The Midwife

by Jolina Petersheim

  I cannot help but listen to such a well-chosen verse, despite the person reading it. I feel I am walking through the valley of death even as this new life, my child, yawns against my ribs. Slipping a hand beneath Eli’s diapered bottom, I jiggle him so that his ribbon mouth slackens into a smile. I then glance across the earthen hole and up into Judah King’s staring, honey-colored eyes. His are softer than his elder brother Tobias’s: there is no judgment in them, only the slightest veiling of confusion not thick enough to hide the pain of his unrequited love, a love I have been denying since childhood.

  Dropping my gaze, I recall how my braided pigtails would fly out behind me as I sprinted barefoot down the grassy hill toward ten-year-old Judah. I remember how he would scream, “Springa! Springa!” and instead of being caught by Leah or Eugene or whoever was doing the chasing, I would run right toward the safety of base and the safety of him. Afterward, the two of us would slink away from our unfinished chores and go sit in the milking barn with our sweat-soaked backs against the coolness of the storage tanks. Judah would pass milk to me from a jelly jar and I would take a sip, read a page of the Hardy Boys or the Boxcar Children, and then pass his contraband book and jelly jar back.

  Because of those afternoons, Judah taught me how to speak, write, and read English far better and far earlier than our Old Order Mennonite teachers ever could have. As our playmates were busy speaking Pennsylvania Dutch, Judah and I had our own secret language, and sheathed in its safety, he would often confide how desperately he wanted to leave this world for the larger one beyond it. A world he had explored only through the books he would purchase at Root’s Market when his father wasn’t looking and read until the pages were sticky with the sweat of a thousand secret turnings.

  Summer was slipping into fall by the time my mamm, Helen, discovered our hiding spot. Judah and I had just returned from making mud pies along the banks of the Kings’ cow pond when she stepped out of the fierce sun into the barn’s shaded doorway and found us sitting, once again, beside the milking tanks with the fifth book in the Boxcar Children series draped over our laps. Each of us was so covered in grime that the jelly jar from which we drank our milk was marred with a lipstick kiss of mud. But we were pristine up to the elbows, because Judah feared we would damage his book’s precious pages if we did not redd up before reading them.

  That afternoon, all my mamm had to do was stand in the doorway of the barn with one hand on her hip and wag the nubby index finger of her other hand (nubby since it had gotten caught in the corn grinder when she was a child), and I leaped to my feet with my face aflame.

  For hours and hours afterward, my stomach churned. I thought that when Dawdy got home from the New Holland horse sales he would take me out to the barn and whip me. But he didn’t.

  To this day, I’m not even sure Mamm told him she’d caught Judah and me sitting very close together as we read from our Englischer books. I think she kept our meeting spot a secret because she did not want to root out the basis of our newly sprouted friendship, which she hoped would one day turn into fully grown love. Since my mamm was as private as a woman in such a small community could be, I never knew these were her thoughts until nine years later when I wrote to tell her I was with child.

  She arrived, haggard and alone, two days after receiving my letter. When she disembarked from the van that had brought her on the twelve-hour journey from Pennsylvania to Tennessee, she walked with me into Leah and Tobias’s white farmhouse, up the stairs into my bedroom, and asked in hurried Pennsylvania Dutch, “Is Judah the vadder?”

  Shocked, I just looked at her a moment, then shook my head.

  She took me by the shoulders and squeezed them until they ached. “If not him, who?”

  “I cannot say.”

  “What do you mean, you cannot say? Rachel, I am your mudder. You can trust me, jah?”

  “Some things go beyond trust,” I whispered.

  My mamm’s blue eyes narrowed as they bored into mine. I wanted to look away, but I couldn’t. Although I was nineteen, I felt like I was a child all over again, like she still held the power to know when I had done something wrong and who I had done it with.

  At last, she released me and dabbed her tears with the index nub of her left hand. “You’re going to have a long row to hoe,” she whispered.

  “I know.”

  “You’ll have to do it alone. Your dawdy won’t let you come back . . . not like this.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Did you tell Leah?”

  Again, I shook my head.

  My mamm pressed her hand against the melon of my stomach as if checking its ripeness. “She’ll find out soon enough.” She sighed. “What are you? Three months, four?”

  “Three months.” I couldn’t meet her eyes.

  “Hide it for two more. ’Til Leah and the baby are stronger. In the meantime, you’ll have to find a place of your own. Tobias won’t let you stay here.”

  “But where will I go? Who will take me in?” Even in my despondent state, I hated the panic that had crept into my voice.

  My mamm must have hated it as well. Her nostrils flared as she snapped, “You should’ve thought of this before, Rachel! You have sinned in haste. Now you must repent at leisure!”

  This exchange between my mamm and me took place eight months ago, but I still haven’t found a place to stay. Although the Mennonites do not practice the shunning enforced by the Amish Ordnung, anyone who has joined the Old Order Mennonite church as I had and then falls outside its moral guidelines without repentance is still treated with the abhorrence of a leper. Therefore, once the swelling in my belly was obvious to all, the Copper Creek Community, who’d welcomed me with such open arms when I moved down to care for my bedridden sister, began to retreat until I knew my child and I would be facing our uncertain future alone. Tobias, more easily swayed by the community than he lets on, surely would have cast me and my bastard child out onto the street if it weren’t for his wife. Night after night I would overhear my sister in their bedroom next to mine, begging Tobias, like Esther beseeching the king, to forgive my sins and allow me to remain sheltered beneath their roof—at least until after my baby was born.

  “Tobias, please,” Leah would entreat in her soft, high-pitched voice, “if you don’t want to do it for Rachel, then do it for me!”

  Twisting in the quilts, I would burrow my head beneath the pillow and imagine my sister’s face as she begged her husband: it would be as white as the cotton sheet on which I lay, her cheeks and temples hollowed at first by chronic morning sickness, then later—after Jonathan’s excruciating birth—by the emergency C-section that forced her back into the prison bed from which she’d just been released.

  Although I knew everything external about my twin, for in that way she and I were one and the same, lying there as Tobias and Leah argued, I could not understand the internal differences between us. She was selfless to her core—a trait I once took merciless advantage of. She would always take the drumstick of the chicken and give me the breast; she would always sleep on the outside of the bed despite feeling more secure against the wall; she would always let me wear her new dresses until a majority of the straight pins tacking them together had gone missing and they had frayed at the seams.

  Then, the ultimate test: at eighteen Leah married Tobias King. Not out of love, as I would have required of a potential marriage, but out of duty. His wife had passed away five months after the birth of their daughter Sarah, and Tobias needed a mudder to care for the newborn along with her three siblings. Years ago, my family’s home had neighbored the Kings’. I suppose when Tobias realized he needed a wife to replace the one he’d lost, he recalled my docile, sweet-spoken twin and wrote, asking if she would be willing to marry a man twelve years her senior and move away to a place that might as well have been a foreign land.

  I often wonder if Leah said yes to widower Tobias King because her selfless nature would not allow her to say no. Whenever she imagined saying no and in
stead waiting for a union with someone she might actually love, she would probably envision those four motherless children down in Tennessee with the Kings’ dark complexion and angular build, and her tender heart would swell with compassion and the determination to marry a complete stranger. I think, at least in the back of her mind, Leah also knew that an opportunity to escape our yellow house on Hilltop Road might not present itself again. I had never wanted for admirers, so I did not fear this fate, but then I had never trembled at the sight of a man other than my father, either. As far back as I can recall, Leah surely did, and I remember how I had to peel her hands from my forearms as the wedding day’s festivities drew to a close, and Mamm and I finished preparing her for her and Tobias’s final unifying ceremony.

  “Ach, Rachel,” she stammered, dark-blue eyes flooded with tears. “I—I can’t.”

  “You goose,” I replied, “sure you can! No one’s died from their wedding night so far, and if all these children are a sign, I’d say most even like it!”

  It was a joy to watch my sister’s wan cheeks burn with embarrassment, and that night I suppose they burned with something entirely new. Two months later she wrote to say that she was with child—Tobias King’s child—but there were some complications, and would I mind terribly much to move down until the baby’s birth?

  Now Tobias finishes reading from the Psalms, closes the heavy Bible, and bows his head. The community follows suit. For five whole minutes not a word is spoken, but each of us is supposed to remain in a state of silent prayer. I want to pray, but I find even the combined vocabulary of the English and Pennsylvania Dutch languages insufficient for the turbulent emotions I feel. Instead, I just close my eyes and listen to the wind brushing its fingertips through the autumnal tresses of the trees, to the trilling melody of snow geese migrating south, to the horses stomping in the churchyard, eager to be freed from their cumbersome buggies and returned to the comfort of the stall.

  Although Tobias gives us no sign, the community becomes aware that the prayer time is over, and everyone lifts his or her head. The men then harness ropes around Amos’s casket, slide out the boards that were bracing it over the hole, and begin to lower him into his grave.

  I cannot account for the tears that form in my eyes as that pine box begins its jerky descent into darkness. I did not know Amos well enough to mourn him, but I did know that he was a good man, a righteous man, who had extended his hand of mercy to me without asking questions. Now that his son has taken over as bishop of Copper Creek, I fear that hand will be retracted, and perhaps the tears are more for myself and my child than they are for the man who has just left this life behind.

  About the Author

  Jolina Petersheim is the bestselling author of The Outcast, which Library Journal gave a starred review and named one of the best books of 2013. The Outcast also became an ECPA, CBA, and Amazon bestseller and was featured in Huffington Post’s Fall Picks, USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and the Tennessean. Jolina’s sophomore novel, The Midwife, also taps into her and her husband’s unique Amish and Mennonite heritage that originated in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. They now live in the mountains of Tennessee with their young daughter. Whenever she’s not busy chasing this adorable toddler, Jolina is hard at work on her next novel. She blogs regularly at www.jolinapetersheim.com and www.southernbelleviewdaily.com.

  Interview with the Author

  Did you always aspire to be a novelist, or did you have other options on your career shortlist?

  Every kid goes through a spell of wanting to be a nurse, doctor, or veterinarian. I was certainly no different and yearned to deliver babies and/or mend hurt animals. With my mother’s help, I raised a piglet, owls, turtles (snappers and painted), kittens, and a slew of abandoned baby birds that never survived the fledgling stage. Looking back, I think their immediate demise had something to do with the watered-down orange juice I fed to them through a dropper.

  Then came the seismic shift in my future career: I entered third grade and started doing long division. My brain fizzled at the sight of so many numbers, which were all necessary for any kind of medical degree. I countered my arithmetic phobia with books—oodles and oodles of books. I fell in love with words even more after discovering my dislike, nay hatred, of numbers. In sixth grade, I used my journal with the tiny gold lock to record my first novella and—even during my brief stint in college, trying to become the next Katie Couric—have ever since been trying to perfect the novel form.

  What was the most surprising thing that happened once your first novel was published?

  One of the occupational hazards of working from home is that I am often in my bathrobe at eleven o’clock in the morning. That morning was no different. I knew I couldn’t leave the nursery without being seen through the glass front door, but I didn’t want the person to continue knocking and awaken my daughter who was drifting off to sleep. So I popped the collar of my bathrobe and walked right out.

  The UPS man waved at me through the glass. I was relieved and promptly opened the door. I signed his clipboard, and he slid the box of books from my publisher across the hardwood floor. Then he asked if he could purchase an autographed copy for his wife’s birthday. My jaw about dropped, but I just closed the door and sprinted upstairs to fetch a copy. I signed it on the lap of my bathrobe and passed the book to him. He passed me back the correct change, waved good-bye, and bounced down the lane in his big brown rig. That was certainly my most surprising experience!

  Was the process of writing your second book any different from writing your first?

  I’d just found out I was expecting when I started writing The Outcast, my debut. I began writing The Midwife when our bouncing baby girl was twelve weeks old. So I went from writing for eight hours a day to writing whenever my daughter could be cajoled to sleep. Sometimes it felt nearly impossible to take care of her—my precious little insomniac—and the house, and still work on my novel.

  The silver lining during that trying ten months of sleep deprivation is that it taught me to write whenever I got the chance. It didn’t matter if I was feeling inspired or if there were crumbs on the floor and dishes in the sink. When my sweet child’s eyes closed, it was time to grab my laptop and delve into Dry Hollow’s world. Not only was writing The Midwife one of the most challenging things I’ve done, it was also one of the best. I am so glad I had that creative outlet to pour myself into. At the end of the year, I not only had a little girl who (mostly) slept through the night, but a completed novel. I will take that over a spit-cleaned house any day.

  Where did you get the idea for this story? Do you usually start with a scene, with plot, or with characters?

  My closest friend in college had a heart transplant when she was fifteen. Because of the antirejection medication she was taking, she knew that when she married her fiancé, she would be unable to carry his child and mentioned using a gestational surrogate when it was time to expand their family. I thought often about the complications of such an undertaking: What if the surrogate became attached to the baby she carried? What if something was wrong with the child? What if, God forbid, one of the biological parents died?

  I mulled over the concept of surrogacy for many years. But it wasn’t until the birth of my own daughter that I knew that if she’d swum inside my womb and received sustenance from my body—even if she was of no genetic connection to me—she would indeed be my child. I would do anything for her, even if that meant going against the law. In the end, when I began writing The Midwife, the surrogacy thread became more of a tapestry of what it means to be a mother: genetics or love.

  Is Fannie Graber based on anyone you’ve met? What about any of the other characters?

  I researched both of my novels without realizing I was doing it. For The Outcast, I learned about a bone marrow transplant by watching my best friend receive her eight-year-old brother’s bone marrow at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. For The Midwife, I read two books by Ina May Gaskin—a phenomenal midwife who was one o
f the forerunners of a hippie commune in Summertown, Tennessee. She is now in her early seventies and known throughout the world for her competency in the midwifery profession, even if some people disagree with her unorthodox methods.

  I never got to meet Ina May, but Fannie Graber’s gentle nature and physical characteristics are based on her. In writing some of the birthing scenes in The Midwife, I also drew on my experiences with the midwives at a birthing center where I’d hoped to have my daughter. Unfortunately, I ended up at the hospital, but even then the midwives stayed beside me. If we’re blessed with another child, I would like to visit The Farm in Summertown, Tennessee, and see if it’s a place I could give birth with Ina May Gaskin as my midwife. Who knows? Maybe she would even let me interview her in between contractions!

  How has your Mennonite background shaped your writing? Did you always intend to write about Mennonite culture?

  I never thought I would write about my Mennonite heritage because I was just too close to view it objectively. It wasn’t until someone told me a true story about an affair that had rippling effects throughout an Old Order Mennonite community that I began to see a different spin on the quintessential “bonnet fiction” genre. I have witnessed firsthand that the Plain people are not a utopian society but struggle with the fallibility of man that affects the rest of us. I have combined this viewpoint with my experiences of living in a Christian community for eight years as an adolescent.

  I am vastly intrigued by what pulls a community together and what tears it apart and how this convergence of separate belief systems affects the families locked within the community’s confines. So far, I believe this combination has created its own niche, since I use a story to explore the intricacies of community rather than using a community merely as the setting for a story. I will write these narratives for as long as they come to me and aren’t forced.