It takes exactly forty-two days after that conversation, but we are finally given permission to go and visit Abigala’s children. She still has not told us where her husbands are. She has been talking to Anna, who has been talking to Ava, since Abigala is refusing to see Ava. She has been talking to Mom and Dad, too, but less and less, and I think Mom and Dad do not want to see her that much anymore. They are angry with her, I know. They thought if we threatened her with arrest she would do the right thing. They thought if we actually arrested her she would do the right thing. They thought if they told her she could not see her children until she told us about her husbands she would do the right thing. She has not done the right thing, not yet.
Bayan drives, because of course he does. He takes me and Ava and Mom and Dad and Penny and Nua to the children’s hospital that is in the part of the city that is far from us, so the drive takes about an hour. Penny sits up front with Bayan as he drives, so he is not lonely and they can talk, Penny can talk, at least, and my parents sit with me and Ava and Nua in the backseat. I am going to meet, I realize, my nieces and nephews. Maybe just my nephews, I don’t know if they are boys or girls, I just know that there are six of them. Maybe Abigala is the luckiest person in the world and got six daughters. Maybe she’s like the majority of people out there and got mostly, or all, sons. Ava’s nieces and nephews, too, because she’s married to me. Mom and Dad’s grandkids. Nua, I don’t know what these kids are to Nua, or to Penny. But we asked them to come with us, because we are a family now, and if we take those kids home we will all be one big family in one big house, a house on the beach with the ocean in the front and a pool in the back and nine bedrooms and six kids, we could have kids, I asked Ava if she wanted to have kids and she said, “Not right now,” and we have six years to figure it out, if we want to have kids of our own, it would only be me, not Nua, but we might have kids sooner than that anyway, if we take these kids home, if we take care of Abigala’s kids.
This is one of the best facilities for infant development in the country, Ava tells us, so of course her mother had access there. Abigala had to go in six times, every time she realized she was pregnant, to have the fertilized cells extracted from her uterus and placed into an artificial one, where they could grow outside of her body, so she could get pregnant again. Maybe less than six times, I think suddenly, if any of her children are twins. Ava explains all this to us, on the way, my mom knows it already because it’s what she did with me and Abigala right after she got pregnant with us. My dad is holding her hand, gripping it tight, and finally after Ava is done telling us, mostly me and Nua, what happens to pregnant women, she looks over at him and says, “Are you okay?”
“We haven’t had babies around in a long time,” says Dad. Mom laughs at the look on his face. “Come on, Addis.”
“Seriously,” he says. “I was twenty-three when you guys were born, your mom wasn’t even thirty, we didn’t know what we were doing.”
“Yeah, you did,” I say in surprise, and Mom laughs, shaking her head. “Oh, Aber, god, no. No new parent knows what they’re doing.”
“That’s reassuring,” says Nua.
“It’s been nineteen years since we’ve taken care of babies,” says Dad. “We’ve had our share of teenagers and young adults, sure, but babies?”
“That’s why they stay in the hospital for a while,” says Ava with a grin. “The doctors know what they need and they have infant care specialists to make sure they’re developing right, like, socially, and everything. And then…well, the parents are supposed to visit, to bond with them.”
I look at my parents, and my dad nods. “One year after full development, when they could’ve and would’ve been born, that’s when parents can take them home. But you’re supposed to come and stay with them and bond with them within that year, even though they have to stay here where the doctors will take care of them.”
“Is that what you did?” I ask, and my mom laughs. “Yeah. We practically lived in that hospital.”
“We live so far away,” says Ava softly. “How would we go and visit?”
“It’s not that far,” says Mom. Ava smiles slightly, but does not answer. She takes my hand in hers too, though, and when she rubs my fingers I can feel the stress in them.
After about fifty minutes in the car it slows to a stop, and Penny opens the door for us. He is excited, he wants to see the babies, he leads us inside the hospital after Bayan parks the car and rejoins us. We have to get visitor badges and go up and elevator and then we arrive in the newborn suite, and Ava goes up to the front desk to talk to the nurse there as the rest of us sit down in the waiting room, and then she comes to join us, letting out a shaky breath as she sits down.
“You okay?” asks Nua, and Ava sighs, leaning her head against the wall and closing her eyes. “Oh, yeah, I just haven’t been in a car that long for a while.”
“You never used to get carsick,” says Penny, and she smiles. “No, I guess it’s just, it’s more that. Well. Keol hated cars.”
“Yeah?” asks Penny after a moment, looking at me, and I shrug. Ava nods. “If he didn’t lie down he’d get sick. And I know because it happened once, at that party that I took him to, remember?”
I don’t and Penny looks blank, but Nua and Bayan both nod.
“All over my shoes,” she sighs, and Penny grins a little. “And then what?”
“Told him I hated him,” says Ava, as if it were obvious. “And then he said ditto, and then we sent the car away before he was sick again, but we didn’t want to go to that stupid party, it was Mother’s idea, to showcase me all respectable and married. So we went to the beach.”
“The beach.”
“Not our beach,” she says softly. Mom glances at me, but doesn’t say anything, and after a moment Ava continues. “We didn’t want her to see. But I took off my shoes and then he threw them in the water and then I told him to get them back and he did and they were cleaner but there was water in them so he dumped it on me, and then we…sat on the sand for a little bit. The stars were nice.”
“I bet,” murmurs Penny. I look at Nua; he smiles a little, sadly, but doesn’t say anything.
A man comes in from the door next to the nurse’s desk. He’s wearing a white coat and carries a clipboard and it takes me a second to realize he is a doctor, of course he is a doctor, we are in a hospital. Ava stands, he reaches out his hand to her and she shakes it and he says, “You must be Ms. LeGatte.”
“I am,” says Ava with a slight smile. “The whole family wanted to come.”
“I can see,” says the doctor with a smile, gesturing for her to sit again as he takes a chair as well. “I’m Doctor Hayes. Before we bring you in I just need a few more paperwork things. There are a lot of you here; are you all related to the kids?”
“No,” answers Ava for us. She gestures to my parents. “These are the grandparents, Addis and Ane. And then Aber.” She looks at me, putting her hand on my knee. “Uncle, I guess.”
“Uncle,” I say softly, taking her hand. “Yeah.”
“Right,” says Dr. Hayes, his eyes sparkling. “And then you’re married to Ms. LeGatte, correct? So she would be their aunt.”
I look at her. Her eyes are wide and she’s got an expression on her face as if she’s never even considered that before, and my mom laughs. Dr. Hayes smiles again, he’s got a nice smile, he must be good with the babies, and says, “And the others who are here today?”
“Nua,” says Ava, glancing at him, “also my husband, and my brother, Penny. And then our…friend, Bayan.”
I have no idea what to call Bayan now. He was a servant and a slave for fifteen years and now he is free and he is still with us, he brings us to meet the babies. Dr. Hayes does not react to the hesitation in Ava’s voice, and he just nods, scribbling something down on his clipboard. “Okay, so you four directly, Ms. LeGatte, Mr. Ahman-LeGatte, Mr. Ahman, and Ms. Ahman, you’re related to the children all through the mother. Am I correct that we have no information about the father?”
I shift uncomfortably, both from the designation as Ahman-LeGatte and from the mention of Abigala’s husbands, and Ava squeezes my hand. “There are, potentially, four, fathers, and at the moment they’re not in the picture.”
“Alright,” says Dr. Hayes simply, jotting down another quick note, and then he stands. “Doctor Barlowe is in the room with the kids right now. I’ll finish up a last few administration things and then I’ll let her know you’re ready.”
Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.
He goes back through the door, and I look at Ava. “What about the fathers, Abigala’s husbands, what were we supposed to say?”
“Not his problem,” says Ava softly. “Anna’s the go-to for all that legal stuff, so when we figure it out it’s on her to deal with custody issues. The doctors just need to know who’s allowed to see the babies, not why.”
“So we are,” I say. She nods. “Us four, because of blood and marriage.”
“What about us?” says Penny, jerking his head to Nua. “We’re blood and marriage to you.”
“True,” says Ava with a slight grin, squeezing my hand again. “But I’m only marriage to the blood to the kids. I’m not sure where exactly they draw the line.”
“Okay,” says Dr. Hayes, appearing in the doorway again. “We’re ready.
“You all can come,” he adds after a moment, when just Ava and my parents and I stand. “We’ll need a lot of hands.”
Penny grins, and he pulls Nua up, and we all follow the doctor through the door and down the hallway.
We go past a few doors. We go past a few windows, too, into rooms that look like the living room of my home growing up, with comfortable furniture and toys and books and games strewn all around the floor. I’ve still got Ava’s hand in mine, and she looks at me and smiles a little when I squeeze.
Dr. Hayes leads us far down the hallway, almost to the last door there. When I look in through the window on the wall I see a rug in the center of the room with some baby toys, like a rattle and a stuffed animal, and I see six cribs around the walls. The sign on the door says Ahman, and I feel something go through my stomach, I don’t know what it is. Dr. Hayes knocks gently on the door.
After a moment, another doctor, a woman, in a white coat and a surgical mask, opens the door, and steps out into the hallway. “Hi. I’m Dr. Barlowe, you must be the family.”
“The big family,” Ava murmurs, and Dr. Barlowe laughs. “Well, good, you’re about to double it, practically, it looks like.”
“Six babies,” says my dad softly, as if he needs confirmation of the fact, and Dr. Barlowe nods. “Five boys,” she says with a slight smile that I can see in her eyes, even behind the mask. “One girl.”
“Really,” breathes Penny.
“Five to one,” says Ava softly, and I look at her. My mother does too, and takes my father’s hand. I can hear her murmur, “The perfect ratio.”
I don’t know if either of the doctors hear, but Dr. Barlowe gives Dr. Hayes a bit of a look and another surgical mask, and he puts it on, and then Dr. Barlowe steps out of the way, and lets us enter the room.
I can see two of them in their cribs. One of them that I can see is awake, a lump of blanket wiggling around in there, and I don’t know if the other ones are awake or sleeping or scared or anything, I don’t know anything about babies, but the doctors do, and Ava does, she has held Julian before, and my parents do, they have held me before. They did this, nineteen years ago, when I was a baby, when Abigala and I were babies and hardly old enough to come home, but they came to the hospital to see us and there were doctors there that took care of us, too, until our parents took us home.
“Okay,” says Dr. Hayes with a smile, cutting through the tense silence of the room. He goes over to a crib, Dr. Barlowe goes to another, and they each pick up a baby. “Aber and Ava, your niece and nephew.”
Oh my god. He lays the baby in my arms, wrapped in a blue blanket, a little baby boy, and I feel a spark go through my chest. The baby wiggles around in his blanket, one of his hands waving around in a fist, and I look at Ava, who’s got the only pink blanket of the bunch, she sinks down into a rocking chair nearby and I can see the same look on her face that I can feel inside me. “Take care of the children,” said Miss Lilly to Bayan as she was dying in his arms, and she was not talking about her children, not about Ava and Penny, I realize, finally. She was talking about Abigala’s. Five boys and one girl, the perfect ratio, the children, the children, she wanted Ava to have children and Ava couldn’t, so Lilly abandoned her for Abigala, who gave her what she needed. A success story, from the woman in charge of marriages across the country: a girl, her husbands, her children, and she told Bayan to do what he does best and take care of the children.
Bayan is standing by the door still, though, just watching. The doctors hand two more babies to my parents. “Addis and Ane, your grandsons.”
“Wow,” says my dad softly.
“And Penny and Nua,” says Dr. Hayes, carefully picking up one of the last two babies, lying in their hospital cribs. “I don’t really know what to say for you guys.”
“Yeah, that’s alright,” breathes Penny as Dr. Barlowe lays the little boy in his arms. “Do they have names?”
“The first four do,” says Dr. Barlowe. “Mr. Ahman, you have Kian, he’s the oldest, around sixteen months from conception, and then the girl, Olivia.”
Ava looks down at the little girl in her arms.
“And then Nua, you have Finn,” continues Dr. Hayes, “and Ms. Ahman, you have Xavier. Aber and Penny, you’re holding baby “Doe”s five and six at the moment.”
“Are any of them twins?” I ask, looking up at him, and the doctor smiles, and shakes his head. “No. All one at a time.”
“No A names,” murmurs Ava, rocking back and forth in her chair, the girl in her arms seems to have fallen asleep. “There’s gotta be some A names we can pick.”
And my mother laughs. “Family tradition.”
“Is it really?” I ask, “or did you just want to be annoying about it?”
And my dad laughs too, at the look on my mom’s face, and the doctors both seem to smile under their masks. “We’ll let you guys get acquainted,” says Dr. Barlowe, and she and Dr. Hayes leave us all alone.
Not alone, there’s thirteen people in this room, unlucky thirteen, I think to myself for a split second before the baby in my arm yawns, and everything else melts away. “So if he’s sixteen months from conception,” says Penny after a moment, “then he’s like, what, four months old?”
“Closer to six-ish,” says my mom. “And then, what did they say, one month apart, or thereabouts? So Kian’s about six months, Olivia’s five, what did he say the next one was?”
“Finn,” answers Nua softly, staring at the baby he is holding.
“Finn’s four and Xavier’s three,” she finishes, looking down at the infant boy in her arms. “She must have come to visit them, then, at least a few times, to name them, but not the last two.”
“She couldn’t, really,” says Penny quietly. “A month, two months ago, we were back at the house, trying to figure everything out, especially after Lilly died.”
“I mean, she just forgot about them, right?” I ask. “Like she forgot about her husbands, until we brought it up again.”
“Will she be able to name these guys?” asks Nua, looking down at Finn, and Ava sighs, still rocking back and forth with little Olivia. “We told her she can’t see them until she tells us where her husbands are.”
“She doesn’t want to give that up,” says my mom softly. “It’s the last great secret Lilly entrusted her.”
“They’re probably somewhere in the city being taken care of by one of Mother’s people, or back in an agency,” says Ava. “The babies are too young to be taken home, anyway, so she’ll probably hold out at least for another six months ’til Kian’s ready.”
Baby Doe Five makes a noise in my arm, and Dad’s Kian makes one in response. Ava smiles, shaking the hair out of her eyes, and takes a deep breath. “This is just. Crazy.”
“Yeah,” answers Nua, his voice sounds dazed. Mom bounces Xavier in her arms, and says, “Who has the girl?”
“I do,” says Ava, standing. “Olivia.”
“Olivia,” whispers Mom, as Ava comes over to show the baby to her. “Oh, my god, all of this and she got one daughter.”
“Ane,” says Dad softly, he goes to her too, and my mom sinks to the ground in the center of the room, onto the rug, she moves a stuffed elephant out of the way and crosses her legs and cradles the baby she is holding to her chest. “We lost our daughter for all of this.”
“Mom,” I say softly. I can feel my eyes start to fill with tears, and my dad sits down next to her on the ground. The babies can tell they are close to each other, they start making noises, Mom is holding Xavier and he reaches his hand out for his older brother, who is in Dad’s lap. And my mom is crying, but when she looks down at the baby and his fingers stretching out she smiles a little too.
“Mom,” I say again. I go to sit down next to her on the ground, me and my parents and our grandchildren slash nephews, the only person missing is their mother, my sister, my parents’ daughter, Abigala. We lost her, she lost herself, she followed Lilly into all of this and then into jail, because of this, because of these babies, all for them. She has not even met two of them. I do not know if she ever will.
Ava joins us too, and Penny takes the chair she was sitting in. He has the littlest baby and he is holding him so carefully, Bayan goes over to look too, and Penny smiles looking up at him. Nua is bouncing Finn in his arms as he walks slowly around the room, his hand on the back of the baby’s head, I can see the gold of the wedding ring on Nua’s finger glint in the light against the baby’s dark wisps of hair. My mom takes a deep breath beside me, and she puts her hand on my head too and pulls me close to her and kisses me on the forehead, and then she nods, holding up her baby, she has Xavier, she holds him up and looks at him, and the baby giggles. I can’t help but smile too, and neither can Ava or Dad or Mom, even as a tear rolls down her cheek again, and I look down at the baby in my arms, the second youngest, doesn’t even have a name yet, will we get to name them. He has his eyes closed now, he is nuzzled into his blanket into the crook of my elbow, and I say softly, “All for them.”
“All for them,” agrees Dad quietly. “All for a family.”
I look up at him, and then I look at Ava. The sight of her, cradling a baby in her arms, sends something through me, again, another something that I don’t know what it is, and she looks up at me too, when she feels my eyes on her. She smiles, shakes her hair out of her eyes, and nods. “All for family.”