The Last Midwife

by Sandra Dallas

  “I’m grateful they’ve taken to a bottle. I’ll try them on ground-up oatmeal in a day or two.”

  “My ma did that. It helps them sleep through the night.”

  “Would you feed one?” Not waiting for Mittie to reply, Gracy handed her a bottle, taking Benny out of Mittie’s arms.

  Mittie dropped a little of the milk onto Tommy’s tongue, and when he took the nipple and began to suck, she said, “You want me to take them, take them for good, don’t you?”

  Gracy looked at her in astonishment. The young woman had her figured out all along.

  “Is it so obvious? I’m too old, and I don’t want to put them in an orphan home. And you wanting a baby so much…” She thought a moment, then said, “It won’t be easy. Two babies are three times the work. And folks would know how they were sired. If you figured right off that Davy Eastlow was the father of one of them, others will, too.”

  Mittie brushed off the concerns. “I taken care of a whole house of little ones when Ma was feeling poorly. And as for the fathers, well, ain’t nobody’s business, and I’d tell that to anybody who says a thing against them. It ain’t their fault what their pas did.” She glanced down at Tommy, who was stretching his arms and legs. “I wouldn’t mind having them for a little while. Henry might go along with it, too. But not forever. I’d know they wasn’t mine, and they’d know it, too. Even if I could love them like my own, they wouldn’t love me back, not after they knew their ma was somebody else. It’s not possible.”

  “It is possible.”

  “I saw how Jeff looked at you. He wouldn’t do that if he wasn’t your own flesh and blood.”

  Benny pushed the nipple out of his mouth, then cried a little as he tried to find it. Gracy had been staring at Mittie, and now she looked down at the boy in her arms, making sure he’d found the nipple and was taking the milk again. “Yes he could. You see, Jeff isn’t really my own flesh and blood,” she said quietly, looking up at Mittie and nodding at the truth of what she’d revealed.

  Mittie turned to Gracy so fast that she jerked the bottle out of Tommy’s mouth, and he began to cry. “You’re fooling me. He looks just like Mr. Brookens.”

  “That’s because Daniel’s his father.”

  “You mean…” Mittie’s voice trailed off.

  Gracy nodded. “Daniel and me and John Miller—and now Jeff—know it. And there’s others in Nevada that do. But I’ve never told a soul in Swandyke—until just now.”

  “You don’t have to tell me, Mrs. Brookens.”

  “Maybe I do, if it’ll help these babies,” Gracy said. Benny had finished the bottle, and Gracy put him against her shoulder and patted his back. “We’ll put the boys down. And after, I’ll fix us coffee. I’ll eat later.”

  She laid Benny in the crib, then went to the fireplace and built up the fire to heat the water in the teakettle. She put a handful of beans into a pan and let them brown on the fire, then ground them and dumped the grounds into the coffeepot. After the water boiled, she poured it over the grounds and let them steep. At last, she took down two cups, the china ones she’d used with John Miller, not the tin, and poured coffee into them, setting them on the table beside the sugar bowl.

  When Mittie finished with Tommy, she laid him in the cradle beside his brother, then went to the table and sat down on the bench across from Gracy, who pushed a cup toward the woman—the cup that still had a handle. Mittie took a spoon from the spooner and stirred sugar into her coffee. They might have been just two women going through the ritual of making coffee, sitting down for a cup, taking a break in their day to gossip. Mittie looked at Gracy and waited, and Gracy knew the woman would not ask what had happened. She would wait until Gracy told her, would not ask even if Gracy didn’t speak of it again.

  But now, after all these years, the secret of Jeff’s birth didn’t matter so much, because Jeff knew. They’d wanted to keep it from him, keep him from the embarrassment, theirs and his. But Jeff had found out. Jeff was the reason they had left Nevada for Colorado, and she and Daniel were the reason he had lit out from Swandyke the year before. They hadn’t ever wanted him to know that Gracy wasn’t his mother, that his real mother was a whore. And then he’d found out. He’d asked a question, and Gracy had flushed, her hands and face breaking out in a rash, and Daniel had blurted out the truth. They hadn’t expected Jeff to react so, to go off like that. But he told them they’d raised him to be honest, and now his whole life was turned upside down because they’d kept the truth from him. He didn’t know who he was. How could he when Gracy and Daniel had lied to him since he was a baby? He had to find out the truth of it for himself, had to go to Nevada and learn it. And then maybe he’d still be their son, or maybe not. But he had come back when Gracy needed him, and he still called her Ma, and he acted the way he always had. He might leave again. Gracy wouldn’t try to hold him. In fact, it was best that he go elsewhere. But this time when he left, he’d go as their son.

  Now Gracy looked at the woman across from her and told her, “It’s a confidence.”

  “I know that,” Mittie said, and Gracy believed the girl would not utter a word of what was to be said.

  Gracy turned the cup around in her hands, staring into the coffee. It was bitter—in her hurry, she’d burned the beans a little—and should have sugar stirred into it, but bitter tasted good just then.

  “Daniel stepped. It was his nature,” she began. “He was easy tempted. Daniel’s a lusty man, handsome as a racehorse, and I was just an ordinary-looking woman.” That wasn’t the reason he stepped, but it eased Gracy to think so. She raised the cup to her lips and sipped, the hot coffee almost scalding her tongue. “He’d done it before, done it before even we left Arkansas. I always knew, and I forgave him. But this time it was different.” And then she began.

  * * *

  Gracy had hoped by the time they reached Nevada that Daniel’s roving was done with. But there were too many temptations. The bawdy houses drew him, and Gracy could tell, could tell when he came home smelling of the women—their perfume and powder, their sweat, and the woman smell she knew from her years of midwifery. He didn’t stray often, and it was usually when he was drunk, but the drinking was worse now. Gracy was hurt, of course. She’d cried into her apron more than once. But she knew she couldn’t change Daniel. She could threaten to leave, but she wouldn’t, and he knew it. And his infatuations passed in days—weeks at most. They always did. So she was silent about her husband’s transgressions and tried to keep her heart from bitterness. She showed Daniel a loving face, for kindness whips the devil, she had been taught. And kindness brought him back.

  She knew Nevada had made Daniel a different man. He’d found very little gold in California, and at times, they had lived on Gracy’s earnings. So they’d moved on to Virginia City when they heard the pickings were good there. Daniel worked at it, worked hard, but he fought the rock and lost. Instead of bonanzas, he found borrasca. It had been a thin life for them in the gold and silver towns.

  And then when they were almost ready to move again, Daniel made a silver strike, a good one, better than they knew when he sold out. “Better to be safe,” Gracy had counseled when Daniel asked her if he ought to sell. Besides, where would they get the money to develop the deposit and to fight the lawsuits that were likely to come along? It took a gold mine to operate a silver mine the saying went. They could lose everything.

  Gracy’s advice was what Daniel said he hoped to hear, because he feared a mining company would sue, claiming the vein apexed on its property, which meant Daniel didn’t have the right to mine it. Besides, he wanted money in his pocket. He’d waited too long to be rich. Later, of course, he felt cheated and blamed his wife. Still, he enjoyed the money. He’d always been proud of his appearance and bought a brocade waistcoat, a silk hat, a diamond stickpin, and strutted about Virginia City like a silver king. He still roamed the hills, believing if he’d found one good vein, he could find another, and this time, he wouldn’t be foolish enough to sell out
. On Saturday nights, he went into the saloons and acted the swell, bought drinks, flirted with the whores, had a fling with one or two of them.

  The money changed him in another way. It made him dissatisfied with his life, made him think he deserved better. He bought Gracy a satin dress and an emerald ring, but she hadn’t cared about them. Where would she wear a dress with a neckline cut that low? And she couldn’t deliver a baby with that ring on her finger. The only jewelry she cared about was the dime she wore around her neck and the thin gold ring Daniel had put on her finger when they married. She wanted Daniel to invest the money in property, buy the house they lived in and another they could rent out, maybe even a commercial building. But what he didn’t spend, Daniel invested in mining stocks, and in the end, they turned out to be worthless.

  Daniel had always been a happy man, and that changed, too. He became morose, downhearted. He no longer burst through the door at night, ready to share his day with his wife. He was sharp with Gracy, found fault. He complained if she was out delivering a baby and not home in time to fix his dinner, let her know if the meat was tough or the bread burned. Sometimes he’d go to the saloons and not come home until late, or maybe the next day.

  The money brought that all about, Gracy thought. They’d been happier when they hadn’t had any. The money made Daniel want more. He’d never fretted much when they were poor, but now that there was a little cash, Daniel worried they would lose it. He blamed Gracy for forcing him to sell his discovery. It didn’t matter that Daniel had only asked her advice and made the decision himself.

  Maybe if she had listened to the hints John and Elizabeth Miller gave her about Daniel—and looking back, she realized they had been aware of what was going on—or had she been more knowledgeable about the world, Gracy would have known. But hers was not a suspicious nature, and so she was ignorant of what Daniel was up to—until the day the letter came.

  She had been surprised by that letter, the childish handwriting, Gracy’s name misspelled. She thought it might have come from her sister Orlean in Arkansas or perhaps a niece or nephew, and maybe it contained bad news. She let it sit on the table for a time while she fixed herself coffee and sat down to stare at her name. Then she slit the envelope and read the letter, not understanding. Written at the top in the same scrawling hand were the words “read this ladie its your husband.” She read the letter again, recognizing Daniel’s handwriting in it and frowning as she wondered if he’d written her a letter that had gone astray. But why would he write to her? Besides, the letter was written to Jennie, not Gracy.

  And then the truth of it hit her, and she dropped the letter on the table and put her face in her hands. It was a love letter, written by her husband—written to another woman, who had then mailed it to Gracy. Its last words burned into her brain: “I can’t stay away from you.”

  The women Daniel had been with before, it hadn’t been like that. Those were infatuations, hot and quick couplings with bawdy-house women that grew cold after a time. Daniel tired of the women soon enough and came back to her. Gracy doubted that he had ever written a letter to one of them. This affair was different, serious, and if the woman had sent the letter on to Gracy, she must have wanted to hurt her, maybe cause Gracy to throw Daniel out. Gracy squeezed tears back into her eyes. Such pretty words, and she had taught them to him, taught him how to write.

  She thought to destroy the letter, to add kindling to the stove and build a fire as hot as hell and drop the letter into it and watch the paper curl and blacken in the flames. But she didn’t, not yet, because she needed to think. She looked for a place to hide the letter and remembered her medicine bag. But she didn’t want it with her when she called on a woman in labor, didn’t want to reach into the bag and see it and brood over it, not while she was delivering a baby. So she secreted it in her Bible. Daniel was not a Bible reader and would not come across it there.

  Gracy sat at the table all day, neither eating nor preparing dinner. There would be no need for food that night. She would confront Daniel. He would be surprised, because she’d never done so over the other women. And then what? Gracy wondered. Would he leave? Would he force her to leave? But that was what the woman wanted. It was the reason she had mailed the letter to Gracy. She needed to ponder more, Gracy decided at last. She would wait until the next day or the next week.

  So when Daniel came home that night, Gracy told him she had a hurting in her head and hadn’t fixed supper. She was rarely sick, and she wondered if Daniel would bring her soup, maybe feed it to her with his own hand. Instead, he said he’d go uptown for his supper and left.

  Not until the second letter came a month later did Gracy confront Daniel. This time, the woman, Jennie, made no notation but only enclosed Daniel’s letter in an envelope. Gracy couldn’t bear to read it more than once. Daniel had sent the letter to Jennie with a bouquet of flowers, conservatory roses that cost more than a miner’s daily wage. Daniel hadn’t brought Gracy flowers since they lived in Arkansas, and then they had been wild daisies that he’d picked himself in a meadow during their courting days. Gracy had loved them, of course, because daisies were her favorite flowers. She had pressed one of them in her Bible and had made a crown of daisies to wear at her wedding.

  Gracy knew that this Jennie wasn’t like Daniel’s other women, and she knew Daniel was in love with her. He’d said so in the letter. Now Gracy understood why he’d grown querulous with her, why he blamed her for his own transgressions, stayed away from her for days at a time, claiming he had been out in the hills with his pick and shovel. But what miner prospected wearing a brocade waistcoat? she thought now.

  Daniel’s words seared her heart. He’d written how Jennie made him feel young. He praised her golden hair and pale skin, her breasts that were like roses, the softness of her hands. He said he burned for her as he never had for a woman. But that wasn’t true, Gracy thought, remembering back to the first days of their marriage when their couplings had shaken the cabin and left them exhausted. Her face was hot with shame that Daniel would say such things. No wonder Gracy couldn’t read the letter more than once.

  She laid it on the table and sat there all day, staring at it, as if it were a living thing. From time to time she cried or cursed, but mostly, she just sat, feeling numb. She would be there when Daniel came home. He would see the letter, and they would have it out.

  Maybe the fault was hers, she thought in those long hours with the letter in front of her. Not all of it, but some. She had been busy with the all the birthings in Virginia City and had let Daniel come home to a cold house too often. Perhaps she should give up her midwifery. It would be hard. She had delivered babies almost all her life and knew it was a gift. She had made Daniel promise before they were married that she could keep on with it. But Daniel mattered more now. He was worth the sacrifice. She would tell him that. She would wear the satin dress and the ring with the green stone, put up her hair in a fashionable twist and go about with him, too, drink a glass of beer in the International Hotel in Virginia City. And she would bring back the days in bed when they exhausted themselves with lovemaking.

  Gracy brushed her hair and washed her face. She put on a fresh dress, but the effort made her feel silly. A clean dress wouldn’t make much difference when Daniel was in love with another woman. She sat down at the table and waited, and just at evening, Daniel came in.

  “Where’s supper?” he asked, staring at the cold stove.

  “There isn’t any,” Gracy said.

  “You are getting cantankerous. Is it too much for you to fix my supper?”

  “It is today.”

  “I’ll go to town for it, then.”

  Gracy had been staring at the letter, and now she looked up. “Will you?”

  “You’ve grown quarrelsome.”

  “And you, Daniel, what have you grown?” It was not the conversation Gracy had wanted. She had hoped they would sit down, talk the way they used to, not argue as they had in the last months.

  “God, hel
l! I won’t have a wife who treats me like a common miner.”

  “And will you have a wife at all?”

  Daniel had started for the door, but now he turned back. He stared at Gracy a moment, confused, then glanced down at the table. He didn’t pay attention to the letter until Gracy slowly moved her finger toward it. She touched it and drew back her finger as if she had touched a hot stove.

  Daniel looked at the letter then, and his face fell. He slumped into a chair. “I didn’t mean for you to see it.”

  Gracy almost laughed. “No, I suppose not.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “It came in the mail.”

  “You shouldn’t have read it.”

  “Shouldn’t have read it?” Gracy blurted out. “Shouldn’t have read it, Danny? You shouldn’t have written it, shouldn’t have written it at all.”

  He picked up the letter, read a few words, then turned away, crumpling the letter and dropping it into the cold cookstove. “I’m sorry, Gracy. I never meant to hurt you. It’s me. I can’t help myself. You know I’m weak.”

  She hadn’t expected the words nor the sorrow in his voice, the tears in his eyes, and she all but forgave him right then and there. Now that he knew how much he had hurt her, he would give up Jennie, would make things up to her. Gracy wouldn’t mention the woman again, wouldn’t punish Daniel. They would heal together and go on. She leaned forward as if to put her arms around her husband.

  And then Daniel said, “You’ve been a good wife, the best a man could ask for, and it’s not your fault. It just happened. This isn’t the way I wanted to tell you, but maybe it’s for the best.” Then he took a deep breath. “She’s going to have a baby. It’s mine. I know because I’m the only one she sees now. I set her up in her own place. I’ll live with her there.”

  Gracy dropped her arms, her elbows smacking the table, but she didn’t feel the hurt because it paled beside the pain in her heart. She looked at Daniel in disbelief.