The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  “I should have told you a long time ago, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “Not hurt me? Then why did you do it, Danny? What did I do wrong?”

  Daniel, uncomfortable, rubbed his hand across his eyes. “Nothing,” he mumbled. “You never really needed me. She does. Especially now, with the baby coming.”

  “The baby,” Gracy repeated softly. That was where she had failed him. Her babies had been flawed, had died at birth or before. Only little Emma, the child she had raised but not given birth to, had lived, and then she’d passed on barely into girlhood. Gracy had lost that sweet child, and now she was losing Daniel, too.

  “You know I’ve always wanted a son, and now I will have one,” Daniel said. “She’s healthy, Jennie is, and he will be a strong boy.”

  Daniel looked almost proud then, and Gracy hated him for it. “And what about me?” She cringed at the whine in her voice.

  “You can stay here. You can have the house,” he said, as if he did not remember that they hadn’t bought the house but only rented it. “You have your work. You could go back to Arkansas if you wanted.”

  “Go back? A divorced woman?” Gracy remembered the one woman at home who had divorced her husband for beating her and how she was considered not much better than a whore. She couldn’t go back. She would never let her family know Daniel had left her. “We could try again,” she said, hating the begging in her voice.

  Daniel shook his head. “Not with the baby coming. I’m sorry.” He reached for her hand, but Gracy snatched it away.

  “When will you leave?”

  “Now. There’s no reason to wait, since you know.” He stood up. “I’ll get my things.”

  Like that, just like that. An hour before, she had been a married woman, but in minutes, Gracy would be alone. Daniel had called it deep enough. He hadn’t even given her a chance. She watched as her husband stuffed his shirts and pants into a flour sack. Then she got up and took the clothing from him, folding it properly and placing it in the bag, thinking she did not want him to arrive at the woman’s house with his clothes rumpled, nearly laughing at the idea of it. Surely no other woman in the world would pack her husband’s clothes when he was leaving her.

  Daniel reached into his pocket and took out a handful of gold coins, laying them on the table, while Gracy wondered if that was the way he’d paid whores. “I won’t let you starve,” he said. He laughed. “You’ll have to insist the women you attend pay you now.”

  “But there is plenty of money from the sale of the mine,” Gracy said.

  “There’s not so much money left. But I’ll pay for the divorce. You won’t have to.”

  “Divorce?” Gracy asked. She stiffened, thinking she would hold out. “There won’t be a divorce. Not yet.”

  Daniel shrugged. “We’ll talk about it later.” He picked up his bag and went to the door. “I’m sorry, Gracy. I won’t leave you helpless. If you need anything, you let me know.”

  She didn’t reply, only watched as Daniel walked out of the yard and up the hill, watched until he disappeared, thinking she didn’t even know where he would live. Where would she go if she needed something from him? But she would never ask. The only thing she needed was Daniel, and he was gone. As she turned from the doorway, she glanced at the stove, where one lid lay on the black stovetop. Daniel had not replaced it when he threw the letter onto the ashes. She removed the crumpled paper, smoothed it, and placed it in her Bible with the first letter. Then she held the Bible to her chest and sobbed, a gaunt, graying woman whose world was borrasca. The sin was his, she remembered Nabby warning her. The sin was Daniel’s. But why was she the one to suffer so?

  Twenty

  Mittie stared into her coffee cup as Gracy paused, unable to continue. Mittie said in a low voice, “I been afraid my husband would leave me, too, because I couldn’t have a baby.”

  “That was only part of it, I think. It was an excuse,” Gracy said. “Daniel would have left me anyway.”

  “Did he truly love her?”

  Gracy thought that over. “I don’t like to think it, but I believe he did. Maybe in a different way than he did me. I believe now that it was because she was young, and she made him feel like the world was ahead of him. But like you say, there was the baby. He wanted a son.”

  “Well, who would know it now?” Mitt asked hotly. “He treats you like the Queen of Turkey.”

  “Yes, he does. He does at that,” Gracy said. “I’ve let the coffee get cold.” She got up and threw the remains of her coffee out the door and picked up the pot from where it was warming on a trivet in the ashes. “I forgot. We’ve a can of milk, if you want it. I’ve been thinking maybe the babies would like that better than the powder. But it’s costly, so best if they’ll take the powder.”

  At the mention of the boys, Mittie rose and went to the cradle, staring down at the babies, who were sleeping.

  “Their mother must have give them a wash before she went hunting,” Mittie said. “She took good care of them.” She leaned over and touched the hair on Tommy’s head, which wasn’t much longer than a day’s growth of beard. “You think she killed herself apurpose?”

  “We’ll never know.”

  “I can’t believe it. Why would she go off and leave them?” Mittie came back to the table and sat. “I don’t need milk, but I’d like a bit more of the coffee, if it wouldn’t rob you.”

  Gracy poured the brew into Mittie’s cup, and Mittie doctored it with sugar, tasting the coffee, then stirring in a little more sugar.

  “I might have a little sweeting myself,” Gracy said, pouring her own coffee, then reaching for the spooner. She took out a silver spoon, her best one, with “Mother 1878” engraved on it. Daniel had given it to her.

  The two sat quietly for a moment. Then Mittie jumped up. “I forgot about your supper. I’ll dish it up for you.”

  Gracy put out her hand. “Later.” She was afraid if she took the time to eat, she wouldn’t finish telling Mittie about Virginia City before Daniel and Jeff returned. Darkness was coming on.

  “I would like to hear the rest of your story, if it wouldn’t trouble you to tell it,” Mittie said.

  “No, it wouldn’t. I just needed to rest my heart for a moment. Like I said, I’ve never told it to a soul, except to Jeff when he demanded it. But even then, I didn’t tell him about my pain.”

  “He knows.”

  “I’m not so sure. He’s young.” But perhaps Jeff did know pain. She hoped he wouldn’t say again that he needed to talk to her. Best to leave the past—all of the past—alone.

  Gracy picked up her cup, and this time, she drank up the coffee. “Besides, I’m not sure men understand about that kind of heartache.” One of the babies cried out, and she glanced at the cradle, but the boy settled down. Gracy began to talk again.

  * * *

  After Daniel left her, Gracy stayed inside the cabin for days, barely eating, not sweeping the floor or tending her garden, rousing herself only when a woman came to her for help. Only in childbirth did she forget her troubles. But they came back to her when the birthings were over, hit her as she walked home carrying her bag. She searched the faces of the women on the streets, wondering if one was Jennie, thinking she would recognize her but knowing she would not.

  Weeks later, she passed a saloon and glanced inside to see Daniel sitting at a table with a woman beside him, her back to the street. Gracy stared through the window, hoping the woman would turn around. And then she did for an instant, and Gracy saw that she had hair the pale gold of winter sun and a face that was white and luminous. Gracy touched her own sunburned face with her hand, then felt her coarse hair, and a feeling of despair came over her, for she would never be that woman with Daniel, and never had been. She did not know if she felt better or worse that Jennie was a beauty. She saw Daniel slip his hand to her swollen stomach, and Gracy turned away. The moment was too intimate, too painful. She would not walk that way again.

  After that, Gracy
looked for the woman in the stores, even at church. She couldn’t help herself. Once she saw Daniel and Jennie in the distance, and Gracy turned into a store to avoid them, smiling a little later because it was a tobacco shop, and she had had to busy herself with the pipes and cigars and tobacco pouches until the couple passed by.

  Another time, she saw Jennie in a drugstore. The young woman smiled and stepped aside to let Gracy make her purchase first, perhaps knowing who Gracy was, but more likely not. Jennie was buying face cream and powder and a vial of perfume, which she held in her tiny hand, moving it a little so that the clear stone in her ring caught the light and flashed color. But it was not the extravagances—items Gracy herself had never bought—that bothered her as much as seeing Jennie’s belly and knowing Daniel’s baby grew inside. Jennie would have been seven or eight months along then, and if not for the size of the baby, no one would have known she was pregnant. Her hands and face were still slender, and she had not bloated or grown splotchy as some women did late in pregnancy—as Gracy herself had. Jennie was tiny, not much bigger than a child, and when she spoke, her voice was soft. There was much about her to admire, and Gracy had to admit it was little wonder that Daniel had fallen in love with such a creature.

  Gracy encountered Daniel, too. He came to the house on occasion to retrieve something he had left behind or to ask if she was in need. Once he left her a sack of plums, perhaps remembering how she loved them. Other times, she returned home to find money lying on the table and knew he had been there. It wasn’t much money, however, and Gracy struggled to pay for her keep. She might not have made it if John Miller hadn’t helped, making sure her wood was in, that the windows and doors were tight against the wind, nailing down a carpet he had picked up somewhere. She was grateful, because she knew the winter would be so cold she would dread to sleep alone.

  “He’s a fool for cutting out, Gracy. He should have governed himself,” John told her.

  “You judge too harshly,” she replied.

  “By the living God, you are some woman! Only you could defend such a man,” he said. “I find him detestable.”

  As the days went on and she knew Daniel would not return, Gracy gave thought to how she would keep herself. Elizabeth suggested she could nurse or perhaps take sick miners into her house to convalesce. But Gracy didn’t like that idea. What if they had illnesses she could carry to a newborn? Maybe she could sell the herbs that she gathered in the hills and dried. She could ask her sisters in Arkansas to send those that didn’t grow in Nevada, order others from a catalogue. After all, she stocked the concoctions that helped a woman get pregnant, those that prevented conception, even the ones that sometimes brought on a miscarriage. Now she could add to her stores, finding herbs to treat catarrh and chilblains and cancer.

  She even considered leaving Nevada, going back to California or someplace in the South. Virginia City was harsh and loud, the hillsides ugly with mines and glory holes, and the town was bawdy and godforsaken. But Daniel was there, and for that reason, Gracy could not leave. They might not ever be together again, but there was a bond between them. They had shared so much. He had seen her deliver her first baby, had given her the dime she wore around her neck. They had been young together. They would always be a part of each other. She couldn’t break that tie, not yet. And so she stayed on in the little house alone, hoping she would see Daniel when she ventured out—and hoping, too, that she would not, for even a glimpse gave her an overwhelming sense of loss that sent her into days of misery.

  Gracy was not aware of time passing. Daniel had left her in the heat of summer, and now the wind was blowing down off the mountains, bringing a chill that settled in Gracy’s bones. It surprised her that winter was coming on. Had Daniel been gone that long? She split the wood herself, stacking it beside the door. She pieced quilts, for she had no one to warm her in the nighttime cold. But she no longer made the figured quilts that had brought so much admiration. Instead, she pieced only string quilts from leftover scraps, because the quilts were only for herself.

  Food did not matter much, and Gracy grew even thinner and had to force herself to eat. A bowl of oatmeal or a slice of bread toasted over the open flame of the cookstove was enough for a meal and sometimes she didn’t eat even that. She’d sit at the table, the food untouched, and stare into the flame of the kerosene lamp until it was time to go to bed.

  That night she sat in Daniel’s chair looking out the window at the falling snow. The storm was not a pretty one—no soft flakes but instead stringy bits of ice that the wind blew against the glass. It was dusk, the time Daniel had once returned home, but it was her lonely time now, and she brooded. There was a presentiment that night, a sense that something was not right, and Gracy wondered if it was the air, so charged that it seemed to send out sparks. Perhaps a woman was in labor. She stood and walked around the room, trying to shake off the feeling. But it would not go away. When she heard the knock on her door, she thought it was a bitter night to deliver a baby, for why else would someone come in the storm except to call her out. Still, it would be a time of joy, and Gracy needed that just then. She rose, glanced around the room to make sure her bag was in its proper place, and opened the door—to Daniel.

  For the few seconds they stared at each other, Gracy thought it was odd that Daniel would visit then, because he usually came to the house when she wasn’t there. Surely he had seen the glow of the lamp through the window and knew she was about.

  “Daniel?” she said. She did not invite him in, and it occurred to her that he might be drunk, that he could have come to the cabin by mistake.

  “Please…” he said.

  Gracy didn’t understand. She moved aside then and gestured for Daniel to come out of the storm. He was disheveled, his hair—graying now, she noted—was mussed, his eyes wild. “What is it?” she asked.

  “You have to come.” When Gracy only looked confused, he said. “Well, God, Gracy! She’ll die!”

  “The baby,” Gracy said dully, realizing Jennie’s time had come.

  “Please help her.”

  “Don’t ask it. There are other midwives.” Gracy’s voice quivered.

  “She has one. And a doctor, too. But the baby won’t be born. You’ll know what to do.”

  Gracy turned away, a rage inside of her, despair so profound she could hardly look at her husband. “How can you ask it of me, Daniel? How dare you!”

  “You’re the only hope.”

  Gracy began to shake, and she sat down on a chair. “No, Daniel. I can’t. You ask too much. How could I deliver my own husband’s child? The shame of it! Oh, no, I can’t.” She took hold of herself, swallowed down some of the anger, then said, “It always seems bad with the first one. You don’t need me. She’ll be all right.”

  “But she won’t. The doctor said she will die if the baby doesn’t come. There’s so much blood. The midwife, she said to fetch you. She doesn’t know what to do. You’re the only one.”

  Gracy closed her eyes. She could not do it. Jennie had stolen Gracy’s husband, and now Daniel was begging her to save the woman’s life. What if Gracy couldn’t? What if Jennie died? Would people say Gracy killed her, murdered her in revenge for taking Daniel? The awfulness of it made her shiver. She shook her head back and forth.

  And then Daniel said, “The baby will die, too. You wouldn’t let a baby die, would you, Gracy?”

  No, she could not. Daniel knew it, and Gracy hated him for using that against her. She couldn’t let the baby die, or the mother, either. If she refused to care for Jennie and the woman passed away, Gracy would carry the burden of that death just as she did the deaths of other women. She closed her eyes in pain at the irony of it. But she had no choice. When she opened them, she saw Nabby standing beside her. Nabby had once told her when she balked at attending a woman who had been cruel to her, “Do the righteousness.” Now Nabby said again, “Do the righteousness.”

  “Fetch my bag,” Gracy said, rising slowly, shaking herself as if she could shake
away the anguish. She took off her slippers and put on her thick shoes, then wrapped her shawl around herself and went out into the storm with Daniel.

  “When did the labor pains start?” she asked, as the two hurried along, heads down against the ice that blew into their faces.

  “Yesterday. It’s been a day and a night and a day.”

  Thirty-six hours, Gracy thought. That was too long. “Is she conscious?”

  “Barely.”

  Gracy had attended women like this before, women whose labors never seemed to end. Jennie was tiny. Perhaps the birth canal was too small. Or the baby might be turned. She thought of the irony of that. She had met Daniel the day she delivered his mother, Black Mary’s, breech baby. Now she might be asked to birth his own breeched child. But she could do that. She had done it often enough before. It was the bleeding that was worrisome. Jennie would be weak from loss of blood, maybe not able to push the baby out. Daniel should have come earlier. But would she have gone with him earlier? Gracy didn’t know.

  Daniel’s house was on the far side of town, a pretty brick structure with white jigsaw trim. Gracy had walked past it before, not knowing that was where Daniel lived, and had admired the roses, which were dead now and covered with snow. The house was far nicer than the cabin she and Daniel had lived in together, the home she occupied alone now. The front door opened to a parlor filled with furniture upholstered in red velvet, pictures in gold frames on the walls. And through a doorway was a dining room with a set of china displayed in a cupboard. Gracy had never had plates that matched, or pictures in gold frames, either. But such things had not mattered to her, and she was never jealous of possessions. She put them out of her mind as Daniel led her into the bedroom.

  As she entered the room, Gracy removed her shawl, which had once belonged to Nabby, and threw it over the back of a chair, next to another shawl. The second wrap was new, Persian wool with a design in bright orange, Daniel’s favorite color, and Gracy thought he would have bought it for Jennie, bought it along with all the other fripperies in the house. He’d have purchased them with money Gracy might have used to buy food. But that was in the past, and Gracy did not dwell on it.