Once a Midwife Read online

  The new mother softly touches his cheek. He turns his head toward her, rooting for milk. “Oh!” says Opal, startled. “Does he want food already?”

  “Yes. All warm-blooded animals are ready to eat as soon as they’re born. A healthy human baby is no different from a colt or a lamb and even though you don’t have much milk yet, the sucking will bring it on.”

  Outside, the burgundy Cadillac roars into life. My partner and I look at each other and step to the window. Now, where is the man going? I ask myself. Doesn’t he want to see his new baby?

  Two hours later, the baby’s father still hasn’t come back. “Where could he be?” I wonder under my breath.

  “Maybe he went back into Liberty to get some smokes or to celebrate with a beer?” Bitsy guesses.

  I run back over to the farmhouse and find the children listening to The Lone Ranger on the radio. “From out of the past come the thundering hoofbeats of the great horse, Silver! The Lone Ranger rides again!”

  Willie, who appears to be only a few years older than the girls, has found three cans of Campbell’s chicken soup in the pantry and laid them on the counter, ready for dinner. He’s a resourceful little man and since my husband, Daniel, is out on a vet call, the lad has apparently taken charge.

  “Hi, kids,” I call from the kitchen. “Were you good?”

  “Yes, Mom!” they all cry, then go back to their program.

  “Thank you for getting the soup out, Willie. I keep it around for just this sort of day. I can also open a quart jar of home-canned tomatoes and there’s some fresh-baked bread and butter in the pantry. We just had a baby boy in the Baby Cabin, only five pounds but he’s healthy. Did you see where the father went, the man in the fancy car? Did he say anything?”

  Willie, responsibly hands me a folded piece of paper, and I open it, feeling puzzled.

  All the note says is “Thank you for delivering the baby and please take care of Opal. Tell her I love her.” There are five twenty-dollar bills folded inside, more money than I’ve ever seen at one time.

  “Is the man coming back?” I ask.

  Willie shakes his head no and his blond hair falls over his forehead.

  “Maybe he was going into town to get the baby some clothes and blankets.”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because,” Willie says sadly, “he didn’t look me in the eye.”

  November 23, 1941

  Male infant born to a young colored girl, Opal Johnson of Pittsburgh, brought to our Baby Cabin by her companion, a white man named Sonny Faye. The baby was thought to be several months premature and was a single footling breech, but Bitsy Proudfoot and I delivered it without difficulty.

  The infant weighed 5 pounds, 8 ounces and breathed right away. I would guess that he’s close to 36 weeks. Placenta delivered spontaneously. Blood loss average. No vaginal tears.

  Mr. Faye left one hundred dollars with a note and drove away in his sparkling dark red convertible. Opal has not yet given the baby a name, but he’s nursing just fine.

  Hush-a-Bye

  Come on, kids, do you want to see the new baby? The mama says it’s okay.”

  After our noon meal, I take the children over to the Baby Cabin. This is something special that my young ones enjoy and it makes me smile. They are so tender and respectful. Willie says he’s never seen a newborn before and his pale blue eyes, in his very white face, are round and shining.

  “Touch him,” Mira, my six-year-old, says, pulling the big boy over to the cradle by the sleeve. He holds back, but she insists. Opal is patient and proud. She still hasn’t asked about her mister and this strikes me as odd, but maybe she assumes that because he’s a man, he doesn’t want to be around childbirth.

  The Hope River Valley has changed that way since I’ve been the midwife. Not often, but sometimes, the father will at least stay in the room and hold his laboring wife’s hand. When I began attending births fifteen years ago, that never happened, and I’ll admit, the first father I ever allowed at a delivery fainted and fell on the floor. That was Mr. Macintosh, the owner of the now defunct Macintosh Coal Company.

  “See,” Mira says to Willie. “See how soft he is. Touch his little hand.”

  Finally the boy reaches out with one finger. He strokes the baby’s palm and the infant’s tiny fingers hold on. Willie’s mouth is half-open, but he doesn’t say a word.

  “Any sign of the father?” Bitsy whispers when the children are gone and we’re standing out on the steps of the Baby Cabin.

  “Nope.” I shake my head and hand her the note.

  “Thank you for delivering the baby and please take care of Opal. Tell her I love her,” she reads out loud, and frowns. Then I reach in my apron pocket and hand her the pile of twenties.

  “Lordy!” says Bitsy.

  “The money was wrapped in the note.”

  “Lordy!” she exclaims again. “I’ve haven’t seen such a pile of green since I left Bricktop’s, but that was on the gambling table and didn’t belong to any one person.”

  “I’ll get the kids fed and in bed. Willie told me you allow him to stay up to listen to The Grand Ole Opry.”

  “Only until nine.”

  I don’t even ask about the gambling table because I’m picking up a dim hum of a motorcar coming this way.

  “Do you hear that? A vehicle. Maybe Mr. Faye’s coming back.” An auto bumps into the drive, but it’s not Mr. Faye, it’s my husband, Daniel Hester, veterinarian surgeon, in his old Model T. I watch as he gets out of the vehicle. He’s a tall, thin man, over six feet, with a straight back, and I always feel warm when I see him.

  “Who is it?” Opal calls. “Is it Sonny?”

  “No, honey, it’s Mr. Hester, Patience’s husband,” Bitsy tells her, reentering the cabin. “We don’t know where your man went, but he did leave a note,” she explains.

  “Is the note for me?” Opal asks.

  “Actually, I think it’s for all of us. Maybe mostly for you.” I go to the bedside, but my hand is cemented into my pocket. I don’t want to give the callous message to the new mother. It seems so cold, the rich white man leaving his colored woman and mulatto baby behind.

  Bitsy takes charge and sits on the edge of the bed. “Mr. Faye left you a note and some money. One hundred dollars. Miss Patience should keep ten for the delivery. Do you have somewhere to go? Do you have family in Pittsburgh?”

  Opal reads the words and finally understands. She was so strong for the birth, so calm and determined, but now she crumbles like a piece of cornbread.

  “That’s all? A thank you and a hundred dollars!” she says with tears running down her face.

  “Do you have kin? Someone we could call?” I ask. “I have a phone in the house.”

  Here Bitsy looks impressed. Twelve years ago, when we lived together in the house with the blue door at the end of Wild Rose Road, we didn’t have a telephone. No electricity either.

  “Hush. Hush,” I say to Opal. “I know you’re hurt, but you need to stay calm for your baby. If you don’t have friends or family, we’ll figure something out. You’re safe here and with the cows and chickens and our canned vegetables in the cellar we always have enough to eat.”

  Bitsy brings the infant to feed again. “Hush-a-bye, don’t you cry,” Bitsy sings, stroking the young mother’s hair. “Go to sleep, little baby.” I look around at the pleasant space, the golden logs and the red and white quilt on the bed, the rocking chair, the cot in the corner, the cradle, all hand built by Daniel and our friend Dr. Blum and I come in on the next line. “When you wake, you shall have, all the pretty little horses. Blacks and bays, dapples and grays, all the pretty little horses . . .”

  Back at the house, I warm up what’s left of the soup on the cast-iron cookstove and tell Daniel the news. Willie has fallen asleep on the sofa curled around our dog, Sasha.

  “The bastard just left his sweetheart and his new baby?” Dan exclaims under his breath, his eyes flashing. “What’s she goi
ng to do? Does she have family? I guess we’ll have to drive her home to Pittsburgh, assuming she has a home.” He’s concerned about our patient, but happy too that Bitsy’s back, because he knows how close we were.

  I cover Willie with the blue-and-white quilt in the flying-goose pattern that I made myself when I first moved to West Virginia, and move to turn off the news, but Dan raises his hand signaling me to wait.

  On the radio, Edward R. Murrow summarizes in his deep voice the latest developments in Europe, “Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, announced today that all Jewish establishments are ordered to display a Jewish star on the doors and windows . . .” Dan shakes his head . . . “Go ahead,” he says sadly, and I turn off the radio.

  “You okay?” I ask Daniel. “You’ve had a long day. Up at seven in the morning, home after nine. And then to return to all this! I didn’t tell you the rest . . . Mr. Faye left a hundred dollars and a thank-you note. Bitsy says most of it is for the mother, and I guess that’s right.” I lay the five twenties on the table.

  “Holy cow!” He touches the crisp green bills with his big work-roughened hands. He glances at me and gives me his crooked smile. “We could do a lot with this . . .”

  I put my hand over his. “I know, but it’s for Opal.”

  After I clean up the kitchen, I go back to check the Baby Cabin one more time. “She’s doing well,” Bitsy tells me in a hushed voice. “Her uterus is three finger-breaths below the belly button and the bleeding is minimal. She nursed one more time by herself. I’m going to go over to wash up and kiss Willie good night, then I’ll sleep here on the cot. Is Dr. Hester okay with us staying for a few days? I don’t know what to do about Opal.”

  “He’s fine about it. He was off making rounds all day and is exhausted, but he suggested we could drive Opal to Pittsburgh in my old Oldsmobile tomorrow if she has family there.”

  “That would be good.” Bitsy grins, showing her white teeth. “I’d hate to take her in the sidecar on the motorcycle.”

  3

  Buffalo Girls

  At ten we hit the sack, Bitsy in the Baby Cabin and me back in the farmhouse, but I don’t sleep well. I toss and turn, pulling the covers off Daniel, reliving in half dreams the last time Bitsy and I were together at the house on Wild Rose Road.

  It was eleven years ago, the fall of 1930. We’d returned late from a delivery and were just going to bed when three vehicles drove up. Eight men got out wearing white pointed hoods, and surrounded our house.

  “Buffalo girls won’t you come out tonight. Come out tonight. Come out tonight,” the men warble. Bitsy and I cower behind the curtains, shushing the dogs. Bitsy is crying. “I’m so sorry, Patience,” she says . . . as if it were her fault that the racists are after us.

  Then there’s a blazing cross on the lawn and the picket fence burns. The drunken bastards throw torches at the house, threatening, in rough voices, to rape us or burn us out.

  “Buffalo girls won’t you come out tonight,” the guys sing, wild with drink. The laughter crescendos, the fire flares, and more flaming pickets twirl toward our roof.

  “Come on, Bitsy, we have to get out of here. Bring your rifle,” I whisper.

  Scuttling like crabs in the dark, we crawl out the back door and make it to the barn, but when we’re mounted on our horse, Star, I see two white feed sacks hanging on a nail and I change the plan. We tear holes in the sack for our eyes and put them over our heads. “I’m tired of running,” I hiss. “I’ve been running my whole life.”

  If there were music to this scene, it would be something from a John Wayne movie. “Hold on,” I growl, filled with rage, and I nudge our horse into a canter and out the barn door. I have no idea what I’m doing. I just don’t feel like sneaking away, coming back in the morning to find the KKK has turned our sweet little home into a pile of ashes.

  “You fucking Pillow Heads!” I yell the worst words I can think of as we gallop into the firelight, right up to the knot of men, anger and fear coming out of me in a low roar.

  “You fucking Pillow Heads!” my friend echoes, and fires her gun in the air.

  The singing comes to an abrupt halt. The men are confused. Who are these new masked riders? Bitsy and I, on top of the wild-eyed beast, tower over them.

  “You have business here?” I snarl in the lowest, gruffest voice I can work up, nudging Star farther into the crowd. Bitsy reaches down and strips off one man’s hood. He’s too startled to speak, covers his face, and jumps into his truck.

  “Coward!” I yell through my dusty feed sack. Bitsy gets into the spirit of things and fires into the air twice more. Flames, I am sure, are shooting out of the top of my head and I’m reckless with fury.

  I dance Star around as I pull off three more hoods. The other men duck down where I can’t reach them and bump into one another as they scuttle like crabs toward their cars.

  “That’s right, run! Put your coward tails between your legs and hit the road.”

  I sit up in bed, laughing at the vision of Bitsy and me chasing the Klan off. Daniel still sleeps, snoring softly.

  There’s a shadow in our open bedroom door. Susie, my anxious adopted daughter, stands there in her white nightgown. “I’m sorry, Mama. I peed the bed.”

  4

  November 26, 1941

  A Plan

  If I had to choose one electric appliance, the Maytag would be it. I could do without electric lights. Kerosene lamps work fine if you keep the globes clean and trim the wicks daily. I could do without the Frigidaire. The springhouse at my little farm on Wild Rose Road kept things quite cold, but the washer is a godsend. Without it, I would spend all day pumping and hauling water, scrubbing on the washboard and hanging clothes on the line.

  When the Maytag is loaded and agitating, I add the Borax and my special ingredient, lye, then I leave Daniel serving breakfast to a tableful of kids and take a tray of coffee and porridge over to the Baby Cabin.

  “Everything okay?” I whisper as I put the tray on the rolling table. Bitsy is up and dressed, but Opal still sleeps. The poor thing is exhausted or just doesn’t want to wake up and remember that the man she loved has abandoned her.

  Bitsy waves me to the door and we step out on the stoop. “She has no one. Her family disowned her. Her father said she’d come to no good when she moved to Pittsburgh to get a job. After that she was afraid to tell her parents she was pregnant with a white man’s baby.”

  “I’m not surprised,” I answer. “Even in Pittsburgh, where it’s against the law to segregate hotels and restaurants, not everyone accepts mixed races.”

  “Yeah, her parents are from Connellsville, a small industrial town outside of Pittsburgh, and they’re very closed-minded. She can’t go back.”

  I tighten my mouth. “How did she get involved with this Sonny Faye anyway?”

  “She was a maid at the William Penn Hotel. Sonny is one of the managers. He told her he loved her, but because of his position, they can’t wed. She’s been living in a room in the basement of the William Penn for the last five months.”

  “Well, what was the plan? What were they going to do with the baby?”

  “He was going to rent her an apartment. She’d already looked in the paper and made a list of places she wanted to see, then they went on this country ride and . . . well, you know the rest.”

  We sit down on the cabin steps. There’s a chill wind but we rest on each other and I can hear the children laughing in the house when the kitchen door opens and my nine-year-old, Danny, comes out to feed the chickens.

  “Do you want to use the outhouse and go in and wash up?” I ask Bitsy. “Willie seems to be doing fine. He’s reading my Hans Christian Andersen book. What’s his story anyway? Who is he?”

  “You don’t know? I thought you’d know right away. He looks just like Katherine. Katherine MacIntosh.”

  “I see it now. But where’s his mother . . . Katherine?”

  “Dead,” Bitsy tells me, not sugarcoating it.

  “Oh,
no! She was the first patient you and I delivered together. Willie was the baby I thought would be stillborn. What happened to his beautiful mom?”

  “Another long story. I’ll tell you later. It’s been a couple of years. Right now I’m going for a ride on my motorcycle, and stop to see the Millers out at Hazel Patch,” she says.

  “Oh, Bitsy, those folks are all gone. During the deepest part of the Depression everyone left, going north and west looking for work. It’s a ghost town now.”

  “Well, I have to find somewhere to live.”

  “Why don’t you just stay with us? We’ll work something out. We always do.”

  “No,” Bitsy says. “I came home to the Hope River and to you because you’re all the family I have, but I’m not going to mooch off you and Daniel forever. I have to find my own place. I’ve got to ride. . . . It will help me think.”

  Two hours later, I’m battling wet sheets at the clothesline when Bitsy roars into the drive. She hops off her motorcycle and removes her helmet. “I have a plan,” she says, full of energy, “but I’ll need a horse and cart.”

  Daniel strolls over, along with Willie, who carries a basket. “Look,” he says to Bitsy. “I’ve been helping Dr. Hester gather eggs.” He’s so proud you’d think he’d laid them himself.

  “I have a Model T and a tractor with a hay wagon,” Dan says. “What do you have in mind, Miss Bitsy?”

  “I found us a place to live!” she says. “Willie, Opal, the baby and I are moving to Hazel Patch!”

  “Oh, Bitsy. You don’t have to do that. Those houses have been abandoned for years and the hooligans from town have thrown rocks through the windows. Opal can stay here too, as long as she needs to.”

  I glance at Daniel, knowing he already feels the house is too crowded and knowing we don’t have the money to take care of everyone. He raises his eyebrows in response, as if to say, Really?

  “I appreciate your hospitality, but I’ve thought it all out,” Bitsy declares. “We’ll split the $100 that Mr. Faye left. That will give Opal and I a nest egg to get started.