The Midwife of Hope River (20 page)

27

Waltz

It's a sticky night, and I'm sleeping downstairs on the davenport under one sheet in front of the open screen door when I hear an engine chugging up Wild Rose Road. I've just blown out the lamp, locked my diary, and tucked it under the sofa cushion.

The sound isn't welcome. Lately a visitor has meant trouble or another delivery, and I'm still disturbed about Mrs. Mintz's loss, as if it were my fault, though I know it wasn't.

“Miss Patience,” a man's voice calls from out in the yard. I throw on Nora's red kimono and stand in the dark just inside the screen. “Yes?”

“I'm Pete Dyer, and my brother John says his wife, Hannah, is paining. He sent me to fetch you.”

“Be right there.”

Bitsy is already clomping down the stairs as I hurry upstairs to dress. “I'll leave food for the cow, the chickens, and the dogs,” she tells me.

In ten minutes we're settled in the front seat of the Model T Ford truck, a battered affair that sits far off the ground, perfect for the rough dirt back roads that, with the depression, are now full of potholes. The county has no money to fix them.

 

At the Dyer home, a two-story stone farmhouse on a rise above the Hope River, we are surprised to find Hannah and her husband, John, both in their early twenties, dancing in the living room to a waltz on the gramophone. I recognize the tune, “The Blue Danube.”

Bitsy and I look at each other, drop the birth satchel near the door, and plunk down on the high-backed leather sofa to watch. This doesn't seem right! Either the woman isn't in labor, or we were called way too early.

Hannah wears a white nightdress that rises around her ankles when the two of them spin. Her long straight black hair is loose, and her feet are bare and so are her husband's. It's clear that the two have taken ballroom dancing lessons, and I recall now that both went to Torrington State, he for agriculture, she for literature. John and his younger brother inherited their grandparents' expansive bottomland farm when their grandma died of heart failure a year ago.

The couple have eyes only for each other, so, though I'm miffed at being called so early when I could be home asleep on the sofa. I keep my peace and wait for the music to end. I don't have to wait long. The recording keeps playing, but Hannah stops in midtwirl and says two words: “My back.”

The husband sits down in an easy chair, nods toward us as if he's just noticed our presence, and begins to massage his wife's sacrum. He kneads and caresses, not just her lower back but also her buttocks and thighs. Bitsy looks away, but I'm transfixed, watching something that most people think belongs in the bedroom. The music goes on, and when the pain is over the couple embrace and start dancing again.

“There's cider on the table and fresh-baked muffins,” Hannah calls gaily, looking over her shoulder as she twirls across the room. Bitsy and I wander into the kitchen.

“What do you think? Is she in labor?”

Bitsy shrugs philosophically, biting into a muffin so golden it looks like pure butter. “I guess. Want to take a spin?”

“I don't think so!”

“I'm serious.” My friend grabs my hand and drags me back to the living room. This is the first time since the day I told Bitsy about Twyla's baby being given away that I've heard her laugh. “One, two, three. One, two, three.” She puts her arm around my waist and leads me across the room. “One, two, three.”

“That's the beeswax!” Hannah encourages us. Her face is pink and moist and beautiful. After a few minutes, I'm feeling rather fine myself. “One, two, three. One, two, three.”

I can't remember when I last danced. It might have been at our wedding at the Labor Union Hall, Ruben's and mine. We'd courted for only six months, but the drums of war were already roaring and people didn't waste time back then.

France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, Hungary . . . the whole world was involved; it was only a matter of time until the United States jumped in. Ruben was an isolationist, like many in those days. “We'd just be sending our boys over there for cannon fodder,” he objected. It's not that he was a pacifist, he just didn't see that the war in Europe was any of our business.

Looking back, my years as Ruben Gordesky's wife were the happiest of my life, like dancing, that's how I remember them. Six short years . . .

 

Hannah

Bitsy and I spin around until I'm dizzy, almost bumping into the other couple, who stop suddenly for another contraction, this one apparently harder.

“Whoops! Something just happened!” Hannah lifts her gown and stares at a wet spot on the worn pine floor. “It must be the baby's fluid. Let me get a pad,” she tells her husband. “Then I want to try the Charleston. You put on the recording of ‘Syncopatin' Sal.' ” The young mother-to-be gathers her nightdress between her legs like a woman stomping grapes and heads awkwardly upstairs.

I follow and motion to Bitsy to bring the satchel. “If you wouldn't mind, Hannah, I'd like to check the baby's heartbeat, figure out its position. When did your pains start?”

Hannah doesn't answer; she's squatting at the top of the landing, holding on to the wooden post.

“Jiminy!” she exclaims. “That was a hard one. I'm gonna have to dance faster to keep up.” Before she gets clean bloomers out of her dresser, she has another pain and then another. I consult Mrs. Kelly's gold watch. Three minutes apart. Things seem to be progressing faster than I had thought.

Bitsy pours water from the flowered pitcher into the porcelain basin on the stand, and I wash my hands. Then I have Hannah lie down so I can listen to the baby's heart sounds and make sure it's head down. When the next contraction comes on, before I can assess the strength, Hannah rolls away from me and struggles to get up.

“I can't do this lying down!” she wails, for the first time sounding a little out of control. John, the husband, bounds up the stairs, pulls his wife to her feet, and holds her against his chest. He's changed the recording to a slower tune, “Black Mountain Blues” by Bessie Smith.

I remember that tune from when Ruben and I won a dance contest at a speakeasy in McKeesport. In the early twenties no music was more threatening than jazz and blues. We were traveling in the fast lane, and jazz and blues were the background music for the revolution. I remember with fondness the clubs in Pittsburgh's Hill District where blacks and whites danced together. Now people can listen to the same songs on the Victrola in their own homes. What a world we live in!

I shake my head. There's no point getting nostalgic, and there's no point arguing with Hannah about staying in bed, either. She's not going to do it.

Bitsy carefully puts down our sterile newspaper under our cloth pads on top of the bed and clears the dresser for our supplies. She places Mrs. Potts's hemorrhage tincture and a bottle of olive oil on the side. “Don't forget a smaller bowl for the afterbirth,” I remind her. My friend rolls her eyes, letting me know she doesn't need reminding.

All around the large room, on the white plastered walls, photographs of stern ancestors from the 1800s stare out at us from black oval frames. What would these old people think of all this? The father in the birthing room! The mother dancing! Blues rising sweetly from the talking machine downstairs!

 

Though the Dyers have electricity, there's as yet no water closet. But that doesn't bother Hannah. For an educated young lady, she's as earthy as a peasant woman and has no qualms about periodically squatting over the white enamel potty. There's nothing for me to do but wait, so I rest myself in a high-backed soft chair, close my eyes, and enjoy Bessie's song. I haven't heard much music lately, not since Christmas, when I sang with Mr. Hester. I'm almost asleep when I hear the noise I'm waiting for . . .

“Ugggggggh!” My eyes pop open, and I see Hannah squatting on the commode with her husband kneeling in front of her. “Oooo!” she exclaims. “I've got to pooh!”

“No, you don't, Hannah! That's your baby coming, time to get back in bed. Bitsy, get a wiggle on! We need the hot water!”

“But I don't
want
to lie down. I can't lie down! It hurts when I lie down!” Hannah complains.

I could throw her down, but she'd just bounce up like a rubber ball. I let out my air in frustration. This wouldn't be the first time I've let a woman push when out of bed. I just don't want to make a habit of it. What would the community think if word got around? What would Mrs. Potts think of me, letting my patients deliver like aborigines?

“Well, what do you want to do, then? Are you going to have the baby standing up?” I remember the Amish girl, how it had almost come to that, but Granny had insisted she get back into bed.

“Ugggggggggggggh! Yes!”

John looks hopeful. “Could she? I'll hold her.” Hannah's so hot she throws off her gown.

I pull my sterile gloves on, shaking my head. These young people, with ideas of their own!

When Bitsy returns with a steaming teakettle and a small bowl for the afterbirth, she laughs at the sight of Hannah standing naked, bearing down, in the middle of the bedroom.

“She won't get into bed,” I explain. “Can you hand me the oil?” I grab a pillow and kneel on the floor behind and below the mother. Bitsy pours the warmed liquid on my fingers, and I'm surprised, when I check, to find the head almost crowning. “Slow it down, Hannah!” I yell. “Slow it down or you're going to tear. Get her attention, John!”

The man takes his wife's face in his hands and insists that she make eye contact with him. “Look at me, Hannah. Look at me!”

“Why?” she snaps. “I'm trying to have a baby here!”

“The midwife says to stop pushing. She says to slow down or you're going to rip.”

“Oh, for Christ's sake! What am I supposed to do, then?”

Bitsy steps up and gives her the drill. “Push a little. Blow a little. Push a little. Blow a little.”

In ten minutes, I'm sitting in a pool of warm amniotic fluid with a crying female infant in my lap.

“My baby!” Tears run down Hannah's face as she takes the beet red child away from me and wraps it in her discarded nightdress. The cord's still attached and dangles between us like a swinging bridge.

“My darling wife!” That's John.

“Will you lie down
now
?” That's me, and Hannah complies.

 

The recording downstairs has finished, and the scrape of the phonograph needle is getting on my nerves. “Can you please fix that, Bitsy?” I nod toward the sound.

Bitsy trots down and a few minutes later is back, boogieing through the door to “Oh, Gee! Oh, Gosh!,” a ragtime favorite. I can't help but smile. John takes Bitsy's hand, and they do the Lindy Hop together while Hannah holds up the baby. “See, honey?” she asks the wobbly newborn. “Are you going to be a dancer like your poppy and Bitsy?”

Then she gets serious. “I think we'll call her Mary,” the new mother announces. “Don't you think that's nice? A plain name, but also the name of our savior's mother.”

“Yes,” I agree, thinking of Mary Proudfoot. “That's a beautiful name: brave, strong, and proud.”

 

June 19, 1930. Quarter moon waning in a clear sky.

Birth of Mary Dyer to John and Hannah Dyer of Stony Creek. Six pounds, 11 ounces. Mother and father danced through labor. Even Bitsy and I joined in! Hannah stood up for the birth and I thought she would tear, but she was fine. Blood loss less than normal.

I was surprised as natural as she was in labor that Hannah had a little trouble with breastfeeding. The infant rooted vigorously, but Hannah has very flat nipples. If I had known, I would have had her do some tiddy-pulling the last month to get ready. You can't do it sooner because it causes contractions. When women come to my house to arrange for my services, I must remember to ask to examine them and ask Becky to do it too, since she is seeing some of them in her clinic in town.

Present were Bitsy, yours truly, and John. Payment, a side of bacon and a promise of a cord of wood this fall, but the birth was so fun, I would have done it for free.

28

Ghost Town

At last we are getting produce from the garden, small peas that we eat without shelling, lettuce, and chard. We enjoyed Hannah's bacon and we fish in the river, but we are down to a cup of flour, the sugar is gone, and our money jar is empty except for a few last coins. I stare at them now, scattered on the table, as I pull on my town shoes.

“Man does not live on fish and berries alone, or woman either,” I announced to Bitsy this morning. “I'm going into Liberty. Maybe I can find work. If we don't get paid for the deliveries, we have to get money somehow. I also have the last few birth certificates to turn in for a quarter apiece at the courthouse. That will be something.”

I was surprised when Bitsy ran upstairs to find me something nice to wear and helped braid my hair, but then I realized that she's just as worried about our financial situation as I am and probably wanted to increase my chances by making me look like a lady.

 

It seems a long shot, but my thought, as I get my bike out of the barn, is that maybe Becky Myers or Mr. Stenger, the pharmacist, will know of someone sick or injured that Bitsy and I can take care of. As I fly on my bike past Maddock's farm, I'm surprised to see Mrs. Maddock sitting in a wicker rocker on the front porch. I wave but am speeding so fast down the steep hill that I almost tip over, and she doesn't wave back. An hour later, behind the Texaco station, I park and wipe the dust off my face with my wet cloth, then walk sedately down Main.

The first thing I notice is that the streets are so desolate and the traffic sparse. It's been weeks since I've been to town, and Liberty is almost abandoned. A few autos pass, then a buggy pulled by a swayback mare, but other than that, there are just four out-of-work miners smoking cigarettes on the wooden benches in front of the courthouse, two blacks and two whites. One white guy whistles, and the two blacks get up and walk away. The last thing they need is to be accused of hassling a white woman.

I'm relieved when I get into and out of the County Records Room without hearing any more catcalls from the fellow outside. The only awkwardness is asking for a death certificate for the Mintz baby, but the clerk doesn't question me, so I guess word has already gotten around. She hands me five quarters, one for each form.

Back on the street, the coins jiggling in my pocket, I think briefly of buying an ice cream cone. What would that be, five cents? But the ice cream parlor is closed. The Mountain Top Diner is closed too. Bittman's Grocery is still operating, so I stop in and get a sack of flour, a can of lard, and five pounds of sugar, an extravagance, I'll admit. That leaves me only two quarters in my pocketbook and it won't last long.

Fortunately the crooked tin sign in Stenger's Pharmacy's front window says
OPEN
. When I enter the almost empty establishment, I see Mrs. Blum, the physician's wife, asking question about Lydia E. Pinkham's Vegetable Compound. Her shiny blond hair frames her pale face and sets off her unusual green almond-shaped eyes. She nods as if I'm a stranger, though she's met me many times. No “Hello Patience” or “How you doing?” I guess I'm too far beneath her.

On the newspaper stand just inside the glass door, I pull out a copy of the
Torrington Times
and peruse the headlines. A sudden run on the Brotherhood Bank in Berkeley Springs forced it to shut down. It's the eighth bank in West Virginia to close in the last two weeks, and the state legislature is having a special session about the economy. This is all new to me. Without a radio or newspaper, my world has narrowed to the valley between Hope Ridge and the mountains on the other side of Hope River, and even there I don't really know what's going on. I don't even know my closest neighbors, the Maddocks.

The cash register rings and snaps closed, the pharmacist hands Priscilla Blum her package, and I step up to the counter.

“Hello, Patience. What can I do for you?” I'm sure Mr. Stenger's hoping I'll buy something expensive: rubber gloves, brown soap, or a new hairbrush.

“Oh, I don't need anything, Mr. Stenger. I was just wondering how your mother is doing and if she, or anyone else you might know, requires nursing.” I hesitate. “I could trade for food. Times being hard and all . . .” My cheeks glow with embarrassment, like coals from the heater stove.

Stenger rubs his small auburn goatee, stippled with gray, and burrows his fists in his white lab coat pockets.

“I thought you knew. Mama passed away this January. Got pneumonia.”

“I'm so sorry . . . I didn't hear . . . we were snowed in most of the winter. She was a nice old lady . . . I hope she didn't suffer.” I stare at the red sign on the wall behind him exhorting the benefits of Himrod's Asthma Powder and clear my throat. “Know anyone else with sick relatives?”

Stenger shakes his head slowly.

“Well, if you hear of anyone . . .”

I knew it was a long shot, but I still leave disappointed. I'm on my way over to Becky's when a Model T bounces up on the curb. Who should it be but Rebecca Myers herself.

 

Down by the Riverside

“Get in,” the home health nurse orders.

“Well, hi to you too! What's up? I have my bike back at the Texaco station.” I'm thinking maybe Becky will offer to carry me home, and this time I'll take her up on it. As we travel, I can ask her about possible employment.

“Forget your bike. I'll bring you back later. There's a situation down by the river. I just tried the hospital, but Dr. Blum is in Delmont at a medical meeting. Thank God I saw you.” I hop in and she makes a U-turn in the middle of Main and heads back toward the stone bridge over the Hope at the edge of town.

“What? What's the big emergency?” I'm holding on to the door frame as she careens through the nearly empty streets.

“You'll see.” She pulls up in the dry grass, bouncing into the gravel. “You hear that?” There's no way to miss it, a high-pitched scream.

The vehicle sputters to a stop, we jump out, and she pulls me along through the grass heading under the bridge. The wail rises, then falls. Rises and falls.

“It's someone crying. A kid or a woman.”

What we see next surprises me. Three men, two whites and a black, squat around a small open fire behind one of the bridge's stone pillar. Their lean-tos, canvas supported on poles with cardboard layered over them, are arranged close together on a rise above the riverbed. These are not campers just passing through: they plan to stay for a while. The fellows jump up when they see us.

“Is someone in trouble here?” I ask authoritatively.

“This is the midwife.” Becky introduces me. Apparently she's already met them.

The oldest guy, a man of about fifty wearing a wool cap like a paperboy, steps forward and nods toward the smaller tent. “It's the Girlie,” he says as if that's her name. “She's with child. My name's Will Carter.”

“You the baby's pa?” I'm looking at Carter, but all the men shake their heads no. As the other fellows introduce themselves, I take in the scene. Not a pretty picture: tin cans litter the ground, a string of laundry is tied between two trees, and an old stovepipe sticks out of a metal barrel, making a cookstove.

“We ain't kin. None of us. Girlie just joined up with us in Cool Springs. The goons at the MacIntosh spur drove us off the rails, threatened us with our lives, so we been making it cross-country, heading for Torrington. She's on the run from her old man in Beckley. Nice little lady. Pretty damn good cook even with the hobo stove. Calls us her ‘knights in shining armor.' Can you help her?”

“Is she alone in there?”

“We ain't got no womenfolk,” the young colored man explains.

“No money either,” the third guy mumbles.

The cry comes again, followed by a whimper. Becky pulls on my sleeve. “You better check her.”

I pull the tent flap aside, and my eyes fly open. “Holy cow!”

The mother, a pale-skinned slip of a thing not more than sixteen, is lying on her side with a baby's head halfway out. The girl's not even trying to push, just lying there crying. The trouble is that the tissue all around the infant's head is beet red and distended, as if the head's been crowning for a long time.

“Her name's Docey,” the home health nurse tells me.

“Lord, Docey, how long's this been going on?” That's me. Becky is kneeling to one side, trying to bring some order to the dirty pallet. She picks up the wet, bloody rags with the tips of her fingers and throws them out the tent door.

“How long has the head been down here?” I ask again.

Docey opens her eyes, a startling blue-green, the color of the river in winter when the ice first opens. She shakes her head as if time has no meaning and she's too tired to talk but not too tired to cry.

“Eeeeeee. Owwwww!” she whimpers when a contraction hits her, making no effort to bear down. “It burns so bad, I think I'm going to split open.”

“It's her first,” Becky fills me in. “I got some of her medical history the first time I was here. It was Judge Hudson that called me. Apparently everyone who's crossed the bridge today has heard a woman scream. After the third complaint he wanted someone to go check. For some reason he thought of me, not the sheriff.”

I am hardly listening. If I don't do something soon, she really might split open, right to the rectum. She won't die from it, but she might be ruined for life.

“It's gonna be okay, Docey. You can do this . . . We're going to need warm compresses.”

 

Outside, I throw orders around like Napoleon. “Where's the hot water? Did it boil yet? Get more wood. I need a clean bowl, some sterilized twine, and a sterilized knife. Who has one?”

The black man holds out his pocketknife and wipes it with the tail of his plaid flannel shirt. “Good enough, get it in some hot water . . . Now, do you have any lard?” All activity stops, and the men jerk up from their appointed tasks.

“Lard?”

“Yeah, I said lard. Do you have any? Bacon grease?
Anything?
”

The crying starts up in the shelter again. The older guy, Will, rustles around in a canvas knapsack and comes up with a tin decorated with a smiling pig.

“Patience!” That's Becky. “Patience!” When I reenter the tent, the home health nurse is so anxious you'd think maybe she's never seen a birth before. “Don't leave me!” she says. What do they teach these people in nursing school?

“Make a low table for the water, the lard, and the sterilized knife just outside the tent!” I yell to the men.

Docey yells louder. “OW! OW! OW!” She still lies on her side, and the head hasn't moved. I consider listening for a heartbeat, but how do I know if the baby is even alive? Better concentrate on just getting it out. I indicate that Becky should hold the girl's upper leg, and she does so with shaking hands.

“Docey,” I try, “you have to stop screaming. You're scaring the baby.” I remember Bitsy's words with Twyla, and they seem to work. The girl doesn't shut up, but she turns down the volume.

“The baby's stuck right at the opening, but I'm going to ease it out. You have to push when I tell you. Even if it hurts, you have to push, but just a little at a time. Once we get ready, it will all be over in a few minutes.”

It occurs to me that my optimism may be misplaced. What if the swollen tissue is not what's holding the baby back? What if the infant's shoulders are wedged up behind the pubic bone?

Outside the tent I hear rustling, and I look out to see the men making a platform with two rounds of wood. The oldest guy brings over a pot of hot water. The bearded fellow hands me the can of lard, and the youngest one proudly shows me his pocketknife, gleaming in a still steaming pork-and-beans tin.

 

Hope

Docey cries out again and again, throwing her head back and forth.

“It's okay. It's okay,” I soothe.

“It's okay,” Becky copies me, patting the girl's arm as if she were a dangerous animal about to bite.

“It's gonna be okay. You're gonna have a baby in your arms soon.” That's me again.

With a twitch of my head, I tell Becky to get the warm compresses. She wrings one out, glad to have something useful to do.

“My theory is that the warmth will soften the tissue and help the mother relax,” I explain. It seems to be working. Between pushes, I can now get two fingers in, indicating that there's a little more stretch, and with the next contraction we see some real progress.

“Look honey, the baby is coming.” The hairy head peeks out just a little more.

The men can't help themselves. From outside, they shout their encouragement. “Atta girl!” “You're getting her now!” “That's our champ!”

All my attention is focused on that tight, swollen ring of fire.
This is the part where I'm fully awake.
I make a crown with my hands and just pray that the baby's still living.