The Midwife of Hope River

Now I see what she means. This is not really my affair, I just came by to visit, but I know what to do. “Give me the baby.”

“What?”

“I’ll take him home. Bury him on the farm. You can’t do it. You live in town, with neighbors on either side. Out in the country, no one will know.” There’s a long silence, and Becky wipes her tears again.

“You’d do that?”

“Come on. It will be simple. Just wrap him up in the blanket and put him back in his box. I have a basket on my bike.”

Becky offers to drive me home, but I tell her no. Afterward I think it might have been smarter. I had to carry the baby in the carton past the sheriff as he strolled down the courthouse steps. I also passed Mrs. Stenger coming out of Judge Hudson’s and had to stop on my bike to say hello, and then I had to get around Bitsy.

“I was wondering when you’d get back,” Bitsy calls from the porch as I walk my bike through the gate. “What’s in the package?”

I consider telling her outright, “a dead premature baby,” but I don’t know how she’d take it, so I lie.

“Produce scraps from the grocery store. Mr. Bittman was throwing them out and sent them home for the chickens. I’ll take them out to the barn.”

“Supper in fifteen,” she responds, turning back inside. “I caught a mess of fish.”

The hole behind the barn isn’t big, but it has to be deep so that foxes and raccoons won’t smell the baby and dig it up. It takes me five minutes. Then I kneel at the grave site, my hands folded up against my chest. Just a moment of silence for the mama who has lost this too-early-baby, a woman somewhere with her breasts filling up and a heart so heavy she would sink to the bottom of the Hope River if she jumped in.

I didn’t have a grave site for my premature son. I don’t even know if he was buried properly or just thrown away. I pull a flat rock over the exposed earth, tamp it down gently with my foot, and wipe my tears on the back of my sleeve. This will be my secret gravestone, for both tiny babies.

True Knot

With the dramatic and probably illegal burial of the unidentified premature newborn, I didn’t get around to telling Bitsy about Twyla until this morning. We are standing out in the side yard, preparing to beat the dust out of the front room braided rug with two homemade wire rug beaters that we found in the basement. The heavy floor covering hangs over the clothesline, and the sun comes in and out of big white and gray clouds.

“How was Twyla?” Bitsy asks me, taking a swat. Whack! Whack! Dust rises all around us, and I can see this cleaning is long overdue.

“She’s fine. Looks like she was meant to be a mother the way she holds and cuddles that baby, but things are sticky with the judge.”

“How so? I bet he can’t stand it when the baby cries, but all newborns cry. No way around it. Ma says it’s good for ’em.”

“He wants to give the baby away.” Whack. Whack. “It isn’t right. I don’t know if Twyla even knows, but Nancy told me. Judge Hudson says he doesn’t want a baby in his house. Either the baby goes up for adoption, or he’s putting them all out.” WHACK! “It seems wrong. Steams me just thinking about it.” WHACK! WHACK!

Bitsy just stands there. “He doesn’t want a black baby under his roof. That’s what he means.”

“Well, he can’t do it, can he?”

“It’s his house.”

A dark cloud now covers the sun. Bitsy throws down her rug beater and marches back into the house. Doesn’t even say anything. Her shoulders are high, and I think she’s crying.

“Bitsy? Bitsy!” But she doesn’t answer. Even when I go back into the house with the rug, she won’t talk. She’s curled at the end of the davenport staring at the open pages of Up from Slavery.

Not long afterward, as I’m out in the barn cleaning Star and Moonlight’s stalls, there’s a commotion. Dogs bark and a cart approaches, moving fast up the road. A kid not more than thirteen trots up to the fence.

“Ma’am.” The freckle-faced boy with flaming red hair introduces himself. “Name’s Albert Mintz from Horse Shoe Run. My papa sent me. He went to get Mrs. Potts in the truck, but my ma’s paining real bad and he said I should try for you too—just get someone fast. Heard you was Mrs. Potts’s helpers.”

“Is it far? Do we have time to get washed up?” I rub my dirty hands on the back of my pants.

The boy’s eyes get big, put on the spot for an answer that could be critical. “Took a good while to get here, and I was pushing hard. There will be three of us in the cart on the way back. Better come as you are. It’s Ma’s seventh.”

Bitsy shakes herself out of her dark funk and runs for my satchel. We are still in our work clothes, so I grab two flowered aprons from the bottom kitchen drawer and a couple of wet rags to wash up with.

As we bounce down Wild Rose and around Salt Lick, we do our best to make ourselves presentable. This is not how I wanted our first birth as Mrs. Potts’s backup to go. She is always so neat in her black dress, white apron, and white turban. No use fussing over it.

Before we get to Horse Shoe Run a hard rain begins. Bitsy pushes the satchel under the wooden bench, and I sit on the aprons to keep them dry. Not that the aprons will help much. Our hair is plastered, and water trickles down our necks. At least Albert is wearing a straw hat.

Not twenty minutes later we arrive at a run-down, unpainted, one-story farmhouse at the mouth of a narrow hollow. The privy sits to the side. Three little boys, one with red hair like Albert’s, watch from the porch as we ride into the yard.

Before we reach the door I know something is wrong. Bitsy and I look at each other and tighten our jaws. The boy’s dirty faces are striped with tears and a woman’s voice keens from inside. This is the sound I heard Katherine MacIntosh make when I first gave her the bad news about her baby, the wail that goes right to your heart. Despite my dread, I take the steps two at a time, pushing open the door. Bitsy follows at my heels.

“Mrs. Mintz!” I call out. “It’s Patience, the midwife. Mr. Mintz? Mrs. Potts?” The high, repetitive cry starts up again, and I follow the sound down a dark hallway to a bedroom where a mother sits on the bare wood floor, holding what appears to be a lifeless baby. I step over and take the body in my arms, still attached to its limp umbilical cord. The newborn is covered in sticky, dark brown fluid, which I know to be baby poop. Meconium, DeLee calls it; not a good sign.