The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  “I don’t want no baby!” Twyla shouts after her. So that’s the trouble. It’s hard to suffer the pains of childbirth if you don’t welcome the infant.

  “Hi, Twyla,” I try. The girl turns her back and starts wailing again. She’s a slip of a thing, probably not five feet tall, with wild curly hair and very light, almost golden, eyes, strange in a brown face. Mrs. Potts sits in the corner in a rocking chair, her hands empty in her lap. She’s clearly had enough of this, but a midwife can’t give up, can’t leave her patient until the baby’s out and the mother and infant are stable.

  “Whooooooooooooooooooo!” Twyla shrieks. Bitsy surprises me by dropping the satchel, going right up to the patient, and putting her hand over the young woman’s mouth. She pats Twyla’s lower face so her wail sounds like a barn owl. “Whoooo. Whoooo. Whooooo. Whooooooo.” The girl slaps Bitsy’s palm away. “Who are you?”

  “I’m the midwife’s assistant, and I’m here to get you under control,” Bitsy states firmly. Mrs. Potts and I stare at each other, shocked at such boldness.

  “Yeah? Have you ever had a baby? I feel like my whole damn body is being ripped apart!” The profanity doesn’t bother me, I’ve heard far worse on the union picket lines, but Mrs. Potts cringes.

  Bitsy doesn’t miss a beat. “Well, I’ve never had no damn baby, but I know enough not to struggle with the contractions. They always win. You’re just making a mess of this. Your baby would have come a long time ago if you weren’t fighting it. And you are scaring him, don’t you know. When you scream, you scare the baby. They can hear everything.” I smile, thinking how well Bitsy puts this. You scare the baby. I’ll use that line myself with my next out-of-control patient.

  Another pain hits before the older midwife and I can consult about the baby’s position. Twyla starts her yell, but Bitsy, undeterred, lays her hand over the girl’s mouth again and this time pats so fast that the Whooooooooooo comes like an Indian war whoop. Twyla laughs. She’s met her match. Bitsy wipes the girl’s face with a cool cloth, and that’s the end of the screaming.

  “Thank you for coming, dear. I’m getting too old for this,” Mrs. Potts confides in a whisper. “I don’t mind when a woman is serious about her job, but this girl struggles and there’s no father. You heard?”

  “Thomas told us.”

  The old lady shakes her head. “We’ve been doing this all night. I checked her one time, four hours ago. She was only halfway dilated, but the head was real low. Maybe you can check her now. See what you think. If she’s not progressing, we’re going to have to get her to the hospital, no matter how she kicks and screams. We can’t let anything happen.”

  I approach the patient for the first time. “Twyla,” I say softly, not wanting to upset her again or be hit with another pillow. “I’m Patience. Mrs. Potts and I think you might be getting close to delivering. I’d like to check you after your next contraction to see if the baby’s getting lower.”

  I don’t offer the alternative: And if it’s not coming, we are going to have to struggle you into an auto against your will and drag you to the hospital in Torrington, fifty miles away, where you’ll be strapped down, given gas, and have the baby cut out. (Dr. Blum could probably do it, but he doesn’t take coloreds.) The Hudsons are a respected family in the mountains and would pay for a cesarean section, even in hard times.

  I remember the story Mrs. Kelly told me, that the first successful cesarean section in the United States was, in fact, performed in Mason County, West Virginia, back in the late 1700s. According to her, a physician performed the operation on his wife, who was in obstructed labor. The doctor, a Mr. Bennett, accomplished the surgery with only laudanum for anesthesia. Amazingly, both mother and infant survived.

  Bitsy persuades Twyla to lie still and open her legs while I wait with my sterilized rubber gloves on. When the next contraction ends, I kneel at the bedside. Mrs. Potts is right. The head is very low, and I’m pleased to discover that there’s only a ring of cervix left. “You’re almost there!”

  “I thought so,” crows Bitsy. “She’s so cranky! I knew she must be close.”

  Mrs. Potts smiles and wearily begins to get out her birth gear. She turns to my assistant. “Would you like to deliver the baby, honey?”

  I raise my eyebrows, surprised and a little miffed. I don’t want to contradict Mrs. Potts, but I don’t think Bitsy’s ready . . . On the other hand, Bitsy doesn’t seem nervous.

  “Ugggh!” Twyla moans. “I got to go pooh!” I reach for the flowered ceramic chamber pot and have the patient squat over it. I know the girl feels the head moving down, not a lump of stool, but what harm can it do if she thinks it’s a bowel movement? Everyone turns away while Twyla squats, her long white nightgown covering the receptacle.

  “Do you want me to call your mother and Mrs. Hudson? It won’t be long now,” I say over my shoulder as we lay out the sterilized scissors, string, and towels. Other than my olive oil, that’s all we need. The old lady plunks back down in her rocker.

  “No,” the girl says firmly and then grunts again. Her eyes are big now, and I think she knows she is pushing out more than a large stool. “I just want there to be us.”

  Ten more contractions and “Eeeeeeeee. It burns bad.” Twyla stands and puts her hand on her vagina. “It’s the head!” she exclaims and for the first time smiles.

  When Bitsy and I lean down to look, the infant is almost crowning and a shock of thick black hair hangs out an inch.

  “You’re right, Twyla.” This is Bitsy taking charge, saying exactly what I would say as we lay the patient down. “The baby is coming, and I’m going to need your cooperation while I ease the head out.

  “Push and blow. That’s how to do it. Push a little . . . blow a little.” She sits on a stool at the edge of the bed, between the girl’s legs. “Push a little. Blow a little.” Twyla does what Bitsy tells her, and slowly the head crowns—so slowly I don’t know how the girl stands it. Then I see an ear and then the whole head. I wipe its face with a clean cloth, wipe its mouth out too. Then my able apprentice, without any instruction from me or Mrs. Potts, presses the head down to deliver the top shoulder, lifts up to deliver the bottom, and a wet infant tumbles into her lap, already screaming.

  My friend holds the very brown baby boy out to the young mother, but Twyla lifts her hands in protest. “No! It’s so slimy!” Some mothers, I’ve observed, like to have their wet newborn against their chest, and others are afraid of the mucus. Mrs. Potts whips one of the towels open, wraps the baby in it, and places it back on the girl’s chest. With one finger Twyla tentatively touches the squirming thing, transfixed, amazed that something alive came out of her body.

  “Everything okay up here?” Nancy Savage calls from the hall.

  The door cracks open, and Mrs. Hudson peeks in with Nancy behind her. “It’s so quiet, but . . . we thought we heard a baby cry.”

  Twyla smiles. “See, Ma? I did it. I really did it!”

  April 21, 1930. Sliver moon in a purple sky at dusk, the trees silhouetted in black.

  Mathew Hudson Savage, healthy male infant, was born at 6:15 yesterday evening to Twyla Savage. Twyla is 14 years old and was out of control when we got there, yelling like a wild woman! Spontaneous vaginal delivery performed by Bitsy, with no difficulty. Seven pounds, 4 ounces. Mrs. Potts also present. Father unknown. No tears. Minimal bleeding. Bitsy’s first delivery. Twyla refused to breastfeed, and there was no convincing her.

  23

  Warning

  Since Thomas has already gone back to his job at the Wildcat, I leave Bitsy at the bedside and walk to the vet’s office to see if we can catch a ride home. Before leaving, I check the mother and baby one last time. Mrs. Hudson is ready with a warm nippled bottle, the kind you can get in the Sears, Roebuck catalogue. I hate to see it, but one thing I’ve learned is that if a mother really doesn’t want to breastfeed, it won’t help to pressure her. She won’t be successful, and everyone will be miserable, including the baby.

  Cro
ssing Main, I spy my friend Becky Myers coming out of Gold’s Dry Goods with Priscilla Blum, the doctor’s wife. Becky’s short black hair, in a new bob, blows in the April wind, and her wide-spaced brown eyes sparkle. Mrs. Blum wears a long lavender scarf that trails in the breeze. They both look so fresh that for a moment I’m jealous. Becky’s my friend, but I’ve never lived in their world of store-bought clothes and styled hair.

  “Hey, Becky!” I call out, swallowing my resentment and waiting until the doctor’s wife turns off on Second Street. “I was just thinking of visiting. You have time for company?” Her house is a block away, around the corner on Sycamore. “I’ll just stay a few minutes and tell you about Twyla Savage’s birth. Then I have to find a ride home.”

  I put my arm through hers, companionably, the same way I do with Bitsy, but without any self-consciousness or feeling I’m defying an unwritten law. “It’s a beautiful infant. His hair must be two inches long. Can you make a home visit later this week?” I babble on, still elated about the good birth.

  “I hope Twyla will be okay,” Becky thinks out loud. “At one point she declared she didn’t want the baby. What she really wants is to go back to school.”

  I frown. “Can’t her mother take care of the baby while she goes to class?”

  “Her mother has to work for the Hudsons, and word is, Judge Hudson is looking for a family to adopt it. A black family.”

  We take the steps up to her neat porch with two high-back rattan chairs and enter her white-tiled kitchen. As Becky makes tea I stare out the window and wonder who that black family might be. Twyla was so proud of herself in the end. I’d hate to see the baby taken away.

  Becky changes the subject. “You know, Patience, there’s something I’ve wanted to talk with you about since Bitsy Proudfoot moved in with you.”

  This puts me on alert, and I pause with the teacup halfway to my mouth.

  “What?”

  “You know the Klan is reorganizing in Union County, don’t you?”

  I draw back as if slapped. “The Ku Klux Klan?” Why do I ask? Everyone knows there’s only one Klan, the hooded white supremacist Klan that asserts its power by intimidation and violence. The anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, anti-Communist, anti-Negro-who-doesn’t-stay-in-his-place Klan.

  “I heard they were on the way out the last few years—down from four million to a few hundred thousand left in the Deep South.”

  “The South and the Appalachian Mountains. Wherever people are poor and oppressed, the Klansmen look for someone to bully. That’s what’s happening around here, and I just don’t want that person to be you.”

  “You think I’m a target?” I’m in shock. “I thought I was keeping a low profile, way out in the country . . .”

  “Be real, Patience. You are not low profile. Everyone knows who you are. Times are hard. Men are looking for ways to take out their frustration, and you’re involved with a group of uppity Negroes . . . There’s been talk. You live with a Negro woman . . . For God’s sake, you walk around with her arm in arm. I’d watch it, if I were you.”

  “Like who? Who’s uppity? Thomas and Bitsy?”

  “Thomas and Bitsy . . . and the Reverend Miller and all those folks at his church. Mrs. Potts is accepted because of her skills. She’s delivered a lot of babies, black and white, in Union County, but people say the pastor preaches equality and white people don’t like it.”

  “Well,” I go on. “I’m not responsible for what people say in the pulpit or anywhere else. Anyway, I agree with the preacher.”

  Becky and I have never before discussed politics, and she has no idea how important the issue of equality is to me. “Some people may think Negroes are inferior, but you and I know it isn’t true,” I lecture. “The Proudfoots and the Millers are as smart and able as any of us, maybe more. Anyway, if we want to see the world change, we have to change it, and I’ll put my arm through Bitsy’s whenever I want!”

  “Let’s just let it drop,” my friend mutters and puts her cup in the sink. “I wish I hadn’t brought it up. I was only trying—” The phone on her kitchen wall rings three times. “Hello,” she answers. “Okay, I’ll inform her.” You can tell by the way she’s going to inform me that she’s mad. “That was Bitsy. She’s over at Mr. Hester’s, and he’s going to give you a ride home.”

  “Becky, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get into an argument. I just have a hard time believing that in 1930 the Klan could be a problem. West Virginia fought with the North in the Civil War, for heaven’s sake . . . this isn’t Mississippi or Georgia. Anyway, why shouldn’t all people be proud and free regardless of color?”

  Becky shakes her head and sits down, staring out the window at the daffodils along the walk. She doesn’t even give me a good-bye hug. I lean over her chair and give her a half hug anyway.

  “You’re too innocent, Patience. You need to face reality. Not everyone is as nice as you.”

  Nice as me! If she only knew.

  The ride home with the vet and Bitsy is a quiet one. We each rest in our own thoughts as we chug along in the Model T. I keep wondering what Becky means by “uppity.” I’m shocked at her attitude, an educated woman. Though maybe I shouldn’t be. Someone like me, who lives in my own little world, I don’t really know how the MacIntoshes, the Hudsons, and the Blums think.

  It was at the Westinghouse walkout in 1916 that I first saw black and white workers, men and women too, demonstrating together. Before that, the employers used to pit us against one another. If whites struck for better working conditions or shorter hours, blacks were used as strikebreakers. If men in the all-male AFL struck for higher wages, the bosses would hire more women. But at the Westinghouse munitions plant, six thousand workers, including three hundred women and a few dozen Negroes, walked out together.

  In the second row of the all-female Dish Pan Drum Corps, just in front of the band, Nora and I linked arms, proud and happy, with the Rosenberg sisters and Daisy, our colored suffragette friend, singing at the top of our lungs, “Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! Solidarity forever! For the union makes us strong.” The five of us were thrown into the slammer that day when the coppers said to disband, but we were out in seventy-two hours. Daisy Lampkin got out in a day. Her husband was a rich restaurateur.

  Despite my intention not to let Becky’s warning about the KKK bother me, my stomach grows cold and I wonder what she isn’t saying. I would like to go back and ask her. Who’s talking about me, anyway? What are they saying?

  Threat

  Mr. Hester comes only once a week now to check on Star. Most of the time he goes straight to the barn, doesn’t stop at the house, but yesterday he had good news.

  “Star’s really healing well,” he told me as he washed his hands at our kitchen sink. “Her hooves can bear more weight. You still taking her down to the creek three times a day? You could try riding her if you want to.”

  “She seems to like the creek,” I reply. “Likes to stand in the water, and I enjoy my time there too. It feels like I’m doing a chore while I lie on my back and look at the clouds.” I pour him a cup of sassafras tea and pull out a chair. “The sound of the water soothes me, reminds me of my childhood on the banks of the Des Plaines River.”

  The vet nods as if he understands but returns quickly to the horse, where he’s no doubt more comfortable. “Just start riding her in the pasture, and eventually take her down to the Hope.”

  “I’ve never been on a horse before. If Bitsy has, we’ll do it tonight . . . but can I pose a question?” The vet shrugs, alert to the change in my voice.

  “This is awkward, but have you heard any rumors about the Ku Klux Klan in Union County?” Hester blows across his cup, doesn’t say anything at first, just takes a sip of the tea, so I go on. “I feel funny asking . . . I don’t know why, it’s just that Bitsy and I never talk about anything to do with race. In some ways I don’t know her world at all. We live as if it doesn’t matter, and it doesn’t to me, but Rebecca Myers, the health nurse in town,
told me last week that they’re reorganizing the Klan in West Virginia. Is there anything to it?” Hester stares out the window and shrugs.

  “Maybe. I was invited to a Rotary Club meeting at the Oneida Inn last month. Went with Dresher, Star’s previous owner. He’s a big supporter of my practice, and he thought I should make local contacts, but I don’t think I’ll go again.

  “There was a lot of bitter talk about the folks at Hazel Patch, how they’re forming an agricultural collective, buying things in bulk from the Farmers Co-op in Torrington, even arranging to have feed for their cattle shipped down the Mon River on the steamboat from Pittsburgh. The locals don’t like it, especially the merchants.” He shrugs.

  “Mostly it was just men complaining. Businesses are hurting; everyone feels threatened. Another big mine closed, the Minute Man west of Liberty. William MacIntosh is part owner of that one too.”

  I ask him straight out, “But do you think the Klan presents any danger to me, to Bitsy and me? Becky says she’s heard talk. Is this for real or just men spouting off?”

  “Nah. Just talk.” He sets his cup on the counter. “It’ll blow over. Anyway, what are you going to do about it?”

  That stops me. What could I do about it? Kick Bitsy out? Pretend she’s my servant and make her shuffle and bow? Go to Sheriff Hardman? He’s probably one of them. Call the editor of the newspaper and have them exposed? He might be one too.

  24

  Magda

  Running my fingers over the embossed tulips on the cover of my leather-bound diary, I breathe a long sigh. It’s Mother’s Day, and I’m sad. I’m always sad on Mother’s Day. It just gets to me.

  All across the land, families are at Mama’s having fried chicken and dumplings, or, if they can’t afford a chicken, they’re digging into a good pot of beans. Children will bring their mothers bunches of wildflowers—pink and white phlox from the roadside, yellow iris from the edges of streams, bluebells from the forest floor—but I have neither children to thank me nor a mother to go home to.