The Midwife (17 page)

Getting to her feet, the midwife picked the candle stand up from the rocking chair and turned. The flame wavered with the movement. Fannie met my eyes. “Even if the worst comes true
 
—and I’m not saying it will
 
—you will get through it, Rhoda. The same as I did. You just must let faith overcome fear one minute, one hour, one day at a time.”

Fannie left my room but kept the door open. I watched the glow of her candle flame slowly vanish down the stairs. I closed the door and lay Hope on the bed. I knelt as if in prayer and leaned in. My daughter’s warm, sweet breath mingled with mine. I watched her chest rise and fall, rise and fall, rise and fall. . . . It was like watching a bonfire’s first kindle or the rolling ocean tide at dawn: the view was both miraculous and mesmerizing.

Tears pricked my eyes. In the quiet of my moonlit room in the corner of an ancient house, I let them slide down my
neck without my mouth emitting a sound. Hope did not stir as I continued to weep, and I kept blinking
 
—refusing to lose one glimpse of her face. Kneeling there, that braided rug transmuting my knees with its pattern, I could see how God had already turned the hardships of my life for good. If I had not lost my son, I would have never confided to Dr. Fitzpatrick about the child whom I had been forced to give up. If I had not told him this, he would have never considered asking me to become a surrogate for his and Meredith’s child. If Meredith had not needed a hysterectomy and had conceived that child naturally, or if another surrogate besides me had carried that child, this beautiful gem shielded inside these quilts and dreaming so peacefully might have been lost.

Wiping the grateful sorrow from my face, I clambered into bed. I slid one hand beneath Hope’s diapered bottom and nestled her closer. She pressed her feet into my stomach like small, hot stones. I turned my head on the feather pillow and watched the moonlight splashing in through the curtains and trickling across the hardwood floor.

Remember this; remember this; remember this,
I thought as our hearts beat as one.

In Hopen Haus, I roll two dozen of the eggs I gathered from the barn in a bath of diluted bleach water and pat them dry with a cloth. The other two dozen eggs I don’t clean. Lydie said that the gross, waxy coating from the hen helps keep the eggs fresh, like a seal, and we should just store the unwashed eggs in the springhouse until we need them.

I shudder, swearing to myself that I’ll never eat an embryo again, and tuck the eggs into cartons, marking each one with a date the way I was trained to do when I took over the egg duty position from Terese. Recapping
the marker, I stack the eggs next to the sink since I don’t know where the cleaned ones should go. I’m about to leave the kitchen when Star comes in through the swinging door leading to the dining room. Shadows rim her eyes like smeared liner. They’re the same bruised color as her hair, which looks flat and depressed, devoid of its gluey gel.

“You on kitchen duty this week?” I ask.

Star rolls her eyes. “Least they let me off for a month.” Looping an apron over her neck, she crosses the apron strings behind her back and ties them in front. My eyes are drawn to the magnet of her stomach, as I remember Lydie’s story about the night Star miscarried her baby. I wonder how she must feel, knowing her body doesn’t carry life anymore. Does she miss the baby, although she never met him? I know I would miss my baby if I lost him.

I can feel Star’s eyes on me and look down to see that my arms are wrapped around my middle. A pause stretches between us, just long enough to feel awkward. Removing my hands, I fold my arms high above my waist.

“How’re you feeling?” I ask.

Star studies the menu, with the step-by-step instructions that Alice Rippentoe writes out according to whatever food’s been gathered, shot, or donated that week.

“Like I been hit by a truck,” Star says. But the words are followed by a smile. Even with her tattoos and piercings, that smile makes Star look as if life’s been as easy for her as it’s been for me. Guiltily, I stare at my feet and twirl the ancient cameo ring my parents gave to me on my sixteenth birthday, which my, like, great-great-great grandmother
wore when she met the queen. That was the same night they also gave me keys to my very first car: a baby blue BMW roadster with white leather seats and convertible top, which was the envy of my entire junior class, but left me feeling dull.

I knew the gift was supposed to make me feel special . . . loved . . . but I’d rather have spent a week’s vacation with my mom than drive a car she’d spent half a year working to buy.

Still, I know Star’s here not because she’s pregnant like the rest of us but because no one cares enough to pick her up, and that makes me feel stupid for wanting more from my life when I have a mom and dad who love me like crazy
 
—though with strange ways of showing it
 
—and every gadget a girl of my techy generation could want.

I hear a pop of suction and glance up. Star’s twisting a lid off a Mason jar containing canned tomato sauce and then three more jars containing canned mystery meat (I hope it’s beef or venison) ground into burger. She measures everything and dumps them all into one large cast-iron pot. Then Star adds a big squirt of mustard and cubes of onion and some bright-green sweet pickles that are lined on the kitchen windowsill in clear glass jars.

I’m not on kitchen duty this week but don’t like the idea of leaving Star alone
 
—because, well, I know how it feels to be lonely. So I gather the knives, forks, and spoons from the drawer beside the sink, Mason jars for glasses, and cloth napkins that are tattered along the edges from too many washings by hand. The kitchen is quiet except for the clinking of the empty jars that Star puts in a cardboard box,
along with the lids and seals that can later be reused for canning. (I’m surprised they don’t reuse toothpicks.) Star knocks this thing called an ash catch into a bucket beside the stove and refills the box in the stove with wood.

Soon the water tank is hissing as the fire inside the stove gets stronger. Star takes a long wooden spoon from the crock and stirs the meat and sauce before setting the pot on the stove to heat. I set the tray on the island, gobsmacked by the image of a pretty terrifying Goth girl doing such old-fashioned chores without thinking twice. I then remember how good I felt whenever I watched Grandma Sarah chop peppers and onions on the cutting board next to the sink, and then scrape the colorful squares with a knife so they would tumble into the sauté pan and sizzle in the oil. The memory makes the back of my throat burn. I swallow hard, telling myself not to cry in front of Star, who has so much more to be sad about than I do.

“Did your mom teach you to cook?” I ask. The words are out before I can think to change them. Or maybe just not say them at all.

The tops of Star’s ears look red against the limp purple petals of her hair. “What do
you
think?” she snaps. Her eyes narrow, and I know that whatever bond we’ve made is lost.

Layering the napkins on the tray, I place the silverware in a jar and set this on the tray as well, making it easier to carry everything into the dining room in one trip. I keep my eyes focused on the forks, knives, and spoons and realize that
 
—with our disconnected mothers
 
—Star and I have more in common than she would ever guess.

“I think from the time we’re born, we miss our mothers. . . .” I pause, gathering nerve until I can meet Star’s angry gaze. “Even when we become mothers ourselves.”

The setting sun angles through the kitchen windows, shining off each of the panes.

“You know nothing about it,” Star finally spits from between her teeth. The silver bauble pierced through her tongue gives Star an odd lisp that makes her sound like a scared schoolgirl, when she’s really trying to intimidate me.

I busy myself by turning and drying off the rest of the lunch dishes. I curl my shoulders in toward my chest and rub the plate so hard with the towel, the china squeaks. But the whole time, I can feel Star’s mean stare and wonder who’s hurt her to the point that she feels like she has to keep everyone at arm’s length.

I close the ledger revealing Hopen Haus’s imminent financial ruin and leave my room. Halfway down the stairs, I see Ernest Looper standing on a ladder in the foyer, with a bandanna tied around his silvering blond hair. He runs calloused hands over the drywall cracks that make the ceiling better resemble the parched Death Valley floor. The old German shepherds are curled up head to tail, like yin and yang symbols, under the ladder. It is endearing to see how they trust Looper not to tread upon their limbs.

“Hey, Looper,” I call.

He first looks down and then turns and glances over his shoulder to see me paused on the staircase. “Hey, yourself,” he says.

I tighten my lips. “Can we talk a minute?”

Lowering his arms, Looper claps his left shoulder and rolls the bone, trying to work out a knot. “Sure,” he says. He clambers off the ladder. The dogs awaken at the sound and rise to their feet, shaking their coats and making their tagged collars jangle. A few stray canine hairs float in the sunlight streaming through the windows. Among the first things I’m going to purchase after we get electricity in the examining room are a vacuum and an extension cord.

Looper folds the ladder and slants it against the wall. “I’ve actually been meaning to talk to you about something,” he says. Turning, he pats the crumbling chink filling in the gaps between the logs. A few pebbles of plaster roll into his hand. I wince, embarrassed by how derelict Hopen Haus has become. “Beth,” he continues, “I really don’t think it’s smart to run electricity in a house waiting for one stiff wind to knock it down. It’d be hard to remodel ’cause nothing in this place is plumb. Even if I
could
remodel, I don’t know what I’d find if I tore out drywall and replaced logs. We’re not just talking termites and dry rot, either. There could even be black mold from the roof having leaked so long.”

I descend the rest of the staircase and glance through the foyer into the dining room. It is empty, and though I can hear voices in the kitchen, I cannot distinguish words.
I hope they cannot distinguish mine. “We can’t afford much of anything anyway, Looper,” I intone. “I just went over the books, and we barely have enough money to buy wire for electricity. There’s no way we can afford logs and drywall as well.”

Looper looks up at the cracked ceiling and clicks his tongue, assessing unseen damage. “I can’t just putty over the cracks in the ceiling
 
—not when it’s this bad.”

I look around Hopen Haus and see, suddenly, a metaphor for my own life. Ever since my daughter was taken, I have been trying to prevent more pain by not letting myself feel. But I
have
been feeling all along, even when I did not want to. Now that Looper’s here
 
—his presence ushering back the pain of the past
 
—the fractures splinter through the putty of my self-preservation, letting me know that they have always been here, just biding their time.

Sensing my pensiveness, Looper reaches out and touches my arm. I draw back and beckon him to follow. I leave the foyer and walk out onto the porch. But even this does not feel private enough. I go down the steps and march toward the barn. The dogs run after me, panting. Looper trails at a measured pace. We do not speak before we reach the corral to the left of the barn’s entrance. To calm my drumming heart, I rest my back against the warmed corral bars and focus on the cicadas’ vibrating contralto and the tall white oaks bordering the lane that remind me of the peeling, papery birches back home in Wisconsin.

“Remember when I called you from that phone booth years ago?”

Looper says nothing. From my peripheral vision, I watch him untie his bandanna and wipe the sweat gathering at his temples. But I know he remembers. I know my phone call that dark day left him as bereft as it left me. After a moment, he nods.

“Well,” I continue, “I’d just left my daughter behind. I was a gestational surrogate, and the people who’d hired me to carry the child did not want the child when they realized she might be handicapped.”

Looper looks at me; his eyes remain guarded.

“The child wasn’t handicapped.” I smile. “She wasn’t. She was a perfect baby girl. Though I would’ve thought so, regardless. She was almost eight pounds at birth, with this pointy chin and a mop of dark hair. I named her Hope, and for so long, no one questioned that she was mine. How could they? The entire Dry Hollow Community had seen that I was pregnant, and they’d seen me after I had birthed the child
 
—wouldn’t that make her mine?

“But then time passed
 
—five months
 
—and the parents who’d wanted to have the child aborted somehow found out I was hiding here, and they came and took her back.”

I choke down a sob and turn from Looper, facing the corral instead. I gouge my fingernails into the rust sleeving the corral bars
 
—the same corral I’d held when I clambered onto Sampson’s broad back and rode to Fannie Graber’s the night Hope was born.

“They took her away from me,” I murmur. “Legally, I had no right to the child. I had kidnapped her in my womb, and I had run. But I knew that Meredith, the
biological mother, did not love the child. She was just trying to reclaim what she felt was rightfully hers. It hurt me to see that. And it made me angry . . . possessive.

“When I knew Hope was lost to me forever, I prayed that there would always be enmity between the child and her biological mother. I prayed that they would not have a good relationship because I didn’t want my child to have that kind of relationship with anyone if she couldn’t have it with me.”

When Looper realizes that I’m finished speaking, he opens his mouth, then reaches a hand into his pocket, as if searching for the right words among the peppermint wrappers and loose change. “You don’t got that kind of power, Beth,” he says after a while. “You really don’t. God can sift through prayers spoken out of selfishness or hurt. If that girl has a bad relationship with her parents, it’s not because of something you did.”

I wipe my tears on my palms. “But don’t you see? If I really loved that little girl
 
—if I was really a good mother
 
—I would’ve wanted her to have a good relationship with the woman who’d taken her from me. I wouldn’t have punished her because I wanted to punish her mother. I wouldn’t have wanted her to be lonely like I was. Like I
am
. I would’ve wanted her to be loved.”

I rest my arms on top of the corral fence and lower my face. I feel the heat of Looper’s proximity before he places one arm around my back. I pivot and bury my face in his chest, not caring who in Hopen Haus might see. The walls of my world are crumbling, and I pray that if I remain in
Looper’s capable arms long enough, I can find the strength to build again. This time, though, instead of building a smokescreen of self-preservation first, I will have to restore my soul from the inside out.