The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  Those were the days when on Friday nights we’d have friends, both men and women, over for Irish stew and homemade bread. We’d read out loud the poems of Walt Whitman, passages by Tolstoy and polemics from the International Workers Association. Once Emma Goldman stopped by and several times Mother Jones, the union organizer, did too.

  Mother’s given name was Mary Harris Jones, and she’d been a dressmaker before her four children died of yellow fever and she joined with the United Mine Workers. Most people don’t know that. She carried her sadness like I carry mine, under her heart. If you’d asked how she dealt with it, for a moment she wouldn’t have known what you meant. Then she might pull the dried knot of pain out and stare at it like a foreign thing until she remembered . . .

  Mother Jones brought John L. Lewis with her. This was before he was president of the UMW, but I didn’t like him. He watched me from under his thick black eyebrows and smelled like Mr. Vanderhoff. Daisy Lampkin, our black suffragette friend, introduced us to W. E. B. Du Bois when he was in Pittsburgh on NAACP business. Daisy was a real firecracker. I’d never seen a woman with so much energy and passion for justice.

  As the night wore on, we’d drink homemade wine that Nora made and sing Joe Hill’s songs, “The Tramp,” “There Is Power in a Union,” and my favorite, “The Rebel Girl.”

  “That’s the Rebel Girl, that’s the Rebel Girl, to the working class she’s a precious pearl. She brings courage, pride and joy to the fighting Rebel Boy.” Ruben came with Mother Jones one time too, but we didn’t even say hello.

  On cold nights, when the temperature outside was below zero and the coal heater stove couldn’t keep up, the three of us slept together in Mrs. Kelly’s big bed, Nora, Sophie, and I. We’d snuggle under the feather quilt in our long flannel nightgowns and call ourselves the three bears. Nora was the papa, though she dressed the most womanly, Mrs. Kelly the mama, and I was Baby Bear. We’d laugh so hard, Mrs. Kelly would have to run to the potty to pee.

  16

  Dreams

  Lately, I’ve been bothered by dreams, and I suspect Mr. Hester’s presence in the house has affected me.

  First I dream of Lawrence.

  We’re walking along the boardwalk in Chicago on a warm fall day. He’s a tall, slim man with the yellow hair of a Swede and light blue eyes. I’m sixteen, and when his baby kicks, I grab his hand to show him, then step up on a park bench and leap on his back. Laughing, Lawrence runs around the park, holding my legs, my arms outstretched like a seagull. “I’m flying!” I yell.

  My face is wet when I wake. It’s been so long since I was young and in love. A pounding on the door downstairs jerks me out of my tears.

  December 29, 1929. Dark moon, dark night for travel.

  Unexpected summons to the home of Mrs. Clara Wetsel of Liberty. She was in labor with her fourth baby and having heavy bleeding. Her husband and she didn’t want to call on Dr. Blum because they’re still beholden to him for forty-five dollars after her husband, J.K., lost his arm at the sawmill.

  Clara gave birth one hour after I got there, and I gave her some pennyroyal tea, which caused her to cramp, and massaged her uterus until the clots came out and the bleeding stopped. (Reminder to myself for next spring! Grow more pennyroyal, as it’s useful for many things, including getting fleas off the dogs.) I was paid a loaf of bread and a bushel of potatoes. Got back into bed and dropped into sleep as if I’d never been disturbed.

  Ruben

  The second dream is of my late husband.

  The Polish Club is crowded with steelworkers and radicals. There’s a smell of tobacco and beer. Ruben sits at the end of a long table, surrounded by friends.

  Ruben’s a big man, over six four, with a large jaw and a flat nose like a prizefighter, but his brown eyes snap with intelligence and good humor. His stories are funnier and his laugh louder and more infectious than anyone else’s. Even if he weren’t wearing a red shirt open at the throat, he’d be hard not to notice.

  He winks at me and the pink rushes into my cheeks. When I get up to buy a glass of cold cider, he meets me at the bar, spins me around, and gives me a kiss.

  Waking to the cold room, I can still taste his mouth, feel his familiar skin, one day from a shave, and his curly wild hair. I run my hand across the bed, reaching for him. He always took the left-hand side.

  My socialist husband didn’t start out to be a union organizer. He wasn’t ever a miner or a factory worker, which embarrassed him if it ever came up. He was a college graduate from the University of Pennsylvania (the same school Mr. Hester went to, now that I think of it) and a writer for the Pittsburgh Press. In December of 1907, as a green reporter, he was sent to get a story about the Monongah mine explosion in West Virginia, fifty miles southwest of Pittsburgh.

  “I spent a week there,” he tells me on our first date over coffee and crullers at the German café near the Point. “And it changed my life, talking to the widows and the priests watching the bodies being brought out of the mine.

  “The corpses were carried on stretchers by the dozens and taken to the morgue, where a steady stream of people filed past day after day. Three hundred and sixty-two boys and men, dead, burned, mangled, leaving two hundred fifty widows and over a thousand children without support. Three hundred and sixty.” The big man has tears in his eyes. “When relatives or friends recognized a miner the wails would rip the gray sky open . . .

  “There was one guy, the coroner, Mr. Amos, who had been on duty since the first man was found. I don’t know how he did it, day in and day out, looking at all those bodies, cataloging them, wading through the deep sorrow.

  “Outside the mine openings and in front of the morgue, masses of mostly women stood in the rain shivering, braving the cold to get a chance, one last time, to see the face of their dead. Most spoke Italian, but you could be deaf and dumb and still understand, just from the tear-stained faces.

  “I talked to one rescue worker, a mining engineer they sent over from Torrington State College. He let it drop that it was so dangerous down under that even the trained rescuers had been pulled out for three days. Fire belched from one of the holes, and you could smell burning flesh, but there was no way to get to the victims. They were probably all dead anyway . . .”

  Ruben stops to chew his lip, looking away. It’s a strange conversation for a first date. Ragtime tinkles on the player piano.

  “A mine inspector I’d met at the Monongah tipped me off about the Darr Mine in Westmoreland County, twenty miles east of Pittsburgh. Said there was a ventilation problem there and that, as usual, the foreman from the Pittsburgh Coal Company told him they’d get to work on it.

  “Not two weeks later, I was up at the Darr, doing a piece on unsafe mining practices, when it blew up. I was right there, heard the explosion myself that time, felt the earth shake, saw the women and children trying to dig their fathers, brothers, and sons out with their bare hands. I joined them, scratching the earth until it was clear that another two hundred thirty-nine miners were dead. No one survived but the few men at the opening . . .” He stops his story and looks straight at me.

  “This is crazy,” he chides himself, wiping his face. “Let’s dance.”

  Someone put a polka roll in the player piano. My napkin fell to the floor as Ruben pulled me up. He was a big man but light on his feet. We danced to escape the sound of the explosions, the mothers crying, the dead miners’ bodies piling up at the morgue. Everyone was clapping as we whirled around the room. Half the time, my feet missed the floor.

  I’d been with a few other men before Ruben: Lawrence, of course, and Michael the glassblower and Peter from the Brotherhood of Russian Workers. We were all anarchists or socialists then, or leaning that way. That first night with Ruben, we celebrated Henry Ford’s announcement that he was giving all his employees an eight-hour workday. My love felt bad he couldn’t take me home to his all-men boardinghouse near the steel mills, so I took him home with me. Nora and Mrs. Kelly were already asleep, but they wouldn’t
care.

  Oh, Ruben . . . heart of my heart. I am so sorry.

  17

  Runaway

  All day it rains, turning the snow to mush, and I do nothing but reread the first three chapters of DeLee’s Obstetrics and wonder when Bitsy will return. I am beginning to wonder if she will return. I expected her right after New Year’s, and it’s already the fourth. If she doesn’t come back, I will be sad. I’ve gotten used to her.

  It’s well after dark when, lying on the sofa, I close my eyes for a moment and have another dream! This one is about the veterinarian. An indignity! What’s he doing inside my head?

  In the dream it’s summer. Hester and I are lying in the loft of a dark barn. Not my barn, another larger one, with light that comes in through the cracks in the rough-cut oak boards. Our bodies, still clothed, are pressed together. Nothing else happens, but when I wake, my heart’s pounding and I try to remember what his body felt like.

  A few minutes later, I hear the drone of a motor coming up Wild Rose Road and then banging at the door. As usual, the first thing I think of is the law, like that night the feds came looking for Ruben and we hid him in the attic, or the other time, after he died, when they came looking for me. Turned out they just had some questions about the IWW at Westinghouse, but Mrs. Kelly and I were so scared we didn’t go out for three days, and not long after, we left the city for good.

  I grab my red kimono and hurry to the window. A dark coupe is parked at the fence. The pounding starts up again.

  “Miss Patience! Don’t be afraid. It’s Bitsy and Miss Katherine.”

  “Oh, Bitsy! You did scare me!”

  I open the door, to find Bitsy assisting Mrs. MacIntosh up the steps. When I help her out of her long cream coat with a fur collar, Katherine turns away.

  “Where’s Mr. MacIntosh?” I ask. “Where’s the baby?”

  “He wouldn’t let me have him.” The mother looks up. Her eyes are both black, there’s a bruise on her cheek, and her face is red from crying.

  “Did William do this?”

  “He didn’t mean to. He was drinking and got angry because I wouldn’t come to his room and play cards with him.”

  “Cards?” This seems an exaggerated response, though I know men have put women under the ground for less.

  “Not just cards. He meant something else.” She flops herself into the rocker, and as I put more wood into the heater stove, I notice her arm. Big bruises, with finger marks, circle both wrists.

  “Oh, Katherine! Can you move your hand?” The woman waves a little. You can see that it hurts; her wrists are probably sprained but not broken. I place the green patchwork pillow on her lap and rest her forearm over it, then busy myself making hot water for valerian tea, a nerve relaxant that seems warranted for all of us. I also make up some warm comfrey compresses. There must be more bruises hidden under her clothes. She looks like the loser in a prizefight with Jack Dempsey.

  Bitsy is stomping the snow off her boots. On the floor by the door sits one of Katherine’s monogrammed linen pillowcases, stuffed, I assume with a few clothes and toiletries. I bring in the tea and help Katherine lie down on the sofa. Bitsy covers her with the flying goose quilt and props her head up on the pillow.

  Questions buzz through my head like yellow jackets when you kick up a nest, but it seems wrong to ask for the blow-by-blow details. Katherine will tell me tomorrow—if she can talk about it.

  “We stole the car,” Bitsy announces. “Mama stood in the bedroom door and blocked Mr. MacIntosh’s way, but we had to leave the baby. He wouldn’t let go of him.” I can picture Mary Proudfoot facing the mister down. She’s as tall as he is and thirty pounds heavier. I don’t worry about little Willie; as soon as his father passes out, Mary will get her hands on him and feed him cow’s milk or cereal.

  “He’ll be awful pissed,” Bitsy continues, “when he finds his precious Oldsmobile is gone. Probably call the sheriff.”

  “We’ll worry about that in the morning.” I glance out the window to see if anyone’s coming. “Who drove?”

  “I did.” That’s Bitsy. “Miss Katherine showed me what to do. We took it real slow. That’s why we got here so late.” I look at Bitsy with new respect; her fearlessness amazes me. It took me a year to learn how to drive; Ruben taught me. That was back when he had an auto, on loan from the union.

  Katherine MacIntosh hasn’t uttered a word since she told me about refusing to “play cards.” “Is there anything you need, Katherine? Do you want to wash up? We can help you.”

  “My chest,” she says. “I’m so uncomfortable. The baby still nurses every few hours.”

  Cripes! I’ve been so concerned about the woman’s bruises, I hadn’t even thought about her breast milk. I reach over and touch Katherine’s cheek, wipe the tears off her face. “Can I check? If you’re engorged, we have to get the milk out or you’ll get an infection. Here, sit up.”

  I pull her yellow cashmere sweater up to her chin, undo her brassiere, and find that her breasts are as hard as baseballs.

  “Bitsy, get a shallow bowl and more warm compresses. Do you think you can express the milk, Katherine? Or do you need our help? We have to get it out somehow, and we don’t have a baby to help us.”

  The beaten woman shakes her head and lifts her sprained wrists, opening and closing her fingers with difficulty to show that she can barely move them.

  “Well, Bitsy and I will have to do it, then. Is it okay?” Katherine shrugs and I help her lean forward so her breasts hang down. We surround them with warm compresses; then I teach Bitsy how to grasp the nipple between thumb and fingertip and squeeze down. Milk drips into the bowl and mixes with Katherine’s tears.

  Some people would say that this is too strange, to be milking another woman like a cow, but I am a midwife, a former wet nurse. I’m used to touching women’s bodies and have taught many mothers to breastfeed. For Bitsy, granted, it must be odd, but she’s always interested in learning new things and midwifery may be her calling.

  When we’re done, we put the bowl of breast milk in the kitchen and cover it with a pie pan; then I carry it out to the springhouse. I’m not sure what we’re saving it for, but human milk, since my days as a milkmaid, has always seems like liquid gold to me.

  “You can sleep in my bed, if you want, Miss Katherine,” Bitsy tells our exhausted guest. “I’ll change the sheets real quick.” She puts the dogs out to pee and banks the fire.

  Katherine declines, maybe because she wouldn’t want to sleep in a colored person’s bed but more likely because it would hurt too much to get up the stairs. Regardless, we tuck her back under the quilt.

  It’s a bad night. Twice I get up to put wood on the fire and look out the window, apprehensive about what the next day will bring. I open my diary and write by candlelight. Will Mr. MacIntosh really send the sheriff after Katherine and arrest her and Bitsy for stealing his car? Or will he be too ashamed about assaulting his wife to get the law involved? Next door in her bedroom, Bitsy grinds her teeth in her sleep, something she does when she’s upset. My friend is probably worried too. She’s the driver of a stolen car—a Negro driver of a stolen car.

  I toss and turn, wake, and fall asleep again, studying the problem of what I should do. We need to get the mother and baby back together, but is it safe? I have no doubt that William’s as thick as thieves with the constable and all the lawyers in town. And what will the repercussions for Mary and Bitsy be?

  William could claim that Katherine went hysterical on him and he had to fight her off, was only defending himself and the baby. The only witnesses would be the two black females, who are not likely to be listened to. I don’t know what the wife-beating statutes in West Virginia are, but in some states it’s considered a husband’s right to keep his woman in line with a whack or beating.

  In the deepest part of the night an idea takes shape, and first thing in the morning, I take Bitsy aside and explain my intentions: “I am going to go around the mountain by road to the vet’s and ca
ll the MacIntoshes’. If Mary answers, I’ll ask if it’s safe to bring Katherine home.

  “If William answers . . . I don’t know what I’ll do; see if he’s concerned about Katherine or is still in a rage. If he’s drunk or angry . . . well, my strategy hasn’t gone that far. I’m just hoping things have calmed down and we can bring Katherine home to the baby.”

  “After we return the Olds to Liberty how will we get home?” Bitsy wonders aloud.

  “Good point. Maybe Mr. MacIntosh will be so ashamed he’ll drive us. Or maybe I could ask Mr. Stenger, the pharmacist. Or maybe we’ll walk . . . It’s only fifteen miles.”

  Bitsy gives me a deadpan look. She’s doubtful about hiking home in the cold, and I don’t blame her.

  “You want me to drive you to the vet’s?” she offers.

  “No, I can drive. My late husband taught me.” I realize I’ve never talked to Bitsy about Ruben. “Anyway, someone has to stay with Katherine. If William MacIntosh shows up, turn the dogs on him and keep the door locked. I’ll be back as quick as I can.”

  The ride around Hope Mountain turns out to be harrowing. On the slick part, coming down the hill past Maddock’s, I skid into a ditch but am able to gun my way out. The mud is thawing and the snow is slush, which actually makes the conditions worse. How Bitsy and Katherine made it home in the dark is hard to imagine.

  As I approach the vet’s drive, I begin to wonder what I’ll do if he’s not home. As usual, that hadn’t occurred to me. He could be out on a visit or in his office in town. I’m relieved when I see his Ford in the drive.

  I bump over his wooden bridge and park next to it. Both cars now show the weather. William MacIntosh’s pride and joy, the once shiny black Oldsmobile, is covered in grime. I notice that Hester’s vehicle has chains on the tires, probably a good idea.