The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  My appetite has vanished. I have a difficult time being grateful for such meager fare. Hopen Haus is at its lowest capacity since Fannie Graber founded it twenty-five years ago, yet we cannot take many more boarders without someone going hungry. I look down the table again—imagining where these girls would live if we were forced to close our doors.

  Our youngest boarder, Desiree Jones, is fifteen weeks pregnant and fifteen years old. She has slick pigtails that poof out behind her ears, and a mocha baby face contrasted by a chip on her shoulder as large and scathing as her mouth. Desiree’s social worker brought her to us from the projects in Knoxville, and here Desiree will remain until her mother’s child-abuse allegation goes to court.

  Terese Cullum is in her late twenties. She has pale blonde dreadlocks bound in a kerchief and wears peasant skirts and chunky turquoise rings, the latter of which she refuses to take off regardless of her body’s rising water retention. At twenty-eight-weeks pregnant, she shows signs of early-onset preeclampsia. She and her five-year-old son, Luca, hitchhiked here from southern Tennessee. Her boyfriend—who fathered her unborn baby, but not Luca—abandoned Terese at a rest stop without so much as a dime.

  Our driver, Wilbur Byler, brought sixteen-year-old Lydie Risser to us four months ago. Wilbur said Lydie was from the Split Rock Community in Kentucky, and that though Lydie’s parents had hired him to drive her to Hopen Haus, they hadn’t told him that she was even with child. But as she clambered out of the van in her cape dress and long twin braids, the humiliation singeing Lydie’s cheeks explained it all.

  I know how Star arrived, but I am not sure who dropped her off. One morning, just after dawn, I heard the crackle of tires on the lane and crawled from beneath the quilts on my bed to look out the window. A heavyset girl was leaning against the open passenger door of a small white truck. She wore baggy jeans and a sweatshirt, as it was March and cold. Her hair was the only circumspect thing about her; it was short and twisted into stiff purple spikes. The girl suddenly flung out her arms, arguing. A backpack sailed out of the interior of the vehicle—hitting her stomach.

  She staggered backward, clutching the burden. The truck then bounced down the washed-out lane. The girl kept watching until the taillights had winked out around the bend near the old cattle chute. And then she dropped her backpack, clutched her hair with both hands, and cried. Even after I sent Charlotte outside to welcome the girl in, she refused to tell us anything beyond what would soon become obvious: she was newly pregnant and alone.

  Charlotte now mistakes the reason for my sullen demeanor and reaches over to pat my hand. “Maybe they didn’t air the story,” she soothes, a natural grossmammi, even though she’s neither been married nor had a child. “It’s been a week, and we’ve not heard anything yet.”

  She goes back to spooning her soup. I pull both hands below the table and curl them into fists. To my right, Alice’s gaze brands my skin. When I meet it, she shifts away. Her guilty silence speaks volumes.

  “Oh, they’ve used it,” I say, watching as below her white kapp, the tips of Alice’s ears slowly turn red.

  Alice Rippentoe was baptized into Dry Hollow Community’s Old Order Mennonite church one year after I was. But differences of opinion, such as her wanting publicity for Hopen Haus and my despising it, have cropped up countless times since we became midwifery peers. I am grateful for that night, six months before Alice joined the church, when a slipped disk christened my position as reluctant head midwife and gave my opinion more weight than hers.

  She cuts her eyes over at me again, the color of them like a thundercloud. “I didn’t know the news would pick the story up. Okay, Rhoda? I just thought that journalist—”

  “Well, they did,” I interrupt. “They picked the story up, and now they’ve got our pictures, too.” When I went outside to send the Channel 2 News team away, an attentive cameraman had taken my photo before I could turn away.

  Charlotte shakes her head, heavily buttering a piece of salt-rising brot and layering it with red-veined radishes. “Ach, such a shame,” she murmurs.

  Unlike orthodox Charlotte, who’s never once stepped foot outside Old Order Mennonite parameters in her fifty-seven years, I am upset not because I believe any captured image is idolatry, but because I’ve been using this cloistered lifestyle to conceal my past. Now, with that one brilliant flash, everything I have worked so hard to keep in darkness may be revealed.

  “Can’t we just talk to them?” Alice asks. “Ask them to retract the story due to our religious beliefs?”

  I take one fist out from beneath the table and hammer it on top. “No!” Panic makes my voice louder than I intend. Star bristles and looks over in alarm. Smiling to reassure her, I lower my voice and lean toward Alice.

  “Telling them we want the story retracted will make it seem like we’ve got something to hide, and they’ll come back here to find out what it is.” I shake my head. “No, all we can do now is wait and hope it blows over.”

  “Get back here!” The baritone command is still resonating when it is chased by two German shepherds with tawny coats and silvered muzzles. The dogs trot up to the entrance of the dining room and pause while thwacking their plumed tails against the doorframe and smiling.

  Hopen Haus’s range of boarders is matched only by their family members, who sometimes visit without warning, as if to make sure we are indeed taking care of their kin. Therefore, I am only slightly perplexed by the sound of a stranger’s voice and the appearance of his dogs in our dining room. But as the dogs’ owner comes to stand in the doorway and I ready my simulated hostess smile in greeting, I look beneath the grizzled beard of the man and see a smooth-faced boy I knew a lifetime ago.

  A life ago. My smile falters. The room pulses with my sporadic breath.

  Seeing my struggle, Alice rises to her feet. Looper lowers his head, and I can spot the slight thinning at the cowlick’s curl. He hooks his fingers beneath his dogs’ collars. “Sorry,” he mutters. “For intruding.” And I wonder if Looper is apologizing for intruding on our meal or for intruding on the life that I have built apart from him.

  “No need to be sorry,” says Alice. I watch her move toward him. My tear-glazed eyes make their bodies waver like a mirage. Cradling his elbow—a habit from her Englisch life that she has yet to break—Alice guides Looper over to the high-back chair at the head of the two tables; a position that is the counter-opposite of mine.

  He smiles while taking the seat. The matching dimples that I remember comb the graying strands of his beard. “I don’t mean to put y’all out,” he says. I am caught off guard by his words that are so slow, they sound poured from a jar.

  “You’re not,” Alice says. “We’re used to visitors.” She pinches off pieces of brot and drops them before the old dogs that have padded over and curled in half circles behind Looper’s chair. She motions to Lydie to bring another place setting. “Where’ve you traveled from?”

  Looper’s eyes slice through the confusion crowding the table and cut me in half. “Wisconsin,” he says. He smiles his thanks at Lydie, who sets a bowl steaming with supp and clatters silverware beside it. “Originally, I mean. Now . . .” He leans down and runs his hand over the head of the dog closest to him. “Now I live wherever my dogs are allowed to stay too.”

  “What do you do for a living, Mr. . . . ?” asks Charlotte.

  “Just call me Looper.” He scoops a spoonful of new grummbeere and dumps them into his mouth, gingerly mulching the food and blowing out their trapped heat. “Mainly drywalling,” he says. “But I can do excavation, finish carpentry, electricity, plumbing. . . . Guess handyman would be the better title.” He drains his Mason jar in one long gulp.

  Alice nods at Terese, and she brings the pitcher over from the sideboard and refills his glass with sassafras tea. “And that’s why I’m here.” Looper wipes his mouth with the cotton napkin, but beads of moisture still cling to his beard.

  “Why?” asks Charlotte.

  “From what I saw on the
news, it looks like this place could use a little sprucing up, and I wondered if you’d allow me to do the job.”

  The story has aired and Pandora’s box has opened.

  He looks at me. I swallow hard and unhook my tongue from the dry roof of my mouth. “Perhaps we . . . we can discuss this after the meal?” I ask.

  “Of course.” Looper smiles, dropping the balled napkin beside his plate.

  With my fork, I puncture a red grummbeere flecked with parsley. Buttered broth seeps from the holes, but I do not have the strength or the appetite to bring the vegetable to my mouth. I know Looper looks at me for an answer, as do Alice and Charlotte. But with the secrets of our past, I don’t know what answer to give.

  Constellations pin themselves to the velveteen night when Looper finally interlaces his hands and rests them on the worn knee of his jeans. “How long you been like this?” he asks.

  Though the question’s vague, there is no need for him to clarify. I can’t imagine how ridiculous he must think I am—wearing the costume of my Plain dress and scraped bun as if I thought that, by assuming a different leading role, I could forget our story. “Eighteen years,” I whisper.

  “Eighteen years!” He pulls one of my kapp strings and barks out a laugh that causes his dogs to lift their heads and look around the yard before seeing nothing of interest and returning to the pillow of their paws. “You were barely eighteen when you left.”

  “I know how old I was.” I am grateful the only light comes from the fireflies that lie like a glittering blanket over the field. I am fraught with his disbelief at how young I was then, when I know these intervening years have not been kind.

  “It’s pretty brilliant,” he says. “Dropping off the face of the earth by joining a Mennonite commune.” Leaning forward, he digs into the back pocket of his jeans, takes out his wallet, and tosses something onto my lap.

  I look down and see a piece of paper folded into a square. Opening it, I can make out a column of words beside a large black-and-white image. The ink is spotty, and the woman featured has her hand up in an attempt to shield her face, as any respectable Mennonite woman would. But even with my kapp and altered features, there is no doubt Looper—surfing the Internet—would’ve instantly recognized me. The bold title reads, “Abandoned Mennonite Community Becomes Home For Unwed Mothers.” I am sure that journalist made me sound like a saint, which only adds to the plethora of lies.

  I fold the article—the edges softened with handling—and pass it back. “This is called a community, Looper. Not a commune. And I had no choice.”

  He snorts. “Beth, you don’t know the choices you had.”

  His use of my real name strips off my costume and shuts off the stage lights. I clench my teeth against the desire to shield my nakedness, when revealing who I am—even for a moment—is the very least this long-suffering man deserves.

  “I might not have,” I say, “but I know going home wasn’t one of them.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “And neither do you.”

  Even the bullfrogs ringing the goat pond grow silent, as if the unspoken words between us have clotted their ballooning throats. Still, Looper says nothing, just clicks his tongue. The dogs heave up arthritic hips and stumble over, panting from the mild exertion and the heat. Easing down onto their haunches, they lean their bodies toward his. Their tails thump an unsteady tempo on the porch boards. Looper gently tugs on their pointed ears and ruffles calloused fingers through their shiny coats. As he does, I do not see the golden gleam of a wedding band. I despise myself for noticing.

  “So . . . you’re willing to work for room and board?” I ask, pulling us both to safer ground.

  “Yeah, Laura Ingalls, I am. Got no bills to pay and nowhere to be, so I’m a free man.” Looper leans toward me with his hands still stroking the dogs and knocks his shoulder against mine.

  I flinch at his touch and glance over my shoulder at the windows. In the darkness, I can’t tell if anyone’s watching. “This isn’t high school, Looper.”

  The smile melts off his face like a veneer. “Don’t you think I know that?”

  “And if you’re going to work at Hopen Haus, you need to treat me like your employer.”

  “But you’re not paying me.”

  “Fine, then. Your peer.”

  The screen door squeaks as someone pushes it open. I turn and see Star scrounging in the floppy pocket of her bathrobe for the cigarettes that, whenever I search her room, I am never able to find. But then she lifts her head with its smashed razorback of purple hair and sees us sitting on the steps. Dropping the cigarette pack into her pocket, she shuffles back inside and lets the screen door slam.

  I emit a disheartened sigh.

  Looper brushes a hand in my direction and gets to his feet. “You know, you might look different, but some things about you are the same as they were twenty-four years ago.”

  I know my indifference makes him angry. But I have shut my heart down for so long, I cannot let myself care—or at least not let him think I do. “And what’s that?” I ask.

  “You still think you’re too smart to let anyone near you, including me.”

  I stand and fold my arms, bracing myself against the truth of his words. “That’s not fair.”

  “Not fair?” He steps closer. “I’ll tell you what’s not fair—” His voice hitches. He looks down at the fog filling the enclave of the valley, swirling around the foundations of the homes built in one day by a community now struggling to exist. He looks back at me. When Looper speaks, his voice is calm, though his eyes glow like the fireflies in the field. “Beth . . . Rhoda—or whoever you are—your family and I’ve spent years trying to find you, so let me tell you: not fair’s letting everybody think you’re dead.”

  Beth, 1996

  Ned Truitt from Reproductive Endocrinology waved as Thom and I came out of the academic president’s office. We waved back. Adjusting his earphones, Ned strolled past us with his heavy backpack bobbing over his white lab coat. Thom and I moved away from the office, but we did not glance at each other or speak. I pushed up my sleeve to check my watch. It was all for show. Throughout that meeting, I’d known just how much time we had left. That’s why I had so blithely signed more forms releasing the university from liability concerning their professor’s hiring a graduate student to bear his child.

  “Want to grab lunch?” I pointed to The Grill, located across from the Student Services Center.

  Thom said, “No,” and glanced behind him. I looked, too, at the opened white blinds hanging over the glass door centered with the university seal. I could just imagine the president and the dean hunkered over that lacquered table while their eyes peered out at us by the light of the titled green lamp. I knew Thom was thinking this as he said, barely meeting my eyes, “We can’t, Beth. Things . . . they must be different now.”

  My heart contracted. I moved down the steps toward the student post office. Again, it was all for show. Six years had passed since I left my father and younger brother behind. In all that time, I had made little effort to stay connected with my family—inadvertently abandoning them to the same extent my mother had abandoned us. But even if I had stayed in touch, I doubted they would have sent me mail.

  My right loafer had just touched the third step when Thom reached down and brushed the edge of my sleeve, that simple gesture girding my threadbare hope. Without looking at him, I climbed back to the landing. Thom took my elbow and led me away from that peering office glass and out the double door. We stood on the covered porch next to the cigarette receptacle that had freshly ground ashes clotting the air.

  “You understand. Don’t you, Miss Beth?” he said. “Even if we both keep quiet like we’ve agreed, if students saw us together, they’d assume the worst. And rumors . . . would start.”

  I looked around the campus, buying time to gather my thoughts. The wind had whipped the snow and salt into meringue. It clung to black branches of the trees marching past the brick building
s with their white columns, towering cupolas, and gilded clocks. Students pressed around us on all sides—scarfing down sandwiches peeking above tinfoil, poring over index cards jammed with notes, chatting with fellow classmates about weekend plans.

  Even though it had gotten easier, as many of my graduate school classmates were married and therefore not preoccupied with the frivolity of my undergraduate years, I still felt I was trapped beneath a globe depicting only one season. All around me life transpired, seasons changed, people lived and died, yet I remained the same—stagnant, barren . . . alone.

  “But aren’t we together now?” I whispered. “Aren’t we being seen together now? At the restaurant, you said how much this all meant to you. I thought . . .”

  I knew exactly what I had thought, but I could not voice it. Months had passed since that brisk afternoon Dr. Fitzpatrick led me from the office down to the viaduct overlooking the river swollen with crumpled red-and-brown leaves. We had stood side by side, staring straight ahead in silence, until Thom’s hesitant voice asked if I’d be willing to carry his and Meredith’s child without explaining why Meredith could not carry their child on her own.

  That day I first formed Thom’s name on my lips within his hearing. I had agreed to gestational surrogacy not because I wanted the money, nor because I had overcome the pain of bearing my child only to give him away. I had agreed because I had never imagined that what I thought would bring Thom Fitzpatrick and me together would actually tear us apart.

  Thom now said, “I’m sorry, Beth.” He let his outstretched hand fall down to his side, as if it were a physical extension of the futility he felt. “I should never have asked you.”