When we leave, Magda is settled, with a worn blue-and-brown patchwork quilt covering her. Buster sits next to her on the bed and touches his tiny brother with the tip of one finger.
The mother lifts up her face, and I notice for the first time that she has a harelip, but not a bad one. She still looks like a print of the Madonna in Lawrence’s art book.
“We’ll pay you when Zarek gets his first wages,” she says to Mrs. Kelly in a thick accent.
“No,” Sophie responds. “You need the money more. Get Buster some new britches, and take care of that baby. Breast only. No cow’s milk or gruel. I’ll come see you next week.” She runs her hand through the boy’s thick brown hair and pats the mother on her cheek.
I help the midwife with her heavy coat, throw my blue cloak around my shoulders, and pick up her carpetbag. Then we go into the bitter night, back to the trolley stop. When I turn, pale lamplight shines through the one four-paned window in a golden path along the cobblestones, and I can hear Magda singing “To my little one’s cradle in the night comes a little goat, snowy and white . . .”
25
Bolt from the Blue
On the way back across the meadow, with my sweet-smelling Mother’s Day bouquet of white serviceberry blossoms and pink phlox, I’m startled to see a vehicle sputtering up Wild Rose Road. It can’t be the vet; he left on the train yesterday. Not likely Katherine MacIntosh either, unless Bitsy’s with her and she’s on the run again. The sheriff?
I trot into the house, lock my diary, and shove it under a sofa cushion. I plunk my flowers into a quart mason jar and then hang my red kimono on its nail behind the kitchen door. Maybe it’s Becky Myers, come to check on me after her excessive worries about the Klan, or perhaps a father, looking for the midwife.
I’m surprised when Mildred Miller and Mrs. Potts get out of the battered black open hack. The two are dressed in their church clothes, dark dresses with bright white lace collars and white hats that frame their faces. The old lady is using a cane, and her companion helps her up the steps.
“I’ll get right to the point,” Mrs. Potts starts out once she settles on the sofa.
“I love your house,” Mrs. Miller interjects. “It’s so nice and clean. Smells so good. It must be your flowers. Is Bitsy here?”
“Her room’s upstairs, but she’s gone into town to spend the day with her mother, Mary Proudfoot.”
Mrs. Potts tries again. “My heart’s been skipping around and causing me dizzy spells. The doc says it’s weak. Thinks I ought to stop running around after babies.”
“She had a fall last week, out in the garden, and lay there for two hours until one of the Bowlin boys passed!” That’s Mrs. Miller.
“I tripped on an old tomato stake! Could happen to anyone. The point is, Patience, I need your help. You’re young and strong, and I could turn my mothers over to you. I’ll still come to the births in the daytime, just to be companionable, if I’m feeling well and the roads aren’t bad. The doctor says I have a few more years if I’m careful.” She declares this last part so offhandedly: a few more years. I’m taken aback, shocked at the sound of it. Mildred stares at the floor.
“Would there be many?” I ask in an attempt to get practical. “Usually I do two births a month; since the hard times came, maybe three. People who used to think a home delivery too old-timey are now calling on me because they can’t afford the hospital or they’ve heard bad stories from other new mothers.”
“I do ’bout the same. Two or three a month, but more of my patients are black mothers and they aren’t as much trouble as white girls. Got more grit.” I smile at her comment. She’s possibly right, with the exception of fourteen-year-old Twyla, who screamed her way through labor.
“Mrs. Potts, I’m honored, but I don’t know how to say this . . . Bitsy and I have to make a living. We can’t always do deliveries for free. Would people pay us? Would you and I split the fee?” I feel like a money-grubber even bringing this up. Mrs. Kelly believed that delivering babies was a sacred act, close to serving Communion, but midwives don’t live on light alone. Even if we grow and preserve our own food, we also need coal, kerosene, cornmeal, and sugar.
The old lady chuckles. “Of course we’d divide everything, unless it’s a chicken! And if I don’t make it to the birthing, the chicken’s all yours.”
“Would the families accept me? They’re used to you. Would they even want me? I’m white, and I’m new. Trust is important.”
“That’s why I’d come to the deliveries with you at the beginning, as much as I could . . . I’ve been a midwife in this community for over sixty years, delivered white and black babies all over the place, and if I say you’re good, they’ll know you’re good.”
I make the two ladies sassafras tea in my best blue-and-white cups while I think it over. If we got paid for the deliveries, it would make a big difference—and anyway, how can I say no?
“So do we have an agreement?” Mrs. Potts asks.
“I’m honored,” I reply, wondering what I just got myself into.
Mildred Miller gazes at the painting on the wall behind the sofa. “Is that you at the ocean? I went there once to see my cousin in South Carolina. The water was cold and salty. I didn’t like it.”
“It’s me when I was sixteen. My baby’s father painted it, and that water is Lake Michigan near Chicago. It’s not salty.”
“I didn’t know you had a child.” Mrs. Potts picks up on the “my baby’s father.” “Is he grown?”
“No, he died. Died at birth. They both died within days of each other.” Mildred sucks in her breath, and Mrs. Potts puts her veined hand over mine.
“That’s what makes you a good midwife,” the old lady says. “You know the value of life, and you know loss. My father used to say the two are one, like the bramble and the rose. Life and death . . . the bramble and the rose.”
Discarded
Tears have a way of humanizing people, though I don’t cry much myself.
What’s making me think of such things is my trip to Liberty today. I had bicycled in to check on Twyla and the baby. Bitsy stayed home and took her bike down to the Hope to go fishing. Didn’t want to come to town, she said. She’d had all of Twyla she could stand for one month.