The Midwife of Hope River Read online

  “Nice colt,” I say to the men as I wash my hands. There’s nothing to be done about my wet trousers.

  “It’s a filly,” the vet corrects. I snap my mouth shut, feeling foolish, and go out to the car.

  Milk Stone

  Twenty minutes later, motoring toward home over the stone bridge that crosses the wide and rocky Hope River, I’m still embarrassed about my mistake in calling the filly a colt but also elated from the experience of witnessing new life. It doesn’t matter if it’s a horse or a human, I decide, it’s still amazing. If I believed, I’d call it God’s miracle.

  “Thank you for taking me with you,” I say humbly. “I’ve never seen anything born before, except a human. Are they always that way? Or was that an especially hard delivery?”

  “No, it wasn’t especially hard. I’ve never seen a human born. Seen all kinds of animals . . . but . . .” He changes the subject. “Every now and then I need an assistant for the hard deliveries. I’m the only vet in the county now, and my practice is new. Some of the farmers are helpful, and some I wish would just go back in the house. Mr. Hicks was okay, not as nervous as some.

  “Horses are like people, all different. Each will react to foaling in her own way. Mares that haven’t foaled before can foal late; then you worry about the size. Also, mares that are nervous struggle more and impede the process.” He’s lecturing now, almost as if I’m a student.

  “Just like women in labor,” I comment. “Turn here.” I direct him down Raccoon Lick to Wild Rose Road.

  As we pull into the yard, the vet looks around. “I haven’t been up here before.”

  I take out my timepiece; it’s been four and a half hours since Moonlight was milked. “The barn is in back, but we better wash up.”

  “Sorry the water’s cold,” I murmur. We’re in the kitchen, and I ladle almost cool water from the hot-water reservoir on the side of the cookstove. There are only coals left, and the house is growing chilly. “When the fire’s going, the water’s nice and warm.”

  Mr. Hester shrugs and turns to stare through the doorway into my living room. He takes in the piano, the books, the framed paintings on the wall. I realize that he’s the first male to stand in this house since the men from the church brought the piano two years ago.

  In the barn he’s all business, goes right to Moonlight.

  “See what I mean? It’s a breast infection, isn’t it?” I comment. Then correct myself. “A teat infection, I mean.”

  Hester doesn’t answer. He takes a thermometer out of his box and sticks it into my cow’s rectum. Moonlight barely reacts, just looks back once, her head hanging low. Gently he washes the whole udder with soap and water, then squeezes some kind of salve on his hands and palpates the red, swollen teat. The cow moans and he sees how it hurts her, but he keeps on with his examination.

  I hand over the milk bucket, and he wraps his index finger and thumb around the red, swollen teat, then squeezes down with the other three fingers, careful not to force the milk uphill into the bag. I wince when blood squirts into the bucket.

  The vet stops and examines the sick teat again. “The straw looks clean. Are you routinely washing your hands with soap and water before you milk?”

  “Yes.” What I want to say is “What do you take me for, a dummy?” but I bite my tongue. No need to be disagreeable.

  The vet gently compresses the bloody teat, up and down, side to side, searching for something. First one side, then the other. I watch his hands, wondering what he’s looking for.

  “I think she has an obstruction, not simple mastitis. It might be a milk stone.”

  He reaches into his satchel, selects a small metal box with sterilized instruments, pulls out a scalpel, and before I can say no makes a slit down the side of Moonlight’s sore teat. This time she almost kicks him, but he’s ready for her and ducks away. When she settles, he takes a long pair of curved tweezers and pulls out a white object about the size of a pea. He hands the instrument back, then gets out suture and gauze and begins to blot the oozing red as he sews up the incision in my poor cow’s teat.

  “That’s a milk stone, probably what caused the infection in the first place,” he says as he works. “I could feel it in there. I’m surprised you didn’t.”

  I tighten my mouth. “I’ve never heard of a milk stone. I wouldn’t have known to look for one.”

  “That’s why you call a vet,” he says, and I feel my face flush.

  “I did call a vet.”

  “Keep your shirt on. Just next time get me sooner.”

  “Not everyone has the money to call a veterinarian for the least little thing. Not everyone has a phone.” That shuts him up.

  He stops for a second and stares at me. “Hemostat.” He picks up the instrument he just used and holds it out for me to see. “Needle driver.” He picks up another one. “Forceps.” He shows me the rest. “Retractor. Scissors. Scalpel . . . Do you do any stitching in your line of work?”

  I’m surprised at his interest. “Some, not often. I’m good at getting babies out without tears, and I’ve never had to do an episiotomy. I know how, though.”

  “Here.” He hands me a needle holder and a curved needle. “You can have these. I have several. Old Doc Collins, from Liberty, gave them to me when I bought his practice. They might help if you have a deep laceration. I’ll show you how to use them someday.” He stands and stretches his back, looking around. “Don’t forget, you owe me one more trip as an assistant.”

  I stare down at the shiny silver needle holder. “Thank you,” I mumble, then jerk up. “What do you mean one more trip? I thought I’d paid for Moonlight’s visit by helping you with the foal. I did my job and more, bouncing around in your dusty old car.”

  (Actually, I’d enjoyed myself. I don’t get to see a baby horse born every day, even if I did get covered with amniotic fluid and slime. Still, he irritates me.)

  “Yeah, but I had to do surgery on your cow’s teat, and surgery costs more. It might even be two more trips.” Again the one corner of his mouth twitches. Is he joking? I can’t tell.

  “Well, you’d have to come around Hope Ridge to get me, and sometimes I’m away at a birth . . . it would be hit and miss, and remember, I don’t have a phone.”

  “Yeah, you told me that. Don’t you need one in your line of work?”

  “You’re not getting the picture. I’d love one. It would help a lot, but the co-op electric and phone lines haven’t come out Raccoon Lick yet. None of my neighbors care about a telephone or electricity, and I couldn’t afford to pay extra to get the poles and line set just for me. I’m not a rich veterinarian. I don’t think there are rich midwives.”

  “Not many rich vets either,” he says. The dig doesn’t faze him. “I guess neither of us do it for money.” We walk back toward the house and I let him into the kitchen so he can wash again. Against my better judgment I ask if he would like tea. It seems only neighborly, but I’m relieved when he says he has to get going. I’m not used to company, and when you’re as old and cranky as I am, you don’t miss it.

  “Thank you for helping with the foal,” he responds, reaching out his hand. I shake it like he’s a banker or lawyer. I’m surprised that it’s so warm and folds over mine like a quilt on a snowy day. I’ve never felt a hand so warm, except Mrs. Kelly’s.

  “Thank you too,” I mumble, not looking at him. “Is it okay to still milk Moonlight, with the stitches and all?”

  “Yeah, but use Bag Balm to make your hands slip.” He looks around the kitchen to see if I have any, and I point out the distinctive bright green can with the image of red clover and a cow on the lid. “You can take the stitches out in two weeks when she’s healed. Keep her bag empty. I’d continue to milk her every four hours. How much does she give, anyway?”

  “Not that much. Two or three quarts a day. How much do you get from your cows?”

  “Three gallons a milking.” My eyebrows shoot up. “If you had her bred,” he continues, “and freshened, you could g
et that much too, but you’d have to let her go dry so she’d ovulate. I have a bull; no charge, if you’re interested. You’d want to do it right away. As soon as the mastitis is over.”

  I let that sink in. “How long is a cow’s gestation?”

  “About nine months, same as a human’s. Let me know.” Hester shrugs back into his coat, which he’d laid on the seat of the wooden rocker, and glances around the parlor once more. His eyes rest on the picture of me overlooking Lake Michigan, with the west wind blowing my hair.

  “Better bring in some wood. It’s going to be cold tonight.” He pulls on his old brown fedora and goes into the dark.

  Outside, a crescent moon sits in the branches of the naked oak tree. I pull on my jacket and stand for a minute looking up at the clear star-filled sky. Under the porch there’s only enough coal to fill a milk bucket, and the stack of split oak is almost gone.

  7

  Big Mary

  Today the sun shines, a strong wind blows in from the west, and I have no excuse for not making my visit to the MacIntoshes’. I’m embarrassed to ask them for payment outright. Mrs. Kelly always told me that delivering babies was an act of charity, something a person did for love, but that was before the economy collapsed, and back in those days almost everyone gave us something—a few dollars, a side of ham or maybe a chicken. I’m hoping that William MacIntosh will get the hint when I return, because I badly need cash for fuel, wood and coal.

  As I pedal down Wild Rose Road, then along Raccoon Lick and the three more miles into Liberty, I make note of the last of the wildflowers. Only a few goldenrods still droop in the ditch with the six-foot-high purple ironweed lording it over them. A long V of geese flies low overhead, and I stop in the road to admire them.

  Each spring and fall they pass near here, doing what their species has done for aeons, making our human struggles seem petty and small. They don’t know about wars or stock market crashes or union struggles. The geese give me hope, fill up my heart.

  I step down hard on the bike’s pedals and push on, but the wind blows in strong gusts, and twice I waver and almost fall off. A horse would be nice, I think, but there’s no way I could afford one, and a vehicle like Mr. Hester’s is unthinkable.

  The whole way into Liberty no one passes, except one big truck from MacIntosh Consolidated that almost runs me off the road. When I finally arrive at the three-story brick house, I stop to catch my breath and straighten my hair. Holly bushes with red berries grow along the drive, with a few last red roses up the porch rails. I park my bike to the side and knock on the back door like a delivery boy. I know this isn’t right. I should enter through the front, as Dr. Blum would do. A midwife is a professional, isn’t she?

  “Well, come on in,” Mary Proudfoot, the big coffee-colored cook, greets me, a white scarf tied behind her head, covering her neatly braided hair. “Bye Bye Blackbird” by Gene Austin is floating out of the radio in the dining room. “Pack up all my care and woe, here I go, singing low. Bye bye blackbird.” I grin when she pulls me close to her bosom, a soft pillow. I’m underendowed myself.

  “Miss Patience,” Bitsy greets me without enthusiasm, looking down and away as she carries a load of laundry through the kitchen and out to the side yard.

  “Sorry I’ve not been back sooner . . .” I trail off. “Is Mrs. MacIntosh doing all right?”

  “Oh, she’s right as rain, honey. Bitsy and I know about newborns. The missus is upstairs nursing . . . Speaking of Bitsy, she’d make a good midwife assistant, don’t you think? Didn’t she do right good at the delivery?” The cook pours me a cup of black coffee without even asking and pulls out two wooden kitchen chairs, indicating I should sit.

  I’m taken aback by her comment about her daughter, but Mary allows the thought to sit on the back burner and rambles on.

  “It’s the mister I’m worried about. Talk about your care and woes.” She leans forward, glancing first at the door to the dining room. “He’s wearing his tail to a frazzle! Says he’s lost all he’s worth, except this house and the coal mines. Everyone in town is holding on by a thread. No one can believe it’s happening. The banks are tied in knots, and all because of that President Herbert Hoover. Worthless!

  “I don’t even think the mister told Miss Katherine that Bitsy has to move out. They can’t afford her. Mr. MacIntosh says they don’t need a maid, the missus and I can manage. I told him Bitsy would work just for keep, no cash pay, but he says no. She’d still require food. Things are that tight.

  “I asked him what she’s supposed to do . . . The few people that used to have servants in Liberty are letting theirs go too. I’m just glad I’ve been here so long and Katherine has the new baby. They can’t let me go; I practically raised William, used to work for his parents. If he put me out they’d turn over in their graves.”

  She stands and stirs a fragrant chicken broth on the stove. “The mister told me not to bother Katherine about Bitsy! He doesn’t want his wife upset. Might lose her milk, he says, but I don’t know what Bitsy’s supposed to do . . . where she can go . . .” There are tears in her brown eyes, not falling yet, just resting in a pool below her lower lid. “Our closest kin are in North Carolina.”

  Outside the tall twelve-pane kitchen window, I study Bitsy as she struggles with the wet sheets in the wind. She’s a small woman, about my size, half as big as her mother, but she seems tough, like the little blueberry bushes that grow on the granite rocks at the top of the ridge.

  “Mary, I’d help you if I could, but I’m broke too.”

  “Thomas was at your house. He says it looks like you have extra rooms. I’ve studied it out. Bitsy could learn to help you with the deliveries and on the farm. She’d work for room and board. No salary. My daughter is thrifty and smart. She’d be company for you out there in the sticks. You’d like her.”

  I can’t believe this conversation is happening. Sometimes it would be nice to have another person around. Mrs. Kelly and I lived quite comfortably together in our little white house before she had her heart attack, but Bitsy and I together, a black and a white? I don’t really care what people think, but I can’t afford to bring attention to myself. I’ve just met Bitsy, and I’ve never known a white woman to live with a colored before, unless she was a servant.

  “She has one week to move out of here.”

  “You know, Mary, I don’t have electricity or gas or a telephone or a car. It would be a tougher life than Bitsy is used to. Has she ever lived in the country?”

  “Sure. We stayed with my pa near Fancy Gap in the mountains of North Carolina when she was a girl. That was before we moved to West Virginia so my husband could work in the mines. Mr. Proudfoot, Bitsy’s pa, was killed in the Switchback Mine explosion along with sixty other men. By that time my daddy had passed on and lost his farm, and there was no place for us in Fancy Gap. The children and I moved north with the MacIntosh family when they opened their new mines in Union County.” She says all this without a trace of self-pity.

  “Bitsy knows how to kill and dress deer. She can fish. She could clean and do laundry for you so that you’d have more time. My daughter graduated from the colored high school in Delmont. She can read, even big books, and she’s as hard as cowhide if she needs to be.” The cook is as relentless as a Fuller brush salesman.

  “Is that the baby crying?” I grab my satchel and make a hasty escape up the back stairs. At the landing, I slow and give the prospect some thought. Bitsy’s moving in with me could be a gift or could mean the demise of my peaceful hermitage. I picture the two of us curled at the opposite ends of the sofa, reading in the evenings, as Mrs. Kelly and I once did. Would Bitsy squirm? Would she talk too much or sing under her breath? Does she snore or click her teeth when she eats? Would I have enough food? Those are the little things that concern me.

  I let out my air, wondering how the community would feel about us. I couldn’t call her my servant, and I couldn’t stand someone waiting on me. It riles me even to think of it!

  Cre
scent Moon

  “Katherine? It’s Patience,” I call softly from the upstairs hall. “I came to check on you and the baby.” The bedroom door is half open, and I see the woman pull her shift over her breast and stand up. “I’m sorry it’s taken so long to get back,” I apologize. “Mary says you’re both doing fine.” I note that the baby is asleep in his cradle, nursing his little tongue.

  “Oh, Patience. I’ve missed you.” Katherine plunks down on the edge of the bed, and by her action, I see that her bottom doesn’t hurt anymore, but things are not as hunky-dory as Mary implied.

  “Are you okay?”

  Dried milk is caked on the woman’s lavender chemise, her hair is uncombed, and her pale face, without makeup, looks lined and tired.

  “Yes . . . oh, I guess so . . . no, not really. I just feel so rotten about Bitsy.”

  That takes me aback. “I thought you didn’t know about that—about her having to leave and Mr. MacIntosh’s financial problems.”

  “I know more than he thinks! William treats me like a child. I can hear the news on the radio, for heaven’s sake. I can put two and two together.

  “The day the baby came I was so distraught I didn’t realize what they meant by Black Tuesday, but since then there’s been a string of men in and out of the house, bankers, creditors, investors, people like that. I hear their raised voices. I hear their fear.

  “Then Martha Stenger came over to see the baby, the pharmacist’s wife, with her six wild children. I thought they’d never leave. The kids were squirming all over, and the two littlest boys got in a fight!” She rolls her eyes.

  Here I see a sly smile, and I remember why I like Katherine. Despite her sweet face and gentle feminine demeanor, there’s a little piss in her vinegar.

  “I know what you mean. They’re a rowdy brood, bright but so noisy.”

  “Martha Stenger told me that Mary Proudfoot has been asking everyone in town if they’ll hire Bitsy. I was so angry when I found out William fired her! I would have confronted him if it wouldn’t have meant a big fight. He has so many other worries. Has to make payroll for his miners this week. I just feel so bad. I don’t have any money for you either, after all you did.”