The Midwife of Hope River
Page 9
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Only two years later, Mama developed a cough and came down with consumption just like her mother. She was spitting up blood when she died. I was shipped to Chicago to stay with the widowed sister of our solicitor, Mrs. Ayers, and worked as a laundress in her small inn, washing and ironing the linens and cleaning the rooms until Mrs. Ayers found a new husband and shipped me off to St. Mary’s House of Mercy, an orphans’ asylum for the destitute. Mrs. Ayers cried a little when I left, but I wasn’t her responsibility. Not even kin. I understood that.
5
Mastitis
The weather has turned warm again, blue sky dotted with innocent white clouds, the smell of leaves rotting, a last shower of gold from the big oak out front, but there’s something wrong with Moonlight. When I went out to milk her last night, one of her teats was as tight and red as a German sausage. I suspect the problem is an infection brought on by an injury or, more likely, from my not milking her on time, letting her bag get too tight and full, but I don’t know much about cattle.
Consumed with guilt, I’ve been going out with hot water and rags to wrap around her udders every few hours. She seems to like the warm compresses but hates it when I try to milk her. Still, it’s the only thing I know to do. A breast infection hurts like the holy devil. I should know; I had mastitis a few times myself when I was a wet nurse.
First, to get the milk flowing, I pull on the teats that aren’t quite so tender. It’s what I tell my mothers when they have a red, tender breast: “Nurse on the good side first, rest, drink fluids, apply warm compresses. Keep the breasts empty, and leave the nipples open to the air.” Good food also helps and sometimes cabbage leaves, but I can’t figure out how to tie cabbage leaves on the cow’s udders, so I skip that part. Meanwhile, I lay my head against the side of my beautiful black-and-white bovine, and my eyes fill with tears. I am so sorry, Moonlight.
This morning, finding my cow with her head hanging low, I get up my nerve, hike down the road to the neighboring farm, and ask Mr. Maddock what I should do. Maddock is a stern-faced old bugger who always wears a black felt hat and never waves when I pass, despite the fact that I’ve lived here two years. I was hoping he might be out in his fields mending fence or cutting brush, but I have to go up to the house.
“She’s stopped eating and doesn’t even look up when I come in the barn,” I tell him through the screen door. Maddock doesn’t invite me in, though a stiff wind is blowing and I have to keep brushing my hair from my face. “She just looks at me with big eyes and moans. I’m milking her six times a day, even getting up at night and using warm compresses. Can you think of anything else I could do?”
Maddock owns four or five Holsteins; I’ve seen them in his field. He pulls on his coarse black wool jacket, steps out on the porch, and yanks down his broad-brimmed headpiece. “You could ask the new vet; maybe he’d have some salve.” He scratches his chin through his gray-speckled beard. “He doesn’t live far. You can walk around Salt Lick Road to his farm on Titus Hollow or just hike over the top of Hope Ridge on the old Indian trail that goes through the woods. His place backs up to yours on the other side. Either way, you’d be there in an hour.”
Behind the weathered man, in the parlor, sitting by a kerosene lamp on a table, Mrs. Maddock, a pale woman with her silver-and-gold hair twisted up in a bun, sits knitting. She doesn’t get up or come to the door. I catch her eye and smile. She doesn’t smile back. There are books on shelves behind her and a display of framed needlework on the walls. Ordinarily, women in Appalachia would invite you in, but Mrs. Maddock, who looks, from her books and artwork, like an interesting person, must not approve of me, a woman without a man living alone just up the road. She turns her head and goes back to her knitting.
House Call
The hike over Hope Ridge, through a thick forest of stunted spruce growing out of flat sheets of granite, takes longer than I’d expected. Just when I decide that maybe I’m lost, I smell coal smoke and see, through the trees, a stone house with a white barn down in the hollow. The two-story dwelling, situated in a long narrow valley, appears to have been built a hundred years ago. Three horses graze in the pasture.
It’s a picture-book place but so quiet that it occurs to me, for the first time, that I don’t know the veterinarian by sight or even his name, and the closer I get, the more I begin to fear that this trip may be wasted. He could be out on a call or, now that I think of it, probably has an office in Liberty or Delmont.
A pileated woodpecker laughs from the top of a bare sycamore and I can hear a vehicle winding along Salt Lick, a pickup, maybe the mail carrier. As I work my way down the hill through the stubby yellow grass and outcroppings of rock, I sight a man dressed in coveralls, next to the barn, wearing black rubber boots and hammering on a piece of metal. Clang. Clang. Clang. He has a strong back; a tall fellow, maybe six feet, his light brown hair receding. Around forty, I think; I’d expected the vet to be someone much older.
A rock about the size of a cottontail rabbit catches under my foot and begins to roll downhill straight toward him. “Look out!” I yell.
He steps aside and watches as it lands near his feet. “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m sorry, I should have called out. My name is Patience Murphy.” I’ve been using this name since Mrs. Kelly and I came to Union County, and by now it rolls off my tongue like honey.
“I’m the midwife from over Hope Mountain.” I’m not sure why I tell him I’m the midwife. Maybe I feel it gives me some kind of legitimacy. “I have a cow with a red swollen teat, and Mr. Maddock, my neighbor, told me you might help.”
“A house call is five dollars. You could have used the telephone and saved yourself some trouble.” He looks me over, head to toe, and I’m suddenly aware of the sight I must be. Usually when I go into town or make a social call, I spruce up, wear a dress and hose (if I have any), but today I’d come in my work boots, the trousers I wore when I worked at Westinghouse, and a heavy men’s red-and-black-plaid jacket that Mrs. Kelly and I bought secondhand, before we exiled ourselves to these outer lands.
That’s how I think of it, as though I’ve been banished from civilization, all because of what happened in Logan County at Blair Mountain. Some would say I should forget it. The feds can’t still be looking for me after all this time.
5
Mastitis
The weather has turned warm again, blue sky dotted with innocent white clouds, the smell of leaves rotting, a last shower of gold from the big oak out front, but there’s something wrong with Moonlight. When I went out to milk her last night, one of her teats was as tight and red as a German sausage. I suspect the problem is an infection brought on by an injury or, more likely, from my not milking her on time, letting her bag get too tight and full, but I don’t know much about cattle.
Consumed with guilt, I’ve been going out with hot water and rags to wrap around her udders every few hours. She seems to like the warm compresses but hates it when I try to milk her. Still, it’s the only thing I know to do. A breast infection hurts like the holy devil. I should know; I had mastitis a few times myself when I was a wet nurse.
First, to get the milk flowing, I pull on the teats that aren’t quite so tender. It’s what I tell my mothers when they have a red, tender breast: “Nurse on the good side first, rest, drink fluids, apply warm compresses. Keep the breasts empty, and leave the nipples open to the air.” Good food also helps and sometimes cabbage leaves, but I can’t figure out how to tie cabbage leaves on the cow’s udders, so I skip that part. Meanwhile, I lay my head against the side of my beautiful black-and-white bovine, and my eyes fill with tears. I am so sorry, Moonlight.
This morning, finding my cow with her head hanging low, I get up my nerve, hike down the road to the neighboring farm, and ask Mr. Maddock what I should do. Maddock is a stern-faced old bugger who always wears a black felt hat and never waves when I pass, despite the fact that I’ve lived here two years. I was hoping he might be out in his fields mending fence or cutting brush, but I have to go up to the house.
“She’s stopped eating and doesn’t even look up when I come in the barn,” I tell him through the screen door. Maddock doesn’t invite me in, though a stiff wind is blowing and I have to keep brushing my hair from my face. “She just looks at me with big eyes and moans. I’m milking her six times a day, even getting up at night and using warm compresses. Can you think of anything else I could do?”
Maddock owns four or five Holsteins; I’ve seen them in his field. He pulls on his coarse black wool jacket, steps out on the porch, and yanks down his broad-brimmed headpiece. “You could ask the new vet; maybe he’d have some salve.” He scratches his chin through his gray-speckled beard. “He doesn’t live far. You can walk around Salt Lick Road to his farm on Titus Hollow or just hike over the top of Hope Ridge on the old Indian trail that goes through the woods. His place backs up to yours on the other side. Either way, you’d be there in an hour.”
Behind the weathered man, in the parlor, sitting by a kerosene lamp on a table, Mrs. Maddock, a pale woman with her silver-and-gold hair twisted up in a bun, sits knitting. She doesn’t get up or come to the door. I catch her eye and smile. She doesn’t smile back. There are books on shelves behind her and a display of framed needlework on the walls. Ordinarily, women in Appalachia would invite you in, but Mrs. Maddock, who looks, from her books and artwork, like an interesting person, must not approve of me, a woman without a man living alone just up the road. She turns her head and goes back to her knitting.
House Call
The hike over Hope Ridge, through a thick forest of stunted spruce growing out of flat sheets of granite, takes longer than I’d expected. Just when I decide that maybe I’m lost, I smell coal smoke and see, through the trees, a stone house with a white barn down in the hollow. The two-story dwelling, situated in a long narrow valley, appears to have been built a hundred years ago. Three horses graze in the pasture.
It’s a picture-book place but so quiet that it occurs to me, for the first time, that I don’t know the veterinarian by sight or even his name, and the closer I get, the more I begin to fear that this trip may be wasted. He could be out on a call or, now that I think of it, probably has an office in Liberty or Delmont.
A pileated woodpecker laughs from the top of a bare sycamore and I can hear a vehicle winding along Salt Lick, a pickup, maybe the mail carrier. As I work my way down the hill through the stubby yellow grass and outcroppings of rock, I sight a man dressed in coveralls, next to the barn, wearing black rubber boots and hammering on a piece of metal. Clang. Clang. Clang. He has a strong back; a tall fellow, maybe six feet, his light brown hair receding. Around forty, I think; I’d expected the vet to be someone much older.
A rock about the size of a cottontail rabbit catches under my foot and begins to roll downhill straight toward him. “Look out!” I yell.
He steps aside and watches as it lands near his feet. “Where’d you come from?”
“I’m sorry, I should have called out. My name is Patience Murphy.” I’ve been using this name since Mrs. Kelly and I came to Union County, and by now it rolls off my tongue like honey.
“I’m the midwife from over Hope Mountain.” I’m not sure why I tell him I’m the midwife. Maybe I feel it gives me some kind of legitimacy. “I have a cow with a red swollen teat, and Mr. Maddock, my neighbor, told me you might help.”
“A house call is five dollars. You could have used the telephone and saved yourself some trouble.” He looks me over, head to toe, and I’m suddenly aware of the sight I must be. Usually when I go into town or make a social call, I spruce up, wear a dress and hose (if I have any), but today I’d come in my work boots, the trousers I wore when I worked at Westinghouse, and a heavy men’s red-and-black-plaid jacket that Mrs. Kelly and I bought secondhand, before we exiled ourselves to these outer lands.
That’s how I think of it, as though I’ve been banished from civilization, all because of what happened in Logan County at Blair Mountain. Some would say I should forget it. The feds can’t still be looking for me after all this time.
