The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  “Can my mamm come?” Lydie says.

  From experience, I know that a woman craves her mother’s presence the most when faced with birth or death. This poor child is being faced with both within one twenty-four-hour period. I want to grant her request, but we have no time to lose—nor do we have room for Lydie’s mamm in Looper’s truck.

  I look over at Looper. “Can you tell Mrs. Risser that we need to leave now?” I ask. “See if she’s able to get a ride and follow us as soon as possible. And can you please use someone’s phone to call Wilbur and ask him where Amelia is?”

  “There’s a phone in the barn,” Lydie says. I am about to rattle off Wilbur’s cell phone number when Lydie Risser stares right into my eyes and recites it. Looper nods and walks off the porch toward the barn.

  Lydie chokes out, “I’m sorry.” She bows her head.

  I kneel on the porch and press the calloused pad of Lydie’s small hand. Her body exudes the energy and the warmth that will propel her through childbirth and the trying months afterward, when she faces life as a single mother in a community filled with picture-perfect families. “It’s all right, my meedel,” I soothe, just as Fannie Graber once soothed me—a forgotten kindness restored. “None of that matters now. We just need to focus on bringing your baby into this world.”

  Rocking back on my heels, I stare into the yard. The foliage on the trees blurs as my eyes flood with memory. I may not have had the daughter who was taken from me, but I have been surrounded by these precious daughters who have all been as alone in the world as I. For eighteen years I have taken them for granted. Nonetheless, I vow to open my heart to them, and through that communion, become the kind of mother I have never had.

  Amelia, 2014

  Wilbur parks, and the fog I’ve been floating in, ever since his leak about my parents, evaporates. Uriah Rippentoe runs out of Hopen Haus like he’s been waiting for us. His straw hat blows off in the yard and snags on a clump of dandelion weeds. His eyes scan me as I get out of the van. I’m relieved to see him, but as I turn toward him—my eyes swollen, my bones aching with shock—I’m also embarrassed by how strange I must look, wearing Lydie’s too-small cape dress and with my hair finger-brushed into a messy bun. I know that Uriah’s not checking out my appearance as much as he’s making sure that I’m all right. However, faced with my parents’ lie, I’m not sure I’ll ever be all right again.

  “What happened?” Uriah asks. Then he turns toward Wilbur without waiting for my answer. The two men stare at each other. Wilbur doesn’t blink. The veins throb in Uriah’s hands.

  I move between them. “I’m fine,” I say, though my voice is hoarse from crying. “Lydie’s dad died. They buried him today.” When neither speaks, I ask, “My parents been by?”

  Uriah says, “Your parents?”

  “Yes.” I wrap a hand around my throat, watching Wilbur walk over to his van. “They’re coming down here. They . . . they might be here soon.”

  “They’re coming to take you back?”

  I nod. My body trembles as I understand what back really means: a meeting with a counselor, a doctor’s appointment, followed by a ton of Ivy League college applications. My mom has no doubt taken every step to make sure that my future is only rescheduled, not derailed. But is that what I want? I wrap my arms around my thickening waist, wanting to scream—to weep—yet somehow I remain standing. After living in Hopen Haus and seeing cases like Desiree’s and Star’s, I know I’m lucky to have parents who are not only involved in my life, but so hands-on they’d drop everything just to come down here and guarantee my safety. But how can they guarantee my safety while my mom is asking me to harm my child, her grandchild?

  I came down here to find myself, and instead I’ve never felt so lost. How can a baby be growing inside a body that doesn’t even know its birth mother . . . its original name?

  Covering my mouth, I begin to sob. Uriah crosses the short distance between us and folds me into his arms. I rest against him a second, absorbing power from a boy’s touch as I’ve always done; then I close my eyes and picture the two of us hugging with this invisible child between us, a viewpoint that suddenly helps me see our flirtation for what it is. Every time I’ve been forced to face the darkest parts of myself, I have instead turned the opposite direction and faced someone else. I did this the night my baby was conceived; I am doing this now.

  Breathing deep, I blink tears and step back from Uriah, not because I want to, but because my baby deserves a mother who is willing to break the cycle and try to become more than who she currently is. Then I see that Wilbur Byler is watching us. His body is slanted against the hood of his van, which is still ticking with the engine’s trapped heat. His thick arms are crossed. Our eyes remain locked until Wilbur points to me, brings a finger to his lips that is as straight as the barrel of a gun, and shakes his head—a threat that is also the worldwide demand for silence. I continue watching him as he climbs into his van.

  His brake lights flash once before he drives down the lane.

  Rhoda, 2014

  I give Looper a pointed glance, and he punches the gas pedal. The truck rattles as the engine accelerates us down Dry Hollow’s coarse county road. Unsnapping her seat belt, Lydie writhes and turns, facing the truck bed. She digs nails into the seat and pants until the dusty rear window fogs with breath. Not in the truck, I think. Please, Lydie. Don’t give birth in this truck. I delivered Henry and Arlene’s nine-pound daughter in a buggy discreetly parked behind the ticket booth at the annual farm auction in Scottsville, Kentucky, but I’ve never caught a baby in a speeding vehicle. Lydie’s mother was hoping one of her Englischer neighbors who had come to pay their condolences could shuttle her to Hopen Haus in an hour or two, once the majority of the mourners had left for home. Looking at Lydie now, though, I am not sure Rebecca will make it before her grandchild’s birth.

  I wedge myself between Lydie’s body and the dashboard, placing my left knee on the floorboard. Gently pushing on her shoulders with the flat of my hands, I press my other knee into the small of her back. She pushes against the seat, bracing against me. Tenderness swells in the forty-five-degree angle of my wrists, and a bottle cap is gouging my kneecap on the floorboard. But I continue administering counterpressure until Looper’s hurtling Chevy dips into a gully in the washed-out lane leading to Hopen Haus.

  I topple toward the floor, and my ribs chip against the gearshift. Clenching my eyes, I bite back a moan and can feel Looper’s hand touch mine in sympathy. Lydie emits an unintelligible stream of Pennsylvania Dutch as another contraction assaults her, and no one is able to help her grapple with the pain.

  Looper abruptly shifts into park and the truck lurches to a stop. He jumps out and runs around to help Lydie. Crawling out of the truck, I drag a bridal train of sawdust and ten-penny nails onto the flat-topped grass. I limp in Looper and Lydie’s steady wake toward Hopen Haus, holding my right side. My ribs echo with the pulse of the heart beneath them. I try to straighten and wince. At least one of my ribs may be broken, if not more. My breathing is shallow. These physical limitations do not bode well for delivering a child. I am so focused on the agony of inhaling and exhaling, I am taken aback when I look up and see Amelia Fitzpatrick, in a cape dress and bun, standing on the front porch beside Uriah.

  Her red hair is the eye of the vortex swirling around us. I want to dart up those steps and embrace her. I want to hold her against my chest and thank God that she is safe from Wilbur Byler and that she somehow came back to me, even after seventeen years. I want to whisper her birth name in her ear like a prayer. I want to mourn what we’ve lost and rejoice over what we have left, no matter how insignificant that might be.

  But as Lydie’s keening reverberates across the yard, I know this is not the time for the mother-daughter reunion for which I’ve always longed. Looper places one arm around Lydie’s back and scoops the other beneath her legs. Her ramrod body loosens in this strangely matrimonial embrace. Tears drip across Lydie’s temples and she bites dow
n hard.

  “Breathe through it, Lydie,” I call, though breathless myself. “Don’t fight. Just breathe.”

  Uriah scrambles over to the screen door and pulls it open. Looper plods up the steps and turns sideways before carrying Lydie past Uriah and into the darkness of the hall.

  “She okay?” Amelia asks. Her fingers hover near her mouth. I can see the thin, pale circle where Meredith Fitzpatrick’s cameo ring used to be. This is the first time I’ve looked at Amelia as a mother viewing her child. My eyes burn with the intensity of the emotions I feel. I extend my hand to touch this phantom brought to life, this child turned woman. But I retract it at the last moment, fearing that Amelia would prefer not to know the truth.

  “Rhoda?” Amelia says.

  My scalp prickles as I understand that this young woman will never consider me her mom. I look down. “She’ll be fine,” I say, not knowing if I speak for Lydie or for myself. Then I stare at my daughter for one second more before entering Hopen Haus, knowing that, somewhere in its depths, another mother and her child are waiting to be born.

  Fatigue is its own anesthesia, letting Lydie remain half-asleep through two lighter contractions. Alice stands to the right of the four-poster bed, listening to the baby’s heart rate through Fannie’s old fetoscope, its fluted mouth pressed against Lydie’s stomach like a kiss. Alice moves the scope higher and then higher still. Her fair brows furrow. She looks over, and though she is obviously concerned, I am not able to interpret her expression. Straightening her back, she walks toward me.

  I push up from the cane-backed chair and hobble over. I lift the edge of Lydie’s sheet with my right hand—and even this movement is almost too much to bear. I turn to the side and wince, trying to keep from gasping aloud. But then Alice Rippentoe’s gasp echoes what I have not uttered. I look over at her, perturbed that a midwife has emitted a negative sound in the birthing room. A patient is never more attuned to her caregivers’ verbal and nonverbal cues then when about to give birth.

  Alice meets my eyes. I follow the trajectory of her pointing finger, and my jaw goes slack. Clutching my side, I shuffle closer. I try to breathe through the panic, as I have instructed Lydie to do. But I can’t. One of the baby’s feet has emerged. It’s really as simple and as complicated as that. Though I assisted Fannie once in the delivery of a shoulder presentation, I have never seen a foot presentation before in my life. And I have most certainly never delivered one. Even if I wasn’t incapacitated by my broken ribs, I wouldn’t know how to begin. Why did I make the oldest mistake in midwifery and assume that the protuberance at the top of Lydie’s womb was the bottom and not the head?

  I’ve only delivered one breech baby since Fannie died, and I had Sadie Gingrich to assist me, who had once assisted Fannie and therefore knew what to do when I felt so inept. Everything must be done slowly and precisely—if the umbilical cord gets clamped during pushing and the head is still anchored in the womb, the baby will not receive oxygen through the mother’s blood. The baby will then either be severely handicapped or asphyxiated before he’s even drawn his first breath.

  I turn my back on Lydie and gouge my nails into my palms, angry that I allowed her to go to Split Rock—for her dawdy’s funeral or not. It was too close to her due date. I should’ve known better. If Lydie had been in my care from the beginning of this complication—and if I had remembered my birthing satchel—I could have determined the baby’s position from the location of the heartbeat. There would have been ways to relax the womb and try to manipulate the baby into the correct position for birth.

  Now it’s too late. Holding on to the edge of the bed, I reach out and stroke the bottom of the tiny, neonatal foot. My pulse thumps in my ears. I wonder if our intervention has come too late and the child’s already dead. Then the foot moves. The five perfect toes with their five perfect nails unfurl. The movement is so infinitesimal that it is like watching a flower bloom, one petal at a time. And yet the child is alive.

  “Praise be,” Alice whispers. I look over and see her touching the back of her gloved hand to her lips, contaminating it without thinking. “Praise be,” she repeats.

  Lydie stirs from her exhausted half sleep. “My bobbel . . . my bobbel all right?” she asks.

  I give Alice a sharp look of reproof and say, “Change your gloves.” Then I soften my voice. “Yes, Lydie. Everything’s all right. We just think you might’ve been in labor longer than we anticipated. You can’t remember any time your waters might have broken?”

  Charlotte moves to the front of the bed and brushes the hair back from Lydie’s brow. She brings over a glass of raspberry leaf tea and bends the straw to allow the girl to drink.

  Lydie swallows and sinks into the pillow. “I’m not sure,” she rasps. “Might’ve happened in the bath—” Her word becomes a soft moan as another contraction hits. Grinding her teeth, Lydie rises and scoots up the mattress, trying to escape the pain. She breathes through it by mimicking Alice’s open-mouthed panting and then wrenches her body sideways. Charlotte darts over with an old milk pail. Vomit spews from between Lydie’s fingers and pings against the bottom of the tin.

  “It’s all right,” Charlotte murmurs, rubbing Lydie’s convulsing back and holding the pail steady. “It’s all right, liebe.”

  The putrid scent is exacerbated by the heat trapped inside the room. I stand and move around the bed to open the window and then remember that I can’t. I motion to Alice, and she lifts the window for me. Flecks of paint break free as her svelte arms heave and the old glass panes clatter upward. The room swells with the sound of bullfrogs croaking down near the pond; the steady tappity-tapping of a pileated woodpecker drilling for bugs; the jangle of the Gypsy goat herd’s bells.

  Watching Lydie Risser in the center of the four-poster bed, curling her body around the clenching fist of her unborn baby, anger burns within me. How could Wilbur Byler have been so calloused—so cruel—as to steal Lydie’s childhood by making her with child herself?

  I yearn to strike out. I yearn to banish Wilbur from Hopen Haus and from our lives forever, knowing the only way to do so is to involve the law that I have been trying to evade for eighteen years. The same law that Wilbur would use against me, by revealing how I kidnapped the Fitzpatricks’ daughter and hid in the very place meant to keep others safe. I know bringing a suit against Wilbur for statutory rape is outside my jurisdiction, but would he know that? And would newly widowed Rebecca Risser be able to rise above her grief long enough to bring the suit against him that I cannot? Or would her pacifist beliefs force her to let him go? These questions have no ready answers, and so they are answers in themselves. I must notify the police of Wilbur’s actions in the hope that they will put enough fear into him that he will not repeat such a travesty. I do not dread the repercussions of my heedless past brought to light. I would not want to do it over, but I would do it all again. What I fear is how Amelia Fitzpatrick would be affected if she found out that her own parents did not want her until they knew she was not malformed.

  But I know I will do anything within my power to ensure that what happened to Lydie does not happen again. Even if that means hurting my own daughter by revealing the truth behind the lifetime lie. I hear the crunch of gravel beneath tires and turn toward the window, though I can only see the shaded garden. I imagine that Wilbur Byler has just arrived. That he’s somehow learned of Lydie’s labor and has returned to ensure the safety of the life his selfishness has risked.

  “Alice . . . Charlotte,” I say as I hear a vehicle door slam. “Will you be all right if I step outside a minute?”

  Lydie is oblivious to anything but the compression of her womb. However, the two midwives look up. Sweat curls the silver strands that have come loose from Charlotte’s kapp. Alice’s cheeks are smudged with exertion. Alice opens her mouth—to ask me to remain, I’m sure—but then she says, “Hurry.”

  Downstairs, I cut through the dining room to intercept Wilbur Byler. My left hand is on the screen door handle, about to pul
l it open, when a flurry of movement in the yard catches my eye. It’s not Wilbur Byler’s silver minivan that has just pulled up. A black luxury car is parked in the driveway. Meredith Fitzpatrick is striding across the lawn. Thom is following in her wake.

  He looks much the same as he did when I left my daughter behind in Boston. I do not remain focused on him; Meredith’s transformation requires more attention than that. Her khaki pants are rumpled. The collar of her shirt is flipped up into blonde hair that hangs as limp as curtain panels on either side of her face. The lines of Meredith’s face and body are just as symmetrical, but everything is softened, as if the woman I once knew and feared was nothing but a lump of malleable wax set too long beneath the sun.

  Suddenly, Amelia’s back appears in my line of sight, her slim silhouette framed by the screen door, but she does not take one more step toward her mother.

  My eyes dart to Meredith’s face, which is fitted with a mask of immense relief and rage. The aim of Meredith’s gaze does not take in Hopen Haus’s dilapidated state. It does not take in the gleeful chickens pecking the dirt her quick steps have tilled. It does not take in the shadow of the woman who hides behind this screen door. The screen door separating the woman from the daughter she birthed—the woman who is now watching the woman who wanted to take her daughter’s life claim her daughter again. No, Meredith’s gaze is focused wholly on her daughter, as it should have been focused all along.

  Meredith marches up the steps. She is so near, I can watch the abalone buttons glint on the front of her shirt. I can hear the chime of sterling bracelets on her wrists. Meredith is so close that I can see the anger give way and tears rise in her eyes.