The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  The vet frowns, trying to picture the events, takes a swig from the silver flask, then hands it back to me. “I don’t know much about women, but cows get seizures related to milk fever when they lack the ability to quickly move calcium into their milk and end up depleting their own blood levels. And there’s a condition in cats and dogs called disseminated intravascular coagulation that’s related to the depletion of clotting factors. Basically they use up all their platelets and protein and start hemorrhaging from everywhere . . . There’s also eclampsia. Maybe that was it.”

  He may be attempting to comfort me by providing clinical information, and at some other time I might be attentive, but right now I’m overcome, not interested in a possible explanation. I put my hand to his mouth to silence him, and he takes it and kisses my palm, a strange gesture—an agreement, perhaps, that he should shut up. The rains have started for real now, first a pitter-patter, then a hiss.

  “You have blood on your face.” He touches my cheek. “And your neck . . . here . . . and your dress.” He takes his bandanna, steps over to the door to wet the cloth in the downpour, and wipes my face, then my neck. He’s so close I can smell his sweet breath, and I close my eyes and turn my cheek to feel his hand better.

  Lightning flashes, then thunder a few seconds later, so close and so loud that it shakes the barn walls. He unbuttons the two top buttons of my dress and I let him, my heart pounding so hard that I think if it wasn’t for the sound of the now-continuous claps and booms, he might hear it. When we stand, the moonshine has affected me more than I realize, and I almost fall into him.

  The rain roars on the tin roof now, roars all around us, and we step to the barn door to watch the sheet lightning. He holds out his bandanna to wet it again and wipes my hands and nails, still grimy with blood, then leads me out into the downpour, where we stand with our arms around each other. My face against his wet undershirt, his face looking into the sky, flashing white, then yellow, then white again, we sway like dancers in an all-night dance marathon.

  Hester unbuttons a few more buttons and then washes my neck almost down to my nipples. Shivering, I watch his fingers work. He kneels in the mud and wipes my legs, then wipes me between my legs, over and over with his soft bandanna, washes me like a baby, and I begin to cry again. No one has bathed me since my mother died. I have bathed others, patients in labor, newborn babies, old people who were ill, even just today I washed a dead woman, but no one has washed me.

  When I unbutton the rest of my dress and step out of it, there’s nothing underneath. No brassiere, no corset, just my drawers. I’d changed out of my work clothes in such a hurry when Mr. Moon came for me that I hadn’t bothered with the other things. I’m shocked at myself but don’t pull away. I’m a woman in a dream removing her silver armor. Hester doesn’t seem surprised by my lack of modesty and tosses the shift into the dry barn.

  Again and again thunder fills the air like boulders colliding across the mountains. The vet just continues to hold me, naked, while the holy water washes us clean.

  River

  Morning. Blinding sun through a dusty windowpane in a room that at first I don’t recognize. I’m lying naked in a four-poster bed like the one at the MacIntoshes’ home, but the room is nowhere near as fancy. My eyes roam the white plaster walls with high windows framed in wide dark oak molding, the bare wood floors. There are paintings of horses in gold and black frames, landscapes with hunting horses and workhorses and racehorses and a photo of a young soldier standing with his horses. I know this place now. This is where, weeks ago, I bandaged the vet’s leg and brought him soup while he healed from his fistfight with the Bishop brothers.

  I run my hand over the twisted sheets and the empty space where Hester had slept. I guess he slept. Sometime in the night we left the hayloft and ran through the mud, into the house, and up the stairs; then, before dawn, the telephone rang and he left me. I heard his car start up and move away down Salt Lick, but I was too undone to care. It was the alcohol, I remind myself, that brought me to this man, not exactly a stranger, not exactly a friend.

  I run my hands over my body and, finding myself still the same person, dress quickly, ignoring Kitty’s old blood on my damp dress, which I find laid out neatly over the back of a chair. It’s too soon to tell how the events of last night will change my relationship with Hester . . . or if they will. I pull on my shoes and realize with a wave of guilt that unless Bitsy came home, our animals were out in the rain all night.

  At the crest, I look down toward the Hope River and am surprised to see the valley looking no different after the storm. The dust has been washed off the tired plants, but even hours of hard rain can’t turn the grass green. Nothing has been altered, except inside me. I am laid open.

  When I get to the house, I am surprised to see smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney; Bitsy is home. The doors to the barn are open, and I can hear her singing to Moonlight while she milks. “Oh, sister, let’s go down. Let’s go down. Don’t you want to go down? Oh, sister, let’s go down. Down to the river to pray . . .” It’s the first time she’s sung since her mother died.

  “Morning,” she says as she strides into the house ten minutes later, swinging a pail full of warm white liquid. I’ve only had time to brush the straw out of my hair. She eyes the birth satchel as I replace our supplies.

  “You were up all night at a birth? I’m sorry, I should have been with you. Who delivered? Everything go okay?”

  “No . . . no, it didn’t go well.” I sit down at the table. “It was Kitty Hart. Someone we never met. She died. Her baby died too.”

  Shocked at my words, Bitsy drops her bucket into the sink, and the milk splashes over the side. She plunks down in the chair next to me, puts her hand on my arm. “Oh, Patience, baby. I’m so sorry. I should have been there. I should have been there to help you . . .” She waits for me to explain, but I’m too exhausted to even talk.

  “I have to change.” I indicate my bloodstained dress.

  “Can I heat water? Bring in the tub?”

  “No, I’ll go to the river. I’ll tell you about the birth later.”

  This surprises me. Why do I want to go to the river?

  When Star and I arrive on the banks of the Hope River, now rushing brown from the great storm, I’m greatly relieved to see no trailers or tents. The vet has already washed the blood off my skin; it’s my soul that needs cleansing. I pull off my dress and bloomers. “Oh, sister,” I remember Bitsy’s song, “Let’s go down. Down to the river to pray.”

  I step into the water, deliciously cold, float on my back, and stare up at the white scarves of clouds. I haven’t prayed in so long. Who would I pray to?

  August 14, 1930. Full moon already waning.

  (It’s been three days. I couldn’t write about this before.) Stillborn baby girl born to Maynard and Kitty Hart of Burnt Town. Arrived at the home after mother was in labor for three or four days and had been pushing for four hours. Baby was a month early and wedged in the birth canal with its head turned sideways. After I got there, birth was accomplished in less than ten minutes, but it was too late for the baby. Mother was swollen and began to have seizures. Bitsy and I looked this up later in DeLee’s text; it’s called eclampsia. There was nothing I knew how to do, no herbs or anything. Sometimes women live through these fits, but Kitty had already lost so much blood I believe her heart stopped.

  Others at the birth were her sister, Birdy (surname unknown); Edna Hart, the husband’s sister; and Mrs. Moon, the neighbor lady. Bitsy was in Hazel Patch. A very sad day.

  Autumn Returns

  35

  Fall from Grace

  Dark shadows over the mountains. Slate clouds like dirty sheets that won’t come clean. They blot out the sunshine during the day, blot out the stars at night. There are no jobs in Union County. One out of four men stands idle, and that doesn’t include the farmers who can’t sell their crops or the women who used to work before the men came back from the war.

  It’s be
en weeks since the big rain, and the heat all over the South is fierce, one of the hottest Septembers the locals can remember. When they cut hay, cattlemen are averaging two bales instead of four. Scores of houses and farms are listed for auction or foreclosure in the Liberty Times, and people are moving east and north in droves like flocks of migrating birds.

  This afternoon, while Bitsy and I trudged around the garden inspecting the parched dry brown tassels of our corn, a vehicle bounced up the road with a cloud of dust rising behind it.

  What’s this now? Another delivery.

  We watch from the fence as Reverend Miller gets out of the truck and moves around to the passenger side to open the door for his wife. He’s wearing a white straw fedora. Mildred is waving a large church fan with a picture of Jesus on it. The two advance toward the house without smiling, the dry yellow grass crunching under their feet.

  I figure they’ve come to see how my friend is faring after her mother’s death or maybe to bring news of Thomas. He hasn’t been seen for weeks. Bitsy runs for the house to wash up and bring out some cold sweet tea.

  “Howdy,” I call out, wiping my forehead with my blue-and-white bandanna. The reverend nods formally.

  Mildred Miller calls out, “How you doin’, honey?”

  We settle on the wooden benches in the shade on the porch. I offer Mildred the one rocking chair, and she insists that her husband take it. Then Bitsy comes out with a wooden tray and four glasses of tea. The spring water is so cold we don’t need ice. Not that we have any.

  “Have you heard from Thomas?” Bitsy starts out. I know she’s been worried, but with Sheriff Hardman looking for him, it’s better that he’s disappeared. We just need to know that he’s safe.

  “No,” the pastor answers. “No word yet. We’ve come about something else. This is hard, so I’m going to tell it to you plain . . . Mrs. Potts went to meet her maker last night. She died in her sleep, a good Christian woman. Hemorrhaged from the cancer, that’s what Doc Robinson says.”

  “Cancer? I didn’t know. She seemed so vigorous for her age. What kind of cancer was it? Did anyone know?” I’m so shocked, I keep babbling. Bitsy doesn’t say anything, but Mrs. Miller reaches for her and holds her tight.

  “What this means,” Mildred goes on, passing her Jesus fan slowly back and forth in front of her face, “is that we now have only one midwife in Union County; that’s you. Dr. Blum’s gone too, you probably heard.”

  “What about the other physician, Dr. Robinson?”

  “He doesn’t do deliveries, and he doesn’t go to people’s homes anymore. If you’re sick, you have to go to him.”

  “There’s Becky Myers, the health nurse,” I suggest.

  “Yes, Becky . . . but she won’t go out after dark and she’s no great shakes about birthing. Too nervous.” This, I must say, I agree with after seeing her at Docey’s birth down under the bridge; she’s a real nervous Nellie.

  “Anyway,” the pastor continues, “we thought you’d want to know that people will be calling on you.” He takes Bitsy and me in with his eyes. “Not just for births, women’s things. Infant things.”

  Great, I think, and what will we tell them if they ask about hot flashes, strange rashes, and monthlies? I’m not a doctor, and I’ve never had female troubles . . . except my periods, which come when they want to, but that never bothered me.

  I take a big breath. “Thank you for letting us know.”

  “When are they putting Mrs. Potts in the ground?” Bitsy asks. It’s the first thing she’s said.

  “Sunday. The whole church service will be dedicated to her. Samantha and Emma, you remember them from Cassie’s birth, will be singing the solos.”

  Bitsy escorts the couple to their car, standing for a few minutes at the passenger door while I take the tray of empty glasses into the house. When I come out, the green truck is sputtering back down Wild Rose Road in the dust.

  “They say anything more about Thomas?”

  “No.” She looks away, and I know she doesn’t want to talk about it.

  I collapse on the wooden bench in the shade and flop my head back against the white clapboard wall. What will come next? So many deaths. I count back. Six this year. The Mintz family’s little girl, Angel. Mary Proudfoot. William MacIntosh. Kitty Hart and her baby. And now Grace Potts. The world will be smaller without her.

  Across the valley, on the other side of the Hope River, a shard of lightning pierces the clouds. No thunder. No rain.

  Circle

  The Sunday service devoted to Grace Potts is more spectacle than funeral. I imagined something simple like Mary Proudfoot’s, but this is more of a celebration.

  Again Bitsy and I dress in our best dark dresses with knickers under them and mount our horse. This time we leave early and take the long way around Raccoon Lick to Hope Ridge and up the south fork to Horse Shoe Run. It’s cooler in the shade where the hemlocks and maple trees hang over the creek.

  As we come out of the woods and trot up Horse Shoe Road, the dust is so thick we almost choke on it. Autos and buggies stream along in the same direction, heading toward the freshly whitewashed chapel where the wooden doors, decorated with wildflowers, open like arms. Again we tie our horse with the other horses in back. Bitsy heads directly across the yellowed grass to talk to Byrd Bowlin, and I, feeling conspicuously alone, wander toward the church. I thought maybe Thomas would be here, but he’s nowhere around.

  I’d expected to be the only white person in the crowd, but I am surprised to see others. Mr. Stenger, the pharmacist, and his wife are sitting at a picnic table with Becky Myers, Mr. Bittman the grocer, and Daniel Hester. The vet lifts his hand but doesn’t come over. Mrs. Wade, the fruit fly who was such a pest at Prudy Ott’s birth, is talking to Sheriff Hardman.

  What’s Hardman doing here, anyway? Snooping around for the whereabouts of Thomas? That pisses me off, and I decide to confront him. I never particularly liked Mrs. Wade either.

  “Nice to see you,” I say to the woman with a smile as sweet as sweet potato pie. She’s dressed in a navy blue suit with white buttons the size of silver dollars and a wide white straw hat. Perspiration shows on her upper lip, which is covered in bright red lipstick. “Sheriff . . .” I nod and bare my teeth in a smile. “I didn’t know you were acquainted with Mrs. Potts.”

  “She delivered us. Bill is my brother!” That’s Red Mouth cutting in. The fact that the two are related surprises me, and I look at them in a new light. Not much family resemblance except for the way they hold themselves, their backs straight and their chins tilted high.

  The lady goes on, “Our mother died a few years ago, but Mrs. Potts was her midwife and they always stayed friends. Many is the time we would come in the kitchen and find the two of them laughing over sassafras tea.”

  Then Sheriff Hardman takes up the story. “Mrs. Potts was only a young woman when she starting delivering babies in the 1800s, and she didn’t call herself a midwife then. She’d been to a few births over in Maryland. Ma and she were just girls, really, eighteen and nineteen. There were no doctors in Union County then. Grace Potts was it.”

  The church bell chimes, and the crowd files into the little white chapel, men, women, and children. I follow the sheriff and his sister but squeeze in with Bitsy, who is sitting with Bowlin in the third row. I guess Thomas isn’t going to show. Probably feels it’s too hot for him here after MacIntosh’s death.

  The reverend begins with a prayer and then leads us in the old spiritual “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” He follows with another prayer and then an account of Mrs. Potts’s life, how she had come from Maryland through Front Royal and over the mountains into West Virginia in 1870, a former slave, released along with her mother by her master when she was a child before the end of the Civil War. Her husband, Alfred Potts, was born free in New York State, a trained blacksmith and farrier, and they settled along Horse Shoe Run, a creek Mrs. Potts actually named.

  I had never thought of Grace Potts as a slave. How could that b
e? Such a dignified, well-educated community leader? We all have our histories, but this is a revelation to me.

  The pastor goes on, telling us that the couple had four children, all of whom died in an outbreak of yellow fever in 1878. I think again what a woman she must have been. All of your children dying in one year? What would that do to you? Four little graves . . .

  “Grace Potts was truly a saint,” Reverend Miller intones.

  “Amen,” the congregation responds, and then we sing another spiritual. “Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in.” The harmony raises the roof of the little church and sunlight streams through the windows. I wonder why I didn’t visit the old midwife more, why I didn’t try to learn from her while I had the opportunity. Once we had Star to ride, it would have been easy. She was always so open with me. I guess I thought she would be here forever, but I should have known better.

  Next the pastor asks everyone who was delivered by Mrs. Potts to come forward. Two-thirds of the congregation rise, from babies to men and women Hardman’s age. I’m surprised to see Mr. Maddock, my neighbor, push his wife up the center aisle in a squeaky wicker wheelchair; the woman I’d thought so stern and disapproving, the woman who never came to the door or asked me in. Now, as I glance at her withered legs under the green-and-white crocheted blanket, I understand why. There’s another surprise.