The Midwife of Hope River Read online

  I slam the Olds’s door, and before I can think what I’m going to say, Daniel Hester sticks his head out the kitchen door. He’s wearing a flowered apron and wiping his hands on a dish towel.

  “What are you doing here?” he asks by way of a greeting. It’s the first time we’ve seen each other since Christmas Eve. He nods at the vehicle. “Your car?” He knows it’s not; he’s just being funny.

  I tilt my chin. “No. It’s my friend Katherine’s. I wonder if I could use your phone? I need to call the MacIntosh residence in town. It’s sort of an emergency.” I don’t want him to think I came for a visit.

  Hester shrugs. “Sure.”

  At the stone threshold of the back door, I stomp my feet and walk into a bright kitchen that’s seen better days. Dirty dishes are piled on every surface. The vet points out a wooden telephone box on the wall, but my glasses have steamed and it takes me a minute before I can see.

  “Where’s your housekeeper?” I ask, indicating the condition of the room.

  “She left me. Her husband got work down near Beckley. King Coal closed last week and MacIntosh Number Three, near Delmont, too. It’s just as well. I couldn’t afford her anymore. When money’s tight, people only call a vet if they’re desperate.”

  He takes down the black receiver and cranks the phone for me, unembarrassed about the feminine apron. The brass bells on the front seem especially loud, but it’s been a while since I’ve used a telephone.

  “Susie,” the vet says, speaking louder than normal into the metal horn on the front of the oak box. He motions me forward. “Yeah, this is Dan Hester out on Salt Lick. . . . I’m fine. . . . How are you? Can you give me the MacIntosh residence in Liberty? That’s—” He snaps his fingers, and I hand him the slip of paper that Bitsy gave me. “That’s 247.”

  I take a deep breath. The phone rings once, twice, then three times. Finally there’s a click, and a low female voice comes on. He hands me the receiver.

  “MacIntosh residence.”

  “Mary, is that you?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Patience.”

  “Where are you, girl? Are Bitsy and Miss Katherine with you? They took outta here so fast last night, I didn’t get a chance to ask where they were headed. Is the missus okay?”

  “She’s pretty busted up.” I look over at Hester to see if he’s listening. I know that he is, despite his concentration on the soap bubbles in the sink.

  “Is it safe to bring her home?”

  “Lordy, child, I hope so. I’ve never seen the mister like this before. He threw all the whiskey out of the house and has been crying all morning. I gave him a talking to and told him he didn’t deserve that nice wife and baby and he’d be lucky if Miss Katherine didn’t go back to her mother in Baltimore. Then he blubbered some more. I’ve seen him push Katherine around before, but this was the worst. He has one foot in a hell of his own making.”

  “We were worried he might call the cops about the car.”

  “Nah, he wouldn’t do that. Wouldn’t want to lose face by admitting his family has troubles. Tries to keep up a front, you know, though everyone in Union County understands MacIntosh Consolidated is finished.”

  She changes the topic. “I been feeding baby Willie cereal and canned milk, but he’s getting mighty fussy. When can you get here?”

  “Well, I have to talk to Katherine, but I imagine we can be there by noon. I just don’t know how we’ll get home. Would William take us?”

  “Hon, I don’t know. His head hangs so low. We’ll figure out something.”

  Hester taps me on the shoulder and points to his chest. Then he picks up his car keys and shakes them, meaning he’ll bring us.

  “Okay, will you tie dishrags to the front and back doors if it’s safe for us to come in? See you in a little while.”

  I stare at the box, then turn to the vet; it’s been a few years since I used a phone. “Is that all?” Hester puts the earpiece back in its holder, then sets a cup of coffee on the table in a white mug, the kind they have in the Mountain Top Diner.

  “Cream?”

  “I can only stay a minute.”

  He streams the white liquid from a quart mason jar, then clinks it back into his electric fridge. Mary Proudfoot has a similar Frigidaire at the MacIntoshes’, and she told me it costs almost as much as a Model T! In Pittsburgh we used an icebox, but there’s no iceman this far out in the country.

  “I guess you heard.” I tilt my head sideways at the phone.

  “Hard not to. Domestic quarrel?”

  “Worse. It got physical.”

  The veterinarian shakes his head, and I slurp my coffee down in a hurry.

  “I’m going into my office in an hour; I’ll drive you home from town at four P.M.”

  I’m standing, pulling on my jacket, and I lay my hand on his arm without thinking. “Thanks.”

  I hadn’t meant to do that. I’m so used to touching women, I’d forgotten he wasn’t a patient or hardly even a friend.

  William

  The ride into town goes smoothly once we get to the main road, though I’m a little rusty and stall the Olds twice. Bitsy offered to drive, but between the two of us, I’m more experienced. She sits up front to offer advice.

  The car’s cozy, and when I ask about it, Katherine tells me, from the back, that the warmth is transferred somehow from the engine. Something new every day! It’s the first heated vehicle I’ve traveled in. That’s her only comment. The rest of the time, she just stares out the window like a woman without hope, and it saddens me.

  I recall another time a battered woman came to our house. This was when we still lived in Pittsburgh. In the middle of the night, Kay Dorsey pounded on our door. “Let me in. Please!” she was screaming. It would have been about this time of year, still winter, and she had her baby wrapped up in a shawl and bruises all over her face. Nora took her in a cab to the Women’s Hospital, but Kay never got a divorce. Father O’Malley wouldn’t allow it. Nora was madder than hell.

  And another time she was madder than hell . . .

  “I can’t live like this,” Queen Nora announced one afternoon in mid-December.

  She’s decorating the Christmas tree that we bought for fifty cents at the corner lot and has already eaten half a rum cake. “Always hiding, keeping low. It’s been years and Lizbeth is still wearing black, for Christ’s sake, and it’s Christmas.” Sophie’s lover was throwing tinsel at the tree as if it were chicken feed—and she hated chickens.

  “How long is this going to go on? There were thirteen thousand battling the coal company troops at Blair Mountain. How does she know anyone even saw what happened?

  “There’s just no fun here anymore, no parties or salons, always lying low! I can’t live like this, I tell you.” She stands glaring at the room, the gaslights illuminating the shiny tinsel, and Mrs. Kelly’s face, white as snow. “I tell you, I can’t live this way! It won’t do. It’s no good. All the life is sucked out of me!”

  Looking back, I think maybe she just wanted to leave and was searching for an excuse. Two weeks later, Nora left with the novelist Jacqueline Lyons for San Francisco, and that was the end of her. On Christmas Eve, Mrs. Kelly didn’t even go to Mass. I watched the midwife’s brave heart collapse like a hot-air balloon losing air. Now we were both widows.

  Nora was right. How do I know anyone even saw? But I might as well say it: I killed my husband during the battle at Blair Mountain while trying to get two goons off him. It was an accident, but that one misplaced blow shattered something essential in me: reason . . . hope . . . sensibility.

  Still I go on, too much of a coward to do anything else. There was a time I thought of suicide, wanted not to feel the terrible grief and guilt anymore, but there’s a difference in wanting to be dead and doing it. Besides, now there are Moonlight and Buster, Sasha and Emma to think about . . . and Bitsy. I might as well admit it. She’d take my death personally, as if it were her fault.

  The dark sky echoes my mood.
Twice we pass deer on the way into town and I point them out. It isn’t until we enter Liberty that I reach for Katherine in the backseat, squeeze her knee, and slow down.

  As we pass the courthouse, we are surprised to discover a score of miners walking back and forth in a picket line. Their faces are clean, but they wear their hard hats with lamps on the front and hold placards and signs.

  “Is it a strike?” Bitsy asks.

  “I don’t think so. Strikes are usually at the work site. It’s some kind of demonstration. What do the signs say?” I’m gripping the wheel, nervous to be driving in town.

  Bitsy reads the rough handmade inscriptions out loud as we pass: WE DEMAND FOOD AND CLOTHING FOR UNEMPLOYED MINERS’ CHILDREN. FREE FOOD FOR OUT-OF-WORK MINERS.

  “But who are they picketing? Is there anyone at the courthouse that can help? The County Health Office? The churches?” I ask out loud.

  “William is really going to love this!” Katherine mutters. “Most of those men are from his mines. They were at the house last week begging for help, but he maintained it wasn’t his responsibility. The truth is, he’s broke.”

  We’re surprised when, as we roll forward, Thomas Proudfoot steps out of the crowd. He’s the only colored man in the group, and he flashes us a big smile, raising his sign higher. FEED THE CHILDREN!

  “Damnation!” Bitsy lowers her head. “Ma’s gonna be pissed.”

  “Why?” I ask. “What’s so wrong? He’s standing in solidarity with his fellow miners. Mr. Wetsel told me, when I helped his wife have her baby, that the owners shut off the electricity in the closed mining camps and shut the company stores. The workers have no money and no scrip to get food or kerosene. They’re stranded in an isolated area where there’s no other employment. Why shouldn’t those that still have jobs stand with those that don’t?”

  “He’s a black man,” Bitsy mutters, slashing her eyes at me. “That’s different.”

  As we pull up at the MacIntosh home, I’m relieved to see white dishcloths hanging from both doors. We go in through the kitchen and find William sitting at the table, his head bent and his hands running through his hair. Katherine scoots silently past him, takes the crying baby out of Mary’s arms, and goes upstairs. Bitsy follows with the monogrammed pillowcase.

  I plunk down across from Mr. MacIntosh. “We have to talk.” The man flinches, meets my eyes, and then looks down again.

  “William, I know things have been rough on you,” I say, trying the sympathetic approach, though I don’t feel a bit sympathetic. “The economy is hard on everyone.” I make as though I haven’t heard about his bankruptcy. Mary is standing around the corner in the pantry, pretending to tidy the shelves.

  “William, look at me.” The unshaven man lifts his head, and I see that his eyes are red from crying. “This can never happen again. If you touch a hair on Katherine’s head, I’ll call the cops. Lay one finger on her, and I’ll do it. I probably should this time.”

  “I’ll die before I do it again,” William finally whispers. I have to lean into his yesterday-whiskey breath, his voice is so low.

  “You better bathe, shave, brush your teeth, and go say those words to Katherine. I’m not leaving until she feels safe.” The man shuffles toward the stairs, and I let out my air.

  Sometimes I surprise myself. When I entered the room, I had no idea what I’d say and was actually hoping I wouldn’t see him.

  “You done good, girl,” Mary whispers, and I grin and raise my eyebrows.

  “Hey, wait a minute, William.” I yell up the stairs, now feeling powerful. “Come back a second. You still owe Bitsy five dollars for her work over the holidays!” The man looks around like he’s waking from sleep and edges back down the steps.

  “God, I forgot. Do we have any money in the cookie jar, Mary? I’m out of cash.” Mary rolls her eyes where he can’t see her and lifts the honeybee on the top of the beehive ceramic cookie jar.

  She takes out a small handful of coins and one bill and spreads them on the table. “One buck, twenty-eight cents.”

  Not enough, but I’m not letting him off. “Bitsy was here for three weeks, so you can pay her the rest in food. Mary, can you fix us a sack of flour and beans, whatever you think is worth about five dollars if we shopped at Bittman’s Grocery Store?”

  “Good idea,” William agrees. “I don’t want to go to the bank just now.” He reaches out his hand so I can shake it and I notice his ring, gold with a ruby. I have a ruby too, though he wouldn’t know it. That’s the way of the rich; they lament about the state of the economy and their businesses and go on with their life in the same regal manner. There’s a difference in the wealthy lamenting about being poor and being really poor. If you’re rich, you can go bankrupt and still wear a ruby.

  “Thank you, Patience,” MacIntosh says, looking right at me. “Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “You are welcome,” I answer formally, but then harden. “You better thank Katherine for bearing your child and coming back to you.” He nods and turns to go upstairs. “And thank Mary too, for feeding baby Willie while Katherine was gone.”

  The cook smiles, shakes her head, and gets out a sack of flour.

  Bitsy is in awe when I hand her the money. She lays it on the table and counts it again, then hefts the sack of goods Mary has stowed away for us. It must weigh thirty pounds. My friend’s so excited to get paid and I’m so relieved that the scene at the MacIntoshes’ didn’t turn ugly that we’re in a celebratory mood.

  “Let’s go shopping,” I suggest. “We have one hour before the vet leaves. You said you need stockings.”

  “Miss Katherine has to do our shopping,” Bitsy says in a low voice. “There’s no dry goods store for black folks in Liberty. We can go in Bittman’s Grocery for food, if we’re shopping for our employer, and there’s Friedman’s in Torrington or the Sears catalogue, but no one but Stenger’s Pharmacy caters to coloreds, and they don’t sell clothing.”

  That feels like a splash of cold water in the face, and I realize how little I know about my housemate’s life. I don’t know where she and Mary shop for personal things or get their hair trimmed. I don’t know if there’s a colored dressmaker or what they do when they’re sick.

  This is West Virginia, part of the Union in the Civil War, not Alabama or Mississippi, but Bitsy and I still can’t stop for an ice cream together in the summer—“No coloreds allowed”—or go to a picture show together—“Whites on the ground floor and Negroes in the balcony”—or get a sandwich at the Mountain Top Diner.

  I give up the shopping spree and settle for purchasing a two-gallon can of kerosene at the Texaco station. Two blocks down as we stroll toward the vet’s, I link Bitsy’s arm in mine, the way I would with Mrs. Kelly, Nora, or Daisy Lampkin in Pittsburgh. Bitsy stiffens, looks around to see who’s coming, and tries to pull her arm out, but I hold on tighter, daring anyone to say anything.

  I do it on purpose. We’re only forty miles south of the Pennsylvania state line, for God’s sake. One hundred miles from Pittsburgh, where I did the Charleston with colored men in the jazz clubs and where, since 1887, it’s been illegal to deny any person of color service in a restaurant, hotel, or streetcar.

  When we round the corner of the courthouse, the demonstrators are gone and I think maybe we’ll stop off at my friend Becky’s women’s clinic downstairs, but two men in heavy ankle-length overcoats stride down the sidewalk. Bitsy pulls harder and yanks her arm out.

  Their black shoes are shiny, not country shoes, and their eyes take us in. They must be from Pittsburgh or Charleston. Maybe cops? Maybe feds? Bitsy turns to watch the outsiders get into their long gunmetal vehicle but I look away. Above us, Sheriff Hardman, a rail-thin man of about fifty with a notable scar straight across his chin, leans on a pillar at the top of the steps. He tips his hat but doesn’t smile. On the second floor, in the county jail, a prisoner leers down through the bars.

  “Come on,” I insist. “We don’t want to miss Hester.”

 
18

  Twilight Sleep

  As we bump out of Liberty in Hester’s Ford, I note the stone house with the green-shingled roof where Prudy Ott and Mayor Ott live. She’s due in a month. Becky Myers has been seeing Prudy at her clinic to check on the growth of the baby. Since I haven’t heard otherwise, I assume she’s okay.

  Prudy makes me uneasy. The birth of her only daughter four years ago, at Boone Memorial in Torrington, was a disaster. She’s told me the story twice, and it’s clear that she’s terrified.

  “I was assaulted by nurses and doctors,” she announced the first time we met. Those were her exact words, not overcome or treated badly—assaulted. I think she meant raped.

  “Mr. Ott wanted me to have the best of care, so we went all the way to Torrington for my first baby, where I could have an obstetrician and twilight sleep. For two days I was in labor, in a ward with five other patients, and all that time I was delirious, in and out of a dream. My husband slept in the waiting room. He had no idea what was going on.

  “I would wake and hear the women scream as one by one they delivered. I must not have had enough medicine or maybe it didn’t take, but unlike most of the mothers I talk to who had twilight sleep, I remember everything. The sounds ripped right through me, and I was strapped down in a high bed with bars so I couldn’t get away. One patient untied herself and crashed to the floor. The doctor yelled at the nurses, blamed them for not watching her closer.

  “Finally they took me to the delivery room. By that time I was screaming like the rest of them.” Her hands shook and she put down her cup of tea. “They strapped me down, though I begged them not to. The harder they tried to control me, the more I struggled. Finally one of the nurses slapped me across the face.

  “ ‘If you want us to help you, you better cooperate!’ she yelled. ‘You’re worse than a child!’ That shut me up. Once my wrists were tied to those boards on the delivery table, I felt like Jesus on the cross.