The Runaway Midwife

by Patricia Harman

  “I’m Rainbow. I write too, short stories.” She has a pleasant face, tanned without many wrinkles, late thirties, maybe forty, and I realize Rainbow may think I’m another hippie since I’m wearing heavy boots, have the messed-up short spiky hair and am still walking around the store with my backpack on.

  All this friendliness is making me uncomfortable and then out the front window, I see a black-and-white squad car pull into the lot. Now I’m really uncomfortable.

  Long Arm of the Law

  Dressed in a navy blue uniform parka and the regulation mirrored sunglasses all cops seem to favor, the officer gets out of his vehicle and comes into the store. He glances at me and then at the hippies, tips his baseball-type hat that says Seagull Island Police on it and asks Molly Lou how her husband is.

  “Watch the expiration dates,” my new hippie pal whispers, apparently unaware we’re under surveillance. “If you’re nice about it Helen will reduce the price. Not Eugene though. He never does.”

  “Sara!” Molly Lou calls. “About done? It’s noon and I have to get home and make Big Chris his lunch. He’s been out in the cold all day.”

  I nod to Rainbow. “Nice meeting you.”

  “Hey,” she says as I turn away. “We have a little writers’ group at the farm. You’re welcome to come. It’s the first Wednesday of the month.”

  “Thanks,” I say. “I’ll think about it.”

  THE SIGN BEHIND the cashier says US CURRENCY ACCEPTED, and my bill is $49.01. “Don’t you use a bank card?” Helen asks as I hold out a hundred-dollar bill. “I don’t have change for a hundred.” Everyone in the store turns to listen, even the cop, especially the cop, and it’s the last thing I wanted to happen, to call attention to myself.

  “I don’t have a card with me. Could I just give you the hundred and you write down that I have credit?”

  Helen looks at her husband and Eugene shrugs. “Fine then. You have $50.99 in credit.”

  “I’ll try to get smaller bills or a credit card for next time. Is there a bank on Seagull Island?”

  “There’s a credit union at the ferry dock the first and third Monday of the month,” Eugene offers. “They come over from Leamington.”

  “We need to go, soon,” Molly Lou says. She’s pulling me by the sleeve now and I wonder if something else is going on, or if her husband, Chris, just demands his hot lunch on time.

  Eugene hands me my two plastic bags of groceries and puts in a complimentary Burke’s Country Store calendar that features scenic photographs of the island and the store’s phone number and I thank him for his thoughtfulness.

  “Officer Dolman, this is our new neighbor, Sara,” my driver says as we prepare to exit. The cop tips his hat and his big silver ring flashes in the light. It’s the kind made by Navajo artists with a turquoise stone and an image of an eagle carved into it.

  “Nice to meet you, Sara,” he says in a low voice, deceptive and soothing. He’s a pleasant-looking man with short salt-and-pepper hair, but still dangerous. “So you’re Molly’s neighbor. I wondered. Thought maybe you were one of the organic farmers.” He tilts his head toward the men in the hardware section sorting through plumbing fixtures and for a second I see myself reflected in his mirrored glasses: white face without makeup, big eyes, wild spiked hair, a scared rabbit.

  I nod hello but don’t say anything and it’s good he doesn’t offer to shake hands because mine would give me away. They’re as cold as ice.

  “Sara’s house-sitting Seagull Haven on Gull Point. She’s a friend of Wanda and Lloyd Nelson,” my companion explains.

  I see now what Molly Lou is up to. She wants to get me away from the hippie chick and make sure the police officer knows I’m not one of them, which since they seem so disliked, is probably a good thing.

  “How is Lloyd, anyway?” Dolman asks, shaking his head in a sad way.

  “Not so good,” I answer, taking a breath and trying to sound normal. “Wanda is taking it hard. They have the hospice nurse now. It might not be much longer.”

  “Damn shame,” the cop says. “Nice to meet you, Sara. I didn’t get your last name.”

  “Livingston,” I mumble, wondering why he wants to know. Do I look like a thief and a runaway? Do I look like someone wanted for manslaughter?

  Middle of the Road

  Bouncing over the rutted roads on the way home, Molly Lou and I are both quiet. I want to ask more about the hippies, but it’s so clear she doesn’t like them that I keep my mouth shut.

  I’ve never been a free spirit, but many of my patients were new age hippies, organic farmers, artists and yoga teachers. Lots of people think midwives by definition are granola crunchers, but it’s not true. Though our inclination is toward natural childbirth and we believe in a patient’s right to choose her birthing attendants and birthing environment, that’s about where our similarities end.

  Some midwives deliver naked women in the warm salt water of the Pacific Ocean. Others attend high-risk OB patients in tertiary-care hospitals. Some own their own freestanding birthing centers. Others work overseas in international health.

  On reflection, I’m what you might call a middle-of-the-road midwife. University educated as a registered nurse with a master’s degree, I belong to the American College of Nurse-Midwives, go to medical conferences, have a West Virginia nurse-midwife license and attend deliveries in the hospital . . . or I used to, I remind myself. Those days are gone.

  My one radical notion is that home birth is wonderful, and nineteen years ago I delivered Jessie in my own bed.

  I HAVE BEEN pregnant two times. The first baby miscarried. This was in the early days before Richard and I were married. He was a graduate student teaching freshman biology, and I was a freshman.

  I don’t tell everyone about losing my baby, just women who are going through the same thing because I want them to know that I understand the terrible empty feeling when the embryo leaves you.

  Looking back I can see that even then Richard had a penchant for younger women, females he could protect and eventually smother, but I didn’t know about that then and loved being taken care of.

  YEARS LATER, AFTER we were married, we conceived again, this time on purpose, and I carried the pregnancy full term. Richard was thirty-two; I was twenty-seven and we still loved each other.

  The decision to give birth at home was an easy one for me; I instinctively knew that I would be most relaxed in my own environment. The labor was short and intense, only six hours, which surprised me. I was expecting it to last for a couple of days. Sandy, my favorite midwife from the hospital, was there and Dr. Karen and Richard, of course.

  When Jessie came out of me, I swear I could feel each part of her body. The head, with a burning pain, then the shoulders, then whoosh, the whole body. Sandy and Karen were laughing. Richard was weeping. I was in shock. It had all happened so fast. Jessie opened her eyes, looked right at me and howled.

  CHAPTER 11

  Harbinger

  For six days it rains and the waves crash up on the breakwall dragging the chunks of ice in and then out. On the fourth day, in the afternoon, the clouds, like battleships, pass over the horizon. Spring is coming. I can feel it, but there’s no joy in my heart.

  I’ve been here almost four weeks and there’s a change in the light and the sky is bright blue, but I’ve slipped into the gray waters and I’m floating back and forth with the ice. Clara Perry is dead but Sara Livingston of Seagull Island has not quite been born.

  Besides leaving my home, my job, my patients and my daughter, I think I know why I’m in the doldrums. I haven’t delivered a baby in over five weeks and I hadn’t realized how much being a midwife carried me on wings.

  Birth is a miracle, not just for the patient and her family, but for me. When I was with a woman in labor, I wasn’t thinking about what to have for dinner or who Richard was screwing. My full attention was on the patient and there was peace in that.

  It’s like meditation, there’s only one thing that matters;
getting the mother and the baby safely through the passage with love and grace. I miss it . . .

  NOW THAT I’VE identified that the absence of midwifery and caring for patients is partly what’s wrong with me, I take in a full breath of air and blow it out through my nose, like a cleansing breath, then from the back of the sofa I grab the quilt, wrap it around me and go out in the sunshine.

  “Brrrrrrrr!”

  It looked like spring from the big front window, but stepping outside is like entering a walk-in freezer. Before me the sculptured drift that was eight-feet-tall is shrinking, but it radiates cold and there’s not a crocus in sight.

  Sitting with my face to the setting sun, something catches my eye, movement in the rocks on the breakwall. A raccoon? A fox? A cat? It’s the first wildlife, except the red squirrel in the middle of the road and the birds, that I’ve seen since I arrived. It’s been so still and white and cold . . . but whatever I saw is already gone, like a ghost. Maybe it was only my imagination.

  JUST IN CASE, after dinner, I bring out a saucer of milk. By this time it’s so dark I can hardly see my feet, but above me is a sky filled with little ice chips. There’s the Milky Way. There’s Orion’s Belt. There’s the Big Dipper.

  The stars are so bright because there are no street lamps on Seagull Island. As far as I can tell there’s not even one billboard or neon sign. As I put the old blue-and-white saucer by the door, my fingers linger on the chipped plate. Is this something Lloyd put his toast on?

  In the morning the saucer is empty, the milk is gone.

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, the sun rises again into a clear blue sky and I remember that though I can’t call on my cell phone or connect to the Internet, it still works as a camera, so I charge it up again and go down to the beach to take photographs. The first thing I look for is the dead man wearing the Timberland boot, but the man and the swan are gone, washed away by the breakers.

  Happy that the beach is now free of that darkness, I take photos of everything—the curved snowdrifts, the sparkling icebergs floating in the water. I even get a shot of a white seagull soaring over the house.

  As I return to the cottage, I notice that the snow is now only a few inches deep in front of the shed door and this gets me excited. I don’t know what I expect. The small garage is probably just full of garden tools, but I kick the ice and snow out of the way and jerk on the handle until I can finally slip through. It’s a little creepy, sneaking around looking through other people’s stuff, but I don’t intend to steal anything.

  Inside, by the dim light coming through the one dirty window, I discover a neat workbench with hammers, clippers and screwdrivers mounted on the wall. There’s a box of old newspapers and cans of old paint. There’s also a rack that holds saws, shovels and rakes, but the real reward for my snooping is an old Raleigh bicycle.

  Struggling the bike out and up onto the porch, I inspect its condition. It’s not great. Both tires are flat and the treads are worn thin. The chain is off and the back fender is bent. The gears appear to work, although they probably need oil. There’s a basket on the front and cute little tassels on the ends of the handlebars. The body is bright purple. Perfect! (Well, it will be perfect when I get it fixed up.) It’s so retro it’s cool.

  Richard and I used to bike together, when we were at the university and lived in Ann Arbor. Those were the good days . . . when we were still in love. Then later we would bike on the trails around Torrington with Jessie in a child seat behind me. I think of those times and wonder about our marriage. Fifty percent of all marriages in the US end in divorce. Why did I think we would be immune?

  Propping the bike against the porch rail, I take the steps to the upper deck looking out at the huge expanse of blue water and sky. A few last ice floes bob up and down and far in the distance, I can hear geese, one small V heading north, a harbinger of spring.

  WHEN I GET back inside, I get out Birds of Lake Erie, a book that I found in the Nelsons’ small library, and settle myself on the sofa to read about geese. Seagull Island, the book says, along with the other islands of the Lake Erie Basin, is a stopping place for migrating birds. Thousands will come here in spring and fall.

  This is my opportunity to learn more about them, I decide. The Nelsons have left a pair of binoculars. I was always a good student and what else do I have to do? I’ll keep notes in my journal using the bird book. I’ll be the Sara Audubon of Seagull Island! I pick up a pen and begin.

  CANADA GOOSE

  The most widespread goose in North America

  Black head and neck with a marked white “chin strap”

  Dark gray upper body, light gray underneath

  Voice: a deep musical honk or bark

  Migrates Alaska to Mexico, (overwinters in some places in the USA)

  Wingspan: 4–6 feet

  Alaska to Mexico . . . amazing!

  CHAPTER 12

  Angels

  Pale blue sky without a cloud, dark blue water of the inland sea with small ice blocks bobbing up and down.

  There’s something romantic about calling Lake Erie a sea, as if I live on the shores of the Baltic or the Mediterranean, and I try to imagine how this place will look in the summer. It should be beautiful. I’ve paid rent for March, April and May. I’ll have to figure out how to call Mrs. Nelson and see what the rent will be for June, July and August. Probably lots more because it’s the tourist season, but it will be worth it. Also, money isn’t my problem. My problem is getting a bank card and checks.

  Eugene Burke said the credit union came to the ferry dock every other Monday, so I get out one pack of hundred-dollar bills and hike into the village. As I plod along the now muddy road, I sing to give myself courage. I’m really going to stick my neck out today and the mood of the bank teller may be my undoing.

  “This old man. He played one. He played knick-knack on his thumb.” Since I came to Seagull Island, my voice has grown stronger. I even make the hand motions for the song, like we did when Jessie was little.

  Suddenly, from a distance, I hear dogs barking, a high-pitched whooof. Whooof. . . . Whooof. Whooof.

  I turn, but nothing stirs. I look toward the woods, still nothing. The noise stops, so I shrug and head on.

  A few minutes later . . . Whooof, whooof again. High and clear. Then . . . I see them! Twelve white birds, flying low in a V just over the tops of the bare trees. I’ve never seen swans in the air before, have only seen them swimming in a city park (or lying broken on the beach next to a dead man), but what else can these be? Their black beaks stretch out in front; their black legs trail behind. What I heard a few moments before was not whooof whooof, but whooo whooo.

  I think of my friend Karen and how she would have loved this. The huge white birds are like angels against the blue sky and if it were not so cold, I would kneel down. White swans like angels passing over me!

  Nature is a healer, I think. It brings us peace. It opens our hearts. It gives us wings.

  Village

  An hour later, I finally enter the Village of Gull. This is said tongue in cheek because there isn’t much of a town. No stoplight, no sidewalks, not even a red stop sign. There’s a new concrete ferry dock with a ferry, but it’s still locked in by ice. There’s a white clapboard ferry terminal on the lakeshore along with a matching office that says CANADA BORDER SERVICES AGENCY: IMMIGRATION AND INSPECTION. The two men I saw at the airport, wearing sunglasses and their black uniforms with gold patches on the shoulder, come out of the building and get in the white van.

  I keep my head low and my face turned away. The one thing I didn’t anticipate when I came to the island was how tiny the population would be and how noticeable a new person is. When the men pull out of the lot and drive off, I take a big breath and continue to look around.

  On the other side of the road, facing the water, there’s a place called the Black Sheep Pub, the Island Family Health Clinic, Seagull Island’s Ontario Provincial Police headquarters, Mike’s Garage and finally a boarded-up grocery store wit
h a sign in the window that says FOR SALE.

  The ferry terminal that doubles as a bank is my destination and I’m relieved when I see a wooden placard out front announcing it’s open for business . . .

  ESSEX COUNTY COMMUNITY CREDIT UNION

  OPEN THE FIRST AND THIRD MONDAY OF EACH MONTH,

  9:00 A.M.–3:OO P.M.

  Here goes nothing. One slipup and I could be deported, arrested and extradited to West Virginia. I put on my heavy plastic-rimmed specs and black beret, pull open the red front door and find myself in a large sunny room with wooden benches for travelers and a folding table set up on one side.

  At the table sits a young man, dressed in a white shirt and tie with short blond hair and a silver nameplate in front of him that says Girard. He has no vault or money box, just a laptop computer and an aluminum briefcase, the kind a courier would chain to his wrist in a spy movie.

  “How can I help you?” he asks in a precise tenor.

  “I’d like to open an account.”

  “Certainly. What kind of an account?”

  “Both actually, checking and savings.”

  Girard gets out several forms and I sit across from him at his table. Sara Livingston, I write at the top of the form in loopy feminine cursive like the Livingston woman used on her driver’s license. Address: 402 Grays Road, Seagull Island, Ontario.

  He looks over what I have done so far. “Is there a Mr. Livingston? Did you want a joint account?”

  “Not anymore,” I answer, making a sad face. “He died in Iraq.” (Another lie slips out like a weasel!)

  “I’m so sorry,” Girard says without sounding like it. He opens the aluminum case, which is set up like a teller’s tray, and hands me a deposit slip after he writes my account number on it. “How much did you want to put in?”

  “Five thousand dollars US.”

  The man’s eyebrows shoot up. “That’s a lot of cash. What did you do, rob a bank?” He thinks this is funny.