The Midwife of Hope River

“He’s fine. Just laying low, farther up in the mountains.” I watch through the open back door as she heads for the barn, gets her bicycle out, and walks it through the dry grass out to the road. Part of me is relieved to have her gone for a while. Breastfeeding an infant when I don’t have milk is causing my uterus to contract, and I’m about to swoon.

“What are we going to do with you, Norma?” I release her little mouth from my nipple, insert my pinkie, and jiggle her up and down. “Your parents are on their way north to find a better life. They just don’t have enough money, and there are three other children.” Norma, as if she understands and is really mad about it, stops sucking, spits out my finger, and begins to wail again. What the heck, I guess I can stand it. I put the baby back on my breast and pace back and forth to distract myself. Surely no woman has ever had an orgasm while nursing a foundling. It just can’t happen!

Angel

As the sun reaches over the trees, Norma finally falls asleep again and I place her in her basket, tucking the blanket around her. She keeps sucking the way infants do when they dream, and I stand looking down at her. Times are hard, but there must be some childless couple who would like to raise this beautiful baby.

I consider the folks at Hazel Patch, a good-hearted community if there ever was one, but this child is white. Would adopting a white infant be possible for black people? There might even be Jim Crow laws.

I contemplate keeping the baby myself . . . but how would I manage? What would we do with Norma when Bitsy and I had to go to a birth in bad weather? Take her out in the cold? I look down at the sleeping newborn again, touch her cheek with one finger.

“How about Gladys and Ernie Mintz?” I wonder out loud. It’s only been four months since the loss of their baby. Maybe the woman could reestablish her milk supply.

The Mintzes don’t have money, but they have their own farm and a cow. Unless one of the parents gets ill or injured, their family will survive. It may seem outrageous, but it could be just what Mrs. Mintz needs . . . I run upstairs to put on my second dress and white apron, wanting to impress them this time, look more like Mrs. Potts, a respectable midwife.

At the last minute I take down my red Calumet baking soda can. The weight of the stocking tucked inside is reassuring, and Katherine’s gold-and-pearl pin plops out, along with Mrs. Vanderhoff’s ruby ring. I thread a blue hair ribbon through the ring and tie it around the baby’s neck. Maybe the Mintz family will have a way to get to Torrington to trade it for cash, or maybe they will consider it a good-luck charm. In a way, I am glad to get rid of it.

An hour later, with the baby swaddled in a white sheet against my chest, I trot into the Mintzes’ yard and awkwardly slide off Star. The three little boys are playing with bits of wood in the dirt next to the porch, and they stop to look up at me. I straighten my dress and pat the baby. Albert, the oldest, comes around the side with a bucket of feed for the chickens.

“Here goes nothing,” I say under my breath as I approach the house. “Don’t take it personally, little one, if they don’t want you. I’m an orphan myself, you know. We’ll figure out something.”

“Miss Murphy,” Albert says, tipping his straw hat and eyeing the bundle attached to my front.

“Your ma home?”

“Inside . . . She’s poorly.”

I frown, ashamed of myself for not ever making a visit. By the time Bitsy and I left their home after the stillbirth, Mr. Mintz had stopped verbally berating me, but I still felt he blamed us for his baby’s death and I’d never returned, not in all this time.

“In the back,” Albert directs, opening the screen door.

I pass through the dark hall and hesitate at the closed bedroom door. “Gladys. It’s Patience, the midwife. Can I come in?” There’s no answer, but I hear movement on the other side of the wall. “Gladys?”

A woman clears her throat. “Come in.” This is uttered without enthusiasm. As the door swings back, I discover the mother sitting up in bed in her nightdress, her long lank hair drooping over her shoulders, a plate of untouched beans, dandelion greens, and corn bread next to her on the bedside table.

“Good morning, Gladys. Are you doing okay?” I can see that she isn’t.

“Can’t seem to get my strength back,” Gladys answers with hardly enough air to get out the words. “The mister cooks for us, says I need to make new blood, to eat lots of collard greens and organ meats. He even killed three chickens and cooked up the liver and giblets, but losing our Angel has knocked something out of me. I don’t think I can get it back.”

She stares out the window, her face a wall of grief, doesn’t notice the bundle on my chest until it begins to mew. “What’s that?” she asks. “It sounds like a kitten.”

“A newborn infant that was left to me.” I ease myself into the rocker and undo the sheet. “Her name is Angel too.” This is a fib, but it comes out like the truth. Now that I think of it, there is some resemblance to their baby. Same dark hair and little bowed mouth. I plunk the child into the grieving mother’s lap, and Gladys raises her hands as if she’s seen a ghost.

“Where’d you get that?”

“Another woman birthed her yesterday and left her with me. She needs a ma and a family.”

Mrs. Mintz tentatively touches the baby’s hand. She picks her up, cups the infant’s head, and looks at her face, then opens the blanket and inspects her body.

“Who’s the mother?” she asks.

“A stranger named Annabelle. She and her husband were passing through Union County on their way north to look for work. They had three other children and got lost on the back roads. I found them near Bucks Run over by my place, where she was about to give birth in their truck, and they spent one night with us on the farm, then left before dawn without saying good-bye. Didn’t get their family name. They weren’t from around here.”

The baby whimpers, then begins to cry, and I notice, with interest, breast milk leaking through the woman’s nightdress. Gladys swings her feet around and sets them on the floor. She holds the infant against her shoulder and pats it, the way all mothers do.

“You could feed her,” I encourage.

“There’s some grits in the kitchen. Can newborn babies eat grits mixed with cow’s milk? I’ve always breastfed before.”