Hill Country Courtship

by Laurie Kingery

  She had a wonderful time singing aloud and enjoying the fine day, and she could tell from the pleased note of Hannah’s little cries that she was having a good time, too.

  “Ah, Hannah, just wait until spring,” she told her. “I’ll bring you with me and we’ll watch the newborn lambs frolicking in the sunlight,” she murmured. She could imagine Hannah’s excited chuckles. She would be several months older, and would doubtless be reacting to the world around her even more noticeably.

  Half an hour’s walking took Maude past the corrals and the bunkhouse and into the scrubland of mesquite and pecan trees, cactus and rock that led upward to the limestone hills. It felt good to get out and stretch her legs, breathing air free of the smell of the salve she applied to the housekeeper’s healing burns and the faint camphor scent of Coira MacLaren’s clothing. Even Hannah seemed to enjoy the outing, cooing contentedly on Maude’s back and chuckling when a startled turkey sprang up out of the brush and took wing directly overhead.

  The sight of the bird made her think of how close it was to Thanksgiving. Was Jonas a hunter? If not, could Hector be sent out to bag this fine bird for their table? She was not about to eat haggis on Thanksgiving Day. She’d seen a pumpkin or two in the housekeeper’s kitchen garden; hopefully Senora Morales would make it into a pie.

  She wondered if Jonas MacLaren had ever had a proper American Thanksgiving feast.

  Nearing the cluster of cottages on the side of a hill, Maude stopped by a small creek surrounded by tall cottonwoods and live oaks to rest. She had untied Hannah—who was fast asleep—from her shawl and was leaning over to cup some of the cool water into her mouth when she heard footsteps approaching.

  Who could it be? Maude wondered, suddenly realizing how alone and defenseless she and Hannah were. She crouched over her baby, whom she’d laid on a grassy area, still wrapped in the shawl. And her without so much as a big stick to defend herself. What kind of fool went walking in the brush without a weapon?

  But the girl who entered the shaded grove would be no threat. No more than sixteen, dark haired and dark eyed, she carried a bucket. She gave a little cry of surprise as she spotted Maude.

  “Ay de mi! Who are you?” she asked, clearly poised for flight. She brandished the empty bucket as if she intended to bash Maude over the head if Maude gave an unfriendly answer.

  “I’m Maude Harkey. Might you be Senora Morales’s daughter? She sent me to visit you.” Now it was apparent why the housekeeper was eager for Maude to meet the girl, for she was hugely pregnant.

  “Oh! Yes, I am Dulcinea Alvarez, Dulcy for short. Pedro the shepherd is mi esposo, my husband. You came to visit me?” The girl seemed childishly pleased at the prospect. Then she caught sight of Hannah, who had awakened at the sound of her voice. “Oh, but you have a baby! How pretty she is! May I hold her?”

  Maude nodded, thinking the girl was young to be not only a wife but soon, a mother. Though April Mae had been even younger, she remembered—just fifteen when she’d given birth to Hannah.

  “I see you’re expecting a wee one of your own. You should not be carrying heavy buckets of water. Let me fill the bucket for you and carry it back to your cottage.”

  “Gracias. It is very kind of you. Yes, Pedro is so happy that he will soon be a father. Please, follow me, and I will show you to our casa,” she added, when Maude straightened again after dipping the bucket into the water.

  She followed the shorter girl up a narrow deer track that led to the cottage, a white frame lean-to perched against the wall of a limestone cliff. Inside, the furnishings were humble, but Dulcinea showed her to a rickety chair as proudly as if the cottage was a palace and the chair a throne. Then she reached onto a shelf and brought out some carved wooden animals and placed these in front of Hannah, whom she had laid on her tummy on a tanned goatskin on the floor. Maude placed one of them, a figure that looked like a goat, into her hand.

  “Pedro made these for the baby already,” Dulcey announced, a proud smile creasing her face.

  The animals were carved with amazing skill. Maude could clearly see that one figure was a sheep, such as the wooly creatures she had seen clustering on the hillside. When she picked it up, its carved curly fleece looked so real she could practically feel the wool beneath her fingers. Another was a ram with curling horns. There was a crouching dog, its mouth carved open as if it was barking, and a shepherd with a crook.

  “He’s quite a skilled wood-carver,” Maude praised, then saw the girl clutch her abdomen, her face creased with distress. “Dulcinea, what’s wrong?”

  “Dolor,” the girl ground out. “The pain comes again.”

  “‘Again’?” Maude echoed. “Dulcey, when did the pains start? How long do they last?”

  But Dulcinea’s eyes were squeezed shut, and she moaned too loudly to hear Maude’s questions.

  Maude waited until the contraction loosened its grip on the girl’s abdomen, then asked her questions again. “Have you seen a doctor since you learned you were with child? When did he say your time would come?”

  “No, no doctor...”

  Maude realized the question had been foolish. This daughter of a servant wouldn’t be taken into town to see Dr. Walker. Her mother would merely help her figure out when her baby was to come, and try to be present to help when it was time.

  “The pains started this morning,” the girl went on, “and they come...every few minutes. They last for as long as it takes me to say a Padre Nuestro or two...”

  Padre Nuestro—Our Father—the Lord’s Prayer. Maude thought about how many seconds it would take to recite the prayer, then came to a conclusion she really didn’t want to face.

  The girl was in labor.

  Chapter Ten

  “Dulcey, I think the baby is coming,” Maude said as calmly as she could manage. “We should get you into bed...” Searching with her eyes, she found an alcove at the end of the room, separated from the rest of the room by a screen made of tanned goatskins stretched on a frame.

  Dulcey’s eyes widened. “The baby? Now? Ay yi yi! Pedro isn’t here...it’s too early! The old woman told me it would not come until the luna llena—the full moon,” she added, when she saw that Maude didn’t understand. “But she also said first babies have a mind of their own.”

  Maude thought for a moment. The last time she had looked at the moon was the last evening she had spent at the boardinghouse—had it only been a week ago? What had the moon looked like then? Then she remembered the sight of the half-bright orb.

  “Dulcey, the time of the full moon is late this month, so it’s all right if the baby is coming now,” she said, keeping her voice calm. “It’s not that early. And who is this old woman you speak of?” she asked, hoping the girl would say there was an experienced midwife nearby.

  “The curandera lives up the hill a ways,” the girl said.

  “Curandera?” Maude asked, unfamiliar with the word.

  “The healer,” Dulcey explained. “An old wise woman.”

  The thought that there might actually be an experienced helper nearby was the only thing that kept her from full-blown panic that would have spread to Dulcey, who already looked apprehensive.

  But even knowing that there was someone nearby who could help did not banish her panic entirely. Maude could not believe she was being asked to experience such an ordeal again. It hadn’t been that long ago that she had delivered a baby whose birth had resulted in her mother’s death, and now she would have to deliver another baby. Lord, what are You thinking, to put me in this position? I wasn’t equal to the task before!

  The answer came immediately, as she recalled to mind verses from the Bible that told her that God’s grace was sufficient for all things. Even for this. Even for her. She could let go of her fear and turn it all over to God.

  Hannah gave a little squeal of protest just then, for
she had dropped the toy Maude had placed in her hand. The reminder of Hannah’s presence gave her new cause for alarm.

  Lord, if I’m to stay and attend this birth, what of Hannah? She’ll get hungry, and Juana isn’t here. They don’t know where I am, back at the ranch house. Please, Lord, help me!

  Maude rose and went behind the screen. Dulcey had changed into a simple night shift and had gotten into bed.

  “I’m going to examine you now, Dulcey,” Maude told her, and began to palpate the girl’s abdomen to determine the position of the baby.

  The results were not reassuring. Instead of being head down, deep in the pelvis, Maude felt the hard round prominence of the skull at the top of the rest of the soft mass of the baby’s body.

  It was going to be a breech birth—that is, the head would be delivered last. A very dangerous sort of birth, because nature intended for babies to born headfirst, so that the largest part of the baby’s body was released first. When the head was delivered last, all sorts of disasters could happen—especially when the mother was both young and small, as Dulcey was.

  Dear Lord, I need Your help.

  “The baby will come soon, yes?” Dulcey asked, smiling up at Maude with utter trust.

  “Yes, with God’s help,” Maude told her. God, help me!

  All might still be well unless the umbilical cord came first—or the head was too large to pass after the baby’s legs and body had been delivered. And Dulcinea was so small...

  She settled down to time Dulcey’s contractions as best she could without a watch. They were coming every five or so minutes now, and lasting about sixty seconds each. During each one, Dulcey would grip Maude’s hand so tightly Maude was sure her hand would break, but no cries passed the girl’s lips.

  “Breathe with the pains, Dulcey,” she told her, and the girl smiled weakly and tried to comply.

  After the tenth contraction, Maude noticed the shadows lengthening outside the dwelling’s only window. It was late afternoon, and they would be worrying about her back at the ranch. With a first baby, there was no telling how long this could take. The delivery might be hours away. And since she didn’t know where to find the nearest neighbor—even if she had been willing to leave Dulcey’s side—there was no way for her to send word. What would they do when she failed to appear by nightfall? Hannah had fallen asleep on her goatskin, and Maude had covered her with one of Dulcey’s skirts, but when she woke, she would be hungry—and furious when she was not fed.

  After the tenth contradiction, there came a knocking at the door. Thank You, God! Deliverance was at hand!

  It was an old woman, but it was not the curandera, Maude learned after the visitor and Dulcey had spoken a few sentences—just a neighbor from one of the other crude lean-tos clustered on the hill who’d come to check on the young mother-to-be.

  “Can you ask her to summon the curandera?” Maude asked, when the old woman seemed about to leave. “And can you ask her to get word to the ranch house that I am here?”

  After a rapid exchange in Spanish, Dulcinea smiled. “She will send her grandson for the curandera. Then, afterward, he will run to the ranch house. He can run very fast,” she added, when Maude allowed her dismay to show. It was already suppertime, and they were relying on a child’s legs to run so far?

  Meanwhile, Dulcey’s labor was progressing. The pains were closer together and lasting longer. Maude had managed to light a fire in the hearth, and was boiling a knife in a pot over it. Dulcey had asked for a second knife to be placed under her pillow—“to cut the pains.” Bowing to the superstition seemed to bring her comfort, and Maude saw no harm in the idea.

  Hannah, however, was not comforted. She had begun a fretful fussing, which Maude knew was only a prelude to the wailing that would soon come if she was not fed. Between contractions, Dulcey suggested that Maude take the corner of a clean cloth and dip it in the honey Pedro had brought her in a jar. Sucking on that seemed to satisfy Hannah for now, but how long would that last?

  As the pains grew closer together, Dulcey began to get fretful, too, calling for Pedro.

  “Does he come home in the evenings?” Maude asked hopefully. She didn’t want to leave Dulcey alone, but if she had to go get help, at least the girl’s husband would be with her.

  Dulcey shrugged. “He comes when he can...” she said vaguely.

  Maude felt her fists clenching in frustrated worry. What kind of a husband left a young wife with child alone, and assumed she would be all right?

  “He comes when someone else can watch the sheep,” the girl explained further, perhaps sensing Maude’s frustration. “Someone must protect the young lambs against the coyotes, the cuguar.”

  It was all very well to protect the lambs against the coyotes and cougars, but who would protect the little lamb Dulcey was struggling to give birth to?

  A verse from the Psalms came to her—I sought the Lord and He heard me, and delivered me from all my fears.

  Thank You, Lord. May I ask that You send help quickly?

  Dulcey was moaning in the throes of a contraction again. She kept getting out of bed to crouch beside it, instinctively seeking the position in which gravity helped the laboring woman.

  The light had faded from the window now, and Hannah was no longer content with sucking the honey rag. In between contractions Maude tried to soothe her baby, but Hannah was hungry and she was not willing to be pacified.

  Dulcey had gone to the window after her latest pain, and she turned to Maude, hopelessness shadowing her face.

  “The curandera will not come now that it is dark,” she said. “She is old, and she worries about falling against the rock and breaking her...how do you say?” Dulcey asked, pointing to her upper leg.

  “Her hip? She worries about breaking a hip?”

  “Sí, sí, her hip.”

  What sort of a healer worried about darkness when a patient needed her? Maude wondered irritably. Her own father had left his home at all hours, and even in all sorts of foul weather, to see patients, trusting in his buggy horse to use the light of the lamp or the moon to guide him. Yet she didn’t know if a healer had any tricks for breech birth that she didn’t know, anyway. There weren’t any tricks for that, just prayer, and she was already “praying without ceasing,” as the Scriptures suggested.

  Her own father had said he didn’t believe in trying to turn a breech baby to face head down before labor. If it did not happen naturally, the way it was supposed to before labor began, then he believed in leaving the baby where it was. Even if the physician was successful, he had told Maude, all too often the baby stubbornly turned back into the head-up position before birth.

  Dulcey was moaning through another contraction now, crouching and grabbing her abdomen. When it was through, she clutched at herself.

  “Something has come,” she said, looking alarmed. “It is sticking out.”

  Lord, let it be a leg, or both legs, Maude prayed, trying to ignore the increasing volume of Hannah’s wails. If the legs were showing, perhaps she could gently pull this baby into the world.

  “Dulcey, I am going to wash my hands again quickly,” Maude told the girl, striving to keep her features calm and her voice cheerful. “And then I’m going to check. You should lie down now, please.”

  Obediently, Dulcinea lay down on the now-rumpled sheets, and after Maude had washed with the crude lye soap and water she had poured into a basin, she went to examine her patient.

  It was as she had feared. The umbilical cord was protruding from between the girl’s legs. It pulsed faintly with Dulcey’s heartbeat. When a contraction seized the girl, though, and caused the muscles to tighten, the circulation provided through the cord would be cut off, leaving the baby with no air for the length of the contraction.

  This could cause the baby to be stillborn. It would be up to Maude to insert a finger a
gainst the punishing pressure so that the cord’s blood—and air—supply was not cut off for vital seconds.

  “Dulcey, you’re going to have to stay in bed for the rest of your labor,” she told the weary girl as she wiped beads of sweat from Dulcey’s forehead with a cloth. “And I want you to lie down on your left side. We’ll prop you so that your hips are higher than your head.” In simple terms, she explained why—because the baby’s head was not coming first, gravity would become their enemy instead of their ally, pressing on the endangered cord.

  Maude saw a single tear slip out of one of Dulcey’s eyes, but then she nodded and obediently lay down again. There was only one large pillow in the humble dwelling, so Maude used every blanket she could find to prop the girl’s hips up and take pressure off the cord.

  With the next contraction, Maude inserted a finger into the birth canal, keeping the intense squeezing pressure off the cord, and it kept pulsating, though she thought for a moment the force of the contracting muscles against the pelvic bone would surely break her finger. After the contraction was over, she inserted her finger farther, hoping she would feel a foot, but she could find nothing yet. The feet were probably tucked up around the chest, which would make it harder to deliver the baby, for there was nothing she could grab on to and pull.

  Lord, stay with me, she prayed, steeling herself to ignore Hannah’s crying. Let this baby come quickly but safely. She had no idea how much longer this labor would take or how she could help the baby or the mother if it took too much longer.

  She lost track of time, and her entire world became a series of contractions and prayers she said out loud, knowing that Dulcey was in too much pain to really comprehend them. Like many laboring mothers at this stage, the girl despaired of the ordeal ever being over.