move away. I slip out and ’round to the salvage bin, trying not to look at what be happening to our homes. I got Lydia to care for, and her baby, too.
    I come around the salvage heap and thank the Ursulines’ God Lydia still there. She be moaning again, but now the fire be roaring so loud, you can’t tell. “Low and quick,” I hiss at her and grab her hand. She pull back, but I pull harder. We stumble forward and now she be moving with me as I steer her left and right, around the groups of men, none of them our own. We lucky they ain’t got hounds. Hounds can sniff out blood, round folks up by type. Small blessing, but I’ll take it.
    Lydia groan and fall to the ground. I do my best to hook my arms around her and drag her to the brush. It slow going, and seem like we gonna be caught, but they ain’t coming for us, and I wonder if this hunt be for the O-Negatives. It don’t matter to me as long as the Devil ain’t come for the two of us today.
    • • • 
    “It gonna be all right,” I say to Lydia. I been pulling her along, wrapped in the sheet I thought I’d be using for the baby. But there ain’t gonna be no baby if we ain’t safe. “It gonna be all right,” I say again. Lydia nod, her forehead beaded with sweat, and I worry again about them dogs. O-Neg hunt or not, they’d be after us. Because now there be blood on the sheet coming from between Lydia’s legs. We still not safe enough. I slide her through the woods ’til we get to a protected place. Protected as can be in these thin trees, with a little pond of water and enough moonlight to see by.
    I lay her out on the cleanest part of the sheet, and she look so weak lying there. She don’t even be moaning and crying anymore, just calm, like she asleep. “Fen.” She try to sit up, eyes wide. “Are we there yet?” she ask.
    “We here. We at the hospital. We gonna have your baby now,” I tell her. She smile at me. Ain’t been a real hospital in the Delta since before I been born. They all been turned into crypts or tribe houses, and the Ursulines’ tent be more like a morgue than a place where babies be born. Not everybody live in the open like us OPs. We a big enough tribe to care for ourselves, watch our own backs.
    Used to be, anyway.
    “I’m going to push now,” Lydia say suddenly, and she grip my hand like she gonna break it. She take in a sharp breath and push down.
    “Okay, okay, breathe easy,” I tell her, and wish I had a blanket or something to pillow her head with. Instead, I make sure there be no rocks under her head or back. She lie there with no complaint and the contractions hit again. When they come a third time, I let go of her hand and go down to see where the baby be at. Lydia bleeding real bad, and I can’t help but listen for dogs. It too soon for all