Lazaretto

THE DIMLY LIT
room smelled of sage and mint and boiled cotton. A lone candle high on a whitewashed mantel threw off just enough light to illuminate a space on the wall above it where a picture of Abraham Lincoln hung. The sight of him with his top hat and wry smile seemed to calm Meda as she pushed and moaned, her legs spread wide apart. Fourteen-year-old Sylvia gently slid her hands between Meda's legs into what felt to Sylvia like the center of a volcano.

“How many fingers can you insert?” asked Dr. Miss, the midwife directing Sylvia.

“My entire hand,” Sylvia said, as a low-pitched cry of pain rumbled out of Meda and Sylvia quickly pulled her hand back.

“Your hand is not the cause of her discomfort this moment,” Dr. Miss said. “This is her first, and there is no history to draw on with the first to help them when they push.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sylvia said. This was also Sylvia's first. She'd worked here going on a year as assistant to Dr. Miss, and right now her duties had taken a monumental leap. She and Dr. Miss had exchanged places, and instead of dabbing Meda's forehead and speaking encouraging words in a soothing voice, and otherwise doing what Dr. Miss requested, Sylvia now sat on Dr. Miss's stool at the foot of the cot, taking the lead in delivering a baby.

“Now, tell me what you see.”

Sylvia looked over at the waning flame of the candle that was
struggling to stay alive. “I believe I need more light,” she said as she got up to retrieve the candle.

“Did I say you need more light?” Dr. Miss snapped, as if to remind Sylvia who was who.

“No, ma'am, you did not.”

“Your hands should be your light.”

“Yes, ma'am. But you generally employ more light at this juncture. I am just trying to determine if there is a reason—”

“I know how to do this in the absence of light, and you must as well, because another occasion may require it. Leave the candle and return to the stool.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sylvia said, then held her tongue as she walked back across the pine floor that had been painted white, the way everything in this room was white, from the cot to the stool to the hearth to the frame that held the president's likeness. Sylvia reasoned that the preponderance of white in this room was Dr. Miss's attempt at coating a swath of purity over the various situations that found their way here. Though Dr. Miss prided herself on delivering the babies of literate, well-to-do black parents attracted to her because her father had been a respected intellectual, a Freemason, and a barber who dispensed fiery diatribes against slavery right along with the perfect cut and shave, there was an underbelly to her practice that she kept hidden from her respectable clientele, where she expertly removed formations eight to twelve weeks along, before a woman started to show. “Troubled formations” Dr. Miss called them when a woman was not legally betrothed, or too young, or too old, too fragile, or, as in the case of Meda, escorted here under the cover of night by a wealthy white man in a two-horse carriage. Dr. Miss had become well known in the whispered circles of rich white men as a viable medical solution to the consequence of their indiscretions. Meda was supposed to have been such a case. But once Meda was out of her cape, even
Sylvia could see that though this young woman was small, and carried small, the formation she carried had already dropped, was already in a prone position, and, troubled or not, was a full-term formation ready to be born.

The candle's light was down to a wisp as Sylvia returned to her place on the stool. She was about to insert her hand again and see what she could see, but then Meda let out a growl of a sound followed by a hard grunt that expanded like a cyclone, growing longer, wider. And Sylvia gasped, because suddenly she could almost see the head.

“Crowning?” Dr. Miss called, standing over Sylvia now.

“I believe so, uh, yes.”

“Cup your hands—and take care, it will be slippery.”

Sylvia did, surprised that her hands were not shaking because all of her insides were as she watched the head push out and actually turn itself around as the shoulders squeezed through. “Uh, uh, uh” was all that Sylvia could manage to say, because with all of the other births she had been tending to the mother at the other end of the cot. She'd never before witnessed this instant. And then, stillness, everywhere in the room it seemed, except for the silence that replicated itself in pulses of non-sound. And already her hands were holding the baby. And the baby's cries pushed through the silence. And Sylvia was both laughing and crying, and now the candle flame had died completely, and between the darkened air and her own tears she could barely see enough even to determine whether the baby was a girl or a boy. She tried to piece through the darkness, but before she could, Dr. Miss covered the baby with a white square of a blanket and snipped the cord. Sylvia lifted the baby to her then. She moved her hand under the blanket to rub its back. Its skin was warm and slick. The tiny curls of its breath tickled her neck; the pat-pat of its heartbeat thrilled her. And then a cold space of air as Dr. Miss
took the baby from her arms and Sylvia felt the sudden absence of its warmth. Then her eyes cleared and she focused on the miniscule hand that was the palest pink with just a hint of yellow, like the first light of dawn reaching through the black air. It seemed to be reaching for Meda's voice as Meda called out, “My baby, give him to me. Please, let me have my child.”

Generally at this point, Dr. Miss would inspect the baby, then place it on the mother's chest. She did not this time. “Warm her, please, she's getting chills. Then deliver the afterbirth,” she said to Sylvia. “Rub her stomach in circles to help it along. Then pour a cup of calming brew and get her to sip.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sylvia said, looking through the air to try to find Dr. Miss's face. Dr. Miss was tall and thin and dark, made even taller and darker by a white cloth wrapped around her head and piled high like a queen's crown, the rest of her essentially lost in this black-aired room. Sylvia often thought that with all of the medicinal plants growing around here and the concoctions brewing, if Dr. Miss had not been such a skilled midwife she could have certainly succeeded as a witch. She thought that now, as Dr. Miss seemed to turn a deaf ear to Meda, who was trying to sit up, her calls for her baby having grown louder, more insistent. The baby's cries were full throttle now, too. It was as if the baby and Meda were engaged in a charged call-and-response, the space between them widening as Dr. Miss walked away with the baby, her long white dress flouncing as she moved through the door, leaving Sylvia to contain Meda, who was trying to get up from the cot to go after them.

Sylvia delivered the afterbirth and sedated Meda per Dr. Miss's instructions. Then she went into the parlor, where Dr. Miss was in hushed conversation with the man who'd escorted Meda there, Tom Benin, a powerful Philadelphia attorney—though he seemed anything but at that moment, as Dr. Miss motioned Sylvia in and he turned and glanced at her. He seemed as if he'd been
winnowed down by shame and remorse, his skin whitened, his eyes red, his manner delicate as he listened to Dr. Miss's report. “She arrived months too late for the other procedure,” Dr. Miss said. “I am sorry that she was so good at keeping it cloaked. She is a small woman after all.”

He looked down, away from Dr. Miss, as if he were a chastened schoolboy being reprimanded by the headmaster. He even stammered over his words as he asked Dr. Miss if she was certain that there had been no other option.

“If there had been, I assure you we would have exercised it.” She snapped the ends of her words.

“And the baby was born alive?” he asked, as if he hoped that by phrasing the question directly he might hear a different response.

“I have already said yes. Born alive. Full-term.” The edge to Dr. Miss's tone increased the more she spoke.

He pulled out a pocket watch, a gold watch decorated with bridges, the likes of which Sylvia had never seen. “I am just not prepared for such a result at this time,” he said, talking more to the watch than to Dr. Miss.

“Neither were we. But we are accustomed to adjusting to unexpected results.”

“So you have had this situation prior?”

“We have, and have handled it with discretion.”

“And if you handle this likewise, what will be its disposition?”

“We think it best that the fewer details you have, the better for all concerned.”

“And how is she?”

“Meda, or the baby, because the baby is actually—”

“Her, her, Meda,” he said, his hushed voice straining with agitation now.

“I assure you that Meda will pull through expertly in body, though the heart is slower to recover.”

He swallowed hard and placed his hands on the edges of Dr. Miss's ornate oak desk as if to steady himself, as if to keep himself from collapsing into tears. And Sylvia balled her fist, to steady herself, too, to resist the wave of compassion for the man trying to bowl her over. She disliked about herself the way that she could be affected by a thin vein of good in a person who was otherwise despicable, wished right now that she was blind to this man's complexities.

He squared his shoulders then, suddenly remembering his status. “On second thought, I will see to its disposition myself. Ready it, please. My carriage is waiting along the side of this structure. Deliver it to me there.”

“Sir?” Dr. Miss said, as if she'd not heard him.

“It occurs to me that I have several options.”

“But, sir, I already have a suitable resolution in mind.” Dr. Miss's sharp tone was replaced with a softer, pleading one. “A young Negro couple of the highest caliber—”

“I have said I have other options in mind.”

Now it was he snapping the ends of his words and Dr. Miss was the one looking away, looking down as she breathed deeply several times, and the only thing in the room that seemed to move was her chest, rising and falling. “As you wish,” she said. “And we should tell Meda . . . what, sir?”

“Tell her her baby girl died,” he said, already out of the parlor.

Dr. Miss sank in her chair, her face ashen, as if all the blood had left her. Her head wrap had begun to unravel and hung along the side of her face. She spoke more to the thick velvet draperies swagged around the parlor's doorway than to Sylvia. “The woman I had in mind would have been the perfect mother. I've been treating her barren womb. Now . . . who knows what he will do.”

Sylvia's heart was beating double time as she swallowed the urge to cry. “Was it a girl, ma'am?” she asked in a whisper.

“Did you not deliver it?” Dr. Miss's voice was a mix of agitation and reprimand.

Sylvia clasped and unclasped her hands. “The candle died, ma'am. Uh, it was dark, and then you covered it, uh, the baby. You covered the baby and I did not see—”

“Let that be a lesson to you. I told you that your hands should be your eyes.”

“Yes, ma'am,” and then Sylvia could no longer hold it in and she started to cry. “You do not think he means the baby harm, do you?” She said in a cracked voice.

“I do not know what he will do. He does not even know what he will do. He is not in his right mind; the shock of a live birth has left him incapable of clear thought.”

“Well, we can tell
him
that the baby died,” Sylvia said, her voice screeching as she tried to contain herself. “We can take the lie that he is prepared to tell to Miss Meda and turn it right back on him. Then you can give the baby to the woman as you had planned.”

“That is preposterous, Sylvia.”

“But, ma'am, you said he is incapable of clear thought. We should think for him, then, for the sake of the baby—”

“And what if he asks to see the corpse? That is his child—”

“But is the baby not also Miss Meda's? Is Miss Meda his property? In Philadelphia, in 1865?”

Dr. Miss stood and rewound her head wrap back up high. “I will cover the baby in a balm that will protect her against evil intentions. And you, Sylvia, must accept that most Negroes do not live the prosperous life that your parents are able to give you. It is best for Meda that she believes her baby died. She will grieve, she will recover, she will be better than most in her situation. It is my understanding that the Benins' live-in help enjoy excellent accommodations.”

“And yet she has come to us carrying his—” Sylvia stopped
herself then. She had gone too far; she knew by the way Dr. Miss squared her shoulders and focused her eyes like spears trained on Sylvia. “Forgive me, ma'am,” Sylvia said as she looked down at the planked hearts-of-pine floor. “It's just that that baby was my first.” She swallowed hard to hold herself from crying again. “Shall I ready the baby and deliver it to his carriage?”

“I will do it,” Dr. Miss said. “And you best mind your mouth, Sylvia, or find a different training ground for your nursing aspirations.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Sylvia said, but Dr. Miss had already left the parlor. Sylvia sank into the chair where Tom Benin had just been. She was remembering the feel of the baby's head finding the crook of her neck and nestling there. “A girl,” she whispered to herself. “It was a girl. It was my first.”

HOURS LATER A
brilliant burst of sunlight ushered Meda to full consciousness. She'd dozed, on and off, after her baby was born, and the spate of time following was a blur. Whatever it was they'd made her drink had invited a fog to settle inside of her head. She'd barely been aware of their comings and goings as they piled blankets on her, and packed her insides to stop a threatening hemorrhage, and squeezed her breasts to relieve the buildup. Each time they entered the room, she'd call for her baby. Dr. Miss at turns ignored her, instead whispering instructions to Sylvia, or she'd just gently touch her fingers to Meda's forehead and tell her to hush. “Get some rest, and hush.”