The Midwife of Hope River (28 page)

Others at the birth were her sister, Birdy (surname unknown); Edna Hart, the husband's sister; and Mrs. Moon, the neighbor lady. Bitsy was in Hazel Patch. A very sad day.

Autumn Returns

35

Fall from Grace

Dark shadows over the mountains. Slate clouds like dirty sheets that won't come clean. They blot out the sunshine during the day, blot out the stars at night. There are no jobs in Union County. One out of four men stands idle, and that doesn't include the farmers who can't sell their crops or the women who used to work before the men came back from the war.

It's been weeks since the big rain, and the heat all over the South is fierce, one of the hottest Septembers the locals can remember. When they cut hay, cattlemen are averaging two bales instead of four. Scores of houses and farms are listed for auction or foreclosure in the
Liberty Times,
and people are moving east and north in droves like flocks of migrating birds.

This afternoon, while Bitsy and I trudged around the garden inspecting the parched dry brown tassels of our corn, a vehicle bounced up the road with a cloud of dust rising behind it.

 

What's this now? Another delivery.

We watch from the fence as Reverend Miller gets out of the truck and moves around to the passenger side to open the door for his wife. He's wearing a white straw fedora. Mildred is waving a large church fan with a picture of Jesus on it. The two advance toward the house without smiling, the dry yellow grass crunching under their feet.

I figure they've come to see how my friend is faring after her mother's death or maybe to bring news of Thomas. He hasn't been seen for weeks. Bitsy runs for the house to wash up and bring out some cold sweet tea.

“Howdy,” I call out, wiping my forehead with my blue-and-white bandanna. The reverend nods formally.

Mildred Miller calls out, “How you doin', honey?”

We settle on the wooden benches in the shade on the porch. I offer Mildred the one rocking chair, and she insists that her husband take it. Then Bitsy comes out with a wooden tray and four glasses of tea. The spring water is so cold we don't need ice. Not that we have any.

“Have you heard from Thomas?” Bitsy starts out. I know she's been worried, but with Sheriff Hardman looking for him, it's better that he's disappeared. We just need to know that he's safe.

“No,” the pastor answers. “No word yet. We've come about something else. This is hard, so I'm going to tell it to you plain . . . Mrs. Potts went to meet her maker last night. She died in her sleep, a good Christian woman. Hemorrhaged from the cancer, that's what Doc Robinson says.”

“Cancer? I didn't know. She seemed so vigorous for her age. What kind of cancer was it? Did anyone know?” I'm so shocked, I keep babbling. Bitsy doesn't say anything, but Mrs. Miller reaches for her and holds her tight.

“What this means,” Mildred goes on, passing her Jesus fan slowly back and forth in front of her face, “is that we now have only one midwife in Union County; that's you. Dr. Blum's gone too, you probably heard.”

“What about the other physician, Dr. Robinson?”

“He doesn't do deliveries, and he doesn't go to people's homes anymore. If you're sick, you have to go to him.”

“There's Becky Myers, the health nurse,” I suggest.

“Yes, Becky . . . but she won't go out after dark and she's no great shakes about birthing. Too nervous.” This, I must say, I agree with after seeing her at Docey's birth down under the bridge; she's a real nervous Nellie.

“Anyway,” the pastor continues, “we thought you'd want to know that people will be calling on you.” He takes Bitsy and me in with his eyes. “Not just for births, women's things. Infant things.”

Great, I think, and what will we tell them if they ask about hot flashes, strange rashes, and monthlies? I'm not a doctor, and I've never had female troubles . . . except my periods, which come when they want to, but that never bothered me.

I take a big breath. “Thank you for letting us know.”

“When are they putting Mrs. Potts in the ground?” Bitsy asks. It's the first thing she's said.

“Sunday. The whole church service will be dedicated to her. Samantha and Emma, you remember them from Cassie's birth, will be singing the solos.”

Bitsy escorts the couple to their car, standing for a few minutes at the passenger door while I take the tray of empty glasses into the house. When I come out, the green truck is sputtering back down Wild Rose Road in the dust.

“They say anything more about Thomas?”

“No.” She looks away, and I know she doesn't want to talk about it.

I collapse on the wooden bench in the shade and flop my head back against the white clapboard wall. What will come next? So many deaths. I count back. Six this year. The Mintz family's little girl, Angel. Mary Proudfoot. William MacIntosh. Kitty Hart and her baby. And now Grace Potts. The world will be smaller without her.

Across the valley, on the other side of the Hope River, a shard of lightning pierces the clouds. No thunder. No rain.

 

Circle

The Sunday service devoted to Grace Potts is more spectacle than funeral. I imagined something simple like Mary Proudfoot's, but this is more of a celebration.

Again Bitsy and I dress in our best dark dresses with knickers under them and mount our horse. This time we leave early and take the long way around Raccoon Lick to Hope Ridge and up the south fork to Horse Shoe Run. It's cooler in the shade where the hemlocks and maple trees hang over the creek.

As we come out of the woods and trot up Horse Shoe Road, the dust is so thick we almost choke on it. Autos and buggies stream along in the same direction, heading toward the freshly whitewashed chapel where the wooden doors, decorated with wildflowers, open like arms. Again we tie our horse with the other horses in back. Bitsy heads directly across the yellowed grass to talk to Byrd Bowlin, and I, feeling conspicuously alone, wander toward the church. I thought maybe Thomas would be here, but he's nowhere around.

I'd expected to be the only white person in the crowd, but I am surprised to see others. Mr. Stenger, the pharmacist, and his wife are sitting at a picnic table with Becky Myers, Mr. Bittman the grocer, and Daniel Hester. The vet lifts his hand but doesn't come over. Mrs. Wade, the fruit fly who was such a pest at Prudy Ott's birth, is talking to Sheriff Hardman.

What's Hardman doing here, anyway? Snooping around for the whereabouts of Thomas? That pisses me off, and I decide to confront him. I never particularly liked Mrs. Wade either.

“Nice to see you,” I say to the woman with a smile as sweet as sweet potato pie. She's dressed in a navy blue suit with white buttons the size of silver dollars and a wide white straw hat. Perspiration shows on her upper lip, which is covered in bright red lipstick. “Sheriff . . .” I nod and bare my teeth in a smile. “I didn't know you were acquainted with Mrs. Potts.”

“She
delivered
us. Bill is my brother!” That's Red Mouth cutting in. The fact that the two are related surprises me, and I look at them in a new light. Not much family resemblance except for the way they hold themselves, their backs straight and their chins tilted high.

The lady goes on, “Our mother died a few years ago, but Mrs. Potts was her midwife and they always stayed friends. Many is the time we would come in the kitchen and find the two of them laughing over sassafras tea.”

Then Sheriff Hardman takes up the story. “Mrs. Potts was only a young woman when she starting delivering babies in the 1800s, and she didn't call herself a midwife then. She'd been to a few births over in Maryland. Ma and she were just girls, really, eighteen and nineteen. There were no doctors in Union County then. Grace Potts was it.”

The church bell chimes, and the crowd files into the little white chapel, men, women, and children. I follow the sheriff and his sister but squeeze in with Bitsy, who is sitting with Bowlin in the third row. I guess Thomas isn't going to show. Probably feels it's too hot for him here after MacIntosh's death.

The reverend begins with a prayer and then leads us in the old spiritual “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” He follows with another prayer and then an account of Mrs. Potts's life, how she had come from Maryland through Front Royal and over the mountains into West Virginia in 1870, a former slave, released along with her mother by her master when she was a child before the end of the Civil War. Her husband, Alfred Potts, was born free in New York State, a trained blacksmith and farrier, and they settled along Horse Shoe Run, a creek Mrs. Potts actually named.

I had never thought of Grace Potts as a slave. How could that be? Such a dignified, well-educated community leader? We all have our histories, but this is a revelation to me.

The pastor goes on, telling us that the couple had four children, all of whom died in an outbreak of yellow fever in 1878. I think again what a woman she must have been. All of your children dying in one year? What would that do to you? Four little graves . . .

“Grace Potts was truly a saint,” Reverend Miller intones.

“Amen,” the congregation responds, and then we sing another spiritual.
“Oh, when the saints go marching in, Oh, when the saints go marching in.”
The harmony raises the roof of the little church and sunlight streams through the windows. I wonder why I didn't visit the old midwife more, why I didn't try to learn from her while I had the opportunity. Once we had Star to ride, it would have been easy. She was always so open with me. I guess I thought she would be here forever, but I should have known better.

Next the pastor asks everyone who was delivered by Mrs. Potts to come forward. Two-thirds of the congregation rise, from babies to men and women Hardman's age. I'm surprised to see Mr. Maddock, my neighbor, push his wife up the center aisle in a squeaky wicker wheelchair; the woman I'd thought so stern and disapproving, the woman who never came to the door or asked me in. Now, as I glance at her withered legs under the green-and-white crocheted blanket, I understand why. There's another surprise.

“Is that Twyla? With the baby?” I whisper to Bitsy.

Bitsy whispers back, “Well, she was delivered by Mrs. Potts, and her baby too, with our assistance.” I can tell she's proud of the role she played that very wild day. The infant begins to fuss, and Samantha goes over and picks him up, carrying him over her shoulder like a little sack of potatoes.

“This is Mrs. Potts's legacy . . . her gift to the world,” the reverend explains. “She called all her babies her
angels.
”

Emma begins to sing in her low contralto,
“Nearer, my God, to thee, nearer to thee.”
Bitsy squeezes my hand. Mrs. Potts's angels move slowly back to their seats, many crying, the children and older people too.

I sink into myself, pull down my mind's purple curtain, hardly listening to the rest of the prayers, thinking about death, thinking about birth and all the beautiful mess in the middle. I don't come out of it until Bitsy elbows me.

Mrs. Miller is standing by the piano. “ . . . and there are two other people that we'd like to introduce today,” she's saying. “Patience Murphy and Bitsy Proudfoot, please rise.” I frown. What's going on? Bitsy pulls me up.

“These are the midwives for Union County now.” All heads turn to look. “If there was anything you ever planned to do for Grace Potts
someday,
then do it for them. If you owed anything to her, you can pay back the girls. I'm sure Mrs. Potts would approve.” I almost laugh at the reference to us as “girls.” My companion may be young, but I'll be thirty-seven by the end of the year. Bitsy pulls me back down, and I plunk into my seat, feeling my face beet red. Still, it's a generous and unexpected thing for the Millers to do.

 

When the service is over and Mrs. Potts is laid to rest, the church ladies arrange food on wooden picnic tables under the trees. I prepare my plate of greens, fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans and plan to sit next to Bitsy or maybe at the table with Becky Myers and the Stengers, but when I look around Bitsy is sitting with Byrd Bowlin on a blanket under the trees and the table with Becky and the others is full. I'm wondering where to go when Mr. Maddock beckons me over to a green wooden table where he's already served both himself and his wife. I sit down on the bench across from him, expecting one of them to say hello, but they're mum. Maybe I'm supposed to start the conversation.

“I'm Patience Murphy,” I announce, turning to Mrs. Maddock.

“I know.” She smiles. She has a nice voice like a motion picture star. “I'm Sarah Rose Maddock. You should come for tea someday.”

“I'd love to.”

“And your friend.” That surprises me. Bitsy has slowly been accepted in the bedrooms of white women, as my birth assistant, but no one has ever asked us for tea.

“We'd be delighted,” I accept formally.

Maddock is already standing. Enough of the pleasantries, his rangy body says. He adjusts his suspenders and pushes his Sunday farmer's hat down firmly over his thinning dark hair, then takes both their plates and places them in their woven picnic basket. “I have to get home to milk,” he announces, though we both know it's way too early. “Do you need a ride?”