Mrs. Archer and I stood shivering at the edge of the playground and as usual she was full of chatter. “Did you hear the news about the White Rock Civilian Conservation Camp?”
It turns out they are making it into a German prisoner-of-war camp. Apparently such camps are popping up all over the U.S. The Brits have captured so many German and Italian soldiers, they have no place to keep them on their small island. On the other hand, the U.S. has a shortage of farm and factory workers, so they’re already shipping the POWs here.
The idea is that they’ll be rented out to farmers and factories around us. Apparently the town is all up in arms about it and I don’t blame them. Think of it, Nazis right in our own backyard!
We miss you and pray for you every night. Even Three Legs.
Your hardworking, loving wife,
Patience
October 22
My Dearest Patience,
I was happy to hear that Mr. and Mrs. Roote got married. I guess if they were going to live together, they wanted everything to be proper. Hope Charley is getting back on his feet.
Except for missing you and the kids, things are going well here. Teaching Bones how to read has opened up new doors for me. The bald-headed guard you saw last time in the visiting area, Norm, has arranged with the warden for me to have daily reading classes, and I now have twelve students.
The men are touching in their appreciation and give me extra food and treats. I don’t think many of them went beyond the third grade. You’d think maybe everyone in the big house would be a vicious criminal, but the longer I’m here, the more I realize that’s not true.
One young fellow with a patch over his right eye was convicted of manslaughter when, in self-defense, he killed a man who accosted him in an alley in Martinsburg. He lost his eye, but still got fifteen years in prison. If I ever get out of here . . . (Sorry! I mean, WHEN I get out of here) I’m going to ask Mr. Linkous to look into it. It doesn’t seem right.
But that’s something you learn in prison. Life isn’t fair. I don’t know why I ever thought it was. Some of these fellows are just regular fellows who didn’t have the advantages I had. The Great Depression came, and just to survive they fought and they robbed.
It’s odd to be locked up for protesting a war you hardly remember. The only news we get is when guards tell us what’s happening overseas or if we’re allowed to listen to the radio on Sundays.
Invasions in Guadalcanal, German attacks on Russia, counterattacks, victories and losses. It all seems so futile as the world turns red with blood.
On a lighter side, here’s something that will amuse you. Ronald will now ride around in my shirt pocket and he’s become sort of a mascot for my cellblock. There are twenty inmates in my section, but I still have a cell to myself. At night sometimes I get the men to sing the old songs we all know.
“I’ll fly away, oh glory. I’ll fly away!” That’s something to hear echoing in harmony down these lonely concrete halls. “I’ll fly away . . .” If only we could.
My love to you,
Daniel
43
October 23, 1942
Molly
Yesterday, I was called to the home of Molly Klopenstein, who lives on Buck’s Run on the other side of Union County. The kids were still in school with Mrs. Miller and she kindly agreed to watch them if I didn’t get home by dark.
I hadn’t been up Buck’s Run for ten years and was surprised when I got there to see that the small community, a variation of Old Order Amish, had grown to eight log houses. There used to be only four, scattered along the creek in the narrow hollow that runs back toward the mountains.
WHEN I KNOCK on the door, Levi Klopenstein greets me. He was just a young fellow when I met him years ago, but now he has a dark beard down to his chest, threaded with gray, and he wears the regulation black pants, white shirt, and dark suspenders of the rest of the religious order.
“Hello, Levi,” I say as I enter the log house. It’s simply furnished with handmade wooden furniture and illuminated with kerosene lamps. “Can you tell me what’s happening? I didn’t get much of a report when your neighbor phoned me. Is it Molly?”
“Yes. She delivered her fourth baby boy about six hours ago, but the afterbirth won’t come and she’s bleeding. Granny pulled on it and the cord broke. We don’t know what to do.”
I take a deep breath. “Okay. Well, you did the right thing by calling me. Where is she?”
Levi silently leads me down a short hall into a small room with a big wooden bed. Just like the last time I was here, the women of the community, all dressed in black, sit in a row on a long bench like six black crows. Three I know: Granny, Molly’s mother, and Molly’s sister, Ruth. A very pink newborn sleeps in a homemade wooden cradle.
I repeat what Levi told me, to be sure I have the story right. Then I turn to the patient. The first thing I note is she’s very pale and her pulse is weak. A pile of red rags has been dropped in a bucket.
Time to get to work. This is what the medical books call the third stage of labor, and it’s the most dangerous part for the mother. I wipe away the blood from Molly’s vagina and put a clean folded towel under her bottom to better keep track of the bleeding.
The safest thing to do is get Molly in the Olds and head for Boone Memorial in Torrington, but I know from my previous encounter with the family that they won’t even consider it. Hospitals, they believe, are hellholes, places people go to be tortured or to die.
“Ruth,” I ask, “has Molly been nursing? Breastfeeding stimulates the uterus to contract and that might bring the placenta.”
“Yes. She put the baby to the breast right away, and she’s been feeding him every two hours, but nothing is working.”
“Well,” I say, to give myself time to think, “go get Molly some warm chicken broth. If you don’t have any soup, bring me some tea with honey. And Mrs. Klopenstein, boil some water.” I think the ladies might balk, but they both go off briskly.
“She won’t drink, Midwife,” says the old grandmother. “We already tried. She says she wants to sleep and that the Lord will take care of her.”
“She’ll drink if we make her. God needs her to drink. I can tell by looking that Molly’s lost too much blood. If the placenta doesn’t deliver, the uterus can’t contract to stop the bleeding and her life force will drain out of her.”
Hoping to find the afterbirth just inside the vagina, I put on my sterile gloves and separate the opening. If I can see the shiny organ, I’ll get my fingers around it and drag it out, but I’m not that lucky. There’s nothing there. Not even a blood clot or a piece of the severed cord.
Next I do a vaginal exam with two fingers and more blood and clots shoot out, but there’s no placenta. This is going to require a whole-hand exam.
“Molly, wake up and look at me,” I call. “I have to go in and see why your placenta isn’t coming. This is going to hurt, but it has to be done. It will take only twenty seconds, maybe less. Ladies”—I turn to the crows still sitting in a row behind me—“can you count out loud to twenty slowly? And someone come hold Molly’s hand.”
“One, two, three . . .” I start off. Molly opens her eyes and groans but she doesn’t squirm or fight me. She knows that getting the placenta out is critical if she wants to live.
“Twenty. Twenty-one . . .”
I slowly remove my fingers and let out my air.
“I’m sorry I hurt you, Molly, and I thank you for cooperating. Now, here’s the good news.” I turn to my female audience. “I’m pretty sure the afterbirth has separated. I was worried it might be embedded in the muscle of the womb, which would require surgery. But there’s bad news too. Molly has a large fibroid just inside the cervix and I think it’s holding the placenta back.”
“Well, what can we do? Can you help her?” one of the women asks.
“I’ll try,” I say, looking straight at them.
When Ruth returns with the chicken broth, I explain the problem again and we take a few mi
nutes to sit Molly up. “Honey, you have to drink this! I know you don’t feel like it, but we’re talking life or death here, and you don’t want to leave Levi alone with four little boys. He needs you.”
Finally, Molly opens her blue eyes and comes out of the dark hole she’s been hiding in. She’s a pretty woman, in her thirties now, with long blond hair braided down her back, but she’s as limp as a tomato plant during a drought.
I hold the mug up and she sips a little, but I don’t give up until it’s all gone. Next Ruth and I scoot her to the side of the bed and get her to squat over a chamber pot. We wait five minutes.
Damn! I was hoping she’d urinate and the whole thing would plop out. Now what? More broth. While Ruth holds the mug, I try to think what to do. I was so convinced that getting her to void would solve the problem, but now my insides turn cold.
This is becoming a real mess. If the woman dies, I may be blamed. The times are not favorable for midwives, especially one whose husband is a draft protester, and I could be accused of manslaughter. Then both Dan and I might be locked in the big house. I look again at the circle of red on the clean towel under Molly; it’s now the size of a sunflower.
When the second cup of broth is gone, Molly’s color begins to improve, so we switch to tea with honey to give her some energy. “Can you push, Molly? Can you grunt and push like you’re having another baby?” I ask.
“I can try,” she answers, “but I feel so weak. I have to do it though, don’t I? I have to try.” Molly pushes with all her strength for ten minutes and then I tell her to stop. It’s not working.
“Can you get a pan of hot water, Granny?” I request. The old lady shakes her head in disgust. She’s never approved of me. “What now?” she grumbles, but she stomps to the kitchen.
When she returns, I indicate she should set it on the floor by the bed. Then I ask everyone to leave but the sister, Ruth. I’m not sure why I do this. Maybe it’s because with the spectators sitting there, it feels like they’re watching a movie. As they all shuffle out, Molly whispers. “Thank you for sending them away,” she says. “I felt like I was letting everyone down.”
“No, these things happen,” I reassure her, though in the hundreds of births I’ve attended, I’ve never pulled off a cord. “Okay, up you go again. Ruth and I will support you, but I want you to feel the warmth from the water and try to relax your pelvis. Just think about something pleasant, soft, and loose. This time don’t try to push. Just let it come.”
“Can I have my specs?” Molly asks, and Ruth reaches over to the bedside table and helps her put them on. “Oh, thanks,” she says. “I’m blind as a bat without them.”
For another ten minutes she squats, but still nothing comes. Finally, exhausted, she begs to get back in bed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”
When I look at the warm water in the pot, it’s now colored red.
The Male Vigor
No, you can’t come back in!” I almost shout to the ladies in black as they crowd around the bedroom door. “We’re working here. What you can do is get Levi. I want Levi!”
“This is not a man’s place! You have too many strange ideas,” Granny grumbles, but she nods to the youngest woman, who puts her black coat on and trots out the door.
I’m running on empty here, but the first time I helped Molly, her labor had stalled and I had Levi come into the birth room to help her walk. I called his power to help “the male vigor,” and somehow he brought the contractions back. Maybe it will work again this time.
Soon, Levi is at the bedroom door. “You okay, wife?” he asks. Molly, exhausted, reaches out her hand. “Can you walk again with me, Levi? Can you hold me and sing?”
The man looks at me as if he thinks his wife is delirious.
“Please?”
“Midwife?” he asks. “She shouldn’t be out of bed this soon, should she? She’s lost too much blood.”
“Sometimes in labor the woman knows what she needs, Levi. It might help,” I say as he and I assist her to her feet again. “Come on, Ruth, let’s make some more tea.”
In the kitchen, I get nothing but horrified looks. “You left her in there, by herself,” the old lady hisses. “She could die!”
“No, she’s with Levi. Just like before she needs the male vigor.” Across the hall we hear singing, and when I peek in the bedroom, I see Levi holding Molly in his arms, swaying back and forth . . . just as in their first birth.
“Oh, Shenandoah, I long to hear you. Away, you rolling river,” he sings into Molly’s ear, and she hums along with him. Her face has such peace as she rests on his shoulder . . . Then her eyes snap open. “It’s coming!” she yells, and a ball, half the size of a loaf of bread, plops on the floor.
October 23, 1942
Called to the home of Molly and Levi Klopenstein for a critical delay in the third stage of labor. A healthy eight-pound baby had been delivered and six hours later the placenta was still inside. The grandmother of the clan, who serves as the community’s midwife, had inadvertently pulled off the cord.
I had Molly drink two cups of broth and urinate in a chamber pot, but nothing helped until I called the husband to get her out of bed. As before, he sang to her and they swayed in the kerosene lamplight, and finally, a large afterbirth was delivered spontaneously, right on the floor. I must remember my concept of the male vigor. Again it has worked. There’s something about male and female energy that when combined is more than the energy of either gender alone.
It was impossible to estimate blood loss because most of it happened before I got there, but when I left, the patient appeared to be recovering. Her color was better and she was nursing the baby. I gave her a spoon of Mrs. Potts’s medicine, just in case.
I was paid nothing, but Levi said he had heard about Dan’s pacifism and protest and they were praying for him.
44
October 31, 1942
Haunted House
For Halloween, we went over to Hazel Patch because Bitsy, Willie, and Lou had fixed up one of the abandoned homes as a haunted house. They’d gone to quite an effort. There were dummies made of old clothes stuffed with straw sitting on the porch, and one such scarecrow made up to look like Adolf Hitler was even hanging by the neck from the rafters.
Cobwebs made of string were tangled everywhere, complete with spiders molded from papier-mâché. The only lighting was from flickering candles placed in pumpkins with leering faces. Lou had even carried in an old hand-cranked turntable that played spooky music.
The Millers were there, and the Jacksons and their boys. Milt and Sarah Maddock came with daughter, Sonya, and there was our brood. Susie clung to me as we went from room to room, but the rest of the children ran around scaring one another.
Afterward, everyone went over to Bitsy’s for cider, two kinds of cake, and peach pie. We even bobbed for apples, and Mira was thrilled when she got one. While Bitsy and I were cleaning up the refreshments and everyone else was in the living room listening to Lou tell a ghost story, I noticed Bitsy was wearing a ring with a small red stone on her wedding finger.
“What’s up?” I indicated the ring with my eyes.
She smiled slowly, gazing at her hand. “A present,” she said. “From Lou . . . we haven’t decided what to do about marriage, and I’m still hiding the pregnancy, but I can’t keep that up much longer. Neither of us can afford to lose our jobs if old man Vipperman objects to our union, and of course we don’t want to go to jail.”
“Oh, Bitsy. No one around here would put you in jail, certainly not Sheriff Hardman.”
“Don’t be so innocent, Patience!” she shot out. “Plenty of interracial couples have been sent to prison, or worse. It doesn’t take a lawman to ruin someone’s life.”
AT HOME LATER, missing Daniel and unable to sleep, I snuck downstairs for a piece of the cake that Bitsy sent home with us, wrapped in a piece of newspaper. As I unfolded it, I glanced at an article on the front page of the Times. It was a firsthand account by a labor
er who witnessed the slaughter of thousands of Jews by the German SS in Ukraine.
According to the article, summarized from a translation in the New York Times, the man, a carpenter working on a new bridge, first saw a convoy of military trucks come by filled with men, women, and children.
“I knew at once that they must be Jews,” the laborer reported. “Because they were all wearing stars on their sleeves and I’d heard a lot of talk about the Nazis rounding them up. Soon we heard rifle shots and we ran in that direction. The people who’d been forced off the trucks were being ordered to undress by an SS man who carried a whip and flogged them like dogs. They had to put their clothes in piles, shoes here, coats there, belts, shirts, and pants.
“Without weeping or trying to escape, the people stood in family groups. They kissed each other, said farewell, and waited for another SS man with a clipboard, who stood near the pit, to call their name.
“I watched as one family of eight were herded that way. An old grandma with thin white hair was holding a one-year-old child in her arms and singing to it. The child was cooing with delight and the parents were looking on with tears in their eyes. All were shot in the head and thrown into the pit within minutes.
“When I looked down, I saw there were hundreds of the naked dead and dying Jews in the hole. Some were still moving.”
After rereading the article, I sat at the kitchen table, tears running down my face, and could no longer think of eating carrot cake. Holding the noise of my sobs back with the back of my hand, so as not to wake the children, I cried for the grandmother and the parents and the little child who didn’t know what was happening. I cried for all of those families and I cried for our family too.
There are no Nazi SS men here with a whip ordering me to strip on the edge of a mass grave in a gloomy European forest, but I stand on the edge of my own darkness, and my black anger at Daniel returns.
I’ve tried to understand, tried to be sympathetic, but was I only lying to myself about my feelings? Tonight a bond between us rips loose . . . not because he left me, but because he can’t see the enemy threatens all human decency. Hitler and the Nazis have got to be stopped, and where is my husband in this struggle against them? Self-indulgently sitting in jail with his pet Ronald, singing “I’ll Fly Away” with his jailbird friends?
Once a Midwife Page 25
