Running this through my head, in the beginning I’d just dismissed the whole thing as some kind of parlor game or trick that Mama Vermillion was playing on us. But now I was sure that something very mysterious and amazing was going on.

Maggie knew Mama much better than I did. She’d been seeing her for months during all her “work” with her. So now, with my curiosity getting the best of me, I decided this was the perfect time to ask about it.

“Baby, what is going on here? You’ve been seeing Mama Vermillion for months now. What have you two been talking about?”

Maggie sighed and said, “You know Mama Vermillion is a midwife. She and two of her friends have brought hundreds of babies into the world. She’s been midwifing for fifty years.”

“I did not know that,” I said.

“Yes, a lot of the black families in New Orleans use midwives. Many of them can’t afford a hospital birth and they don’t trust the doctors, so they have their babies at home. Evidently Mama Vermillion and her friends are the most experienced midwives in town.”

“That’s amazing,” I said, “but what does that have to do with your visits with her?”