Only one birth from the Austin apprenticeship really sticks with me, though I know there were ten.
Annabelle and Feather, another midwife, and I had been pushing with Rosa, a first-time mother, for hours but nothing was happening. It was starting to remind me of Mica’s birth. The father, Diego, a Texas state trooper, chain-smoked in the kitchen.
This was different for me and maybe that’s why I remember. In West Virginia, the homebirth community was strictly hippie. In Austin, women who birthed at home were of all walks of life. The fact that the dad was a lawman was strange, too. Since our activist days, cops were the enemy, but Diego seemed like a nice guy.
“Do you think we should call Paul?” Annabelle whispers to Feather.
“He gets out of class by three thirty and should be home by five. That’s another half hour . . . I’ll leave him a message, but let’s keep pushing.”
We’d already tried hands and knees, squatting, and every other position, but I help the tired mother into the bathroom again, wondering who the heck Paul is.
Forty minutes later, through the open bedroom window, I catch sight of a tall man with a little ponytail coming down the drive. Turns out, he’s Feather’s husband. Next thing I know, Paul, dressed in shirt and tie, appears in the bedroom. He nods to Feather and Annabelle.
“Hi, Rosa. You having a pretty hard time?” The young woman, who’s now back in bed, nods. “I’m Paul, one of the other Austin midwives.” This shocks the pants off me. I thought all midwives were female. It never occurred to me that gender wasn’t a qualification. What counts is a practitioner’s orientation toward childbirth as a normal physiological event, a profound spiritual passage that has the power to change both men and women.
Paul washes his hands, gloves up, and encourages Rosa to relax. “Can you let your legs go?” She takes a deep breath and complies. I watch the man’s face, wondering what he’s feeling for during the exam; perhaps the ischial spines, two bony prominences on the inside of the pelvis that are the markers used to determine the descent of the fetal head.
The midwife stares into space, getting his bearings. His brows come together. “The head’s low, and you are one hundred percent effaced, but I have to be honest, Rosa, you aren’t fully dilated. You’re only one centimeter.”
One centimeter! Shit, this is worse than when I was told to push at eight centimeters, and this time I’m one of the people responsible.
The laboring woman wails at this news and Diego takes her hand. Annabelle, Feather, and I stand back against the wall, wishing we could just disappear and wondering how we could have collectively made such a mistake.
“The good news is that your cervix is paper thin. I’m going to loosen things up a bit. This will hurt a little, but after that you can rest. I don’t want you to push down, unless you absolutely have to. It will only be a little while. Your baby’s head is in a perfect position.” While he talks, I see that he’s doing something with his fingers.
“Ow! Ow! Ow!” That’s Rosa.
Instinctively I move to the other side of the bed and take the young woman’s moist hand. “Just blow. It will only take a minute, then you can rest.” I say all this as if I know what’s happening.
Paul grins. “Now you’re three centimeters! Little secret massage I do. Soon you’ll be five. Diego, take Rosa outside for a walk.”
Annabelle and Feather bustle around throwing a blue chenille robe over Rosa’s shoulders and clipping back her long brown hair. I bring a warm washcloth for her face and while they are gone, follow Paul out to the kitchen, where he pours himself a cup of strong coffee.
“So, how did you become a midwife?” I ask, feeling like I’m asking a drag queen how he became a cross-dresser.
Paul turns a chair around, sits down on it backwards, and looks at his watch. “We used to have a certified nurse-midwife in Austin who did homebirths. When she left the state, Feather was four months pregnant with our third. There was no way we were going to go to the hospital after delivering the first two at home, so I’d asked Melanie if I could accompany her to a few deliveries. The plan was just to learn what I could, so that I could catch our next kid, but it turned out I had a knack for it and when Melanie left, I started attending other families’ homebirths too.
“The problem was, I couldn’t make it during the day, because I teach, so I trained Feather and she trained Annabelle . . .” He looks at his watch again. “Should be soon. How about you? How’d you become a midwife?”
It pleases me that he calls me a midwife, because I’m still thinking of myself as a birth attendant. Just as I’m about to tell him my story, the screen door slams and Feather scurries in with the rest of the entourage. “Urge to push!” she announces and raises one eyebrow at her husband. “This time for real!”
Paul and I follow the little group into the bedroom, where Annabelle sets out the birth kit and Feather washes Rosa’s bottom. Paul gloves up and checks the woman’s cervix.
“The baby’s head is right at the introitus and it has hair!” He grins. Everyone cheers but Rosa, who’s too busy pushing. She pulls herself into a squat and bears down. This time she means business.
“Hold on there!” Paul laughs. “Give us a chance to get ready.” He hands a pair of gloves to me and nudges me over to sit on the bed.
I’ve already delivered a score of babies, but never in front of a group of experienced midwives, and my hands tremble like new leaves. Here there are no trees to lean on or stars to pray to, so I just take a deep breath and do what I know how to do.
“Oil?” I request, and find my outstretched fingers slicked with warm liquid. I massage the vaginal opening and urge the mother to slow down.
“It’s going to burn a little,” I tell her. “But I’ll hold warm compresses over your perineum to help you stretch. Here, reach down and feel your baby’s head.” Feather guides the new mother’s hand and Rosa’s eyes get big.
By this time, I’ve forgotten my mentors. There’s only one thing on my mind, a circle of light around the woman’s vagina. The head crowns, slips into my hands, and we all cheer when the baby, before it’s born, sneezes. Feather pulls the mother’s nightgown up and I settle a crying eight-pounder on her chest.
Paul checks between the baby’s legs. “It’s a boy!”
“My Carlos!” Rosa holds her husband’s eyes.
The baby reaches out his arms.
“Carlos means ‘free man,’ ” Diego explains, and lays his hand on his heart.
CHAPTER 6
Expedition
Three nights ago, a sudden late January storm slammed West Virginia. The wind was so fierce I thought a tree might fall on us. Now eighteen inches of snow covers the trail, drifting almost up to the windows, and we’re out of clean diapers.
“We’ll either have to carry and heat water to wash them or get into town to the Laundromat,” I announce to no one in particular.
We’re all sitting around the big oak table for breakfast in the cozy kitchen of the Long House, inhaling the nutty smells of oatmeal slavered in peanut butter and honey. Fire crackles in the woodstove. Tom turns to Stacy, “What do you think?”
Stacy shrugs. “Since the phone is out, there’s no way to tell, but the roads must be plowed by now. Then again, we’d have to get to Steele Hollow Road first, and we don’t have any snowshoes. I wish I’d brought them from Duluth, but I never thought we’d get snow so deep.”
“I’ll come too. We’ve got some dirty clothes.” Ben brushes his curly hair from his eyes and hangs his guitar on the wall.
While the men dress for the weather, I load Orion’s soiled cloth diapers, red, yellow, and blue with a tie-dyed sunburst design, in a bundle and wrap them in a leftover plastic tarp. We don’t use disposable diapers because they aren’t biodegradable, but since we’re relatively close to town, we’ve gotten into the habit of using
the Laundromat, just down the street from the food co-op.
Rachel jots a list of what we need on the back of a used envelope: cornmeal, cooking oil, lentils, wheat berries. “And get some baking soda too,” she instructs as she hands Ben one of her parents’ five-dollar bills. “I want to make gingerbread again.” I raise my eyebrows when I see the money and catch Mara’s eye, wondering how much more the woman has stashed in her bedroom.
Rachel’s father, Mr. Levine, owns a string of furniture stores in New Hampshire, and the issue of her money has come up before. Everything we own is in common, and most of us feel we shouldn’t accept the privilege of family contributions. People in the third world don’t have rich relatives to help them out. How can we say we’re trying to live a subsistent life when we accept money from outside?
By sundown it’s been eight hours, and the men still aren’t home. There’s been plenty of time to get to town and back, even if they had to hike the whole three miles. Rachel lights the kerosene lamps and arranges them on either end of the table.
I think of going up to the Little House to ask Laurel if we should go look for them, but decide to wait one more hour. Mara sits writing, Rachel sits grinding wheat berries into whole-wheat flour, Mica sits on the window seat doing his reading workbook, and I sit staring into space.
Another blast of wind batters the house and outside the world turns white once more as a new storm takes aim. A chill runs through me and it’s not from the cold that comes under the door. Mrs. Shoepeck told me what happened to her younger brother. He was trying to get home from Spencer in a sled with a team of horses when a blizzard hit. This was sixty years ago, before Spring Creek Road was paved. He ran off the trail and his sled tipped over. The horses ran away. They found him the next day, frozen to death in a haystack where he’d taken refuge.
Mara pulls the rocking chair up to the fire and lets out a long sigh.
“Worried about Ben?”
“Yeah, but it’s not just that . . . I’ve been feeling so unsatisfied and low lately.” This takes me aback and I don’t like it. Mara always seems so optimistic, a person who wakes up smiling.
“Maybe it’s a monthly thing.”
She cuts me off. “No, I’ve felt this way all winter. A lack of direction.” She sighs again. “I keep thinking I want to start over and reevaluate my life. I don’t know anymore what I’m doing here.” I pour her a cup of sassafras tea, my heart sinking like a hot stone through the snow. I want to plug my ears like a little kid and yell “Nah! Nah! Nah!” but ever the good friend, I sit down and listen.
“I think of all the people who’ve left the commune,” Mara goes on. “I imagine them organizing food pantries in the South, running kids’ camps in the Sierras, or working with the Catholic Workers in New York City. Colin wrote me from jail this week. He’s still with the Clamshell Alliance.
“I actually thought of leaving with him, going back to New England when he was here on winter solstice. At least I’d be contributing something . . .”
I stand and busy myself at the sink, twisting my mouth. It’s not just that I fear Mara might leave. Her thoughts mirror my own. Once I was full of moral resolution. I thought that with a community of people to share the work, I’d be able to live simply and at the same time, write, organize women’s study groups, deliver babies, and start a free school, but it still takes all our energy just to get by. I’m thinking all this, but don’t say it to Mara, afraid of encouraging her negativity; too many have already gone.
I glance over at the black-and-white photograph that hangs by the door. It’s never a fight or disagreement that causes people to leave, just a slow erosion. There goes Brother Lenny back to Cincinnati. There goes Kaitlin and Tall Terry, off to Chicago. Now Shanti leaves to live on her own farm with her lover, Jim. Always walking away. Walking away across the ridge . . .
Storm of the Century
We wait another half hour to eat dinner, hoping the guys will return, but when Mica complains for the third time that he’s hungry and Orion starts crying, we put the cast-iron pot of vegetarian stew, a jar of honey, and plate of golden cornbread on the table. The storm still roars and going out to search for them would be crazy.
“Better say a prayer,” Mica, our little prince, says, holding out his small hands to Rachel and Mara. I reach for Orion and close the circle. We sing our Johnny Appleseed song and Rachel is just filling our bowls when the door flies open and Benny, Tom, Stacy, and Laurel stagger in, the men’s beards caked with ice. We all crowd around, help them take off their backpacks, unlace their stiff boots, and bring them dry clothes.
“It’s bad,” Ben starts out. “Way worse than we thought. Couldn’t get the truck started, but it wouldn’t have mattered, there’s no way we could have made it down Steele Hollow without killing ourselves. Nothing’s plowed. The only thing moving was old man McCauley on his horse. We followed his trail, three miles, into town.” Mara hastily fills bowls of soup for the guys and they stop for a minute to slurp the hot liquid.
“Half the state is still out of power.” Stacy takes up the story. “Most of the telephone lines are down, only the main roads are cleared, Route 33 and County Road 119. It’s a major disaster all over the Midwest. The National Guard has been called out in West Virginia, Ohio, Michigan, and Indiana. Twenty people have already died. Now it’s starting up again.”
Shit! And here we were, cozy as anything, in our snug log cabin.
“Some people are calling it the White Hurricane. The food co-op was closed, no one could get in from his or her farms to unlock the door, but the A&P had power from their generator and we were able to shop.”
Tom shakes the snow off the backpack and pulls it over to the table. “Do the honors?” he asks Benny.
“Well,” says Benny, rubbing his hands together, with a wink at Mica and flashing his eyes at us all. “Let’s see what we have here.” Mica crawls up on his lap. “First the staples. Powdered milk, peanut butter, beans, cornmeal, baking soda . . . and eggs!” He surprises everyone because eggs weren’t on the list.
“And now with Rachel’s generous donation . . .”—he draws this out for effect—“Oranges!” We almost swoon; it’s been so long since we’ve had any fresh fruit besides the apples we stored in the root cellar.
Mica grabs for one, but I tell him, “Later.”
“And . . .” Mara beats two spoons on the oak table for a drum roll as Benny pulls something from the bottom of the rucksack with a flourish. “Two pineapples!” We all cheer. “Tom picked these up from behind the store.”
“I got them out of the Dumpster. They have a few soft spots but someone must have just thrown them out because they weren’t frozen.” He passes them around and we all take big sniffs of the tropical fruit.
“Party time!” yells Rachel. “I’ll make some gingerbread.”
“Can I help?” Mica squeals.
Sometimes when there’s nothing special to be happy about, except that you have your friends around you and no one’s lost in a blizzard, you just have to celebrate. The house already smells like baked goods when Stacy gets out his Autoharp. Ben and I get out our guitars and Tom his string bass. It isn’t long until the house rocks with music.
Joy to the world, all the boys and girls! We rattle the storm away with our voices, shake the fury from the blizzard with our clogging feet. I look around at these friends. They are my family and I want to stop life right now, hold it just as it is.
Spring
CHAPTER 7
Fire
Spring equinox. Three gray rainy days have turned into this cold moonless night and still Tom’s not home from his new job fixing musical instruments in Athens, Ohio, two hours away. Mara, Ben, and Rachel took off for a week to demonstrate with the Clamshell Alliance in New Hampshire. Laurel, Stacy, and Mica went to visit her family in Philadelphia. The last time I left the farm was for A
lexandra Murphy’s birth, and that was only for a few hours. I thought at first that I’d arrived there too early, Alexandra seemed so comfortable. We sat around knitting, then abruptly the woman decided to take a bath. I should have known. She’d already had five babies.
Upstairs, I hear her running water. Twenty minutes later she’s shouting, “Oh, my God! It’s coming!” All I did was support the perineum and hold out my hands. Then we had a party. That was four weeks ago.
By nine, I load the heater stove upstairs in the library, stack more wood to the side, and open the chimney flue halfway.
I brush my teeth, don my flannel nightgown, wool socks, and pink knit cap, check Orion one more time, then crawl into my cold bed. So strange to be out here by myself. I’m not sure it’s ever happened before . . .
A few hours later, Orion whimpers and I force myself awake. This isn’t right. The room’s way too hot. Half asleep, I study the situation then pull myself up on one elbow. Through the open door to the library, I see why I’m sweating. The tin chimney pipe, where it joins the stove in the library, is shaking from the force of the internal conflagration. It’s a chimney fire! I’ve seen this before in Minnesota and I’ve read that creosote buildup in a tin chimney, caused by the condensation of smoke, can burn at 2000 degrees.
Throwing the covers back, I stand at the bedside. My mind jerks wildly from one thought to the next. I could call the fire department, but even if they knew where we lived there’s no road to get in here . . . Should I pour water on the fire or let it burn out? Open the flue or shut it? Any move I make might make things worse, cause the pipe to crash down or the metal stove to rupture.
I shake my hands in distress. I don’t know what to do, but if I don’t do something the roof will catch on fire and the house will burn down.
That thought gets me moving. First, without waking him, I transport Orion into Mara’s room at the opposite end of the house, as far away as I can get him from the red-hot heater stove. Then I fly down the ladder, pull on my boots, and run outside to see if the sparks have caught on the roof yet. If they have, there’s no hope.
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