“One moment,” he said. “Cambridge instructed me to write if I felt there
were any gross injustices.”
I didn’t understand, so he repeated himself. “I could only help one
student,” he said. “They have offered you a place, if you want it.”
It seemed impossible that I would really be allowed to go. Then I realized
that I would need a passport, and that without a real birth certificate, I was
unlikely to get one. Someone like me did not belong at Cambridge. It was as
if the universe understood this and was trying to prevent the blasphemy of my
going.
I applied in person. The clerk laughed out loud at my Delayed Certificate
of Birth. “Nine years!” she said. “Nine years is not a delay. Do you have any
other documentation?”
“Yes,” I said. “But they have different birth dates. Also, one has a different
name.”
She was still smiling. “Different date and different name? No, that’s not
gonna work. There’s no way you’re gonna get a passport.”
I visited the clerk several more times, becoming more and more desperate,
until, finally, a solution was found. My aunt Debbie visited the courthouse
and swore an affidavit that I was who I said I was. I was issued a passport.
In February, Emily gave birth. The baby weighed one pound, four ounces.
When Emily had started having contractions at Christmas, Mother had said
the pregnancy would unfold according to God’s will. His will, it turned out,
was that Emily give birth at home at twenty-six weeks’ gestation.
There was a blizzard that night, one of those mighty mountain storms that
clears the roads and closes the towns. Emily was in the advanced stages of
labor when Mother realized she needed a hospital. The baby, which they
named Peter, appeared a few minutes later, slipping from Emily so easily that
Mother said she “caught” him more than delivered him. He was still, and the
color of ash. Shawn thought he was dead. Then Mother felt a tiny heartbeat—
actually she saw his heart beating through a thin film of skin. My father
rushed to the van and began scraping at the snow and ice. Shawn carried
Emily and laid her on the back seat, then Mother placed the baby against
Emily’s chest and covered him, creating a makeshift incubator. Kangaroo
care, she called it later.
My father drove; the storm raged. In Idaho we call it a whiteout: when the
wind whips the snowfall so violently it bleaches the road, covers it as if with