The River Midnight (50 page)

“Misha,” her mother said, “you’re sixteen years old and a woman now. I’m giving you the key to my grandmother Manya’s trunk. Your father was refinishing it for a bridal trunk before he died, and I hope that you’ll fill it with good things. Come, here,
shaynela
, and let me show you what’s inside. It’s not very much, just a few things for you to start with. So when I’m gone you remember what you need to.” Her
mother moved the brass candlesticks, the wooden bowl, and the red woolen shawl that had covered the trunk so long, Misha had forgotten that it was anything but a shelf or a bench.

Lifting the lid of the trunk, her mother took out a folded cloth. “This was my mother’s,” she said, “whom you were named for. She made it before I was born.”

As she pulled back an edge of the cloth, Misha saw the carefully detailed stitching of leaves, flowers, and roots. “Tansy, hellebore, bryony, belladonna,” Misha said with delight. “And this one?” She pointed to a bell-shaped rose-and-purple flower, the inside speckled with red dots.

“Foxglove,” her mother said, unfurling the finely spun cloth so that it lay shimmering across the floor between them. “Very strong for the heart. Strong and dangerous, every one of these flowers.” Her finger traced the delicate threads. “Your grandmother hung this cloth over my cradle when I was born. I did the same, and it protected you until you could walk. Now, it’s time for you to come with me to the women, and I’m sure that you’ll be strong enough to see what you have to see. Soon you’ll know that when a woman is in labor, the midwife shakes hands with the Angel of Death.”

Misha was silent as her mother folded the cloth and returned it to the trunk. She would be glad to go with her mother, she thought, she’d been waiting so long for it. “I’m not afraid, Mama,” she said proudly.

Her mother put a cold hand over hers. “You will be,” she said.

By the time her mother died three years later, Misha had seen many things. A pregnant woman who got the sugar sickness and wasted away as if she was dying of starvation. A woman who swelled up, nose bleeding, eyes blurred, convulsing. Another whose uterus came out during labor. A woman too tired to push anymore who bled to death. A baby who was strangled by the umbilical cord. Two babies, brothers, who were born live but a year later still couldn’t sit up or lift their heads. The mother drowned herself. Misha tried not to think of them. She couldn’t or how would she be able to laugh and joke and prepare the right remedies for the women who needed her and their children, too. But she swore that she would never go through it herself.

After her mother died and she was alone in the room they had shared, Misha said, “I don’t need anyone else, Mama. My life belongs to me. Isn’t that enough?” But she found that it wasn’t so easy sitting alone at the table, turning around to say something to her mother and having to remind herself that there was no one there. So when the Old Rabbi himself approached her about marrying Hayim, she thought of his golden eyes and the strength of his hands when she danced with him at Hanna-Leah’s wedding and she agreed.

Right after her own wedding, she’d known it was a mistake. There wasn’t enough room in the little house for her herbs and jars and boiling pots and Hayim, too. He was always in her way, looking at her with those serious eyes of his, asking her over and over what he could do for her until she wanted to scream with impatience at his stammer, his drawings pinned to every wall so that she couldn’t rest her eyes on anything but an image of herself. And just when she wanted to throw his buckets into the river, the gentleness of his touch would soften her and she would find herself forgetting everything except the heat of her body. Until the next day. Then she would walk around muttering to herself, “Idiot. Don’t you know what time of month it is? Do you want to get pregnant like every other woman?” She would wait for her period in a panic, checking her underwear, wondering if she’d made a mistake about when it was due. She couldn’t sleep. She was too hot. Hayim let her have the bed to herself.

When her period didn’t come, she was almost relieved. So now it had happened. She would have a baby. Hayim would be very happy. She watched him stretch, his back stiff from sleeping on the floor. “You shouldn’t be sleeping there,” she said.

“It’s, it’s all right. You need room in the bed.”

“No. You should sleep here with me.”

He smiled. Hayim smiled so seldom and here he was smiling at her, his eyes crinkling, his hands reaching out to clasp hers, the fingers grayish from charcoal dust. “Very good, Misha.”

But all day she could do nothing. She thought of everything that could go wrong and how she’d be as helpless as any other woman. Her heart pounded. She could hardly breathe. Finally she said to herself, Look you’re not like other women. You know what to do. You can take care of it. And Hayim? He wants children so badly. A son to name
after his father. What will he say? He won’t know. Women lose their babies all the time. Let him divorce me. It would be better for him. He can marry someone else and have a dozen children.

Of course Hayim was angry. That was good. It would make it easier for her to do what she had to. She took enough tansy and ergot to abort a horse. The pain was worse than she’d expected, the unstoppable blood frightened her. Then Hayim’s pity made her cry because he didn’t know that she’d done it to herself, so sweet that she almost agreed to forget the divorce. But she refused to go through any of this again. He’d remarry, she assured herself. And she didn’t need anyone. She preferred to be alone.

Yet when Berekh came to her after his wife died, more than enough time had passed for her to want to be with someone again. For his red beard curling in all directions and his walk like a restless horse and his clean hands that smelled of nothing but old books, she was ready to give up a piece of her solitude. And now look what had happened.

Misha sat down heavily, realizing that she had missed her period not once, but twice, and that her sickness was not any bad fish. Well, she knew what to do. There was nothing moving inside her, no quickening yet. She was just, let’s say, irregular, and she could make herself regular again.

Soon, Misha had set aside some of the ergot for her own use, and the tansy tea was brewing while she sat with her elbows on the table between the jar of honey she used for making syrup and the bottle of vodka she used to preserve strong herbs. Resting her chin on her fists, Misha waited and thought. She had warned Ruthie about ergot. It’s dangerous, she told the girl. It’s not an herb, but a growth on the rye plant, and don’t you touch it. Misha dropped her fists, upsetting a pile of roots. “You raised an idiot, Mama. How could I, of all people, not know that I was pregnant? The remedy is supposed to be taken two weeks after a woman misses her period, even four, but now?” She shook her head. “I waited too long. But what can I do? I’m not putting a wire inside myself. I’m not so desperate to die like that.

“When I was pregnant the first time, I was just a girl, only twenty years old. Having a baby would be more dangerous now—I’m thirty-six already. And a woman in labor is as helpless as a piece of wood in a
fire.” She poured the tea into her cup. “Even if nothing goes wrong, to have a baby alone in a place like Blaszka wouldn’t be easy. Remember what happened to Manya. Well, that was a long time ago. And what if I bleed too much again? I could die for nothing.”

She was still undecided when Hayim came in. Silently, he poured the water from his buckets into the barrel in the hallway. The tea was steaming in front of her, the ergot on the stove. She was so far away in thought, she hardly noticed him come to the table.

“Mazel tov, Misha,” he said.

She was startled as if he’d materialized out of her reverie. If he knows, she thought, then the whole world must know, and my humiliation will begin. The entire village can watch Misha the midwife brought low, her belly growing willy-nilly before her without any say on her part. And Misha would have drunk the tea down right then, without any further thought, if she hadn’t knocked it over in shock first.

“How did you find out? Does everybody in Blaszka know?” she asked.

Shaking his head, he picked up her cup from the floor.

“Who’s talking? Tell me. How did you know?” Were they laughing behind her back? It was just too ridiculous, the Rabbi with her. For the moment she’d forgotten completely that there was a second possibility for the father, a large figure shrunk to a pinpoint and then locked away in the closet of her memory.

“Why, I, why,” he stammered.

“ ‘Why not?’ Is that an answer?”

“Shouldn’t I know? I was, I was …”

“My husband? Only for eight months.”

“Long enough. I see. In your eyes, I see it.”

“My eyes? What’s wrong with them? If you know, the whole world will be pointing fingers at me.”

Hayim looked at her, his face unreadable. She could get nothing out of him. It was useless.

“It’s not. Don’t. Don’t trouble yourself, Misha. I can’t put two words together when I want to.” He was wet, dripping on the braided rug, the water mixing with the spilled tea.

Maybe it’s
beshert
, she thought. Maybe this was written. It could
even be that my mother made me spill the tea. Hayim is a good man. I divorced him and he never remarried. What’s a man without children? Maybe this is my payment. But before she could offer him a cup of hot tea and a chance to dry off by the fire, he was gone. It’s Purim, she said to herself. Everything is upside down. And she rose to dress herself like a queen for the reading in the synagogue.

“Haia-Etel’s baby is coming early. That’s not so good,” Misha said. It was just before Passover. Drizzle hung like a string curtain across the houses of Blaszka as Misha and Ruthie walked arm in arm. Misha’s red shawl covered her head and shoulders, falling across her belly in generous folds. Her dress was tied a little looser, but she wasn’t showing noticeably yet.

“Don’t be so serious, Ruthie. It won’t help you, and it won’t help Haia-Etel. Smell the good air. Take a deep breath.
Aah.
” Misha prodded Ruthie in the ribs until she inhaled noisily. “That’s good. Again. Like the piggie sniffing at Alta-Fruma’s turnips.” Misha smiled as Ruthie giggled. “A girl in labor getting tired and maybe scared doesn’t need to see a sour face,” Misha said. “She needs a good laugh. A bright color, red is good.” Misha fluttered her shawl at Ruthie’s cheek. “Some light, so she doesn’t think she’s ready for the coffin already. It’s good even to make her angry. Anything, so long as she has some spirit. Whisper something immodest in her ear. Make a joke about her husband’s ‘little thing’ and don’t be afraid to be crude. Call it a
shmeckel.
It gives her strength. Don’t expect Haia-Etel to be like Gittel. She pops them out like a nut from a prune, but Gittel’s had five already, all boys.”

“I know,” Ruthie said. “It’s Haia-Etel’s first.”

“And she’s young, too. I want you especially to see Haia-Etel because you’re the same age,” Misha said. “She just left her mother’s house nine months ago. Now she’s alone with a husband who is twenty years older than her, in a room behind the shop. Her Mendel means well, but he’s too rough.”

“At the wedding she looked like she was going to faint,” Ruthie said.

“You listen to me, Ruthie. A girl should wait a few years after she
starts to bleed before she gets married. Not before she’s maybe eighteen. If she’s too young, then …” Misha shook her head. “Often she loses the baby, or God forbid it isn’t normal, or even worse. I knew of a girl who had a baby when she was thirteen. It was terrible.”

“Thirteen? Really?”

“My mother attended her, and she told me herself what happened. The baby only had half a head. The top was completely open, and the girl couldn’t walk afterward. So you listen to me, Ruthie, and don’t get married too soon.”

“I don’t want to get married.”

“Good, you’re a little nervous, you should be. That’s right in a girl.”

“I’m not nervous. I just don’t want to get married.”

“And what do you think you’re going to do?”

“I’ll live alone. Like you.”

Misha stopped. There was something in the girl’s tone. It had gone suddenly quiet and trembly like the voice of a married woman who wanted a different man. “A girl like you to live alone?” Misha said firmly. “It’s not to be thought of.”

“But you do it.”

“I’m not you, Ruthie. I’m used to being on my own. You always have someone to turn to, sisters, uncles, your mother and father”

“You don’t know how it is to have a pack of sisters breathing down your neck,” Ruthie protested. “It would be a nice change to sleep alone. I wouldn’t be black and blue from being kicked in bed. I wouldn’t lie awake listening to Leibela wheezing next to me. I could stretch without someone complaining. What a pleasure.”

“All right, all right. But don’t fool yourself. It’s not always easy to live alone.”

“What do I need a husband for? Men are hairy and ugly. Not my papa, of course, he’s sweet, but then he’s my papa.”

“Tell me, Ruthie dear,” Misha said, remembering the knot hole in the back of the bathhouse. “Aren’t you even a little curious?”

“No,” Ruthie said so forcefully that Misha was startled.

“When a woman lives alone, people are always ready to think the worst of her. Could you bear that? Remember what happened to Manya.”

“Oh, that old story. It was a hundred years ago. And besides, she
had a baby and no husband. I won’t let a man come near me. What would I want from him? I’ll tell you a secret,” Ruthie said shyly. “I read in my grandfather’s books about English women who traveled all over the world. Even to the islands of Japan. I like to sit on the silver rocks in the river with my eyes closed and dream that I’m on a ship going to Japan.”

“And you’re not lonely in this dream? Without any family, any home. Nobody knows if you’re alive or dead.”

“Who says I’m alone? I’ll go with someone.”

“Maybe one of your sisters?” Misha asked as if the dream were reality.

“Oh, not my sisters. Maybe a friend. There’s nothing like a good friend who knows your every thought.” Ruthie looked softly into the distance. “A friend who shares your soul,” she said.