The Reluctant Midwife (23 page)

“So, do you know what's going on?” I ask Sheriff Hardman as we skid out the CCC gate.

“Sorry, didn't get the details.” He activates the flashing red lights on either side of the front doors, and then takes off on a small dirt road, a shortcut to Liberty. It isn't until we're within a mile of town that he turns on the siren and I feel like I'm a G-man on a Prohibition raid. In another half hour, we're following a rail fence into Hazel Patch.

This is the first time I've been to the Negro community, and as we wheel through the neighborhood, the siren blaring, small, tidy farmsteads fly by. Most have a barn and farm animals and enough oak and maple trees for a woodlot out back. There are goats and sheep, a few cows and even some horses, and it strikes me that this is what Mrs. Roosevelt is trying to create at Arthurdale, only the people have done it without government help.

At last we pull into a short drive and stop in front of a weathered clapboard house where a small dark man stands on the front porch waving. Apparently, he's expecting us, because he shows no surprise as a police car with red lights pulls into his yard.

“It's coming!” he shouts. “The baby's coming!”

With no time to thank the lawman, I grab my nurse's bag and run into the house where three colored women push me into the bedroom.

“The midwife's here. She's here!” they tell the very lean mother who half sits in bed, rhythmically swinging her head back and forth. She's gripping the white sheets, making a low noise in her throat, and an infant's head, with dark curly hair, shows at the opening of her vagina.

I take a deep breath. “Hello . . . I'm Nurse Myers the home health nurse. I'm sorry . . . the sheriff didn't give me your name.”

“Mmmmmmm,” the mother groans. The short man who was waiting on the porch and who I assume is the father makes a brief introduction.

“Sorry, I'm Homer Lewis and this is my wife, Livia. Now that you're here, I'm going to escape down to the Reverend's house. This is women's business.” He kisses his wife and steps out in a hurry.

“Okay, Livia, one or two more pushes and the baby will be out. If you can blow through the next few pains, I'll have everything ready.” What I'm thinking is,
this looks easy
. I don't even need to get vital signs or a fetal heartbeat. It will all be over in minutes.

“Ladies.” I turn to the three birth attendants, a light brown wisp dressed in a yellow shift; a graying, almost black grandmotherly type; and the third, a coffee-colored girl who could be the laboring woman's sister. She has the same narrow face, high cheekbones, and almond eyes, and it suddenly strikes me that even though they are all called Negro, they're as different as a pale Norwegian, a swarthy Italian, and a red-faced Irishman.

“Ladies, this is what I want you to do. . . .” I give orders like the boss on a PWA road crew and within minutes we're set up and ready for the birth.

“Okay, Livia, time to push.”

The laboring woman doesn't answer but growls with the next pain, the sound of a mother elephant calling her young.

There's timelessness when watching a labor and we slip into the stream. I check vital signs. I check the fetal heartbeat and all is well, but after another ten contractions I look at my watch. This isn't right. The head hasn't moved and it's been forty minutes. I need to take action, but what should I do?

“Livia, I want you to stop pushing for a few minutes.” I turn toward the others. “A phone? Is there a telephone?”

“The closest one is at the Reverend's house. Reverend Miller,” offers the gray-haired lady, her eyes big and round.

Damn!
(A silent curse.)

“Okay, then, I need someone to run to the Millers' home and call Patience Hester, the midwife. Who can that be? Who will go?” The young woman in yellow raises her hand.

“Okay, what's your name?”

“Daisy.”

“So, Daisy, here's what I want you to say. . . .”

She bundles up and takes off, a deer chased by a pack of hounds, slipping and sliding in the gray slush. Once she falls, but she looks back, grins, and keeps going. “Tell the Reverend a few prayers couldn't hurt,” I call after her, but I don't think she hears.

It's only then that I notice the weather, low clouds boiling over the mountains and into the valley. Daisy runs into the wind.

Patience told me when you don't know what to do, wipe the mother's face, so I return to the bedside with a cup of sweet, hot tea, reach for a cool rag, and follow my friend's advice. Livia's eyes flutter open and with my little finger I moisten her chapped lips.

“How much longer, midwife?” she asks me. (
Midwife!
I feel like an imposter.)

“I want you to rest another twenty minutes, then we'll start pushing again.”

“Is my baby too big?”

I lean across the bed to palpate the uterus. “I don't think so. About six pounds.”

“My other one was seven.” We look at each other.

Only a few weeks ago, Patience talked to me about obstructed labor. “While you sit on your hands,” she advised, “try to think what could be wrong. Are the contractions too weak? Then strengthen them. Is the mother too tired? Try to get her to rest. Is the baby in a bad position? Correct it.”

I run over these options while I check the fetal heart rate, then look at my watch again.
Where is Daisy? I hope she understands the importance of bringing the midwife's message back as fast as she can
.

To fill the time, I do something I've never done before. I brush Livia's dark hair between contractions. She lets out her breath and sinks back on the pillows.

“Thank you, Miss Becky. Why is it you have to go through labor to be treated like a queen?”

“You
are
a queen. I've never met a woman who was so brave.”

“I'm scared. All I can do is pray. My body is one solid prayer for my baby.” She starts to contract again just as a horse with two riders gallops up to the house.

“Did you get her on the phone?” I meet Daisy on the porch, impatient to hear.

“I talked to the vet, who ran upstairs and talked to his wife, then came back with her message. The midwife says, ‘
If you can't shift the baby, shift the woman
.' ”

“What?”

“If you can't shift the baby, shift the woman.”
The girl takes a few more deep breaths and looks right at me. “That's what her husband reported. He said those are her exact words,
‘If you can't shift the baby, shift the woman.'
”

“That's all? That's all she said?” I reenter the house, shaking my head. Outside the window, a few snowflakes drift down.

“Shift the woman!”
Grandma repeats with a toothy grin. “You know. Shake her up. Get her moving.”

I decide to trust Patience.

“Livia.” I kneel down by the bed. “How are you holding up?”

“I can't do this much longer.”

“Well, you aren't going to have to. The midwife sent word that we must get you moving. We'll try different positions, and if that doesn't bring the baby, we'll head to the hospital in Torrington.” There's a hush in the room.

“Oh, no! We can't go there.” Livia begins to cry. “You don't know what it's like. The colored hospital is down in the basement. Old people go there to die, but only if they have no kin. I can't go there!
I won't
. I'd rather die here, where people care about me.”

I am struck dumb by Livia's words. No one is going to
die
! Not if I have anything to say about it.

The first thing we try is walking. I thought this might be too uncomfortable, with the top of the baby's head sticking out, but strangely it's not. When Livia gets up, she actually feels better and
she tells us her back pain is gone. I have her push standing, with my hands positioned under the baby's head. We try squatting. We try hands and knees. Still no change.

Outside it's getting dark and has begun to snow hard, big wet flakes that slash against the house and cover the west side of the trees. From far away there's the sound of a vehicle gunning through the thick white.

Daisy lights a kerosene lantern, sticks her head out the bedroom door, and says something to the people who've just arrived, but I pick up only a few sentences. “She wants to take her to the colored ward in Torrington. You have to make her understand, that just isn't going to happen.”

I shake my head, let out a long sigh, and keep going. A few minutes later the familiar words of the Lord's Prayer come through the wall. (I'd told Daisy to tell the preacher that a few prayers couldn't hurt. They must have formed a vigil.) Then both male and female voices break out with, “Onward Christian Soldiers,” a strange choice I think to serenade a woman in labor, but it actually gives us strength.

Livia's face and whole beautiful brown pregnant body are now slick with sweat as she pushes and pushes with no results. The rest of the women are working hard too, so I open the bedroom window a few inches to cool us.

“Oh, can you smell it? Can you smell the snow?” Livia exclaims turning her head toward the fresh air. “I want to go outside!” She looks around for her slippers and Daisy finds them for her as if this was the most natural thing in the world, but I'm horrified.

“Oh, I don't think so! The snow is really coming down.”

“I know. That's why I want to go out there. I need to feel it on
my skin, on my arms and face. I need to feel something different than the pain between my legs.”

I stand in front of her to block the way. “It really can't be recommended. Women in labor never go outside, certainly not in the snow. You might catch pneumonia. Now how would that be when you have a new baby?”

Livia isn't listening. She's moving toward the door with determination, and if I don't move, she may plow me over.

“Can't you stop her?” I plead with the others. Daisy shrugs and throws a man's plaid bathrobe over Livia's shoulders. As I follow the little band through the parlor, I see who's been singing.

It's the Reverend and Mildred Miller; Homer, the father; the horseman; and three other ladies kneeling in front of the sofa. Cypress, the grandma, breaks from the birthing team to join the prayer group, but I grab my worn wool coat and the rest of us press onward.

Outside, the temperature is not as cold as I'd thought, but the snow swirls around us like feathers. Then it occurs to me: what if by some miracle, the baby starts to come? I run back inside for a blanket, not that it's likely to happen, but I'd rather be prepared.

Livia heads toward the split cedar fence with Daisy and Georgia, the three looking up as if they've never seen snowflakes before. The mother-to-be stops, reaches out to touch the inch of white on the rail, takes some and washes her face. She bends her head down and licks it with her tongue. The others, laughing, follow her example. It looks so fun, I'd like to do it myself, but someone has to be sensible.

Livia takes off her robe and steam rises up as the snowflakes fall on her hot body. She puts one foot up on the lower fence rail and leans back to catch the feathers in her mouth and that's when it happens.

“Ugggggh,” she groans, as if she were the earth pushing a whole tree out of the ground. “Uggggggg!”

Both young women turn toward me, mouths open. “Get her back in. Get her in!”

We make it as far as the living room. Here, Cypress throws a quilt on the floor. Mrs. Miller puts a pillow under Livia's head and I catch a healthy male child, already crying.

The preacher, Homer, and the horseman, who I later realize is Nate Bowlin, the guy who helped the preacher bring us some wood, stand in the corner, faces turned away, murmuring a prayer.

“Thank you, Lord Jesus!” says Cypress, taking the infant and wrapping it in a kitchen towel. “If you can't shift the baby, shift the mother!”

The third stage of labor is a blur. I deliver the afterbirth, cut the cord, get Livia back in bed, and examine both the mother and baby. Then, while everyone celebrates with apple cider and sandwiches that Mildred has brought from her house, I slip out into the dark yard and walk toward the fence. Tiny flakes tickle my face as I look into the gray sky and let the tears come.

I have lived under the presumption that there is great pain in this life and you must move carefully or you will get hurt, but I see today that sometimes pain brings great joy, like labor contractions bring us the baby.

I walk over to the fence, lean forward, and lick snow off the cedar rail. And the joy makes up for it all.