The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  Bitsy has taken her bicycle into Liberty to spend the day with Big Mary and Thomas. Even Daniel Hester found another vet in Delmont to cover his practice and has taken the train to see his mother near Buffalo.

  We didn’t have Mother’s Day when I lived in the white house in Deerfield. It became a national holiday later, started in 1910 by a woman from Grafton, West Virginia, I hear, not seventy miles from Liberty.

  I wish we had celebrated Mother’s Day; then I could have taken my mother flowers and thanked her for all the times she’d tucked me in or ironed my bed on a cold winter’s night or sewed my dresses or read me stories, but she’s gone now, gone many years.

  I had Mrs. Kelly too, a second mother, who took me in when I was homeless and alone, taught me all I know about delivering babies and living on the land. I stayed with her thirteen years, as long as I lived with my own ma.

  And once I was almost a mother. I felt Lawrence’s baby move and squirm inside me, until I lost them both. My little boy is buried in the corner of my heart now, a small mound of pain just left of my breastbone. I can’t even take flowers to my mother or Mrs. Kelly’s grave sites. Mama is buried far away in Deerfield, and my dear Sophie was put to rest in the family graveyard in Torrington.

  Enough of this! What would Mrs. Kelly think of my feeling so sorry for myself! I don’t need children. I don’t need a mother. I need to go pick my own bouquet.

  “To my little one’s cradle in the night comes a little goat, snowy and white.” I sing the old lullaby as I tromp across the meadow. “The goat will trot to the market, while Mother her watch does keep, bringing back raisins and almonds . . .” I continue the tune all the way down to the creek where the serviceberry bushes bloom.

  The first night I heard that song was the night I saw my first birth . . .

  “Steady the lamp,” Mrs. Kelly orders. “Please!”

  I’m shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. Even though I grip the lantern’s wire handle with both hands, the shadows dance.

  I would have preferred to stay outside in the dark, but Mrs. Kelly said she might need me. Anyway, where would I have waited? Alone in the alley?

  The worn-thin mother, lying on the pallet in this one-room shack down by the river, lets out a deep groan. I try not to look, stare up at the cobwebs on the ceiling and at the newspapers pasted on the walls to keep out the wind, but the woman’s white belly glows like the full moon.

  I met the midwife just a few hours ago, and we were on our way to talk to a mother of twins, who might need me, when a boy raced up and begged the midwife to come.

  Now the lad leans against the door frame in the shadows. His knickers are torn, and he has one deformed ear. He may have been born that way, or possibly somebody cuffed him.

  “Buster,” Mrs. Kelly commands, “make yourself useful.”

  The kid shuffles over. “Here, you hold the lantern. Elizabeth, kneel down and pull hard on the mother’s hands; it will give her strength.”

  I’m like Buster, don’t want any part of this, but Mrs. Kelly is hard to refuse. I crouch low, so close I’m in the pregnant woman’s face.

  “Next time you feel the pain, I want you to push with all your heart,” the midwife instructs. (I now use the same words with my patients.) She glances at the pocket watch she wears on a ribbon around her neck. Before the next groan, the patient opens her legs, puts her chin on her chest, and I know she means business.

  “What’s your name?” I whisper, when she lets go of me.

  “Magda.” The tired woman blows her long hair out of her eyes, which spark green in the kerosene lamplight.

  “I’m Elizabeth. You can call me Lizbeth, everyone does.”

  Buster is silent, just endures with his arm straight out, holding the metal lantern, steady as an oak branch when there’s no wind, tears streaming down his face, making dirt streaks. He looks about nine.

  Mrs. Kelly is at the woodstove, heating up water and getting out her clean cloths and scissors, when, with the next push, the patient shouts something that I think must be Polish, and the infant tumbles out. The midwife sees what’s happening, steps over, and hands the new life to me. I have no choice but to take it, all wet and slimy, wiggling and crying with the cord still attached. It was the smell of the birth that made me gag. Now I actually like it, sweet and earthy.

  I hand the newborn over to Magda, who has fallen back on the bed. “Here’s your baby.” Buster sets the lamp down and runs from the shack. The midwife kicks the door shut to keep out the cold, and I can hear the little boy sobbing.

  In fifteen minutes, we have the place tidy. Buster, still hiccuping his sobs, shows me the way to the pump in the alley, and I bring in more water. “Everything’s okay now,” I tell him as we walk back toward the shack. “Your mother’s fine. You have a pa?”

  He tilts his head toward the railroad tracks. “Just started graveyard shift, throwing coal for Pittsburgh Steel.” That’s good, I think. They’ll have someone to look after them.

  When we leave, Magda is settled, with a worn blue-and-brown patchwork quilt covering her. Buster sits next to her on the bed and touches his tiny brother with the tip of one finger.

  The mother lifts up her face, and I notice for the first time that she has a harelip, but not a bad one. She still looks like a print of the Madonna in Lawrence’s art book.

  “We’ll pay you when Zarek gets his first wages,” she says to Mrs. Kelly in a thick accent.

  “No,” Sophie responds. “You need the money more. Get Buster some new britches, and take care of that baby. Breast only. No cow’s milk or gruel. I’ll come see you next week.” She runs her hand through the boy’s thick brown hair and pats the mother on her cheek.

  I help the midwife with her heavy coat, throw my blue cloak around my shoulders, and pick up her carpetbag. Then we go into the bitter night, back to the trolley stop. When I turn, pale lamplight shines through the one four-paned window in a golden path along the cobblestones, and I can hear Magda singing “To my little one’s cradle in the night comes a little goat, snowy and white . . .”

  25

  Bolt from the Blue

  On the way back across the meadow, with my sweet-smelling Mother’s Day bouquet of white serviceberry blossoms and pink phlox, I’m startled to see a vehicle sputtering up Wild Rose Road. It can’t be the vet; he left on the train yesterday. Not likely Katherine MacIntosh either, unless Bitsy’s with her and she’s on the run again. The sheriff?

  I trot into the house, lock my diary, and shove it under a sofa cushion. I plunk my flowers into a quart mason jar and then hang my red kimono on its nail behind the kitchen door. Maybe it’s Becky Myers, come to check on me after her excessive worries about the Klan, or perhaps a father, looking for the midwife.

  I’m surprised when Mildred Miller and Mrs. Potts get out of the battered black open hack. The two are dressed in their church clothes, dark dresses with bright white lace collars and white hats that frame their faces. The old lady is using a cane, and her companion helps her up the steps.

  “I’ll get right to the point,” Mrs. Potts starts out once she settles on the sofa.

  “I love your house,” Mrs. Miller interjects. “It’s so nice and clean. Smells so good. It must be your flowers. Is Bitsy here?”

  “Her room’s upstairs, but she’s gone into town to spend the day with her mother, Mary Proudfoot.”

  Mrs. Potts tries again. “My heart’s been skipping around and causing me dizzy spells. The doc says it’s weak. Thinks I ought to stop running around after babies.”

  “She had a fall last week, out in the garden, and lay there for two hours until one of the Bowlin boys passed!” That’s Mrs. Miller.

  “I tripped on an old tomato stake! Could happen to anyone. The point is, Patience, I need your help. You’re young and strong, and I could turn my mothers over to you. I’ll still come to the births in the daytime, just to be companionable, if I’m feeling well and the roads aren’t bad. The doctor says I have a few more years if
I’m careful.” She declares this last part so offhandedly: a few more years. I’m taken aback, shocked at the sound of it. Mildred stares at the floor.

  “Would there be many?” I ask in an attempt to get practical. “Usually I do two births a month; since the hard times came, maybe three. People who used to think a home delivery too old-timey are now calling on me because they can’t afford the hospital or they’ve heard bad stories from other new mothers.”

  “I do ’bout the same. Two or three a month, but more of my patients are black mothers and they aren’t as much trouble as white girls. Got more grit.” I smile at her comment. She’s possibly right, with the exception of fourteen-year-old Twyla, who screamed her way through labor.

  “Mrs. Potts, I’m honored, but I don’t know how to say this . . . Bitsy and I have to make a living. We can’t always do deliveries for free. Would people pay us? Would you and I split the fee?” I feel like a money-grubber even bringing this up. Mrs. Kelly believed that delivering babies was a sacred act, close to serving Communion, but midwives don’t live on light alone. Even if we grow and preserve our own food, we also need coal, kerosene, cornmeal, and sugar.

  The old lady chuckles. “Of course we’d divide everything, unless it’s a chicken! And if I don’t make it to the birthing, the chicken’s all yours.”

  “Would the families accept me? They’re used to you. Would they even want me? I’m white, and I’m new. Trust is important.”

  “That’s why I’d come to the deliveries with you at the beginning, as much as I could . . . I’ve been a midwife in this community for over sixty years, delivered white and black babies all over the place, and if I say you’re good, they’ll know you’re good.”

  I make the two ladies sassafras tea in my best blue-and-white cups while I think it over. If we got paid for the deliveries, it would make a big difference—and anyway, how can I say no?

  “So do we have an agreement?” Mrs. Potts asks.

  “I’m honored,” I reply, wondering what I just got myself into.

  Mildred Miller gazes at the painting on the wall behind the sofa. “Is that you at the ocean? I went there once to see my cousin in South Carolina. The water was cold and salty. I didn’t like it.”

  “It’s me when I was sixteen. My baby’s father painted it, and that water is Lake Michigan near Chicago. It’s not salty.”

  “I didn’t know you had a child.” Mrs. Potts picks up on the “my baby’s father.” “Is he grown?”

  “No, he died. Died at birth. They both died within days of each other.” Mildred sucks in her breath, and Mrs. Potts puts her veined hand over mine.

  “That’s what makes you a good midwife,” the old lady says. “You know the value of life, and you know loss. My father used to say the two are one, like the bramble and the rose. Life and death . . . the bramble and the rose.”

  Discarded

  Tears have a way of humanizing people, though I don’t cry much myself.

  What’s making me think of such things is my trip to Liberty today. I had bicycled in to check on Twyla and the baby. Bitsy stayed home and took her bike down to the Hope to go fishing. Didn’t want to come to town, she said. She’d had all of Twyla she could stand for one month.

  When I got there, the mayor and Mrs. Hudson were in the parlor having tea with Mrs. Stenger, the pharmacist’s wife, so I just said hello, checked on Twyla and little Mathew, who has already gained a pound, and then headed down the back stairs, intending to leave through the kitchen. I had my hand on the knob when Twyla’s mother, Nancy Savage, stopped me.

  “She doing pretty good, ain’t she?”

  “She is. Twyla’s taken right to motherhood.”

  “That’s why I hate to see it.”

  I’m adrift in this conversation. “See what?”

  “The judge planning on giving our baby away. Says little Mathew got to go. Either he goes, or Twyla and I can leave with him. He says there’s no place for a baby in his home. He means a black baby.”

  “What does Mrs. Hudson think? It doesn’t seem right. It’s not the judge’s baby to give away.”

  “She disapprove, but she says he the boss.”

  “Nancy!” It’s her mistress calling from the parlor. “Can you bring us some more tea, honey?” The cook bites her chapped lips. “Coming!” she calls and picks up the teapot.

  “Pray for us, Miss Patience,” she whispers as she leaves, and there are tears in her eyes.

  Before riding home, with a heavy heart, I decide to visit Becky at her clinic in the courthouse. I’m wondering what she thinks of the whole mess. She’s mentioned this possibility before, but I didn’t think the rumors could be true. We haven’t spoken since our tiff about the Klan, and that was weeks ago.

  “Hello,” I call, entering the empty waiting room of the Women’s and Children’s Health Program. “Hello?”

  The receptionist’s wooden desk is unoccupied, but that doesn’t surprise me. The clinic runs on a tight budget, and Mrs. Cooper, the secretary, works only part-time. I take a seat, prepared to wait a few minutes, figuring that Becky must be in the single exam room with a patient.

  To kill time, I inspect the small space, which smells faintly of Lysol. This is where the home health nurse holds her classes. What interests me are the posters. The yellow announcement by the front door exhorts the benefits of corn: FOOD FOR THE NATION, SERVE SOME AT EVERY MEAL. An attractive dark-haired woman is baking corn bread. I didn’t know corn was that healthy! I’d better plant more next year.

  Over the desk is another sign, this one with an orange border and a man sneezing into a handkerchief: COUGHS AND SNEEZES SPREAD DISEASES. Finally there’s one next to the restroom: STAMP OUT TUBERCULOSIS! Santa Claus holds a letter with the famous Christmas Seal on it, a fund-raiser for the National Tuberculosis Association. I let out a long sigh. My mother and grandmother both died of it, the Great White Plague.

  There’s a muffled sound inside the exam room and I straighten my skirt, ready for Becky and her patient to come out, but the door doesn’t open. Then I hear moaning. A chair scrapes, and there’s moaning again. “Becky?” No answer. “Becky?” a little louder.

  I stand up and step closer. Becky and I are friends, but this is her place of work and I can’t interrupt her; still, it does seem odd that she won’t answer. Maybe she’s ill . . . I move right up to the door and press my ear against it. “Nurse Becky? Are you okay?”

  The woman clears her throat. “Just a minute . . . ” I sit down again, but she doesn’t come out. By Mrs. Kelly’s gold pocket watch it’s 3:10. Five minutes later she still hasn’t shown. Finally I step over, tap twice, and crack the door open. “Becky?” I whisper. “It’s Patience. Can I come in?”

  “Oh, it’s you, Patience . . . yes. You’d better. You’d better see this.”

  That wasn’t the answer I expected. I open the door, step inside, and close it behind me. “Are you all right?” I can see that she isn’t. Her face is mottled, her eyes are red from crying, and tears run down her pale cheeks. “What’s wrong?”

  She turns to her side and indicates the exam table. That’s when I see it. Lying on a clean blanket is a tiny baby boy, smaller than a doll and clearly dead. Its skin is so thin that you can see the blood vessels, and its face is dark and bruised.

  “When I came in this morning,” starts out Becky in a small voice, “I found a box tied up with string at the door. The waiting room was full, so I didn’t open the package until everyone left. Then I almost fainted. This is so sad! I never saw anything like it. Do you think the baby could have been alive when I got here? Do you think it died because I didn’t look right away?” She starts to sob and touches the infant with one finger. I touch it too, but the baby is so cold and stiff, I pull my hand away.

  “Oh, Becky. I don’t think so. Really. Look at the body. He was so early. I doubt he ever took a breath. His lungs wouldn’t have been formed yet. I’ve seen infants born prematurely before. This baby wasn’t ready to come. It’s nothing you
did or didn’t do . . . But whose baby is it, anyway? Do you think it’s one of your patients or one of mine?”

  “I don’t know. I thought it might belong to one of the traveling families, someone passing through who heard about the clinic. Some of those people moving north, looking for work up in Pittsburgh.” She folds her hands as if in prayer and starts to cry again. My arm around her, I cry too, but my tears are different.

  I’m thinking of the little boy I lost. Would he have looked like this, so frail, so not ready to live on this earth? And his little body, would it have looked like this? I don’t even know where they buried him.

  There’s a knock at the outside door. “Mailman!” a low voice calls out. Becky jumps up and uses her body to shield the baby, though there’s no way the postman can see through the closed exam room door.

  “Thank you, James,” she yells out. “Just put it on the desk. I’m with a patient.” Then to me, in a whisper, “What shall we do with him?”

  We both collapse back into our chairs and I squint, not understanding. The nurse goes on, “Well, we can’t just throw him away. He has to have a proper burial.”

  “We could let the sheriff take care of it.”

  “No! If we do, there will be a manhunt. He’ll want to know whose baby it is and will search the vagrants’ tents down by the riverbank. He might even put someone in jail.”

  Now I see what she means. This is not really my affair, I just came by to visit, but I know what to do. “Give me the baby.”

  “What?”

  “I’ll take him home. Bury him on the farm. You can’t do it. You live in town, with neighbors on either side. Out in the country, no one will know.” There’s a long silence, and Becky wipes her tears again.

  “You’d do that?”