The Midwife (7 page)

“But the two of you . . .” I paused, not knowing how to continue and wishing I had never begun.

“We never had children?” Meredith supplied.

I focused on the sprawling hospital buildings coming into view.

Meredith said, “Thom made the assumption that if he promised to stay home with the children, then I would promise to
have
children.” Her laughter did not escape her lips. “He should not have assumed. I could not put everything on hold and go on a three-month maternity leave. My business was just starting up.”

“So,” I said, “the surrogacy kind of works in your favor? You can just go about your life without morning sickness or doctor’s appointments and let Thom take it from there?” I no longer cared that I was teetering on the brink of rudeness. Meredith made this child I carried sound not like a miracle, but like an inconvenience. If not for Thom, I knew I could not give this child to such a driven woman, who had allowed her job to overtake her life.

Meredith maneuvered her car into a space wedged
between two vehicles and shifted into park. She flicked off the key. The classical music faded. “I do not think surrogacy works in anyone’s favor,” she snapped. Jerking the keys out of the ignition, she cracked open the door and grabbed her purse. Bending, she met my eyes. “Except, of course, maybe yours.”

She slammed the car door and stalked off toward the hospital. Once again, I had no choice but to follow. As I did, I wondered if Thom had preceded me in Meredith’s anger, and if this child in my womb would trail in my wake.

A Filipino man with salt-and-pepper hair in a shoulder-length braid came into the room. He carried a manila envelope I assumed held the paperwork I had completed in the hospital lobby. Sitting on the stool beside the examining table, his pristine sneakers squeaked as his heels propelled him across the tile.

“You’ve had an ultrasound before?” His teeth gleamed in his tanned face. The computer monitor was tilted just beyond my line of vision, but I saw his fingertips were poised above the keyboard.

“Not here, but yes.”

“How many weeks are you?” he asked.

“Seventeen.”

A pause as he typed it in.

“This your first child?” He looked up, waiting.

I cleared my throat that was blocked with emotions and replied, “No. I . . . I’ve carried a child to full term before.”

When he finished typing, he came over and stood before me. I had tugged my sweatpants down below my hip bones and pulled up my T-shirt. He squirted some of the warmed ultrasound gel on my stomach and rolled the wand that looked like a deodorant stick.

“Have you felt the baby move?” he asked.

I nodded. “Not too often, though,” I said. “Just started to feel her in the past two weeks.”

He rolled the ultrasound wand lower. It seemed he was trying to manipulate the baby. He didn’t know that I knew a little about the medical profession, and I didn’t tell him. I wanted to be like any other patient, allowing him to reassure me when I was afraid that something was wrong.

Fear grew in the silence until it became a steel trap bracketing my chest. “I had some pain this morning,” I whispered. “And I just wanted to make sure that everything’s all right.”

The ultrasound technician didn’t look at me. He removed the wand and wiped the gel off my stomach with a wet cloth. He gave me a hand and boosted me into a sitting position. It was not the weight of the baby I carried, but the weight of my apprehension, that made me weak. “I’ll be right back,” he said, patting my knee.

The computer screen flooded the darkness with a square pool of light. I stared at it and wondered if we had come this far only to have lost the child I’d just allowed myself to love. The terror I’d tried to keep at bay made me want to reach out to my mother, whose absence hurt as much now as it had when she had left. I even wanted to call Meredith
and tell her to come back to the hospital. After pacing in the lobby and chain-sipping Diet Cokes for half an hour, she’d said she could not wait any longer. She’d given me the number to her portable phone and then walked out through the automatic doors without asking if I would be okay.

Although she was the least maternal person I had ever known, I wanted a face that was familiar to me, and it only seemed fair that the mother of this child should also have to hear these words. That the mother should help me grieve
 
—that she should grieve too.

The door the ultrasound tech had shut opened again. I felt like a caged animal, blinking in the crackling fluorescent lighting after an older gentleman flipped the switch. He had white hair receding in a horseshoe shape and dangling pink earlobes. His smile was kind, as were his eyes. Taking the swivel stool the technician had occupied, he hitched up the material of his dress pants and placed his large feet at forty-five-degree angles. His shins were bony and covered with socks made of heavy gray wool. The leg hair was white.

“Miss Winslow,” he said. I raised my gaze. He did not even deliberate if I was married or not, as I must have seemed so alone, sitting there in my sweatpants with the university logo and my eyes huge in my unwashed face. “I’m Dr. Carmichael.” He reached out his steady hand with long, tapering fingers that felt like chilled candlesticks.

Did he think the exchange of physical touch would make the words easier to bear?

“I’m sure you know that my being called in here is not a good sign,” he continued, “so I’m not going to make it
worse by beating around the bush.” He smiled. For an irrational moment, I wanted to assault him for his joviality at such a serious time. “There’s some residual swelling on the baby’s brain, and one of the upper ventricles does not seem to be developing. These two things combined with the fact that there’s not a good flow through the umbilical cord . . . well, it makes us worry that there might be something wrong with your child.”

“It’s not my child,” I whispered, tears flooding my eyes. The second I uttered those words, I realized that Meredith did not have to know that something was wrong. In my opinion, she did not
deserve
to know, as she could not take a few hours out of her Saturday to sit in a darkened room with a scared woman who was contracted to bear her offspring. Because of her apparent apathy, I did not want to tell Meredith anything. But it was not only Meredith’s child I carried. It was Thom’s child too, and for him I asked, “What’s the next step? And how long ’til we know something for certain?”

Dr. Carmichael slipped on the reading glasses hanging down across his lab coat from a chain. With his left hand tilted at an odd angle, he scrawled something across my file and said, “I would like to schedule you for an amniocentesis and an MSAFP, which is
 
—”

“Maternal serum alpha-fetoprotein screening.”

The doctor looked up from my file. The blue eyes peering above his bifocals brightened. “Actually, yes,” he said. “We’ll check your fetoprotein levels to make sure the fetus does not have a neural tube defect, such as spina
bifida or anencephaly. High levels of AFP may also suggest esophageal defects or a failure of your baby’s abdomen to close. However
 
—” he glanced over his glasses and smiled again
 
—“as you might know, the most common reason for elevated AFP levels is inaccurate dating of the pregnancy.”

“That wouldn’t be the case here, Dr. Carmichael,” I said. “I am a gestational surrogate. I know the exact minute this child was conceived.”

“Ah, I see,” he muttered. He had not heard me the first time. “Low levels of AFP and abnormal levels of hCG and estriol may indicate that the developing baby has some type of chromosome abnormality. But these are all just precautions, so we can know for certain that your child
 
—or
their
child
 
—is fine.”

I ran a hand over my stomach, which was as hard as an unripened fruit. The T-shirt covering it was still smeared with the gummy ultrasound gel. “Thank you for being honest,” I said. “I’m sure they’ll appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome.” Dr. Carmichael looked over his glasses and paused a moment before saying, “But I know if I were the parent of a contracted baby, I’d also want the surrogate to be honest with me.”

At the knock, I get out of bed and whisk the shawl off the back of my desk chair. Spooling it around my shoulders, I pull open the door. I see a pale girl with wet hair dripping across the front of her floor-length nightgown.

“Lydie?” I ask. “You all right?”

She shakes her head. “I think . . . I think Star’s hurt.”

I step back inside my bedroom. Holding the fiery stub of a match, I lift the oil lamp’s glass and touch the flame to the wick before snuffing the match out. I adjust the wick and bring the lamp closer. “What happened?” I ask.

Turning from the light, Lydie shakes her head. “I don’t
know. When I came back from my bath, Star had locked me out. But . . . I heard her moan.”

Passing the oil lamp to Lydie, I grab the birthing satchel I keep beneath my desk. Then, without speaking, the two of us hurry down the hallway. The lamp sloshes light across the log-and-chink walls. Our matching white nightgowns float around our ankles.

I rap my knuckles on the door to the bedroom Lydie shares with Star. “It’s Rhoda,” I say sharply. “What’s wrong?”

Silence.

I hang the satchel over Lydie’s other arm and motion for her to move. Twisting the doorknob hard to the right, I shove my shoulder into the door, displacing the ancient hook lock along with my shawl. The tang of metal and sweat assaults my senses. My eyes struggle to see in the dim light. Once they do, years of experience are overtaken by uncertainty. But only for a moment. I reach for the lamp, and Lydie wordlessly passes it to me. I set the lamp on the floor, where it illumines the scene. Lydie gasps and clamps a hand over her mouth. I hear her nostrils pump in and out with fear.

Star is tucked into the space between the dresser and the window on the left-hand wall. Her knees are pulled up to her chest. Blood spreads from the seat of her pajama pants
 
—soaking her multicolored slippers
 
—and sheens on the hardwood floor. Even in the darkness, every color fades next to the garish spectrum of the girl’s purple hair contrasted with that waxing flood of red spilling from her
womb. I have seen enough miscarriages to recognize postpartum hemorrhaging. If I cannot stop the bleeding, we will lose Star too.

Lydie is so dazed, she is not even aware that I am asking her to give us space. I bracket her small shoulders and push her toward the door. As Lydie clings to the doorframe with her eyes wet and lips moving in silent prayer, I dig into my satchel for Pitocin. I insert the syringe’s needle into the vial and push down on the plunger. I turn the vial
 
—attached to the syringe
 
—toward the ceiling like a gun and extract all ten milliunits. Removing the needle, I set the vial down before flicking the side of the syringe to make sure the liquid is void of bubbles.

I lean over Star and peel down the shoulder of her bathrobe. Lamplight casts shadows over the galaxy of tattoos and scars whittled into her right arm, which has always been hidden under long sleeves. Some of the scars have faded with time; some are as bright as if they were inflicted yesterday. Perhaps they were.

I use an alcohol wipe to clean a circle on Star’s skin before jabbing her deltoid with the needle. Star’s sore eyes flicker open. They close again. Her chin dips onto her chest.

“How long have you been cutting?” I ask, recapping the syringe and cleaning the area of the shot.

“Dunno,” she replies.

“How long have you been bleeding?”

“Dunno,” Star slurs again. “Awhile.”

I trace the scars on Star’s forearm. I turn the arm over
to expose the paler flesh lacerated with angry red stripes running parallel to the sunken purple veins. I say, “You’re lucky you didn’t nick one.”

Star drops the back of her head against the bedroom wall and rolls her eyes to the ceiling. “Lucky?” she says. Gravity pulls tears down her face. “Lucky woulda been the other way around.”

Once Star is stabilized, I leave the bedroom and take a right. I enter the holding cell of the walk-in linen closet, where I often trap myself until my tears of anger have fled. After my entire life was taken, except my chance to bring new life into the world, I could separate myself from the child I carried so that it did not remind me of the child I had lost. But the more time that lapses since my womb was full only to become barren once more, the more certain I am that I will never again have the chance to hold a child
 
—
my
child
 
—in my arms. And this makes it harder and harder to distance my heart when I feel a baby thrashing inside the cocoon of a womb, like a butterfly trying to strengthen its wings.

Often I can relinquish my desire to nurture that unseen being if I know the mother whose stomach stretches drum-taut beneath my hands also longs for the day her child unfurls into flight. But sometimes, as that child thrashes, the mother’s body locks up as if every kick to her ribs is a personal assault. This is when I desire to take that child and raise him or her as my own. Yet my becoming a parent is
a hopeless case, and not just because I am a single woman who works a nonprofit job. I know no court would ever allow a woman to adopt a child when, out of desperation, she once kidnapped one.

Someone knocks and then rattles the doorknob like she’s trying to break in. I clear my throat and cull the tears from my cheeks with my palms. “Who is it?”

“Lydie.”

I turn the lock and open the door partway, splitting the globe of light from the lamp the young woman carries. Her lashes fan against the scald of my stare. I blink as well and look over at the shelf; the checkered pattern on the sheets transforms into a watery fusion of remorse.

“You all right?” she asks. When I don’t answer, Lydie brushes a lock of damp hair with a trembling hand and says, “It’s Star.” It takes seconds for me to remember what has happened and who I am now supposed to be: not an abductor on the run, but a midwife and mother in a home for unwed girls. “I’m not sure if she’s asleep, or . . . if she’s passed out again.”

I suck stale air in and expel it through my mouth, trying to bring myself back to the present and finding it a fight. Pulling the closet door, I pivot on the grit beneath my heel and follow the beam cast by Lydie’s lamp. As we draw closer to the bedroom, reality clamps its ragged teeth, and the venom of panic courses through my mind. Lydie gives me wide berth as we enter and holds out the lamp. Across the floor, I see evidence that Star’s bleeding has resumed.

My heart throbs. I kneel down and press two fingers to
the side of Star’s neck. Her pulse is weak.
Oh, God, what was I thinking by leaving her unattended, even for a moment?

“Lydie,” I say, “please wake Charlotte and Alice and tell them to come.”

Her eyes waver in the lamplight before she nods. I hear her feet flit down the hall. Fervent knockings and harried whispers are exchanged. Seconds drag past like hours as Star’s pulse beneath my fingertips slows to a crawl. Two sleep-creased faces appear in the doorway, the brass oil lamp in Alice’s hand polishing the silver coronet of Charlotte’s hair.

“How is she?” Charlotte asks.

“Not good. Her PPH won’t stop even with Pit. I need help moving her downstairs.”

Alice and Charlotte look down at Star; then they look at me. I know we are all thinking the same thing: Star’s a large girl awake, but now that she is unconscious, her body somehow weighs more.

Alice says, “What about Looper?”

I look over my shoulder at Alice. I had forgotten that his reappearance in my life was not part of my dreams. “Yes. Looper. Get him.” I flutter my hands at Alice, who bolts out the door.

Charlotte and I heave Star into a sitting position. Soon, Looper
 
—his sandy waves matted, striped nightshirt askew
 
—steps barefoot into the bedroom and squats before us.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

I repeat what happened, and Looper slips an arm around Star’s shoulders. Her head lolls to the side, and
I support the prickly spears of her hair with my hand. With a grunt, Looper lifts Star’s upper body while Alice and I support the legs. He walks backward out of the bedroom, careful not to trip on her soiled robe that sweeps the floor like a train. A slipper thwaps to the floor. Alice sidesteps it and looks over at me.

“You think . . . ?” Her mouth hedges over words.

I snap, “What?”

“Should we take her to the hospital?”

Charlotte bunches up the bathrobe and holds it with one hand while supporting Star’s lower back with the other. She won’t meet my eyes. I know she also fears that Star may need more medical attention than we can give her here.

“Looper,” I say. He squints at me while adjusting Star’s weight in his arms. “Can you drive?”

Looper stirs as I brace myself on the arms of the vinyl chair and lower my body into the seat. “What’d they say?” he asks, stretching out his right knee, frozen stiff from the football injury he received the same night as the ’89 homecoming crown.

“If the D and C goes well,” I say, “they’ll release Star in a few hours.”

“Will she come back to your place?” Looper asks.

“She has no choice.”

“No family, you mean?”

I pause. “’Least none she’s willing to call or talk about.”

Looper scratches his hair. In the lull, he looks down the
curved length of chairs and whispers, pointing. “What’s her story?”

In my sleep-deprived state, even tilting my head to the right is exhausting. But I do it. I see that Alice is curled beneath the sleeping bag Looper must have brought in from his truck while I was busy admitting Star to the emergency room. Even with her pink bow mouth open and her prayer
kapp
askew, Alice is exquisite. Her eyelids skate restlessly over dreams. Her lustrous skin is haloed with escaped blond curls. Looper’s interest in her causes envy to take easy root in the acidic soil of my heart. I feel worn out, sour, and about a thousand years old.

“Her story’s like most, I suspect.” I wince at the superiority in my voice that I have not earned. “She got pregnant. The father didn’t want anything to do with the child, so she came here, and the community took her in.”

“Yes,” Looper says, “she told me about Uriah.”

“Hmm.”

I watch the bustling nurses’ station. Looper’s eyes scan over me, trying to decipher the reason for my aloof response. For the first time since he came, I am grateful these challenging years have not allowed for womanly pampering. The emotions igniting my skin cannot escape through the sun-coarsened layers.

“What’s her story?” he again whispers.

I roll my head toward Looper and see that he is pointing at me
 
—asking me for
my
story. I look away and close my lids down hard.

What he does not know is that this version of my story
for twenty-some years has never been told. That this story is not just
my
story but his story too.

“We were so young, Looper,” I whisper. “Your dreams
 
—I didn’t want you to give them up by having to support a child.”

Looper’s eyes are again on my face, and this time no layers of sun-coarsened skin can prevent the heat of my vulnerability from seeping through. I can’t look at him; I am too scared to see our life history displayed across his face. “You saying that . . . that . . . ?” His words cling to false starts and ellipses, but the tears coating his voice tell me that he has already guessed the answer to the question he won’t allow himself to speak.

“Yes,” I say. “I conceived that summer.”

“Did you . . . ?”

“I had the baby, if that’s what you’re asking. But I didn’t keep it. I couldn’t.”

Looper takes his bearded face in hard-skinned hands. His back begins to quake, but I do not reach out to him. I find comfort in the fact that finally someone can help shoulder the loss I have been carrying on my own. I dig into my birthing satchel for a Kleenex, but find only individually sealed alcohol wipes. Tearing the package, I pass one to him.

He shakes it open, wipes his face, and looks over. His eyes are raw. “Girl or . . . boy?”

In that briefest hesitation, I see what he would have hoped.