Arms Wide Open

by Patricia Harman

  Every two minutes, Sue Ellen pulls her legs back, grits her teeth, and with great courage bears down. Stacy wipes the perspiration from her face with a cool rag. Shawn takes the young woman’s hand between contractions and presses it to his lips.

  With each push, more of the bullet-shaped body appears. I could check the fetal heartbeat with my fetoscope, but what would that prove? If the rate begins to drop, we can’t get to the hospital in time for a C-section, and with a breech you can’t pull or you’ll extend the arms.

  “It’s up to you now, Sue Ellen! You’re almost done. I can feel the cord pulsing, so I know the baby’s getting enough oxygen. And she’s got her arms at her sides where they belong.” I say all this like I know what I’m doing, but it is only the pictures in Varney’s that reassure.

  “Towel,” I say to Stacy. If I had time to think about it, I’d be amazed at my daring.

  Imitating the directions in the text, I wrap the fabric around the baby’s wet hips and lift up. With my other hand, I press my fingertips into Sue Ellen’s lower abdomen, cup the baby’s head through her flesh and keep the skull flexed.

  “This is it, Sue Ellen, everything’s out but the head. Push like you mean it, and if you run out of air, grab some more and go down again. Push until I tell you to stop.” The mother pulls back her legs one more time and puts her chin on her chest. Shawn and Stacy, grim-faced, help her sit up. We all bear down, willing this baby to be born. It occurs to me that if we needed to we could lift the whole farmhouse.

  The infant’s body is out, drooped over my forearm, and slowly, gently, the head delivers, first the nape of the neck, then the ears, and finally, the soft wet black hair. No episiotomy. No lacerations. I let the whole baby fall into my lap, pink and already crying. Bow down, I think. Bow down and sing the praises of the small, the weak, the miraculous.

  We all cry, even Shawn, the hardened, half-crazy Vietnam vet with the Fruit of the Loom underpants now back on his head. “Coyote,” he whispers. “Wise little Coyote.”

  Outside the bedroom window, the undersides of the new green maple leaves reflect the rising sun, and Marley now sings, “Everything’s gonna be all right.” Over and over, “Everything’s gonna be all right.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Mope

  I am sitting with my chin in my hand, feeding Orion oatmeal and staring out the window at the lush green forest. I’m in a mood today, and I can’t tell if it’s PMS or something else. Despite the beauty outside, there’s no joy.

  The screen door slams and Mara swaggers in wearing her work clothes, black polyester slacks and a baby blue sweater. She looks like a secretary on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, has a big grin on her face, and slaps the Roane County Times Record on the table.

  “What?”

  “I found you a job.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah, you! For weeks you’ve been moping around, letting out these long mournful sighs. I was thinking if you got off the farm more, it would do you good. You’re too isolated. I enjoy working at the eye doctor’s office a few days a week and Rachel really likes taking care of the old people at the nursing home . . . You need to get out more.”

  I stare at the folded weekly newspaper and then give Orion another spoonful. Since Mara announced she was pregnant, she’s been way too spunky.

  “Who says I’ve been moping? I get out now and then; once a week to the food co-op and occasionally to do a homebirth or make a home visit. Besides, who would take care of Mica and Orion?” I shoot her an irritated look but can’t help asking, “What’s the job, anyway?”

  “Oh come on! There are seven of us. I think we can cover child care!” Mara picks up the newspaper and reads the advertisement that she’s circled in red. “‘Outreach Worker wanted to make home visits and teach sewing, nutrition, and budgeting. Some college required. Must have own transportation’ . . . I already called Community Action; the position is still open and Mrs. Hatcher sounds interested.”

  “Who’s Mrs. Hatcher? Anyway, I don’t know anything about budgeting. I never had enough money to budget . . .” I think this is funny, but Mara doesn’t laugh. She’s on a mission.

  “You know Mrs. Hatcher! She used to work at the library when you taught childbirth classes and volunteered as Story Lady to read to the little kids.”

  “Sounds like you’ve got it all worked out . . . only one thing. Vehicle. All we have is the old jeep truck and it’s in bad shape.”

  Mara is blowing my mind. Though I’ve resented being stuck on the farm while everyone trots off to work, meetings, or demonstrations, I hadn’t considered getting a job, not since I got pregnant with Orion, anyway. I’m vacillating somewhere between irritation and interest.

  “Well, I’ve figured out the transportation too. I saw Sara and Fred Meretti at the co-op and was telling them about the position. When Sara’s grandmother died, they inherited her new car and they want to give us their old Volvo.”

  “Give it to us? Why would they do that? They’re good friends and all, but give it to us? Does it run?”

  Mara laughs. “Yeah, it runs.” My cynicism doesn’t deter her.

  Sara and Fred are Peacemakers who live a few counties over. I was with Sara at the hospital for her second delivery. I smile when I think of her yelling at the new nurse, “You better quit diddling around and get the goddamn doctor!” Sara never swore, so she was obviously in transition. I haven’t seen the Merettis since the co-op potluck last fall.

  “You were Sara’s coach when they had their baby girl! They want to give something back.”

  Orion is sitting in front of me in his wooden high chair, his mouth open like a baby bird, and I remember to shovel in another spoonful of mush. Mara wipes the dribble off his chin with a dishtowel.

  My friend’s observation is right on; lately I have felt lonely, resenting my place as keeper of the home fires. I rise to put the bowl in the sink and nudge Mara out of the way. She shoulders me back and we stand for a minute in the middle of the kitchen, pushing against each other like two lady wrestlers.

  “You got it all figured out, huh?” I grit my teeth and meet her eyes.

  “Yep.” I’m bigger than she is, though she’s just as sassy.

  “OK. OK. I’ll check it out. For sure we could use the money.” I give her an extra strong push then remember she’s pregnant and ease up on the wrestling.

  Ghost

  Cursing myself for my foolishness, I toss my well-worn paperback copy of Varney’s Midwifery back on the bed. If only I hadn’t been stupid and tried to pull that log out of the woods single-handedly, this wouldn’t have happened. I was so determined to get a road built into the farm that when the group finally agreed, I had to make it happen. My zeal, as we cut trees to widen the trail, outmeasured my strength.

  Now here I lie, supine, unable to do anything but breastfeed and tend the baby. Thank goodness Mrs. Hatcher agreed to hold my job. The door downstairs bangs open.

  “Mara,” I call. “That you?” There’s no answer. Then heavy feet clump up the ladder. With each step there’s a groan. I think of a bear, but know that’s silly. “Tom?” Still no reply. “Hello?” I call out. Why won’t he answer?

  The next thing I know, Tom staggers into the room and collapses on the floor, holding his knee. “Oh, fuck!” he cries. “Shit!” I’ve never heard Tom go on like this. Ignoring my own back pain, I slide off the bed.

  “Didn’t you hear me shouting for help?” I shake my head no, shocked by the look of him. “I’ve been calling and calling,” he moans. “Everyone else on the farm is off somewhere.”

  “You know I couldn’t hear. I would have come somehow.” I kneel over his injury and try to pull up his pant leg. “What happened?”

  He winces. “Fuck! Stop for a minute. I was up on the ladder, almost done shingling Rachel’s roof, right at the edge, when a rung broke
through and I fell two stories, crashed on the lumber pile below. I finally realized you’d never hear me and scooted along the path on my butt. Fuck! It hurts so bad, I’m afraid something’s broken.” His skin is pale, sweaty and cold.

  From Boy Scouts, Tom knows how to make a secure splint, and by the time he’s done he’s pretty sure his leg’s not fractured. Though it hurts and takes a good while, he’s up on the bed by sunset. He lies beside me, flat on his back, like a man in a coffin, arms at his sides.

  Outside the window screen, the evening birds warble in the green summer light. I look down at the scraped-off skin, the purple bruise and swelling. “When you came in, you looked like you’d seen a ghost.”

  “I did. The ghost of myself, lying dead on the woodpile with a broken neck.”

  I’m silent, imagining Stacy and Laurel coming to the cabin after finding Tom’s lifeless body. I see by their faces that something is wrong. They gather me in. Stacy tells me the news as gently as possible, that my husband, my lover, my best friend is dead. Dead as in gone forever, as in never going to sing with me again, never going to make love with me again or argue with me or comfort me or play with our boys.

  “I almost bought it, Patsy. We must be doing something wrong.” He turns and buries his head in my side, sobs without noise, his whole body shaking.

  I’ve seen tears in my lover’s eyes many times, tears of joy, but this is the first time I’ve seen him cry in earnest. I pat his back and stare out the window. “It’s OK, Tom. You’re OK now,” I whisper. “You’re safe now.”

  Summer

  CHAPTER 10

  Wider

  “Mrs. Utt?” I peer through the rusty screen door into the shadowy interior of this rough, unpainted, wood-sided dwelling. A woman sings along with Willie Nelson on the radio toward the back. She mimics Dolly Parton and doesn’t sound half-bad.

  This is my first week employed by Roane County Community Action, going to the homes of the poor, teaching sewing, nutrition, and budgeting. Though it’s only part-time, a component of the War on Poverty, I’m grateful for the work. We need the money, and it gets me off the farm for a few days a week. Instead of worrying about the commune, I think about the women I visit. The world has grown wider. Mara was right. I’m happier now; find myself singing more, laughing more.

  I’m also grateful for the ten-year-old Volvo that our friends the Merettis gave us. I glance over my shoulder at the sturdy faded blue vehicle, parked just on the other side of the creek next to the swinging bridge. Without it, I couldn’t have taken this job.

  “Mrs. Utt!” I yell louder, pounding on the warped brown doorframe. She’d better be expecting me after I risked life and limb crossing the waterway on that wobbly wood-and-cable contraption.

  I hear the slap, slap, slap of flip-flops. “Yeah, I’m comin’. If ya selling somethin’, I can’t afford it. If ya need a phone, I ain’t got one. If ya asking directions, you’re mighty lost.” A narrow pixie face with a cigarette in the corner of her mouth peers through the screen. Etta Utt, a mother of four, is a lot younger than I expected, mid-twenties, dressed in tight blue stained polyester pants and a striped purple tee.

  “I’m Patsy Harman, Mrs. Utt, the home aide from Community Action. Mrs. Hatcher, the director, told me she’d asked if I could visit.”

  The woman glances at the rooster clock on top of the TV. “Oh, gosh. I plum forgot. Come on in.” She pulls the screen open and waves me in with one hand. The wooden doorframe drags across a curved scar in the bare pine floor.

  I check out the living room as I follow her through: baskets of folded clean laundry on a torn imitation-leather sofa that’s covered with magic marker scrawls, dust balls in the corners, a jar of daisies in the center of a coffee table propped up with a concrete block.

  My hostess and, hopefully, soon to be client, escorts me to the kitchen, where she’s been cutting up carrots for stew. I use the opportunity to pull out some healthy recipes I’ve mimeographed on bright yellow paper. “The application you filled out for the program says you have five kids. Is it OK if I call you Etta? You can call me Patsy.”

  “Suit yourself.” She settles on one of the unmatched wooden chairs at the long rectangular yellow table. I sit down, too.

  “Mind if I ask, boys or girls?”

  “Two boys, the twins. The rest is girls.” Etta scratches a wooden match twice on the bottom of the chair and inhales another unfiltered Camel. In the light through the window over the sink, her small face with high cheekbones is more lined than I thought. She could be thirty, even thirty-five. I pull out some fabric and together we clean off the table.

  Tiny Mrs. Utt tells me about her children as we lay out the Singer pattern for a simple blouse on the kitchen table. In the few visits I’ve made, I’ve discovered that my welcome in these impoverished homes is based on my having something tangible to offer. What insures my acceptance is not my recipes, or tips about making the most of one’s money, but the colorful cloth I bring. New flowered gingham is the ticket that gets me through the door.

  “The twin boys are in seventh grade, then one of the girls is in fourth, and the other in third,” Etta explains.

  “You were popping out babies every few years weren’t you?” Birth stories always interest me.

  “Got knocked up nearly every twelve months. Lost a few too. Been pregnant ten times. Besides the ones living, I had three that didn’t take and one that came too early. That was the worst. Poor little thing. The last one . . . He weighed just two and a half pounds. Didn’t seem like they tried very hard to save him. I heard Doc Carson tell a nurse that I already had too many damn babies. Wasn’t his business how many kids I had!

  “They just took his little body away. I never even got to hold him . . . We wanted five or six kids. Sparky had a good job at the rubber plant, before he threw his back out. The doctor put me to sleep and cut out my tubes.”

  “Sterilized you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They can’t just sterilize a woman against her will.” This pierces me like a sewing needle stabbed through the thumb. Not just the injustice but the assault on the woman’s body.

  “They can and they did. Afterward, Dr. Carson told me I was bleeding too much and it would be a danger to have more children.” She barks a short laugh and exhales smoke through her nose. “I wasn’t bleeding that much. I’d had babies before. He thought I was dumb.”

  I take a long breath and show Etta how to pin the front of the golden daisy print smock to the back, placing the pins so she can stitch over them.

  I don’t know what to think about Etta’s physician. In her limited circumstances, five babies seem like too many, but it wasn’t for Dr. Carson to decide. “I’m sorry that happened to you,” I say softly. “Losing the baby and the doctor sterilizing you . . .”

  “It’s OK,” Etta answers through the pins in her mouth. The Camel smolders on the edge of the table. “I’m grateful for what I got, my other kids and my husband, Sparky. He treats me real good.”

  Two hours later I stand at the front door with my hand on the screen and make plans to see my new client the following week. “Oh wait!” The little mother flies back to the kitchen. “I plum forgot. I fixed you a poke with a few cookies and soda.”

  As I shuffle back over the swinging bridge to the Volvo, careful to step over the missing boards, I can still see Etta leaning against the porch post and I raise my hand in salute. She waves back and pushes a strand of her brown hair behind her ear. Wild pink sweet peas grow on the riverbank. I remember it’s summer solstice today and throw a handful of blossoms into the water.

  Betrayed

  “You mean leave the farm?” My voice is high, filled with tears, but I try to hide them. When I look up, the sun has dropped behind the courthouse and the street is in shadow. What I’ve feared for months has finally happened.

 
The three of us, Mara, Rachel, and I, are waiting, on the public bench across from the food co-op, for a ride back to the farm with Randall Shoepeck. This is the first mention Mara has made of her plan to move to town.

  “For good? Both of you?” I’d been lulled into trusting her and thought that now that she was pregnant, she’d stay put. I’m almost choking and I’m furious too, but I can’t say this.

  “Benny’s job wouldn’t start for a month. He just got the offer last week. I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure. The pay will be good and the Spencer State Hospital will even pick up his tuition if he wants to go back to school. We’ll get health insurance and they’re giving us a house on the grounds, rent-free. We just can’t pass it up. Besides, I can be more involved with the local community.”

  Mara has just told us that Ben is starting work as manager of landscaping at the huge old brick monolith on the edge of town, a mental hospital, one of the largest employers in the county. Randall Shoepeck works there and put in a good word for him. I bristle when she says she’ll be more involved with the community. What about our community? What about the farm?

  Mara continues to try for my support. “It’s a four-bedroom two-story house and can be a home away from home for all of us,” she goes on. I’m barely listening. “It’s a great deal. We’ll have indoor plumbing and electricity. Everyone can come to town and take showers and do laundry. And Benny will get four hundred dollars a month. We’ll be able to save money to get the new road graveled, maybe even convince Anne Margaret to sell us permanent access.”

  “But you won’t be with us when you have the baby. What are you going to do? Have it in the hospital?” I throw this out in a mean way, but I can’t help it.