The Surrogate (18 page)

When it ended, she stared at her watch with its glowing dial, hoping to determine how much time passed in between pains. But when the next pain started, she forgot to check the time. She grabbed hold of the steering wheel and waited for it to end.

Then she forced herself to stare at the watch as she waited. Almost ten minutes passed before the now familiar pain began once again. And ten more minutes before the next pain. When that pain subsided, she actually felt calmer. She knew what the situation was and knew what she had to do. What she was experiencing was not false labor. Not Braxton Hicks. Snow was drifting against the windshield. The roads were becoming impassable. Pretty soon the car was going to be buried. Unless she found some sort of shelter, she and her baby and her dog were going to freeze to death.

Jamie turned on her headlights and squinted to make out the faded name on the mailbox. It was McGraf. There would be no help for her at the end of this lane, but at least she would be out of the weather.

The lane was completely buried under snow, but she was guided by the fence posts that marched along both sides. Just as she pulled up in front of a small frame house with a sagging roof and boards nailed over the windows, she had another pain—a hard pain that took her breath away.

She took a flashlight from the glove compartment, found her boots among the pile of things in the backseat, and exchanged her sneakers for them. At one time the front door of the house had probably been padlocked, but now it stood open. She shined the light around the small front room. The floor was littered with beer cans and trash. A broken chair lay in one corner. She walked over to a stone fireplace. There was cold air coming down the chimney. A good sign. The chimney would draw.

Working in between the pains, she began gathering wood and piling it beside the fireplace—any sort of wood she could find—twigs, sticks, fallen fence posts, the broken chair, loose boards from the front porch. Ralph was always at her side. Poor little dog. How confusing this must be for him. She would have to remember to feed him and put out water for him when they settled down inside.

She slipped and fell several times, at one point striking her forehead so hard against the edge of the porch that she saw stars. Another time she slipped and slammed her hip against a tree.

Once she had a sizable pile of wood, she dug around in the trunk and backseat, locating blankets, quilts, towels, a box with the few dishes and utensils she had kept from her grandmother’s kitchen, and another box with snacks, dog food, and water bottles she’d packed with her journey in mind.

The pains seemed somewhat closer together. Not unbearable but getting harder. She kept fear at bay with busyness. Doing what had to be done.

There were two old mattresses in one of the bedrooms. She dragged them both into the living room, putting the least filthy one in front of the fireplace.

She piled wood in the fireplace then tore open the spare mattress and pulled cotton batting from it to use for kindling. She had no matches but found a tin can among the trash scattered about the house and poked some of the cotton batting inside it. Then she took the can out to the car and used the cigarette lighter to ignite the cotton.

She knew that one was supposed to boil water before a delivery, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Since she had only three water bottles, she filled her grandmother’s soup pot with snow, and set it close to the fire.

What else might be useful? she asked herself.

She would need string and scissors for the umbilical cord. She waited for the next pain to end, then went back out to the car and located her grandmother’s scissors in the sewing stand. In lieu of string, she cut a narrow strip from a towel. And she placed the scissors and strip by the mattress.

She closed the living room off from the rest of the house to prevent heat from escaping and continued making forays outside in search of more firewood and to collect snow to melt in the pan by the fire. She discovered that it took a lot of snow to make only a little water.

The snow was getting ever deeper, but she had no way of knowing how much wood she would need and decided she would keep gathering wood as long as she was physically able. She tore rotting boards from the front gate and a collapsed shed.

She would fall to her knees when the pains began. And moan with Ralph whimpering beside her.

Finally, too exhausted to do anything more, she put out food and water for Ralph and spread a blanket over the mattress by the fireplace. It crossed her mind that she might be preparing her deathbed. And that of her son.

If she thought she was about to die, she would try to open the door so that Ralph would at least have a chance of surviving. But probably he would be eaten by wolves or coyotes if he didn’t freeze to death first.

Before she gave herself over to the mattress, she tried to think. Was there anything else she could do?

She remembered a movie she had seen about a woman having a baby alone on an island in the far north country of Canada. The woman had tied a rope to a bedpost to give her something to pull on while she was in labor. But Jamie had no rope and no bedpost. What she wanted was someone’s hand to hold. Someone’s soothing presence and voice to get her through this.

The only sounds she heard came from the howling wind.

At the end of each pain, Ralph would lick her face and put his head on her shoulder. And she would fall asleep thinking what a good little dog he was. A perfect dog for a little boy.

Then she would awaken to another pain. Terrible, agonizing pain. Pain that took over her body and her mind. Pain that took away her self-control and brought forth frantic thrashing and scream after scream. Pain that made her not care if she lived or died.

She would look at her watch and immediately forget what she had seen. Time lost all dimension. She never knew if the time between pains was seconds or hours. She forced herself to check the fire after each one. And she would reach between her legs, hoping to feel the top of the baby’s head. Then she would sleep until the pain began again.

She knew that it would end only if she could push the baby out of her. Out of desperation, she grabbed hold of her knees and pushed with all her might. Which only increased the pain.

She let go of her legs but felt such an urge to push that she pulled them back again. Toward her chest. It felt as though her insides were being pushed out of her body. She was being turned inside out. But the pushing was no longer a choice. It was something she had to do. Along with screaming. She pushed and screamed. Then dozed. And then she repeated the cycle. Again and again.

After each pain, she reached down between her legs.

He was stuck in there. In the birth canal. They were both going to die. Sooner rather than later, she hoped.

If they didn’t survive, she wondered how long it would be before they were found. Would their deaths even be reported, or would they be secretly buried and forgotten? It really didn’t matter, she supposed. Dead was dead. And with every pain, she felt closer to death. With every pain, she wondered if it was time to open the door so that Ralph could escape.

She grabbed her legs once again. And this time she felt something happening. Something moving. When the pain ended, she reached down once again and felt the top of the baby’s head.

She pulled her legs back and pushed with all her might.

This time when she checked, she felt his neck and a tiny shoulder.

Again she pushed, with all the strength left within her body.
“I will not die,”
she screamed.
“I will not die.”

She felt the rest of the baby slide from her body. He was born.

She rolled onto her side and scooted her body around him. The baby wasn’t moving. His arms and legs were blue. His lips were blue.

She pulled his wet, slippery body toward her and shook him. Then she put her mouth over his and blew air into him.

And again. But to no avail.

“Breathe, baby,” she implored. “
Please
breathe.”

She stuck a finger in his mouth, which was full of mucus. She suctioned it out with her own mouth, spit out the mucus, and breathed into him again.

Then his little chest moved up and down.

And he cried. A thin, weak cry.

She clutched his slippery, bloody body to her chest. Only then did she realize how cold it was. She was shivering. The fire was almost out.

But there was more stuff happening down there. She pulled a corner of the blanket over the baby’s wet body and waited until she felt the afterbirth come sliding out.

The baby’s crying grew stronger as she tied off his umbilical cord. Then she cut the cord and wiped the blood and mucus from him with a towel, wrapped him in another towel, and laid him on a corner of the mattress. Then she wrapped the afterbirth in the blanket she had been lying on, carried it outside, and shook it into the snow.

A new day was dawning, and the storm was over.

She covered the mattress with a fresh blanket, wrapped a quilt around her shoulders, and turned her attention to the fire, leaving a trail of blood with every step she took. She stuffed the towel she had used to clean the baby between her legs, knelt in front of the fireplace, and blew on the coals. The blowing took such effort. And she felt so weak. But somehow she found the strength to blow again and was able to ignite a fresh wad of cotton batting. Then she continued blowing until it was safe to add more wood.

She closed her eyes, relishing the blessed heat that the fire emitted and worrying that the smoke from the chimney could be seen from the road.

She couldn’t stay here long. Just a few hours to get her strength back.

With the fire going, she turned her attention back to the baby. His eyes were open. “Hello, little guy,” she said. “I’m your mother.”

G
US WAS BACK
at Victory Hill sitting at his desk when the phone rang. He grabbed it and barked, “Yes.”

“Montgomery is dead,” Kelly’s voice reported.

Gus closed his eyes and slumped back in his chair.
“Dead?”

“Yeah. Sorry it took so long. We searched the house from top to bottom. Then we spread out over the grounds, but the weather’s turned bad. A regular blizzard. One of the gardeners finally found her in the family cemetery completely covered over with snow. All she had on was a nightgown. She was lying with her arms around the marker for the stillborn baby.”

So that’s whose baby was buried there.
Montgomery’s.
But he couldn’t think about that now. At some later time, maybe he would process the information. Right now he had to deal with the situation at hand.

“And the girl?” he asked.

“I sent two men out in a truck with snow chains. They managed to get all the way to Alma and didn’t see a sign of her. The service station was closed but they asked at the truck stop. Lots of truckers and travelers are holed up there. No one had seen her.”

“How bad are the roads? Could she have even gotten that far?”

“I suppose, but I don’t see how she could have gotten any farther. The interstate and state roads are closed.”

“Who says?”

“The highway patrol. They aren’t allowing any traffic onto the interstate. Apparently there’re dozens of jackknifed eighteen-wheelers. I’m thinkin’ maybe she headed north, in which case she might have beat the weather. Hard to say.”

“Send men out on horseback. And get hold of someone in that little town north of there.”

“Monroe?”

“Yeah. Monroe. Call law enforcement in any town where she might be holed up, but tell them not to approach the girl. Tell them she’s a psycho and may be armed. They’re to keep her under surveillance and notify you.”

Jamie cleaned the baby with warm water from the pot by the fire. Then she cleaned herself as best she could.

She had torn down there, and blood was flowing. More than when it was her period. A lot more. She tore a blanket into sections that she could fold into pads.

She winced as she wiped the blood off her buttocks and thighs, which were covered with bruises from her slips on the ice while unloading the car and gathering wood. Her shoulder also was badly bruised, and the lump on her forehead was excruciatingly tender.

She pulled on the same maternity jeans and top she’d been wearing, then let Ralph outside and closed the door.

In a few minutes, Ralph announced his return. She put out food and water for him and drank some water herself and ate a couple of crackers. Then she put more wood on the fire, curled up with her baby in her arms, and closed her eyes. Soon she would have to decide what came next, but right now she did not have the strength.

She slept off and on, waking to put more wood on the fire, change the makeshift pad between her legs, and make sure the baby was still breathing before surrendering once again to sleep.

Midday, the baby began to cry.

Probably he needed to be nursed. But how did one do that?

She wrapped him in a fresh towel, then bared a breast and propelled her nipple into his mouth, but he did not take hold. She changed positions and tried again, speaking words of encouragement. Still no luck. In desperation, she rubbed the nipple back and forth over his lips. He would suck a few times and then stop. She tried the same maneuver again and again, hoping he was getting something. Then she held him in her arms and surrendered herself once again to sleep.

It was dark when she nursed him again, this time with seemingly better results. While he nursed, she tried to plan.

She hoped that Kelly and Montgomery hadn’t discovered that she was missing until morning and assumed she was already hundreds of miles away. She doubted if anyone would be looking for her this close to the ranch. Maybe she should just stay here for another day or two and give the roads a chance to clear.

Except she needed to find someone to stitch her up and either reassure her that the heavy flow of blood was normal or do something to stop it. And she needed baby clothes and diapers. Needed to buy a book on how to take care of a baby. Needed to find a place to stay. And a computer. A new name. And a cup of hot coffee would be really nice.

What choice did she have but to press on? Just the thought of loading her things back into the car made her exhausted, but she really should leave while it was dark. If she waited until tomorrow evening, she would have to find more firewood, and she had already scavenged most of the wood around the house. To find more, she would have to go farther out and leave the baby here alone. Besides, eventually someone was going to notice the smoke coming from the chimney.

Leaving the baby on the mattress, she ate a couple of granola bars and drank a bottle of water. Then she bundled up the bloodied towels and bedding and stuffed them into the trunk. After carrying her other possessions out to the car, she tidied up the house as best she could, collecting the trash in bags and putting them in the car to be discarded later.

By the time she was finished, she was exhausted and the baby was crying.

Once again she offered a breast to him. This time he grabbed hold like a little piglet. And Jamie laughed out loud.

“We learn fast,” she told him. How beautiful he was, she thought as she looked down at him. How perfectly beautiful.
Her baby.
She was a mother now. Not a surrogate mother. An honest-to-gosh mother. She would die before she let anyone take him away from her.

When he seemed to have finished nursing, she put the baby in a nest she had made for him among the items piled on the backseat. Ralph jumped into the front seat.

She got in the car and took a last look at the house, thinking of the long-dead family that had once lived here. Their house had saved her life and that of her baby.

She drove with her headlights on low beam, crawling along at a snail’s pace, almost sliding off the road several times. Once, she saw headlights up ahead and panicked, but the vehicle turned and headed toward a cluster of lights a half mile or so off the road.

At dawn she met a pickup truck. She could tell that the driver was an elderly person with frail, hunched shoulders.

The sun had cleared the horizon when she met a second pickup, this one driven by a man wearing a cowboy hat. He raised a finger from the steering wheel by way of a greeting. Jamie nodded then watched in the rearview mirror, half expecting him to turn around and chase after her.

She drove a bit faster now that it was daylight. The roadbed was covered with loose snow but not icy. After an hour or so, she reached the intersection with U.S. 54. Just a few more miles and she would be leaving Marshall County.
Forever.

The lone service station in the tiny town of Monroe was closed, but it took less than an hour to reach Stratford, where she stopped at a convenience store. She filled the gas tank and purchased diapers, baby wipes, Kotex, and a cup of coffee and a doughnut. Back in the car, she diapered the baby and wrapped him in the last clean towel. Then she drove around to the back of the store and deposited her trash bags in a Dumpster.

From Stratford, she drove northeast on Highway 54. In less than an hour, she crossed the state line into Oklahoma. Will Rogers offered a smile and a wave from a billboard, welcoming her to the Sooner State. She took a deep breath and gave a prayer of thanks.

Just minutes later, she was driving into the town of Goodwell, population 1,192, according to a sign posted at the city limits. She pulled abreast of some children waiting for a school bus and asked for directions to the local cemetery.

It looked as though considerably more people had been buried in Goodwell’s cemetery than now lived in the town. She drove up and down the lanes, hoping she could spot a suitable grave marker from the car. She could not. So she tucked the baby inside her jacket and, with Ralph following along behind, walked up and down the rows until at last she found what she was looking for.

Janet Marie Wisdom had been born the year after Jamie’s birth and died at age three. Jamie took note of the girl’s birthday then touched the tombstone, thinking of the grieving parents who had buried this child here. “I hope you don’t mind if I borrow your name, little Janet,” she said. “I’d rather your family name was Smith or Jones, but Wisdom is a fine name.”

Then it was on to Guymon. The town was considerably larger than Goodwell, with a downtown clustered around a courthouse square. She stopped at a service station and looked in a phonebook for midwives. Only one was listed. Mae Vandegrift, certified nurse-midwife. She dialed Mae’s number and explained that she had had a baby unattended yesterday morning and was bleeding pretty badly.

“What’s your name, dear?”

Jamie hesitated. “Janet,” she said. “I can’t go to the hospital. I don’t have any insurance. I can pay some, but not much.”

“You on the run?”

“Yes,” she said. “From my boyfriend.”

Mae explained how to find her house.

It was a one-story brick dwelling set well back from the road. A pair of horses watched over the fence as Jamie turned into the driveway.

A middle-aged woman with graying hair answered the door. “You and that baby get yourselves in here out of the cold,” she ordered.

Jamie stepped into a cozy living room warmed by a gas heater installed inside a flagstone fireplace. Family pictures smiled from the mantel. A large and well-worn Bible sat in the middle of the round coffee table.

“The boyfriend do that to you?” Mae asked, pointing at the lump on Jamie’s forehead.

Jamie nodded.

Mae sighed and shook her head as she reached for the baby. “And no one was with you when you had this baby?”

Again Jamie nodded.

“You poor child. Where are your folks, honey?”

“Dead,” Jamie said, blinking back tears. The kindness and concern in the woman’s voice threatened to erode the force of will that had kept her going until now. She squared her shoulders. She was strong, she reminded herself. She would always be strong. She had to be for her baby’s sake.

“So, what are you going to do?” the midwife asked, indicating that Jamie was to sit on the sofa.

Jamie sat down, putting the baby to her shoulder and laying her cheek against his head. “I don’t know yet,” she admitted.

“I can give you information about state assistance programs for single mothers,” Mae said as she reached for the baby and placed him lengthwise on her lap. The baby’s eyes were open, and he seemed to be looking up at the midwife. “Well, aren’t you a handsome little fellow. I bet your old aunt Mae can find some clothes to dress you in.”

Jamie reached over and stroked her baby’s cheek. “I’ve never been around babies much. I need to buy a book and learn how to care for him.”

“I’ll give you some reading material, and your own instincts will kick in. He seems calm enough. Have you tried to nurse him?”

Jamie nodded. “But the stuff coming out of my breasts doesn’t look much like milk. Maybe I should buy some formula.”

“No call for that. He’s getting exactly what he needs.”

Mae asked Jamie how she was feeling, then, carrying the baby, she led the way to her clinic, which was housed in a room that been built onto the back of the house. “My mother built this room for a beauty parlor,” Mae said as she struck a match and lit a gas heater. “I grew up shampooing hair and taking out curlers.”

After washing her hands, the midwife thoroughly examined the baby, then listened to his heart and lungs, took his temperature, cleaned the cord stump, and weighed him. At five pounds nine ounces, he was a bit undersized but seemed quite healthy, Mae assured Jamie. She explained how to care for the cord stump and that the greenish stuff that was starting to come out of his bottom was normal.

Once she was finished with her examination, Mae diapered the baby, dressed him in a pair of fleecy pajamas, wrapped him in a pink blanket, and placed him in an infant carrier. “Sorry about the pink blanket,” she said.

Jamie had the feeling that she wasn’t the first woman who had showed up at Mae’s door with a baby wrapped in a bath towel.

“Now it’s your turn, Janet,” Mae said, handing her a flowered gown and pointing to a curtained-off corner of the room.

With Jamie sitting on the end of the examining table, Mae took her blood pressure, checked her pulse, listened to her heart and lungs, took her temperature, then helped her lie back on the table. With her head resting on a clean, soft pillow, Jamie realized how exhausted she was.

Mae covered her with a sheet, guided her feet into the stirrups, and sat on a stool at the end of the table.

“Good grief, girl!” she exclaimed. “You’re just one big bruise! That so-called ‘boyfriend’ should be arrested!”

Jamie said nothing, feeling almost guilty that she was allowing some nonexistent man to be maligned.

“Well, you tore some,” Mae said, “but not too bad for a first baby. I’ll clean you up and stitch you back together. You’ll be just fine.”

When Mae finished her examination, she explained that she was deadening the perineum as best she could but that Jamie was still going to experience some pain.

Jamie clenched her fists and tried not to cry out, which proved to be impossible. Still, it was nothing compared to what she had been through giving birth.

The stitches in place, Mae helped Jamie into a sitting position and rattled off a list of instructions for her and the baby. “I’ve got all this in writing, so it’s okay if you don’t remember everything.”

“What about a birth certificate?” Jamie asked.

“We’ll get to that,” Mae said. “First, I want to watch you nurse this little guy.”

Mae showed Jamie how to position the baby and discussed how long and how frequently she should nurse him. “It’s best to nurse him on both sides each session,” she instructed. “You may have to tickle his cheek or jiggle him a bit to keep him awake.”

Once the baby had nursed on each breast and was sleeping contentedly, Mae put him back in the infant seat. Jamie got dressed and carried the baby into the kitchen. Mae gave her a cup of hot tea and a generous slice of homemade banana-nut bread, then sat across the table from her, holding an official-looking form.