The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  At the basin, I start to wash my hands. “I’d say you’re about eight weeks. That sound about right?” There’s no response. Wiping my hands, I glance over my shoulder. A blush has crept into Amelia’s cheeks. She sits higher on the examining table and tightens the sheet around her waist. Then she nods.

  “Are you eighteen?”

  “Yes.” Amelia pauses. “Had my birthday last month.”

  “Congratulations,” I say drily. I can always tell when my boarders are lying.

  I go over to the cabinet and extract Amelia’s file from the Ws for her last name, Walker. Amelia hops off the examining table—dragging her sheet like a toga—and gets dressed behind the screen. I take a seat at the desk and flip open the file. Uncapping a pen, I fill in the information I’ve already gathered. “And do your parents know where you are?”

  “Yes,” she says. There’s a tinny ring as a belt buckle strikes the floor. A rustle of material sliding over legs, followed by a light hop and the rasp of a zipper. As funny as it sounds, the familiar melody make me miss wearing jeans. “Well,” she adds, “my dad does.”

  I wince. When I left Wisconsin, I did not know the scale of what I was doing until my own child was taken from me and I was the parent who was left behind. “Believe it or not, Amelia,” I say, my voice firm, “just because you’re eighteen doesn’t mean that your mom doesn’t deserve to know where you are.”

  “Believe me—” Amelia comes out from behind the screen, all sass and cranberry hair, the sheet bundled against her chest—“she’s better off not knowing.”

  I tilt my head and stare at this striking girl, trying to understand the true meaning behind her words. “How did you hear about us?” I ask.

  “I told you, read an article.”

  “The article that was posted online? ‘Abandoned Mennonite Community Becomes Home for Unwed Mothers’?”

  Amelia fingers an earring and sighs, “That’s the one.”

  I recap the pen and drum it on the desk. Amelia crosses her arms and jiggles her bare foot. I look down at it and am taken aback. Her toes are mangled: the polished nails curl downward; the arches are calloused knots. Those tough dancer’s feet look strange, compared to Amelia’s soft, manicured hands. And instead of judging Amelia for her apparent wealth and obvious beauty—thinking the combination gives her a life of ease—I find myself remembering the insecurity I felt when I first arrived at Hopen Haus.

  I say, still tapping the pen, “You’re really brave, Amelia.”

  The girl tightens her arms. “You shouldn’t say that yet,” she says, staring at the wall.

  For the first time in so many cases similar to this, I allow myself to feel Amelia Walker’s pain. My chest positively aches with it. I want to tell Amelia that she is indeed brave, that many girls in her situation wouldn’t even contemplate continuing the pregnancy.

  And yet I say nothing. I simply close Amelia’s file and rise to my feet. Pulling open the cabinet drawer, I stow it among hundreds of others that conceal the information of girls and their babies long gone from here. I run my fingers over the tops—catching glimpses of crisp white pages tucked among the yellowish-brown folders. I know the girls’ constant arrivals and departures are why I cannot let myself feel. I have already loved and lost enough.

  When I turn back to the examining table, Amelia herself has left. So intent on my memories, I didn’t even hear her close the door. The sheet she used rests on the table. In her wake trails a familiar perfume, and I find myself staring at the place she just exited through, wondering who she’s running from . . . wondering who she is.

  Standing in the doorway of the barn, I scan the stalls for Uriah Rippentoe, who has barely come into Hopen Haus since he and Wilbur Byler, our driver, returned from their trip. I had encouraged Alice to let Uriah go to Canada with Wilbur, as I had thought the manly camaraderie might alleviate some of Uriah’s tension that washes over everything like a malignant tide. But Uriah’s sullen disposition and avoidance make him now seem even worse. I fear that Uriah is angry with me for allowing Ernest Looper to share his attic room. It should not matter—because it would not matter if the girls did not care for their roommates.

  I would like to speak with Uriah about this, mainly for an excuse to see how he is doing, yet I cannot find him. The Rhode Island Red hens are clucking from their enclosure. The loosened Nubian goats are nibbling on the crabgrass sprouting alongside the perimeter of the barn, their bells jangling as they shake rain from their ears. But Uriah, their master, is not in the barn or in the yard. The clothed figures suddenly flashing through the tack room slats blur my eyes with confusion. What are people doing, congregated in the barn? And what are they talking about? I have no answers, but what I do know is that they would not be hiding here if they wanted me, the head midwife, to know the topics being discussed.

  I stride across the floor, sawdust clumping to my muddy boot heels. The barn door that I have released thwacks shut behind me. At the sound, a man’s voice grows silent. I yank open the door to the tack room. I choke on the must the abrupt movement conjures and on the disbelief at those I see. Ernest Looper is among the group, along with Alice Rippentoe and Wilbur Byler. Alice’s cheeks glow red. Looper stares at the floor, tangled with bridles and bits and crusted cans of saddle soap that are all as senseless as a buggy with no horsepower to pull it.

  Pushing aside a hank of brown hair, Wilbur folds his arms. “We think it’s high time you got electricity here,” he says. So, though I am one of his employers, Wilbur is to be the defiant spokesperson of the group. But I suspect Alice is the one who initiated the meeting. The one who has taken advantage of the fact that Star’s near-death experience two nights ago has underscored her belief that Hopen Haus must accept change to thrive.

  I stare past Wilbur’s posturing stance to Looper’s lowered head. I am hurt that I have opened my home to him and, in exchange, he has taken their side without hearing mine. As if sensing this, Looper lifts his eyes. In those two-toned orbs, I see no culpability or pleading. Only a firm reminder that, at eighteen years old, I once made the heedlessly life-altering decision to give our son up without giving the child’s father a chance to express his feelings on the matter. And that now, we should not choose sides, but pay heed to the vantage points of each. This decision—to accept electricity or reject it—will not just affect those currently sheltered beneath Hopen Haus’s roof.

  It will affect the lives of every girl who will ever come.

  “What would it take to—to get electricity?” I stammer, wondering if compromising will make it easier for Looper to forgive me. “Structurally, I mean.”

  Alice peers over her shoulder. Her face is still bright with embarrassment, but I know that she is shocked that I have given in so easily. Though I understand guilt is my main motivation, I am as shocked as she.

  “It wouldn’t be too hard,” Looper says, each word well chosen, but he avoids my eyes. “I could wire everything in a day or two, and it wouldn’t take that much renovation . . . or money.”

  “We’d have to talk to David Graber, I’m sure,” Alice adds, naming Fannie Graber’s son, the only deacon and ballast of authority Dry Hollow Community has left. “And then he’d probably have to go before the bishops in Indiana. If they don’t want us to have electricity, or allow us to drive cars, we might have to secede from the community.”

  “We will secede from nothing,” I say, my voice hard. “This is not the Civil War.”

  Wilbur Byler clears his throat and looks at the wall, where a yoke garlanded in cobwebs is hung. “Pardon me, Rhoda . . . Alice,” he says, “but you might not have a community left to secede from. Uriah and I stopped by the community in Indiana on our way down here, and they’re splitting off right and left. The conservatives are moving back to Lancaster, and the progressives are remaining behind.”

  Alice looks at me. Panic ignites her pale-green eyes. We have been receiving financial support from the community in Indiana: a predetermined agreement, since both th
ose going and those staying knew Hopen Haus could not keep functioning if the majority of Dry Hollow left us behind. We have not been receiving a lot of support, obviously, but enough to cover the cost of dry goods and medical supplies. If their community implodes, Hopen Haus—like a child whose umbilical cord is severed—will not survive.

  9

  Amelia, 2014

  Rain drips off the front of the arrogant stranger’s hat, the owner of which I now know is named Uriah, the midwife’s son. He takes the hat off, wipes it back and forth across his leg, and stomps his boots on the entrance rug. I glance across the breakfast table and see that Lydie’s watching him too. Every girl in this place is probably watching him. Jealousy shoots down my spine like a lightning bolt, which is pretty ridiculous. We’re all pregnant and couldn’t get Uriah’s attention if we wanted it. Not that I’m interested in him or anything. I’m just saying. But of course, prairie-girl Lydie is clueless to my feelings. The poor girl probably doesn’t even know what jealousy is. She just smiles at me, takes a sip of apple juice, and wipes her mouth with the back of her hand.

  “How long ’til you fell asleep last night?” she asks. “I heard you rutsching.”

  “I don’t know—’round two?” I stab my fork into the sunny-side up egg and watch the yolk ooze yellow into my oatmeal. Pushing my plate away, I turn my head and ask, “What’s rutsching mean, anyway?”

  “Moving a lot; it’s Pennsylvania Dutch.” Lydie reaches into the pocket of her apron. (Yes, an apron. I’m telling you, this girl is strange.) “Here.” She places a Baggie filled with dried green leaves on the cloth napkin beside my plate. “This always makes me feel better.”

  I look down. My bleary eyes grow wide. “Didn’t think you were the type.”

  Tin plates drop onto the table and a chair scrapes back across the floor. “It’s meadow tea, not marijuana.” I peek through my fingers and watch Uriah hook his hat over the left spike of the chair. His dark curls are wet and his cheeks red, though the sun’s barely up in the sky. Sane people aren’t awake at this hour. I just want to be back home, asleep in my queen-size bed.

  “Does Lydie look like a pothead to you?” he asks.

  I glance over at my roommate. Her head—with its bobbing braids—is bowed and her hands folded as she prays over her meal, though none of the midwives are here to enforce the silent blessing. The girl could be one of Grandma Sarah’s Norman Rockwell paintings brought to life. I look back at Uriah. I’m surprised to see that he’s smiling. “Well, no,” I admit.

  Taking a seat, Uriah dusts his eggs with salt and pepper and cuts the slippery whites with his fork. “Mamm says you’re from Connecticut?”

  My face warms at the thought that he’s been asking about me. Then I realize that blushing’s not the way a pregnant seventeen-year-old should react, so I reply, “Yeah,” as if I could care less. You’d think you wouldn’t want attention from boys when you’re pregnant, but you do. I guess wanting that attention’s what got me into this mess in the first place.

  “Man . . .” Uriah shakes his head and uses buttered toast to scoop up the eggs. “Wish I could live somewhere like that.”

  “The quiet’s nice too,” I say, thinking, If you count goat-petting as entertainment.

  Lydie shifts on the bench. I look away from Uriah and follow the path of Lydie’s eyes. Ernest Looper—who’s, like, the Hopen Haus handyman—has come into the dining room. Beside him is this younger, huskier-looking guy with a pink face and a bunch of chopped brown hair. The two of them sit at the far end of the table. Looper takes the head; the man takes the left-hand side. The oatmeal and eggs polished off by us hungry preggo girls, Terese and Desiree bring out plates piled with hash browns made from last night’s potatoes. The men lean back as the plates are set before them, thank the girls, and start eating.

  To my surprise—and, yes, jealousy!—Uriah reaches across the table and touches the top of Lydie’s hand. He says something in a foreign language I guess is Pennsylvania Dutch. Lydie nods in reply, but her eyes are on the Mason jar. Uriah removes his hand and wraps it around his coffee mug. He takes a sip but keeps looking at the man who’s been watching Uriah with Lydie. The man raises his coffee mug toward Uriah in some kind of toast. Uriah does the same, but he doesn’t look happy.

  Not able to stand it any longer, I ask, “Who’s that?”

  Uriah says, “Wilbur Byler.”

  “Lydie,” I say, “you know him too?”

  Lydie blinks and looks up from her plate. “I’m going to lie down,” she whispers. “Will you wake me before chores?”

  I nod and watch her go. Lydie’s apron sash is hanging loose, and her left foot drags as if she has a limp, though she walked just fine when we came downstairs.

  “What’s with all the code language?” I ask Uriah.

  He says, “It’s not code if you understand.”

  “Well, fill me in, 007. What were you and Lydie talking about?”

  Smiling, Uriah stretches across the table to stab a bite of Lydie’s eggs. “Why, you jealous?” His dark eyes latch onto mine, refusing to let go.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I snap, just to make up for the blush sweeping across my face.

  I drop our plates off at the kitchen and go upstairs to find Lydie facedown on the bottom bunk. Closing the door quietly, I stare at the bare white line between Lydie’s thick, dishwater-colored braids. I wonder if she’s okay, but remembering all the times my mom would go into the master bedroom and I would stand in the open door—staring at her and waiting to be invited in—once again, I discover that I’m too afraid to ask.

  So I tiptoe across the floor and pull open the bottom drawer of the cheap dresser we share. The stuff inside rattles and Lydie turns onto her side. Taking out a bottle of lotion, I squirt a line down my right palm that’s blistered from pulling weeds. My hands are sore and I’ve lost two fake nails already, but none of this bothers me as much as I thought it would.

  “You sick?” I whisper.

  Lydie shakes her head. One braid flaps to the side. “Just homesick,” she sniffs.

  “For your family?”

  She nods.

  “Any brothers or sisters?”

  Wiping her eyes on her skirt, Lydie sits up. “Five, counting me.”

  She looks so terrible that I have to tease. “That’s a basketball team!”

  Lydie says, “That’s not that big of a familye. Our nochberen have nine kinner, and she’s expecting again.”

  “Where do people like you live?”

  “Split Rock,” says Lydie, my sarcasm lost on her.

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I would think not many Englischers have.”

  “Is that what I am, an ‘Englischer’?”

  Lydie smiles at my attempt to mimic her accent. “Just means you’re not part of the community.”

  “That,” I laugh, “I’m most certainly not.”

  I toss the lotion back into my shower caddy, but there are no showers here, just this Stone Age tub we’re only allowed to use on alternating days. (I’ve thought about bribing Lydie for one of hers.) Pulling back the curtain over the window, I hold a compact mirror out with one hand and try to spruce up my appearance. Crimping my eyelashes, I can almost picture that first ballet recital when my mom used her fancy makeup kit to prepare me for the stage. I was six years old, and since that night, I’ve learned it’s better to hide behind a mask than show your true feelings to people who just don’t care.

  “What’s it like?” murmurs Lydie. “Being Englisch, I mean.”

  Swiping gloss across my lips, I drive away thoughts of my mom and blot the leftover gloss on a tissue. “Hard to say. I’ve never known anything different.” I point the tube at her. “Why don’t you tell me what it’s like being Mennonite?”

  “I’ve never known anything different either.” Lydie pulls at a thread on her dress. “But it’s like everyone’s watching, and you—you still can’t be seen.”

  Smiling, I swagger over and to
ss my gold makeup bag into Lydie’s lap. “Put some of that stuff on. It’ll getcha noticed.” I don’t tell her that, while putting on that mask will get her noticed, the true, broken parts of her still won’t be understood.

  Lydie pulls the tassel that unzips the bag. She holds the tube of lip gloss up to the light coming in through a gap in the curtained window behind our bunk. For a while, she watches the oily bubble slip back and forth. “I already know what it’s like to be noticed,” she whispers.

  I stop brushing my hair. Through the compact mirror sitting on top of the dresser, I stare at Lydie. She doesn’t know she’s being watched, so she lets sadness rise up beneath her clear brown eyes. Is Prairie-girl wearing a mask even harder to see through than mine?

  Setting my brush on the dresser, I turn. “I’m not trying to be mean or anything, Lydie, but what are you doing here? You don’t belong . . . not with the rest of us.”

  Lydie sets the tube of lip gloss in her palm and curls her fingers around it. “No, I don’t belong,” she says. “But I can’t go back to Split Rock. Not now.”

  Beth, 1996

  For many weeks after I arrived at Hopen Haus, whenever Wilbur Byler’s truck drove up the lane, I would run to the springhouse or the barn and wait for him to leave, my arms laced over my womb and my heart thudding beneath my ribs. Wilbur was the only one in the community with access to the outside world. The only one with access to newspapers, television, radio, and whatever other media the Fitzpatricks might have employed to search for me and their kidnapped daughter. But weeks turned into months and nothing ever happened. Instead of running away when Wilbur came, I just started avoiding his eyes. For some reason, this made him more intent to meet mine. But when our gazes locked—across the yard or over the table at mealtimes—he never said a word. Fannie teased me, saying I had an admirer. I feared there was more to it than that. Did he know the truth?

  However, as I entered my last trimester, the adrenaline that had accelerated by escape ebbed. The hearty food, manual labor, and fresh air started to lace my worried frame with muscle and brought out the rose hue in my cheeks. This is what I remember from those twenty-two weeks before my daughter’s birth: lamplight polishing the spartan dining room table as the other girls and I savored a meal our hands had harvested from the earth, washed, diced, and cooked. The scent of lavender and lye as we stirred clothing in a large copper basin, suspended and steaming over a roaring outdoor fire. After rinsing, we’d spread towels on the side porch outside the mudroom. Placing clothing on half of each towel, we’d cover the clothing with the other half and twist the towel between us. Warm water would stream from the fabric, hitting the ground and splattering our bare feet. We’d talk and we’d laugh as suds shimmered on the breeze.