“You’re probably right, but I’m serious. I have a nice little house down the road. If we can just get you there . . .”
She growls low and pushes again.
“Mister!” I change my approach and turn to the wild-eyed fellow. “Get the kids. We can make it if we hurry. I’ll leave my bike and show you the way. Children, come now!” The father tosses the youngsters in and cranks up the engine. I jump on the running board. “Straight ahead! Hooo! Hooo! Hooo! Annabelle! Listen to me. Do like me. Hooo! Hooo! Hooo!”
“Ugghhhh!”
“No, you don’t! Blow!”
The lady wails, and I think that the head must be close to crowning. We bump up Wild Rose, and I catch sight of Mrs. Maddock sitting on the porch. Mr. Maddock stands out in the field up on a hay wagon, where a hired man holds the horses. They stare as we speed by in a cloud of dust, me still on the running board holding on for dear life.
“Hooo. Hooo. Good girl.” The truck lurches to a halt at the gate. “Bitsy!” My friend runs out the blue door. “Birth satchel.” I don’t need to explain further; she leaps back inside.
“Okay, now, Annabelle. Just take little steps. It’s not much farther. Children, sit under the tree!” The father lifts them down one at a time and points to the old oak. I have my hand on Annabelle’s bottom, and through her worn wet cotton dress I can already feel the top of the head.
“Up you go.” The father and I almost lift Annabelle up the steps, and as she goes into a squat, Bitsy throws my green patchwork quilt down under her.
“Uggggggh!” Annabelle collapses onto her side. Two pushes later, a rosy pink infant is crying in my arms. The mother is strangely silent. The children, unable to help themselves, peek through the porch rails. The father brushes his wife’s hair off her damp forehead, then takes the kids back to the tree, where they all sit down in the shade.
“Well, I thank you ladies kindly. Ain’t no way we can repay you, but when we get settled up north I can mail you a few dollars.” That’s Rolly, the father of the family, dark-eyed, dark-haired, and handsome in his worn denim pants and work shirt. Usually people who are down and out want to tell me their story, want to show me that they weren’t always so destitute, but this fellow is mum about his history.
I figure he’s another miner out of work or maybe a storekeeper who’s lost his store, another guy fallen on hard times. We’re at the kitchen table, sharing our meager supper of greens and rabbit stew. The children lick their bowls as if it’s the best meal they’ve had in weeks. He doesn’t ask our mailing address and I never expect to get a penny, but I know he means well.
By dusk Rolly has retrieved my bike and cloth bag of groceries from the roadside ditch; we’ve installed the mother on the sofa and set up pallets for the rest of them in the barn. Bitsy and I sit on the porch, watching the clouds turn pink and then red, taking turns holding the baby while the exhausted mother sleeps. They named her Norma.
September 8, 1930. Full moon waning.
Norma, daughter of Annabelle and Rolly Doe (I realize I don’t yet know their last name), travelers I met on Salt Lick. Female infant, 6 pounds, 6 ounces. The family has three other children and no home. They were on their way north to look for work when they got lost on the back roads and she went into hard labor.
Delivery went fine, out on our front porch. No vaginal tears and only about two cups of blood. I made Annabelle drink a sip of Mrs. Potts’s potion, just in case. She was so pale and thin. No offer of payment, but the mister split up a mess of wood. Didn’t expect any pay.
Foundling
Twice during the night, the baby cries and I tiptoe downstairs, take her out of the basket Bitsy has fixed up and let her suck on my finger. The exhausted mother shifts a little but doesn’t turn over. When I try to wake her to breastfeed, she moans and brushes me away. I know from my wet nurse experience that it’s better to put the baby to the breast right away, but Annabelle’s milk won’t come in for a day or two, so I let her be. Mrs. Kelly told me that in the Orient, they don’t start nursing until two days after birth and their babies survive.
At dawn the rooster crows, but I put my pillow over my head and hope for another hour of shut-eye. Bitsy wakes me a few minutes later.
“They’re gone,” she says, standing next to my bed fully dressed.
“Gone?” I wrench myself out of dreamland (something about flying over Lake Michigan with my arms outstretched). “What do you mean, gone?”
“I mean twenty-three skidoo! No note or anything.” For the first time I notice that she has the baby in her arms.
“Holy cow! They forgot their baby!”
“I don’t think they forgot.”
The travelers abandoning their newborn flabbergasts me. Over breakfast we discuss what to do.
“Maybe you could take the baby to the sheriff,” Bitsy offers.
“I’d hate to do that.” I take her in my arms. “Isn’t there an orphanage in Union County or somewhere?” The baby starts crying again, rooting at the front of my red silk kimono, and without even thinking I open the front and offer her my breast. She finds the nipple as if she’s done it before and draws it in.
Bitsy bugs her eyes and then looks away. “Miss Patience!” she says, her teacup halfway to her mouth. “Is that proper? To nurse someone else’s baby?”
“It’s okay, Bitsy. I don’t have milk, but sucking will give the baby some comfort while we figure out what to do. I was a wet nurse once, you know.” Reflecting, I realize that I’ve never talked to Bitsy about that part of my past. Never told her much of anything really, fearing once I got started the dike would break and everything would spill out: my days at the orphanage, my life at the Majestic, my teenage pregnancy, the death of Lawrence and the baby, the theft of the ruby ring, my radical days in Pittsburgh . . . and the worst part, the march on Blair Mountain.
Bitsy pushes her chair back. “There’s no orphanage. Usually, around here, kin just take care of kin. What about the home health nurse, Mrs. Myers, wouldn’t she have some connections?” She stands and puts her teacup in the sink. “I hate to leave you right now, but I’ve got to go to Hazel Patch. It’s about Thomas.”
“Is he okay? The sheriff isn’t still watching for him, is he? Katherine was so sure William had committed suicide, I thought the manhunt was over.”