The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  I choke down a sob and turn from Looper, facing the corral instead. I gouge my fingernails into the rust sleeving the corral bars—the same corral I’d held when I clambered onto Sampson’s broad back and rode to Fannie Graber’s the night Hope was born.

  “They took her away from me,” I murmur. “Legally, I had no right to the child. I had kidnapped her in my womb, and I had run. But I knew that Meredith, the biological mother, did not love the child. She was just trying to reclaim what she felt was rightfully hers. It hurt me to see that. And it made me angry . . . possessive.

  “When I knew Hope was lost to me forever, I prayed that there would always be enmity between the child and her biological mother. I prayed that they would not have a good relationship because I didn’t want my child to have that kind of relationship with anyone if she couldn’t have it with me.”

  When Looper realizes that I’m finished speaking, he opens his mouth, then reaches a hand into his pocket, as if searching for the right words among the peppermint wrappers and loose change. “You don’t got that kind of power, Beth,” he says after a while. “You really don’t. God can sift through prayers spoken out of selfishness or hurt. If that girl has a bad relationship with her parents, it’s not because of something you did.”

  I wipe my tears on my palms. “But don’t you see? If I really loved that little girl—if I was really a good mother—I would’ve wanted her to have a good relationship with the woman who’d taken her from me. I wouldn’t have punished her because I wanted to punish her mother. I wouldn’t have wanted her to be lonely like I was. Like I am. I would’ve wanted her to be loved.”

  I rest my arms on top of the corral fence and lower my face. I feel the heat of Looper’s proximity before he places one arm around my back. I pivot and bury my face in his chest, not caring who in Hopen Haus might see. The walls of my world are crumbling, and I pray that if I remain in Looper’s capable arms long enough, I can find the strength to build again. This time, though, instead of building a smokescreen of self-preservation first, I will have to restore my soul from the inside out.

  15

  Beth, 1997

  In the weeks following my discovery of the article among Wilbur Byler’s old newspapers, a debilitating fear would sometimes give me the urge to run, to take this child who’d so captured my heart and leave everyone I loved but her. However, when Wilbur returned to Hopen Haus after traveling among the Plain communities in Kentucky and Tennessee, it was like he was trying to reassure me that everything was all right. He’d bring Hope a beaded teething ring. Or a woolen bonnet and sweater set that one of the younger Mennonite girls had crocheted for the accumulation of pocket money. Once, he overheard me complaining that I had nothing to read. The next time he came to Hopen Haus, he handed me a box filled with a year’s worth of Reader’s Digest condensed books.

  I could have cried, handling those hardback covers. I was beginning to understand snippets of Pennsylvania Dutch. Nonetheless, residing in a secluded community where my first language was the rest of the community’s second felt, at times, like I was living in a foreign land. When Wilbur saw how much I enjoyed the books, he began bringing me smaller gifts: a treasure box of candy or a coil of brightly colored yarn. At first, these gifts from Wilbur flattered me. I was never the type to garner admirers. Then I noticed that he was watching me open the gifts, as if waiting for compensation. When I next saw Wilbur’s truck barreling up Dry Hollow’s steep lane—which the men continued to rake and level despite the gullies continually formed by the rain—I found that my stomach clenched.

  It was time to tell Wilbur that his gifts were no longer welcome.

  Hope squirmed in my arms. I wrapped my shawl around her to block the wind and tried to smile as Wilbur clomped up the icy porch steps, hugging to his chest a basket of cellophane-wrapped bounty. I stared at the flamboyant summer fruit popping up from the basket like the first clump of daffodils after a long winter: pineapple, mango, grapefruit, kiwis, pears. . . . Since coming to Hopen Haus, I had feasted on new tastes such as rice pudding, Yorkshire pudding, Dutch apple bread, ham loaf, parsnip fritters, chicken soup with rivvels, pickled okra, beets, baby corn, and chowchow, along with numerous other homemade concoctions that crowded the supper table yet were somehow always consumed before an array of desserts. But in all my time there, I had not eaten any imported fruit—even bananas. My mouth watered.

  I stared over at Wilbur. I did not know how to best broach the subject, so I just came out and asked, “Why’re you doing this?”

  “Doing what?” he said.

  I pointed to the basket he’d set on the porch. Hope looked down too, as if to inspect.

  Wilbur shrugged. “Just trying to help you out, is all.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “But I want to. I want to know you both.”

  I watched him a moment, trying to gauge his motivations. Alice Rippentoe was beautiful beyond reason, but Wilbur paid her no attention. And then I began to understand: Wilbur knew he had no chance of securing the affections of someone like Alice, but an unremarkable woman such as me would not be trailing around a host of men. With me, a bachelor who drove Old Order Mennonites and Amish around for a living would actually stand a chance.

  Or so Wilbur thought.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, holding Hope’s head. She was beginning to thrash, ready for her afternoon feeding. “You’ve been so kind. Really. I’m just . . . just not ready for any kind of relationship right now. I’m not sure I’m ever going to be.”

  Wilbur plucked off his orange hunter’s hat and scratched at his scalp. Returning it to his head, he said, “Why, sure, Beth Winslow . . . I understand.” Then he turned and walked down the pathway without pinching Hope’s cheek or commenting on how big she was getting, as he usually did.

  It wasn’t until I watched his truck drive away that I realized he’d called me by my real name.

  Though I was of non-Mennonite background, Fannie Graber’s taking me on as her midwife-in-training helped the community accept me and my daughter. They really had no other choice if they wanted birthing assistance. But this wasn’t the only reason. When I stopped regarding the Gentle People with suspicion, they began to trust me. Soon I could embrace their beautiful families without feeling a whiplash of pain.

  I remember how I would sit on the front porch with the butter churn pinned between my legs. Stirring the stick through the cream slowly, so as not to leave lumps, I would watch a mother in a long cape dress and kapp walk down the lane past Hopen Haus with a line of bundled, stair-step children waddling behind her like ducklings. At Elam Glick’s barn raising, after his barn roof collapsed from the weight of snow, I would arrange the hot casseroles on the food table and admire the tenacity of the young boys—tongues pinched between teeth, cheeks ruddy with the novelty of handling grown-up tools—as they hammered nails alongside their fathers’ gloved hands. I could watch them, admire them, and not think of my son.

  I even allowed Fannie to teach me things my mother never had: how to knit with Wilbur’s gift of yarn—which I could accept by telling myself I had imagined him uttering my real name—sprinkle potato starch before pressing laundry with an iron, French-braid hair, sew a straight hem, and bake a shoofly pie from scratch.

  The rare occasions Fannie spent the night at Hopen Haus, she and Charlotte and I would pull rocking chairs close to the hearth. Hope, in my arms, would be lulled by the fire’s crackling melody. She would curl her fingers around her nose and suck her thumb, watching the sisters with serious eyes until she nodded off against my chest. And the sisters were worth watching. With their white nightgowns and crowns of silver hair, the contrast of Fannie’s thin figure and Charlotte’s plump one made them resemble mismatched twins. Their stiff fingers would slip thread through beeswax before inserting the needle into the vibrant fabric warming all our laps.

  What a peaceful time that was. I am glad we did not know the measures being taken to draw it to an end.

  One month af
ter I stood on the front porch and told Wilbur Byler the two of us could never be anything other than friends, I had cabin fever and wanted a reprieve from motherhood and midwifing. Hope was in my bedroom taking a nap. I was walking down the lane—my boots punching through the sleeted crust—when the smell of death arose in the clearing of the pines. I shielded my eyes against the sun and watched the orbiting bodies of vultures sail down to land on their carcass—a yearling, I surmised from the glimpse of tawny hide in between the dark, fluttering wings.

  I had no sense that life as I knew it was about to change, no sense that it was time to hold my child—to take my child and run—even though I was as bound to the earth as the vultures’ deceased prey. I felt nothing except the sun’s rays penetrating the ash-gray clouds and warming my face—and the sweat limning my body due to my unnecessary layers beneath a buttoned boiled-wool coat.

  Something flashed down in the valley. I squinted through the snow-covered trees. A dark-green Land Rover crawled down the lane around the old cattle chute, its hubcaps glimmering like mirrors. I was curious who would be traveling these icy back roads when the main ones were scraped. I continued walking and covered my mouth to block the scent of death that grew more potent as the wind shifted direction, blowing a snowdrift of glitter across the land.

  The Land Rover shifted into four-wheel drive and ground up the hill. The windows were tinted; the golden sides were splattered with road salt and snow. Though interaction with outsiders wasn’t encouraged, I lifted my gloved hand and waved. The vehicle passed without braking. I turned and looked at the plates: Davidson County, Tennessee. It was a bad day for travel. But sometimes tourists visited Dry Hollow Community after seeing our address stamped on soaps or canned goods displayed in an Amish store located near Nashville.

  The Englischers didn’t often bother us. The bolder ones might lean out of their car windows and take pictures. The quieter ones would just drive slowly by, taking everything in with the same curiosity that I had the first day I came. Now that I was part of the community, this curiosity made me feel like a rare species trapped in a nature preserve. But Fannie Graber didn’t mind. She said, with her usual forbearance, that the Englischers were merely trying to capture the simplicity their own lives lacked.

  I continued walking until I reached the old cattle chute. Swatting the snowflakes mounded on the post, I stared across the land, remembering the summer afternoon I’d first come to Dry Hollow. How I’d watched the Clydesdale horse chip his hooves into the dirt, the bearded rider holding the reins with everything he had. That time seemed so far removed from me now, but not the sense that I would do whatever it took to ensure my child—not a child of my body, but a child of my heart—had a fighting chance.

  For a moment, the earth stood still; the snowflakes froze in the midst of their descent.

  Though I was yards away from the deer carcass, its odor clung to my nostrils like a harbinger. I gripped the fence post as images superimposed themselves over each other, creating a dire collage: the article about the missing surrogate, Hope asleep in the house, the Land Rover crawling up the hill, the vultures orbiting in the charcoal sky.

  I splayed fingers across my chest, unable to breathe, and yet I forced myself to run. The wind peeled back my bonnet. The kapp beneath it wobbled with the intensity of my stride. My boots scrambled to find purchase on the sheets of ice. Chunks loosened and slid down the sloped lane. Extending my hands to keep myself from falling, I cried out and lifted my head. Pieces of hair hung in my face. My vision was blurred with panic and pain.

  Blinking, I looked to the left and saw sated vultures hunched on the peak of the barn. Their oily feathers were extended across the thawing tin roof; their warty heads were as red as blood. The barn edges were fanged with icicles that cracked in the wind and punctured the snow. The sound sent the vultures scuttling into the air. Wiping my eyes with my sleeve, I took a deep breath and continued running—hoping that my intuition was wrong. That the Fitzpatricks had not found us, that I was not already too late.

  The Land Rover was parked outside of Hopen Haus, the engine left running. Exhaust silently streamed from the twin mufflers, twisting into the air like breath. The property was quiet. Not a bird twittered in the white oak bedecked with feeders filled with black sunflower seeds; none of the tree’s bare branches stirred the cauldron of the wind. For a moment, I wondered if I had mistaken everything—if the Land Rover’s owners were parents of one of the residents and not the Fitzpatricks like I feared. Then I heard someone lock the vehicle doors.

  I paused in the yard and turned to peer through the Land Rover’s tinted windows. I stared at the silhouette of the person seated in the backseat, but I could not distinguish enough to tell if it was a woman or a man. Apprehension curdled my stomach. My mouth tasted bitter, but I didn’t have enough moisture to swallow. Who was here? And what did they want? Plodding up the front porch on heavy legs, I opened the front door.

  The staircase creaked. I looked up. Fannie was descending the steps as if the nodules of her spine could not withstand more pressure.

  I pushed against my chest, forcing words to exit my windpipe that terror had sealed shut but for a rind’s width of breath. “What is it?”

  Fannie paused. The old midwife looked down at me. Tears filled her eyes and then the grooves on her face, water in an ancient riverbed. “I’m sorry, Rhoda,” she rasped, pressing a knuckle to her mouth. Fannie descended the steps and reached across the landing to take my hand. “I’m so very, very sorry.”

  I wrenched my fingers free and gripped my upper arms, shaking. “What happened?”

  “Hope’s parents are here.” Fannie glanced behind her, up at the steps.

  I reared back as if I’d been struck by those cruel words—wasn’t I her parent?—then I hurled my body forward.

  Fannie blocked my path, her weak body fortified by a stronger will. “We must be rational here, Rhoda.” The midwife seized my shoulders, and her eyes bored into mine. “They have papers. They have a lawyer. They told us they won’t press charges if you let Hope go quietly.”

  I felt such an acute sense of betrayal, my cheek stung with a Judas kiss. Since the evening I had allowed Fannie to cross the barrier around my heart, I had confessed everything. Everything about my childhood when I’d been forced to take the place of the mother who had abandoned us; about the child I had conceived out of wedlock with my longtime friend, and how—in a way—I had left both him and our son; about my infatuation with my married graduate school professor and the tainted reasons for which I’d agreed to bear his child; about running away because I loved the child, but also because I was weary of being alone.

  I had said all of this in the hope that pouring my darkest self out to Fannie might absolve the magnitude of my guilt and, in compensation, keep Hope from getting taken away. But now, all of that was gone. My Hope, my faith in the Creator whom I’d just started to believe in, my trust that life could be good again, my trust in my adopted family, my trust that this remote place could become my sanctuary where—if I never stepped beyond its boundary—nothing could ever go wrong.

  I heard a murmuring sound. Turning, I expected to see the Fitzpatricks. Instead, I saw Alice Rippentoe leaning against the dining room wall, her infant son nestled against her chest. Her eyes were closed, but her lips moved in prayer. Breaking Fannie’s hold, I marched toward Alice. My entire body tingled and hummed with an energy that could kill, kidnap, or maim to protect my daughter, whom the courts would never grant as mine.

  “Don’t you dare,” I seethed. “Don’t you dare pray for me and my child when your child’s still in your arms.”

  Alice opened her eyes and shielded her son, Uriah, from my fury. Disgusted, I pivoted and maneuvered around Fannie Graber without meeting her saddened gaze. I charged up the stairs and flung open my bedroom door.

  Meredith and Thomas Fitzpatrick and an older man in a pin-striped suit looked up at my entrance. My eyes frantically scanned the room. Thom was standing behind the
rocking chair, his face white. Meredith was beside the bed. A suitcase was on the mattress, its dark mouth gaping. The well-dressed stranger was standing in the center of the room—his shoulders hunched, his raked steel-gray hair flush with the dried lavender hanging from a beam on the ceiling.

  But Hope was not there.

  I walked into the room. The tautness was as palpable as trip wire.

  With a jerk, Meredith zipped the suitcase closed and strode over to her husband. The dresser top revealed what she had taken. The missing objects were now just cutout shapes in the dust: a circle for the small container of grape-seed salve I massaged into Hope’s skin after her baths; a rectangle for the mother-of-pearl comb I used to brush Hope’s fledgling hair; a square for the stack of laundered cloth diapers piled with shiny, tangled pins.

  The stranger stepped forward, acting as a barrier between the Fitzpatricks and me. His height only added to his imposing appearance, making him seem larger than life, an otherworldly judge. A detective, I thought—or the Fitzpatricks’ lawyer. Neither was good.

  “I’d advise you not to interfere today,” he said. “The Fitzpatrick family has every right to press charges, and if you fight back, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”

  My heartbeat was a sharp staccato against my ribs. “Where is she?” I whispered. Stumbling over to the bed, I unspooled Hope’s yellow blanket from the quilt. It floated in the air like a contrail of sun. I pressed my face against it, breathing in her scent. “Tell me where she is!”

  No one spoke.

  My legs buckled, kneecaps ramming the hardwood floor. Clutching the blanket, I lifted my gaze and traced my eyes over the indentations in the mattress where my daughter and I slept. Someone crossed the room. The floorboards groaned as the person knelt beside me.

  “Get up, Thom.” Meredith’s strident voice cut the room. “She’s making enough of a spectacle as it is.”