The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  “Come on. It will be simple. Just wrap him up in the blanket and put him back in his box. I have a basket on my bike.”

  Becky offers to drive me home, but I tell her no. Afterward I think it might have been smarter. I had to carry the baby in the carton past the sheriff as he strolled down the courthouse steps. I also passed Mrs. Stenger coming out of Judge Hudson’s and had to stop on my bike to say hello, and then I had to get around Bitsy.

  “I was wondering when you’d get back,” Bitsy calls from the porch as I walk my bike through the gate. “What’s in the package?”

  I consider telling her outright, “a dead premature baby,” but I don’t know how she’d take it, so I lie.

  “Produce scraps from the grocery store. Mr. Bittman was throwing them out and sent them home for the chickens. I’ll take them out to the barn.”

  “Supper in fifteen,” she responds, turning back inside. “I caught a mess of fish.”

  The hole behind the barn isn’t big, but it has to be deep so that foxes and raccoons won’t smell the baby and dig it up. It takes me five minutes. Then I kneel at the grave site, my hands folded up against my chest. Just a moment of silence for the mama who has lost this too-early-baby, a woman somewhere with her breasts filling up and a heart so heavy she would sink to the bottom of the Hope River if she jumped in.

  I didn’t have a grave site for my premature son. I don’t even know if he was buried properly or just thrown away. I pull a flat rock over the exposed earth, tamp it down gently with my foot, and wipe my tears on the back of my sleeve. This will be my secret gravestone, for both tiny babies.

  True Knot

  With the dramatic and probably illegal burial of the unidentified premature newborn, I didn’t get around to telling Bitsy about Twyla until this morning. We are standing out in the side yard, preparing to beat the dust out of the front room braided rug with two homemade wire rug beaters that we found in the basement. The heavy floor covering hangs over the clothesline, and the sun comes in and out of big white and gray clouds.

  “How was Twyla?” Bitsy asks me, taking a swat. Whack! Whack! Dust rises all around us, and I can see this cleaning is long overdue.

  “She’s fine. Looks like she was meant to be a mother the way she holds and cuddles that baby, but things are sticky with the judge.”

  “How so? I bet he can’t stand it when the baby cries, but all newborns cry. No way around it. Ma says it’s good for ’em.”

  “He wants to give the baby away.” Whack. Whack. “It isn’t right. I don’t know if Twyla even knows, but Nancy told me. Judge Hudson says he doesn’t want a baby in his house. Either the baby goes up for adoption, or he’s putting them all out.” WHACK! “It seems wrong. Steams me just thinking about it.” WHACK! WHACK!

  Bitsy just stands there. “He doesn’t want a black baby under his roof. That’s what he means.”

  “Well, he can’t do it, can he?”

  “It’s his house.”

  A dark cloud now covers the sun. Bitsy throws down her rug beater and marches back into the house. Doesn’t even say anything. Her shoulders are high, and I think she’s crying.

  “Bitsy? Bitsy!” But she doesn’t answer. Even when I go back into the house with the rug, she won’t talk. She’s curled at the end of the davenport staring at the open pages of Up from Slavery.

  Not long afterward, as I’m out in the barn cleaning Star and Moonlight’s stalls, there’s a commotion. Dogs bark and a cart approaches, moving fast up the road. A kid not more than thirteen trots up to the fence.

  “Ma’am.” The freckle-faced boy with flaming red hair introduces himself. “Name’s Albert Mintz from Horse Shoe Run. My papa sent me. He went to get Mrs. Potts in the truck, but my ma’s paining real bad and he said I should try for you too—just get someone fast. Heard you was Mrs. Potts’s helpers.”

  “Is it far? Do we have time to get washed up?” I rub my dirty hands on the back of my pants.

  The boy’s eyes get big, put on the spot for an answer that could be critical. “Took a good while to get here, and I was pushing hard. There will be three of us in the cart on the way back. Better come as you are. It’s Ma’s seventh.”

  Bitsy shakes herself out of her dark funk and runs for my satchel. We are still in our work clothes, so I grab two flowered aprons from the bottom kitchen drawer and a couple of wet rags to wash up with.

  As we bounce down Wild Rose and around Salt Lick, we do our best to make ourselves presentable. This is not how I wanted our first birth as Mrs. Potts’s backup to go. She is always so neat in her black dress, white apron, and white turban. No use fussing over it.

  Before we get to Horse Shoe Run a hard rain begins. Bitsy pushes the satchel under the wooden bench, and I sit on the aprons to keep them dry. Not that the aprons will help much. Our hair is plastered, and water trickles down our necks. At least Albert is wearing a straw hat.

  Not twenty minutes later we arrive at a run-down, unpainted, one-story farmhouse at the mouth of a narrow hollow. The privy sits to the side. Three little boys, one with red hair like Albert’s, watch from the porch as we ride into the yard.

  Before we reach the door I know something is wrong. Bitsy and I look at each other and tighten our jaws. The boy’s dirty faces are striped with tears and a woman’s voice keens from inside. This is the sound I heard Katherine MacIntosh make when I first gave her the bad news about her baby, the wail that goes right to your heart. Despite my dread, I take the steps two at a time, pushing open the door. Bitsy follows at my heels.

  “Mrs. Mintz!” I call out. “It’s Patience, the midwife. Mr. Mintz? Mrs. Potts?” The high, repetitive cry starts up again, and I follow the sound down a dark hallway to a bedroom where a mother sits on the bare wood floor, holding what appears to be a lifeless baby. I step over and take the body in my arms, still attached to its limp umbilical cord. The newborn is covered in sticky, dark brown fluid, which I know to be baby poop. Meconium, DeLee calls it; not a good sign.

  “Bitsy, tie and cut the cord, get the mother back in bed, then start massaging her uterus,” I order, grabbing the infant. I wipe the inside of its mouth with the corner of my work shirt and commence to breathe for it. Come on, baby. Come on. There’s no response, and part of me knows there won’t be. The baby is cold, and the mucus all over him is already dry. I keep trying anyway. Puff. Puff. Puff. I put my fingers to the chest. No pulse. Puff. Puff. Nothing, but I can’t stop.

  “Miss Patience?” That’s Bitsy, standing beside me. She shakes her head to indicate that what I’m doing is useless. Even my young apprentice sees that. And I hope she sees more, sees that what we do for a living is like walking on a straight razor: life on one side, death on the other.

  “My baby. My baby!” The mother starts up again. Outside there’s commotion, and minutes later Mrs. Potts hobbles in with her cane, followed by a thin man dressed in coveralls who I presume is the father.

  He looks at me sitting on the side of the bed with his dead baby. “What have you done?” He whirls to Mrs. Potts. “What has she done?”

  Mrs. Mintz raises one pale hand. “Ernest,” she says weakly. “Ernie . . .” He’s not listening.

  I try once more. Puff. Puff. Puff. Come on! I can’t believe this is happening.

  “It’s okay, honey,” the old midwife tells me. “That baby’s long gone. Give it here.” She wraps the limp female infant in a blanket and hands it to the mother. This is something I’ve never seen before, giving a dead baby to the mother.

  “Gladys,” she says, “hush your crying. That little girl has gone back to Jesus. Sing her a song.”

  Gladys looks at Mrs. Potts with big tear-filled eyes but does what she says. “Swing low,” she begins weakly, “sweet chariot. Comin’ for to carry me home.”

  “Swing low, sweet chariot,” Bitsy joins in as she delivers the afterbirth all by herself. It lies in a pool of red on a white towel, covered with more of the brown goo.

  “Get me a bowl, Ernest, and a pot of warm wat
er. We’ll need some clean linens,” Mrs. Potts orders. The man, his jaw rigid, stalks out of the room.

  “The baby was already born when I got here, Mrs. Potts. I didn’t do anything to it, I swear! When Bitsy and I came in the room, Mrs. Mintz was sitting on the floor, already holding the baby. I did my best. I did what I could.” We all stare at the pool of water and blood in the middle of the floor.

  “It’s all right, honey. You can tell by the cord the baby was in trouble.” She shows us the twisted rope of flesh with a true knot and three dark purple clots. Somehow I don’t feel any better knowing the cause of the infant’s death.

  When Mr. Mintz comes back and sits next to his wife, the old midwife shows him the unusual cord. “See this, Ernest,” she instructs. “It’s a true knot. Your little girl was swimming around in the womb and made the loop-de-loop herself. I don’t want you saying anything bad about this new midwife. These things happen, and it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

  Mintz shoots me a hostile look, then turns his attention to his wife. “I’m so sorry. I’m so, so sorry,” he says, pushing back her red hair and stroking her face. “If we’d only had the money, I would have carried you to the hospital.”

  Mrs. Potts interrupts, “Now, Ernest, don’t you go blaming yourself, neither. I already told you. The baby’s time had come. Some of us get ninety years on this good earth. Some get nine days. Your little one didn’t get nine minutes. There’s nothing those doctors at the hospital could have done. I can tell by looking this baby’s been gone for two days. The good Lord giveth, and the good Lord taketh away. Your job is to take care of your woman. Make her life easy until her heart mends.”

  By the time we’ve cleaned up the blood and remade the bed, the shadows of the mountains lean into the room. Mrs. Potts, Bitsy, and I move into the kitchen to wash the limp infant and leave the couple alone. The old lady wraps the tiny girl in a clean blanket and carries it out to the children.

  “Come here, boys.” She sits down on the porch rocker. “I want you to see your dead sissy. She’s just a little bitty thing, but Jesus took her home early. She’s an angel now.” The four boys, their faces white with sorrow, gather round the rocker.

  “Mama was crying,” one of the kids whispers. “We never heard her cry before.”

  “I should have gotten Miss Patience here sooner. I tried.” That’s Albert.

  “Don’t you go reproaching yourself either, son! You did what you could. That’s all God asks of us.” Albert wipes his eyes.

  The youngest boy touches the dead baby’s hand and then wipes his tears. “Look at her itty-bitty fingers!”

  May 14, 1930. Three-quarters moon.

  Stillborn female infant. Angel Mintz, child of Ernest and Gladys Mintz of Horse Shoe Run. Born dead with a true knot and three clots in the cord. Also, there were only two blood vessels. Mrs. Potts said there are usually three . . . The baby seemed perfect in every other way, but she weighed only 5 pounds. She was covered all over with brown baby poop. I tried to get her to breathe, but it was too late. Probably died before labor, Mrs. Potts said.

  Present: Bitsy, Mrs. Potts, and I. No payment. Didn’t expect any. Bitsy felt very bad too and said she would go back to Hazel Patch with Mrs. Potts. Now I will have to go to the courthouse to fill out a death certificate. I hope I don’t get blamed.

  Summer

  26

  June 3, 1930. Sliver moon, thunder with lightning in the west.

  Thomas came for us again in his cart, riding fast through the summer storm. He brought two heavy slickers, which he must have borrowed from some of the miners because they were so big that Bitsy and I drowned in them. There wasn’t any time for talking. He carried us back around the mountain to the Wildcat Mine, where we delivered without fuss Gincey Huckabee, one of the women whose husband was killed in the spring cave-in. The mine owners let her stay in her shack because she was a widow and pregnant. When the baby boy was born, Gincey cried and cried. It was so sad about her husband, Bitsy and I cried too. Male, 6 pounds, 4 ounces. Named for his father, Harold Huckabee, Jr.

  Brook Trout

  Spring turns to summer, and today Bitsy and I took Star down to the river to graze in the grass while we fished. I rode at the beginning while Bitsy walked, and then we switched. It was our first time out of the pasture, and Star did fine. You’d never know by watching her what a mess she was in a few months ago.

  After we rested on the riverbank, we picked a mess of greens: dandelions and shepherd’s purse, ramps and watercress. Bitsy says you can eat stinging nettles too, but you have to get them when they’re young and tender and boil the heck out of them.

  At this point I’ll try anything edible because our larder is nearly empty and so is the root cellar. In addition to four jars of last year’s canned green beans and a few carrots, there are a couple dozen seed potatoes that are starting to sprout, but we’ll need them for planting, and though the peas are up, nothing in the garden is ready to pick.

  Last week we had rabbit for two days, kind of stringy but not too bad in a soup. I’m amazed at how many critters I’ve eaten this year: rabbit . . . coon . . . possum . . . duck . . . deer . . . squirrel . . . wild turkey. Since Moonlight was bred and is no longer producing milk, our only supply of protein, other than the game, is two eggs on a good day.

  This lack of meat and milk makes me feel nearly destitute, but I forget I still have Mrs. Vanderhoff’s ruby ring and Katherine Mac-Intosh’s golden moon pin, hidden on the top of the closet in an old red Calumet baking powder tin. I promised myself I wouldn’t sell them unless I was truly desperate, and apparently I’m not there yet. Even if I wanted to, where would I go? Who would have cash money to pay me?

  As we explore the riverbank, Bitsy and I are surprised to find three tents set up under the trees. From the looks of the first two, constructed with tarps tied over two well-used old pickup trucks, the occupants are on the road with all their household goods. The third, a lean-to, is set about a quarter mile downstream where an older man with a week-old salt-and-pepper beard tends his fire. We give him a wide berth and stop around the bend. Then, while Bitsy readies our fishing poles, I tie Star where she can walk in the shallows and graze in the grass.

  “Here, Patience, watch me,” Bitsy orders as, without flinching, she threads an earthworm onto the barbed metal hook. I follow her lead, but it takes something out of me. The worm is still alive, and it’s writhing. I have fished before, but it was years and years ago, when I was a girl, and Papa always baited the hooks for me.

  My companion gives me a few tips about casting and moving along the bank slowly in the shade. Then she hands me an old tobacco can with three more worms that she dug out of the garden and heads farther upstream in her high rubber boots.

  “Meet me back here when the sun is straight up,” Bitsy instructs. “Good luck.”

  I watch as she expertly flicks her line and realize how dependent I’ve become on her. Once I was her benefactor. Now she’s mine.

  For hours I wade without getting a bite. Finally I plunk myself down in the grass and just dangle the pole, let my bait drift along in the current. It’s a sunny day with white puffy clouds drifting over me, and I play a game I used to play as a kid, looking for animals in the sky. There’s a horse . . . there’s a chicken . . . there’s the face of a hog . . . Wild pink roses crawl along the edge of the woods, and their sweet scent fills the air.

  My musings end abruptly when I feel a tug at my line. At first I think it’s a snag, so I jerk the pole, but the line pulls back. Holy cow! I’ve got one! I stagger to my feet and walk backward into the brush.

  “Bitsy!” I call, but she’s a mile away. I whip the homemade willow pole back and forth, back and forth, until a flash of silver hits the air. Oh my gosh! It’s still alive. For some reason this surprises me. The foot-long silver-and-brown-spotted fish lies on the bank, with its gills opening and closing, drowning in the air.

  Now I must kill the fish to end its suffering. I pick up a rock and smash th
e trout in the head until it lies still; then, to keep the flies off, I dangle it back in the river, still on the line.

  “Some people just throw them alive in a bucket of cold water. Keeps them fresh,” a low voice comments from behind me. When I twist around, I find one of the men from the tents, a thin swarthy fellow standing in the brush with a string of his own fish over his shoulder.

  It occurs to me that this might not be the safest place for a woman alone, but he seems harmless enough, so I smile. “It’s my first catch, and I’m not very experienced . . . It looks like you did all right.” He holds up about a dozen brown and rainbow trout.

  “That’s why we stopped here, to fish and rest for a few days, my wife and our two kids and my brother and his family. We’re heading for Pittsburgh.

  “Name’s Earl Cook. Came up from Beckley. Heard Carnegie Steel is hiring.” He sits down in the grass and starts to roll a cigarette. “It’s been a long trip. We thought we’d rest a spell. Lost the farm to the bank last month. There’s no work for us back home.”

  I’m surprised he’s telling me all this, and I’m thinking there may be nothing for him in Pittsburgh either, but I keep that to myself. All he has left is his pickup, his family, and hope . . . but things could be worse.

  It’s high noon, with the sun at its zenith, so Mr. Cook and I part. He goes downstream, back to his campsite, and I look for Bitsy. She’s already started a fire upstream and has gutted her fish on the river’s edge. A quartet of rainbow trout is arranged on a flat rock waiting to be cooked, but my one fish is the biggest, almost a foot long, and I’m proud of it.

  “Nice trout,” Bitsy comments and then shows me how to clean the creature. I watch as my fish’s innards are washed away in the current. This self-reliance is getting to be a bit much!

  Next she demonstrates how to skewer the trout with a straight green willow limb and hold it over the coals. Everything for our feast is in her knapsack, even tin pie pans to use as plates, forks, and salt. We sit on the riverbank, the green life around us, enjoying our supper, and I think to myself, Things could be worse.