The Midwife of Hope River

“Mostly it was just men complaining. Businesses are hurting; everyone feels threatened. Another big mine closed, the Minute Man west of Liberty. William MacIntosh is part owner of that one too.”

I ask him straight out, “But do you think the Klan presents any danger to me, to Bitsy and me? Becky says she’s heard talk. Is this for real or just men spouting off?”

“Nah. Just talk.” He sets his cup on the counter. “It’ll blow over. Anyway, what are you going to do about it?”

That stops me. What could I do about it? Kick Bitsy out? Pretend she’s my servant and make her shuffle and bow? Go to Sheriff Hardman? He’s probably one of them. Call the editor of the newspaper and have them exposed? He might be one too.

24

Magda

Running my fingers over the embossed tulips on the cover of my leather-bound diary, I breathe a long sigh. It’s Mother’s Day, and I’m sad. I’m always sad on Mother’s Day. It just gets to me.

All across the land, families are at Mama’s having fried chicken and dumplings, or, if they can’t afford a chicken, they’re digging into a good pot of beans. Children will bring their mothers bunches of wildflowers—pink and white phlox from the roadside, yellow iris from the edges of streams, bluebells from the forest floor—but I have neither children to thank me nor a mother to go home to.

Bitsy has taken her bicycle into Liberty to spend the day with Big Mary and Thomas. Even Daniel Hester found another vet in Delmont to cover his practice and has taken the train to see his mother near Buffalo.

We didn’t have Mother’s Day when I lived in the white house in Deerfield. It became a national holiday later, started in 1910 by a woman from Grafton, West Virginia, I hear, not seventy miles from Liberty.

I wish we had celebrated Mother’s Day; then I could have taken my mother flowers and thanked her for all the times she’d tucked me in or ironed my bed on a cold winter’s night or sewed my dresses or read me stories, but she’s gone now, gone many years.

I had Mrs. Kelly too, a second mother, who took me in when I was homeless and alone, taught me all I know about delivering babies and living on the land. I stayed with her thirteen years, as long as I lived with my own ma.

And once I was almost a mother. I felt Lawrence’s baby move and squirm inside me, until I lost them both. My little boy is buried in the corner of my heart now, a small mound of pain just left of my breastbone. I can’t even take flowers to my mother or Mrs. Kelly’s grave sites. Mama is buried far away in Deerfield, and my dear Sophie was put to rest in the family graveyard in Torrington.

Enough of this! What would Mrs. Kelly think of my feeling so sorry for myself! I don’t need children. I don’t need a mother. I need to go pick my own bouquet.

“To my little one’s cradle in the night comes a little goat, snowy and white.” I sing the old lullaby as I tromp across the meadow. “The goat will trot to the market, while Mother her watch does keep, bringing back raisins and almonds . . .” I continue the tune all the way down to the creek where the serviceberry bushes bloom.

The first night I heard that song was the night I saw my first birth . . .

“Steady the lamp,” Mrs. Kelly orders. “Please!”

I’m shaking like a leaf in a windstorm. Even though I grip the lantern’s wire handle with both hands, the shadows dance.

I would have preferred to stay outside in the dark, but Mrs. Kelly said she might need me. Anyway, where would I have waited? Alone in the alley?

The worn-thin mother, lying on the pallet in this one-room shack down by the river, lets out a deep groan. I try not to look, stare up at the cobwebs on the ceiling and at the newspapers pasted on the walls to keep out the wind, but the woman’s white belly glows like the full moon.

I met the midwife just a few hours ago, and we were on our way to talk to a mother of twins, who might need me, when a boy raced up and begged the midwife to come.

Now the lad leans against the door frame in the shadows. His knickers are torn, and he has one deformed ear. He may have been born that way, or possibly somebody cuffed him.

“Buster,” Mrs. Kelly commands, “make yourself useful.”

The kid shuffles over. “Here, you hold the lantern. Elizabeth, kneel down and pull hard on the mother’s hands; it will give her strength.”

I’m like Buster, don’t want any part of this, but Mrs. Kelly is hard to refuse. I crouch low, so close I’m in the pregnant woman’s face.

“Next time you feel the pain, I want you to push with all your heart,” the midwife instructs. (I now use the same words with my patients.) She glances at the pocket watch she wears on a ribbon around her neck. Before the next groan, the patient opens her legs, puts her chin on her chest, and I know she means business.

“What’s your name?” I whisper, when she lets go of me.

“Magda.” The tired woman blows her long hair out of her eyes, which spark green in the kerosene lamplight.

“I’m Elizabeth. You can call me Lizbeth, everyone does.”

Buster is silent, just endures with his arm straight out, holding the metal lantern, steady as an oak branch when there’s no wind, tears streaming down his face, making dirt streaks. He looks about nine.

Mrs. Kelly is at the woodstove, heating up water and getting out her clean cloths and scissors, when, with the next push, the patient shouts something that I think must be Polish, and the infant tumbles out. The midwife sees what’s happening, steps over, and hands the new life to me. I have no choice but to take it, all wet and slimy, wiggling and crying with the cord still attached. It was the smell of the birth that made me gag. Now I actually like it, sweet and earthy.

I hand the newborn over to Magda, who has fallen back on the bed. “Here’s your baby.” Buster sets the lamp down and runs from the shack. The midwife kicks the door shut to keep out the cold, and I can hear the little boy sobbing.

In fifteen minutes, we have the place tidy. Buster, still hiccuping his sobs, shows me the way to the pump in the alley, and I bring in more water. “Everything’s okay now,” I tell him as we walk back toward the shack. “Your mother’s fine. You have a pa?”

He tilts his head toward the railroad tracks. “Just started graveyard shift, throwing coal for Pittsburgh Steel.” That’s good, I think. They’ll have someone to look after them.