The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  “Uriah?”

  He looks up. His bead-dark eyes glint at me from a tanned face cut with angles like razor blades. Again I find myself wondering what Uriah’s father must have looked like to genetically counter Alice’s delicate features and blonde curls. Backing away from the door, I usher Uriah inside. He peers with such curiosity at the table, filing cabinet, and privacy screen, it makes me realize that he has not been in here for years. But why should he have been? I walk over to the table and begin folding sheets overflowing from a wicker basket. The buttery-yellow cotton is scented with sun. I am doing this task to keep Uriah from feeling cornered; though, strangely enough, he is the one who sought me out.

  “You know Wilbur Byler?” Uriah studies the conduit, which holds the electrical wires running along the plaster wall. All my patients have started gravitating toward this, Hopen Haus’s first contemporary addition, whenever they feel awkward during an examination and don’t know where else to look.

  “Of course I know Wilbur.”

  Uriah’s head dips forward in acknowledgment, but he continues facing away from me. I cannot help but notice how rapidly he is transforming into a man. With his long, loose black hair brushing broad shoulders, ropey forearms, and hard waist, he reminds me of Absalom. He reminds me of someone who cannot properly remain in a household full of young, impressionable girls—pregnant or not. But, oh, how I shall miss him when he leaves.

  “D’ya know Lydie and Amelia are with him right now?” he asks.

  “Yes,” I reply. “Lydie’s father’s very ill. He is not expected to live.”

  Uriah turns. The intensity in his gaze is disquieting. “You remember last summer when I’d go with Wilbur on drives?”

  Snapping the sheet, I fold it in half and nod.

  “This one time he told me to wait in the van while he gathered produce from the farms. I thought that was strange since he’d brought me along to help. But I didn’t say anything. After a while I started wondering if Wilbur had forgotten about me, so I got out of the van and walked down the lane. Right then is when I saw him leave the Rissers’ house and cross the field.”

  “What do you mean?” I place another squared sheet on the pile.

  “Lydie’s parents weren’t home,” he says. “Her father, Alvin, had to go to dialysis every week in Knoxville, and after I saw Wilbur walk across the cornfield beside her house, I started paying attention. He had me load produce and wares from every farm but the ones in Split Rock. And every time we went to Split Rock matched the times Lydie’s parents were gone.”

  I stare at Uriah’s downcast face as he picks at a scab grafted over his knuckle. My mind races to keep up with the words careering through my ears. Taking a deep breath, I stammer, “You—you’re saying you think Wilbur Byler was visiting Lydie?” Visiting is too euphonious a term for the rendezvous I infer from Uriah’s story. But I cannot verbalize such a vile accusation without hearing Lydie’s side first. I cannot imagine that docile child opening the door of her parents’ house and ushering a man twenty years her senior into bed. And what about Wilbur? After eighteen years, during which my initial suspicions of him went unconfirmed, I ascribed my misgivings to new-parenting paranoia. Was I wrong in this? Was the taciturn bachelor who frequented Hopen Haus truly wicked enough to commit statutory rape? “You’re trying to protect Lydie, aren’t you?” I ask.

  Uriah’s temples hollow out as his jaw throbs. “I’m trying to protect . . . everyone,” he says, his voice choked. “But I . . . I just don’t know how to anymore. I told Wilbur I knew what was going on, and he threatened me. Said that if I told anybody about him and Lydie, he’d go to the police first.”

  It takes conscious effort to focus on Uriah’s face. “Go to the police with what?”

  Uriah lifts his gaze. His cheekbones darken with embarrassment and worry. “Wilbur told me he’d tell them what you did.”

  Beth, 1997

  I sobbed as Wilbur Byler’s battered truck traversed Tennessee lines. Leaving my daughter behind no longer felt selfless; I felt I was making the most cataclysmic mistake in the world. For a moment, my tears wetting the passenger window glass as fast as the rain was falling outside it, I wanted to tell Wilbur to turn the truck around. I wanted to tell him that I did not care if my daughter’s childhood was spent in courtrooms if only, inside those courtrooms, our paths could sometimes cross. I instead said nothing. My throat was siphoned off with the reality that the Fitzpatricks would teach Hope to hate me for disturbing their lives.

  It was better, then, that she not know me at all.

  Wilbur pulled over at a gas station tucked miles inside the state line. Pinching some quarters out of the ashtray, he set them in a neat pile between us. The coins clinked together, like poker chips. “You got somebody to call?” He stared straight ahead, as if my sorrow was obscene.

  I didn’t respond, just slid the quarters off the seat into my hand. I was drenched in the seconds it took to sprint from the truck cab to the telephone booth. Water splattered my calves, soaking through the tights and pooling in my lace-up shoes. Shivering, I pulled the thin glass door behind me. I fed quarters into the slot with damp, shaking hands. I didn’t allow myself to think as I dialed Looper’s parents’ home number . . . by heart.

  The phone rang and rang. Just when I was about to give up, someone answered. “Hello?”

  My pulse leaped. It was him. The one person in the world I wanted to tell, but this was the first time we’d spoken since that regretful summer, and I could not put together the words.

  Into the silence, Looper said, “This some kinda joke?”

  “No—” I covered the mouthpiece and swallowed. I forced syllables through my trembling lips. “It’s me, Looper. It’s Beth.”

  “Beth?” Looper breathed my name, apparently stunned to be conversing with a person who was as dead to him as our past. I could picture him as he’d been six years ago: rangy and fun-loving, with his hands calloused from farm work, his mop of brown hair tipped with summer blond. But this was not the Looper I’d left, for I wasn’t the same either. “Why’d you call?” he asked.

  The poor connection magnified the distance in his voice. But I could not explain why I had called now or why I had left him then. I also could not explain why I wanted to come home and borrow from his reservoir of strength when I had left him parched.

  The operator requested another quarter, and though my apron pocket was still heavy with Wilbur’s change, I murmured, “I’m sorry; I shouldn’t have called,” and clanked the phone in its cradle. I was so numb, I couldn’t feel the deluge needling my skin as I crossed the parking lot toward the idling truck. And as Wilbur navigated toward the interstate that would lead us to Hopen Haus—where midwifery devoid of a husband and child was waiting—I wondered how many times in my life I would have to turn my back on those I loved.

  Rhoda, 2014

  I leave the examining room after Uriah’s revelation and mount the steps, hoping to find among Lydie’s things the letter from her mother that might reveal their home address. Wilbur Byler would obviously know where Lydie’s family lives. But at this point, I am not sure it is wise to let Wilbur know we’re aware of his alleged affair with a sixteen-year-old girl. I would rather hear everything directly from Lydie before taking any legal measures against a man whose motivations have always been as enigmatic as he is.

  I push open Lydie and Amelia’s bedroom door. The gridlocked hinges squeak as the door swings wide. The space smells of talcum powder and that mystical fragrance that causes chills to scatter across my skin, even though the upstairs is sweltering. Other than the scent, there is nothing too noticeable about the small room. On the bunk beds, threadbare quilts cover tangled sheets that look like the underground pathway of moles. The dresser is crowded with the standard female debris, most of which is Amelia’s: bobby pins, a lipstick capsule, an eye-shadow case with squares of glittering, earth-toned hues, a brush nested with long red hairs, jewelry. . . .

  My breathing stops. My booted
feet click across the floorboards faster than my mind can process the need to walk. I blink and, heart racing, pluck a white-gold cameo ring from amid the cheap costume pieces. I stand motionless, staring, knowing that I’ve seen it before. Then I cradle the delicate treasure in my two trembling hands.

  “Where did you get the cameo?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Fitzpatrick, Thom’s mother,” Meredith explained without looking at me. “The ring’s been in the family forever. Someday I’m supposed to pass it down.”

  I inhale sharply, but my lungs struggle to inflate. Amelia told me her last name was Walker. And she wasn’t born in September. But even as I think this, I know Amelia’s not the first Hopen Haus boarder to lie about her name and age.

  I look back at the dresser and pick up the hairbrush. I hold it in the light filtered through the curtains and watch the sun kindle the strands. Surely I would’ve known. Surely some part of me would have guessed that the tall, self-assured woman—living in the house I’d paid for with money stolen from her father—was the daughter I lost as an infant.

  But then I remember. I remember that hot day Amelia arrived at Hopen Haus and how I’d stared at her, thinking I was taken aback by the dichotomy of her wealth in our underprivileged world, when my soul was spellbound by the fact that she was actually here. I remember wanting to weep in the examining room after Amelia told me about the child in her womb that she felt she had to give up. And how, that night in the kitchen, I felt such an urgency to reach out to her—to trespass the boundaries of my heart—when I had never allowed myself to connect with a boarder before. Just yesterday, didn’t we pass each other on the staircase, and I was so captivated by her strange familiarity that I wanted to force her to pause so I could memorize every nuance of her face?

  I glimpse Amelia’s purse strap peeking from under the bunk beds, and the brush clatters from my hand. Crouching, I drag the purse out and stand, digging in the main compartment until I feel the wallet. I apologize to Amelia for this intrusion, but I have to know. Hands shaking, I pop the snap on the leather wallet and look at the window for the driver’s license. Massachusetts, it reads at the top. Not Connecticut. I never even thought to check her license plates after Amelia parked her car behind the barn. I look back down. DOB: 09/14/96. HGT: 5’7’’ Eyes: GR. Then, at the very bottom: Fitzpatrick, Amelia Janelle. 314 White Swan Road, Boston, MA 54763.

  The Fitzpatricks must have known I wasn’t a serious threat, for all this time they’ve been living in that same house in White Swan Estates. Amelia’s birth date is only two days off. I never filled out a birth certificate, so Meredith and Thom must’ve used the date of the IVF to approximate the day of her birth.

  The day of her birth.

  Everything—all the loss and the love—I remember just as clearly as I remember the first time I held my daughter. And my son. Oh, my children . . . my child.

  My legs collapse, knees striking the hardwood floor just as hard as the day my Hope was taken. But I do not feel the blood ballooning beneath my kneecaps, as I had not felt it then. This time, joy rather than pain sets every synapse in my body afire because I know—after eighteen years of deferred dreaming—the impossible is true. Holding the tiny picture on the driver’s license to my lips, tears stream from my eyes. I lift them to the ceiling and marvel at the forbearance of God that let, through the return of my daughter, his own prodigal daughter again be found.

  Although my worst fear came true and my Hope was taken from me, I have to remember that she was never mine to begin with. Nor was she really the Fitzpatricks’. Hope has always belonged first and foremost to her Creator—the one who, that day I left my daughter behind in Boston, I’d vowed was incapable of taking care of my child . . . his child. For he is the one who formed her cranberry hair and rosebud mouth; he is the one who knew exactly how many chromosomes her body would carry and the battle that would rage for her life. He is the one who possibly even gave me that heedless inclination to run.

  Still kneeling, I pray that whatever happens in the future, I will rest in the truth that his ways are greater and that, though I may not understand it, he has a plan.

  Amelia, 2014

  The whole Split Rock Community is invited back to the Risser house after Alvin’s funeral, but I can tell from Rebecca’s dazed expression that she’s in no state of mind to prepare the food. Because of this—and maybe because Lydie is nowhere to be found—the neighbor women roll up their sleeves and begin to help.

  One heavyset woman in a wide cape dress chatters at Henry in Pennsylvania Dutch, and he goes down to the basement, resurfacing with his arms filled with ham, rounds of cheese, and two quart jars of canned peaches. The woman then squints at Wilbur Byler, who is leaning against one of the Rissers’ kitchen cupboards. He looks like a dog just waiting around to be fed.

  “Wilbur,” the woman says, her accent as stout as the forearms pressing against the sleeves of her dress. In response, his heels practically click as his body skids to attention. She begins rattling off instructions in Pennsylvania Dutch. He nods and then nods again. I watch this exchange while hidden by the bookshelf next to the couch. I want to help, but I’m too terrified of being asked to do something I wouldn’t have the first clue how to begin. I’ve learned a lot since coming to Hopen Haus (how to pull weeds, for example, or to bake an apple pie as long as someone else makes the crust, or to polish copper pots, or—thanks to Uriah—gather eggs from an angry hen), but working next to these Mennonite women would be intimidating as can be.

  I’ve also been waiting around for a chance to speak to Wilbur, to interrogate him about him and Lydie and find out the truth from what he won’t say to me. So when Wilbur leaves the Rissers’ home—to do that woman’s bidding—I get up from the couch and slip out the door behind him.

  He’s just opened the driver’s side of his diesel van when I work up enough courage to call across the yard, “Can I ride along?”

  Wilbur doesn’t even turn to see who’s spoken. Shrugging, he says, “I’m just going up the road,” before climbing into the vehicle. I scurry down the sidewalk, my sandals slapping, and pull the handle to the sliding door, suddenly not sure if I’ll have the nerve to cross-examine him or not. I sit back, and Wilbur maneuvers the van around the black buggies clustered in front of the house. The horses strapped to them don’t spook as the engine starts up. They just shake their bridles and shift their weight to their other mud-splattered legs.

  Nervous, I rip off a hunk of the yellow stuffing popping up through a tear in the seat. I drop bits in my lap, which stick to the fibers of Lydie’s worn-out cape dress. I rack my brain, trying to think of a way to get Wilbur to talk since he barely spoke to Lydie and me on the trip up here. We haven’t yet passed the Rissers’ square mailbox when I decide that I don’t know where he’s going, and so I’m just going to come out with it.

  But right then Wilbur says, “Don’t you remember getting kidnapped?”

  I close my mouth, trying to understand what he’s just said. Finally, I murmur, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Wilbur doesn’t say anything else. He just takes a right back toward the main road and the entrance sign. I can run faster than this, I think, and suddenly I want to run. I want to escape from this man who’s watching me through the rearview mirror as he says, “I didn’t know it was you ’til I heard you talking on the way up here.”

  “You don’t know me,” I say. “I . . . I’ve never seen you before Hopen Haus.”

  “You just don’t remember ’cause you were a baby.”

  I sink my fingers into the sponge padding of the seat, grappling for something to hold on to. I speak between shallow breaths, “How . . . how do you know me?”

  For a while, Wilbur says nothing. Then his face twitches in a smile that is scarier than anything I’ve ever seen. “I haven’t been in touch with Meredith or Thom since they came to take you back to Boston,” he says, “but I do know your birth mother.”

  Confused and terrified, I gape a
t the back of Wilbur’s head. The thought of a birth mother is so weird, I couldn’t be any more surprised if Wilbur had started speaking pig Latin. How can I possibly understand—or believe—such crazy words? But how does he know my parents’ names? And where we live? And deep down, haven’t I wondered why I’ve always felt like my parents were in this play that I could watch from the outside and never participate in or belong to?

  Throat tightening, I face the window. My eyes sting with tears as the entire Old Order Mennonite community shrinks to the size of a telescope lens. I can picture the men who were at Alvin’s service working these fields tomorrow, the disks of their wide-brimmed straw hats turned up toward the sun and their sweated, watercolor shirts tucked into the black pants with the black suspenders crisscrossing the broad Vs of their backs.

  The peace of this Plain ground collides with my rising panic. And I discover that I’m no longer Lydie Risser’s street-smart protector, but a stupid girl who thought she could trap a lion in its den and come out unharmed. My nerves intensify the canned air, stinking with a mixture of old hamburger wrappers and body odor. I push a fist against my mouth, trying to keep back my nausea. The white sign for Split Rock Community blurs as the van engine picks up speed. Tires spit gravel as Wilbur Byler pulls out onto the main road.

  “Hey—” I smack my fist against the glass. “Where’re you going?”

  I ask this question at the same moment he locks the doors.

  Rhoda, 2014

  Chunks of mildewed clapboard break free of Hopen Haus’s fascia and clatter across the grass, like a poor man’s game of matchsticks. Even from where I stand near the garden fence post, I can see termites infesting the old logs that clapboard once kept from view. Every hidden place is being revealed, and it’s obvious that it’s time.