The Midwife of Hope River (26 page)

Katherine looks down at her carefully manicured, ladylike white hands and twists a ring that I notice is not her wedding ring. She surprises me when she answers. “I'm not shocked. He was a good man once, years ago when we courted . . .” She shakes her head slowly. “But it wasn't a happy marriage. You know that. He'd threatened suicide before, more than once . . . every time I tried to leave.

“I'd only been back in Baltimore for a few hours before he started calling. He was drunk, begging me to return. Nothing had changed. ‘Come back,' he blubbered over the phone . . . over and over. ‘You belong to me. I can't live without you.' It probably sounds terrible, but I'm not even sad . . . It's like a great weight is lifted off me.” She looks me in the eye, waiting for a reaction, a woman compressed into steel.

I return her gaze, my mouth pressed tight. “You had to leave. You had to leave him for the baby's sake, and for your own. You can't let a man manipulate you that way . . . There was an article in the newspaper calling William's death suspicious. Did you see it?”

She waves it away as if batting flies. “Oh, that!”

“You don't think there could have been foul play?”

“Never. William had guns all over the house. He would have blasted any intruder.”

When I glance up, Bitsy is sleepwalking across the churchyard. Far up the hill, behind the small chapel, moving through the green oak and maple, a white shirt disappears. Thomas, probably because of Sheriff Hardman's presence, is taking the back way home.

Katherine stands up and embraces Bitsy. “I can't tell you how sorry I am.
So
sorry. Your mother was a saint. If it weren't for her, I might have been killed the night I left. There will never be anyone like her.”

Bitsy blows her nose. You can tell she's running out of tears. “Thank you, Katherine. You and the baby meant a lot to Ma. She always worried after you . . .”

Out of the corner of my eye I see Mrs. Potts moving carefully across the lawn with her cane. “There's a reception at the Millers',” she announces. Her eyes sweep the whole group but end with me. I take a deep breath, knowing I should be supportive of Bitsy, but I'm exhausted and just want to go home. Bitsy lets me off easy.

“It's okay. Byrd Bowlin says he'll drive me home. You should probably check on Moonlight and the calf.”

“I'm sorry, we have to go too.” That's the Reverend Martin.

Hester offers to drive me, but I have Star, so I give Bitsy and Katherine a hug.

“Will we see you before you leave again for Baltimore?” I ask Katherine.

“I'll try,” she says, “but I need to make arrangements about what's left of the estate, then get William back to Baltimore on the train for his funeral next Thursday. He has family coming down from Boston.” I hug her again, holding on tight, trying to give her some strength. Then I turn toward the back of the church for my mount.

 

At the fork of Horse Shoe Run, I cringe when I spy the sheriff's car waiting at the intersection.

“Where's Bitsy and her brother?” the gruff fellow demands.

“Stayed for the reception at the preacher's house.” I tell a white lie, knowing Thomas is halfway over the mountain, slipping through the spruce trees like the shadow of a gray fox.

“By the way, I talked to Mrs. MacIntosh before the funeral. Why didn't you report that she'd gone back to Baltimore after a domestic dispute?” Hardman gives me the squint eye.

“We were scared. We didn't want William to try to find Katherine. We were scared.”

 

July 30, 1930. Nearly full moon sailing through fast-moving clouds.

Birth of Daniel Withers, 6 pounds, 14 ounces, seventh child of Edith and Manley Withers of Hog Hollow. Bitsy and I delivered the baby together, my hands over hers. The Witherses are another family associated with Hazel Patch Baptist Chapel. Mrs. Potts was feeling poorly and didn't come.

Present, besides Bitsy and me, were the two oldest girls, Ida and Judith, 10 and 12. Bitsy showed them how to cut the baby's cord. Edith declared, when she put the baby to breast, that the afterbirth pains were worse than the actual labor, but I told her they were good because they'd keep her from bleeding. We were paid $2.00 and one home-cured ham. Seeing a new life come into the world after Mary's death did both Bitsy and me good.

33

Drought

Flat gray clouds press down like iron, and I scan the sky each morning for a change in the weather. The air is full of wetness, but it won't come down.

This morning Bitsy and I began to water the limp corn and beans by hand. The root crops, potatoes and carrots, are deep enough to find their own moisture. The tomatoes, Bitsy assures me, are more heat resistant. Back and forth we go, carrying two buckets each from the spring to the garden, giving a quart jar of liquid to each drooping plant.

“It's a drop in the bucket,” I joke with my friend, but she doesn't laugh.

Bitsy sets down her pail and arches her back, her eyes closed. “No rain today.”

“How can you tell?”

“No breeze. The wind will come before the rain.”

“I think the rain god might just send down a flood to mock all this work we're doing,” I make light. My companion shakes her head and goes back to her watering. Maybe my reference to a rain god offended her. Since her mother's funeral, she's been reading the Bible daily. Twice as I passed her bedroom door I saw her praying on her knees.

A few hundred buckets later, our arms aching, our backs groaning, Bitsy looks up at the late-afternoon sun just burning through the haze. “I think I'll take Star for a ride.” A frown flashes between my eyes, but I keep my thoughts to myself. Over to the Wildcat again. Is she checking on Thomas or going to see her sweetheart, Byrd Bowlin?

 

Thirty minutes later, I'm dragging my aching body up the porch steps with my basket of green beans when I catch the sound of a horse and buggy barreling up the lane. The dust is so thick I can't see who's coming. There goes my bath in the cool creek water! I'm so sweaty, I can hardly stand myself.

“Need you in Black Springs!” the young driver yells before he even pulls back on the reins.

“What's up?”

“Mr. Hart says come quick, his woman's bleeding.”

“I don't know Mrs. Hart. Is she having a child?”

“She's carrying, if that's what you mean. It's still in there.”

“Okay,” I mutter, “I'll be right with you.”

Great, I think, as I run upstairs and pull my everyday gray-blue flowered housedress off the hook. Just when Bitsy leaves, I have an emergency. Luckily, Star, Moonlight, and the calf are out in the pasture, where they can graze and get water from the stream, and the chickens are locked in their pen. I grab the birth satchel and, as an afterthought, tie a bandanna over my head.

“Please hurry, ma'am. Mr. Hart was in an awful state.”

It's going to be a rough ride.

 

Kitty

An hour later we pull up, in a cloud of dust, to an unpainted dogtrot farmhouse with two sections, a kitchen on one side and the living quarters on the other, separated by a central outdoor breezeway. Two white women wave frantically from the long shady porch. One is short and round, wearing a stained red-checked apron. The smaller of the two is crying and looks to be an albino: white hair, white skin, and pink eyes crying.

“Come in. Come. Hurry!” the round lady cries. “Lord help us!”

The scene in the bedroom is more terrible than I could have imagined. Blood is everywhere. It's on the floor, on the bed, and all over the mother, who's barely alive. There are actually bloody handprints on the poor woman's swollen belly where someone has been trying to push the baby out. “Damnation,” I say under my breath and instantly regret it. Would Mrs. Kelly or Mrs. Potts talk like that? The two ladies who greeted me hover uselessly at the bedside. A third, gray-haired woman in a bloodstained green dress kneels next to the patient. Mr. Hart is nowhere to be seen.

“You the midwife?” the senior of the three asks. I nod. “The baby is stuck, and it's killing her. We tried, but we can't get it out.”

“Stuck. Stuck. Stuck,” the albino girl says, waving her hands in front of her face.

I study the patient. Something is very wrong here. Her limp legs are two sizes too large and full of water under the skin. A small, hairy head is visible between her thighs, and she's hemorrhaging. I could take time to check the fetal heartbeat, but what would that prove? The baby may already be dead, and if I don't do something fast, the mother will die too.

“Hold her legs back and open,” I command. The women all have tears running down their cheeks, but they do what I tell them. I rip open the birth bag and grab some gloves and the sterilized scissors. I've never before had to use them before, but this may be the time.

“How long has she been paining?” I ask as I begin my examination, trying to figure out why the baby won't come.

“Three days,” the ladies answer in chorus. It's like the vet told me: when times are hard, families don't call him for their sick animals unless they're on the verge of collapse . . . only this is someone's wife, sister, or daughter.

“Has she had children before?” I continue to take her history as I oil my gloved hand and slip it around the infant's skull. There's an ear just under the pubic bone. Now I understand. The small head is trying to come out turned sideways instead of facing the sacrum. With a tiny baby this sometimes happens. I try to turn it, but it's wedged in tight.

The round woman answers, “This is her first.”

“Is it before her term?” I unwrap the scissors and make one quick snip. The patient's green eyes snap open.

“We think maybe a month early. She was due in the fall.”

“How long's she been pushing?”

The trio look at one another, and the older woman guesses, “About four hours.” No wonder the patient is as limp as a wet noodle.

“Okay, now, Mother.” I touch the patient's face with the back of my bloody glove to get her attention, but she doesn't react. “You must push. I've made more room for the baby. It's stuck, but I think I can turn it if you push hard.”

“What's her name?” I ask the three attendants, indicating the woman in bed.

“Kitty,” the albino offers.

“Kitty, I'm Patience, the midwife. I know you're tired, but if you give this your all, the delivery can be over in few minutes.” There's no reaction. “Kitty!” I pinch her arm. The girl's eyes fly open again. She's not dead yet.

“We
need
you to push. Here, we're going to get you up in a squat. Just do what I tell you. It will help spread your pelvis.” With great effort the three assistants hoist Kitty upright. Then, with one hand on top of the uterus and one hand below, I push down and a small head pops out. It is about the size of a large apple, one of those commercial kinds at Bittman's Grocery.

My helpers ease the mother back on the bed, and the whole baby slides forth. I blow on the little girl's belly, but there's no reaction. I blow again. No grimace, no stretching of arms or gasp. Nothing. I try a few puffs into her nose and mouth, as I did with little William, but still no response. No heartbeat either under the frail chest. The limp body just hangs there between my hands.

Now everyone is crying. Everyone but the mother, whose eyes roll back in her head as her body goes rigid. She stiffens her arms and screams.

 

Maynard

“Get the husband. Get Mr. Hart!” I command. The short round lady in the gingham apron runs for him. I lay the dead baby in the wooden cradle and try to get Kitty's womb to ball up, but she's shaking so hard I can't keep my hands around it, and there's no way I can get her to drink Mrs. Potts's tincture.

It isn't until Kitty's body grows limp that I'm able to check her pulse. By Mrs. Kelly's watch, it's 140 beats per minute, way too fast, weak, and trembly. When I pull the patient's eye open and inspect the tissue in the crevice below, it's almost white. Mrs. Potts told me to do this when I need to judge a woman's stamina: dark red, her blood is rich; pale pink, the patient is weak. Kitty is way past weak.

The grim lady in green begins to pull away the bloody sheets and swab them on the wet floor.

“The baby's dead, isn't it?” the albino girl asks.

“Yes, honey. I'm afraid she is. She's gone to Heaven now.” I'm starting to sound like Grace Potts.

“Here, Kitty.” I try again to get the exhausted mother to swallow some water mixed with the tincture, but she's in some kind of coma and the green liquid dribbles down her chin.

From the front of the house I hear the screen door slam open, heavy boots in the hall, and Mr. Hart runs in. “What? What's happened? Is my wife dead?” I can see why he thinks this, but I know for a fact that her heart is still beating. Just to be sure, I take my wooden horned fetoscope and put it to her breast.

“She's not dead yet, sir. Kitty had a fit and then fell into a slumber. She'd already lost all this blood before I got here.” I don't know how to say it nice, so I just say it. “The baby died. It was stuck in the birth canal too long.”

Tears are streaming down the man's lean, high-cheekboned face clear down to his whiskers. He kneels in the blood and shakes Kitty's shoulder. “Wife! Wake up!”

“She can't wake up, Mr. Hart. She's had a fit. She's in a coma. We need to get her to a hospital.”

“You know I don't have any money! I would have taken her to the hospital two days ago if I had.” So you called me, I'm thinking. Called me too late, so that I could take the blame and the heartache.

“Well, if we don't get going,
you won't have a wife.
Forget about the money.”

“Dr. Blum's gone,” the green dress reminds us. “Moved back to Virginia.”

“
Someone
will help us if we show up at the hospital. That other doctor from Delmont or maybe a nurse. Does anyone have a vehicle, a truck? Maybe we should go right to Dr. Robinson, the colored doctor.”

“No black sawbones is touching my woman!” Hart slashes out and swipes his wet face, wiping blood across his eyes.

I bite my tongue, almost cutting it. What difference does the hue of the physician's skin make? The mind has no color. Robinson would know what to do.

“Dr. Robinson could give her medicine or put in an IV. Mr. Hart, your baby is dead because you didn't go to the hospital before or call me sooner. Didn't you notice your wife was swelling? Didn't you know the baby was too early? Do you understand, if we get in an auto right now, your wife might still make it?” I repeat myself, but I'm getting nowhere.

Hart stomps out of the room, followed by the woman in green. I know he's distressed, but he has to listen!

“Mr. Hart, please!” I run after him and pull on the sleeve of his neatly patched work shirt. “There must be
some way
to get to town. I'm telling you, your wife is very weak and ill. If she has another seizure, she may not make it.”

Hart steps out on the porch, slams his fist into a porch pole, and groans.

“Maynard, listen to her,” the older lady says. “Kitty needs help.”

“Miss Patience!” someone in the house calls. I run back inside.

The albino girl is holding her sister's head, and the shakes and rigors have started again. We women gather round, holding Kitty's limbs. The bed blossoms red under her buttocks like a begonia opening, and now she's bleeding from her nose too.

What is this? It's like she's shaking the life fluid out of her, and she's not breathing either. If she doesn't stop seizing, she'll expire right now.

For two, maybe three minutes, we hold Kitty while Mr. Hart stands expressionless at the bedroom door. I know he must have feelings, but he's gone somewhere else, far from this horror, fishing down on the Hope River, maybe.

In the end Kitty takes a big breath and swoons again. I feel for her pulse, but it's too fast to count. She opens her eyes one last time, sees her husband in the doorway, reaches out to him, and dies. Her poor heart has stopped beating. All our hearts stop.

 

Women's Work

“We need to clean this mess up before it brings in the flies,” I say out loud as a big one buzzes around my head. The birth smell is sweet and heavy, but this is something else. The blood smell is overwhelming. I almost gag but swallow hard and try not to think about it.

“What's your name, honey?” I ask the albino.

“Birdy,” she answers. “Kitty is my sissie. She's dead now, isn't she? And the baby?” The girl blows her nose on the hem of her skirt. Birdy and Kitty, I think. The parents must have had a sense of humor.

“I'm sorry. Yes, they're both gone to Heaven now. Why don't you sit and hold your sister's head while we clean her up.” Birdy does what I say, lifts Kitty's head into her lap and strokes her long hair, which I notice now is yellow-blond and straight like a Norwegian's. She hums a little song under her breath and presses the dead woman's eyes shut. One comes back open, but she closes it again.

Where is Bitsy when I need her? I wonder again. How will I describe this scene to her? Maybe I shouldn't. She might not want to come to births with me anymore.