The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  Spring light slanted through the rectangular window. Dust motes sparkled and fell like stars. In that moment fraught with an intimacy I had desired yet did not deserve, the emotion I felt was not jealousy that he was Meredith’s husband or anger that this child I carried was not mine. Instead, I just felt wonder that I had been gifted with this child at all. My gratitude for someone whom my body would usher into the world, but whose life I could never fully claim, let me understand the beautiful sacrifice of true maternal love.

  The force of the office door opening flapped the papers scattered across the floor. Thom’s wife stood in its gap, staring down at her husband and me embracing. Her blue eyes glimmered. Her lips were hard pressed like marble. She had enough dignity not to say anything, but before I could explain what she thought she had seen, Meredith pivoted on her heel and stalked out of the room. The door remained ajar. The misaligned papers became still. If not for the trail of her citrus perfume, I would have thought I had dreamed Meredith Fitzpatrick’s startling presence.

  I stood from the chair with my hand still holding my stomach.

  Thom rested his hands on my shoulders and eased me back down. “Don’t,” he said. “Please—let me take care of this.”

  I didn’t know how he would, though. As I stood staring at Thom’s shoeprints marring the papers of my thesis, I no longer believed the argument I had spent months backing up with primary and secondary sources. There was no ethical solution when a surrogate fell in love with the child a contract prevented her from claiming. There was no ethical solution because there really was no choice. The child was never the surrogate’s, even if the surrogate’s heart belonged entirely to the child.

  I did not know where to go once I had signed into the fertility clinic, aware of Meredith Fitzpatrick’s eyes burning into my back from her chair along the left-hand wall. I had not seen Meredith in the two weeks since she entered her husband’s office and found Thom and me embracing. And I knew she did not want to see me. I knew that if she could extract this child without causing it harm, she would. But she couldn’t, so she had no choice but to be civil, although I am sure everything inside her itched to paint her handprint across my face.

  Thankfully, Dr. Hancock and the genetic counselor, Dr. Michaels, came into the room as soon as we were called back.

  Dr. Hancock smiled before pulling up the swivel chair. Dr. Michaels remained standing with her back against the wall. Everything from Dr. Michaels’s cardboard expression to her stoic voice seemed an attempt to observe us from the shadows or to become a shadow herself. I noticed this because I often made the same attempt.

  “Why don’t you all take a seat?” Dr. Hancock asked, indicating the three padded chairs she must have brought in specifically for our visit.

  She continued to watch us long after we were settled. In that moment, I understood that she was not just being reticent; she was trying to calculate her words. “It seems . . . ,” Dr. Hancock began, then paused to clear her throat. “There’s something wrong with your child, Mr. and Mrs. Fitzpatrick. For the past two weeks since Dr. Michaels and I’ve been monitoring your surrogate, Beth—” Dr. Hancock nodded at me—“we’ve noted the high level of alpha-fetoprotein in her blood; the excess of amniotic fluid; the coarctation of the aorta—a narrowing of the exit vessel from the heart. Although the baby did fine during the stress tests, the traces of trisomy 18 and 21 convey to us that your daughter might have a chromosomal abnormality.”

  Meredith inhaled, as if extracting whatever oxygen there was left in the room. “Like Downs?” she asked.

  “We’re not sure,” Dr. Hancock admitted. “Sometimes everything we look at can point to a certain condition, but when the child’s born, everything is fine. Other times, we will monitor mother and child and only discover a chromosomal abnormality once that child’s born.”

  “What do we do now?” Thom asked. With a PhD in obstetrics, he must’ve known the answer. But as a father, he was baffled . . . stunned.

  Dr. Michaels stepped from the shadows. The fluorescent lighting glinted off her beige hair.

  “In a few weeks, we could do another amniocentesis,” she said. “To make sure we haven’t made a mistake. If the results are the same, we could do a D and C, which is—”

  “I know what a D and C is,” Thom snapped. His face softened. “Sorry. You just don’t have to explain.”

  Meredith turned to her husband. “I don’t know. You might, but I don’t.” She faced the doctor again. “And I’d like to.”

  Dr. Hancock continued the conversation where Dr. Michaels had been cut off, and I imaged that this tag team was accustomed to dealing with parents whose underlying tensions erupted during stress. “D and C stands for dilation and curettage,” she said. “It is the most invasive of the procedures, as it would completely remove the fetus from the uterine cavity—”

  “Hold on,” Thom interrupted, shaking his head as vehemently as Meredith was nodding hers. “This is a decision that will have to take time.”

  Meredith said, “Just like deciding to have this child took time?” I looked over. Her legs were crossed, arms folded. Her blue eyes shot ice.

  “We will not discuss this now,” Thom said.

  Meredith turned back to Dr. Michaels. “We want another amniocentesis.” She waved toward the calendar tacked to the wall. “Put us on your schedule or whatever you do.”

  Dr. Hancock looked between the parents and then over at me. “You all right?” she asked.

  I nodded, but I could feel the sweat beading my top lip as the vertigo returned—making me the axis from which the rest of the room spun. I wanted to have a say in the decision, but I knew that—without a biological connection to the child—I had no right. I was just a conduit for life that had, with the casual flick of Meredith’s wrist, been transformed into a conduit for death. With every puncture to the uterine cavity, both my life and the baby’s were put at risk through the potential for preterm labor and infection.

  My rattled mind echoed with the words I had thought in the beginning: This is a business transaction; that is all. But it no longer was just a business transaction, and if I was honest with myself, it never had been. I had been coerced into this business transaction not by the promise of money, but by the phantom promise of Dr. Thomas Fitzpatrick’s love. I realized—sitting there, cradling my womb beneath protective hands—that love not for the father, but for the child herself, was the reason I wanted to weep over the loss that was sure to come.

  “I’m not prepared to raise a child who isn’t normal,” Meredith said. “I’m just not. I was never really prepared to . . . to raise a child at all.”’

  Thom stripped off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So what do we do if the amniocentesis shows the same results?”

  “We only have one choice,” Meredith said. “Don’t we?” She looked between the doctors and then her husband as if the woman whose body actually sustained her child’s life were not in the room. “It will have to be aborted.”

  As tears dripped upon my clenched hands, I wondered if I was the only one who noted the shift from a daughter, a baby, a life, to it.

  Thom turned at the sound of my bike tires rolling over the uneven boards of the dock. He wasn’t wearing his glasses. His hair hadn’t been combed. If it weren’t for the faint gray fanning out from his temples, I would almost think him the same age as me—and that there really was hope for us. But there wasn’t hope. There never had been.

  He smiled as I drew closer. “You came.”

  “Did I have a choice?” I leaned my bike against the side of the dock and walked toward him. “You told me to.” My tone was clipped. But I wasn’t angry, just broken.

  “We all have a choice.”

  “Meredith doesn’t think we do,” I said.

  Thom winced. He looked out across the lake, where swans stirred the water with their brilliant white wings and then settled down again as if they had never moved. “No,” he finally sighed. “Meredith doesn’t.”


  “And what do you think?” I stepped closer.

  Thom cupped his hands over his mouth and exhaled hard. “We both signed the contract, Beth. We both have a say.”

  “But don’t I have a say?” I cried. “Doesn’t it matter that I want to keep this child? That I don’t care if she’s handicapped or not?”

  Thom placed his hands on the railing of the dock. For the first time since I met him, the boyish traces faded away, and he just looked . . . old. “I know Meredith wouldn’t allow you to adopt the child. She wouldn’t. Not after—” He cast a hand over the still water with its floating net of feathers, but I knew he was recalling the afternoon Meredith saw the two of us embracing in his office. I then understood that though Thom had surely caught up with his wife that day, he had never been allowed to explain our relationship. Perhaps he didn’t understand it himself.

  I said, “But to sacrifice a child to preserve her pride? To . . . to punish us? What kind of mother would do that? Already . . .” I placed a hand on my stomach, and as if in response, she stirred inside my womb, leaving behind an undercurrent of life long after her movements had ceased. “Already I would give everything up for this child, and she’s not even mine.”

  Shaking my head, I took a step away from Thom, back up the dock. “No. It’s not natural what Meredith’s feeling and what she’s not. That is not the kind of mother I want my daughter—” My mouth convulsed. My vision swam as, for the first time, I uttered the possessiveness for this child that I innately felt. It did not matter that I would never be able to study her features for traces of my own. It did not matter that she would instead look like Meredith, the woman who had allowed her body to go through such physical duress without ever opening her heart. What mattered was that, for this moment, this child was mine to protect—to cherish—and I would not let anything harm her. Or anyone. Even the man I had thought I loved.

  Thom picked up the scarred leather satchel beside his feet and moved down the dock toward me. “I always knew what was at risk,” he said.

  “Then why risk it?” My voice cracked. “If you knew your wife didn’t want this child, why’d you place me between you? Why’d you place us between you?”

  “Everything just seemed to make sense.” He looked down. “Surrogacy was the only way to be a father, and I knew that you needed money for school and that you’d had a child before.”

  The implication that money was the reason I’d agreed to bear his child made acid creep up my throat. “It was never about the money.”

  Thom glanced up to meet my eyes. “I know.” He held out his satchel and then, at my curious expression, pulled it open. Inside, I saw green bills bound with blue and pink bands. He reached out, as if to skim his fingers across my stomach’s surface. Dropping his hand, he swallowed deeply and said, “If we agree to terminate the pregnancy, I know . . . I know money can’t offset your pain, but I want you to know that we . . . appreciate your sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” I gasped, and the reality burned. “Are you paying me to abort your child?”

  Thom turned and stared at the lake. His unfocused eyes gleamed with tears. I knew then that this choice was breaking his heart too.

  I took a deep breath and reached out to touch his arm—beseeching him to reason, to care. “But isn’t there a chance the baby’s normal?” I asked. “Why don’t you just cancel the second amniocentesis and hope for the best?”

  Thom dragged a sleeve hard across his face. His voice was so carefully devoid of emotion, he might have been quoting from a textbook as he said, “An amniocentesis is 99.4 percent accurate, Beth. You know that.”

  Taking his hand from where it rested on the dock rail, I forced it against my womb. “You felt her move, Thom. You cried when you heard her heartbeat. Do not throw your percentages at me; you know very well that, normal or not, your daughter is as much a person as you or I!”

  Thom withdrew his hand and folded his arms. I glimpsed his steel will girding his passive facade and knew he would not change his mind. To hide my fear, I stared out at the swans that were as exquisite as decoys. I saw a single Canada goose gliding through the water. She was beside them, but not among. Her tan-and-black wings were strengthened from numerous flights, while the swans’ immense beauty had been clipped to stay. Had I always felt so isolated from my peers because I had never been meant to live a normal life? Had my trials toughened me, so I would now have the strength to take flight and save this child?

  My mind reeled. If I fled, I would not only be leaving behind my unfinished degree—my future prospects—but I would also be leaving Thom, my only friend. This was the second time in my life I had been given a gift that came with an enormous price.

  Tears filled my eyes. I looked over at Thom. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just . . . tired.”

  He bridged the distance between us and patted my shoulder. In that touch, I felt what I had never allowed myself to see: Thom had never seen me as a potential lover, but as the daughter that, before me, he’d never been able to have.

  “I will take your money,” I whispered, not meeting his eyes, “and if the amniocentesis results are the same, we will terminate the pregnancy.”

  Thom nodded and again swallowed deeply. The silence between us was broken only by the fowl’s pulsating wings as she prepared for flight. As Thom embraced me for the final time, I could tell he thought that I had accepted his viewpoint. The truth was, however, I was just beginning to understand my own.

  7

  “Deborah?” I said after the Mennonite midwife mumbled a greeting into the phone. “I’m sorry to wake you. I found your number through the operator. My name’s Beth—Bethany Winslow. You . . . you delivered my son five years ago at La Crosse Regional on February 3, 1991. . . . I’d just turned eighteen.” Cradling the phone against my shoulder, I turned to the side and waited until I could continue speaking. “It was on the second anniversary of the court ruling of the In re Baby M case. I was watching it on TV . . . after I gave my son up.”

  I could hear Deborah Brubaker sitting up, the soft rustle of sheets peeling back. I could imagine her husband mouthing questions and Deborah using the same hand that had soothed my mourning to bat him away.

  “I remember you,” she said. “What do you need?” Her lilting Pennsylvania Dutch accent seemed diminished, but then I wondered if her tongue was still heavy with sleep.

  “I’m pregnant. Again.” My jaw tightened around the words. My ears burned with the implication. For some reason, I did not want this Mennonite midwife who had taken care of me five years ago to think I was an immoral girl who slept with every guy around. And for once, I wanted to tell someone—anyone—the truth.

  “I’m a gestational surrogate for a wealthy couple,” I explained. “But they don’t want the child anymore—because of a defect. I need somewhere to stay until she’s born. I don’t have much money. And I need to leave right away. Do you know of any place?”

  I would not know Deborah was still on the line except for the uneven pitch of her breathing. I sensed that she was deliberating whether this girl she’d helped so long ago was worth the risk of losing her job. The air conditioner kicked on in my apartment. The toilet flushed in the bathroom between my bedroom and my roommate’s. I rubbed my forehead. Despite the coolness of the room, my fingers came back dampened with sweat. I looked at my watch. If I was going to leave unnoticed, I did not have much time.

  Finally, Deborah said, “I know someone. We were trained by the same midwife back home, in Lancaster.”

  I sat on the corner of my unmade bed and closed my eyes. “Thank you.” My voice quavered. “What’s her number?”

  “Oh, my,” Deborah said, “Fannie doesn’t have a phone. Not even in the barn. She’s still Old Order Mennonite. The only way you can reach her is by mail.”

  “By mail?” I repeated. “I can’t write a letter. I have no time.”

  “You could drive there,” Deborah said. “Fannie can’t turn anybody away. It makes it diffi
cult for her since the community doesn’t always agree, but it’d work in your favor now.”

  “Where’s she located?” I asked.

  “Tennessee,” Deborah replied. “Dry Hollow, Tennessee.”

  “Is it remote?”

  “Remote? You can’t get more remote than Dry Hollow. Henry and I traveled down there after Fannie opened Hopen Haus in ’89, and we were driving dirt roads for miles. That’s one of the reasons the community bought the place. It’s so far from everything.”

  We were both silent. Then I cleared my throat. “I called too,” I said, “because I never got the chance to . . . thank you. I don’t think you’ll ever know what you did for me that day.”

  “You’re welcome,” Deborah said. “But I didn’t remember you because of the Baby M case.”

  “You didn’t?”

  “No,” said Deborah. “Though it did help me put you in a timeline, of sorts. I remembered you because I’d never seen a girl your age go through what you did alone. You were really brave that day. I hope you know that.”

  Tears trickled from my eyes. At twenty-three, I was as alone as I’d been at eighteen. Would my entire life be spent in solitude? Would my entire life be a reminder of the familial intimacy I’d lost? Saying good-bye, I dabbed my face and padded into the hall. Resting my hip against the doorframe separating the bedrooms from the living room, I touched my stomach rising beneath my cotton shirt.

  “I’ll be brave,” I whispered.

  As if celebrating her resurrection, the child leaped within me.

  I finished packing my car at dawn, not that I had much to pack. I had winnowed both my family’s and my possessions when I left Wisconsin at seventeen. Since then, I had purposefully not met anyone or gotten anything that could not be left behind. I slammed the hatch and climbed behind the wheel.

  I heard the sound of Jillian, my roommate, practicing her flute in the tiny apartment. Her daily routine usually set my teeth on edge, but knowing this would be the last time I would hear it made me wistful for the relationship I’d never allowed myself to cultivate. The high, sweet notes drifted out of my roommate’s open bedroom window and caught in the crape myrtle dancing in the morning June breeze. I kept my own car window down so the music could serenade me as I drove out of Simms University’s brick-and-mortar entrance, with its massive wrought-iron gates under an enormous golden letter S.