The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  “Please close the door,” I called. “We’re not heating the outside.”

  It was not one of our Hopen Haus girls who entered, but the driver, Wilbur Byler. Stomping mud from his boots, he came into the kitchen. “Sorry,” he said. Wilbur blew hard on his hands. “The door got away from me.”

  I nodded, picked up the knife, and continued paring apples in quick, clean strokes. The juice ran down my chilled fingers. The countertop was festooned with teardrop-shaped seeds and long tendrils of skin. My actions were relaxed. But deliberately so. Between my shoulder blades, tension sunk like an ax. I could never shake the unease I felt whenever Wilbur Byler came around. I had no reason to doubt his character; everyone in Dry Hollow trusted Wilbur without question, granting him access to their finances, their families, their homes. In my six months at Hopen Haus, he had not singled me out or asked one question. However, the covert way he watched me made me wonder if he knew more than he let on.

  “Is there hot water in there?” Wilbur pointed to the cast-iron pot on the stove. “I’d like some coffee ’fore I hit the road.”

  “No. But I can make some.”

  Wilbur shook his head. “You’ve got your hands full. I’ll do it.”

  I gritted my teeth, eager to have him leave, but continued peeling. I heard Wilbur lift the heavy cast-iron cover over the burner and wedge pieces of kindling down into the box. Still, I felt his eyes scanning my back, as if willing me to turn. My hands shook as the blade separated fruit from skin. The paring knife slipped and gouged the pad of my left palm, just below the thumb. I cried out. Startled, Hope began to cry as well. Blood welled in the cut and dripped down my hand, plopping onto the fresh, off-white fruit.

  “You cut yourself?” Wilbur called over the din of Hope’s sobbing.

  I nodded and tried to calm my daughter with my uninjured hand.

  The heavy stove lid clanked into place. The kitchen floor absorbed Wilbur’s heavy tread as he crossed the kitchen toward me. “Here,” he said. “Wrap this around it.” He held out a tea towel. I bound it around the wound and curled my fingers into a fist.

  I thanked him and shifted from side to side, trying to rock Hope back to sleep. But she would not be soothed. Her face reddened. Her desperate cries seemed to ricochet across every metal surface in the kitchen. My chest heaved against her heaving chest. I knew Hope was not only reacting to being awoken from her nap, but also from the nerves wracking my body.

  Wilbur held out his arms. “Let me take her,” he said.

  “No.” The word was a growl, as emphatic as a curse. My heart pounded. Blood throbbed in my hand. I looked down and saw red blooming through the floral tea towel, as bright as a poppy. I pressed Hope’s head harder to my breast. She cried and thrashed, trying to escape the person who was trying to keep her safe.

  Wilbur stepped back. “You okay?”

  I looked up. His square hands were raised in a defensive gesture, as if he feared I was going to attack him with the knife. But this gesture did not hold my attention as much as the connotation undergirding his words.

  Let him think I’m crazy, I thought. That’ll make him leave us alone.

  I did not nod or break eye contact, daring him to look away first. “Not sure,” I said.

  The sun glinted off the blade I had just picked up. Hands shaking, I lowered the knife. My eyes burned with a primal protectiveness unlike anything I had ever known. “You’d better not hang around here too long, Wilbur, or somebody might get hurt.”

  Two days before Farmer’s Market Saturday, Fannie Graber claimed that I was the best choice for overseeing Dry Hollow’s booth: I spoke perfect English for the paying customers, plus she had taught me enough snippets of Pennsylvania Dutch to have me be considered genuine Old Order Mennonite. When pressed, Fannie also revealed that she thought Wilbur still harbored a crush for me that would work itself out if the two of us were given enough alone time. She was even more interested in providing Hope with a dawdy than she was in providing me with a husband. It did not seem to matter that I was not attracted to Wilbur in the least, or that my knife-wielding incident a month and a half ago had left him in no hurry to interact with me. But for Fannie Graber, I would do anything.

  Consequently, Farmer’s Market Saturday arrived and there I was, sitting in Wilbur’s idling truck as panic flared inside my chest, making it difficult to breathe. I glanced beyond the fingerprints marring the passenger’s-side window. Crowds were flocking toward the pavilion that some men from Dry Hollow Community had been hired to build. I could see similarities between it and our own dwellings in the pavilion’s stout, rough-hewn cedar beams and corrugated tin roof. On the last Saturday before Christmas, the farmer’s market reopened, and vendors from across the county gathered to sell their wares with more intensity than normal, as the money must hold them over through the sluggish winter months.

  Even from inside the cab, I could see many of the booths were set up with displays of earth-toned pottery, beaded jewelry, wool purses and hats dyed in a kaleidoscope of color, glass-bottled lotions, and baked goods tastefully packed in white paper boxes stacked on overlapping red and green tablecloths. But none of the vendors were Mennonite or Amish.

  Business ventures were never openly discussed in Dry Hollow Community because Bishop Yoder believed that money—and anything associated with it—was the root of all evil. Yet that morning, as Fannie handed me a lunch, she said that my kapp and cape dress and the bits of Pennsylvania Dutch vocabulary I had learned were crucial for sales. Englischers believed they were getting a better product if it came from a Plain community, where morality supposedly held the “Gentle People” to a higher standard than the rest. And sales were necessary, far more than even Fannie Graber let on. Hopen Haus relied on food and funds hoarded over spring and summer when Dry Hollow better resembled the Promised Land. But Fannie said they were sometimes scraping the bottom of the barrel before the next harvest season came around—which was why, having gone through our own orchard’s supply, we were baking with donated apples.

  Watching the people now milling beneath the pavilion, I understood to what extent the community had sheltered me, how they had offered me refuge when I had nowhere else to turn. Though I was grateful to them, I was slowly realizing that the Dry Hollow Community was no utopia as the Englischers thought. I was baptized into the Mennonite church, but despite my cape dress and kapp, I was still perceived as Englisch as when I’d come. I was still a woman with a daughter and no husband: a toxic blend the Dry Hollow families did not want encroaching upon their well-ordered lives. Nonetheless, in seven months I had never stepped across the border of the property. I suppose it felt like hallowed ground upon which no ill-intentioned footsteps could trod. But looking out at that crowd, I felt vulnerable—my exposure to the public reawakening my fear of getting caught.

  I looked over at Hope, nestled in the car seat beside me with her cheeks round and bright against the trailing strings of her knit hat. Then I looked over at Wilbur. He smiled and stroked the top of her hand. I had to ball my fingers into fists to keep from striking him away. Hope was not frightened, though. She just looked at Wilbur with those large hazel eyes framed with light lashes that seemed to see through a person’s mask and still love what was beneath. Cooing, Hope held on to one of his proffered fingers.

  “Such a sweet-natured thing,” Wilbur said.

  The bumper-to-bumper traffic bottlenecked around the square started to flow again. Wilbur shifted out of neutral and drove a few feet, parking his truck in the slanted white lines outside the Scottsburough Emporium. Wilbur got out. Sound poured into the vehicle, like a submerged porthole undone. My hands shook as I unfastened the straps of Hope’s car seat.

  The passenger door creaked open. “Here,” Wilbur said, “I’ll take her.”

  I’ll take her. The simple sentence ripped through my ears, but I reminded myself of Wilbur’s and my last altercation and the type of attention-seizing behavior that I did not want to repeat. “All right.” My acknowl
edgement was barely audible, but I could clearly hear my fear. I held Hope out, and Wilbur took her from me. Settling her against his shoulder, he patted her back with the heel of his hand. She pushed off his chest and tried to look up. Laughing, Wilbur took his hat off and hooked it over the hat already on her head. Hope wobbled from side to side, knowing something was different but not knowing what or how to take the hat off.

  I slid off the bench seat and reclaimed my daughter, wrapping my coat lapels around her body and pressing her to my chest. Since Wilbur could not get the truck any closer to our booth, he stayed behind to unload the boxes. I felt insecure, knowing that I would be parting the masses all by myself, and was then amazed that the man I felt threatened by was also someone who—when faced with countless strangers—brought me comfort.

  Keeping my head down, I wove among Englischers for the first time since Hope’s birth. The air was crisp, but sweat dripped down the small of my back. I felt, rather than saw, the stares of the people as they realized a Plain woman was in their midst. My entire life, I had been overlooked. But now that I craved anonymity, the kapp and cape dress—the very articles intended to keep me from view—seemed to propel me into everyone’s sight.

  I pulled the lapels of my coat tighter until they obscured Hope’s face. She arched her back and cried out, struggling to break the hold of my arms. Again, I knew she was sensing my tension; I had to relax. Breathing deep, I smelled popcorn and funnel cakes and recalled unspooling cotton candy on the Ferris wheel at the La Crosse County Fair with Looper when we were children.

  In the street, children laughed and ran pell-mell through the crowd. Silver helium balloons floated high above them, tied with ribbon to their small wrists—airborne buoys that let the parents know where they were. Centered under a doorway, a volunteer rang a bell for the Salvation Army bucket. Cameras flashed. Vendors hawked wares. Car horns honked as vehicles struggled to find parking spaces where there were none left.

  After seven months without even the electrical buzz of power lines to dispel the quiet, this cacophony made me want to clap my hands over my ears. I pondered afresh Fannie’s motivations for requiring me to oversee Dry Hollow’s booth. Surely she knew there were women in the community far more capable than I. Although I had never told her the fears I battled, she could probably deduce from my avoidance of Wilbur and refusal to leave the community that my past haunted me still. I stood motionless, the din swirling around me, and recalled what Fannie had said when I told her why I’d taken Hope and run: “For the sake of yourself and the child, you can’t live in fear. . . . You must let yourself live.”

  My courage renewed, I locked my gaze on the pavilion and parted the crowd.

  Wilbur grabbed a stack of old newspapers off a folding chair and dropped it on the table of the booth. “Brought these to wrap the candles and jams,” he said. “Be careful not to pop the tops.” Ducking low, he grabbed a box of plastic T-shirt bags and set it beside the newspapers. He put his hands on his hips and surveyed the booth. “Well, I guess that’s it.”

  “You going somewhere?” I asked.

  He nodded. “But I’ll stick around until you’re comfortable, then come back to help load everything up.”

  “Thank you,” I said, purposely meeting his eyes.

  Wilbur avoided them and looked at the ground. “You’re welcome.”

  My first customer came within seconds. She was a stout, middle-aged woman with sun-dried skin and high cheekbones offset by short, peppery hair. I wrapped her oatmeal-and-lavender bar and “Home Sweet Home” candle in newspaper, then slid them into the bag.

  As I passed it to the woman, she reached out and clenched my hand. “You one of those girls?” she asked. Native American earrings trembled in her lobes. I could not have looked away from her gray eyes if I’d wanted to. She pressed my fingers and clarified, “The ones at that home for unwed mothers?”

  Hope chose that moment to coo from the basket tucked against the table, giving me away. My face filled with so much heat, I was sure it would glow right through my skin.

  “Jah,” I said, retracting my hand from the woman’s grasp. Sweat moistened my palms. Below the table, I wiped them on my skirt. When would a simple exchange with a stranger stop feeling like a threat?

  I tucked the woman’s twenty-dollar bill beneath the change compartment and crouched to check on Hope. She had fallen asleep—one arm over her head, fingers unfolded—and had found her thumb on the other hand without my assistance. Her cheeks were red; her mouth looked dry. I wondered if she was hot. I pulled the hat off her head and covered her ears with the blanket. Someone cleared his throat. I stood up and smiled.

  “I’d like to buy this, please.” A tall, older gentleman—bundled in a finely cut navy wool coat—slid across the table a jar of blackberry preserves.

  “Yes, sir,” I said. “Let me wrap it.”

  “It’s not a gift.”

  “No, I just don’t want it broken.”

  He nodded, curt.

  Setting the jam on its side, I wrapped it and crunched the paper around the gilded lid and then wrapped the jar in another layer. I was about to wrap it a third time when he said, “I think that’s enough.”

  My movements froze, but not because the impatient man had stopped me. A single word in the newspaper article had caught my eye; the tiny font magnified by the glass jar and then obscured by the dark purple jam inside it. The jar rolled as I slid the newspaper pinned beneath. The feather-light section A and B of the Tennessean flapped like wings, even though I seized the edges with trembling hands. I could barely read the words through my panic, yet the collage of them—surrogate, graduate student, Simms University, Dr. Fitzpatrick, alleged kidnapping—told me that a nightmare had resumed.

  “What’s wrong with you?” the man gruffed. “Here—take the money.”

  But I could not look up from the newspaper. I heard him slap the bill on the table and stomp away. The article, “Search Continues for Missing Surrogate,” was dated August 13, 1996—a month and a half after I fled. If a newspaper in another state had carried the story weeks after my disappearance, how much coverage had it received in Boston?

  My mouth filled with saliva. Acid backed up my throat. Dropping the newspaper, I clamped a hand over my mouth. I searched the booth for a trash can. Nothing. I retched into an empty cardboard box. Looking up and dabbing my mouth, I saw Wilbur watching me. His satisfied expression seemed out of place, almost like a mime who had forgotten what face to display at different parts of the show. But when he noticed that I was looking at him, he frowned, stood, and came running over.

  “My word . . . Rhoda? You okay?” Wilbur helped me into a chair and passed me a clean napkin from his jacket pocket. “What happened?” he asked. “Do you feel bad?”

  I wiped my face and tearing eyes, buying time. I could not let him know what I had discovered.

  I blinked hard, willing myself to appear strong, and stared right into Wilbur’s eyes for the second time since I met him. It was like looking in a dim pool; they didn’t reveal anything. Could he have seen the article? Could he have planted it there for me to find?

  I shook my head, willing away the fears my paranoia had birthed.

  “I’ll be fine,” I lied.

  The afternoon after I discovered the article and the contents of my Pandora’s box unfurled, I took Hope upstairs and nursed her in bed. I awoke a few hours later, sweat-soaked and screaming. Clutching Hope, I sat up and panted. Footsteps pounded up the staircase. The knob to my bedroom door turned. It did not budge. I had wedged the back of the rocking chair beneath the knob. “Open the door, Rhoda,” Fannie called, rapping knuckles on the solid wood. “Rhoda. Open the door.”

  Shivering as my sweaty body cooled, I kept Hope close, who somehow remained sleeping. I removed the rocking chair from the door with one hand but held the chair in front of my body, blocking the entrance. Fannie had one crooked finger wedged in a brass candle stand. The candle’s faltering light etched furrows in her face.
I saw the wiry gray hair that had escaped her kapp, the slump of her shoulders, the responsibility of so many lives dulling her eyes. At almost seventy, Fannie Graber was tired—and far too old for this.

  “Come on, Rhoda.” The head midwife sighed and pushed two fingers against her right temple. “You’ve got to let me in.” I knew Fannie was not just speaking of physical passage, but of emotional trust. I had let Fannie assist me in labor—the most intimate act beyond conception. Nonetheless, terrified of being hurt, I continued to safeguard my heart—letting Fannie see bits and pieces and yet never its whole, bruised entirety.

  I hated that this had stifled our bond, for I loved Fannie. She was the closest thing to a mother that I had known in years, and yet drawing close to her made me feel like I was being disloyal to the mother who was only mine in memory, the woman who wore a crisp white apron over my father’s worn bib overalls, her only adornment a checked handkerchief tied over her brunette waves and a lavish brand of department store perfume. I recalled the diamond crumb in her engagement band glinting as she sifted cocoa and confectioner’s sugar into a bowl that filled the morning kitchen with a decadent chocolate haze and the promise of an afternoon treat. I recalled peeking over the countertop and my mother passing me the glistening brown beaters, which I licked until my cheeks became an abstract canvas stamped with a wide white smile.

  This was the mother I loved and remembered. However, I now had to make a choice as my little brother, Benny, had been forced to make so long ago: cling to a phantom memory or to the flesh-and-blood woman standing before me. The woman who had never abandoned me. The woman who loved me too. I exhaled and pulled open the door. Stepping to the side, I let Fannie pass. I touched the damp hanks framing my face. Jiggling Hope with one arm, I covered my mouth and began to weep.

  Fannie set the candle stand on the seat of the chair, stepped toward me, and placed two papery hands on my cheeks. My tears dripped over her fingers. With one hand, I reached up and clasped hers, tilting my head toward her touch like a blossom toward life-giving sun. “You can’t live in fear, Rhoda,” she whispered, searching my eyes. “That’s no life at all.”