The Midwife of Hope River (6 page)

That surprises me. He's always seemed so expensive. “What's his fee now?”

“Twenty dollars for the delivery and a two-night stay at his hospital. Fifteen dollars if he comes to your home, but that's only for people in town or the rich farmers. He won't go out to the coal camps.”

That's almost the same fee I charge! Not that I get it.

Katherine turns and strolls to her vanity, sits on her padded chair, and combs her short blond bob with her silver brush. Then she picks up the carved silver mirror with a little handle and stares back at me. “If you will take Bitsy, I'll give you this.” She pulls a gold-and-pearl brooch out of her jewelry box and holds it out, dangling in her thin hand.

I stare at the offering, a gleaming crescent moon with a pearl the size of an eyetooth. You can tell it's real gold.

“I couldn't. That's ten times too much. I'll just wait until you and William get on your feet.”

“Patience, it could be years . . . Mary's daughter is like family. This will be for my beautiful baby and a beginning of a new life for Bitsy. You can teach her to be a midwife.” She stands and drops the heavy brooch in my lap.

“Won't Mr. MacIntosh object? If he needs the money, he could sell this.”

“It's not his. My mother gave it to me. Anyway, he hardly notices what I wear for jewelry, or even my clothes. He probably doesn't know I own it.”

I shake my head and pointedly lay the ornate crescent moon with the pearl at the tip on the bedside table. It must be eighteen carats, though my experience with jewelry is limited.

“I need to examine the baby.” I change the subject. “He's beautiful. I'm sorry I put you and William through the pain of thinking he was dead. I'm still not sure why I couldn't find the heartbeat, and then you said you didn't feel him move.”

Katherine sits beside me on the bed and smooths the dark brown satin quilt. “You gave me comfort in the night. You gave me my son.” Her face is flushed, and there are tears in her eyes.

Our happiness for this one live baby drowns out my other worries, my lack of cash to survive the winter, my fears that I am over my head in calling myself a midwife. I don't even notice when Katherine drops the golden brooch into my apron pocket.

8

Bitsy

First hard frost last night, and all the remaining tomatoes are ruined. I thought if I left them on the bushes, they might redden up, and I was mad at myself all day until Charles Travers came for me and I was called to another delivery. This one made up for the near tragedy at the MacIntoshes' and the strangeness of Delfina's birth in the coal camp. It reminds me that most of the time Mother Nature knows best.

 

November 15, 1929. Almost full moon and the first hard frost.

Uncomplicated delivery of Ruth Ann Travers, firstborn of Charles and Abigail Travers of Liberty. Six pounds, 9 ounces. One small tear that didn't require stitching. I bicycled home singing because I was paid five dollars! Others present were Abigail's mom, a mother of seven. She was a great help to me.

Mrs. Kelly's ornate parlor clock chimes five as I rest my leather journal across my chest. It's extravagant, I know, and the fire will burn out faster, but I've left the door of the heater stove open to enjoy the flames in the late-afternoon light. The coals shimmer like rubies. I allege that I don't know much about jewelry, and that's true, with the exception of Mrs. Vanderhoff's ruby.
The ruby . . . the ruby ring.

Under the sound of the wind, I catch another sound, the clatter of wagon wheels coming up Wild Rose Road. When I jump off the sofa to look out the window, I see in the gloom a cart piled with split wood pulled by two burros, which are also laden with bulging gunnysacks. A small dark woman balances on top of the logs with a bicycle tied on beside her. Mr. Cabrini is driving, and Thomas Proudfoot, Mary's son, walks by his side. They pull up to the porch and tie their animals. The woman climbs down. She has a worn cardboard suitcase and two firearms, a rifle, and a shotgun. It's Bitsy.

 

Before I left the MacIntoshes' a few days ago, I returned to the kitchen and conferred again with Mary. I tried to be honest, tried to explain. “It's not the color thing. You know it's not. It's just I'm not used to people waiting on me, and truly I have so little money. I know I look better off than I am, with a house and a small farm to my name, but that's only because I inherited the land from the older midwife, Mrs. Kelly, and the cottage is so tiny, really, I've no need for a maid. Right now I have only a few dollars to my name and not enough coal or wood for the winter.”

Mary, looking worn, stared out the window at the last of the black-eyed Susans along the back fence. Her chin rested in one hand, the other hand smoothed the tablecloth.

“So,” I continued, “I'm uncomfortable, but I guess we could try it—”

The big lady jumped up, knocking over her chair. “Praise Jesus! You were my last hope.”

“—on a trial basis. We'll see how it goes. See how we get along. At least it will solve the problem for a while.”

Now Bitsy is here, climbing off the top of a load of firewood, and my privacy's gone. I lock my journal with its little key, tuck it under the sofa cushion, and open the door.

 

For a week, Bitsy and I tiptoe around each other, careful not to offend. At six
A.M.
I wake to hear her shaking the grate, taking out ashes, tossing in the kindling and split oak that Mr. Cabrini and Thomas brought: not only two cords of wood but gunnysacks full of small chunks of coal, spilled by the railway cars, that the Cabrini children had picked up along the tracks.

The pile of black gold and the stack of oak and hickory are my pay for delivering Mrs. Cabrini's baby. If you don't count the golden crescent moon that Katherine dropped in my apron pocket before I left, it's the best payment I've received in a long time.

 

By the time I rise and dress in an old sweater and trousers, the downstairs is warm and fragrant with the sweet smell of bread toasting on the top of the cast-iron cookstove. Bitsy and I eat together in the kitchen (there's nowhere else to eat), though I suppose she and Mary dined separately from the MacIntoshes. We comment on the weather and discuss the chores for the day. There's no milk or cream with our meal. Moonlight has dried up and is at Mr. Hester's, consorting with his bull.

“Do you want some more toast?” Bitsy asks me.

“No, I'm fine.”

We don't talk about anything personal. The habit of hiding my past is so much a part of me, I wouldn't know where to start. We just tread the surface of the backwaters, never diving into the stream.

I could ask Bitsy if she has a sweetheart. Does he live in town? Does she miss him? I could ask what her favorite food is or what books she likes to read, but I just eat my bread with blackberry jam and hot tea. Then Bitsy gets up and clears the table.

At first I insisted she let me take my turn at cooking breakfast and washing up, but the young woman always rises before I do. I had to draw the line when she got out the washtub and washboard and started to launder my underclothes!

Yesterday, at breakfast, a deer and her fawn crossed the yard just outside the picket fence that circles the house.

 

“Bitsy,” I hiss. “Look!”

The small woman leans over my chair. “Should I get my rifle?”

My head goes up sharply. “No! Not the mother with her baby!”

“Most female deer will have babies this time of year.” She looks at me as if I don't know anything. “They give birth in the spring, and by fall the young ones are following them around. If you want to eat meat this winter, as soon as it stays below freezing, I've got to hunt. The fawn is old enough to survive.”

It's the first time Bitsy has argued with me. Usually it's “Yes, ma'am.” “No, ma'am.” “Whatever you say, Miss Patience.” It gets on my nerves.

9

Ice Storm

All night it sleets, and toward dawn the house gets cold. I toddle down the stairs in my long red flannel nightgown to build up the fire and find Bitsy already standing there.

“Ice,” she says, pointing at the window. She's wearing the faded pink chenille bathrobe that Katherine gave her before she left town.

I shove a few logs into the firebox.

“Here, let me do that.”

“No, Bitsy. I managed to keep warm before you came. I'm not helpless.” She turns away hurt, and I regret my sharp words, but I stir up the coals with the wrought-iron poker. Then we both move toward the window.

Outside, when the clouds part, you can see by moonlight that every branch and twig is covered with ice. The limbs are so heavy they droop to the ground, and as we watch a branch breaks and shatters like crystal. We look at each other with big eyes.

Then the clouds close in again and everything's black, like the curtain dropped at the end of a picture show. In the silence that follows, there's a new sound, the crunch of footsteps in the distance, coming up Wild Rose Road.

“You hear that?” I ask, hoping I'm imagining it.

The footfalls don't frighten me. It's the thought of someone being in labor on a night like this that makes my stomach turn. I do a quick review of the women who've already arranged for my services. Minnie Boggs is not due until Christmas. I shut my eyes and hope it's not her. She's only fourteen and the baby would be five weeks early. Then there's Clara Wetsel, but she's had four kids and shouldn't deliver until mid-January. She'd be so early that her husband would know to go to Dr. Blum, no matter what his wife said.

“Can you see anyone?” I wonder. “It's darker than a coal mine. Wait . . . a man on a horse.”

“He's leading another horse.” That's Bitsy.

“We'd better get dressed. Light a lantern.”

 

Minutes later, Bitsy and I, each holding a kerosene lamp, stand in the doorway watching as Thomas ties two burros to the closest maple tree. The Proudfoot brother and sister give each other fierce hugs, and I see now how much Bitsy misses her family. Not having any relations myself, I hadn't thought much about it. She misses her mother, with whom she's lived her whole life. She misses her brother. She most likely misses the fellowship of the Liberty A.M.E. Church.

“They need you in Hazel Patch” Thomas finally says by way of a greeting. There's no “Howdy” or big smile.

What now? I don't know anyone in Hazel Patch, an isolated village of about a hundred souls where mostly blacks live. Becky Myers, the home health nurse, told me their story, how they had migrated up from the southern part of the state to work the Baylor Mine near Delmont, then stayed on after the cave-in when seventeen men were killed. That was in '21, before Mrs. Kelly and I got here. Most of those who weren't killed won't go back underground again and now make out a living as subsistence farmers.

“What do those people want with Miss Patience?” Bitsy demands protectively. “It's after midnight and a terrible ice storm. Those people got no call for us. Anyway, they have Mrs. Potts to help them.” She emphasizes
those people
a second time as if they are
country
and we are too good for them. Hazel Patch is also way on the other side of Spruce Knob.

“Come in, Thomas. Is someone in labor?”

The tall man, an oak like his mother, Mary, steps up onto the porch and ducks though the door. Cold radiates off his green mackinaw, and flakes of ice shed on the floor.

“It's bad, Miss Patience. There's a baby coming, or trying to come, but the arm's coming first. It's Cassie Washington. This is her fourth child, maybe fifth. I think one died. Mrs. Potts has been trying for three hours, and the aunties say the baby's arm is turning blue. You got to come help.”

“We can take Raccoon Lick to Hope Ridge,” I offer, “and cut past the Harpers' through the woods, until we hit the south fork of Horse Shoe Run. It will take an hour if we hurry.”

“If you're going, I might as well come,” Bitsy grumbles, but I smile, glad on this dark night to have her company. She can boil water, get the extra people out of the bedroom, and deal with Mrs. Potts, who may or may not be happy to see me.

As soon as I step out, I slip on the porch. I had forgotten about the ice.

“Damn!” I land hard on my butt.

Bitsy starts to giggle, but Thomas punches her lightly on the forearm and pulls me up.

“You be careful now, Miss Patience,” he says. His hand is bare and warm, with coal dust forever under his fingernails, and I wonder if he has any mittens. Then I notice that Bitsy's hands are bare too. The night is just a little below freezing, but I'm wearing a blue tam, gloves, and scarf that I knit myself.

“Are we going to be able to make it?” I ask Thomas. “Can the burros' hooves cut through this ice?”

Thomas grunts. “Reckon. The old gals did okay on the way here. The ice is melting a little now. We have to try.” I imagine the birth scene, a woman thrashing around with a baby's arm presenting. She's crying and trying to push, but nothing happens.

Thomas helps me mount the larger of the animals and puts Bitsy behind me; then we ride bareback and I adjust the younger woman's hands so they're under my arms where they can stay warm.

 

Twenty minutes later we're at the crossroads of Wild Rose and Raccoon Lick. When the moon comes out again, I see the damaged trees. Limbs dangle like broken arms everywhere. Down the slope the Hope River roars, an invisible lion. Three times we stop while Thomas gets off his burro to drag a large branch off the road.

Another mile and we're trekking up the Harpers' long tree-lined drive. The
crunch, crunch, crunch
of the burros' hooves sounds like broken glass under their feet, and I estimate that the flakes of ice are two inches deep. At the Harpers', dogs bark, but no lights come on.

Just past the hulking shadow of their big barn, we cut into the woods and follow the south branch of Horse Shoe Run. Here in the dense spruce and hardwood forest, branches are crashing down everywhere. I look up and realize the danger we're in.

Bitsy holds on tighter. All I can see is Thomas's shadow in front of me. Thank goodness the last wolf in West Virginia was eradicated and the bears are hibernating. I
think
they're hibernating. They wouldn't be out on a night like this, would they?

 

At last we see lights and in another few minutes the village of Hazel Patch, a collection of a dozen or so houses and small farms associated with a little white chapel. Thomas quickens his pace, and though I'm dreading what we're about to walk in on, I hurry my mount to catch up with him.

What was I thinking when I pulled on my boots? How can I help an experienced midwife like Mrs. Potts, someone who's probably been delivering babies for fifty years, while I got my certificate only two years ago just by signing my name? And the family . . . I don't even know them. I'd rather be home in my cozy warm bed.

We pass the little church, a small clapboard affair with a wooden steeple, and then follow Thomas down a private road bordered on either side by a neat split-rail fence. At the end is a two-story log house with light pouring out of every window. A woman howls into the night, a wild sound. Bitsy and I shiver. The woman stops for a few minutes and then starts up again.

 

Mrs. Potts

Sensing my apprehension, Bitsy gives me a squeeze and slides off our mount. Though she hadn't wanted me to come, she grabs my birth satchel without hesitation and accompanies Thomas up to the door. I follow carefully, determined not to make my grand entrance by falling on my butt again.

Thomas knocks twice while we stomp the ice off, but he doesn't wait for an answer. He opens the door and lets us into a large living room with oak bookshelves against the log walls, an organ, and a fawn velvet sofa. It's the kind of room I imagine a judge or a physician would have had in the pioneer days, only there wouldn't have been electric lights. Hazel Patch is located right on the main road, close to the power lines. The way Bitsy referred to the Hazel Patch folk as “those people,” I thought we were coming to a hardscrabble place more like the mining camp.

Across from the door is a bright yellow kitchen with a pale green enameled high-backed gas stove. Two dark-skinned women and a shorter coffee-colored lady are laying out food. The three, all wearing flowered housedresses and aprons of various shades, turn to greet us.

“Mrs. Potts?” Thomas calls, removing his hat.

The stooped brown midwife, dressed all in black, with a neat white apron, a white lace collar, and a white bandanna, comes down the hall. She walks as though her joints need oil, but her face is nearly unlined. From another room, the patient in labor wails like a trapped animal.

I'm surprised when the elderly lady passes Thomas and Bitsy and wraps her arms around me. “Honey,” she says, “I'm Grace Potts. I'm so sorry to bring you out on a night like this, but I didn't know who else to call and we have a
sitiation
here.” She says
situation
in a funny way, like a lot of older Appalachians do. “Dr. Blum won't come to Hazel Patch or allow coloreds to come to his clinic, or we would have already gone. You'll see what I mean in a minute.”

“Thomas says the arm is coming out first. Can you feel the head at all?”

Grace Potts holds out both her worn hands, gnarled with arthritis, each knuckle of each finger distorted, the tops ebony and lined with veins twisted and crossed like a road map but the palms as pink and smooth as mine. “It's way up there. I was hoping you could—”

We are interrupted by cries from the bedroom, and I hurry that way with Bitsy right behind me. “Will she let me check her?” I'm all business now, and whatever trepidations I had are gone. There's a job to be done, a puzzle to be solved. I can at least try. Thomas turns toward the kitchen, where the trio of cooks fusses around him, proffering coffee and coffee cake.

“She'd let the vet check her if it would rid her of this pain,” Mrs. Potts observes. I wonder if she means Hester or she's just making a general observation. Maybe someone should call him. He did pretty well with the horse.

 

In the bedroom we discover the patient, a dead ringer for the cabaret singer Josephine Baker. She's on her hands and knees wearing a white nightshirt, and she looks at us with big tear-filled brown eyes.

Bitsy, who already sorted through my satchel a few days ago, opens the bag and hands me my sterilized rubber gloves while I sit on the side of the bed and place my hand on the woman's calf. I'm impressed with my new assistant, who doesn't hesitate but gets out her own new gloves too, the ones Mrs. MacIntosh bought her at Stenger's Pharmacy before she left Liberty.

Mrs. Potts makes the introductions. “Cassie,” she says, “this is another midwife, Patience Murphy, and her assistant, Bitsy. She's going to check you inside, real gentle, and see how we can get this child out.”

I wonder if the older midwife realizes that according to the midwifery statute of West Virginia we are now breaking the law, but I have to admit she's clever, the way she says “
how
we can get this child out,” not “
if
we can get this child out.” She also legitimizes Bitsy by calling her my assistant, not my helper or maid. I'm surprised to hear that she even knows my last name.

“Here, honey, roll over so Miss Patience can feel.”

Cassie moans but does what we ask of her. I indicate that Bitsy should pour oil on my gloved fingers, and when I lift up the patient's gown, I am stunned.

 

Arm Presentation

Though I wouldn't have come all this way through an ice storm if I hadn't been prepared for the complication, the sight of an infant's arm sticking out of a woman's vagina is something you don't want to see. I meet Bitsy's brown eyes and note that she shows no shock, a good trait for a midwife. (You never want to alarm a patient.) You'd think she sees this all the time.

“Can you open your legs a little wider, Cassie?” I ask. “Squeeze Bitsy's fingers, and if you feel like yelling, try panting like a dog . . . pant, pant, pant . . . don't push. I'm going to grease my fingers and go all the way in and find the baby's head. Heart rate?” I turn to the older midwife for confirmation that this baby still lives.

Mrs. Potts pulls a metal stethoscope, a fancy one like Dr. Blum's, out of her deep apron pocket. “There was a heartbeat a few minutes ago.” She listens intently and then nods. “Right lively,” she tells me.

“Good. Ready, Cassie?”

Cassie screws up her face and nods, but her eyes are on Mrs. Potts. Bitsy pours some more olive oil on my glove and, following the limb up to the shoulder, I use my other hand, on the mother's abdomen, to find the head. It's a tight fit, but if I could get the arm back inside, I might be able to get the head down into the pelvis. I remove my fingers and think how to do this.

“Don't push, Cassie. Don't let her push, Bitsy. I'm going to go all the way in and try to reinsert the arm, then bring down the head.” I don't mention that the one time I tried something similar was with a horse and I was bringing a hoof out, not putting it in.