“If we leave for the hospital right this minute, we might make it, or you could be delivering in the pickup by the time we get to the ER in Spencer.”
What I’m picturing is, if we make it in time, the scene will be a disaster. The thin thirty-year-old, expecting her first baby, will be assaulted by bright lights and strangers, doctors and nurses, who will flare their nostrils at our strange hippie garb and think Grace a lunatic for trying to have an out-of-hospital delivery. They’ll push Simon aside, wheel Grace into the delivery room, strap her down and give her gas as she begs them not to. The couple has been planning a homebirth since before they conceived. Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata plays low on the stereo.
“As your midwife, I can go either way, but thirty-six weeks is borderline for delivering at home. The baby will be tiny, maybe five pounds. We’ll have to work hard to keep its temperature up and get it to breastfeed . . .”
Grace, a pale, dark-haired woman who trails through life like a silk scarf, teaches piano lessons to children in town. Simon, a thin dropout from MIT with a long, scraggly red beard and a Fu Manchu mustache, works on a hippie carpentry crew. “I’ll make some raspberry tea and give you some time alone to think it over.”
I rise and wander down the hall, trailing my fingers along the faded flowered wallpaper. In the kitchen, I stare out the window at the early morning light, notice my rumpled, short bowl-cut in the reflection and smooth it down. It’s been six years since I chopped my braids off with a hunting knife, in the log cabin in Minnesota, each long rope dropping without a sound on the floor, a symbolic gesture. I was temporarily home from my travels, through with men, and just needed to know who I was, separate from their strong, warm bodies. I picked up the braids, a symbol of femaleness, and laid them on the table for Stacy to see.
There was nothing dramatic about our breakup, no café scenes like you see in the movies. Stacy’s not an outwardly emotional person. He wasn’t then, anyway. He didn’t cry or get mad when I told him I was taking the Greyhound to the Peacemakers meeting in Cincinnati and might spend the winter in New Mexico. He accepted it philosophically, the same way he would accept a windstorm that knocked over his beehives. He might cuss a little, but then he’d take a few deep breaths, look up at the sun, put the hives back together as best he could, and go on with his work. I carried guilt about the breakup with me like a boulder in my backpack for months.
Abandoning Stacy and Mica was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I wasn’t just leaving a man, but the dreams we’d constructed like castles in the air. Mica, for a time, receded to a shining golden sun at twelve noon, reflecting from a pool of water in the bottom of a stone well. He was far away and safe with his father. That year I wandered like a hobo with only a sleeping bag and a few changes of clothes, a traveler through my own great depression.
I spent time in Illinois, Kentucky, and New Mexico, and places in between, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Missouri . . . unsure where to go or how to fill the emptiness. Every few months, I’d bounce back like a rubber ball on one of those thin wooden paddles, but then hit the road again.
Sometimes I took Mica with me. We’d stand together in the grass on the side of a highway, he with his little thumb out, me with a cardboard sign lettered MILWAUKEE, MINNEAPOLIS, or CHICAGO. If a man appealed to me, I slept with him. Then I got sick of it. I was looking for love in all the wrong places. It’s a blur when I try to remember.
Fortunately, Colin eventually generated enough energy to give birth to a fledgling community. We rented a run-down farmhouse with a barn that had holes in the roof near Batavia, in southern Ohio. Every few days a new hippie would hike down the road to our temporary headquarters and hang out for a few weeks or a few months.
Mara was there, and Tom, Tristan the Viking, and Kaitlin . . . and some new folk, too many to mention, all of them nonviolent activists. The rooms of the ancient three-story farmhouse filled to the attic with music and politics.
And then one evening, it was late October, I looked out the window into the sunset and there was Stacy with Mica standing in the front yard under a maple that shined the brightest yellow I’ve ever seen. I ran down the stairs, jumped off the porch, and the three of us fell into each other’s arms. The golden maple leaves showered down on us in the slanting light. We were family again and my heart thumped back into my body.
I glance down at my red plaid flannel work shirt and think how funky I’ll look if Grace and Simon decide to go to the hospital. With the palms of both hands, I feel my full breasts. No wet spots, yet. I left a bottle of breast milk with Tom for our baby, but if this labor goes too long, I’ll be leaking. I smile, thinking of our auburn-haired three-month-old, Orion, so different from his white-haired older brother, Mica, now seven.
Tom and I got together at the commune after Stacy hooked up with Mara. It was like that back then, musical beds, but we’ve been together for four years. Orion was born upstairs in the first cabin we built on the ridge, surrounded by our friends from the commune. My labor was shorter this time, but not much. Mica, the little prince, cut his brother’s cord by the golden light of the kerosene lamp and we all ate a piece of placenta.
A Ford truck rumbles up the gravel drive and I wipe my sudsy hands on the back of my jeans. It’s Laurel.
From the window, I watch my fellow communard spring out of the neighbor’s battered truck. She’s as tall as I am, also with short, straight hair, but lighter brown, and she’s ten years younger, a dancer with long graceful limbs. In the aftershock of our breakup, Stacy didn’t stay long with Mara, but they left friends. He was with a few other partners, but he and Laurel made a commitment two years ago. Like Tom and me, they had a hippie marriage ceremony up on the ridge.
“Hellooo!” The screen door scrapes on the worn green linoleum and Laurel enters. She takes in the kitchen with wide gray eyes, the garbage flowing out of the trashcan, clothes draped over chairs, and the full ashtray on the wooden table. “Where’s Grace?”
“Back in the bedroom with Simon. She’s in labor, all right, but the baby’s only thirty-six weeks’ gestation . . . on the edge of preterm. I left them alone to decide what to do. It’s a little chancy to stay here, borderline for homebirth, but if we head for hospital now, we could end up delivering in their truck on the way.”
“Hey.” Simon waves to Laurel as he slouches into the room. He rolls a cigarette and turns to me. “Grace says the contractions are picking up. We’re gonna stay home . . . It’s a beautiful day, can she go outside?”
“Sure, Simon, but you better stop smoking in the house . . . you know? There’s gonna be a kid here in a few hours.” The bearded man gives me a sheepish grin and stubs out the cig.
While Laurel sterilizes linen in the oven, readies the kitchen, and makes the birth bed, I brush Grace’s long brown hair and tie it back with a blue ribbon, then follow the mother and father-to-be, from a distance, as they stroll around the backyard. I don’t need to ask if the contractions are harder. I can tell by the way the woman breathes. And I don’t need to give Grace much guidance, either.
Every few minutes she stops, with her eyes closed, sways back and forth, puts her arms around her husband’s thin waist and leans into him. He strokes her back and runs his hands down her bottom. They’ve got a good routine going and I see by the way Simon touches Grace that despite the fact the man doesn’t seem like much of a farmer, he’s a good lover.
From my seat on a rusted iron bench, under a spreading white oak, I time Grace’s contractions on Tom’s Timex. I’ve been delivering babies for two years, but I still don’t have a watch of my own. When we moved to West Virginia, the first thing I did was start childbirth classes, again at the local library.
The Roane County Hospital was as restrictive in its obstetrical protocols as St. Mary’s and St. Luke’s in Duluth, maybe worse, and hippie women, transplants from places like Arizona and New Jersey, New York and California, who had rea
d Spiritual Midwifery by Ina May Gaskin, needed my support. Their friends had used midwives and they wanted an unmedicated, natural delivery.
At the time, I’d given birth to Mica and seen two other babies born in the hospital as a labor coach, so I was recruited. I did my first homebirth by accident, when a friend went into labor during a spring snowstorm, and after that I took my well-read copy of Varney’s Midwifery everywhere.
BLOSSOM
A monarch waltzes across the yard and lands on a drooping daisy. A V of migrating Canada geese flies low over the field, heading south already. It’s so peaceful I’m almost dozing, sitting there in the sun, until Grace groans. It’s a sound I know well.
“Grace,” I call, “I think it’s time we go in the house. I want to check your progress. If you aren’t close to pushing, we can come back.”
“Couldn’t she have the baby outside?” Simon asks. “It’s warm and she’s doing great. There are no neighbors nearby. We could lay a quilt and some pillows on the grass . . .”
Wouldn’t that be great to have a baby outside? Like making love outside! For a moment, I’m tempted.
“Nah, Simon. Not this time. Come on. There’s more breeze than you realize. We can’t take a chance with the baby losing heat.” I take Grace’s arm and guide her up the steps toward the back door as she looks back at the asters and daisies.
“Ummm!” the mother groans again, grabs a peeling white porch post, gushes amniotic fluid, and waves desperately for her man. Simon rushes forward as Grace drops into a squat.
“No you don’t.” I pull her up and get her moving again. “No pushing yet. Blow! Let’s get you inside and I’ll check you.” The kitchen is sparkling, dishes put away, trash removed, a jar of wildflowers on the table. Even the window over the sink shines. Laurel runs ahead to open the birth kit.
It doesn’t take long. By the time I get Grace back onto the bed, she can’t help bearing down. “I’ve gotta get this thing out of me,” she growls, feeling the pressure in her rectum.
“Slow it down, Grace. The baby’s right here. Breathe. Show her how, Laurel . . .”
My friend doesn’t hesitate. She crawls on the bed, takes Grace’s face between her hands, and starts blowing. “Like this,” she says. “Hoo, hoo, hoo.”
Now all three of them are doing it: “Hoo! Hoo! Hoo!” I pull on my gloves. Laurel hands me the olive oil as I massage the perineum and two pushes later a scrawny baby, with bright red hair, is crying in my hands. The placenta follows with the next push.
“Blossom! It’s Blossom!” Grace sobs. Simon wipes his eyes with the back of his hand, but he can’t stop crying. He reaches out to touch his daughter and she grips his little finger.
“Here, Simon, strip off your shirt. Your body is the best infant warmer.” Laurel lays a very pink baby on the man’s chest. I take a warmed flannel blanket, fold it over, and then tuck the quilt around all three. The red-faced infant looks surprised to be here. Her temperature’s perfect, 99 degrees, and her respirations are regular.
As Laurel and I retire to give the new family time alone, I throw one arm around my friend’s shoulder. The morning sun still shines through the tall goldenrods at the edge of the garden.
Hush little baby, don’t say a word . . . Grace’s voice floats through the open bedroom window. Simon harmonizes in a reedy tenor. Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
Home
The sound of a cat being tortured comes from the bedroom at the far end of our log house, where Rachel is screeching on her new fiddle.
“Shit,” Tom whispers, squeezing his eyes shut. He was a music major at Ohio State University before he dropped out and became a draft counselor. He runs his hands over his high cheekbones and sparse beard.
I glance toward the big central room upstairs, where Mica and Orion are sleeping. I’m willing the sounds not to enter their dreams. Mica won’t wake, but his little brother, Orion, is more sensitive, easily stimulated, and hard to soothe.
“Rachel . . .” I call, knowing Tom won’t say anything. “Do you think you could play a little quieter? The kids are sleeping.”
“I live here too! When am I supposed to practice?”
Ben, upstairs in the far bedroom he shares with Mara, yells down, “Not at night!” I picture his grin, his curly brown hair and twinkling brown eyes. Mara giggles. You can hear everything in this dwelling we call the Long House, and Rachel’s been getting on the group’s nerves.
“Maybe you could practice in the morning, when Orion and Mica are awake.” I try to make peace. Rachel slams her door. Tom and I lock eyes.
It gets harder and harder to live with Rachel, but we cannot ask her to leave. The communal ethics are firm about that. “Everyone is welcome; no one will be turned away.” Besides, this farm belongs to a land trust and is hers as much as ours. I let out a long sigh and continue to write in my new green journal. From nineteen members, we are now down to nine, the hard core, seven adults and two children.
Rachel stamps out of her bedroom, a short, stocky, full-breasted woman with pale skin and a shock of red curls. She pulls on her worn sneakers, drags her parka off the hook, and steps outdoors without saying a word. The late autumn wind is no colder than the vibes she trails behind.
“Want some tea?” I ask Tom as I stir up the fire.
“Sure.” My husband stretches his lean body, pulls on the boots that he’s been oiling, and pushes up his wire-rim glasses. “I better bring in some wood. The temperature’s dropping. We might get a frost.”
While he’s gone, I take up the broom and sweep the golden pine floor, pull out the bench, get the crumbs from under the table, and wash down the wooden counter. I push a knitted draft-stopper against the front door, which opens to the deck that looks downhill into the pine grove, then push another one against the door Rachel slammed, the one we use mostly, that leads to the ridge and the outhouse. I rinse the sink and make sure that the slop bucket’s empty.
Rachel bustles back into the house. “Saw Shanti, Fern, and Darla in town today.” Her mercurial anger is gone. “They were picking up supplies at the Growing Tree Food Co-op. Shanti’s pregnant again. Did you hear? She says she’s going to have this one at home. Do you think you’ll be there to help her?”
The women she mentions were, until a few years ago, part of our original intentional community. They have moved on and are now living on different farms in the tri-county area.
“I guess. If she wants me.” I was Shanti’s coach at her first birth, a comedy if there ever was one. Fifteen ragtag hippies and one little blond boy in the Roane County General Hospital waiting room, listening to their comrade scream her way through transition, the part of labor when many women come unglued, and me trying to quiet her. Since then, as a midwife, I’ve gotten better, learned how to soothe, learned how to listen, learned how to guide.
It startles me to hear my inner voice refer to myself as a midwife. When did I decide I was a midwife? For the longest time, I called myself a labor coach or a birth attendant.
Upstairs our three-month-old whimpers. “That’s Orion.” I immediately cross my arms over my breasts. It doesn’t work. The letdown of milk is instantaneous.
“I’ll get him,” says Rachel.
Ten minutes later the kettle is whistling, my milk dribbles down Orion’s little chin, and Rachel sits companionably in the rocking chair next to me. Tom steps inside with a pile of wood and stacks it in the wood box. He’s not a big man, but carrying one hundred pounds is effortless for him.
My turn to go to the outhouse. “Could you change Orion’s diapers, Tom? That way he’ll be ready to go to sleep when I come back.” It’s only 9:00 p.m., but without electric lights and TV, we hit the sack early. Then again, carrying water, sawing, and chopping wood, turning over the soil with spades, washing clothes by hand, and tromping up and down this thousand-foot hill makes you r
eady for bed by dark.
As Stacy and I did in Minnesota, the commune has chosen to avoid power tools in an effort to save nonrenewable fossil fuels. We’re devoted to simple, sustainable living and rely on our muscles whenever we can. The difference? Here it’s not quite as cold as northern Minnesota, the winter isn’t as long, and we are closer to civilization. Also, there are many hands to share the labor, to sing us through hard times and bring in money when we need it.
Outside, the moon, a curved blade, rips through the silver clouds. Though we’re only three miles from town, there’s no ambient light, no street lamps or neon signs. At night the stars take your breath away, handfuls of stars, buckets of stars, wheelbarrows of stars. There’s Orion’s Belt and the Seven Sisters just over the stand of pines down the hill, the same as in the North Country.
From the open latrine door, I notice a lantern in the window of Stacy and Laurel’s clapboard-sided cabin up the hill. We call it the Little House because it’s about the size of our Minnesota log cabin, abandoned now in the North Woods, except for the mice and the squirrels.
We built the Little House, where Tom and I lived when we gave birth to Orion, out of recycled lumber salvaged from a century-old hotel, the first summer we were here. Before that, the hardiest of us slept in the barn and in tents, even when it snowed that first spring, and the rest of us in a little gray house that Shanti rented on Spring Creek Road.
All we had when we came here was two hundred dollars and the muscle of nineteen strong bodies. The light in the window flickers out. Stacy and Laurel must be going to bed.
On the way back to the Long House, I throw back my hood, enjoying the quiet. A barn owl hoots from up on the ridge. I picture the big raptor, high in the treetop, still as a fence post, its yellow eyes blinking.
When I open the door, I smell wood smoke but the kitchen is empty. Only the Coleman, on the hand-built oak table, lights my way. I stand for a moment in the center of the room, looking around.
Arms Wide Open Page 10
