Delia Ortiz gives birth in the back seat of a convertible

Delia Ortiz gives birth in the back seat of Diana Ladd’s convertible after labor overtakes the group’s attempt to get her to the hospital at Sells. The improvised roadside delivery turns a journey toward medical care into a moment of urgent shared work; for Lani Walker, it also makes the purpose of her own traditional learning newly clear. With Kath Fellows driving, Wanda Ortiz bringing light and towels, and Lani attending Delia, the birth ends in the naming of a son and in Lani’s resolve to pass knowledge on.

Labor Begins at the Feast House

Leo Ortiz and the baby had left a few minutes earlier while the women finished wiping down tables and sinks and sweeping the floor. Delia was half asleep when a sudden gush of water brought her fully awake. She found herself sitting in a growing puddle, and Wanda immediately recognized that Delia’s water had broken and the baby was coming.

Delia had time to hear the news, but little time to respond. A powerful contraction doubled her over, beginning at her rib cage, front and back, and rolling through her body until she was gasping and gripping the bench to keep from falling. When Lani’s face appeared inches from hers, Delia could at first make out only fragments of what Lani was saying, including the words hospital and walk. Once the contraction passed, Delia said she could walk and tried to stand; another contraction forced her straight back onto the bench.

The scene’s change of direction is physical before it is logistical. Delia wants to get home and into bed, but her body makes ordinary movement impossible. The plan becomes not a matter of preference but of finding a way to move her safely while labor advances. Her experience also narrows the world to successive interruptions: faces, a few audible words, a brief pause, then another contraction strong enough to overwhelm whatever decision had just been made.

The Journey Becomes a Race Against Time

Lani and another helper lifted Delia from the bench and propelled her out of the feast house. Diana Ladd’s large convertible sat outside with its top down and engine running. Kath Fellows was behind the wheel; she got out to help Lani ease Delia through the passenger-side rear door and into the back seat. Delia lay flat, but another spasm hit as soon as she was inside.

As the car moved along a rough dirt road, Delia’s awareness came and went with the contractions. At one point she saw stars above her and thought she was dead, with the baby on the way to heaven; Lani’s face and the flashlight she held between her teeth brought her back to the fact that she was still in the open convertible. Lani knelt between the front and back seats and urged Delia to breathe and pant. The instruction offered a practical response, but the contractions were coming too hard and fast for Delia to make use of what she might otherwise have known about childbirth.

When Kath slowed at the intersection with Highway 86, Lani recognized that they would not reach the hospital at Sells in time. She called for Kath to stop soon. Wanda had offered her pickup, but Lani had rejected the idea of putting a woman in labor in the truck bed; the convertible’s back seat was only marginally better. The choices remain makeshift, but stopping becomes necessary. Before they could continue toward the hospital, the birth had to be attended to where they were.

The Roadside Delivery

Kath parked on the shoulder. She asked whether Lani had delivered a baby before; Lani had not, but thought the task would be fairly self-explanatory. Seconds after the car stopped, Wanda pulled her Dodge Ram alongside it and maneuvered until its headlights shone through the convertible’s back door. In that bright glare, Lani saw the baby’s wet, shiny head emerging.

Lani steadied herself and eased the baby forward. She asked for something sharp to cut the cord and a string to tie it. Kath said there was a Leatherman in her purse and brought it. Wanda had clean towels with her, extras she had brought in case they were needed at the feast house. As the baby boy cried, Wanda wiped him clean while Lani tied the rubbery umbilical cord with a strip of towel hem and cut it with the Leatherman. Wanda then handed the baby back to Lani, who held him wrapped in the soft folds of an enormous flannel shirt. The sequence is plain and practical: headlights make the delivery visible, the towel supplies a tie, and the tool from Kath’s purse completes the separation of mother and child.

Lani told Delia that the baby was perfect and handed him to his mother. Delia named him Gabriel Manuel, after his two grandfathers. Kath then ordered the others out of the way so she could raise the convertible’s top and turn up the heat for the trip to the hospital, where mother and child belonged. The delivery has happened, but the journey for medical care is not yet over; the scene closes on the group preparing to continue it.

Lani and the Work of Inheritance

Holding the newborn, Lani understood why Fat Crack Ortiz and Nana Dahd had patiently answered her questions: she would need to pass those answers to someone else. The realization links the immediate care of a child to the longer transmission of knowledge. Lani remembers asking Fat Crack whether he had taught the baby or Leo Ortiz what he taught her, while he showed her how to collect and dry wiw, the wild tobacco used in Peace Smoke. In the scene, teaching is not presented as knowledge kept for its own sake; it becomes something that must travel onward through relationships and through time.

Looking at the infant with his fists clenched and eyes pinched shut against the headlights, Lani decides that he will be interested in the lore and traditions his father had wanted to teach his sons, and that she will be there to teach him. This is Lani’s conviction about the child’s future, not a confirmed account of what he will later do. Its importance lies in what it reveals about her: she now sees herself as a bearer of traditions, with an obligation to pass them along. The birth thus gives the scene two linked arrivals—the child into his family, and Lani into a responsibility she recognizes as her own.