The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  “Take chairs,” Nancy told the women. “Thread you a needle and commence.” The women sat and removed their needles from their sacks or under their collars or hems or wherever they kept them. None of the women was so rich that she owned needles enough for an entire sewing circle, so each brought her own. Some were lucky to have even a spare. Nancy reached for an emery bag and pushed her needle in and out more times than was necessary. Gracy didn’t know whether she was nervous to see what the women thought of her quilt or because Gracy had shown up.

  Gracy took a chair near the center of the quilt and turned to Rebecca Richards’s sister Martha Richards, thinking how nice it would be to have a sister to quilt with—or a daughter. She’d once thought she and Emma would quilt together when the child was older. In fact, Gracy had already taught her to stitch a seam and had kept the little girl’s work folded up in a paper in the bottom of her pie safe.

  Rebecca and her sisters were married, but nonetheless, they were always referred to by their maiden name. Gracy took a deep breath. She hoped she could take the sharpness out of the air. “How’s Rebecca doing? Did she have a boy or a girl?”

  Martha was startled and looked down at the quilt in the frame, rubbing her hand across a red square. “Well, it was a girl. They named her Rebecca and call her Becky.”

  “About time,” Gracy said with a smile. “After two boys, who wouldn’t want a girl! And Becky. It’s a name to live up to. I’ll wager she’s as pretty as her mother.”

  “Oh, she is, prettier even,” the other sister said.

  “And her labor, did it go easy with her?”

  “That baby just popped out. Dr. Erickson said he never saw a baby come so quick, claimed it was the easiest baby he ever delivered…” Martha’s voice trailed off as she realized she’d admitted Rebecca had sent for the doctor instead of Gracy. She looked down at the quilt in front of her.

  “How many’s he delivered?” Mittie asked. Gracy smiled to herself as she wondered if the others had caught the sarcasm in Mittie’s voice.

  “Two,” Martha said, “including Rebecca’s.”

  At that, the women laughed, and the tension eased a little, although not much. Even Effie Ring smiled, Gracy noted. Mittie had sat down on one side of Gracy, and Effie was on the other, because her chair was the only one left when Effie reached the quilt. She had slid the chair as far away from Gracy as she could, and Gracy could feel the distance between them as if it were a gulch.

  “Is Rebecca in need of anything?” Gracy asked. “I’d have taken her some soup if I hadn’t been stove up.”

  “Oh, she has every little thing already. Our mother saw to that. Mother cannot rest content if there is a cent left in the house.”

  “She bought Rebecca a sewing machine, a washtub, and a silver spoon,” the second sister added.

  “A sewing machine!” one of the women marveled. “Why, we wouldn’t need a quilting if we had a machine that sewed.”

  “My husband said he’d buy me one, only it would make me a shirk,” Effie said.

  “Not that he ain’t a shirk hisself,” someone muttered.

  The women settled in, and the afternoon took on a familiar hum, as the quilters gossiped and talked about their children, the weather, whether the ore was running out at the Tiger Mine. After the early tension, Gracy felt more at ease.

  Following a silence, a woman observed, “This is a good place to quilt. Plenty of room for a frame.”

  “A better use for this place than on Sunday, I can tell you,” another said in a low voice. “Sunday last, the Reverend Frome preached so long you could have gone across the water on a ship by the time he finished.”

  “Where is Salome Frome?” Mittie asked after the preacher’s wife.

  “She doesn’t stitch. She reads novels. He says it disgusts him. But she will not stop reading novels, and he will not quit smoking.”

  “I believe that is called a compromise,” Gracy said.

  Then someone asked Gracy if she had heard from Jeff. “I expect your troubles will bring him home.”

  The unexpected mention of her son jolted Gracy. Jeff’s presence would indeed be a consolation, although he wasn’t likely to come. She and Daniel hadn’t heard from the boy since he left out. So he wouldn’t know about the Halleck baby. She’d let folks think that Jeff had gotten it in his head to see the world, but she suspected they had gossiped that his abrupt departure was something more. “He’s not one for writing. And I expect he moves around some. I’m not sure just where he is now,” she said. Jeff had said he wouldn’t write, but still, Gracy had hoped he would. She needed that little bit of contact from him.

  The women let that answer satisfy them and did not inquire further. They were silent again until someone remarked, “Such a beautiful top.” It wasn’t, Gracy noted, and that was the reason she did not look forward to stitching on the quilt. The design was only a Nine Patch, the colors clashed, and some of the fabric was so worn out it wouldn’t survive more than two or three washings. And Nancy Culpin was not known for her fine stitching. The sashing was askew, and the pieces in the blocks didn’t fit properly. But not for the world would one of the women criticize Nancy’s quilting. There was nothing that insulted a woman more than to say her stitching wasn’t perfect.

  “That purple next to orange, it looks like sunrise,” Gracy said. The others murmured agreement, although the colors together looked as bad as a dog’s dinner.

  “It’s just like nature. Why, look at the flowers over there by the altar, red and orange and pink together. I believe the Lord likes every color,” Nancy said. “Did you ever see so many flowers for a burying? Some got sent up from Denver on the stage.”

  “I never seen so many folks at a service,” another woman observed.

  “Well, they didn’t care so much about that poor baby passing from death into life eternal as they was curious. There’s not been but one murder in Swandyke since I came here, and when you think it was a baby killed by a midwife, why, a funeral will draw folks like a fat lady at a circus,” Effie said.

  Gracy shuddered. She couldn’t help herself. Nancy said, “Effie!”

  “Oh … I … oh…” She turned to Gracy. “Oh, aren’t I the little goose. I forgot you were here.”

  The others glanced at Gracy, then looked away.

  “There’s too many folks not minding their own business,” Mittie observed.

  “I’ve been told there’s a hearing next week, and that’s everybody’s business. You know I didn’t mean anything by what I said,” Effie remarked, but Gracy knew better. What’s more, she knew the others in the room did, too.

  “No, none of us mean it, Gracy,” Nancy insisted. “We’ll have to ask you to forgive us, treating you like you murdered a baby when I for one know you’d do no such thing. You’d think we hadn’t known you for ten, fifteen years. I’m ashamed I haven’t called on you.” She took a few sloppy stitches in her quilt.

  Some of the others nodded in agreement, but not all, and they included Effie. She yanked her needle through the quilt so hard that the thread broke.

  “Effie?” Nancy said.

  “I don’t know no such thing. There’s a baby dead, and Edna Halleck said Gracy did it. I never knew Edna to be a liar.”

  Gracy kept her eyes on her needle, although her hand shook.

  “And I never knew Gracy to be anything but healing,” Nancy said.

  “Did Edna say she saw Gracy kill that baby?” Mittie asked.

  The women were silent, thinking. “I never heard her say it,” Martha said.

  “Well, she didn’t deny it. It’s the same thing. Besides, Coy Chaney said she told him Gracy done it,” Effie said.

  “Oh, Mr. Chaney,” Mittie said, waving her needle, as if to dismiss the man’s words.

  Effie didn’t reply, just licked the end of her thread and pushed it through the eye of her needle. She knotted the other end of the thread, then took a stitch, pulling her needle through the fabric and scraping it against Gracy’s a
rm, drawing pinpricks of blood. “I heard Edna and Josie agreed with Mr. Halleck that Gracy killed the baby.”

  Gracy barely felt the scratch. She was staring at her own needle, which had dipped down through the quilt sandwich of top, batting, and backing, and up again. She stared at her shaking hands, the gold wedding ring nearly worn through. Her hands were thin, the skin loose and veins prominent as worms, and they were rough and dotted with dark spots. Old hands. She thought of those other hands, smooth as a newborn’s, the nails trimmed, the gold ring with a faceted stone that glittered like fire. A diamond, she supposed it was. She roused herself, wondered why her mind had brought that up just then. Perhaps it was to block out Effie’s words. She didn’t know how to respond.

  “There’s plenty of men out there that agree Gracy’s guilty,” Effie finished.

  “Plenty of men that was never in a room where a woman gave birth. What would they know?” Mittie asked.

  “Besides, men agree with Mr. Halleck or they clam up. That man could make discord in Eden,” Nancy told them. She stood and said it was time to roll the finished end of the quilt over the edge of the frame to expose an unquilted portion. So the women got up and stretched to get the kinks out of their backs and turned to small talk. One said it was a shame they couldn’t sit outside in the churchyard and quilt, the weather being so good. Why, come winter, they’d look back on that fine day and be sorry they’d wasted it.

  “A day’s never wasted when we’re quilting,” another said.

  Nancy came over to Gracy and whispered, “They don’t disesteem you. They are just uncomfortable with this squally business.”

  “You are given to kind remarks,” Gracy replied, grateful for the unexpected support from Nancy. The woman had never been a close friend, and Gracy was surprised Nancy had sided with her. Others, some of whom she had considered friends, would not be so kind. Marianna Martin, whose baby Gracy had delivered in that very room years before, had not said a word. She had been Gracy’s good friend and was much admired by the others.

  The women sat down at the quilt and began to gossip once more. Gracy didn’t pay them much attention until one announced she had seen Swede Olson’s wife on the street, looking like she had a ham under her coat. “I expect she’ll be calling for the Sagehen shortly.”

  “Why, she hasn’t been married six months,” a woman said sourly. “I saw her talking to that young doctor, so maybe you won’t have to do for her, Gracy.”

  Gracy didn’t respond. The pregnant woman had come to her months before, begging Gracy to end her pregnancy, saying she didn’t want to marry such a man as Swede, who was foulmouthed and taken with himself, although he was handsome as a racehorse. Gracy had given her herbs, but they hadn’t helped, and now Gracy felt responsible for the young woman marrying a man she didn’t love.

  Others who might have been her patients would seek out the doctor now. Perhaps she wouldn’t have to make that decision about whether she would continue as a midwife. The murder charge was destroying the reputation she had spent years building. Fewer and fewer women would come to her until there wouldn’t be any at all. So she would not die in her boots. Instead, Gracy would empty out her medicine bag and put it away. The births would fade in her mind, although the deaths she would always remember. She would think about them as she stitched out her days, an old dotty thing piecing quilts for brides and for babies that others delivered, wishing she could make one for a grandchild, but not for herself, for she and Daniel had enough quilts to last.

  “Well, I for one wouldn’t want anybody else to attend me. I’d have my husband deliver my baby before I’d go to that doctor who thinks so kindly of hisself,” a woman said, and the others laughed. “Of course, that ain’t no thing for you to worry about, Gracy, me being an old peahen.”

  “It’s the thought that counts,” Mittie spoke up.

  “Is there going to be a trial, Gracy?” a woman asked.

  Suddenly, the women were still. There wasn’t so much as a cough or the sound of a needle squeaking through the fabric. Gracy herself stopped quilting and stared at a piece of yard goods so worn you could see clear through it. Why would anyone use old material like that? she wondered. She turned her mind back to the conversation and slowly looked up, wishing the talk had moved away from her. “I can’t say for certain,” she said at last. “It will depend on what happens at the hearing. If the judge decides there’s enough evidence against me, he’ll order a trial. Sheriff Miller’s collected evidence—”

  “The idea!” Nancy interrupted, but Gracy held up her hand.

  “He has to. Like he says, it’s his job. My guess is he’s got enough for a trial. And if the judge agrees, then the trial will be held the next time the court’s here in Swandyke.”

  “Well, won’t nobody find you guilty,” Mittie said.

  “But if Jonas Halleck says…” one of the quilters muttered, letting her voice trail away.

  “That man’s heart is as cold as a banker’s,” Mittie broke in.

  “Maybe Edna will stand up for you, Gracy,” Nancy said. “Maybe she’ll say it was an accident.”

  “You think she’d defy her husband?” Martha asked. “I’d as soon put my hand in a snake’s mouth as do that. And Edna…” She shrugged, and women nodded. Edna would melt in front of her husband just like a dish of butter left in the sun.

  “What about Josie?” Nancy asked.

  “Now there’s your goose,” Martha scoffed.

  “She’s an odd one, all right. She wanders. I’ve seen her up toward Mayflower Gulch, all by herself. Now what’s she doing up there?” a woman Gracy did not know asked.

  “And she don’t like to quilt.”

  The women smiled. What better proof was there that something was wrong with the girl?

  “Maybe she did it, Gracy. Did you ever think of that?” Nancy suggested. “Maybe she didn’t like having a brother.”

  “Not Josie. She’s too kindhearted. I know she took home three baby rabbits after a fox got their mother, raised them until Mr. Halleck turned them out,” came a reply.

  “Her mind might have snapped if her father bragged to her about finally having an heir, somebody he’d leave the Holy Cross to one day.”

  “It’ll be out of ore by then,” Marianna said, speaking for the first time. The others laughed.

  Nancy ran her hand over the quilt, smoothing it. “He never had any use for Josie, treated her worthless.”

  “It’s funny Mr. Halleck never talked about that baby until after it was dead. Did anybody ever hear him say he was hoping for an heir?” Mittie asked. “I never heard of him saying it until after he brought the baby to Mr. Chaney.”

  A woman at the end of the quilt looked up and remarked that Mr. Halleck had never been heard to say his wife was pregnant. “You’d think he’d be a-braggin’ about it.”

  “Maybe that’s Edna,” Martha said. “You know how she is, hiding like she done so’s nobody’d know she was pregnant, so nobody’d know what she and Mr. Halleck were up to. She’d like to believe you picked babies off a tree, like plums.” The others laughed at that, and one woman muttered, “I’d a lot rather pick plums than sleep with Jonas Halleck.” They were earthy women, and Edna Halleck’s fastidious ways made them uncomfortable.

  Mittie made a knot and nipped off her thread. “Well, I’d hide out, too, if I’d done the thing with Mr. Halleck.”

  “Time to turn,” Nancy said, getting up. “I brung a surprise. I brung gingerbread because I know I’m a better cook than I am a quilter.”

  There were a few protests, the women saying that Nancy was a fine quilter, but they knew she was not. They were grateful for a chance to get away from the frame for a minute. Nancy cut the gingerbread and handed around the squares. There were no plates or forks or napkins, and one woman said she’d get a pail of water so they could wash the crumbs off their hands. After all, they wouldn’t want to soil Nancy’s quilt.

  The woman went outside for the water while the others chatted and
picked crumbs off their hands and their bosoms. The door opened, and Gracy, her back to it, paid no attention until she realized the others had grown silent. She turned around.

  Edna Halleck stood in the doorway, Josie behind her. Edna looked around the room, dropping her eyes when she came to Gracy, but Josie stared at the midwife. The girl’s face was drawn, and when she raised her hands to her mouth, her fingers tightened into fists. Despite Josie’s haggard look, Gracy could see that the girl was beautiful. Gracy had never paid much attention to Josie until that day in the Halleck house when she had examined the baby, and now she noted that Josie had hair the color of clotted cream, so pale it was almost white, and it set off her black eyes and fine nose and wide mouth. Gracy had never seen such coloring. The girl was small and slender, with tiny hands and feet. Any man would have been drawn to her, one anyway. Gracy thought of the baby, which did not look like the girl but instead had been the spit of his father. She wanted to hold Josie to herself, just as she had Josie’s baby, but she kept her hands to her sides.

  “Oh, I did not know about the quilting,” Edna said. “I thought to bring back some flowers, to press…” She did not look at the women when she spoke but instead kept her eyes on the quilt.

  The silence in the room was as loud as the stamps in a mill, and Edna’s words hovered in the air. The women shifted their eyes to each other, sending furtive glances at Gracy and then at Edna.

  Gracy herself did not know what to do, what to say. She should have been prepared for Edna, thought it out ahead, practiced some words in her mind. But she felt numb. She stared at the woman for a long time, but after that quick glance, Edna would not look back at her. “Edna…” Gracy said at last.

  Edna looked up then. “Gracy … I … Gracy…” she said. “Oh, the sin of it!” She raised her hands to her face, but she did not cry. She seemed to steel herself, then turned and fled while Gracy wrapped her arms around her body to keep from shaking. She had hoped Edna might have said something, perhaps broken down and admitted she’d seen her husband strangle the baby.