The Midwife of Hope River

by Patricia Harman

  Now here I am considering the concoction myself. I press my hand just above my pubic bone. How many months has it been since I was with Hester during the thunderstorm? Early August, late July, and it’s now mid-October. Around fourteen weeks! According to DeLee, too early to feel movement. Too late for a miscarriage. But Dr. DeLee doesn’t know everything.

  October 13, 1930. Waning moon still high in the pink sky at dawn.

  I might as well record it. Day before yesterday, Bitsy delivered her first baby alone. The mother is Mildred Miller’s cousin Fiona Lincoln from Cold Springs. Very short labor, less than one hour. No time for me to come. No problems. Present were Mildred Miller and Bitsy. Male infant. Weight unknown.

  Liberty

  Air crisp as an apple right off the tree. The smell of frost on the fallen leaves. It’s almost dark, and over the mountain, the three-quarters moon rises, big as a goose egg.

  “Is that Maddock?” Bitsy asks as we ride up Wild Rose Road on the way back from the grove where we have been gathering hazelnuts. We never talked about our fight, just got up the next morning and went on with our work. Then we got so busy cutting wood, it seemed as though it never happened. Bitsy still doesn’t know my condition. A gunnysack, half full of the small soft-shelled sweet nuts, rattles over my lap. “Is that Maddock? There by the fence.”

  The man stands at his mailbox wearing a dark coat and hat; all I can see in the dim light is his white, deadpan face. He puts out his hand like a traffic cop.

  “Sheriff Hardman’s looking for you,” he announces, and the peace of the evening drains out of me. This is the last thing I was expecting. With my worries about my pregnancy, our other troubles have taken a backseat. The lawman’s visit could be anything: more questions about Thomas, questions about the baby I buried behind the barn, or even the long-feared arrest for what happened on Blair Mountain.

  “Do you know what he wanted?” I act as though it’s no big concern, as though Hardman is likely to visit any old time, but inside I grow cold.

  “The grocer’s wife is in labor, the blind woman. Her husband, Mr. Bittman, asked Hardman to get the midwife right away. My Sarah told him I would drive you.” He looks away, embarrassed to seem neighborly. My stomach is still in knots, but maybe the copper was only trying to be helpful.

  Forty-five minutes later, after rushing home to clean up, get our birth kit, and take care of the animals, we bump into Liberty in Mr. Maddock’s Ford pickup. The entrance to the Bittman apartment, located above the grocery, is up the back stairs.

  Standing on the wooden porch, I knock twice as Maddock pulls away in his truck and am surprised when Mrs. Wade answers. Not her again, Hardman’s sister, the woman who drove me crazy at Prudy Ott’s birth!

  “What took you so long?” she begins by way of a greeting. “We’ve been worried sick.” Behind her, five people sit at a round oak table, just finishing supper. Lilly, the young pregnant woman, a tall redhead, stares blankly at a space over the stove, but her face is turned our way.

  “Oh, Patience,” she says with a laugh. “We’re so glad you’re here. Mother’s been fretting all day, but I’m fine. These are my parents, Mr. and Mrs. Wade, my uncle Billy Hardman, and of course B.K. Is Bitsy here too?”

  “Right behind you.” My friend has already moved into the room. She puts down the birth satchel and touches Lilly on the shoulder as Lilly reaches up and hugs her. If Mrs. Wade is still offended by the color of my partner’s skin, she knows not to say it. To the blind girl we all look the same, just as it should be.

  “You smell good,” Lilly says when Bitsy hugs her.

  “It must be Patience’s homemade soap. She puts lavender in it.”

  “Oh, we must get some for the store, then! Could we, B.K.? Wouldn’t that be lovely? If it wasn’t too expensive, the women would snatch it up.”

  “Yes, honey,” says B.K., standing and placing his dish in the sink.

  The beautiful redhead stops her chatter and begins to swing her head slowly from side to side. It’s a new gesture to me, but I recognize a contraction when I see one. The room goes quiet, and B.K. steps up behind his wife to rub her shoulders. When she’s done, she rests her head on his stomach. “Thanks, hon.”

  “Lordy, how long must this go on?” Mrs. Wade wonders.

  “Bertha,” Mr. Wade warns, “it’s the midwife’s job to figure that out. You can take a break now, go back to the spare bedroom, and read.” Bertha slashes him a look but does what he says, clears the table, and stalks out. “I’m going over to my office,” Lilly’s father tells us. “Call if you need anything.”

  “I better get a move on too.” That’s Hardman, Uncle Billy. “I came by your place on Wild Rose and waited for a while, but had to get back to town. Maddock bring you? He’s an odd duck . . .” The sheriff doesn’t wait for my opinion but shrugs into his policeman’s jacket. “Give ’em hell, honey!” he encourages his niece.

  “I have something of yours, Miss Murphy,” he says to me, then moves out the door.

  This can’t be good. “Something for me?”

  He nods his scarred chin and tips his head toward the porch. Outside a fog has moved in and silenced the street. Hardman pulls out a yellow sheet of paper folded in quarters. “It’s been in my top desk drawer for a long time.”

  My hands shake as I take the document and hold it up to the porch light. I’m thinking that this is something I’ve feared seeing someday, a wanted poster with my photo on it.

  I’m surprised, when I unfold the parchment, to discover a drawing of a woman who only vaguely resembles me. The hair is dark, they got that right, and there are wire-rimmed glasses, but the face is too long and the almond eyes look almost Asian. An artist has sketched a composite from a vague description.

  “Two Hundred Dollar Reward,” the announcement reads, “for the arrest of Elizabeth Snyder, approximately 30 years of age, known radical and union organizer from Pittsburgh. Miss Snyder, an associate of agitator Mother Jones, is suspected of the murder of coal miner Ruben Gordesky of Matewan. Information about the whereabouts of the suspect can be given to any local law enforcement officer.”

  “Almost everything about the notice is wrong.” I look up.

  “I know,” Hardman agrees. “Picture doesn’t look much like you, either. That’s why it took me so long to figure it out.”

  “I wasn’t an organizer, just a sympathizer. My husband was the organizer, Ruben Gordesky. He was a wonderful man but never a miner. We lived in Pittsburgh, where he worked for the UMWA, and he just came to southern West Virginia to see if he could settle the miners down, avoid a riot. I’m proud of him.” It isn’t until I say Ruben’s name that the tears come. “So what now? What are you going to do? Arrest me?”

  “This.” He looks straight at me, rips up the paper, and stuffs it into his shirt pocket.

  “And those other lawmen involved? The outsiders. Do they know?”

  “They were here on another matter. Revenuers from Pittsburgh. Someone in Union County has been running moonshine into the city. They aren’t interested in Blair Mountain or what happened there. No one else is either. There haven’t been any prosecutions for years.”

  I let out my breath and stare down at the gas streetlights. In the fog, they look like they have rainbows around them. “It was the worst day of my life. They were shooting at us. Ruben was down. One of the goons was on him. I was only trying to keep him from choking Ruben . . . and I bashed in my husband’s head instead . . . an accident.”

  “I’ve watched you for a year. You’re no killer. Too soft.”

  Though I should keep my mouth shut, I can’t let that go by. “Midwives aren’t soft. We are warriors.”

  He smiles. “Okay. But you still wouldn’t hurt a fly unless you had to. I can see that. Not on purpose.” He places his hand on my shoulder, a stiff gesture but one of acceptance, and I would like to hug him, but just then Bitsy yells from the bedroom. “Patience?”

  “Got to go.” I pull open the screen.


  “Give ’em hell, honey.” He uses the same words he used with his niece Lilly. “And tell Bitsy to say hello to Thomas for me. Proudfoot is a good man. After Katherine MacIntosh told me about her husband’s previous suicide threats, I dropped the investigation. Finally closed the case as a self-inflicted death yesterday.”

  In the empty kitchen I lean back on the door. By his words, everything in the room has been altered; the light is brighter, the colors more vivid, the shadows less dark.

  “Patience?” my partner calls again. I want to tell Bitsy that a great weight has been lifted. I want to tell her that her brother is safe, that the cops are officially done with it, but there’s no time.

  “Patience, where are you?”

  “Coming!”

  In the Bittmans’ small bedroom, I’m surprised to see the lights dimmed. There’s not much space to move around, but our patient is making the most of it. She stands in the candlelight in a blue checked nightdress in the center of a blue braided rug, swaying back and forth during a contraction and making little noises in a high-pitched voice, almost as though she’s singing. “Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.” Bitsy wrinkles her brow at me, wondering where I’ve been, but even if there was time, I wouldn’t try to explain.

  “Hi, Lilly, it’s Patience.” I touch the girl on her arm. “Are the pains coming regularly now?”

  “Every five minutes, right on,” answers B.K., consulting his pocket watch.

  “Well, if you’re ready, I can check you and your baby. Bitsy and I are here for the duration.”

  I watch as Lilly easily feels her way back to the bed and, without hesitation, flops down and pulls up her shift. Her underpants are still dry.

  “No leaking fluid yet?”

  “I don’t think so.” Lilly’s palest blue eyes are open and she stares at the ceiling, seeing only blackness . . . or perhaps red or blue . . . maybe it’s like when you lie in the sun with your eyes closed and see colored lights.

  I place my hands on her belly, feeling for the baby’s position abdominally. Then I have Bitsy check and listen to the fetal heartbeat.

  “Around a hundred and thirty beats per minute, and the head’s down,” she reports with a grin.

  I double-check and nod. One hundred thirty.

  “Is she close?” B.K. asks, standing at the door with his back turned.

  If the vet wants to know the status of a horse in labor, he just sticks his hand into the horse’s vagina, but the men who wrote the West Virginia Midwifery Code think we midwives wouldn’t have enough sense to limit our internal examinations or use sterile gloves, so I break the law only when I have to, and right now there’s no need.

  “Best guess, the baby will come after midnight,” I hedge. (That could mean two A.M. or six.) “In an hour or so, we’ll have a better idea. If Lilly could rest, that would be good.”

  “Horsefeathers! That’s not going to happen,” the redhead interrupts. “It hurts less when I’m sitting or walking. Are you done now, Miss Patience?” The “Miss Patience” gives me the shivers, but I let it slide. “Whoooo, here comes one now!” The woman jumps up and sways her whole body, her long red curls moving with her. “Mmmm. Mmmm. Mmmm.” B.K. steps back into the bedroom, wanting to help but unsure how.

  “Hold her like this,” says Bitsy. She has him step forward and put his arms around his wife so she can lean into him.

  “That was a doozy!” Lilly informs us.

  “Good. The strong ones will bring the baby. I’m going to make sure all of our supplies are in order. Did you sterilize your sheets?”

  “I went to Nurse Becky’s baby class before she left for Char-lottesville. Ma and I ironed everything and wrapped it in paper.”

  “That’s great. I know she gives good instructions.” I slip out of the room. The apartment is small, and I can hear the patient’s birth song through the walls. My plan, since Bitsy has decided she’s a big midwife, is to let her take the lead and see how she does.

  Bertha

  When I return to the kitchen to make tea and check to be sure everything is ready, I’m disappointed to discover Mrs. Wade back at the table.

  “Hello. I thought you were napping.” There’s no way I want this busybody around Lilly, making her nervous, distracting her from her job, even if she is the girl’s mother.

  “I tried to, but I couldn’t. She’s our only child, you know. We adopted because we couldn’t have our own, and then when she went blind . . . I know I’m overprotective.”

  “Lilly wasn’t born blind?”

  “No. She lost her sight the year all the children got measles. A half dozen went blind in the county, and a few were struck deaf too. Thank the Lord, no one got both. She went to the School for the Blind in Charleston for a few years, but we missed her so, we brought her home. She can read Braille and do housework, even sew.”

  “All the children?”

  “Yes, it was that bad winter. Sickness swept through Delmont and Liberty, Torrington and Oneida. Lilly was four. Many didn’t survive.” I realize she’s talking about an epidemic of German measles, the three-day kind, a wicked strain that causes high fever.

  There’s a groan and then B. K. Bittman’s voice singing, low. “Will the circle be unbroken . . .” Mrs. Wade sweeps me a big-eyed look, and I put my hand over hers. It’s an unexpected gesture. I was horrified to discover the intrusive woman here an hour ago, but now I find myself sympathetic. That’s the way it is, Nora once told me. No matter who they are or what they’ve done, when you hear someone’s story you see him or her differently.

  “By and by, Lord, by and by,” B.K. goes on. He has a strong voice and accompanies himself on the guitar.

  “There’s a better home awaiting.” Bitsy joins in and then Lilly.

  Bertha smiles. “They’ve been married five years. We’d given up on grandchildren. I thought maybe Lilly would be barren like me, but God heard our prayers.”

  Barren, I think . . . I assumed I was barren too, and look what happened!

  For the next hour, as the contractions roll on, I double-check the contents of the birth bag that we so hastily packed while Mr. Maddock waited in his truck. With the excitement, I’d even forgotten to eat. I’ve had no food since breakfast and am feeling a little sick, so I ask Mrs. Wade for a cold glass of milk. I still have no clue what I am going to do about my nonbarren state. For a moment sadness overcomes me, but I shoo it away, as if it were a pesky housefly. No time for self-indulgence.

  When I peek into the birth room the first time, Lilly is slow dancing with her husband, wiggling her hips erotically in a way I might find embarrassing if it weren’t part of the birth dance. The second time, she’s leaning over a chair while Bitsy rubs her back. Sweat now beads on her brow, a good sign. I catch Bitsy’s eye and lift up my thumb.

  Bitsy gives me a thumbs-up too and says out loud, “She’s the cat’s meow!”

  Lilly laughs.

  “For sure!” B.K. adds.

  Lilly

  The third time I tiptoe down the hall, Mrs. Wade follows. “Can I peek too?” I nod reluctantly. At least she’s getting the idea that we want to disturb them as little as possible. When a laboring woman has found a successful routine, you don’t want to break it.

  In the dim room, lighted only by a gas lamp, Lilly now swings her hair and moans, then closes her sightless eyes and takes a deep breath.

  “They’re getting stronger, Mama, but don’t worry.”

  “Okay, sweetheart. I’m so proud of you.”

  “How did she know you were standing with me?” I ask when we’re back in the kitchen.

  “Smell,” the patient’s mother answers. “She says my distinct smell is like bread baking. Will she need a birth bath?”

  That takes me aback. Then I remember Prudy’s wild labor and how I invented the “birth bath” just to get Mrs. Wade, Priscilla Blum, and my nervous friend Becky out of the way. Apparently, she now thinks a bath is the latest thing for women before they deliver.

  “Do they have a tub?�
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  “Just a little one. Nothing like the Ott home.”

  “Well, we’ll see. It couldn’t hurt, but she might not need it. Prudy was awfully tense. Lilly is loose as a goose, which is what you want . . . until pushing. Then you hope the woman can bear down like she means it.”

  By the sounds in the bedroom, I can tell that the contractions are coming one after the other. “Can you boil the water? It might be soon.” Mrs. Wade stands up and bustles around, glad to be put into action, and I slide back into the bedroom.

  “Oh, Patience, I don’t know if I can do this!” Lilly complains when she hears me approach. “It hurts like the dickens!”

  “It won’t be much longer. If it helps, you can lean on the baby a little, nothing too forceful. No holding your breath.” I picture just a rim of the cervix left, and I’ve found that at this stage, between letting go and bearing down, it helps to give the patient something to do. Any time now, I expect her voice will drop and we will know that the baby is coming.

  Bitsy stands back and puts one arm around my waist. We both find pleasure in watching a woman who’s comfortable with her body. Each time a contraction comes, Lilly’s blind eyes get big and she takes a few breaths, then holds on to her husband and rocks back and forth.

  “Should I get out of the way soon?” B.K. asks nervously. “There’s a shipment of canned goods down in the store that need shelving—”

  “No, sir, Mr. Bittman!” This is Lilly. “I want you here. You helped make this baby, you can damn well help me get him out!” That seems to settle the matter. B.K. shrugs. Bitsy catches my eye. Now we know for sure that birth is imminent. When a well-bred woman begins to curse, she’s nearly ready.