The sun skulks out from behind a cloud. Looper shields his eyes, but not before I can feel their blistering hurt. “Going well,” he says. He clears his throat. “Now that I know what you want, I can probably be out of your hair in two weeks.”
This time I am the one who averts my gaze. I don’t know what I want; I don’t know anything. I rip a hank of grasses out by the roots. The sweet, green chlorophyll oozes out of the long blades and stains the creases of my fist. Looking down at my ragged nails and cracked skin, I wonder if there is anything left in me that is womanly and fragile. Anything left in me that will truly let someone in. I open my hand and watch the yellow seeds scatter on the breeze.
“And who’s to say that I want you to leave?” I swallow hard, knowing that with vulnerability, there is also great risk.
Looper hangs his head. “I don’t know what you want from me, Beth. I just know that you don’t want me here.”
I turn my back to him and cross my arms over my chest. “Rhoda . . . now Beth?” My voice shakes. “Why do you keep switching names?”
Looper is quiet for such a long time, I have to force myself not to look over my shoulder at him. Then he says, “’Cause sometimes I can see that little girl—that Beth—inside you, still feeling guilty for something she hasn’t done. When I see her, that’s when I know . . .”
He clasps my hand and turns my body toward his. “That’s when I know that I have to forgive you for giving away our son because you’re already blaming yourself for something you couldn’t have changed.”
With one finger, Looper lifts my downcast face. The movement is gentle, but I can feel the smoldering frustration that I know he is trying to quench. “Your mom’s leaving had nothing to do with you, Beth.” He holds my eyes. “She made me promise to tell you that.”
My throat tightens. Looper wraps his arms around my back, drawing me into his exhibition of forgiveness. This is the closest we have been since he arrived. The closest we have been in decades. He smells of sweat and pine and something akin to sadness. But my own grief dulls any age-old magnetism, and I am only aware of the comfort of his familiar embrace.
“If it wasn’t my fault,” I say, “then why’d she leave?”
Beneath my hands, Looper’s muscles grow taut. He looks over my head, and then stares down at me. “Your mother . . .” Looper scratches one hand across his beard and swallows. “Your mother tried to stay for you and Benny, Beth, but she and your dad had grown apart. He wouldn’t give her a divorce, so she just . . . left.”
Surprise stings my eyes as the revolving door of my mind entraps one thought: She didn’t leave because of me.
Looper holds me against him, and I remember how my father used to hold my mother, as if his arms could repel the force field of my anger toward her. At twelve years old, I could sense my mother’s discontent and resented her for stripping away my security at the cusp of my teenage years when I needed her support the most. But perhaps my father wasn’t trying to protect my mother from me; perhaps he also sensed my mother’s unrest lurking beneath her serene smile and was trying to keep her close to prevent her from breaking our family apart. Not knowing that, in five years, his daughter would follow in her mother’s footsteps by heeding the urge to flee rather than remaining and taking the risk of getting hurt.
Moving out of Looper’s embrace, I can feel self-preservation erecting its barricade around my heart. If Looper didn’t love me when I was seventeen and our lives were so connected, he surely does not love me now, when I am just a husk of the person he once knew. I now understand why he sought me out here, at Hopen Haus. He came to unburden an old friend by telling me it wasn’t my fault that my mother had left. Nothing more, nothing less.
I step away from him and take the desolate trail, which will lead back to the lane that, eighteen years ago this summer, brought me to Hopen Haus. In the background, dogs bark. Looper calls out, asking if I’m all right. He calls my name—my given name—Beth, Beth, Beth. But I am crying too hard to stop. I begin to run, my cape dress fluttering with the breeze. For now I know it is time to let go of the past. It is time to let go of the bitterness toward my mother, but also of the hope that I did not know I was holding on to until I was certain it was already gone. The hope that a barren midwife could have a husband and a child of her own. The hope that there would ever be a future left for Looper and me, a future left for us.
Amelia, 2014
I crouch toward a hen that spreads her wings and hunkers low, guarding her eggs like treasure. I dart my hand beneath the feathers and feel a hard orb. The hen rises on her claws and squawks. Beating her wings, she fills the coop with swirls of hay and darts her head out of the shoe-box cubicle to peck my hand. Jerking back, I scream and crack the shell against the side of the coop. Two weeks ago I would’ve cursed or at least made a scene. But now I just wipe my fingers off on my shirt, toss the egg into the basket, and go down to the next hen. (Maybe prairie-girl Lydie’s having more of an influence on me than I thought.)
This time, I make vague “shoo shoo” motions, trying to get the hen off the nest. The hen remains. Her yellow eyes and hooked beak wink in the barn’s dingy light. Rubbing the puncture on top of my hand, I try to be more aggressive in my shooing—a little closer this time, but still out of pecking reach. The hen stretches its beak into a yawn. Out of options and running low on time, I bend my arms into wings, cluck my own tongue, and stamp my feet. Despite my two-hundred-dollar jeans and my pointe skills, I look like a performer at one of those old-fashioned hoedowns, doing the chicken dance.
Then something or somebody blocks the sunlight coming in through the barn’s open doorway. A shadow falls across the coop. My jig for the bored red hen stops. Groaning inside, I turn. Uriah Rippentoe is standing there. His arms are folded. His mouth is straight, but the tilted corners make me think he’s trying not to smile. “How difficult is it to gather eggs?” he says, swaggering into the barn and glancing at the straw bale, where my basket’s sitting empty, except for the single cracked egg. “You’ve been down here, like, what? An hour?”
“The chickens don’t like me.”
“Don’t like you?” He laughs. “You just need the right touch.”
Without hesitating, Uriah reaches under the hen that pecked me and takes out two smooth brown eggs, as easy as a fox. He passes them to me and moves down to the next hen. His hand reaches in and out so fast, the hen doesn’t even know he’s been there until she resettles her feathers over the nest and feels that her eggs are gone. He continues passing eggs to me, which I tuck into the cloth-lined basket.
“You build this?” I gesture toward the chicken coop.
Uriah nods.
The cubicles are painted white and stuffed with fresh straw; the outside is black. I wonder if I should, like, comment on it somehow, but I don’t know the terms. So I settle for a solid knock against the wood and say, “You want to be an architect or something?”
This time Uriah doesn’t even try to hide his smile. But then his eyes drift away from mine. “Our school only went to eighth grade.”
Without thinking, I reach out and place a hand on his back. “I’m sorry,” I say, removing my hand. I can feel the tips of my fingertips growing warm along with my ears. “It must be hard for you here.”
Uriah says, “It’s not so bad now.” Then he turns so quickly I have no time to even blink or breathe. Taking the basket of eggs from me, he sets it on the ground and brings that hand up to touch the layers of my hair, which are frizzing like crazy from the heat. I look up. His head leans down toward mine. My eyes close. Then they spring wide as I remember Prairie-girl.
“What’re you doing!” I hold my hand up like a traffic director. “What about Lydie?”
The current between us snaps to nothing. Uriah goes over to the bin. Using a scoop, he refills the chicken feeder with cracked corn. The leftovers sift over the ground in flakes. Sticking the scoop back in the bin, Uriah clangs the lid on top. A dark flush creeps up from the neck of his shirt
. He rests his arm on the side of the chicken coop and looks at me without saying anything. A vein pulses on Uriah’s high forehead, with its stripe of white skin where his ugly straw hat blocks the sun. “I’ve never touched Lydie,” he says. “Not like that. I just feel responsible for her, I guess.”
I roll my eyes. “Responsible? But you never touched her. Right.”
“I don’t feel responsible for her pregnancy, Amelia.” And I can tell he’s ticked. “I feel responsible because I could have saved her.”
With this, Uriah Rippentoe pushes past me. I hear his footsteps as he leaves the barn, slamming the doors behind him. Hay drifts from the loft and spins through the air like those helicopter leaves Grandma Sarah and I used to collect at the park when I was a kid. Staring up at them in the semidarkness, I remember how we’d take the leaves and helicopters home, shave red, orange, and brown crayon over them, and iron everything between two pieces of the parchment paper Grandma Sarah kept in the pantry for baking. It was one of my favorite projects in the fall until I realized it wasn’t cool to do craft time with my nanny.
Catching one of the pieces of hay, I hold it against my chest, which is suddenly tight with this frustration that I can’t even understand. Maybe it’s because I know a summer fling with Uriah would sidetrack me enough that I wouldn’t have to feel much of anything at all. But now that he’s gone—and angry with me on top of it—I have no buffers left to stand between me and my own pain.
I wait until I can hear Uriah calling for the goats down at the pond. Then I slowly sink to the ground beside my basket piled with brown eggs, hold my face in my hands, and—for one of the first times in over a year—let myself cry over the loss of Grandma Sarah, who was more like a mother to me than my own mom.
Beth, 1996
Fannie was asleep in the cane-backed chair before the fire; her thin chest rose and fell, her chin sank beneath her top lip, and her prayer kapp sloped forward. At noon, Fannie and I had driven her buggy up into the mountains to deliver Mary Hoover’s tenth child. Though Mary’s delivery was as fast as we’d expected, the mother had started hemorrhaging afterward. Fannie knew just what to do to save the mother’s life, including climbing up onto the feather-tick bed and kneading Mary’s abdomen with arthritic fingers until the afterbirth had been safely expelled.
We returned to Hopen Haus before bedtime. Charlotte took newborn Hope from me—she had spent the majority of Mary’s labor asleep in a wrap against my chest—and told us that Alice Rippentoe’s quickening had started less than an hour ago. But we knew her first labor could last long past dawn. The fact that Sadie Gingrich had been in Lancaster visiting family for two weeks—therefore handing even more responsibility off to Fannie—made me determined not to disturb Fannie’s much-needed rest. Once Charlotte offered to watch Hope, I told her I would try to deliver Alice’s child on my own.
Eight hours later, in the birthing room, I stared at Alice’s file, illuminated by two kerosene lamps suspended from hooks embedded in the beam dissecting the ten-foot ceiling. Alice’s complication-free prenatal appointments were documented by Charlotte’s looping cursive and Fannie’s precise script. There were no issues that might portend a difficult delivery. So what was stalling Alice’s labor? Alice stayed quiet except for panicked breathing through her contractions. I had witnessed women screaming and spitting before true labor had even begun, so I had to admire her silence.
I could see fear in the flush of Alice’s cheeks and the watery gleam in her wide green eyes as she suddenly breathed, “Something’s wrong; something’s wrong,” like a chant.
I did not say it, but I was fearful as well. I glanced at the watch I kept hidden under the elbow-length sleeve of my cape dress, as we were not supposed to wear jewelry. It was now 6:35 a.m. Alice had been in labor for over eleven hours, and there had been little to no progress. Fannie believed that letting nature take its course—with our guidance, in case something went wrong, as it had with Mary Hoover—was the best application of midwifery. I admired Fannie’s standard of minimal interference, yet it was essential that Alice give birth before seven o’clock tonight. We had a twenty-four hour window from the time her water broke before mother and baby were at great risk for infection.
I would soon have to notify Fannie of Alice Rippentoe’s failure to progress. With our labor window cut in half and nothing left to lose, I tried an experiment. After a careful examination, I smiled encouragingly. “You’re almost to six,” I said. “Over halfway there.”
At this point, the hours of withstanding contractions with nothing to show for them were chipping away at Alice’s strength. She needed something—even a lie—to buoy her up.
Alice blinked back tears. “I am?”
I nodded and helped her off the table. “Now let’s put you to work.”
The damp terror left Alice’s eyes and determination took its place. I knotted a sheet to the bedpost, twined the fabric around Alice’s hips, and pulled and pulled on my knotted end, like a strange game of tug-of-war. The “double hip squeeze” maneuver usually requires two midwives. But the bedpost—for the most part—served as the other arm. Alice sighed and closed her eyes. I felt such satisfaction, knowing this had relieved the pressure on her lower back.
Alice’s breathing grew harder as her contractions increased.
I held her hand as she breathed through each one. Another contraction bore down before the previous one had abated. She groaned and whittled her nails into the sides of the lacquered wood.
My heart pounded with each of the guttural sounds Alice made. I wanted to run and get Fannie; I wanted to tell Charlotte to leave Hope for a moment and come. Come quick! But there was no longer time. Suddenly, Alice’s bellow reverberated through the small room, and her child was born.
I suctioned the crying baby’s nose with the bulb syringe and cradled him close. Tears filled my eyes as those almond-shaped eyes opened and looked around the room. He was breathing perfectly, his color was golden, but—just like my daughter—he did not utter one more cry. His dark irises seemed to deflect every ray of sun spilling through the curtains. He stretched his tiny fingers toward it, as if to cradle the cosmic star in his palm.
“Uriah,” Alice whispered. “I’ll call him Uriah—‘God is light.’”
Blinking free of my stupor, I helped Alice gingerly sit down on the bed. Her teeth were chattering. I placed her son in her arms and went over to the cupboard to get another quilt. I wrapped the heavy, wedding-ring pattern around her shoulders. She reached out and clasped my hand.
“Thank you,” she said, “for bringing my son into the world.”
I nodded but continued looking out the window, where the sun had fully tipped over the mountains and poured its rays across the valley. In the wash of Alice’s child’s birth, I had felt more cleansed than at my own baptism. Yet before the amniotic fluid had dried on my palms, my heart clenched with jealousy. Turning, I watched them together. Alice’s face was still bright with exertion. The rim of her blond hair was darkened with sweat. Her lips were red and swollen from so many hours of biting through the pain of fruitless contractions.
As the halo of light spread to ensconce them both, I saw how she held her child. I saw how she cradled him close, not needing to be aware of time, since no one was waiting in the wings. She would not have to stop suckling him or swaddling him or nuzzling his fragrant skin to sign papers that would let the child who was bone of her bone and flesh of her flesh be taken away.
Tears slipped down Alice’s cheeks, dampening the faint curls covering Uriah’s head. He rested peacefully against her breast. Watching them, my own breast ached with longing. For a moment, just one, I yearned to snatch that beautiful boy-child from her arms and claim him as mine—just so Alice would know what it felt like to lose someone so dear to you as effortlessly as pearls slipping off a broken string.
I withdrew from Alice Rippentoe at that moment. Like her intuitive response to labor, my recoiling from the pain she and Uriah evoked felt like the only w
ay to survive. I am not sure it would have been easier if she had given birth to a girl. But I know that her giving birth to a boy only increased the vividness of my own loss.
As I clamped off the umbilical cord and severed it with the sanitized scissors, I found it ironic that I was the one to separate this mother from her child, when I had suffered from that separation one way or another since I was twelve years old.
When I knew from my blocked throat that my soul was a wellspring about to be wrung dry, I awoke Charlotte in my bedroom and asked her to finish checking Alice and the baby.
I then ran to the linen closet and shut the door. In the darkness, sobbing, I buried my face in the folded stacks of towels. I breathed in the icy fresh scent and forced the image of my own newborn son away. Though my soul rejoiced in the presence of my eight-week-old daughter—a rosy-cheeked cherub tucked in the Moses basket beside my bed, a gift—she could never fill the hole he had left behind.
As another baby boy was born into the world, my grief was birthed anew.
13
Lowering my face into the wrap, I kissed Hope’s forehead and hugged her warm body against my chest. Right there—standing in the kitchen, stark sun streaming through spotless windows, donated apples gleaming crimson in the wooden bowl—I vowed I would never wish for my son when I had my daughter right here. Not the way I had wished for my son when I helped birth Alice Rippentoe’s child last night.
The kitchen door leading to the back porch swung open before I had even finished the thought. An arctic gust caught it and smacked the door against the clapboard siding, again and again, until I thought the door would slam shut in slivers. Wind swooped into the kitchen, rattling the copper pots hanging overhead, making them clang like chimes. I clutched Hope, hoping to shield her from the draft. She remained asleep in the wrap, yet I shivered with equal parts premonition and cold.
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