The Reluctant Midwife Read online

  I go on alert, like a hunter who has just seen a four-point buck. “How much could you pay?”

  “Do you know someone? They’d need chains for the winter.”

  “I’m thinking of me. I have a six-year-old Pontiac. We have chains and I could do the deliveries. Dr. Blum, you probably heard, is disabled now, but he could carry the heavy boxes and I’d be careful to not let him scare people. What do you think?”

  B.K. enters the room, sits on the edge of the bed with his hand on Lilly’s leg, and joins the conversation. “We couldn’t pay much, only gas, two bits for a delivery and maybe your groceries at a discount. We were thinking of a man, but you’d do this for us?”

  “I’m a good driver. I got us all the way here from Virginia . . .” I’m almost on my knees, though I still sit on the bed.

  “Well, let’s try it. I’ll call you the first of the week and you can get started.”

  That puts the damper on things. “I’m sorry, we don’t have a phone.”

  “Oh,” Lilly says, dropping her head in disappointment, but then jerking it up, the red hair flaming around her pink face. “But that’s okay. We’ll just tell people that deliveries are only on Mondays and Thursdays now.”

  “It’s set then?” Can you stay for our midday meal?” B.K. asks.

  “No, I have to go. The doctor’s in the car, but I’ll see you Monday. There will be deliveries for sure, then?”

  “Yes, I already know of three. Yes, for sure. I’ll memorize the directions so that you can write them down.” Lilly is like a new woman and I am too.

  11

  Goose Attack

  “Damn!” I curse, as I turn around for the third time and reverse my course on County Road 92. “We’ve been up and down this stretch two times and I still haven’t seen a swinging bridge.”

  Finally, I spot it, almost obscured by the tall grass. I pull up in the gravel, find the boxes of groceries Mr. Bittman has prepared, and motion Dr. Blum to help me. When he doesn’t respond, I open the passenger door and haul him out.

  “Here!” I yank out his arms so I can set the box in them. “Follow.”

  I take the smaller carton and wind my way down a narrow path that leads to the wood-and-cable contraption that spans the creek. Dr. Blum is right behind me and I don’t know if it’s safe for the two of us to cross at the same time, but I guess I’ll find out.

  With each step, I hold my breath as the swinging bridge bounces and sways. Don’t think about the water and rocks below, I tell myself. Just keep your eyes on the white house on the other side.

  Across the field, four blond barefoot girls sit on the porch and they can’t stop giggling. I suppose my fear must be hilarious to people who travel the bridge a few times a day. Finally, a woman comes out, wearing a blue housedress with tattered lace down the front. Her golden hair is pulled back in a bun.

  “Sally,” she yells. “Go down to the bridge and help that lady. Those are our groceries and I don’t want her dropping them in the creek.”

  The oldest girl saunters over with the other ones following.

  “Ma’am,” she says with a curtsy, when I reach dry land. “I’m Sally. Can I take the parcel for you?”

  It’s not heavy, but I’m shaking so bad, I give it over gladly, happy to have the solid earth under my feet. “Nice to meet you, Sally. How old are you?”

  “Almost ten.” She’s such a pretty, well-mannered child.

  “Fifth grade then. Where do you go to school? Does the school bus come all the way out here?”

  “It still passes by, but I don’t go. My shoes were too small and Ma says it would be shameful to go to school barefoot.” This takes me aback. I hadn’t really thought about the impact of the Great Depression on children, except maybe for the lack of nutritious food. Moments later, the sound of honking interrupts my thoughts as four huge geese come running from the barn, their necks outstretched and their vicious yellow bills open and ready to bite.

  I jump up on a hay wagon and pull Dr. Blum with me.

  “Help!”

  Willa

  “Girls!” the mother shrieks. “Get those birds away!” She comes off the porch flapping her apron and the troop of little blondes, laughing their heads off, drives the flock out of the yard. The biggest goose circles around behind the barn, a mean one with a black head and red eyes, and comes back, but Sally chases him all the way down to the creek. Embarrassed, I climb down from the wagon. Blum jumps down too.

  “So sorry,” the woman of the house apologizes. “The geese aren’t used to strangers and they’re as fierce as guard dogs. That big one bit the Fuller Brush salesman in the butt. . . . My name’s Willa Hucknell.”

  “I’m Rebecca Myers from Bittman’s Grocery. I guess you figured that out.”

  “Lilly told me there’d be a new delivery person but I pictured a man. Would you like to rest a spell after that torment? I’ve just made some coffee.”

  “Okay, but just a minute,” I respond, knowing it would seem rude to refuse. “We have three other deliveries to make.”

  I follow Willa into the neat kitchen dominated by a long wooden table and surrounded by nine wooden chairs. There’s a sink with a pump, a white cookstove, and a pie safe in the corner. The pine floor is shiny and clean.

  Willa gets out two blue chipped mugs and pours coffee into them and I notice then that she’s pregnant. “How far along are you?” I ask, wondering why the heck, in times like these, the Hucknells need more children. Then I remember, not every pregnancy is planned and birth control is hard to afford.

  “Just four months; I’m showing earlier every time.” She rolls a cigarette, lights it with a wooden match, and sits down at the table, blowing smoke out the side of her mouth. “So what’s wrong with the sawbones?” she asks boldly.

  “No one’s sure. He’s not dangerous or anything. I just have to lead him around.”

  “It’s a shame,” Willa responds. “I wasn’t crazy about him when he doctored here. Kind of a cold fish, but he was a good physician. We don’t have one now.”

  I take a sip of the black coffee and keep my eye on Blum through the kitchen window. He’s still standing in the grass in the front yard and when one of the small girls picks up a stone and throws it at his shoe he doesn’t flinch.

  “This coffee is good,” I tell my hostess, “but I can’t stay long. The groceries are three dollars. It’s twenty-five cents for the delivery.” Mrs. Hucknell turns toward the pie safe and rattles around in a money jar while I try not to look.

  “My husband, Alfred, is employed by the PWA, the public works thing, on the Pennsylvania Turnpike at Bald Knob and he needs the truck for his job. That’s why I have to have groceries delivered. The girls miss their daddy, but we were getting so far behind, the bank threatened foreclosure. Him going away to work is the only way we could keep the farm, and he only gets home once a month to see the little ones.”

  “You and your children live here alone? Keep the farm up and everything?”

  “We do the best we can. We don’t grow crops since Alfred left, just our garden, the chickens, a cow, and the hay fields, but we hold on all right. I get a neighbor to bring us wood . . . or coal, if we can afford it.

  “It’s hard for everyone now,” she goes on. “At least we have a place to live and we have the girls. We are rich in girls!”

  “Just girls? No boys?”

  The woman looks over at me and takes another long drag on her cigarette. “Yes, but Alfred keeps trying to get him a son, says every man needs a namesake.”

  There’s laughter on the porch and I see that the pebble game has escalated into a teasing song with the children circling the doctor. “All around the mulberry bush. The monkey chased the weasel. The monkey thought it was all a joke. Pop goes the weasel!” The “pop” is shouted right into the doctor’s face, but he doesn’t blink and the girls think that’s hilarious.

  Mrs. Hucknell slams through the wooden screen door. “For shame on you, Sally, and you a big girl! You
leave Dr. Blum be! He’s the one that delivered you right in this house ten years ago.”

  The mother turns to me as I stand in the doorway. “For the twins, Sunny and Sue, who’re five, I had Patience, the new midwife. The last one, Sonya, I birthed myself. She’s four.” She plunks down next to her children and commands their attention. “We must be kind to those who help us in this troubled world, even if they turn funny later on,” she instructs, nodding at the doctor.

  Sally hangs her golden head. The little ones move in close to their mother and she strokes their flaxen hair. For a minute, I’m sad I don’t have children. How nice it would be to have their small, soft warm bodies against me.

  But that’s not all there is to mothering, I remind myself. There’s feeding and bathing, mending their clothing, teaching them right from wrong, and keeping them out of danger until they have enough sense not to be a danger to themselves.

  Anyway, I have Dr. Blum to care for. . . . I smile to myself (not without bitterness) and drink up my last bit of coffee.

  Mrs. Stone

  The next week my deliveries go without mishap and because I can park close to the homes, I don’t need Dr. Blum’s help; I just roll down the windows and leave him sitting in the car.

  There’s the Indian family, the Hummingbirds, who live in a large log house on Dark Hollow, then Charley Roote, an old veteran of the Spanish-American War who lives on the next farm, and finally, a widow, Mrs. Stone.

  The tiny lady, about five feet tall, using a cane with a silver lion’s head for a handle, meets me on the side porch of her two-story brick farmhouse. In the back is a barn with a wire fence around it and about two dozen goats of all colors and breeds, some little, some big, some with horns and some with droopy ears.

  “Oh, sweetie, thank you so much. I didn’t know the Bittmans were using a delivery girl.” The tiny white-haired woman ushers me into her kitchen where my eyes go wide. The room is a blaze of white; white walls, white cupboards, a white-and-yellow-checked linoleum floor. On one open cupboard, displayed on flowered shelf paper, are dozens of white ceramic cookie jars, decorated with red, yellow, and blue flowers, each one different, an amazing collection. On the other shelves are seashells of all sizes and shapes and a few carved wooden sculptures, the kind you might get in Africa or India.

  Mrs. Stone pulls open the door of the shiny white fridge and takes out a jar of brown liquid. “Can I give you a cup of ice tea? Won’t take a minute. I need one myself. I’m just a mess today.” She has a high voice, almost like a little girl, and she indicates a round oak table covered with papers.

  “What did you say your name is? I’m Mrs. Stone, but you can call me Sparky.” I decide to let Isaac sit in the car another few minutes, while I take in the pleasant surroundings. Mrs. Stone interests me.

  “My name is Becky Myers. Have you lived here long?”

  She answers, standing with her back to me, so I can’t see her face. “Just a year. I’ve lived overseas most of my life. I’m originally from Connecticut, but my husband was in the Foreign Service. This was his mother’s homeplace. He died on Christmas, right after the crash.”

  “That must have been terrible, losing your husband around Christmas.” I have a feeling she’s leaving a lot of heartache out of the story. “Was it a long illness?”

  “No. He jumped. Jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge.” My head jerks up and I almost choke on my tea. “He didn’t even leave a note or say good-bye. Just went off to work in the city like it was any other day. I suffered, of course, floated like a lost soul, but then I came back to myself and moved here. . . . What else can you do? Life goes on.”

  She sits down across from me and offers the sugar bowl, decorated with flowers like the rest of the collection. Her hands are small and dotted with brown age spots, but they look strong.

  “I’m so sorry. Was it money, like you hear about? All those suicides at the beginning of the Depression, twenty thousand around the world, I read somewhere.”

  “I guess, but if it was debt he didn’t tell me. That’s the worst part, not knowing. It was months later the lawyers brought me in and told me we’d lost everything.” Here she runs her veined hands over the piles of correspondence on the table.

  “Paperwork! That’s why I’m in such a frazzle. More tea?” I place my palm over my glass to indicate I’m good.

  “My stomach is just in knots.” She stares at the stacks of folded and wrinkled documents in front of her. “I hate this sort of thing; can’t find what I’m looking for, but I know it must be here.

  “When we inherited this farm in ’25, my husband remarked specifically that the deed said mineral rights included. I didn’t understand why that was important. In Connecticut we never heard of such things.

  “Later, he told me the history, how the farmers in Appalachia, back in the 1800s, were tricked into giving up their mineral rights for a few measly bucks and then the oil and coal barons came in and tore up their land. He said his grandpap was wise to refuse to sell, a stubborn old coot! He just wouldn’t sign.

  “Now, yesterday, this young man, wearing a suit and tie, just a whippersnapper from Pennsylvania Oil and Gas, comes by saying they own the mineral rights and want to bring in a crew to drill for oil. I may be over the hill, but I’m not senile. How dumb does he think I am?”

  “What’s wrong with an oil well? I see them along the road. Once the company drills, they just put in a pump, one of those rigs that go up and down. Gas is a byproduct and you could get it free to heat your house like a lot of farmers do. Some folks even heat their outhouse. Seems like a good deal.”

  “Give them an inch, honey, they’ll take a mile! You see what they did to the Harrod farm on North Run?” I shake my head no.

  “Brought in those big trucks and drilling machines, and now their road and fields are nothing but a rutted mess and that beautiful creek that used to have nice brook trout in it is dead from the muddy runoff. This farm is all I have left and they’re not going to ruin it!”

  “Maybe you could go to the county assessor. They must have copies of the deeds. I hate to leave, Mrs. Stone. The tea was refreshing, but Dr. Blum is sitting out in the car.”

  “Dr. Blum?” We step out on the porch. “Well, why didn’t you bring him in?”

  “No, you don’t understand. Dr. Blum has had a misfortune. Physically, he’s fit, but he has no intelligence and I take care of him.”

  Sparky Stone walks right up to the car and whacks the door to startle the doctor, but Blum doesn’t blink. “What do they say about him, his physicians?”

  “Well, they don’t say much, just that’s he’s had a stroke or maybe he’s catatonic.”

  “I’ve never trusted doctors. Never needed them much either,” Sparky comments, still staring at Blum. “Next time you come, Miss Becky, bring the man in.”

  The old lady reaches through the open window and strokes Blum’s jaw with one bony finger, then turns his face to hers and looks into his eyes as if searching for something. I may have imagined it, but I swear light flies from her eyes to his, then Blum blinks and the curtain comes down.

  Oranges

  Back at Bittman’s an hour later, I check on Lilly, who’s being a good girl and staying in bed and then give B.K. his money. He writes the proceeds in his notebook and turns over my pay.

  “It wasn’t too bad today. I enjoyed driving around the countryside and the people were nice, especially Mrs. Stone. She’s a character. You’ll want me Thursday, then?”

  “Lilly is already writing down the deliveries.”

  I look at the oranges arranged on a tray on the counter. “How much?” I ask longingly.

  “Twenty-five cents a dozen.” B.K. rests his elbows on the wooden counter.

  “No, I guess not. . . . I do need some basics, though, five pounds of cornmeal and three pounds of red beans. As I leave, Mr. Bittman wraps up six oranges.

  “On the house,” he says.

  I go out into the sunshine feeling rich with my carton of food
and my bag of golden fruit, but as we cross over the Hope River I see a barefoot young mother with stringy brown hair, begging just this side of the bridge with her two raggedy kids clinging to her long skirt. This is something new. I have never seen a woman begging before, and she holds a crude sign: WILL WORK FOR FOOD.

  What else can I do? I slow the auto and roll down the window, peel open my parcel, and hold out two oranges.

  “God bless you, ma’am,” the young lady whispers. “We haven’t eaten all day. Can I do anything to repay you?”

  “No. No, we’re fine.”

  Afterward, I thought of the groceries in the back. I could have given her more.

  Blum turns his face away, staring down at the water where it rushes over the rocks.

  12

  Lawn Party

  Sticky with fruit juice, we sit in the shade of a weeping willow tree on an old blanket on the Hesters’ lawn. There’s the smell of newly cut grass and the scent of the red roses growing up the side of the porch.

  Each of us shares a slice or two of our oranges with Danny and juice dribbles down his little chin. Daniel lies on his side petting Emma and Sasha, the two beagles he says were his wife’s dowry. The doctor and I lean against a bench across from them. Patience rests against the trunk of the tree.

  “Is that the phone?” I ask. The double ring floats across the yard.

  “Damnation.” The vet mutters as he sprints for the house.

  “Excuse his French. He’s just tired,” Patience apologizes. “He was up with Mr. Earle’s sick cow last night, milk fever. Slept for a few hours today, but was hoping to have a quiet night.”

  “Patience!” Hester yells from the stone porch. “It’s for you . . .”

  With a long sigh, the midwife pushes herself up and plunks Danny Boy in my lap.