arms, and the room exploded with noise again.
Sometime later that day, when I came in to check on my two patients, I found them asleep. The father stood over the bassinet, staring at his child as if he didn’t quite understand how this had happened. It was a look I saw often on the faces of fathers, for whom pregnancy wasn’t real until this very moment. A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever. “What a beautiful boy you have,” I said, and he swallowed. There are just some feelings, I’ve learned, for which we never invented the right words. I hesitated, then asked what had been on my mind since the delivery. “If it’s not rude of me to ask, would you tell me what you whispered to your son?”
“The adhan,” the father explained.
“God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
He looked up at me and smiled. “In Islam, we want the first words a child hears to be a prayer.”
It seemed absolutely fitting, given the miracle that every baby is.
The difference between the Muslim father’s request and the request made by Turk Bauer was like the difference between day and night.
Between love and hate.
—
I T’S A BUSY afternoon, so I don’t have time to talk to Corinne about the new patient she’s inherited until we are both pulling on our coats and walking to the elevator. “What was that all about?” Corinne asks.
“Marie took me off the case because I’m Black,” I tell her.
Corinne wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound like Marie.”
I turn to her, my hands stilling on the lapels of my coat. “So I’m a liar?”
Corinne puts her hand on my arm. “Of course not. I’m just sure there’s something else going on.”
It’s wrong to take out my frustration on Corinne, who has to deal with that awful family now. It’s wrong for me to be angry at her, when I’m really angry at Marie. Corinne, she’s always been my partner in crime, not my adversary. But I feel like I could talk till I’m blue in the face and she wouldn’t really understand what this feels like.
Maybe I should talk till I’m blue in the face. Maybe then I’d be acceptable to the Bauers.
“Whatever,” I say. “That baby means nothing to me.”
Corinne tilts her head. “You want to grab a glass of wine before we head home?”
I let my shoulders relax. “I can’t. Edison’s waiting.”
The elevator dings, and the doors open. It’s packed, because it’s end of shift. Staring back at me is a sea of blank white faces.
Normally I don’t even think about that. But suddenly, it’s all I can see.
I’m tired of being the only Black nurse on the birthing pavilion.
I’m tired of pretending that doesn’t matter.
I’m tired.
“You know what,” I say to Corinne. “I think I’m going to just take the stairs.”
—
W HEN I WAS five, I couldn’t blend. Although I’d been reading since age three—the result of my mother’s diligent schooling each night when she came home from work—if I came across the word
tree
I pronounced it “ree.” Even my last name, Brooks, became “rooks.” Mama went to a bookstore and got a book on consonant blends and tutored me for a year. Then she had me tested for a gifted program, and instead of going to school in Harlem—where we lived—my sister and I rode the bus with her for an hour and a half every morning to a public school on the Upper West Side with a mostly Jewish student population. She’d drop me off at my classroom door, and then she’d take the subway to work at the Hallowells’.
My sister, Rachel, was not the student I was, though, and the bus trip was draining for all of us. So for second grade, we moved back to our old school in Harlem. I spent a year being dulled at all my bright edges, which devastated Mama. When she told her boss, Ms. Mina got me an interview at Dalton. It was the private
Sometime later that day, when I came in to check on my two patients, I found them asleep. The father stood over the bassinet, staring at his child as if he didn’t quite understand how this had happened. It was a look I saw often on the faces of fathers, for whom pregnancy wasn’t real until this very moment. A mother has nine months to get used to sharing the space where her heart is; for a father it comes on sudden, like a storm that changes the landscape forever. “What a beautiful boy you have,” I said, and he swallowed. There are just some feelings, I’ve learned, for which we never invented the right words. I hesitated, then asked what had been on my mind since the delivery. “If it’s not rude of me to ask, would you tell me what you whispered to your son?”
“The adhan,” the father explained.
“God is great; there is no God but Allah. Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.”
He looked up at me and smiled. “In Islam, we want the first words a child hears to be a prayer.”
It seemed absolutely fitting, given the miracle that every baby is.
The difference between the Muslim father’s request and the request made by Turk Bauer was like the difference between day and night.
Between love and hate.
—
I T’S A BUSY afternoon, so I don’t have time to talk to Corinne about the new patient she’s inherited until we are both pulling on our coats and walking to the elevator. “What was that all about?” Corinne asks.
“Marie took me off the case because I’m Black,” I tell her.
Corinne wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound like Marie.”
I turn to her, my hands stilling on the lapels of my coat. “So I’m a liar?”
Corinne puts her hand on my arm. “Of course not. I’m just sure there’s something else going on.”
It’s wrong to take out my frustration on Corinne, who has to deal with that awful family now. It’s wrong for me to be angry at her, when I’m really angry at Marie. Corinne, she’s always been my partner in crime, not my adversary. But I feel like I could talk till I’m blue in the face and she wouldn’t really understand what this feels like.
Maybe I should talk till I’m blue in the face. Maybe then I’d be acceptable to the Bauers.
“Whatever,” I say. “That baby means nothing to me.”
Corinne tilts her head. “You want to grab a glass of wine before we head home?”
I let my shoulders relax. “I can’t. Edison’s waiting.”
The elevator dings, and the doors open. It’s packed, because it’s end of shift. Staring back at me is a sea of blank white faces.
Normally I don’t even think about that. But suddenly, it’s all I can see.
I’m tired of being the only Black nurse on the birthing pavilion.
I’m tired of pretending that doesn’t matter.
I’m tired.
“You know what,” I say to Corinne. “I think I’m going to just take the stairs.”
—
W HEN I WAS five, I couldn’t blend. Although I’d been reading since age three—the result of my mother’s diligent schooling each night when she came home from work—if I came across the word
tree
I pronounced it “ree.” Even my last name, Brooks, became “rooks.” Mama went to a bookstore and got a book on consonant blends and tutored me for a year. Then she had me tested for a gifted program, and instead of going to school in Harlem—where we lived—my sister and I rode the bus with her for an hour and a half every morning to a public school on the Upper West Side with a mostly Jewish student population. She’d drop me off at my classroom door, and then she’d take the subway to work at the Hallowells’.
My sister, Rachel, was not the student I was, though, and the bus trip was draining for all of us. So for second grade, we moved back to our old school in Harlem. I spent a year being dulled at all my bright edges, which devastated Mama. When she told her boss, Ms. Mina got me an interview at Dalton. It was the private
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