EVERYONE IN THIS HOUSE MAKES BABIES

When Sheila Solomon Klass went to live in the East Indian village of Arcady twenty miles out of Port-of-Spain on Trinidad with her anthropologist husband, she was thirty years old and wanted a first child. Waiting for her to inhabit it, she found the school teacher's house, where the water was on sporadically in gushes, the uthouse sat in the schoolyard, and, as the villagers happily pointed out to her, everyone made babies. And so she did. Here is a story of the domestic round while her husband made friends with the hospitable villagers and followed their paths in the cane fields where they made a precarious, hard living. There was their great friend Jairam, fifteen-year-old Ameena who did for them, Mrs. Kumar who fed them the unforgettable Christmas dinner of ""conk,"" and many other neighbors whose lives met with theirs in helpful ways. The coming of the baby provided the greatest spate of advice and all the personal knowledge of the women of Arcady was at the author's command. She chose a doctor over the midwife, however, after an eye-opening interview. The Klasses left bearing gifts to friendship: as against her husband's chess set and three ivory monkeys, Sheila had an ashtray to show what was the first recognition of a married woman in her own right who inordinately delighted the village ladies. Told with perceptive good humor, this offers a pleasant and informing view of a special life way.