Could G possibly remember her journey to us? Did her incarnation knock twice? One day when she was about three, she said, “All da childwen aememba.” All the children remember. I held her as she sobbed, “I waited a long time to get in!”

Later she said, “It took so long, Mama, in youa belly.”

A few days after that she asked, “Mama, will I hafta be on bedres’ when I have a baby?”

“I don’t think so. My body is different from yours. But just to be sure, we’ll ask the doctor to do tests on you when the time comes. Do you want the real words for what I have?”

“Yes!”

“Remember how we talk about my change?” (Change was my early word for my menstrual period.) “Each month, a mama’s body makes a fresh blanket in case she starts carrying a baby. If there is no baby, then we change the blanket at the end of the month and start again, right?” G nodded. “Well, it’s in that same area. I have an incompetent cervix.”

I made my two hands splay wide open, palms toward me, thumbnails together, index fingers touching and pointing down. I superimposed the triangle I made over my pelvic area. “See where the end of my long sleeves are? There are two ovaries on either side.” I pointed to the general area on her body. “All of your eggs are already there. You’re born with them. They’re waiting for your change to start.”

“An’ for a seed to come and hug it!” she interjected. (That was my early explanation for sex: an egg and a seed hugging.)

“Right. Well, if a seed hugs the egg and a baby starts to grow—see where my fingers are? [I indicated my touching index fingers.] There’s a door called a cervix. Mommy’s door can open too early. The lock doesn’t work well, and it just opens. I have to go to the doctor—like I did when you were a teeny tiny baby in my belly—to ask for a special lock on my door. Then I rest for a while and the lock stays in place while the baby grows big. When the baby is ready to be born, the doctor takes the lock off and the baby can come out! Do you have any more questions? If you do, I’ll answer them anytime.”

“Yes. Wha’ happens to da baby if no lock is put on?”

“Then the baby can be born too early. A baby cannot live in the world until it’s big enough. Sometimes, it is born early enough to survive but only with extra care and surgeries and that can be very difficult. You were born at thirty-seven weeks, which is plenty. The baby wants to be in its Mommy’s belly for thirty-six to forty weeks, to be safe.”

“After da baby’s born, dere’s da cord… dey cut it forst and den you can hold?”

“Actually, you can hold the baby with the cord still attached. Then they cut the cord gently, wash baby quickly, wrap it in a warm blanket, and it can be with Mommy for a long while.”

“Oh.”

“That’s when the baby can have meems [nurse] for the first time, if it’s possible. If the baby and the Mommy want to do that.”

“Can I be a prend newborn right now?” Pretend.

*

A few months later, in February to be precise, Gigi circled back to our discussion. “Mama,” she asked, “Wha’ happens when youa door opens? How did you know it opens too early?”

Although her question came out of the blue, I quickly grasped the topic. I had told her everything there was to know, answering her queries as they arrived. Everything except about the loss itself. I was waiting for the right time—probably years in the future—but I could see no other route except through the truth.

“Well, there was a little boy in my belly before you. My door opened too early, and he died. He went straight to heaven. He was always an angel, it happened so fast.”

“Dat’s sad.”

“Yes, but you know what? He made a path for you to make it here safely, and there is no one in the world I wanted more than you. He told everyone—the doctors, our family, even us—about my door. Then we paid really careful attention when you were in my belly. It was like he put up signs and guarded your path. You started in my belly a few months after he left. When we celebrated his tiny life that summer, we already knew that you were growing. It made us so happy.”

“An’ Papa made you pee on lots of sticks?”

“That’s right! We were testing the pregnancy over and over again. We couldn’t believe how lucky we were!”

As her attention turned elsewhere, I scribbled out our exchange and ran my notes up to my desk, next to my Filofax. That was when I saw the calendar. February 22^nd. His birthday.

I told G. “Do you want to send a balloon up to him? It’s his Angel Day and his birthday all in one.”

“YES!!!!” She lit up with the idea. Throughout the rest of the day she processed the story, “Why did de liddle boy guard my life?”

She re-named him. Thanks to his sister, he was henceforth “Guard Baby.”

For years now, we have not called him anything else, and when G learns about other women’s losses she sometimes will say, “She has a guard baby, too. Maybe you should talk to her.”

Love you forever, my boy.