The Midwife of Hope River
Page 72
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“Mr. Hart, please!” I run after him and pull on the sleeve of his neatly patched work shirt. “There must be some way to get to town. I’m telling you, your wife is very weak and ill. If she has another seizure, she may not make it.”
Hart steps out on the porch, slams his fist into a porch pole, and groans.
“Maynard, listen to her,” the older lady says. “Kitty needs help.”
“Miss Patience!” someone in the house calls. I run back inside.
The albino girl is holding her sister’s head, and the shakes and rigors have started again. We women gather round, holding Kitty’s limbs. The bed blossoms red under her buttocks like a begonia opening, and now she’s bleeding from her nose too.
What is this? It’s like she’s shaking the life fluid out of her, and she’s not breathing either. If she doesn’t stop seizing, she’ll expire right now.
For two, maybe three minutes, we hold Kitty while Mr. Hart stands expressionless at the bedroom door. I know he must have feelings, but he’s gone somewhere else, far from this horror, fishing down on the Hope River, maybe.
In the end Kitty takes a big breath and swoons again. I feel for her pulse, but it’s too fast to count. She opens her eyes one last time, sees her husband in the doorway, reaches out to him, and dies. Her poor heart has stopped beating. All our hearts stop.
Women’s Work
“We need to clean this mess up before it brings in the flies,” I say out loud as a big one buzzes around my head. The birth smell is sweet and heavy, but this is something else. The blood smell is overwhelming. I almost gag but swallow hard and try not to think about it.
“What’s your name, honey?” I ask the albino.
“Birdy,” she answers. “Kitty is my sissie. She’s dead now, isn’t she? And the baby?” The girl blows her nose on the hem of her skirt. Birdy and Kitty, I think. The parents must have had a sense of humor.
“I’m sorry. Yes, they’re both gone to Heaven now. Why don’t you sit and hold your sister’s head while we clean her up.” Birdy does what I say, lifts Kitty’s head into her lap and strokes her long hair, which I notice now is yellow-blond and straight like a Norwegian’s. She hums a little song under her breath and presses the dead woman’s eyes shut. One comes back open, but she closes it again.
Where is Bitsy when I need her? I wonder again. How will I describe this scene to her? Maybe I shouldn’t. She might not want to come to births with me anymore.
The lady in green, I learn, is Mr. Hart’s sister, Edna, who scrubs on her hands and knees without speaking. While she wrings out her rag in the galvanized bucket again and again, her tears drip into the crimson water. The short round woman, Charity Moon, is the wife of the neighbor who drove me to this hellhole.
The other women cry while they work, but not me. My sobs are tamped down like clay at the bottom of a fence post hole. I’ve thought this before. Life is too hard. You are born, and you die . . . that’s the sum of it. In between you love someone or you don’t, and if you are lucky you leave behind someone who loves you.
By the time we are done mopping up and sitting at the kitchen table with strong coffee in chipped cups, the sun is going down and Maynard comes back to the house with red eyes. He takes off his shirt at the sink and washes his face and his arms.
“Will there be a service?” I ask.
“Just something with neighbors and kin,” explains the aunt. “Kitty wouldn’t have wanted a big to-do, and we can’t afford to have her embalmed. We’ll have the reverend bury her here, the fellow from Clover Bottom. You’re welcome to come.”
“I’ll try,” I say, knowing I probably won’t.
“Thank you for coming.” Maynard turns to me. “I don’t have money to pay you.”
“I know . . . it’s okay. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“The neighbor man, Moon, will drive you home.” He goes back out the screened door, and I watch as he crosses to the barn, then leaves with a shovel over his shoulder. Is he going back to the fields? No, he’s starting Kitty’s grave. He needs to bend and sweat and curse. Dig a hole. Where will Mr. Hart sleep tonight? I wonder. Will he lie down beside his dead wife, take the lifeless baby that’s wrapped in a pink blanket and place it over his heart?
Edna, his sister, watches him too. “There’s a family graveyard yonder, all our relations. This is Maynard’s second wife. The first is already up there, died of pneumonia three years ago. He’s not a bad man,” she explains. “He loved Kitty, just had too much pride to ask for charity care.”
Before I leave, I go back to the bedroom one last time to say good-bye to the dead woman, who lies now on a faded rose quilt in a white nightdress. The floorboards are still stained red and always will be.
34
Thunder
The ride home in the dark with Mr. Moon is cheerless. There’s still no rain, and the air is so thick, I can taste it. Twice I think I hear thunder, and once I see lightning out of the corner of my eye, but neither of us speaks or makes note of it.
Clip-clopping along in the faint moonlight, the goldenrod and tall joe-pye weed in the roadside ditches look covered with frost, but it’s only thick dust laid down by the buggies and Model Ts. As we turn up Salt Lick, I break the silence.
“Drop me at Daniel Hester’s, the vet. You know where that is? Another mile up ahead. He’ll drive me the rest of the way home.” I say this with sureness, but I’m only hoping. For all I know, Hester could be out casting the leg of a damaged hound or ministering to a sick mare.
Bitsy won’t be home yet, if she comes in at all, and I can’t go to sleep twisted around the nightmare of this terrible delivery. Mr. Moon follows my instructions and leaves me at the vet’s mailbox, turning his cart around in the drive. We raise our hands in silent, sad salute.
On the wooden bridge, the soft trickle of the creek below startles me. Considering the drought, I’m surprised it’s still running. From the barn, I hear metal grinding. Hester stands in the lantern light pedaling the grindstone, sharpening his garden tools. Suddenly I’m apprehensive. What am I doing here? What will I say?
“A woman died today because I didn’t know how to save her”? “A mother and her baby died needlessly because her impoverished and prideful husband didn’t call me earlier”? “The world is a terrible and tragic place, too hard, too hard for Patience Murphy”?
Hart steps out on the porch, slams his fist into a porch pole, and groans.
“Maynard, listen to her,” the older lady says. “Kitty needs help.”
“Miss Patience!” someone in the house calls. I run back inside.
The albino girl is holding her sister’s head, and the shakes and rigors have started again. We women gather round, holding Kitty’s limbs. The bed blossoms red under her buttocks like a begonia opening, and now she’s bleeding from her nose too.
What is this? It’s like she’s shaking the life fluid out of her, and she’s not breathing either. If she doesn’t stop seizing, she’ll expire right now.
For two, maybe three minutes, we hold Kitty while Mr. Hart stands expressionless at the bedroom door. I know he must have feelings, but he’s gone somewhere else, far from this horror, fishing down on the Hope River, maybe.
In the end Kitty takes a big breath and swoons again. I feel for her pulse, but it’s too fast to count. She opens her eyes one last time, sees her husband in the doorway, reaches out to him, and dies. Her poor heart has stopped beating. All our hearts stop.
Women’s Work
“We need to clean this mess up before it brings in the flies,” I say out loud as a big one buzzes around my head. The birth smell is sweet and heavy, but this is something else. The blood smell is overwhelming. I almost gag but swallow hard and try not to think about it.
“What’s your name, honey?” I ask the albino.
“Birdy,” she answers. “Kitty is my sissie. She’s dead now, isn’t she? And the baby?” The girl blows her nose on the hem of her skirt. Birdy and Kitty, I think. The parents must have had a sense of humor.
“I’m sorry. Yes, they’re both gone to Heaven now. Why don’t you sit and hold your sister’s head while we clean her up.” Birdy does what I say, lifts Kitty’s head into her lap and strokes her long hair, which I notice now is yellow-blond and straight like a Norwegian’s. She hums a little song under her breath and presses the dead woman’s eyes shut. One comes back open, but she closes it again.
Where is Bitsy when I need her? I wonder again. How will I describe this scene to her? Maybe I shouldn’t. She might not want to come to births with me anymore.
The lady in green, I learn, is Mr. Hart’s sister, Edna, who scrubs on her hands and knees without speaking. While she wrings out her rag in the galvanized bucket again and again, her tears drip into the crimson water. The short round woman, Charity Moon, is the wife of the neighbor who drove me to this hellhole.
The other women cry while they work, but not me. My sobs are tamped down like clay at the bottom of a fence post hole. I’ve thought this before. Life is too hard. You are born, and you die . . . that’s the sum of it. In between you love someone or you don’t, and if you are lucky you leave behind someone who loves you.
By the time we are done mopping up and sitting at the kitchen table with strong coffee in chipped cups, the sun is going down and Maynard comes back to the house with red eyes. He takes off his shirt at the sink and washes his face and his arms.
“Will there be a service?” I ask.
“Just something with neighbors and kin,” explains the aunt. “Kitty wouldn’t have wanted a big to-do, and we can’t afford to have her embalmed. We’ll have the reverend bury her here, the fellow from Clover Bottom. You’re welcome to come.”
“I’ll try,” I say, knowing I probably won’t.
“Thank you for coming.” Maynard turns to me. “I don’t have money to pay you.”
“I know . . . it’s okay. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“The neighbor man, Moon, will drive you home.” He goes back out the screened door, and I watch as he crosses to the barn, then leaves with a shovel over his shoulder. Is he going back to the fields? No, he’s starting Kitty’s grave. He needs to bend and sweat and curse. Dig a hole. Where will Mr. Hart sleep tonight? I wonder. Will he lie down beside his dead wife, take the lifeless baby that’s wrapped in a pink blanket and place it over his heart?
Edna, his sister, watches him too. “There’s a family graveyard yonder, all our relations. This is Maynard’s second wife. The first is already up there, died of pneumonia three years ago. He’s not a bad man,” she explains. “He loved Kitty, just had too much pride to ask for charity care.”
Before I leave, I go back to the bedroom one last time to say good-bye to the dead woman, who lies now on a faded rose quilt in a white nightdress. The floorboards are still stained red and always will be.
34
Thunder
The ride home in the dark with Mr. Moon is cheerless. There’s still no rain, and the air is so thick, I can taste it. Twice I think I hear thunder, and once I see lightning out of the corner of my eye, but neither of us speaks or makes note of it.
Clip-clopping along in the faint moonlight, the goldenrod and tall joe-pye weed in the roadside ditches look covered with frost, but it’s only thick dust laid down by the buggies and Model Ts. As we turn up Salt Lick, I break the silence.
“Drop me at Daniel Hester’s, the vet. You know where that is? Another mile up ahead. He’ll drive me the rest of the way home.” I say this with sureness, but I’m only hoping. For all I know, Hester could be out casting the leg of a damaged hound or ministering to a sick mare.
Bitsy won’t be home yet, if she comes in at all, and I can’t go to sleep twisted around the nightmare of this terrible delivery. Mr. Moon follows my instructions and leaves me at the vet’s mailbox, turning his cart around in the drive. We raise our hands in silent, sad salute.
On the wooden bridge, the soft trickle of the creek below startles me. Considering the drought, I’m surprised it’s still running. From the barn, I hear metal grinding. Hester stands in the lantern light pedaling the grindstone, sharpening his garden tools. Suddenly I’m apprehensive. What am I doing here? What will I say?
“A woman died today because I didn’t know how to save her”? “A mother and her baby died needlessly because her impoverished and prideful husband didn’t call me earlier”? “The world is a terrible and tragic place, too hard, too hard for Patience Murphy”?
