The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  I’d felt this might happen, yet still I’m disappointed. The MacIntosh family could at least offer something. I try to let Katherine off easy. “That’s okay. I know you’ll get to it when your finances are better.” (She should know about my finances! A flimsy two-dollar bill is all that stands between the poorhouse and me.)

  I change the subject. “Mary told me about Bitsy just now in the kitchen. She asked if I would take her in, maybe train her to be my birth assistant, but I don’t have any extra money and don’t really need help.”

  “Oh, would you, Patience? Could you? I’d feel so much better if she was with you.” Katherine stands, rocks the cradle with her foot, then floats to the window.

  Why are some women so graceful? Is it learned from their mother or something they’re born with? I compare myself to my patient. Today I wore my second-best dress, the dark blue one with the little white dots with a white apron over it. One strand of my long hair has caught on my glasses, and I smooth it back.

  Even in the wrinkled, breast-milk-stained gown, Katherine looks like a queen, moves like a dancer. She holds the heavy curtain to one side and stares out the window to where the tops of the trees whip in the wind.

  “Did you see the snowball bushes? Mr. MacIntosh planted them last year. The roses too.” (She calls her husband “Mr.,” as many of the older women do.) “He started the roses when we first moved here.”

  “They’re beautiful,” I confirm. Then she turns to face me.

  “Look, Patience . . . times are going to get worse. You need to be realistic. A girl to work on the farm would be helpful. We’ll all have to put in vegetable gardens and do things we aren’t used to.”

  I smile to myself. Having a garden won’t be that different for me. I learned how to cultivate from Mrs. Kelly and from trial and error. Though Katherine has a point; I may have to enlarge the plot and preserve more food.

  “Also, it doesn’t look right you living alone. People talk. And it’s not safe. What if something happened to you?”

  “Nothing’s going to happen. I’ve lived alone for more than a year. Anyway, what do you mean, talk about me?”

  “William heard them at the Oneida Inn when he had his Elks meeting.” The Oneida Inn, twenty miles away, is a restaurant and hotel that’s far too rich for me, and there’s a speakeasy in the back. Not that I’ve ever been there.

  “What do they say? What could they say? I live a good, clean life.”

  “People just talk. They wonder about you. A single woman living all by herself on the side of a mountain. You must admit it’s unusual. If Bitsy lived with you, it would seem more proper.”

  “You don’t think it would cause more gossip? A black and a white woman living together?”

  “Well, she’d be your servant, right? Your maid.”

  My maid! I’ve been a maid myself in the past, a milkmaid with the Chicago Lying-in Dispensary. I’ve never had hired help, never had the money, and anyway, having someone wait on me makes my skin crawl.

  “There’s something else.” Katherine continues her pitch. “Bitsy could bring you some business.”

  I frown, not sure what she means.

  “Black babies,” Katherine whispers, her hand to her mouth as if this is hush-hush.

  “What?”

  “The Negro expectant mothers would start coming to you if Bitsy was your helper. The only midwife they’ve got now is Mrs. Potts, but she’s over eighty and is slow getting around. Bitsy would bring you clients, and you’ll need them now that Dr. Blum has dropped his fees and put a sign in his window, ‘New patients welcome.’ ”

  That surprises me. He’s always seemed so expensive. “What’s his fee now?”

  “Twenty dollars for the delivery and a two-night stay at his hospital. Fifteen dollars if he comes to your home, but that’s only for people in town or the rich farmers. He won’t go out to the coal camps.”

  That’s almost the same fee I charge! Not that I get it.

  Katherine turns and strolls to her vanity, sits on her padded chair, and combs her short blond bob with her silver brush. Then she picks up the carved silver mirror with a little handle and stares back at me. “If you will take Bitsy, I’ll give you this.” She pulls a gold-and-pearl brooch out of her jewelry box and holds it out, dangling in her thin hand.

  I stare at the offering, a gleaming crescent moon with a pearl the size of an eyetooth. You can tell it’s real gold.

  “I couldn’t. That’s ten times too much. I’ll just wait until you and William get on your feet.”

  “Patience, it could be years . . . Mary’s daughter is like family. This will be for my beautiful baby and a beginning of a new life for Bitsy. You can teach her to be a midwife.” She stands and drops the heavy brooch in my lap.

  “Won’t Mr. MacIntosh object? If he needs the money, he could sell this.”

  “It’s not his. My mother gave it to me. Anyway, he hardly notices what I wear for jewelry, or even my clothes. He probably doesn’t know I own it.”

  I shake my head and pointedly lay the ornate crescent moon with the pearl at the tip on the bedside table. It must be eighteen carats, though my experience with jewelry is limited.

  “I need to examine the baby.” I change the subject. “He’s beautiful. I’m sorry I put you and William through the pain of thinking he was dead. I’m still not sure why I couldn’t find the heartbeat, and then you said you didn’t feel him move.”

  Katherine sits beside me on the bed and smooths the dark brown satin quilt. “You gave me comfort in the night. You gave me my son.” Her face is flushed, and there are tears in her eyes.

  Our happiness for this one live baby drowns out my other worries, my lack of cash to survive the winter, my fears that I am over my head in calling myself a midwife. I don’t even notice when Katherine drops the golden brooch into my apron pocket.

  8

  Bitsy

  First hard frost last night, and all the remaining tomatoes are ruined. I thought if I left them on the bushes, they might redden up, and I was mad at myself all day until Charles Travers came for me and I was called to another delivery. This one made up for the near tragedy at the MacIntoshes’ and the strangeness of Delfina’s birth in the coal camp. It reminds me that most of the time Mother Nature knows best.

  November 15, 1929. Almost full moon and the first hard frost.

  Uncomplicated delivery of Ruth Ann Travers, firstborn of Charles and Abigail Travers of Liberty. Six pounds, 9 ounces. One small tear that didn’t require stitching. I bicycled home singing because I was paid five dollars! Others present were Abigail’s mom, a mother of seven. She was a great help to me.

  Mrs. Kelly’s ornate parlor clock chimes five as I rest my leather journal across my chest. It’s extravagant, I know, and the fire will burn out faster, but I’ve left the door of the heater stove open to enjoy the flames in the late-afternoon light. The coals shimmer like rubies. I allege that I don’t know much about jewelry, and that’s true, with the exception of Mrs. Vanderhoff’s ruby. The ruby . . . the ruby ring.

  Under the sound of the wind, I catch another sound, the clatter of wagon wheels coming up Wild Rose Road. When I jump off the sofa to look out the window, I see in the gloom a cart piled with split wood pulled by two burros, which are also laden with bulging gunnysacks. A small dark woman balances on top of the logs with a bicycle tied on beside her. Mr. Cabrini is driving, and Thomas Proudfoot, Mary’s son, walks by his side. They pull up to the porch and tie their animals. The woman climbs down. She has a worn cardboard suitcase and two firearms, a rifle, and a shotgun. It’s Bitsy.

  Before I left the MacIntoshes’ a few days ago, I returned to the kitchen and conferred again with Mary. I tried to be honest, tried to explain. “It’s not the color thing. You know it’s not. It’s just I’m not used to people waiting on me, and truly I have so little money. I know I look better off than I am, with a house and a small farm to my name, but that’s only because I inherited the land from the older midwife, Mrs. K
elly, and the cottage is so tiny, really, I’ve no need for a maid. Right now I have only a few dollars to my name and not enough coal or wood for the winter.”

  Mary, looking worn, stared out the window at the last of the black-eyed Susans along the back fence. Her chin rested in one hand, the other hand smoothed the tablecloth.

  “So,” I continued, “I’m uncomfortable, but I guess we could try it—”

  The big lady jumped up, knocking over her chair. “Praise Jesus! You were my last hope.”

  “—on a trial basis. We’ll see how it goes. See how we get along. At least it will solve the problem for a while.”

  Now Bitsy is here, climbing off the top of a load of firewood, and my privacy’s gone. I lock my journal with its little key, tuck it under the sofa cushion, and open the door.

  For a week, Bitsy and I tiptoe around each other, careful not to offend. At six A.M. I wake to hear her shaking the grate, taking out ashes, tossing in the kindling and split oak that Mr. Cabrini and Thomas brought: not only two cords of wood but gunnysacks full of small chunks of coal, spilled by the railway cars, that the Cabrini children had picked up along the tracks.

  The pile of black gold and the stack of oak and hickory are my pay for delivering Mrs. Cabrini’s baby. If you don’t count the golden crescent moon that Katherine dropped in my apron pocket before I left, it’s the best payment I’ve received in a long time.

  By the time I rise and dress in an old sweater and trousers, the downstairs is warm and fragrant with the sweet smell of bread toasting on the top of the cast-iron cookstove. Bitsy and I eat together in the kitchen (there’s nowhere else to eat), though I suppose she and Mary dined separately from the MacIntoshes. We comment on the weather and discuss the chores for the day. There’s no milk or cream with our meal. Moonlight has dried up and is at Mr. Hester’s, consorting with his bull.

  “Do you want some more toast?” Bitsy asks me.

  “No, I’m fine.”

  We don’t talk about anything personal. The habit of hiding my past is so much a part of me, I wouldn’t know where to start. We just tread the surface of the backwaters, never diving into the stream.

  I could ask Bitsy if she has a sweetheart. Does he live in town? Does she miss him? I could ask what her favorite food is or what books she likes to read, but I just eat my bread with blackberry jam and hot tea. Then Bitsy gets up and clears the table.

  At first I insisted she let me take my turn at cooking breakfast and washing up, but the young woman always rises before I do. I had to draw the line when she got out the washtub and washboard and started to launder my underclothes!

  Yesterday, at breakfast, a deer and her fawn crossed the yard just outside the picket fence that circles the house.

  “Bitsy,” I hiss. “Look!”

  The small woman leans over my chair. “Should I get my rifle?”

  My head goes up sharply. “No! Not the mother with her baby!”

  “Most female deer will have babies this time of year.” She looks at me as if I don’t know anything. “They give birth in the spring, and by fall the young ones are following them around. If you want to eat meat this winter, as soon as it stays below freezing, I’ve got to hunt. The fawn is old enough to survive.”

  It’s the first time Bitsy has argued with me. Usually it’s “Yes, ma’am.” “No, ma’am.” “Whatever you say, Miss Patience.” It gets on my nerves.

  9

  Ice Storm

  All night it sleets, and toward dawn the house gets cold. I toddle down the stairs in my long red flannel nightgown to build up the fire and find Bitsy already standing there.

  “Ice,” she says, pointing at the window. She’s wearing the faded pink chenille bathrobe that Katherine gave her before she left town.

  I shove a few logs into the firebox.

  “Here, let me do that.”

  “No, Bitsy. I managed to keep warm before you came. I’m not helpless.” She turns away hurt, and I regret my sharp words, but I stir up the coals with the wrought-iron poker. Then we both move toward the window.

  Outside, when the clouds part, you can see by moonlight that every branch and twig is covered with ice. The limbs are so heavy they droop to the ground, and as we watch a branch breaks and shatters like crystal. We look at each other with big eyes.

  Then the clouds close in again and everything’s black, like the curtain dropped at the end of a picture show. In the silence that follows, there’s a new sound, the crunch of footsteps in the distance, coming up Wild Rose Road.

  “You hear that?” I ask, hoping I’m imagining it.

  The footfalls don’t frighten me. It’s the thought of someone being in labor on a night like this that makes my stomach turn. I do a quick review of the women who’ve already arranged for my services. Minnie Boggs is not due until Christmas. I shut my eyes and hope it’s not her. She’s only fourteen and the baby would be five weeks early. Then there’s Clara Wetsel, but she’s had four kids and shouldn’t deliver until mid-January. She’d be so early that her husband would know to go to Dr. Blum, no matter what his wife said.

  “Can you see anyone?” I wonder. “It’s darker than a coal mine. Wait . . . a man on a horse.”

  “He’s leading another horse.” That’s Bitsy.

  “We’d better get dressed. Light a lantern.”

  Minutes later, Bitsy and I, each holding a kerosene lamp, stand in the doorway watching as Thomas ties two burros to the closest maple tree. The Proudfoot brother and sister give each other fierce hugs, and I see now how much Bitsy misses her family. Not having any relations myself, I hadn’t thought much about it. She misses her mother, with whom she’s lived her whole life. She misses her brother. She most likely misses the fellowship of the Liberty A.M.E. Church.

  “They need you in Hazel Patch” Thomas finally says by way of a greeting. There’s no “Howdy” or big smile.

  What now? I don’t know anyone in Hazel Patch, an isolated village of about a hundred souls where mostly blacks live. Becky Myers, the home health nurse, told me their story, how they had migrated up from the southern part of the state to work the Baylor Mine near Delmont, then stayed on after the cave-in when seventeen men were killed. That was in ’21, before Mrs. Kelly and I got here. Most of those who weren’t killed won’t go back underground again and now make out a living as subsistence farmers.

  “What do those people want with Miss Patience?” Bitsy demands protectively. “It’s after midnight and a terrible ice storm. Those people got no call for us. Anyway, they have Mrs. Potts to help them.” She emphasizes those people a second time as if they are country and we are too good for them. Hazel Patch is also way on the other side of Spruce Knob.

  “Come in, Thomas. Is someone in labor?”

  The tall man, an oak like his mother, Mary, steps up onto the porch and ducks though the door. Cold radiates off his green mackinaw, and flakes of ice shed on the floor.

  “It’s bad, Miss Patience. There’s a baby coming, or trying to come, but the arm’s coming first. It’s Cassie Washington. This is her fourth child, maybe fifth. I think one died. Mrs. Potts has been trying for three hours, and the aunties say the baby’s arm is turning blue. You got to come help.”

  “We can take Raccoon Lick to Hope Ridge,” I offer, “and cut past the Harpers’ through the woods, until we hit the south fork of Horse Shoe Run. It will take an hour if we hurry.”

  “If you’re going, I might as well come,” Bitsy grumbles, but I smile, glad on this dark night to have her company. She can boil water, get the extra people out of the bedroom, and deal with Mrs. Potts, who may or may not be happy to see me.

  As soon as I step out, I slip on the porch. I had forgotten about the ice.

  “Damn!” I land hard on my butt.

  Bitsy starts to giggle, but Thomas punches her lightly on the forearm and pulls me up.

  “You be careful now, Miss Patience,” he says. His hand is bare and warm, with coal dust forever under his fingernails, and I wonder if he
has any mittens. Then I notice that Bitsy’s hands are bare too. The night is just a little below freezing, but I’m wearing a blue tam, gloves, and scarf that I knit myself.

  “Are we going to be able to make it?” I ask Thomas. “Can the burros’ hooves cut through this ice?”

  Thomas grunts. “Reckon. The old gals did okay on the way here. The ice is melting a little now. We have to try.” I imagine the birth scene, a woman thrashing around with a baby’s arm presenting. She’s crying and trying to push, but nothing happens.

  Thomas helps me mount the larger of the animals and puts Bitsy behind me; then we ride bareback and I adjust the younger woman’s hands so they’re under my arms where they can stay warm.

  Twenty minutes later we’re at the crossroads of Wild Rose and Raccoon Lick. When the moon comes out again, I see the damaged trees. Limbs dangle like broken arms everywhere. Down the slope the Hope River roars, an invisible lion. Three times we stop while Thomas gets off his burro to drag a large branch off the road.

  Another mile and we’re trekking up the Harpers’ long tree-lined drive. The crunch, crunch, crunch of the burros’ hooves sounds like broken glass under their feet, and I estimate that the flakes of ice are two inches deep. At the Harpers’, dogs bark, but no lights come on.

  Just past the hulking shadow of their big barn, we cut into the woods and follow the south branch of Horse Shoe Run. Here in the dense spruce and hardwood forest, branches are crashing down everywhere. I look up and realize the danger we’re in.

  Bitsy holds on tighter. All I can see is Thomas’s shadow in front of me. Thank goodness the last wolf in West Virginia was eradicated and the bears are hibernating. I think they’re hibernating. They wouldn’t be out on a night like this, would they?