by Judy Baer
“Bedtime, Geri.”
She moved away from me.
“Come on, Geri, don’t give me any trouble tonight. I’ll help you take your jacket off.” Feeling bone weary and ready for bed, I wasn’t ready for an argument. Geri is a bit of a night owl. “You aren’t going to a fashion show, you know.”
She grunted in protest and planted her hefty backside on a floor pillow as if to say, “Make me.”
“Let’s take off the jacket.”
Geri looked at me as if to say, “Who, moi?”
She can be so willful and obstinate sometimes—especially when I’m already exhausted. “Okay, you stubborn, vain, egotistical sow, I’ll teach you!” And I lunged for her thinking I could wrestle her to the ground, but Geri squealed and escaped like the proverbial greased pig. She ran into the bathroom and skidded into the side of the bathtub.
Geranium is never very good on tile. Her little hooves just can’t get a grip.
It’s not every woman who owns a pig—or wants to—but I’ve never considered myself an ordinary woman.
Geranium was, for a time, a preschool mascot at the private school at which I taught. When I announced my resignation, the staff and children voted that Geranium should come with me, a bit of tender pork by which to remember them. This was much to the relief of the administration, who had been wondering how to break it to the kids that Geri’s feed bill had been cut out of the budget.
Although my mother did become hysterical for a while upon learning her first grandchild was actually a potbelly pig, she’s come to appreciate Geranium. Pigs are very smart. Geranium is capable of similar reasoning and mischief making to that of a four-or five-year-old child. She needs me. Having been a kindergarten teacher, I’m able to stay one step ahead of her most of the time.
I wrestled her out of her little denim jean jacket with the industrial snaps on the arms. Geranium loves her jacket. She’s very vain and self-important for a pig.
Once she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she willingly let me unsnap the jacket, and trotted outside through the pet door that leads to her sandbox-size litter box and her bed. Geranium is small, which is fortunate for me. She weighs about sixty-five pounds and stands just over a foot tall and approximately two feet long. Pigs are very compact and have hard bodies, so Geri actually takes up very little space—not much more than a large footstool. She’s at least twenty pounds lighter than Hildy and has no tail to sweep everything off coffee tables. In truth, she’s a lot easier to handle than Hildy, who, when I enter the front door, sometimes jumps up and puts her paws on my shoulders to lick my face.
That was another thing about Hank that made me know we’d never work out as a couple. He thought pigs belonged in pigpens in the state of Iowa and nowhere else on the planet. He’s going to have a bad shock when he sees his first pig farm in Mississippi.
He also bought into all the clichés and fallacious stigmas about pigs, and wouldn’t be convinced that the term “dirty as a pig” is pure falsehood. Pigs are very clean animals if not forced to live in untended stys. In fact, even under those conditions, a pig will use only one corner of the pigpen as a toilet. It’s where they’re forced to live, not the pigs themselves, that is to blame for the phrase “stink like a pig.”
Pigs have no odor. I tried to make Hank smell Geranium once to find that out for himself, but he refused. Yet another chink in our relationship.
The other public relations problem pigs have is that they like to roll in the mud. They don’t like being warm and can actually get sunburned if they’re exposed too much. Therefore they roll in the mud to cool off and keep the sun off their skin. Does anyone criticize a woman for using sunblock? I think not.
The telephone rang just as Hildy and I were settling in for the night. It was Mandie, a young single mother whose parents had just hired me to be her doula. She was crying.
“Molly?”
“What is it, honey?”
“I’m so scared. I went to the doctor today, and he says that I could give birth any time now. I don’t want to give birth, Molly.” She hiccuped tearfully. “I want it to stop!”
It’s a little late for that now. Tactfully I didn’t point that out.
“Things are going to be fine,” I assured her. “You’re a healthy young woman. You have a wonderful doctor to care for you, and I’m here for you, too.”
“I’m not a woman, I’m just a kid!”
Truer words were never spoken. Babies having babies. I see far too much of it and it breaks my heart. But it’s not my place to judge. I’m called to be salt and light to these girls, Jesus embodied in me.
“How do you feel?” I asked. “Are you having pain?”
“No. I just keep thinking…”
“How about if I talk you through some deep-breathing exercises? It might be time to give your brain a rest.”
I stayed on the line until Mandie was calmer and ready to sleep.
Hildy snuffled wetly and shifted so that her legs were rigid, managing to take up two-thirds of the mattress. I could hear Geranium rooting around in her pen for nonexistent truffles and the tick of my grandparents’ old clock in the living room. All was right with the world.
The telephone rang at 8:00 a.m. I tried to ignore it and let my answering machine pick up, but then I remembered Mandie. She might be in labor.
“Hullo?” I snuffled into the phone, my voice scratchy from disuse.
“Wake up, sleepyhead! It’s play day!” Lissy sounded annoyingly chipper.
Saturdays are always play days for Lissy. She tries to pack an entire week’s worth of fun into eight or ten hours and always wants company doing it—me.
“I might have a baby coming today.”
“Then we should go soon so we can get a few hours in before you have to be at work.”
“I need to do laundry,” I reminded her. “I’ve had a busy week.”
“Nonsense. We’ll just buy you new clothes. If you can’t go two or three weeks without washing, you’re definitely short.”
“I thought we were going to a museum one day.”
“Fine, be cerebral and dull. How about the Science Museum? That’s my speed. They’ve got lots of dinosaurs.”
“Do we need to borrow a child to go there?”
“Nah. We’ll just pretend ours are already there, running around. That place is always stuffed with kids. You shop with me, I’ll go to the museum with you. Deal?”
Why fight it? Lissy is a lot like Geranium and Hildy. It rarely pays to argue with hardheaded females.
Chapter Three
Of course Lissy had her way and I didn’t. We went shopping.
Lissy pulled a navy-blue suit off the rack and waved it under my nose. “How about this? This would be great for church and it would subdue that red hair of yours.”
“Why on earth would I want to do that?” I held up a broomstick skirt in all the colors of the rainbow. “What do you think of this?”
“It’s a bad accident in the crayon factory. Too many colors.”
I held it up and looked at myself in the mirror. My red hair was fighting against the bond of the braid I’d woven, and so a wild cloud of rusty red framed my face. The bright teal shirt I wore accented the giddy colors in the skirt.
“If that skirt could talk, it would say—” Lissy covered her ears “—too loud, turn down the volume!”
That helped me to make up my mind. I handed it to a hovering clerk. “I’ll take it.”
“She’s a free spirit,” Lissy muttered grimly, as if in apology for my fashion blunder. “I’ve been trying to tame her but it is like domesticating the wind.”
“I think it’s lovely,” the clerk assured me. “Distinctive.”
“See?” I hissed when the woman moved away. “Distinctive. Like me.”
“I can’t shop with you any longer,” Lissy announced. “I’m having a color overload. Let’s get something to eat.”
That was fine with me. I’d rather eat than shop any day.
“How’s The Project going?”
The Project. My big idea, my dream.
Maybe it has something to do with the fact that as a kindergarten teacher I used to like things orderly in my classroom. Everything had a place and that’s where we kept it. Although I actually thrive in chaos at home—my arty side coming out, I suppose—I was very different at school, the only teacher at school who had a Rolodex and a tickle file to remind me of upcoming events. Things make sense to me when they’re organized into groups. Snow pants go in closets, blocks go with blocks and crayons go into the crayon bins.
And doulas, I think, would fit nicely into an agency where they are available and easy to find. When patients start asking questions about birthing assistants or coaches, I believe a doctor should be able to hand them a business card with the name of my big idea—Birthing Buddies—as I fondly refer to it, and allow women to research dozens of doulas before they pick the one best suited for them.
My biggest hurdle and one of the most important parts of the dream is to be an independent agency that has office space and headquarters within the facility. Just being under the Bradshaw Medical roof would be an amazing way to let people know we exist. They rent space to the people with coffee and snack carts on the main floor. Why not me?
Why they should oppose it, I can’t imagine. Labors are shorter by twenty-five percent, and the use of C-sections, epidurals, forceps and medication drop significantly when doulas are involved. We also help the bonding process between mother and baby. When a laboring mother has someone mothering her, things simply go more smoothly.
“It’s going to be an uphill climb. Worse, now that Dr. Reynolds is at the hospital. I suspect he will be opposed to a doula program, especially one offered in conjunction with the birthing classes with which I’m involved.”
“Why Bradshaw General? Why not an independent office somewhere?”
“Because a gift was left to the hospital for the express benefit of encouraging them to enhance a doula and midwife program.”
“I heard something about that. Why? What happened?”
“Some wealthy grandparents watched their daughter breeze through her labor and delivery and credited it all to her doula.”
“And that would be you?” Lissy asked suspiciously. “Why didn’t you tell me until now? That’s a huge affirmation to doulas everywhere.”
“I was just doing my job. Apparently the woman had been very difficult prior to hiring me, that’s all.”
“You do much more than that,” Lissy said. “I’ve had patients tell me that if they could have one person with them through labor and delivery, they’d pick their doula over their spouses, even over the doctor.”
She eyed me thoughtfully. “So that buzz about the hospital getting some sort of gift was because of you. Impressive.”
“It’s not that big a deal.” There’s been more than one time in my life—and less stressful ones than giving birth—that I would have liked someone to watch over me, give me ice chips, rub my back and turn up the aromatherapy. “A doctor I met at another hospital while his own wife was giving birth encouraged me to pursue it. Dr. Chase Andrews seemed to think it would work.”
“Then why don’t you go to his hospital and ask if you can coordinate Doula Central there?”
“Bradshaw is the hospital that received the money. I’d like to see it here. It’s a five-minute drive from my house. I help Tony with classes here at Bradshaw and—” I hung my head, ashamed to admit I’d been snooping in the nooks and crannies of the hospital “—they have a couple of unused rooms right now. It would be easy to have something up and running there in no time.”
“Bradshaw is a pretty staid private hospital,” Lissy pointed out. “But it seems that agreeing to spend money already specified for a doula program wouldn’t be that difficult. What is standing in your way now?”
“The new wrinkle is Dr. Clay Reynolds. Everyone defers to him, and I know he’s opposed. He steamrolled right over me and my client. His form of medicine is ‘my way or the highway.’ There’s no way he’ll encourage this.”
“Just the kind of guy that bothers you most.” Lissy looked concerned. “Don’t stir up any trouble, Molly. People love you and you have a great reputation, but if Bradshaw has to choose between you and their new golden-boy doctor, you know they won’t choose you.”
I know that all too well. It’s just that I care so much about seeing this happen and I believe so completely in what doulas do. We make a difference.
“I’ve already spent way too much time trying to figure out what Clay Reynolds’s problem is. It’s getting boring.”
“Yeah. What’s not to like about birthing coaches? You’d think he’d like the idea of having someone in the room calming nervous mothers before they give birth. You’ll just have to prove to him how indispensable you are.”
“I’m as ‘indispensable’ as tissue paper as far as Reynolds is concerned. It’s written all over his face.”
“His very handsome face,” Lissy corrected.
“When he looks at me it’s as if he smells bad cheese or sour milk.”
“Don’t you think you’re exaggerating just a little?”
I thought about my encounter with Dr. Reynolds on my way out of the hospital after Brenda’s delivery. I was carrying my inflated exercise ball and CD player, equipment I use for my clients during labor. If I’d had a dirty pitchfork over my shoulder and the fragrance of eau de cow barn as my perfume, he wouldn’t have looked any more distressed to see me. Surely my Birkenstocks hadn’t been what pushed him over the edge.
“Don’t worry. He’ll loosen up.”
“I’m not so sure. He’s a throwback to the 1950s, as far as I’m concerned.”
“What a shame. He’s probably one of the best-looking men I’ve ever met.” Then Lissy shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands, palms up. “But pretty is as pretty does, and this whole thing doesn’t look all that attractive.”
My cell phone rang and Lissy groaned. “Don’t tell me our shopping trip is over.”
I flipped open the phone. “Hello….”
“Hey, beautiful. Did you forget our date?”
“Tony? What are you talking about…?” I glanced at my wristwatch. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“I’ll hold the fort, but they will be wanting you.”
I closed my phone. “Sorry, Lissy, I have to go. Tony’s waiting for me at the free clinic. We volunteered to do a class for expectant moms today. I can’t believe I forgot.”
“It was that dumb skirt you bought,” I heard Lissy mumble behind me. “All those colors made you go insane.”
The free clinic is not much to look at but it serves the purpose. Built in the seventies, the rooms are small and sterile-looking with ugly tan-and-brown tile and white cinderblock walls. Still, it’s clean, and the volunteers have hung brightly colored pictures on all the walls. In the pediatric area, there are bright, childlike drawings everywhere. The room in which Tony and I do our Lamaze classes has posters of babies in utero, showing the amazing growth from a few cells to a fully formed infant.
Tony had already set up the room for class and was standing, legs spread, knees locked and arms crossed over his chest, with his back to the room, staring out the window onto the street. He dipped his head in recognition as I moved to stand beside him but he didn’t turn to look at me.
“You believe in God, right, Molly?”
“Of course. So do you.”
Tony is from a large, boisterous family with a strong background of faith. That is one of the things that I enjoy most about him, his openness to conversation about faith. “Why would you ask?”
“Do you doubt Him sometimes?”
I took a sip from the cup of muddy coffee I’d poured upon entering. “I’m human, if that’s what you mean. Sure I doubt…and question…and wonder…but I a
lways come to the same conclusion.”
“And that is?”
“That He’s up there and I’m down here and He knows best.”
“Yeah, that’s what I think, too, but…”
“Did something happen to put you in this mood?”
“My older sister called this morning. She and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for nearly five years and they’ve finally decided to pursue adoption.” His gaze locked on a boarded-up store-front across the street. “Why do some families get to experience a pregnancy and bring home a baby and others don’t?”
“You know the scientific answers better than I do.”
He looked at me despairingly.
“‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy,’” I murmured. “Proverbs 13:12.”
“My sister and her husband are heartsick right now, that’s for sure.”
It’s easy to move from optimistic and expectant to despondent and give up hope when we don’t get what we want. I have traveled that path plenty and I’ve only figured out one solution.
“I like to remind myself that hope is deferred. It’s delayed, not canceled or destroyed.”
“So you think that just because you don’t get something right away, that doesn’t mean you will never get it?”
“I may not get it in the form I expected, but I have to trust I’ll get something better.”
“When does ‘life and joy’ come, then?”
“The Old Testament saints waited a long time for Christ to come. That’s what that verse talks about.”
“My sister hasn’t got that long.”
“Sometimes God gives us something even better than what we think we want.”
Tony looked irritated. “What’s better than a baby?”
“You’ve got me there.” I put my hand on his arm. “I don’t know the answers, Tony. I doubt I even know the questions. Sometimes I just have to trust that things will work out. That’s what God asks of us, after all.”
I recalled a verse from Luke that I’d learned in Sunday School. “‘Don’t be afraid, little flock. For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the kingdom.’”