In front of us, a row of men and women tip beers wrapped in paper bags. The lettering on the back of their black T-shirts reads THE PATRIOT GUARD, THE TRIBE OF JUDAH, and THE RIDGE RIDERS. I squeeze my husband’s hand, throw my head back, and sing with them . . . Searching for shelter again and again . . . running against the wind.
A woman with big hair walks over, waves a Virginia Slim, and pulls two school-age boys in front of us. “These are the people that helped you get born!” she announces. “My husband, Adam—you remember him, Patsy—is over looking at the BMW power cruisers.” The youngsters stare with big brown eyes, embarrassed to be on display.
This happens a few times a week, at the supermarket, the hardware store, or the gas station, to all midwives and OBs. Someone comes up with a toddler or a teen and wants to show us the baby we delivered. It’s a small town and I’m glad for the reminders of what we’ve meant to people.
When the woman drifts off, I whisper to Tom, “Who was she?”
“Works in the operating room at the hospital, Brandy something. Used to be at Bargain City, remember? We bought a TV from her once.”
I see it now. When the department store went bust and she lost her job, Brandy sat in my exam room crying. I held her hand and wiped her wet cheeks, a single mother in her twenties with a one-year-old I’d delivered, no job and no money. I braided her long hair, as I’d braided it when she was in labor. She took my suggestion and enrolled at the vocational school in the LPN program.
A few years later, Brandy got pregnant a second time and returned to the clinic. This time she held out her left hand to show me a gold wedding band.
“I got married last fall,” Brandy says with a grin, “and we ended up preggers a month later. Adam is thrilled. It’s his first.”
“How’d you meet him?” I ask as I do her new-OB exam.
“Don’t laugh . . .”
“I won’t!”
“The Internet.”
“Lots of my patients have met guys that way. I figure, what the heck, it’s worth a try.” The patient doesn’t know about my hitchhiking history. Internet dating hardly seems scary.
Seven months later, Brandy goes into labor. Adam, her husband, a manager at Radio Shack, is with her, and Brandy’s mom and her first son, three-year-old Walker. The plan is for Grandma to take the little boy out of the birthing room when the baby comes, but the labor goes so fast and so smoothly he never leaves.
Brandy delivers standing up at the bedside. Tom, stopping by the birthing center on his way from the OR, pours oil over my fingers just like the old days, while I squat behind her on the birthing stool. I can’t really see what I’m doing, but I just hold on and the baby slips out.
Little Walker stays right at my side observing everything. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t even look frightened. Tom helps him cut his sister’s cord, like he once helped Mica. They name the baby Destiny.
The next day, I asked Brandy how she felt about the birth. “Didn’t it hurt? You were a lot more emotional at your first delivery.”
“No,” she told me, her face relaxed and pink. “I wasn’t afraid. I had everyone I loved around me, and I had you.”
I thought about that. When I was in midwifery school at the university we learned about the factors that affect the progress of labor, the four P’s: the power—the strength of contractions; the passenger—the size and position of the fetus; the passage—the shape of the mother’s pelvis; and the psyche—the mother’s state of fear or confidence.
Some childbirth professionals add a fifth P. The persons helping you have the baby—competent, caring providers, supportive family and friends or nervous Nellies pacing the floor.
Now that I think of it, you could add a sixth P, place. I’ve always felt that a woman does best in an environment that makes her feel secure. For some, this would be a high-risk hospital, for others a birthing center, for others their home.
As the concert ends, I’m still thinking of Brandy. How many women, like her, have I touched and forgotten? How many have touched me, sisters of mercy?
I imagine their hands carrying me over troubled waters, some calloused from hard labor, some with manicured nails, some with tattoos on the back of their wrists.
CHAPTER 5
Dismissal
“Tom?” I’m standing in the hall that leads to his study, staring at the light that comes under the door. “Are you still up?” I enter without knocking. I thought he’d gone down to Zen’s room to sleep. Sometimes he does this when he’s restless and has had too much coffee.
My husband sits slumped in his black leather chair wearing brown plaid pajamas with a bright yellow Wild Turkey T-shirt that he got for free when he went to the liquor store. It’s a holdover from our hippie trash-picking days. We can’t pass up a giveaway. A glass of Wild Turkey sits on his desk. His iPod is plugged into both ears and he’s concentrating on a video game.
“Tom!” I say a little louder. He looks up, surprised.
“Don’t you have to get up at six thirty?”
“Yeah, what time is it?”
“Three!”
“Shit.”
“What’s wrong with you, anyway? Haven’t you slept at all?”
He kicks the leather footstool toward me and offers me a sip of his drink. “I had to fire a patient today.”
“Fire a patient?” I squint, not knowing his meaning.
“Yeah, you know, dismiss her from the practice. Her drug screen was positive for cocaine and negative for her prescription narcotics.”
“That means she’s not taking the medication you prescribed but is snorting coke?”
“Maybe shooting up. Who knows.”
“Is she someone I know?”
Tom looks so sad. “Yeah. It’s Gladys. She was probably selling her narcotics. The ER docs say you can get fifty dollars each for one of those little 10-milligram pills. Gladys was on three pills daily. That’s a hundred and fifty a day. Not bad money, and she probably needs the cash.”
My throat tightens. “Gladys is the diabetic, with the boy that they sent to the detention center and the two other younger kids at home?” I want to defend her. “Are you sure the test was right? She seemed like such a straight shooter, and she’s been our patient for years.”
My husband shrugs. “I know . . . and I really liked her. That’s what hurts. She’ll be calling when she gets the dismissal letter, begging for another chance, but I’m not going to fold. I thought my instincts about people were pretty good. I used to know whom to trust . . . but not now.”
“Come on, bud. You got to be in the OR in the morning.” My friend lets me lead him to bed.
“Thanks,” he says as I tuck him in. No matter how stressed, in two minutes he’s snoring. Tonight is no different. The Wild Turkey probably helps.
I stand watching him sleep. He looks smaller tonight, diminished, not the Tom I once knew . . .
CHAPTER 6
Rescue
Toes curled over the wooden edge of our floating dock, I steel myself, then dive deep into Hope Lake, today so clear I can see the sand and pebbles on the bottom. The shock of the cold water makes me want to shout, but I keep my mouth closed and rise, shaking my wet hair, into a world of green. The dark August green of oak leaves, the jungle green of locust, the shamrock green of maple.
I am alone. Tom has gone north to Ohio to meet with his mother’s lawyer and settle her estate. I’m hoping it will bring him closure about his mom’s death, but not sure it will help. Zen is still out West, surfing, climbing mountains, finding a little work when he can. I smile. Basically living like a hippie.
It’s just Roscoe, our beagle-basset, and me left to take care of the gardens and fruit trees. I’ll have time to read, to write, to swim, to take a solo bike ride or dance naked to the Grateful Dead in the bedroom if the mood str
ikes me.
After an hour of letting the silver minnows nibble my toes, I drape my wet towel around my sunburned neck and amble up the wood and stone steps to the house. An alarming buzz, like the sound of a man’s electric shaver, catches my attention as I cross the lawn. When I turn toward the hives at the lower edge of the garden, I see thousands of bees shooting up like a Roman candle. I’ve never seen anything like it and decide that the heat must be making the insects extra frisky.
Inside, as I prepare a dinner of green beans, tomatoes, and squash from the garden, I glance periodically out the windows. Our suburban homestead is growing, two vegetable plots, seven fruit trees, and five hives of bees, but maybe it’s getting out of control. Masses of bees are now pouring upward, a swirling tornado of insects. What I fear is a swarm.
The phenomenon of a swarm is a natural method of propagation that occurs when a colony gets too crowded; it’s good for the bees, bad for the beekeepers. That’s why Tom and Zen were moving the bee boxes around a few months ago, making enough room for the brood, checking to see that there was only one queen to each hive.
Apparently they’d missed a queen cell and now she’s hatched and is going off on her own. The unfortunate part is, she’s taking an army of workers for her new empire, and before the insects abandon ship, they suck up all the honey they can hold. I watch closely the direction of their movements. Higher and higher they rise over the tops of the tallest oaks, their little bodies shining in the evening light. If they escape, they will take all the honey and, as wild bees, never survive the winter.
Ten minutes later, I’m dressed in Tom’s white coveralls, complete with gloves, hat, and veil, looking, but not feeling, like a beekeeper. I have no clue what I’m doing, but Tom puts so much time and energy into caring for his hives, I would feel terrible if the swarm got away without me even trying to catch them.
I approach the row of forsythia bushes with caution, the Sherlock Holmes of beekeepers. Where would the swarm go? The massive migration has stopped, but a high-pitched drone seems to come from the gazebo. As I move closer, the sound gets louder, until looking up I see, fifteen feet above me, attached to a branch in the peach tree, a lump of bees the size of a beach ball. I’ve located the renegades; now what? I remember years ago reading a pamphlet about catching a swarm . . . what did it say?
First, find a washtub or a box . . . We don’t have a washtub. Maybe a bee box? I truck back to the garage and locate a leftover white wooden beehive with a separate metal cover, then tromp back to the peach tree and place the box under the ball of bees. I’m winging it here, and the light is fading. When night comes, I have no idea what the bees will do. Do they sleep?
The agricultural handout said something about banging a pan to get the bees down . . . What do I have to lose? As fast as I can, in full beekeeper’s outfit, I waddle back to the house and grab two stainless steel cooking pots. Bang! Bang! Bang! The bees buzz a little louder, but that’s all. Maybe I can shake them down.
Tentatively, I take hold of the trunk. Shake. No action. I could climb up the tree and get a better grip on the branch they’re hanging from, but if the bees come after me, I’ll be stuck, so I try harder with the trunk. Shake. Shake. Still no action.
I’m standing in the darkening yard, ready to give up, watching the stars come out one by one and, next, the fireflies, when I think of a rope. Back to the garage. This time, I actually do climb the tree. Hesitantly, I pull myself up. My knees are stiff and I fear falling.
Twenty years ago, climbing a small tree like this would have been easy. I was confident and strong, but I’m no longer used to trusting my muscles. Slowly, like an albino gorilla in my white suit, I pull myself along the slanting trunk until I can loop the cord around the branch the bees hang on. If this doesn’t work, I’m giving up . . .
Back on the ground, I reposition the wooden box below the massive ball of bees and move to the side. I pull on the rope. Shake. Shake. Nothing. With more vigor now!
SHAKE!
Plop!
When the mass falls into my box, I’m so amazed, I just stand there . . . then, rousing myself, before the bees can escape, I slam the lid on my trap and jump back. Not all of the flying insects made it into the receptacle but most did. The stragglers will stay with the colony if I managed to capture the queen. I smile to myself.
It’s been a long time since I’ve been forced, on my own, to cope with some physical challenge. Not since the farm . . .
When you have someone around as handy and talented as Tom Harman, you aren’t often tested. Later tonight, my friend will come home. He will crawl into bed, exhausted from his long trip and the weight that he carries.
“I saved them,” I’ll whisper as he curls around me.
“What?”
“I rescued the swarm.”
AQUARIUS
It’s raining again, a steady gray drizzle, the wettest summer I can remember. The creeks rise over their banks. There’s flooding in the southern part of the state; whole trailers, all that families own, float downstream like wood chips. The raging mountain rivers bring torrents of muddy water into our lake, but at last the sun shines.
Mara and I sit in the gazebo looking down at the sparkling water and watch two bluebirds court in the lilac bush. I was so surprised, this afternoon, to see her as she came down the drive. Our friend’s on her way from Maryland to Berea College, in Kentucky, for a conference on women’s issues. She does this sometimes. Just shows up.
“I heard an interesting story the other day,” I start up. “It made me think about our homebirth days. You know there are more women than ever choosing to deliver at home? The C-section rate in the U.S. is over 33 percent, and the higher it gets, the more families will opt to stay away from the knife.
“This was a wild one. I got this from my midwife friend, Rayne, in Ohio. A doula, pregnant with her third baby, wanted to have a natural birth. She’d had two previous cesareans. One for breech, pretty traumatic, and the other just because her OB said she had to. Apparently, in her local hospital they don’t allow vaginal births after a C-section, otherwise she would have gone to the nurse-midwives there.”
“Why wouldn’t they let her try? They used to.” Mara takes a sip of her iced tea.
“It’s an example of how malpractice insurance companies end up calling the shots. They either refuse to insure a hospital that does VBACs—vaginal birth after cesarean—or they make the restrictions so difficult that providers and hospitals give it up.
“Anyway, this woman, Sophie, I think that’s her name, contacted my friend, Rayne. She’s one of the few nurse-midwives who do homebirths in Ohio. They came to an agreement, even though Rayne lived three hours away.
“Last week, Sophie called after midnight to say her water had broken but nothing was happening so she was going to bed. She told Rayne to go back to sleep, too, and she’d call her when contractions started. Rayne got up at dawn, packed up her birth stuff, and was already on her way when the pregnant woman called again, this time on the cell.
“‘Where are you?’ Sophie asked.
“‘Two hours away, in the car, on the road to your house,’” Rayne told her. “‘Are you in labor? Are you having contractions?’”
“‘Yeah, they’ve started but they aren’t bad yet,’ the woman tells her. ‘My husband is filling the portable birth tub. I figure the baby will come sometime this afternoon.’
“Rayne, the midwife, picks up her speed, but she isn’t worried. Thirty minutes later her cell rings again. This time it’s the husband.
“‘How’s she doing?’ Rayne asks. She knew the man wouldn’t be calling if his wife could talk, so it must be hard labor.
“‘Where are you?’ the guy demands— no ‘Hi’ or ‘How you doing?’
“‘Ninety minutes away. How’s Sophie?’
“‘Pretty cranky, and I’m worried
. Contractions are getting close.’
“‘Well, what’s she doing? Is she in the birthing tub? Tell her to get out. It’s too relaxing. Get her in bed on her left side to slow things down.’”
“Yeah, right,” Mara interjects. “Slowing down a woman who’s had three babies is like slowing down a semitruck coming down a mountain grade.”
I nod agreement and go on with my tale. “‘She won’t!” the man says. ‘She tells me the contractions will hurt like hell if she gets out!’ He’s all upset. Swearing and everything. ‘If we’d gone to the hospital, this wouldn’t have happened!’
“When you think about it, you can’t blame the guy. His wife’s been attending births as a doula for over two years. She’s comfortable with the process. The only deliveries he’s seen were in the operating room.”
“So . . . ?” Mara says. “So what happened?”
“The next call Rayne gets, as she’s hurtling down a narrow secondary road, is Sophie again. ‘You can stop speeding,’ the mother says. There’s mellow music on the stereo in the background . . .
“Well, the cool thing is, the woman got her dream. She had her vaginal delivery after a cesarean section. She didn’t mean to do it alone, but the baby came out. She caught it herself.”
“Holy cow!” Mara exclaims. “What if something had happened?”
“You’re right, but it didn’t. She just put her hands under the water and held on, eased it out, first the head and then a gentle push for the shoulders, just a little grunt and then the whole body slipped into the water. She just flipped it over and let it float to the top. This is what Rayne told me . . . Just as it came to the surface the baby’s eyes opened and they gazed into hers.
“They named the baby Aquarius.”
“The dawning of Aquarius. The age of Aquarius . . . Remember that song?” Mara muses.
Arms Wide Open Page 22
