The Journey Home

by K'Anne Meinel

  Melanie wiped Stephanie’s sweating brow, bringing in fresh cold water. She indicated the pile of newspapers on the end of the bed and Cass wiped her hands on one of the papers as she placed them all over the floor under where she wanted Stephanie to squat.

  “Come on Stephanie, I want you to get up and sit on the edge of the bed,” Cass told her, reaching for her hands to help her.

  “Why?” Stephanie asked through the pain she was obviously feeling.

  “It’s easier for you to give birth if you are squatting, like over a chamber pot,” Cass said, being blunt.

  Stephanie looked at her in horror, her last doctor had given her something for her to sleep and she woke with a baby happy and healthy in her arms. The pain she was experiencing now was making her frantic. She couldn’t believe what her friend was asking her to do. Shaking her head she refused, “No, I can’t do that,” she gasped as another wave of intense pain gripped her.

  Cass exchanged a look with Melanie and she gave a slight nod and waiting for the pain to pass she pulled a surprised Stephanie effortlessly forward by her hands as Melanie gripped her around her shoulders and shoved. They pulled and maneuvered the smaller woman with their farm girl strengthened arms into the position that Cass desired while she attempted to fight them protesting every step of the way. When they were finished, Cass had her over the edge of the bed with the edge of her buttocks on the mattress, her nightgown hiked above her hips much to her mortification; Melanie leaned against her back, providing her with support. Cass held her hands tightly as the protesting woman tried to get out of her grasp, “Look at me, LOOK AT ME,” she commanded the distraught woman who was panicking at this unfamiliar position.

  Stephanie calmed for a moment as the pain subsided. It made her more aware of her surroundings for a small time frame before she would succumb to the pain of childbirth again.

  “Now you are in the perfect position to give birth, the Indians had it right all these years; you’re using the pull of the Earth to get this baby out of you. Come on,” she encouraged, “You can do this, it’s easier this way.” She held her friend’s hand and with the beginning of the almost non-stop pains she let Stephanie grip her hands painfully as she pushed to expel this baby from her body.

  “That’s it, that’s it, I can feel the head,” Cass told her. The position that Stephanie was in and the lubricant were working. With the next few pains Stephanie got the baby’s shoulders out, Cass noted how broad they were for a baby, it was why it had been stuck, besides the dry channel.

  “What is it? What is it?” Stephanie gasped as she slumped against Melanie. It was fascinating to Melanie to see someone else in labor; it made her wonder what she had been like in her own deliveries, nature in its infinite wisdom made mother’s forget what they had gone through. Seeing how calm Cass remained made her realize how much she had forgotten about her own.

  “God didn’t put their privates on their head so you gotta push a few more times,” Cass laughed up from where she was squatting to catch the baby. One more push actually might do it she thought as she gently turned those enormous shoulders as the baby began to cry.

  Its cry seemed to invigorate Stephanie enough to push the rest of its body from her own. With a mighty push the baby rushed out of her body and Cass expertly caught it before it could even fall to the papers. Holding it up for the exhausted mom she showed Stephanie. “Here’s your new daughter momma,” she smiled as she reached for the rags that Melanie pushed at her from the foot of the bed where she had stacked them. Quickly she wiped the gunk off the crying baby as Stephanie watched. She reached into her bag for clips to staunch the flow of blood between mother and child as she cut the cord. Wrapping the baby tightly in a blanket she handed it to Melanie much to Stephanie’s consternation.

  “Come on Mama, one more push and you should be done with this,” Cass told Stephanie as she used her hands to help expel the afterbirth from Stephanie’s exhausted body. Stephanie’s hands feebly tried to stop her as an intense pain enveloped her.

  Pushing once more hard the afterbirth came out of her body with a plop as it landed on the papers. Cass used rags to clean off Stephanie’s privates. She pulled needle and thread and quickly stitched up a tear caused from the baby’s enormous shoulders. Putting a salve on the stitches to keep them clean and protect them, she pulled drawers over the exhausted mother’s legs and she packed the remaining rags to absorb the normal flow of blood that was seeping between her legs before helping her to prop herself up against the pillows and Melanie gave her the wrapped form that was her daughter.

  Stephanie cleaned up the papers, wrapping the afterbirth within the mess and dumping it all into a pan. She would burn it all later in the fireplace or better yet a burning pit they had by the woodlot. Things like that were better off burned than buried for animals to dig up.

  “Well Mama, you have a girl to go with your boys,” she complemented Stephanie with a smile as she removed her now soiled apron from over her pants.

  Stephanie looked up with a tear in her eye. “She’s beautiful,” she said in gratitude to her friend who had helped deliver her.

  Cass had to agree, there was no arguing with a new mother but even she who had delivered many babies over the years had to admit this was a pretty baby. “Do you know what you are going to name her?”

  Stephanie shook her head. “I thought I was going to have a boy, I never chose a girl’s name, and my husband always chose the boys names.”

  Cass rolled her eyes but kept silent. She thought the names Timmy and Tommy terribly uninspired. Cass left Stephanie with Melanie as they both exclaimed over the baby. Melanie, whose own little girl was a few months old, enjoyed sharing with Stephanie who had never had a girl before either. They shared so much in common that Cass almost felt left out, but she had work to do anyway.

  She took the pan downstairs and out to the burning pit and started a fire in it and got it really hot by using the bellows before placing the packet containing the placenta on it to burn. She made sure it was sizzling well before she put a pan of water on the edge of the fire to heat. When it was hot enough she put some soap that Stephanie had made in the mixture to soak her splattered apron and wash it right away. Years of splattered muck were stained into its white but it was still useful and she got out the worst of the muck immediately. Bleaching it helped a little but it was still hopelessly stained. Hanging it on the line she went to the barn to see what the children were up to.

  “What are you doing?” she asked as she saw Timmy and one of Melanie’s boys chasing a duckling who was squawking loudly while a larger duck was fluttering from behind a fence obviously trying to ‘save’ it’s baby from these two little boys. Tommy and the other boy were watching anxiously.

  “He has a hurt foot,” Timmy told her as he fell on the duckling which peeped louder as he held it in his hands as it fluttered and struggled.

  Cass shrugged, it was part of nature. She took the peeping duckling from the little boys hand and examined its foot. It had been born with it she could tell. Willing to give it a chance she gently pushed it through the fence to its over excited mama and after a thorough examination they both calmed down and waddled off. “You boys can’t take a baby from its mama without permission, look how upset they both were,” she shamed the two boys.

  Both boys hung their heads and Cass looked around. The boys had fed the poultry as she requested and it was still light so Raymond was due in at any time. She looked at Timmy and Tommy and said, “You two go wash up and go see your Mama and new sister.” They looked at her in surprise as they took off, Raymond and Melanie’s two boys began to follow, “Not so fast you two,” she called and they turned at her commanding voice, used to obeying adults. “You two wait here and we will help your daddy unload,” she indicated the wagon they could hear coming from the field. When Raymond stopped in front of the barn he had two eager little boys, both too small to really help, trying their best and getting in the way.

  Cass laughed at their
efforts and explained the afternoon to Raymond. He seemed surprised to hear that Stephanie had had a little girl but then shrugged. It was really none of his concern. With the philosophical attitude of most farmers he got back to work unloading the crops. Cass helped him and they soon had the wagon empty.

  “Cows bred?” he asked as they finished.

  Cass assured him they were and they were both grateful that chore was finished. Cass had paid for all of the cows to be bred, in part to pay Raymond back for some of the work he had been doing with her, they traded a lot of work and shared in their crops in payment as well.

  Melanie made dinner that night, taking a tray up to the new mother. Cass checked on her after dinner and found her patient nursing her new daughter. “Thought of a name?” she asked.

  Stephanie looked up, inordinately pleased with seeing her friend as she shook her head, “I can’t think of a name for her, it’s really bothering me.”

  Cass sat down on the other side of the bed as she looked at the nursing baby at its mother’s breast. For a big baby she was going to eat a lot she could see. She was pleased to see the food that Melanie had brought up was completely gone. Stephanie needed her strength.

  “I thought of Tina but that implies tiny and she certainly isn’t tiny,” Stephanie laughed at her own joke and Cass joined her.

  They gave names back and forth and one that Cass mentioned had Stephanie’s eyes glistening, “I like that,” she said interrupting the names that Cass was spewing forth.

  Cass stopped in surprise, “Which one?”

  “Summer,” she said looking at Cass.

  Cass had just been saying names she had heard of but hadn’t really thought Stephanie would like any of them. “Summer?” she asked as though she hadn’t said it already.

  Stephanie nodded as she looked down at her daughter who had fallen asleep nursing from her breast. She gently pulled her away and covered herself. “I like the fact that she was born in summer and naming her that.”

  Cass watched her as she expertly handled her little girl with easy practice.

  “Summer Dawn Evans,” Stephanie stated giving her daughter a full set of names.

  Cass liked the sound of it, even if the baby hadn’t been born at summer dawn but rather late afternoon. She would ride into Merrill after harvest and record the birth.

  ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

  Stephanie was up the next day despite her stitches which pained her, peeing became a new agony. Cass gave her herbs to help with the pain and healing and packed the wound for her much to her mortification but it didn’t bother Cass, it was part of her job as a midwife and backwoods doctor. Some of the women in the Big Woods and apparently from Iowa too were horribly ignorant of their own body and it was part of her job to take care of them. She checked her before she went back out into the field to finish up her harvest with Raymond leaving her to the care of Melanie.

  That day was the last day she had the benefit of Melanie watching the children and making their meals, she and Raymond went on down the road leading their cattle with a full load of straw and grain for their work on shares of Cass’s crops. She appreciated their work and had been generous.

  The next days with the dogs and a shotgun she let her poultry out to glean from the large fields. They pecked and ate the fallen seeds. She shot a few flying varmints which scattered her flocks that Shia herded back but she got rid of the threats. Seymour and Selma learned from watching Shia and obeying Cass. Shia growled in warning when a fox came too near, the shotgun had a yelping fox hurrying from the field where he had thought to have an easy meal. Cass would have liked to follow him and take his pelt but she had to watch her large flocks of ducks, geese, and chickens. They all didn’t go in the same directions either and it was chaotic and challenging but they enjoyed the freedom of being out of their pens and it allowed the grasses in the pens to grow back from their long runs. The birds had been busy that summer and the runs were dirty and dusty.

  The boys joined her but they couldn’t sit still too long and the firing off of the shotgun scared them both. She couldn’t watch both the boys and poultry and now that Stephanie was up and taking care of the baby she sent them back frequently to ‘check’ on their mama. Timmy returned more often than Tommy with lemonade or cool water for her which she knew Stephanie had sent. She appreciated it.

  After a few days of ‘wasted’ time she left the poultry in their runs down by the ponds, the chickens in the barnyard. She didn’t want to lock any of them in the runs by the barn, giving them a time to recover from the birds. The runs down by the pond encompassed water too and deep long cattails, a million bugs and an endless supply of muck for them to go through searching for things she couldn’t see but seemed to fill them.

  She was busy bringing in bushel’s full of produce from the garden and some of the early fruits from the orchard. Stephanie brought the baby down in a clothes basket and began to can some of the vegetables. It was too early to can fruits so she dipped some in a thin wax and set them downstairs in baskets to store. Some of the fruits like berries she made into currants, jams, and jellies. The house smelled wonderful and there was pie with every meal. Stephanie insisted that Cass needed to go into Merrill for more canning jars, sugar, and to trade the buildup of eggs and milk products they had accumulated.

  This year there seemed to be more canning and preserving than in previous years. Stephanie knew recipe’s that Cass’s mother hadn’t used. Cass helped her where she could, she had done it all in previous years but this year she found her main duty was in collecting the produce, vegetables and fruits for Stephanie to preserve. The boys tried to help with the berries but ate more than they collected and she sent them back to the house. Shia was teaching the pups by example and they learned to go with them as Cass kept a shotgun across her back as she collected. Bears were collecting too and you never knew what you would come upon as you turned a corner of the thickets. Having the dogs with her she knew their presence might scare the black bears away, but not always. It depended on the nature of the bear.

  Cass had managed to capture a swarm of bees that summer due to Timmy’s screaming observation that they were running away. The large cluster was knocked into a waiting hive she had prepared and she left them sealed inside it to settle them for a day before knocking out the wax seal at the bottom so they could leave and collect nectar to make sweet honey. She must have knocked the queen with the swarm into the hive because they stayed. She had placed the hive at the far end of her pasture away from the others. She intended to have another line of them but then she rethought that placement when she realized the bears could effortlessly knock over her hives and having them nearer the house beyond the well house where the dogs were able to smell them was a better idea.

  She caught a second and third swarm from other hives by keeping an eye on them but she must have missed a fourth and fifth and the two hives she had ready lay empty. Meanwhile she donned her white ‘bee’ outfit with a hat and netting and gloves, a smoker, and sharp knife to gather honey. Using its sharp blade she pried open the older more established hives where they had sealed the edges with wax. They were very full; it had been an excellent year. She replaced the full and heavy sheets of honey filled cylinders with empty ones so the bees could fill them before winter. She left them with enough that they could eat but also put another box on the hive so they could fill this too, next year with luck the crop would be phenomenal. Even so, this year was something as she filled box after box with the honey combs she collected. In the screen house she carefully heated her blade in a flame and melted off the wax from the end of these small cylinders to release the honey. After melting both sides she placed the sheets in a metal barrel she had ready, closing the top when she had six sheets within. Using centrifugal force, she turned the handle and the honey was forced from its cylinders and out into the barrel. From the bottom of the barrel she collected jars of honey through cheesecloth to collect wax, dead bees, and body parts of the bees as well as any dirt that had gotte
n mixed. Rich golden honey filled jar after jar from her collection. Tightly sealing the jars they filled shelf after shelf down cellar for their own consumption and box after box of the jars for trade or sale.

  Stephanie helped by boiling down the rich bee created wax to make candles. She pushed the wax through strain after strain to make the pure candles that were so valuable. Bees wax was rich and burned steadily. There was a thousand uses for wax on a farm besides as candles. Cass used it on equipment to keep things from rusting, to keep things smooth, a diluted form to lubricate things. This rich supply was a welcome addition to their harvest.

  The mess created from harvesting wax and honey was soon cleaned up by the busy bees. Cass just left her used pieces with sticky honey and melted wax in the open for the bees to gather. They almost swarmed in their desire to gather this already finished product. Nothing was missed; every drop was gathered by these hard working little bees.

  Cass took this opportunity to explain their importance to the two little boys who absorbed the information like sponges. Timmy more so than Tommy. She explained how they gathered pollen from the flowers in their gardens and fields, pollinating them. Their honey and wax were valuable and useful. They saw the amount of work that went into collecting it all and learned a lot from Cass.

  Next Cass began to cut the fields of clover that had grown beautifully that summer. Long hot days and rainy nights had yielded a bumper crop. Using modern machinery she gathered in the long rows of cut hay with the horses and it spewed out a bale of hay every so often. Her muscles lifted bale after bale of hay to the hayrack and brought it into the barn to store it up in the loft up a conveyor belt. After letting the boys ride up once, Tommy on her lap, she warned them to never play on this piece of equipment again. The temptation was too great and Tommy fell off. The boys didn’t know what they were more scared of, the pain that Tommy got from his broken arm or Cass’s disappointment in them disobeying her. She explained as she set the crying little boys arm, there was a lot of work to do on a farm and when one of them got hurt like this, it slowed all of them down. She gave him some herbs to chew on and he was soon asleep under the loving care of his concerned and relieved mother. Stephanie had been frantic when she sent Timmy out to summon Cass from the field. Watching her little boy sleep with a tightly bandaged arm she was relieved he was okay.