I met Fidelia the morning she died, the same morning she was born.

Fidelia’s mother, Christiana, a stately woman with rich dark skin and neatly plaited hair, sat motionless in a rocking chair. The curtains were drawn against the morning light. I introduced myself as the hospital chaplain. When Christiana started to cry, I pulled a chair next to her and softly placed my hand on her arm.

After a while she inhaled, bracing herself, and said, “I’m ready.”

“For what?” I asked.

“For whatever you’ve come to say.”

“Oh, Christiana,” I said. “I have no words. I’ve simply come to be with you.”
Her body softened, and we settled into silence then. In bits, over many hours, we talked. She wondered why God had done this and what she had done wrong. During her first pregnancy she had worked up until the delivery, and Fidelia’s brother had popped out fully baked. “Same yeast, same flour, same oven,” she said, but with a different result. This time, she was not so lucky. During her bath the night before, she’d felt a slight pulling sensation in her belly that soon turned into pain. Seeing blood, she went to the hospital, hoping her baby would be okay. But now it’s the day after, and her baby is dead.

I asked if she wanted to see Fidelia again. In the long silence, I sensed her hesitancy. The dams she was constructing to contain her grief might collapse. What if Fidelia’s death had been her fault?

“I won’t push after this,” I said, as gently as I could, “but would you regret not holding her again when you had the chance?”
She was quiet for a long while and said, “Yes, I would regret that.”

Fidelia had been moved to the pathology lab, scrunched into a too-small plastic container in the specimen refrigerator to await the decision about whether to bury, cremate, or dispose of the body, as if it—she—were medical waste.

Fidelia was curled onto her side, naked, wrapped in a blue hospital pad. I unwrapped her, a perfect miniature approximating life, and cleaned up a little poop she’d been in the middle of—a sign of her distress—and dressed her in a purple knit sweater and cap, both intended for a healthy full-term newborn. I swaddled her in a checkered pale green and lavender baby blanket for presenting to Christiana, who received her tenderly.

As Christiana held her daughter, I offered to take pictures. Without years of memories and photographs to console her, a few pictures would be a sweet balm. The photos were not professional, but I was able to get close-ups of her delicate face, her well-defined eyebrows, and her fuzzy head. Her red fingers seemed impossibly long on her narrow hands; her little thighs ended at knobby knees; and her feet seemed all toes. I photographed Christiana cradling Fidelia in her open palms and against her ample chest.

But Christiana moved woodenly through these poses. I wondered, Did my presence inhibit her? Was she numb with grief? Or was she responding to the lack of life in Fidelia? I imagined how she would have met Fidelia’s warm and snuggling body with a reassuring embrace; how she would have leaned her head and heart into the breath of her daughter. Instead, they were a study in stillness.

Later, I made prints for a small album. I shielded the kiosk screen, not because the pictures weren’t beautiful—they were—but because Fidelia was a little shocking if you were not prepared for what you would see, especially the photograph of her lying flat on her back in the purple hat and sweater that made her look like diminutive, dead royalty. The giant orbs of her eyes made her into an alien creature. Her mahogany skin was tinged with red, yellow, pink, and green. Her shiny, damp body looked as if it might not quite hold all her fluids. But her little nose and sweet relaxed lips glowed with pink light.

* * *

Christiana wondered aloud, “How am I going to tell Kayla?”

Her four-year-old niece was delighted to be having a cousin. Whenever they talked on the phone, Kayla asked if the baby had come yet. When they were together, Kayla would rub Christiana’s belly, press her ear to her stomach, and whisper, “Hi Elizabeth.”

I thought a while. “Let her see your feelings,” I began. “If you try to pretend that you’re not sad, she’ll mistrust your honesty and will feel left out.” I paused. “You’ll probably cry when you say the words, but that’s okay. If you hold Kayla in your lap when you’re talking, it will be easier to wipe away each other’s tears.” After another moment, I continued, “This doesn’t have to be a one-time
conversation. You can write notes to Fidelia or draw pictures together in her honor. You can share stories of how you loved her.”

* * *

To acknowledge Fidelia’s birth, instead of a legal birth certificate, the hospital offered a certificate of birth. I asked, “How would you like me to record her name?”

She said, “Kayla named her Elizabeth, but I am going to call her Fidelia.”

“Fidelia Elizabeth?”

“No,” she said. “Fidelia Nana Yaa. In Ghana, where I’m from, Nana Yaa means Thursday Born. Fidelia Thursday Born.”

The certificate of birth asked for the date and time of birth, Thursday, September 10, 4:27 a.m. Then it asked about the death. September 10, but was the time of her death before, during, or after the birth? I left that part blank.

I didn’t ask the other questions that followed in my mind: If Christiana had had health insurance, would the outcome have been different? Would a Cesarian have saved Fidelia’s life? The unanswered questions linger for me, even now. I never found out why Fidelia died.

* * *

Six years earlier, Carol lost her full-term baby during delivery. While staff helped her decide to see and hold her daughter and where to bury her, they did not know how to help her make memories of their short time together. They offered no inked handprints, none of the clothing her daughter had been wrapped in, no chance for more time alone with Charlotte. Carol had instinctively taken photographs, but she wished she’d taken a thousand more, especially close-ups of Charlotte’s ears, fingers, and toes.

Transforming her experience of Charlotte’s death into a life’s work, Carol created local chapters of two support groups, Empty Arms for bereaved parents and Subsequent Choices for families brave enough to try again. Each time she helps a family have a better experience than she and her husband had, there is a bit of redemption of Charlotte’s too short life.

Carol helped me understand the importance of making memories out of almost nothing. Each tangible item becomes proof that this baby existed, a small consolation to the grief of going home alone. Months before Fidelia’s death, Carol had given me the materials necessary to make three-
dimensional impressions of babies’ feet and hands, but I hadn’t taken the time to learn how to use them before I met Christiana. Not wanting to experiment on Fidelia, I didn’t offer to make castings, and Christiana didn’t know to ask.

The next day, I stewed on my regret for not having made the offer. The following Monday, I learned that Fidelia’s body was still at the hospital because of complications with paperwork. At the end of my workday, I brought Fidelia from the lab to my office, locking the door behind me so no one would walk in unannounced.

I gathered the supplies Carol had given me and reviewed the instructions, took a deep breath, and began. In a Styrofoam cup I mixed a batch of water and alginate, a pink powder used by dentists to take impressions of teeth. I supported Fidelia’s bottom with my left hand, resting her back on my forearm while her legs dangled between my fingers.

I was nervous the way I am around newborns, uncertain how to support her head and afraid of dropping her. I held her body close to mine as I slowly lifted the cup with its pink goo up around her feet. I held still for a few minutes until the thickener was rubbery and springy, like old Jell-O.

I lowered Fidelia onto my knee and leaned forward to support her back so that my hands were free. I steadied the cup while I lifted Fidelia’s feet, one after the other, out of the pliable, forgiving goop, which released each foot with a faint pop. I had worried her skin would tear, but it had not. While I wouldn’t discover what lay within until the next morning, for now I could breathe again.

I took more casts of Fidelia’s hands and feet. Each time, it was easier to mix the powder and water, hold her, and navigate the cup. When finished, I bundled Fidelia in a small slate-blue blanket I had knit over the weekend and cocooned her in a nest of blue pads inside a new container, one big enough to hold her full eleven inches without having to squeeze her in. I did not put the lid on. Even though I knew she was dead, I didn’t want to shut her up without air or light while I continued my work.

Next, I mixed powdered cement with water until it was the consistency of loose gravy. The tiny spatula made a soft thwapping sound against the pliable rubber bowl. I poured the yellow slurry into the small openings made by Fidelia’s ankles and wrists and tapped the cups on a tabletop to release any air bubbles. I poured, tapped, poured, and tapped again. Later I learned I should have tapped some more.

Because the cement had to harden before I could remove the rubbery outer layer, all that remained was to clean up and wait. I leaned back in the armchair and sat for a few minutes, breathing to settle my nerves, still on alert because of this secretive work. No one had questioned my borrowing Fidelia’s body again, but I wasn’t sure it would have been allowed. I hadn’t asked
permission. With Fidelia in the un-lidded box on my lap, I remembered how Christiana’s dark plats glistened in the light as she draped her body over Fidelia to kiss her goodbye. I tried to imagine who Fidelia might have become. I said a little blessing for her. Then I replaced the lid, draped a towel over the container, and walked her back to the lab. The funeral home would be there the next morning.

* * *

I took the cups home with me, and, in the morning light from my kitchen window, I began the unwrapping. I tore away the Styrofoam cup and broke off pieces of the alginate as if peeling the white away from the yolk of a hard-boiled egg. I discovered that the big and second toes of a single foot had not gotten a full complement of cement. But, despite the grainy texture of this miniature sculpture, it precisely captured her skin’s wrinkles, her toenails, the creases between her toes, and the bones in her ankle and foot. In my haste to expose a hand, I broke the tips of the fingers where air bubbles had been trapped. Even so, the accuracy surprised me. Here was solid evidence that Fidelia had been on this earth.

For the next two unveilings, I used an archeologist’s pace and, with tweezers, delicately pulled bits of the pink rubber away, hoping that with this more measured approach I would not break anything else. Taking my time was a challenge because inside I was hopping about, so excited to see the results. I held my breath as I went. The casting of Fidelia’s other hand revealed itself to be complete. It had curled into a loose fist as it made the plunge into the gooey mixture, and a ball of cement had lodged itself, like a small pearl, between her fingers and her palm. I took a photograph of her hand, using my wedding ring for scale. Her little fist sat neatly within the ring’s circumference.

Fidelia’s paired feet emerged as a single sculpture, the left foot resting lightly on the right. Wrinkles, bones, toes, and toenails were all there. All tiny. All immensely amazing. I felt heady from the exuberance flowing through me. I yearned to share the wonder of this perfect pair of feet, as if their delicate accuracy might be enough to restore Fidelia. Alone, however, I felt a poignancy in me, akin to loneliness, which is both the gift and the burden of holding this kind of un-shareable intimacy.

* * *

On the day of the funeral, I greeted Christiana and her husband, Kwame, warmly. I presented them with the replicas of Fidelia’s feet and hands and apologized for making them without their permission. They took the little box and turned to open it. I walked away to give them privacy, but I heard Kwame’s hushed voice, “This makes her real now.”

I gave them the small album of photographs, along with a cloth pouch that closed with a heart-shaped button made by a kind woman for just such occasions. Inside, I had placed all the things that had touched Fidelia’s body: the knit sweater, complete with a little poop stain; the knit cap; the cheerful checkered blanket; Fidelia’s too-big hospital band; and the certificate of birth with inked impressions of Fidelia’s feet and hands around its edges. They accepted these things as if I were giving them gold, which, in a way, I was.

* * *

I can still hear Christiana’s voice when we said goodbye: “Mmmm, Becky. God is going to reward you.” How could she know there could be no better reward than to have accompanied them? Than to know that Fidelia’s body was wrapped in a blanket I made for her, instead of in a hospital pad? Than to take the impressions that confirmed that Fidelia was their beloved, very real daughter? Than to see Christiana’s hands resting gently on the small, burnished cherry coffin in farewell?

* * *

My time with Christiana and Fidelia marked me. They have become a touchstone of sweet sorrow for the pregnancies I’ve never had and the babies I’ve never birthed but have nevertheless had to let go of.

* * *

Fidelia is buried in a grassy knoll in a communal plot donated by the hospital, downhill from a grove of pine trees. A rough, pink quartz headstone, marking someone else’s grave, stands nearby as sentinel watching over her small spot. There is no headstone for Fidelia, but if there were one, it would read Fidelia Nana Yaa. Fidelia Thursday Born. Fidelia Thursday died.

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