by Rosalyn Eves
After the blessing, Sister McPherson makes Rebekka get out of bed and move. I support Rebekka as she walks around the room. One of the women goes to the kitchen to heat some water; I hear her talking to Ammon. The midwife strips the sheet from the mattress, spreads some newspapers across the bed, and replaces the sheet.
Rebekka sags against me as another of her pains hits her. Her grip on my hand is hard and tight.
“I want to lie down,” Rebekka says, but Sister McPherson says no—it’s better to keep moving till the baby gets closer.
Time begins to blur as the hours pass. The other women and I take turns helping Rebekka walk tight circuits of the room, and when she groans, the midwife encourages us to keep moving. Sometimes she checks Rebekka, feeling up beneath her shift in a way that makes me turn away in embarrassment.
Ammon paces in the kitchen and sitting room outside.
When night falls, we light a lamp in the bedroom, and I remember the herbs Mama sent for just this moment. The midwife insists on sniffing them first, as though she does not trust the judgment of some unfamiliar mother, then says, “Well, I do not know as they will help, but they aren’t likely to hurt.”
Another of the sisters brews the herbs into tea, and I hold it to Rebekka’s lips for her to drink. The tea smells of cinnamon and cloves and something I can’t quite place. A smell like caramelized sugar wafts back from the kitchen, the scent I always associate with Rebekka’s mother. Maybe her mother is here in spirit.
Rebekka walks some more. Her pains are closer together now, but nothing seems to be happening. The midwife checks her again, frowns.
Rebekka catches the expression. “What is it? What’s wrong?”
Sister McPherson clears her face. “Nothing’s wrong. The babe is slow in coming, but that’s not uncommon for first babies.”
Sometime after midnight, we help Rebekka back into her bed. While the midwife and one of the sisters fuss over her, I go around the room and unfasten the ties to the curtains, the strings that bind my apron together. I thought it was only Mama’s superstition, to untie all binds during birth, but something is not right.
I slip outside. Dawn threads gray fingers into the sky, where the moon hangs, a flattened, washed-out circle.
I go back in. Rebekka’s pains have slackened, and she twitches in a kind of half-sleep. The midwife paces the room, gnawing the knuckle of one finger. I sit by Rebekka, holding her hand, and pray.
“Is it false labor?” I ask the midwife. Mama had spells like that, with Rachel.
She shakes her head. “No. The signs are all in place for the baby to come—he’s just taking his sweet time.”
Morning comes along with Ammon, checking on the progress of the birth. He eyes his wife’s pale face with concern, and the midwife says nothing to comfort him. The two sisters who came with Sister McPherson leave—they have their own families to mind, now day is come.
Ammon tends the animals, returns.
I make breakfast—boiled eggs and toast—but only Sister McPherson eats.
The day passes with agonizing slowness. The sun burns high overhead, then begins its steady descent. Insects hum and grate outside the window. Inside, it’s stuffy and quiet. Rebekka has mostly gone silent, even when her now infrequent pains strike. Periodically, I help her sit so she can drink some of the warmed-over tea that Mama sent.
Midafternoon, the midwife sends Ammon to a neighbor for some beef broth.
“I don’t like Rebekka’s color,” she tells him quietly.
I sit beside Rebekka and stroke her hand. I’m not sure she’s aware of me at all—she seems far away, sealed in her own little world of pain, her eyes glassy.
As the afternoon edges toward dusk, the midwife checks Rebekka again. When she looks up, her face is grim. “Brother Walton, I think you’d best call for a doctor.”
chapter fourteen
Tuesday, July 16, 1878
Outside of Cheyenne, Wyoming
Thirteen days until eclipse
The nearest doctor, Sister McPherson tells me after Ammon has run out the door, is in Cheyenne. It will be some time yet before he finds the doctor and returns. Doctors are expensive, usually called only as a last resort in childbirth.
I make a sandwich for the midwife, press some more tea on an unresisting Rebekka. It dribbles along her chin, and I wipe it away.
The faint scent of burned sugar intensifies—I check the stove to make sure that nobody spilled something there. It’s clean, but the smell surrounds me.
Is Rebekka dying? I want to ask the midwife, but fear of her answer keeps me silent. I try to pray, but the words stick to my tongue. I sit by Rebekka and pick at a hangnail.
It’s dark by the time Ammon arrives with the doctor. The doctor washes his hands, using some of the soap I used for the laundry, and then examines Rebekka. Ammon hovers awkwardly over his shoulder. The doctor asks questions about the time of labor.
“It’s certainly well that you called me. When a laboring woman’s pains slack off, as Mrs. Walton’s have, it can be serious. My estimation is that the baby may be locked—I shall see what I can do to adjust its position and stimulate the return of labor.”
The doctor mixes a few grains of dark powder in some water, and tips it down Rebekka’s throat. Some of it spills down her cheeks, and she coughs. The midwife takes Rebekka’s hand, and there’s nothing for me to do but stand back and watch my sister.
A memory surfaces from my childhood. Hyrum and I had been playing with a pair of dolls that Aunt Elisa had sewn for Rebekka from empty grain sacks. A neighbor boy had swooped in and turned our domestic scene (two friends having tea) into a dueling battle. An arm popped off one of the dolls. Rebekka came in to find me and Hyrum crying in unison. She gave Hyrum the rest of a peppermint stick she had saved from Christmas and showed me how to stitch the arm back on the doll. A few days later, she presented me with a third doll, smaller and more misshapen than the others, but that I loved better because it had been made for me.
I don’t want her to die.
Is this somehow my fault too? I cannot see any way that I’ve neglected Rebekka as I did Rachel, but maybe my faith failed her. Maybe the blessing didn’t take because of some fault in me. Because I haven’t kept my promise as I should, because I keep wanting a life bigger than the one laid out for me.
I add a silent prayer: Mother, Father, let her live.
Rebekka groans and turns on her side, and the midwife snatches up an empty bowl from the top of a dresser and presents it to Rebekka just as she vomits.
“It burns,” Rebekka says weakly.
“The pain is part of the blessing,” the doctor says. “As Eve did, so all women must do.”
Sister McPherson shoots him a frowning look. She leans close to Rebekka to whisper, “Never you mind him. You just do what your body is made to do.”
Whatever the powder was, it seems to work. Rebekka’s pains start up again, and she grips my hand so hard my fingers turn white.
Finally, the baby comes.
“Praise be!” the midwife says.
The doctor eases the baby free, and there’s a moment of dizzying relief—the baby is here!—before fear sets in again. The baby isn’t right. She—it seems to be a girl—is limp in the doctor’s hands, her skin a kind of pale purple. She’s not crying. Albert came out red and shrieking.
The doctor passes the baby to the midwife, who rubs a soft cloth across her face, her belly. The baby doesn’t move. Beside the bed, Ammon asks, “What is it? What’s wrong?” No one answers him.
Rebekka slumps back across the bed, a sudden, appalling gush of blood washing from her. The midwife shoves the baby into my hands, as both she and the doctor turn to Rebekka. Ammon drops to his knees beside the bed, his prayer so fast and harsh it might be an incantation.
I’m left alone, holding a baby that mi
ght be dead.
A familiar freezing creeps over me, my mind spinning helplessly.
No, I think. I can’t freeze here. Not now. Not when Rebekka needs me to help her baby.
I force myself to think, to act. Anything. The umbilical cord is still attached to Rebekka, so I cannot move far. I take the soft cloth the midwife was using and rub the baby’s face again. She’s so lovely and still and warm and my heart is breaking with each brush. A tiny shadow moves in her throat. A pulse? Only my desperate wish?
I hold the baby closer to me, remembering how Hyrum breathed for Rachel beside the pool until she could breathe for herself. I pinch the miniature nose closed, and put my mouth over the tiny rosebud one, and breathe. One, two, three. Each breath becomes a prayer: Please. I pull back. Nothing. I press her chest gently, as though that might remind her to breathe. Then I breathe for her again.
I don’t know how long I repeat this, trying to focus on the infant so I don’t see the whirl of activity around Rebekka, the bright flash of red that keeps spreading.
Pink creeps slowly back into the baby’s face, so slowly I almost miss it until the tiny chest rises. Once, then twice, and then the baby is breathing steadily, making small noises in her throat. I start to cry. Fetching one of the baby blankets Rebekka made before illness forced her to her bed, I wrap the infant up tightly. “The baby—” I try to speak, but choke.
The baby whimpers.
At the sound, the others, who have been arguing about something, fall silent.
Ammon turns to me in astonishment. “Is the baby—”
The little girl lets out another cry, louder this time, and his face crumples in relief. In the bed, Rebekka is white-faced and still. For a heartbeat, I think I’ve saved Rebekka’s baby only to lose Rebekka. But no—her chest lifts and falls.
The midwife takes the baby from me, gently.
After that, things blur together. Eventually, it seems Rebekka will live, at least through the night, and the doctor takes his leave. The midwife tucks the baby into a cradle, and I stumble into the sitting room to my bed.
We’ve made it through.
I waver on my feet, my missing night of sleep finally catching up with me. I’m asleep before I hit the ground.
* * *
* * *
Rebekka is still alive, but weak, when I check on her the next morning. The infant girl is tucked into the bed beside her, suckling. Rebekka’s eyes are fixed on the baby. She strokes the downy fuzz on the baby’s head and croons softly.
I know that look on her face. It’s the way I felt when I first realized what stars are: the light of a thousand distant suns.
The midwife bustles around the room, collecting up her things. “You did a good thing last night, Elizabeth. You kept your head during a crisis and saved that baby. I’d say you have a knack for midwifing.”
I should be pleased at her praise, pleased at her confirmation that I have a clear and right place in this domestic world I’ve chosen. That Mama and Dr. Morton are right.
And part of me is pleased—glad to have done something right, for a change. Grateful to have been able to help Rebekka and her baby. Another part of me is conscious of a slow, creeping chill that settles in my chest, wrapping around my heart.
Sister McPherson is still waiting for a reply.
I say, “I’m here to serve.”
* * *
* * *
The next few days pass in an exhausted blur. Sister McPherson comes back daily to check on Rebekka, who grows slowly stronger. I write a quick letter to Alice, to let her know the baby has come safely, and a longer letter to Far and Mama, with fuller details of the birth. Rebekka insists I bring the letter to her bedside, where she adds a postscript in wobbling handwriting, telling them I saved baby Ida’s life.
I even start a letter to Samuel, but throw it into the stove fire when I catch myself. Clearly, I must be tired.
A bevy of sisters from church show up each morning to stock Ammon and Rebekka’s larder with food and to wash out the baby things, which seem to collect at an astonishing rate. I forgot this paradox of babies, that something so small can make such tremendous messes.
The midwife continues to come daily to check on mother and baby. Ida’s color is back and she is starting to regain the weight she lost at birth. When I look at her, at the honey-blond fuzz on her head, I see Rachel. I see redemption.
Rebekka looks at me as though someone has made me a saint. When she thanks me—about thirty times a day—I try to laugh and shrug it off. I’m no saint. If I truly saved Ida, I was only making up for past failures. And if I was the conduit for a miracle, I was only the tool, not the hands that wielded it.
I come in from hanging yet another batch of baby linens on the line to find Rebekka sitting up in bed, watching Ammon, who holds the tiny bundle of his daughter to his chest and spins in a slow circle. He sings, “Rockaby, lullaby, dear little rover, into the stilly world, into the lily world, go, oh, go—”
Rebecca’s laugh peals out. “Into the stilly world? What on earth does that mean?”
Ammon stops singing. “Heck if I know. I don’t know what a lily world is either!” His booming laughter makes the baby jerk awake. Her thin cry only makes her parents laugh harder.
Something squeezes tight around my heart.
I turn away quietly and creep back out of the house, letting the warmth of the sun wash over me like a benediction.
* * *
* * *
Busy as the days are, the nights are harder. Sister McPherson tells Ammon and me that Rebekka is to sleep as much as possible. Ammon has his own chores to do during the day and tends to sleep right through the baby wailing. That leaves me to walk the floors at night when baby Ida stares, entirely too bright-eyed, at the new world around her. I have yet to convince her that nights are meant for sleeping.
On the third night of baby Ida’s life, I take her outside into the warm darkness. The waning moon reflects in her wide, blinking eyes. I make note of the moon’s position, but it seems a pointless thing to do. I’ve left my notebook back in Monroe, and anyway, I’ll be too tired in the morning to care.
Ida weighs almost nothing in my arms, her lightness a reminder of her uncertain beginning. One tiny fist emerges from the blanket I’ve swaddled her in, her wrist only a little bigger around than my thumb. The movement catches my heart, snags. The prophets tell us that there are untold numbers of souls in heaven, waiting for bodies. Waiting for mothers to carry them. I study Ida’s little old-man face and think: Maybe. Maybe I could be one of them.
Light catches in Ida’s eyes, and I look up.
Beneath the Perseus constellation, sparks of light fall like rain. The Perseid meteor shower. I snuck out last summer once to see the meteors—it was worth all the extra chores Mama set me when she caught me coming back in—but in the rush of the last few weeks I forgot about them.
I snuggle Ida to me and sit on the stoop to watch. She’s warm and slight, and she nuzzles my neck, rooting for food. I’ll have to take her in to Rebekka soon.
This is what Mama wants for me—this domestic life, with a husband, and a child, and only occasional glimpses of fire in the sky. I think of Rebekka and Ammon laughing with Ida. The way Ida searches my face like I search the sky.
This is enough, I tell myself.
I lean back on the stoop and watch the stars fall.
* * *
* * *
By Friday, Rebekka is well enough to totter into the kitchen as I’m making breakfast, leaving Ida sleeping in the bedroom.
“Should you be up?” I ask, alarmed.
She waves her hand dismissively. “I have to get up sometime. I won’t be long.” She seats herself gingerly on a wooden chair at the table and accepts a bowl of oatmeal from me. She inhales. “It’s nice to be alive. To taste food again. To kiss my daughter.”
&n
bsp; “I was worried you wouldn’t be,” I admit, taking a seat across from her.
She smiles a little ruefully. “I was worried I wouldn’t be too. At first. Then I was too weak to care. Worse, I might have welcomed dying because it would mean I wouldn’t hurt anymore.” She lifts her shoulders, not quite a shrug. “All mothers walk through death. It’s the price we pay for children.”
I lift a spoonful of oatmeal, turn it over above the bowl, watch the oats fall back to be reabsorbed by their fellows.
Rebekka chews thoughtfully a moment, then swallows. “I thought I saw my mother, you know. Before Ida came.”
I remember the caramel smell in the kitchen. “I’m sure she would have wanted to be here.”
Rebekka’s clear blue eyes rest on me. “Are you all right, Elizabeth?”
“I’m fine. A little tired.”
“Do you know what I remember of you as a child?” my sister asks.
I shake my head, startled by her change of subject.
“You were always so full of questions and ideas, I thought Aunt Hannah would explode listening to you. Everything interested you, and you walked around like you had a lantern glowing inside you. But I’ve been watching you this week. You’re quiet. You don’t ask questions. It’s like someone took that lantern and snuffed it. What happened to you, Elizabeth?”
There’s an unaccountable prickling in my eyes. I must be more tired than I thought. I stare at my bowl, blinking so I won’t burst into tears and alarm Rebekka. “Nothing happened. I’m trying to do the right thing, is all.”
“Yes, but whose right thing?”
My head snaps up. “Isn’t there just one right thing? As women, we grow up, we have families, we serve, we die.”