All around the large room, on the white plastered walls, photographs of stern ancestors from the 1800s stare out at us from black oval frames. What would these old people think of all this? The father in the birthing room! The mother dancing! Blues rising sweetly from the talking machine downstairs!
Though the Dyers have electricity, there’s as yet no water closet. But that doesn’t bother Hannah. For an educated young lady, she’s as earthy as a peasant woman and has no qualms about periodically squatting over the white enamel potty. There’s nothing for me to do but wait, so I rest myself in a high-backed soft chair, close my eyes, and enjoy Bessie’s song. I haven’t heard much music lately, not since Christmas, when I sang with Mr. Hester. I’m almost asleep when I hear the noise I’m waiting for . . .
“Ugggggggh!” My eyes pop open, and I see Hannah squatting on the commode with her husband kneeling in front of her. “Oooo!” she exclaims. “I’ve got to pooh!”
“No, you don’t, Hannah! That’s your baby coming, time to get back in bed. Bitsy, get a wiggle on! We need the hot water!”
“But I don’t want to lie down. I can’t lie down! It hurts when I lie down!” Hannah complains.
I could throw her down, but she’d just bounce up like a rubber ball. I let out my air in frustration. This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve let a woman push when out of bed. I just don’t want to make a habit of it. What would the community think if word got around? What would Mrs. Potts think of me, letting my patients deliver like aborigines?
“Well, what do you want to do, then? Are you going to have the baby standing up?” I remember the Amish girl, how it had almost come to that, but Granny had insisted she get back into bed.
“Ugggggggggggggh! Yes!”
John looks hopeful. “Could she? I’ll hold her.” Hannah’s so hot she throws off her gown.
I pull my sterile gloves on, shaking my head. These young people, with ideas of their own!
When Bitsy returns with a steaming teakettle and a small bowl for the afterbirth, she laughs at the sight of Hannah standing naked, bearing down, in the middle of the bedroom.
“She won’t get into bed,” I explain. “Can you hand me the oil?” I grab a pillow and kneel on the floor behind and below the mother. Bitsy pours the warmed liquid on my fingers, and I’m surprised, when I check, to find the head almost crowning. “Slow it down, Hannah!” I yell. “Slow it down or you’re going to tear. Get her attention, John!”
The man takes his wife’s face in his hands and insists that she make eye contact with him. “Look at me, Hannah. Look at me!”
“Why?” she snaps. “I’m trying to have a baby here!”
“The midwife says to stop pushing. She says to slow down or you’re going to rip.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake! What am I supposed to do, then?”
Bitsy steps up and gives her the drill. “Push a little. Blow a little. Push a little. Blow a little.”
In ten minutes, I’m sitting in a pool of warm amniotic fluid with a crying female infant in my lap.
“My baby!” Tears run down Hannah’s face as she takes the beet red child away from me and wraps it in her discarded nightdress. The cord’s still attached and dangles between us like a swinging bridge.
“My darling wife!” That’s John.
“Will you lie down now?” That’s me, and Hannah complies.
The recording downstairs has finished, and the scrape of the phonograph needle is getting on my nerves. “Can you please fix that, Bitsy?” I nod toward the sound.
Bitsy trots down and a few minutes later is back, boogieing through the door to “Oh, Gee! Oh, Gosh!,” a ragtime favorite. I can’t help but smile. John takes Bitsy’s hand, and they do the Lindy Hop together while Hannah holds up the baby. “See, honey?” she asks the wobbly newborn. “Are you going to be a dancer like your poppy and Bitsy?”
Then she gets serious. “I think we’ll call her Mary,” the new mother announces. “Don’t you think that’s nice? A plain name, but also the name of our savior’s mother.”
“Yes,” I agree, thinking of Mary Proudfoot. “That’s a beautiful name: brave, strong, and proud.”
June 19, 1930. Quarter moon waning in a clear sky.
Birth of Mary Dyer to John and Hannah Dyer of Stony Creek. Six pounds, 11 ounces. Mother and father danced through labor. Even Bitsy and I joined in! Hannah stood up for the birth and I thought she would tear, but she was fine. Blood loss less than normal.
I was surprised as natural as she was in labor that Hannah had a little trouble with breastfeeding. The infant rooted vigorously, but Hannah has very flat nipples. If I had known, I would have had her do some tiddy-pulling the last month to get ready. You can’t do it sooner because it causes contractions. When women come to my house to arrange for my services, I must remember to ask to examine them and ask Becky to do it too, since she is seeing some of them in her clinic in town.
Present were Bitsy, yours truly, and John. Payment, a side of bacon and a promise of a cord of wood this fall, but the birth was so fun, I would have done it for free.
28
Ghost Town
At last we are getting produce from the garden, small peas that we eat without shelling, lettuce, and chard. We enjoyed Hannah’s bacon and we fish in the river, but we are down to a cup of flour, the sugar is gone, and our money jar is empty except for a few last coins. I stare at them now, scattered on the table, as I pull on my town shoes.
“Man does not live on fish and berries alone, or woman either,” I announced to Bitsy this morning. “I’m going into Liberty. Maybe I can find work. If we don’t get paid for the deliveries, we have to get money somehow. I also have the last few birth certificates to turn in for a quarter apiece at the courthouse. That will be something.”
I was surprised when Bitsy ran upstairs to find me something nice to wear and helped braid my hair, but then I realized that she’s just as worried about our financial situation as I am and probably wanted to increase my chances by making me look like a lady.
It seems a long shot, but my thought, as I get my bike out of the barn, is that maybe Becky Myers or Mr. Stenger, the pharmacist, will know of someone sick or injured that Bitsy and I can take care of. As I fly on my bike past Maddock’s farm, I’m surprised to see Mrs. Maddock sitting in a wicker rocker on the front porch. I wave but am speeding so fast down the steep hill that I almost tip over, and she doesn’t wave back. An hour later, behind the Texaco station, I park and wipe the dust off my face with my wet cloth, then walk sedately down Main.