The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  Lucy would be afraid there was something wrong with this baby, too, and Gracy would have to reassure her. Lucy would blame herself if she lost another child, would think she was cursed, which could make her go strange in her mind. That meant this birth had to go well. Gracy hoped for Lucy’s sake—and for her growing reputation as a midwife—that the baby would live, that it would be normal.

  The sister, Marjorie, scooted up onto her mule. Gracy handed up her bag then climbed onto the mule herself, and the two rode bareback, through a meadow, over the hills, and down into a hollow. It was near dark when they arrived, and Gracy wondered if the baby might have gotten there ahead of them. After all, it had taken two hours for Marjorie to ride for Gracy and for the two to return to the house.

  But that had not happened. The cabin was crowded. Black Mary stood at the end of the bed, two of Lucy’s sisters on either side, one wiping Lucy’s brow with a damp rag, the other rubbing Lucy’s back. An old man, Black Mary’s husband, rocked beside the fireplace, a pipe in his mouth, a jug on the floor beside him, calm as if the woman in the bed were doing no more than taking a nap.

  Then Gracy glanced at the man standing next to Black Mary’s husband, a young bull calf with hair the color of ginger and shoulders as broad as a roof beam. And hips! Gracy always did like hips in a man. He slouched against the cabin wall, staring at her with eyes the smoky blue of a bluebird. He was Lucy’s husband, Gracy thought, and one to give a wife trouble. She almost shivered as she caught his look, him standing there as proud as the Lord Hal, a smile on his lips. Oh, he was the kind of man who could claim a girl’s heart as easy as picking a flower, but one who’d bring her heartache. Lucy would be hard put to keep him at home, a man like that who could make a girl feel she was the Queen of Turkey, but a man who would be tempted, who would stray. He could put his wife in her grave. Gracy looked at him a little too long before she went to the bed to examine Lucy.

  “You men get along now,” Gracy ordered. Her voice sounded weak to her, and she cleared her throat to put more authority into it. The ginger-haired man was Lucy’s husband and none of her business, and lucky for that Gracy was. For a second, Gracy wondered what it would be like to kiss him. “You men go outside,” she repeated, her voice stronger.

  At Gracy’s orders, Black Mary’s husband stood, then reached down for the jug. “Come along, boys. We don’t want to be here nohow.”

  “But I’m Lucy’s husband,” a man sitting beside the bed said.

  Gracy had not noticed him until then, and she stared.

  “I can’t leave her now,” he added.

  “I thought…” She turned to the other man.

  “That’s our brother Daniel,” Marjorie spoke up.

  “You seen him before. He was there when Ma birthed Marjorie,” Lucy said from the bed.

  Gracy turned and stared. She remembered him now, remembered him as a runt, a boy hardly worth noticing. As if knowing what she thought, Daniel grinned and tilted his head a little. “I guess we’ll be outside,” he told her. “You come get us when she’s done.”

  He glanced at the dime Gracy wore around her neck. She’d pierced it with an awl and threaded a leather string through the hole and had worn it until it was almost a part of her. Now she remembered that Daniel had given her the dime, her first payment as a midwife. She’d thought it would bring her luck, which was why she never took it off. The last fingers that had touched it so long ago were his, she thought. Daniel lowered his eyes to take her in, then went out the door, Gracy staring at his hips as he left. If hips is what you want, then hips is what you’ll get, Nabby had told her.

  Just then a pain seized Lucy, and Gracy turned to her and all but forgot the young man who had made her quiver. Nothing was more important than the baby.

  She put the man out of her mind as she asked Marjorie to fetch a basin of water and then took out the clean cloths she’d brought and gave them to another sister to warm by the fire. She examined Lucy and told the girl that the baby wasn’t ready to be born just then. “Don’t push yet. It’s too early,” she instructed.

  The women in the room knew what to do. Women always knew, Gracy thought. They kept the fire going so the cabin wouldn’t get cold. They cooed to Lucy and one sang hymns in a voice as sweet as a mockingbird’s. Marjorie placed an axe under the bed to cut her sister’s pain. Black Mary massaged her daughter’s arms and legs, while the others pulled up chairs and talked in low voices. Every now and then, Lucy’s husband opened the door and peered inside, but Black Mary told him, “Not yet. She’s got a lot more pain ahead of her. You think about that next time you’re wanting to rut.” Black Mary turned to those inside. “All men’s good for is keeping up the species.” The women laughed. They were earthy people, devoid of refinement.

  Gracy was one of them, and she wasn’t. She was born into a family like this one, but she’d been raised by a woman who’d gone to school, who’d insisted she speak and act properly. Still, the ways of the hill people didn’t bother her. She liked to sit with the women while they made their remarks, joking about their men.

  Women came together best at childbirth, Gracy thought. They forgot about chores that needed doing and worked to aid and comfort one of their own through her pain. They joyed together at the birth and sorrowed together when something went wrong.

  She turned to see that an old woman had seated herself in the vacant rocker and taken out her piecing. Was there a woman in those mountains who didn’t carry bits of material in her pocket, a precious needle pinning them together? Gracy herself brought her quilt pieces to a childbed, although she rarely had time to sit and stitch. Nabby had taught her to quilt, and as with most things she taught, Nabby had insisted Gracy do it right. Nabby’s cabin held no heavy quilts made from big squares cut from men’s britches. The old woman insisted her quilts be pretty, made from good fabric, the pieces uniform, put together so that the corners were square. And the stitching! Nabby had stitches as fine as a baby’s eyelashes. She taught Gracy to sew the same way, with small, even stitches, and perhaps that was why when Gracy had to sew up a cut, the jagged edges of skin came together perfectly, her stitches as uniform as the ones on a quilt.

  Gracy had started her quilts when she was just a tot of a girl, using Nabby’s patterns—stars mostly. But after a time, she dreamed up her own designs. She took her patterns from leaves and plowed fields and the shapes of clouds. Nobody she knew made such quilts. Other women thought Gracy’s quilts strange, but after a while, they came to like them. They fingered the abstract lines that represented rows of corn and the shapes that were goats and chickens. If Gracy had been a prideful woman, she would have preened over those quilts. But she was not taken much with self-worth and shrugged off the compliments.

  Now she took a moment to peer at the old woman’s quilt square, a nine-patch made from faded material salvaged from worn-out clothing. “For the baby,” the old woman said. “I am some behind because there was a baby born last week and one the week before. I am hard-pressed to keep up.”

  “You are Black Mary’s mother,” Gracy said.

  The woman shook her head. “Lucy’s husband’s mother, come to bear witness to my grandson’s birth.”

  Gracy grinned. “A boy, then.”

  “Of course. First one in our family’s always a boy. Name’ll be King David. My son’s Jesse, and King David’s the son of Jesse.”

  “Does Lucy know that?” Gracy asked.

  “That’s the way of it. Ain’t her business.”

  “Oh.”

  “Saw you looking at Daniel. Best to keep away. His kind’ll tear your heart out and stomp it flat.”

  “I don’t know him. I haven’t been over in these hills much since Marjorie was born.”

  “You will. There’s something draws you two together. I saw it. You could no more stay away from him than you could stop birthing babies. Same with him. There’s just things that are. You and Daniel’s one of them.”

  “That’s foolishness,” Gracy said, her f
ace red as she turned back to the woman on the bed.

  “Maybe so, maybe not. Myself, I think it’s better to have a love so great it breaks your heart than a little one that brings no pleasure. The Lord’ll make you earn your sorrow with that one. He’ll keep you to a hardship. You will set out with bright anticipations, but you are doomed to disappointment and will have a dreadful time of it.” She sighed and muttered, “No Cross on earth, no crown in heaven.”

  It was only his hips, Gracy thought. She had a weakness for hips. That was all.

  Gracy lost herself then in caring for the young woman on the bed. She put her thoughts behind her to tend the mother and babe, tend them wholeheartedly. The baby came quickly now, and when she caught him with hands still as small as a girl’s—a boy, as the grandmother had prophesied—she was as happy as if she’d given birth herself. She studied the child a moment, checked him over before she put him into Black Mary’s outstretched arms.

  “Is he … is he all right?” Lucy asked from the bed. Her face was flushed, and she was covered with perspiration.

  “Of course he’s all right,” Black Mary thundered, before Gracy could answer.

  But Lucy had addressed the question to Gracy and waited for the midwife’s reply.

  “He is at that,” Gracy said. “He’s as perfect as sunrise.”

  Black Mary tied off the cord and reached for Gracy’s scissors, and when Gracy nodded, Black Mary cut the cord, then handed the baby around, while Gracy tended to the new mother. When all was done, Gracy took the baby back and handed him to Lucy. “See for yourself,” she said. Then she whispered, “Better name him quick, before your husband does.”

  “I favor Abner,” she said. Lucy held the baby against her breast, then looked around the room. “Where’s Jesse?”

  Black Mary offered to fetch him and threw open the door. “Best come in. See what you wrought, Jesse,” she called.

  The father rushed into the room, then stopped and gazed at his son.

  “A boy,” Black Mary told him.

  Jesse tiptoed to the bed and smiled at his wife, who showed him the baby.

  “King David,” Jesse said as he touched the top of the baby’s head with his finger.

  “I favor Abner,” Lucy told him.

  “King David’s the son of Jesse.”

  “Abner’s the son of Lucy,” the new mother said stubbornly.

  “I always thought King David—”

  “You name the next one. And you give birth to him, too, give birth through your ear. Them that has the baby names it,” Black Mary told Jesse, fire in her eye. Lucy nodded. She was her mother’s daughter.

  For a moment, Jesse stared at his mother-in-law, then muttered, “Abner. Abner’s the son of Jesse.”

  Gracy was amused at the exchange, thinking Lucy would do all right. The women in that family were a strong-minded lot. Maybe the men were, too. She glanced around the room. Old Man Brookens, Lucy’s father, had come back inside, but Daniel was nowhere to be seen. It was just as well, she thought. She didn’t want a bullheaded man. Besides, the old woman by the fire had talked foolishness.

  Gracy gathered up her things. There was no need to stay longer, since Lucy had her mother and sisters to look after her. The new mother was healthy, would be out of bed long before the ten days of confinement were past. Maybe it was a good thing. In her place, Gracy wouldn’t have stayed abed for even more than a minute. She laughed to think of herself lying on a quilt for days after childbirth. “I’ll be going now. I’ll come back in a few days, but if you need me before then, you send Marjorie for me,” Gracy said.

  The others barely noticed she was leaving, and Marjorie made no move to go for the mule. Gracy would have to walk. But she was used to it, even after a night spent with a woman in labor. She was young and healthy, and she loved the air in the hills, the wind that thrashed the leaves like a woman in labor, the flowers along the road, bright as colored glass. Besides, sooner or later, someone would come along and offer her a ride. She went out onto the porch and stared at the mountains that were black against the dawn light. It wasn’t unusual for her to leave as the sun came up. Dawn was her favorite time of day. God birthed the world then, she thought. She stepped down off the porch, and as she did so, someone grabbed her bag.

  “I’ll see you home,” Daniel said.

  Gracy, startled, hadn’t expected him to be there. “No need,” she said. “I can walk it.”

  “I expect you can. I expect you can do most anything you set your mind to, but it’s far off, and the mule’s getting lazy. I’m a good hand with mules. Horses, too.” He paused, and Gracy thought he might have smiled at her, but it was too dark to see. “I don’t reckon Jesse paid you, did he?”

  “It’s all right. Maybe they’ll send a jar of honey. The honey up here is awful good.”

  Daniel snorted. “Honey. That’s no pay for a night’s work.” He reached into his pocket and took out a five-dollar gold piece and handed it to her.

  “It’s too much. I never got paid five dollars in my life.”

  “But you got paid a dime once.” He reached up and touched the dime hanging from Gracy’s neck, then left his hand there, warm against her flesh.

  “The dime means more than the five-dollar piece,” she said. “It’s the one you gave me, you know. I expect you had to work maybe a month—maybe a year—to earn it.”

  “I thought you’d want more. I thought you’d throw it back to me.”

  Gracy looked up at Daniel, and his hand fell away. “It’s the first money I ever earned, the best I ever earned, too. It gave me my calling.”

  “I guess you won’t want to be anything but an old granny woman then,” he said, teasing. “There aren’t many fellows who’d want to take to wife a woman who’d put other people’s kids before him.”

  “He’d have to understand, although I wouldn’t want a man to feel second place.”

  “It’d take an awful big man for that.”

  Are you such a man? Gracy wanted to ask. But she was silent. A question like that would have been pert, would have shown she had a fondness for Daniel. Besides, she was not one to flirt, never had been. While the girls she had grown up with were already married, already mothers, Gracy had never had a way with men. She was too straightforward, too brusque. She was never fond of silly talk. Oh, boys had asked to walk her home from church. They had stopped by Nabby’s cabin a time or two, asking if Gracy needed help chopping wood. But she had pointed to the woodpile she’d stacked cabin-high and said she was fine. They’d suggested a walk up the hillside to where the azaleas bloomed, but she’d nodded at the azaleas beside the barn and said she could see the blossoms from where she stood. Nabby had smiled and warned Gracy she wasn’t likely to catch a husband by turning down courting. But Nabby had never married, and Gracy saw no need for a husband for herself. He’d only get in the way of her calling.

  “You could do both,” Nabby said. “No reason not to. Plenty of midwives are married.”

  “I don’t know of a man who suits,” Gracy replied.

  Now, as Daniel helped her onto the mule, Gracy wondered if he would suit. He climbed up in front of her, and Gracy leaned against him, one arm holding her bag against her leg. Maybe he would, she thought. But it was likely he was doing no more than playing with her. He was as handsome a man as she’d ever seen, a man who could have any girl. Why would he choose her? She’d become a tall, bony woman, thin, her skin the color of white clay. Well, she did have nice legs, she told herself, better than most girls, trim ankles and slender calves. But it wasn’t likely Daniel would ever know it—or any man, for that matter. The old woman was wrong. A man as striking as Daniel would never choose her. She would have to guard her heart.

  They rode along easily, neither feeling the need to talk. Every now and then, Daniel pointed to a ridge of mountains that was lavender in the early light or a white-tailed deer hiding in the trees. He nodded at a burning bush and told her Black Mary called it hearts-a-bustin’-with-love. Onc
e he stopped to take in the sunrise, a glorious sky with pick clouds edged with purple. Gracy’d never known a man to appreciate a sunrise like that.

  “Makes me wish I was a painter,” he said.

  “Are you?”

  Daniel shook his head. “But I’ve seen paintings, big ones.”

  “Where?”

  “Oh, I’ve been here and there. I don’t intend to spend my life farming these hills.”

  “Where would you go?” Gracy had never been more than twenty miles from Nabby’s cabin and had never thought of leaving Arkansas.

  “I’ve been to Kentucky and Georgia. I even went to the nation’s capital, and I have in mind to make it to New York. I’ve seen buildings as tall as that pine tree.”

  “No,” Gracy said in awe. She couldn’t imagine such a thing.

  “You ever thought of going someplace else?”

  “I would like to go to Washington City and see President Jackson.”

  Daniel turned around and glanced at her. “You know who the President is then. Most girls don’t.”

  “I’ve been to school. I never saw the sense of being stupid.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would.”

  “You’re leaving Arkansas then?” Gracy hoped he didn’t sense the disappointment in her voice.

  “Oh, not just yet. But someday.”

  The bag was awkward, and Gracy switched it to her other arm. Would she ever leave? It wasn’t Arkansas that held her so much. It was her work. And Nabby. She could be a midwife anywhere, but Nabby was old and tired. She needed caring, and Gracy wouldn’t leave her. All she was she owed to Nabby. She smiled to herself. This was foolishness. Daniel was giving her a ride home. He wasn’t asking her to go away with him. Gracy rarely had such silly thoughts, only sometimes late at night, walking home after a birthing, one in which the father shared his wife’s pain, sat by her side and wiped her tears and cried a little himself. Those times, she dreamed of a home, a cabin chinked so tight the strongest wind couldn’t get through, a chimney that didn’t smoke, maybe a cookstove; she’d heard of them. There would be children, one of them a girl who would learn the skills of a midwife. All those dreams had been vague, however. There was no man’s face in them. And there were times when Gracy thought that like Nabby, she would never marry, for she had not fancied any man.