Once a Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  When the song ends, I can hear someone crying and I know who it is: Jimmy’s mother.

  The trip home is a solemn one. Daniel doesn’t say a word.

  During the sermon and following hymns, I’d looked over twice to see him wiping his eyes. I cried too, though I didn’t know Jimmy. I was crying for all the people who died at Pearl Harbor, for all the sailors and soldiers and their mothers and fathers. That’s how I think of the war now, from the mother and father’s point of view.

  I remember the loon I saw once in a bay on Lake Michigan when I was a girl. The waterfowl swam with its chick on its back. We humans are like that. We carry our children on our backs until their flesh becomes part of our bodies. When a child dies, it’s like a piece of us is torn out and that chunk won’t grow back.

  By the time we get home it’s almost dark, and it’s snowing again. I hustle the children into the house to change out of their good clothes and get their chores done. Daniel goes into the pantry for clean buckets and hurries out to the barn.

  He’s out there a long time and when he returns we’re just getting ready to eat, but he says he’s too tired and goes right to bed.

  “Is Pa okay?” Susie asks me.

  I look into her blue eyes, wishing sometimes she weren’t so observant. The other kids are already sitting at the table, as hungry as little pigs.

  “Yes, honey. He just feels sad about his friend Jimmy Pettigrew. He’ll be okay in the morning.” The truth is, I am not sure he will be okay. It’s like something is breaking inside him.

  When supper is over we go through our nightly rituals, clear the table, wash and dry the dishes. No singing while we work. No spit-baths tonight because we all bathed before going to town. The kids get their nightclothes on and we sit around the radio to listen to our Saturday-night shows.

  “Can’t you turn that damn radio down?” Daniel yells from upstairs. His words are slurred and I realize now that what kept him out in the barn for so long was not just the cows and feeding the stock, but nursing the little bottle of rum he grabbed from the pantry.

  The kids roll their eyes and giggle. They aren’t afraid of their father. Unlike most parents in Union County, he’s never whipped his children, has never needed to. They listen to their pa, love him, and obey.

  “Is Papa a little cranky?” Mira asks.

  “Yes, honey. He’s had a hard day.”

  “More than just cranky,” Danny says under his breath. “He’s been hitting the hooch.” I slash my eyes at him to be quiet. Our only boy frequently goes out with Daniel and Dr. Blum on their vet calls and has seen men inebriated.

  We turn down the volume on the radio and when the show’s over, head for the outhouse and then up to the girls’ room for storytime. It’s different tonight, going through our nightly rituals without Daniel, and I think of the families whose fathers have gone to war.

  When the children are tucked into bed, I creep into our room, undress, and put on my long flannel nightgown. I take out my journal and, sitting in the rocking chair, begin to record the last few days’ events. Daniel snores in his sleep. Not the little delicate snore that I’m used to, but the big honking snore of a drunk. An empty fifth of rum lies on the floor.

  After a while, I pull the covers back and try to slip into our bed, but Daniel is smack in the middle and when I gently nudge him, he won’t move. Drool wets his pillow and he smells like a brewery.

  Ruben, my husband before Dan, the union organizer who died in the Battle of Blair Mountain, drank beer on occasion, but I never saw him drunk. Now, for the first time in years, I miss him. Ruben was a fighter.

  Daniel is against the war and sometimes, like now, he seems weak, self-indulgent, and even unpatriotic. I shut that thought down and look around the dark room. I need to sleep somewhere. . . .

  In the end, I pull the covers up over my husband’s shoulder again, take my pillow, and creep downstairs. Lying on the sofa in the dark, I stare out the window. I wish I could listen to the radio. If I could get away from the news about the war, I’d turn on some jazz and pretend I was young again. I’d be at a union meeting, flirting with Ruben. Then I remember how Ruben died.

  13

  Fear and Rage

  It was during the dog days of August, muggy and hot, that our little Pittsburgh coalition, my roommates, Mrs. Kelly, Nora, and I, climbed out of the passenger train in Marmet, a village on the banks of the Kanawha River, and right away I saw trouble. Close to ten thousand miners had already gathered and they were armed with rifles and revolvers. I’d never been in such a crowd and the mood of the men was ugly.

  RUBEN AND THE other men from our group rush off to try to talk to the leaders, but no one will listen. Urging them on is Bill Blizzard, the fiery southern West Virginia organizer. He pushes Ruben aside. Deep in the mob, our friend Mother Jones stands on a dynamite box, but her back is turned and she doesn’t see us.

  “Tell your husbands and fathers . . . tell them there’s no need for bloodshed,” she cries. “Bring them to their senses!” The women, mothers and sisters, daughters and lovers, try . . . but it’s no good; the union men’s anger has already been ignited.

  They begin marching south like soldiers, wearing red bandannas around their necks, toward Logan and Mingo, the last of the non-unionized counties. They’re going for the mine owners, the bosses, anyone who opposes them, and woe to those who get in their way. Like an army of ants, the mass moves south, thirteen thousand of them, over mountains and through valleys, high on their own rage and moonshine.

  We should have just gone home when Ruben saw how it was going, but he still thought he could do some good. For one brief moment my husband and I hold each other. He wears a red bandanna, like all the others, and I kiss it for luck. “Love you,” I say with my hand on his cheek. He picks me up, laughing, swings me around, and then my friends from Pittsburgh and I lose track of him and travel along with the medics.

  It’s on the third day, at the edge of Logan County, that all hell breaks loose. The coal company forces, wearing white armbands, have built fortified positions at the top of Blair Mountain, their weapons, machine guns and carbines, pointed straight downhill. Within minutes, we’re surrounded by men in hand-to-hand combat, guns going off and the smell of liquid courage on half the fellows’ breath. Through the crowd, I catch sight of two men down on my lover. One has his hands around Ruben’s throat.

  It isn’t a bullet that kills my husband. The truth is much worse. I held the murder weapon, a rifle still wet with blood that I’d lifted from a dead miner’s hands. One slashing blow, from the butt of the gun, used as a club and meant for the two men straddling Ruben’s chest, crushed my lover’s skull. Rage is contagious and I meant to kill someone, just not my husband.

  Ruben’s brown eyes go wide and snap shut as his life’s blood flows out of him and I collapse as if the blow had hit me. Nora drags me away and throws the gun in a ditch. Within hours, she, Mrs. Kelly, and I were hidden in the back of a preacher’s wagon heading north toward Pittsburgh. Two hundred men died that day. Some say three hundred . . . I never saw Ruben again and no one can say where he’s buried.

  Upstairs, Dan’s snoring starts up again.

  Oh Ruben, I miss you. We were warriors together.

  January 25, 1942

  Absolution

  Sorry about last night,” Daniel says as he’s straining the morning’s milk at the sink. He awoke before I did, built up the fire, and went to the barn, so I ran upstairs and dressed in our bedroom to make the children think this was an ordinary morning.

  Now the kids are on the school bus and it’s just us at home. I chew on my lower lip, unsure what to say. In a way, I’m mad, but he’s trying to apologize, so I should meet him halfway.

  “Sorry about last night,” he says again.

  “Well, you were pretty out of it. What was going on, anyway?”

  “Did I do anything stupid?”

  “Not too bad. You went to bed and then you yelled that we were playing the radi
o too loud. You didn’t dance around with a lampshade on your head, if that’s what you mean. Danny knew what was up. I don’t think the girls did, though Susie said you were cranky.”

  As I stand to pour myself a cup of coffee, Daniel takes my wrist and kisses it, an act of contrition. I start to pull away, but how can you refuse to forgive a man who kisses your wrist?

  “So what was going on?” I ask, waiting.

  Daniel sits down at the table. “I don’t know, Patience. I was just so sad. Jimmy Pettigrew was a nice kid. Hell, they’re probably all nice kids . . . on both sides.”

  “Not the Nazis,” I say. “Not the actual soldiers, the SS and the Nazi Youth. Not Hitler and his pals. They’re brutal killers.”

  “The German people have been brainwashed like the rest of us,” Dan responds, tossing back the rest of his coffee. “It’s hard to imagine how or why they think all Jews are evil, but it’s easy to convince any group they’re superior. Hell, look at us. Whites think they’re better than Negroes and Asians.

  “Given the right circumstances, don’t you think some charismatic leader could convince Americans that we’re the superior people? Look at what we did to the American Indians, for God’s sake! Treated them like animals. Almost wiped them out. Look what we did to the slaves.

  “Anyway,” he goes on, “last night I just wanted to forget for a while. I took a few swigs from the bottle when I was out in the barn and talked to the cows. They agree with me, by the way.” Here he gives me a little of his crooked smile. “War is a waste of life. You don’t see herds of Jerseys battling herds of Holsteins. They settle it bull to bull, man to man, and leave the cows and calves out of it.”

  “But there have always been wars,” I argue. “It must be human nature. Maybe you have your head in the clouds.”

  “So, does that make it right?” He pushes back his chair and paces around the kitchen. “Does that make it smart? Does it need to go on forever?”

  “Take a deep breath, Dr. Hester. You’re getting yourself worked up again.”

  “Thanks.” He breathes in and out. “Want to go on a walk?”

  “Now? I have housework to do.”

  “Come on. It will be fun.”

  Bundling up in our work clothes, heavy jackets and knit caps, with our tall black mud boots on, we climb up Spruce Mountain. There’s new snow, but it’s only a few inches deep and even with my bum knee if we keep to the trail it’s easy hiking. When we get near the top, we can see the Hope River, a piece of blue yarn winding through the white. A bare, flat rock beckons and we perch like two lions surveying our kingdom.

  “All I want to do is live with my family, do good work, and laugh with a few friends, Patience. That’s all I want . . . to live in harmony with my neighbors and my land.”

  I blow out my air. “That would be nice, Dan, but life isn’t a fairy tale. There’s good and evil in this world and sometimes we have to make choices.”

  14

  February 7, 1942

  Winter Blues

  The Vipperman Woolen Mill is closed for repairs. There was a fire in the main engine room, but the owner swears they’ll be running tomorrow. Meanwhile, Bitsy has a day off and has come with Willie for a visit.

  “I was surprised to see you at Jimmy Pettigrew’s service,” I say to my friend as we settle ourselves on the sofa and turn the radio low. Another two inches of snow came down in the night and Daniel has taken the girls sledding while the boys build a snow fort. Our old dog, Sasha, prefers it inside by the fire.

  “I thought I should go for Maggie Pettigrew’s sake. She’s a nice kid. She came back to work a week after they got the telegram about Jimmy. Said it was because she was afraid she would lose her job, but Mr. Cross told her to take as much time as she needed. I think the real reason she returned so soon was to help her forget. Her mother is shattered, as you’d expect, and Maggie said she just couldn’t stand so much sorrow.”

  “Do you still like working at the mill?”

  “It’s kind of rough lately. Maggie Pettigrew is the only one who will eat lunch with me, and sometimes the other workers give me a hard time.”

  “Like what?”

  “Call me a nigger.” Bitsy stares out the window. “I’m not used to it. My skin isn’t as thick as it used to be . . . Mr. Cross refuses to put up with it though. There was this one gal, every time she passed me on the loom, she would spit on the floor. I just ignored it until she started spitting on me. Then I had to tell Mr. Cross. . . . I wasn’t going to let myself be treated that way.

  “He fired her at the end of the shift and told the other workers he wasn’t going to go looking at the color of a person’s skin when he needed competent employees. We were all there to do a good job and the U.S. military was depending on us.”

  “Oh, Bitsy! Who was she? Anyone I know?”

  “Probably not. Her first name is Cora. She’s married to one of the Bishop brothers, from over by Burnt Town, one of the KKK that came to the house on Wild Rose Road.”

  “I know Cora. Becky brought her to meet me at the Baby Cabin. She was so excited to be pregnant; unfortunately, she miscarried. I never dreamed she’d be so prejudiced, but they’re a hard bunch, the Bishops, ex-bootleggers. Dan’s had trouble with them too. They beat him up once and he and Dr. Blum got into it with them on the Fourth of July a few years ago.”

  “Daniel? He seems such a peaceful guy.”

  “He is . . . most of the time, but he’s a fighter too when he gets angry.” Then I change the subject. “I felt bad at the service when the ushers put you and Willie in the balcony.”

  “Better view up there.” Bitsy laughs.

  “Seriously, doesn’t it get to you?”

  “You can’t fight every battle, Patience. I’m Willie’s mom and I don’t want trouble.”

  “You think of him like that now, do you? As if you are his ma? At first you called him your ward.”

  “I’ve taken care of him for half his life. Do you think because he’s white with blue eyes it makes any difference? I just called him my ‘ward’ because it’s easier for people to accept, like I’m his nanny or something. Colored women have been taking care of white children in the U.S. since it was formed. It’s only in front of people like you and Dan that I declare I’m his mom.”

  I twist my mouth, not knowing what to say, so I change the subject. “Did I tell you Judge Wade asked Daniel to be an air-raid warden? They wanted him to be on the draft board too.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said no. He thinks it’s silly . . . No Japanese airplanes are going to target Union County, West Virginia. And no to the draft board too. He doesn’t believe in it.”

  “Part of the function of the air-raid drills is to make people feel like they’re doing something,” Bitsy argues. “And as for the draft board . . . how are they going to raise an army in a hurry if they wait for people to volunteer?”

  “I know. I’m with you. I went to my first Red Cross meeting last week. It’s the same thing. We rolled bandages. Makes you feel like you’re helping. It was kind of like a quilting bee.

  “Ida May was there with her sister-in-law, Annie Arnold, from Beckley, who’s come with her two girls to stay in Liberty while her husband, Ida’s brother, is in the air force. I asked Annie where he was stationed, but she wouldn’t say. Maybe she doesn’t know.

  “We all wore white aprons and I was given a large red felt cross to sew on the front. In addition, Mrs. Wade took a small gold pin with a red cross and attached it to my collar in a little ceremony. We gossiped and had refreshments. Meanwhile, men are getting killed on the other side of the globe.”

  A familiar tune comes on the radio and Bitsy taps and sways to the music. “Let’s dance.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bitsy! Right here in the middle of the day? Right now?”

  “Why not. I miss dancing. I’ll show you how to do the Black Bottom.”

  When Bitsy left, I bundled up and went out on the porch. I let my friend tea
ch me the Black Bottom, and it was fun while it lasted, but the truth is that dancing and the Red Cross meetings aren’t helping me much.

  At first I thought I was feeling low because of the war, but then I remembered that every February, I experience a slump, as if winter will last forever. To remedy this fit of sadness, I got out my old seed catalogue from last year and began thumbing through it.

  The 1942 catalogues won’t come until March, but just looking at the colorful pictures of purple-topped turnips, shiny green lettuce, and bread-and-butter corn made me happy. I also made note of the flowers I want to plant: zinnias, sunflowers, and marigolds.

  To cheer myself more, I played the piano and sang the old spirituals as loud as I could . . . “I’ll fly away, oh Glory. I’ll fly away . . .” and then, before the children got home from school, I went out to walk Sasha.

  There was something about the day that was different. A strong wind pushed high, white clouds through the sky. I lifted my head and sniffed like a dog, and then I knew what it was . . . the earth was coming alive.

  Spring

  15

  March 1, 1942

  Fisticuffs

  At eight this morning Dan got a call from one of his clients. Mr. Dresher’s prize workhorse had fallen through the ice on his pond. All day I waited to hear what had happened, but it wasn’t until three A.M. that the tired man crawled into bed.

  “Ooh, you’re stiff with cold and shaking. Let me curl around you. You’ll settle sooner if I warm you. How was it? Is the horse okay?”

  “Yeah, it took a tractor and six men, but we finally got him out of the pond. The ice was still six inches deep in some places but weak from the thaw in others. I had to creep out on it on my stomach to spread my weight out and give the animal an injection to calm him. He was thrashing around so much, he’d worked himself into a frenzy.

  “By the time we got him out of there, his legs were pretty torn up by the ice and he was hypothermic, but I stitched him up and we got him warm by covering him with blankets from the house . . . I got in a fistfight though . . .”