The Midwife (26 page)

I stare out at the predawn light inching over the horizon and know that today’s the day my daughter leaves me again. She and the entire household are still sleeping, but I have not slept. I have instead sat on this front porch for hours, praying and reading through Lamentations by lamplight in an effort to find solace in the suffering that I am, once again, having to endure alone. I skim over passages until I come to these verses in chapter three:

I remember my affliction and my wandering,

the bitterness and the gall.

I well remember them,

and my soul is downcast within me.

Yet this I call to mind

and therefore I have hope:

Because of the
L
ORD
’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

I say to myself, “The
L
ORD
is my portion;

therefore I will wait for him.”

I lower the wick of the lamp until the circle of light covering the porch boards is barely distinguishable from the waning darkness. I close the onionskin pages of Fannie Graber’s worn leather Bible, which she willed to me before her death, and pull it close to my heart.

“Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope,” I whisper, evoking the sound of those words being uttered from between the ailing midwife’s cracked lips. I remember how, crying, I clasped her knotted hand, refusing to relinquish her, though she was only waiting to go home. After my daughter’s loss, I had vowed not to let anyone near me again. But somehow Fannie’s gentle nature had torn down my every fortification, except for my ability to trust in the Savior she loved. However, now that she is gone, I know that though she had provided me with a refuge, she was never meant to be my sanctuary. My hope is found in God alone, and I cannot get through today’s
trials or tomorrow’s triumphs without his supernatural strength to guide me.

In the past month, since I started rebuilding my life from the inside out, I have started to realize that love is not about holding on to someone, but about allowing someone to grow and change and loving them through this never-ending metamorphosis of life that
 
—in the process
 
—sometimes changes us too. Still, at times, it seems unfair that my daughter should leave my life just after I found her, and yet I know I should be grateful that I have found her at all.

The truth is, the daughter I loved and lost is still missing. Hope is as distant from me now as the day she was taken. But this does not mean that I cherish her memory any less. It means that to love Amelia the way she deserves, I have to relinquish the phantom child who has haunted my life for nearly eighteen years and allow this beautiful young woman to take her place.

The screen door creaks open and then shuts. Blinking, I turn and see Ernest Looper standing on the front porch, staring over at me. Steam rises from the mug in his hands. “Want coffee?” he asks.

I clear my throat, averting my gaze as I set Fannie’s Bible beside the lamp. “No.”

He pauses. I hear him blow on the liquid before taking a sip. “I know you’re hurting, Beth,” he says. “I also know that nothing can really help how you feel, but I have something that might take some of the pain away.” I look up at him. He sets down the mug and, from his back pocket, takes out an envelope. “I could never really find the right
time to tell you that . . . well, I didn’t just come here to help you out.” He swallows. “I made a promise to your mom that I’d get this to you.”

Looper passes the envelope to me. Across the front, in shaky script I almost cannot recognize as my mother’s aging hand, is my name: Bethany. It is not sealed. I flip out the tucked portion, my fingertips tingling with equal parts anticipation and dread, and begin to read:

Dearest Bethany,

I know you do not understand how I could have left you and Benjamin, and the older I get, I do not understand it myself. I kept thinking that I had to find a life beyond my family, but now I know that you and your brother and your father were my life. Without you all, I had nothing. It didn’t take me very long to learn this, but I thought it was still too late when I did.

So I lived in Iowa and worked for many years. Your father and I only divorced five days before our silver anniversary. Right afterward, I moved from my apartment to the suburbs of Boston. Your father told me you were attending college there, and I wanted to be near you. I was hoping that, with enough time, you would forgive me and I would forgive myself, and that we could rebuild a relationship . . . if you would let me. And yet, two years passed and a connection between us was never made. I had found a job working as a nanny to a family in the university. But even though I saw you once
 
— hurrying to class, your head
down against the wind
 
—I could not get up the nerve to approach you. I knew you had made it clear that you did not want any contact with us. I do not blame you for this; I only blame myself.

Then, a few months later, I saw your name in the newspaper and the story about your gestational surrogacy. I read how you had kidnapped the Fitzpatrick child in your very womb and wondered if the way I had abandoned you made you now not want to give that child up.

I went back to your university and visited your department. I met Dr. Fitzpatrick there. In the months following your sudden departure, I got as close to him as I could. I guess by doing so, I was hoping that eventually I would find you again. I had told no one about our connection. I had reverted to my maiden name, so no one would have guessed that we were mother and daughter. When Thom asked if I knew of anyone who could provide child care in a rather difficult situation, I asked if he would explain the situation to me.

Thomas Fitzpatrick then told me that the child you, Beth Winslow, had carried and kidnapped had been found in a Mennonite community in eastern Tennessee. He told me that he and Meredith were leaving in a week to bring the child back home, but that they both had to return to work after Christmas break, and they needed someone who could watch the child full-time. I hadn’t even resigned from my former position, but I told Thom I would gladly accept the job.

I could tell the Fitzpatricks were nervous about
becoming parents overnight, and the fact that I had been a mother of two and a nanny for years seemed to reassure them. Do not doubt that I can see the hypocrisy in this. The Fitzpatricks asked me to fly to Tennessee with them and their lawyer. I know it might anger you to learn that I was their accomplice in a way, but I wanted a second chance, Beth. I wanted to do things over with you, and when I knew I couldn’t, I thought maybe I could do things over with your daughter. Though she was not genetically yours, knowing that you had loved her enough to run let me know that her heartbeat thrummed in your veins. Through loving her, I could begin again. I could love her the way I should’ve loved you.

“You read this?” I ask Looper, my voice hoarse.

He looks away from the yard but keeps leaning against the porch post, sipping coffee. “No,” he says. “I didn’t think I had the right.”

I look back down.

I saw you that day we came to Tennessee to take your daughter
 
—and their daughter
 
—back. The Fitzpatricks carried the child out to the rental car and placed her like a bundled heirloom in my arms. She was half-asleep and fragrant from her nap, and she yawned and cuddled right against my chest as if she had always been there. Thom and Meredith went back inside to gather the rest of her things, and that’s when
you crossed the yard and looked at the car
 
—and it seemed that you were looking right at me.

I could feel your eyes boring through the tinted glass and seeing the woman who had abandoned you holding tight to your child. I wanted to go to you. I hope you know this. I wanted to ask your forgiveness. But I was still too afraid. I could barely recognize you beneath your Plain clothes, and I could see in your bearing that you were stronger than before.

What if you hated me? You had every right. It was better not to know.

So I remained silent; I remained a coward. I locked the doors and kissed the child’s warm forehead. I pressed my back against the seat and breathed. I watched you walk up those porch steps like a lamb to the slaughter. Inside the house, I knew, you would learn that you would never see your daughter again. . . .

I’ve had to pause in my writing. My strength is not what it once was and this story is so very hard to recount. But I want you to know the truth, Beth, and I expect that this disease will claim me before I can see you again. The only thing I can say in closing is that I have loved and raised Amelia as if she were my own flesh and blood, my grandchild, and through this love, I hope you can find the strength to forgive me for leaving you.

My love always,

Your mother, Sarah Graybill

I look up to glimpse the sunrise: a citrus peel of orange arranged behind two indigo mountain peaks. Pine branches tinseled in blinding fool’s gold. As I stare at it, I can feel the promise of light on my face.
“His compassions never fail. They are new every morning.”

“You okay?” Looper asks.

Folding the letter, I slip it back into the envelope. I turn it over and stare at my mother’s handwriting. I smooth the crease between the
t
and the
h
of Bethany, my given name. I imagine my mother in the hospital bed
 
—dying of a disease that I, her daughter, cannot even name. I imagine an IV tethered to her shrunken vein as she doggedly wrote out this last will and testament of her undying love.

I close my eyes to keep from crying, but sorrow streams down my face unchecked.

In one day, I have found my daughter and my mother only to lose them both again. In one day, I have been both restored and crushed. But more than anything, I have learned the truth in the adage that there are two sides to every story. My mother did the best that she could with what she’d been given. And Meredith and Thom have loved, as best as they could, the daughter they took from me.

Just as Looper was wise enough not to mention my tears, he is wise enough not to repeat his question or respond to my unspoken answer:
I will be okay, but I’m not okay now.
Instead, he sets his mug on the step. Then he crouches down before me. His calloused hand wraps my own. My lifeblood stirs as he uses his other hand to tip
my chin up toward his face. The two of us are altered by loss and by time
 
—but the gentleness in his eyes remains untouched.

“Beth,” he says, and my true name sings on his lips. “I want to be here for you. . . .” He swallows hard, turns my hand over, and traces a square thumb across the soft inside of my wrist. “I want to be here for you if you want me to stay.”

I lean in toward Ernest Looper and rest my forehead on his shoulder. Closing my eyes, I can picture our child
 
—our nameless, ageless son
 
—sprinting through a strawflower field. His fair hair glints in between the blood-red coxcombs and golden dahlias just like the Risser children’s had. Weightless, a homemade kite flutters through the air high above him, buoyed by hope, but anchored to this terrestrial ball by an angel-hair string.

“Stay,” I murmur. “I want you with me and my Hopen Haus daughters. I want us to begin again.”

Again, Looper says nothing, just folds me into his arms.

A flush sweeps Amelia’s neck and cheeks when she comes down the landing and sees me standing here in front of the screen door, holding Lydie’s son. The dynamics of our relationship have literally shifted overnight. She does not know how to proceed on this new terrain, and
 
—honestly
 
—neither do I. Amelia comes down the rest of the steps and rolls her suitcase to the door. Tears that used to fall so sparingly now rush to my eyes. Facing
the screen, I hold the infant a little closer, grateful that my arms are not empty when my daughter is about to leave.

“Thank you for letting me stay,” Amelia says.

I nod, too choked to speak.

From the corner of my eye, I watch Amelia look up the staircase for her parents, who have returned from the hotel to help her pack. She places a hand on her stomach, which barely shows the hint of the baby growing inside it. “Will you come to Boston when it’s time?” she asks. “When I give birth? I . . . I want you there.”

I hear someone descending the steps, the wheels of another suitcase clattering down behind. Reaching out, I place my palm against Amelia’s smooth face. I close my eyes. My fingertips braille her skin like a plea. I open my eyes and say, “Amelia, I’d be honored.”

Her smile looks so much like her father’s. Adjusting her bag on her arm, she picks the suitcase up and catches the door behind her, so it won’t slap shut and disturb the newborn, Alvin, who has fallen asleep again. Through the screen, I watch Amelia stride out to her car and stow the suitcase in the opened trunk. I can feel the warmth of Meredith’s presence before I pivot to see her staring at me . . . staring at her daughter.