The Midwife (21 page)

And then Alvin inhales again, the rattle jolting us as much as the silence.

Lydie takes her dad’s hand. “Go,
Dawdy
,” she says, kissing his knuckles. “Go with
Gott
.” Alvin’s spirit seems to listen, though his body has long shut down. The breath shudders through his body and then stops as effortlessly as I imagine it began.

The Risser girls’ bedroom door opens. I sit up on the mattress and see Lydie’s outline stretching across the floor, lit up by the oil lamp she carries. From where I sit, you would never guess that she’s about to give birth.

“You okay?” I ask.

Lydie draws the lamp up to her chest, the globe tucked beneath her chin. The flame haunts her glance at Mary and Ruth, asleep in a double bed right next to mine. But Lydie’s young sisters are curled together like those Russian dolls
 
—their long blonde and brunette hair covering the decorated pillowcase, their bodies adjusting to each other’s movements even in sleep. Lydie turns the lamp’s wick down and walks over to the dresser along the left-hand wall. I can smell her homemade verbena shampoo. Her wet feet leave prints in the lamplight.

Careful, Lydie pulls out a drawer and pleats the fabric of another dress before smoothing it again. “
Mamm
and I just finished preparing my
vadder
,” she whispers. “I took a bath to help me sleep . . . , but I don’t think I can.” Closing the drawer, Lydie holds the knob. Her lips grow thin. She closes her eyes, and then breathes out. “Will you come outside with me?” she asks, and reaches out a hand.

I can’t say no.

Downstairs, Uncle Titus sits in a kitchen chair beside the simple pine casket, like a guard. He greets us with a stiff tip of his chin but keeps his arms crossed over his coarse black beard that trails down his shirtfront. His booted feet
are like tree roots planted in the seams of the hardwood floor. The casket lid is off, and I can see the careful fold of Alvin Risser’s large, lifeless hands that are the same size as his brother Titus’s. Lydie touches my elbow. Holding back a shiver, I follow her outside. Lydie pulls her damp hair over one shoulder and sinks onto the concrete slab of the porch. She draws her knees up as far as her stomach will allow. I sit beside her. A damp summer breeze sweeps over the lawn. A bird cries in the distance.

“A loon?” I ask.

But Lydie doesn’t answer. She instead lifts her face to the night sky clouded with stars and says, “When my
vadder
was first ill, he would go to a clinic in Knoxville. My
mudder
would go with him, but sometimes she couldn’t if one of the
kinner
was sick. So I was sent in her place. I had already finished eighth grade, and I was expected to help the
familye
. I did not mind. I liked getting away and seeing the city. While
Dawdy
went through dialysis, I would sit and read to him. Or we’d play Dutch Blitz. I really enjoyed that time.

“I did not go often, but whenever I did, I began looking forward to the jokes the driver would tell during the trip, the way he would always bring crossword puzzles to keep me occupied. I was young.” Lydie sighs, as if sixteen is old. “I was so young. I smiled at the driver, and I laughed. I guess I shouldn’t have, but I just didn’t know better. . . .”

Lydie pauses, swallows hard before continuing. “The first time he touched me, he just took my hand. We were crossing the street to McDonald’s while my
vadder
was
finishing dialysis. I didn’t even flinch. His hand in mine felt like the most natural thing in the world. I remember the chill in the air, how my fingers felt so small compared to his; a helicopter hovering overhead that was getting ready to land on the hospital roof.

“I felt so guilty afterward
 
—even for just letting him hold my hand. But I still looked forward to those outings to Knoxville because secretly I hoped that something like that would happen again. And it did. Somehow it always did. He would give me a hug, or tug on my braids, or smile in a way that made me scared and excited all at the same time. He began to come to Split Rock more often. He would always pick up produce or jams or baked goods or quilts and peddle everything around to the Nashville and Knoxville farmer’s markets. But no matter what, he would always stop and see me.
Only
me. My heart thrilled whenever he would come around. So you see . . . you see, he was not the only one in the wrong.”

My mind scrambles to slide the puzzle pieces of Lydie’s life into place. Then she looks at me and continues speaking, and I know that I can’t use this time to uncover the mystery, but just listen to the pain behind her words.

“Around this time, the driver told my
mudder
that he could no longer take my
vadder
to dialysis. That she had to hire this woman in Blackbrier to do it, and so my
mudder
did. She called the number that the driver provided and told the woman the situation. And so, while my parents were in Knoxville trying to keep my
dawdy
alive, the driver would park behind the bakery and walk through the
cornfield over to our house. It happened slowly, gradually. He still brought me gifts; he still complimented me and told me I . . . I was beautiful. I was only fifteen, Amelia,” Lydie murmurs, her voice thick. “Nobody had ever really seen me before. Nobody had ever told me I was beautiful. The words were like magic, making me forget everything but the hunger to hear them again.”

“And so, when Henry, Ruth, and Mary were off at school and Benjamin was down for a nap, the driver would come to our house and for a handful of compliments or a beaded bracelet, I would let him do with me whatever he wanted.”

For a second, Lydie cradles her cheeks, but then drops her hands and straightens her spine. She again lifts her face up to the stars, like she’s seeking wisdom or forgiveness. “I did not understand, Amelia. I didn’t. I was naive, trusting. I had been around a farm all my life but . . . but didn’t know the ways between a woman and a man. I found out I was pregnant because my monthly flow stopped. I didn’t understand what was happening, but the driver suspected. He told me he knew of a place where I could go and stay until after the
bobbel
’s birth. He said that if my parents found out what had happened, they would be so
 
—” she looks down
 
—“ashamed.”

“So I did what he told me to do. I . . . I packed up a small cloth bag with everything I could take, and one afternoon the driver picked me up and brought me to Hopen Haus. I don’t know how my parents found out where I was; I don’t know how they knew enough to send me that letter. But somehow they did, and now it is too late to tell
my
vadder
what happened. Too late to explain that I was as trusting as a child, and so I had become pregnant with a child myself.”

Far off, the strange bird continues its cry. Lydie presses a hand over her mouth and jackknifes her body to keep from making noise. I reach out and pause, my fingers flexed with uncertainty, and then place that hand on Lydie’s back. Turning, she puts her head on my lap
 
—just as I had wished to rest on hers
 
—and sobs. I look up at the overturned bowl of sky. Tears stream down my cheeks as I pray for my friend. And though the communion is as new to me as the hymns the congregation sang while Alvin Risser’s soul passed from the earth, I can sense that somewhere a Father sees our orphan state
 
—and is listening.

I plod up the church steps in my sandals and enter the left side of the two side-by-side doors
 
—trying to stoop slightly so the cape dress Lydie let me borrow hits below my knees. If the church members are shocked by an
Englischer
attending an Old Order Mennonite funeral, they don’t show it by turning around to look. Or maybe they’re too focused on pregnant Lydie, who’s sitting up front with the rest of the Risser family. I take a seat in the back and look at the pine casket displayed on the scarred pine floor next to the podium. The family’s already finished viewing Alvin, so the coffin lid is nailed closed. Morning light pours in through the four windows, bleaching the community’s dreary wardrobe of black, off-white, and gray.

As kids from another family file into the pew next to me, Uncle Titus rises and takes out a shiny little flute. The congregation, in perfect unison, frees books from the back slats of pews and stands. I grab one just for show, since I can’t read the hymnal’s words, but remain seated. Thousands of musty pages flutter as dust fills the warm, sunlit air. Uncle Titus selects the key on the flute, and the harmony begins. The song sounds similar to one sung at Alvin’s deathbed last night.

While they sing, I peer across the aisle toward the men. In the second-to-last pew, I spot Wilbur Byler, who’s also sitting but whose brick-red work coat stands out like a kinged checker piece against the backdrop of plain black suits. Wilbur’s hair is combed, and his unhealthy jowls glisten with aftershave. I have a hard time dragging my eyes away, even after Wilbur meets my gaze. Nervousness shoots down my spine. I face the casket again, my cheeks burning and my pulse slamming in my ears. I remember the depression that assaulted Lydie after Wilbur visited Hopen Haus. I remember the argument that Uriah and Wilbur had out in the springhouse. Was Wilbur so mad because Uriah had told him that he knew the truth? Do I know the truth as well? I want to shriek out my accusation over the community’s harmony. And yet I can’t. This is the Rissers’ time of mourning, and I must respect that. But now that I suspect who fathered Lydie’s child, it’s time to make things right. I am not some naive country girl Wilbur Byler can also take advantage of. He is going to confess to me what he’s done and then pay the consequences for his actions.

One day before Terese Cullum’s pregnancy is declared full-term, and her blood pressure’s nearly perfect. Her swelling has abated to the point she can wear her chunky turquoise rings and braided ankle bracelets without the threat of them cutting off her circulation. The pH strip in the urine sample she left after today’s prenatal appointment shows only a trace amount of protein. If these positive signs continue, Terese should be able to give birth at Hopen Haus without us midwives having to worry about the preeclampsia symptoms she had less than a month ago.

I fill out Terese’s OB record card, so giddy with relief
that I have to battle the inclination to doodle a heart over the three letter
i’
s:
Visit date 8/1; WT 138; BP 124/82; Urine PG tr/-; FH 36; FH 156; EGA 36 wks, 6 days.

I tuck the small pink card into Terese’s folder and pull open the middle drawer of the cabinet. Filing it in the back next to Marie Warren’s folder, whose Hopen Haus daughter must be in kindergarten by now, I hear a knock. I roll the drawer closed and cross the examining room. Uriah Rippentoe is standing on the other side of the door with his battered straw hat in his hands, pulling out loose strands and dropping them mindlessly at his feet.

“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.”

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.

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.

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.