Prairie Hearts

by J. B. Marsden

  “How do ye fare now, with this child you’re carrying?”

  “Seems each of ’em’s different. Carrying Permelia put me sideways to Sunday, but the others not so. I don’t know what changed. With this babe, I blow hot and cold with my moods, but nothing like with her.”

  They sipped their tea for a while. Emma got herself under control.

  “What can I do for ye, honey?”

  “Will Carrie want to come home? Here, that is?”

  “She pines and shuffles all around the cabin. I reckon she misses ye pretty bad.”

  “Should I go with you?”

  “No. You don’t need to be sitting astride Titan.” Laura sniggered. “I don’t reckon, between the both of us and our big stomachs, we could get you up.”

  “No.” Emma chuckled to think of them wrestling her up on the horse.

  “I’ll go back to home. She’ll be back by candle-lighting, I promise. Even if I have to use a switch on her to get out of my hair.”

  Emma sniffled and smiled. “I’m grateful you came, Laura. You brightened my sad mood.”

  “Wasn’t nothing. I’ll be pleased to get her out from underfoot.” Laura stood and put on her shawl. “You get to bed, now. Nothing like sleep to put your mind at ease.”

  “I will.”

  “She doesn’t want me.”

  “She does. She rues the words said in haste out of tiredness and her aches and pains. Think on it, who does she have to help her around the farm with milking, the firewood, toting water, and such, but you?”

  “She said she doesn’t need me. Why would I go back to hear all that caterwauling? I can’t do anything to suit her. I’m a burden to her. I leave manure and clutter in the cabin for her to pick up. She has to tend to my meals. She does the extra dirty clothes I bring in.” Carrie paced the cabin. “Susannah or Elizabeth will help her. Charles will look out for her. I tell you, she doesn’t need me.”

  Laura sighed and sat down at the table, leaning her head against her hand, letting Carrie continue her pacing. After a minute, she spoke quietly, her eyes focused on the middle distance. “After one of James’s and my big spats, I showed up on Ma’s doorstep. She’d liked to hide me for running to her. Nothing she could say would make me go back. Finally, she asked me if I was committed to him. It hit me like a brick. That one thing she said brought me to myself, jolted me to remember. Not the wedding vows, but the meaning behind ’em. The reason we got hitched to begin with.” She eyed Carrie. “Are you committed to her?”

  Carrie stopped in front of Laura. “What?”

  “Do you love her?”

  Carrie ran a hand through her hair, pulling stray hairs from her braid. “She don’t love me.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Aye.” Carrie abruptly turned and banged out of the cabin. “I’m going for a ride.”

  She saddled Maisey, hopped on, and rode toward the south, away from all the noise of people asking questions she didn’t know the answer to.

  Why couldn’t things be the way they were when she first met Emma? Soft touches. Kisses sweet as Moose’s syrup. That damned syrup. Cuddling. Pleasure in the bed next to each other. Working together like they were meant to be a team, tending sick folks and new mommas. She smiled at those good times, when her life seemed on the right track, like God had made a mate just for her, given her a treasure.

  James and Laura had uproars over the years, the little spats as well as the yelling, peeved fights. Yet, they still clung together. They still yearned for their nights in the bed, made goo-goo eyes at one another across the supper table. They each pulled their weight on the farm. Laura cooked, cleaned, washed the dirty, mucky clothes of three boys, two babes, and a grimy farmer, while James brought in meat and grain, traded his skills, his pelts from hunting and trapping, and his deerskins.

  She and Emma were not James and Laura. No one thought of them as a couple, first. Second, she didn’t bring in the farm produce. Was she pulling her weight, or was Emma loaded down with more than she could do? Pregnancy put a lot on a woman’s body. Extra pounds. Extra back ache, not able to eat or move. Had she ignored Emma’s new body?

  Her head hurt. Her chest weighed as heavy as a sack of dirt. All that had taken place in their year of the prairie piled up the misery. The measles affected little Gerta and now she had a lingering cough. The outbreak across the families had taxed her and Emma, running hither and yon, day and night. The losses stacked up like a wood pile: the Conner young’uns, Laban, Dolly’s babe. Emma’s losses piled even higher, including Faith, the woman who died giving birth, and of course, her pa. Carrie let the tears run unchecked. She’d reason aplenty not to lose Emma.

  The early spring air chilled her and she turned Maisey around on the trace and trotted back to Moss Creek.

  Laura spun wool on her new spinning wheel.

  She nodded to her and stuffed her meager clothes into the sack. “Thank ye for taking me in for a day or two. I’m headed back to Locust Hill. Sorry if I put you out.”

  Laura nodded but said nothing, a small smile on her face as she watched her leave.

  Carrie rode at a canter down the trace, not sure what she would find at Locust Hill. The cabin looked the same.

  “Emma, I’ll tote that,” Carrie called, spying her lugging two buckets from the water barrel.

  Emma spun around. She dropped the buckets and ran to her. “You’re back. Oh, thank heavens.” She hugged her tightly, ran her hands down her back and over her arms, giving Carrie shivers.

  Not touching for three days had been hard. A gush of words Carrie had been practicing spilled out of her. “You sure you want me? I’m an awful burden in your state. I could go back to Moss Creek and you wouldn’t have me around to foul the cabin up, take up your time.”

  “Shush, now,” Emma said.

  They spoke over each other:

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Please forgive me.”

  “Shouldn’t have left you to yourself, anything could have happened to you or the babe.”

  “I missed you, fretting about you out in the weather, God knew where.”

  While jabbering their pent-up feelings, they walked slowly, arm in arm, to the cabin.

  Carrie silenced herself. Emma snuggled into her. She must want me still. Oh, please make it be so we’re back to where we were.

  They sat at the table facing each other.

  “I don’t want to be a burden on ye. I want us to be equal mates who each carry our weight. I know you need extry help, now you’re getting close to your time, and I’m piling on the misery with my messes.”

  “You didn’t do anything wrong. I was in a state, no sleep for days, my body big as a cow. The cabin so stuffy, the weather keeping us cooped up like so many hens. I needed fresh air. My brain has been in a fog. I was prickly that morn, so that even your breathing could have set me off. I needed sleep, not to scold you for nothing.”

  “But spilling a morn’s milk—”

  “Hush about that. I spill all the time. Remember last week, the broken crock of oats? The last crock we had? My love. My sweet. Can you forgive me for my moods? My sharp words?”

  “Oh, honey.” The sack of dirt weighing down her chest dropped away. Her mouth curved into a smile all on its own. She held out her hand. She needed to feel Emma’s body, touch her skin, move her hips against Emma’s, and feel the center of her softness to bring them both to that pleasure only their coupling could incite.

  This would not be their last spat, but she vowed to herself to be more mindful of Emma and her moods. Not to avoid them as she’d been doing, but to get ahead of them, be the wall that Emma could lean on, not the childish thing she acted before.

  Susannah Dixson gave birth in April to a very healthy six pounds of screaming boy whom they weighed down with her father’s ponderous name, Horatio Marcellus. Her birth went well, Carrie adjudged, partly due to Susannah having her father’s hearty constitution rather than her mother’s poorer one.

  Emma
’s aches and pains and her lumbering walk didn’t get any better as she neared her time. Because of Emma’s increasing bulk, Carrie took on all the visits to sick neighbors. Gerta still retained a rasping cough after her bout with the measles. The Morgan babe, Hope, developed earaches.

  Some builders had come to construct Dixson, Morgan, and Moose’s new Illinois River lumber mill. One man fell from a height and needed attention for several broken bones. Carrie was proud he made it past the initial scare and would recover nicely.

  Carrie took the opportunity before garden planting to ride to Moss Creek, where she asked James to help her build a cradle like the one Permelia used. It was a dug-out log with two curved planks on either end that would allow it to rock but not tumble over. James had the tools. She planned to surprise Emma with the cradle closer to her time.

  Carrie got more eager for the new babe coming in six or so weeks. At home, she fashioned leather toys and stuffed them with cornshucks. Emma knit blankets, little hats, and booties. But Carrie harbored a niggling idea that this babe was not to be theirs. Somehow, she didn’t have a picture of them tending to a young’un. Mayhap her fear led her astray. She couldn’t shake it.

  While knitting after candle-lighting one night, Emma sighed. “How do you fare? Do you think we’re ready to become mothers?”

  Carrie murmured, “I…I reckon. Why? What bothers ye?”

  “I love the idea of being a mother, of cuddling and caring for a wee one. I see you teaching it to read. I would teach it to tend the goats and chickens. But I worry about our life with a babe. What will we do if we are both needed for sick neighbors, midwifing, and how will we ever work the gardens and make our concoctions with a babe underfoot?”

  Carrie hung her head. “Those thoughts have been rattling ’round my noggin as well. I fear for our neighbors if we can’t get to them in time. Or for the babe, if we have to strap it on Maisey to go to places where it might catch disease, like the measles that just ran through here like a flooded river.”

  “I wonder about the Conners. Should we talk with them?”

  “Why the Conners?”

  “They have lost so much. A babe…”

  Carrie chewed her lip. “I’m flummoxed about it all. Let’s think on it.”

  Later that week, Susannah and Elizabeth came by with baby items, some more blankets, and toys Thad had outgrown.

  Emma and Carrie shared with them the worries of having this babe. Both Susannah and Elizabeth pooh-poohed their concerns.

  “It’s naught but first mother jitters,” Elizabeth said.

  But Carrie harbored her worries. This babe would change their life, would hamper their ability to nurse the sick and wounded in Moss Creek and Locust Hill. Would it die due to sickness they might bring home with them? Conner now doted on his wife. He’d become a member of the neighborhood. Did he deserve this babe?

  As the last weeks of her time closed in, Emma needed Carrie more than ever. She’d begun bleeding lightly. Carrie dosed her with yarrow leaf tea. One morn she ordered Emma to stay in bed.

  “In bed?” Emma cried out. “I never heard such a thing. You’ve got your construction worker mixed up with me. He, with the broken leg, arm, and collarbone, is who’s bedridden. He lives, my sweet, but I must live as well. It involves working my usual chores, doing my housework, so that I will be hale for the throes of labor.”

  “The more you work, the more bleeding I’ve noticed. It can’t be good for the babe for you to run around if he’s not getting the blood he needs from your womb.”

  Emma cocked her head. “What?”

  “The babe thrives on the blood you give him while he’s growing in there. I may not know as much as you about midwifing, but I do call to mind Mabel’s fretting about women bleeding close to their time. She put them to bed. She said they needed to gather their strength, not bleed it away doing hard work.”

  Emma pondered. “But…My granny never said such.”

  “I reckon your granny and mine are gonna come to blows.” Carrie’s face opened in a wide grin.

  Their standoff was interrupted by Josh hollering from the yard. “Auntie Carrie! Momma’s time has come.”

  Carrie raced out the door. “Saddle Maisey for me, boy-cub.” She scurried back into the cabin and gave Emma a withering look. “I have to go to Laura. I ask you please to do as I say. Stay in bed. Do not do any inside work. And for heaven’s sake, do not leave the cabin. I don’t want to come back to you lying on the ground in a pool of blood.” Carrie drew her in for a sweet kiss. “Please, for me. Don’t make me fret while I’m with Laura.”

  Seeing Carrie’s face grimace, Emma gave in, and kissed her again.

  “I’ll say a prayer for Laura, and one especially for you, my sweet.”

  More worried about a pregnant woman than she’d been thus far, Carrie took charge as soon as she reached the Moss Creek cabin. “James, you get water on the fire. Josh, you take your brothers and Gerta out to play. Dress warm. It’s pretty chilled out there. Stay out of the mud.” Suspecting they hadn’t had breakfast yet, she handed each child a piece of venison jerky.

  After the boys and Gerta donned sweaters and hats and ran out to play, James led her away from their bedroom and said in a low voice, “It’s more’n a month afore her time.”

  “I know,” Carrie said, her heart beating like a drum.

  “Will the babe be all right?”

  “I don’t rightly know. Did anything set the pains coming?”

  “She hauled water yestidy and did clothes washing, then complained of a bad back at candle-lighting. It wasn’t like her to go to bed early. Said she didn’t hunger at supper. The young’uns fretted for her and I confess I didn’t like the look of her.”

  Carrie nodded. Early babes, depending on how early, at times did not make it past a day or two. “Let me see how she fares.”

  Laura’s unnatural paleness struck her.

  “Carrie, you are well met,” Laura whispered, her voice barely loud enough to hear.

  “You can rest easy now. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Cramping pain started last evening. Pains coming fast now. I—”

  “Shush, keep up your strength. Let me look at ye.” With trembling hands, Carrie felt the babe’s head low on Laura’s belly.

  “My water broke afore sunup. James cleaned me up, but I’m weak as a kitten.” A contraction set her groaning.

  Letting the pain pass, Carrie racked her brain. Mabel’s words whispered to her, “Give her something to calm her.”

  The chamomile tea prepared, she supported Laura to sit and drink the whole cup. She prepared her with oil, rubbed her back soothingly, and felt Laura’s tension ebb some.

  With some of the jerky, she made a broth and coaxed Laura to drink it down, hoping to strengthen her.

  Then there was nothing for it but to wait.

  James, an old hand at his wife’s birthings, held her hand and cooed gently through each pain.

  After two hours, Carrie cheered up to see the babe’s head appear. Carrie instructed James to ready the hot water and rags.

  “You can push now.”

  Laura cried out and the babe slipped out. But instead of healthy pink, he was blue.

  Her heart thumped wildly and her chest constricted. Carrie quickly wrapped him in rags, jostled him in her arms, and patted his small face. She’d seen Mabel hold a blue babe upside down once, so she did that, jiggling him in his arms, trying not to hug him too tightly against her bosom.

  James eyed her and the babe anxiously, but held Laura in his arms, whispering to her, “It’s a boy.”

  Laura nodded her head feebly. Carrie glanced at her lying back on the bed, pale and spent.

  The babe neither breathed nor squalled.

  He needed air.

  She drew her mouth to the babe’s and blew, still holding his head toward the cabin floor. Two breaths, three, four, five…On the twentieth breath, he wiggled, got pink, then red, and mewled.

  She continued to r
ock him and pat his face, upside down in her arms.

  Finally, he let out a louder cry. She closed her eyes and let up a prayer of thanks, unwrapped him, and wiped him vigorously with rags to get his blood flowing even more.

  For ten minutes or more, while James sat with Laura, she worked on him, breathed into him, cleared his mouth and nose of birth matter, and cleaned his skin, all the while watching anxiously his small chest rise and fall.

  When the afterbirth had delivered, Carrie handed the bundle to James, cleaned and checked Laura, thankfully finding no more bleeding. Her shoulders aching, her chest still pounding, she exhaled deeply.

  James rocked the babe. His crying now echoed in the cabin.

  Permelia woke up in her cradle and howled. Carrie picked her up and asked James to feed her porridge.

  Laura eyed Carrie with haunted eyes. “Is he all right? Let me see him.”

  James laid the babe across Laura’s chest.

  She pulled back the blanket and ran her hand over his legs and arms and patted his cheek. “He’s got all his parts,” she said softly.

  Carrie exhaled again, feeling her shoulders relax this time when Laura’s face pinked up.

  “I’ll get you more of that broth.”

  “He’s mighty small. More like Gerta’s doll. Do you think he’ll make it?”

  “See if he can suck.”

  Undoing the tie of her nightdress, Laura brought him to her breast. He nuzzled close for a minute. Laura stroked his cheek. Finally, he grabbed onto the nipple. He suckled for a few minutes, then fell asleep.

  Carrie made Laura drink as much broth as she could, brought her cow’s milk and bread, then sat at her bedside watching them both closely. The babe woke and suckled again, then slept, his face now pink-red instead of pale white.