The Midwife of Hope River

When I unbutton the rest of my dress and step out of it, there’s nothing underneath. No brassiere, no corset, just my drawers. I’d changed out of my work clothes in such a hurry when Mr. Moon came for me that I hadn’t bothered with the other things. I’m shocked at myself but don’t pull away. I’m a woman in a dream removing her silver armor. Hester doesn’t seem surprised by my lack of modesty and tosses the shift into the dry barn.

Again and again thunder fills the air like boulders colliding across the mountains. The vet just continues to hold me, naked, while the holy water washes us clean.

River

Morning. Blinding sun through a dusty windowpane in a room that at first I don’t recognize. I’m lying naked in a four-poster bed like the one at the MacIntoshes’ home, but the room is nowhere near as fancy. My eyes roam the white plaster walls with high windows framed in wide dark oak molding, the bare wood floors. There are paintings of horses in gold and black frames, landscapes with hunting horses and workhorses and racehorses and a photo of a young soldier standing with his horses. I know this place now. This is where, weeks ago, I bandaged the vet’s leg and brought him soup while he healed from his fistfight with the Bishop brothers.

I run my hand over the twisted sheets and the empty space where Hester had slept. I guess he slept. Sometime in the night we left the hayloft and ran through the mud, into the house, and up the stairs; then, before dawn, the telephone rang and he left me. I heard his car start up and move away down Salt Lick, but I was too undone to care. It was the alcohol, I remind myself, that brought me to this man, not exactly a stranger, not exactly a friend.

I run my hands over my body and, finding myself still the same person, dress quickly, ignoring Kitty’s old blood on my damp dress, which I find laid out neatly over the back of a chair. It’s too soon to tell how the events of last night will change my relationship with Hester . . . or if they will. I pull on my shoes and realize with a wave of guilt that unless Bitsy came home, our animals were out in the rain all night.

At the crest, I look down toward the Hope River and am surprised to see the valley looking no different after the storm. The dust has been washed off the tired plants, but even hours of hard rain can’t turn the grass green. Nothing has been altered, except inside me. I am laid open.

When I get to the house, I am surprised to see smoke coming out of the kitchen chimney; Bitsy is home. The doors to the barn are open, and I can hear her singing to Moonlight while she milks. “Oh, sister, let’s go down. Let’s go down. Don’t you want to go down? Oh, sister, let’s go down. Down to the river to pray . . .” It’s the first time she’s sung since her mother died.

“Morning,” she says as she strides into the house ten minutes later, swinging a pail full of warm white liquid. I’ve only had time to brush the straw out of my hair. She eyes the birth satchel as I replace our supplies.

“You were up all night at a birth? I’m sorry, I should have been with you. Who delivered? Everything go okay?”

“No . . . no, it didn’t go well.” I sit down at the table. “It was Kitty Hart. Someone we never met. She died. Her baby died too.”

Shocked at my words, Bitsy drops her bucket into the sink, and the milk splashes over the side. She plunks down in the chair next to me, puts her hand on my arm. “Oh, Patience, baby. I’m so sorry. I should have been there. I should have been there to help you . . .” She waits for me to explain, but I’m too exhausted to even talk.

“I have to change.” I indicate my bloodstained dress.

“Can I heat water? Bring in the tub?”

“No, I’ll go to the river. I’ll tell you about the birth later.”

This surprises me. Why do I want to go to the river?

When Star and I arrive on the banks of the Hope River, now rushing brown from the great storm, I’m greatly relieved to see no trailers or tents. The vet has already washed the blood off my skin; it’s my soul that needs cleansing. I pull off my dress and bloomers. “Oh, sister,” I remember Bitsy’s song, “Let’s go down. Down to the river to pray.”

I step into the water, deliciously cold, float on my back, and stare up at the white scarves of clouds. I haven’t prayed in so long. Who would I pray to?

August 14, 1930. Full moon already waning.

(It’s been three days. I couldn’t write about this before.) Stillborn baby girl born to Maynard and Kitty Hart of Burnt Town. Arrived at the home after mother was in labor for three or four days and had been pushing for four hours. Baby was a month early and wedged in the birth canal with its head turned sideways. After I got there, birth was accomplished in less than ten minutes, but it was too late for the baby. Mother was swollen and began to have seizures. Bitsy and I looked this up later in DeLee’s text; it’s called eclampsia. There was nothing I knew how to do, no herbs or anything. Sometimes women live through these fits, but Kitty had already lost so much blood I believe her heart stopped.

Others at the birth were her sister, Birdy (surname unknown); Edna Hart, the husband’s sister; and Mrs. Moon, the neighbor lady. Bitsy was in Hazel Patch. A very sad day.

Autumn Returns

35

Fall from Grace

Dark shadows over the mountains. Slate clouds like dirty sheets that won’t come clean. They blot out the sunshine during the day, blot out the stars at night. There are no jobs in Union County. One out of four men stands idle, and that doesn’t include the farmers who can’t sell their crops or the women who used to work before the men came back from the war.

It’s been weeks since the big rain, and the heat all over the South is fierce, one of the hottest Septembers the locals can remember. When they cut hay, cattlemen are averaging two bales instead of four. Scores of houses and farms are listed for auction or foreclosure in the Liberty Times, and people are moving east and north in droves like flocks of migrating birds.

This afternoon, while Bitsy and I trudged around the garden inspecting the parched dry brown tassels of our corn, a vehicle bounced up the road with a cloud of dust rising behind it.

What’s this now? Another delivery.

We watch from the fence as Reverend Miller gets out of the truck and moves around to the passenger side to open the door for his wife. He’s wearing a white straw fedora. Mildred is waving a large church fan with a picture of Jesus on it. The two advance toward the house without smiling, the dry yellow grass crunching under their feet.