Our Own Country: A Novel (The Midwife Series) (28 page)

Part IV

36

IT WAS BUT TWELVE MILES TO BRAINTREE,
but my discomfort on the journey was extreme. The road was bumpy, and I was obliged to ask Thomas to help me to the shrubs by the side of the road, taverns being few and far between. By the time we arrived at Lizzie’s, it was late afternoon, and I was nearly dead with fatigue. Even the babe within me was now motionless, having kicked me furiously most of the way.

Lizzie put me to bed at once in her parlor, where a great old bedstead stood. The bed had been made up with fresh linens and was quite inviting. Mr. Miller brought my trunk inside. A young woman, posture erect and hands clasped, stood by the bed, ready to be of service. This, I soon realized, was Martha Miller. She had grown up since I first brought her to Braintree three years earlier. I hardly knew her.

I lay languidly across the bed in my shift. Lizzie left me then, and I slept. I woke after it was already dark, and I heard Lizzie and Martha talking quietly in the kitchen. Mr. Miller had gone, and I regretted that I had not thought to thank him before I lay down. But I had been so low, so exhausted. I sat up, pushed myself off the bed, and lumbered toward the kitchen. Seeing me, Lizzie smiled and said, “Ah, Eliza. Come join us.”

I sat myself upon a rickety chair, half expecting it to collapse beneath me. I then took a biscuit and a dish of chamomile tea, both of which were ready and waiting for me on the kitchen table. I looked about at the many chores that awaited the women in their busy harvest season and felt myself to be yet another chore. As if hearing my thoughts, Lizzie said, “I’m glad you are come, finally, Eliza. It’s not a moment too soon.”

“I’m most grateful,” I said. I sipped my tea and looked out the kitchen window. Beyond the cottage was a beautiful gray-blue crescent of sea beyond the dunes. Ships glided past on their way to Boston. Fishing boats, transport vessels, and merchant schooners all drifted north. Gulls cried and terns swooped up, then down into the dune grass.

Just up the hill from us sat Josiah Quincy’s house. It was newly built, and I was told that no expense had been spared on the interior. I thought it unlikely that I would make the Quincys’ acquaintance any time soon.

I took to bed early that first night, and the next morning awoke with dull cramps. It was a Sunday, and as Lizzie and Martha readied to leave for meeting, I wrote a letter to John, not knowing when—or if—he would receive it. The post from Braintree was by no means as regular as it was from Cambridge. When Lizzie found that I wrote a letter meant for Portsmouth, she said, “I’ll ask Abigail if she knows of anyone heading in that direction.” By Abigail, I knew she meant Mrs. John Adams.

“Thank you,” I said. While Lizzie and Martha were gone, I poked about to learn something of the lives that continued here after my Jeb had gone. I did not mount the stairs—that would have been an intrusion, and in any case too arduous for me in my current condition. But I looked in Lizzie’s dairy and saw my sister-in-law’s many phials of herbs and medications, kept so orderly, with an exact record of their contents used and the dates in chalk upon the door. I espied a fruit tart off to the edge of the coals, covered with glistening apricots . . . How had she managed that? I would have liked to eat the entire thing.

To remove myself from temptation, I stepped abroad and felt the strong sea breeze at once. I heard the raucous seagulls above me. The apples had been harvested, but there were still a fair number of bright-red ones hanging among the branches. These I considered fair game. I plucked one and bit into it, expecting it to be inedibly tart—but no. It was crispy and delicious! I was munching happily away when Lizzie and Martha returned.

Lizzie smiled warmly at me as she approached. “I was able to give your letter to Abigail, Eliza. As luck would have it, someone she knows is heading north.” Lizzie then looked at me more carefully and held my face in one hand. “I like not your color. Martha!” she called. Martha had gone directly into the kitchen to prepare us a simple dinner. “I shall stay behind for the second service—you may go without me.”

“Nay,” said Martha. “I’ll remain behind as well and harvest the flax—you may need me.”

Lizzie nodded, her eyes still upon me.

I continued to feel Lizzie’s gentle hand on my face even after sh
e’d
removed it. After our dinner, Lizzie and Martha donned their bonnets and went off to the fields. “Rest, Eliza,” Lizzie called. “Let us know if you need us—we’ll be keeping our ears open.”

“Oh, I doubt I’ll need you. I feel quite well now.” They both looked at me then, their wizened little faces sharing a single expression I could not read. I washed the dishes, though they had told me to leave them. I then rested for perhaps twenty minutes, but, growing bored, I rose and perused Lizzie’s shelf of books.
The Tragedies of William Shakespeare
, Sharpe’s
Surgery
, Culpepper’s
Herbals
—none tempted.

I decided I would step abroad, as it was yet a fine autumn afternoon. I meant merely to look at the flowers and herbs in the kitchen garden. I had just opened the front door to step into the garden when I felt a flood of warm liquid run down my leg. I did not know a great deal about childbirth, and this alarmed me. Had I involuntarily—relieved myself?

“Lizzie!” I called. She and Martha were just returning from one of the fields, bundles of flax in their arms. When Lizzie saw me, and took in my surprised expression, she dropped her bundle and moved toward me.

“Come,” she said calmly. “Let’s go inside.”

“What’s happening?”

“The babe’s coming.”

I was puzzled. “But I feel no pain. Really, Lizzie, if this is the extent of a woman’s labor, then we are a miserably weak lot to complain as we do.”

“It will come on gradually,” she said.

Suffice to say that “gradually” soon turned to “unrelenting,” and thence to “unbearable.” It was a torture of such ferocity I knew not why women ever had more than one child. I swore aloud that, were I to come through this one alive, I would never have another. I suffered, shouted shipyard curses—everything
I’d
heard on Badger’s Island and worse. Martha and Lizzie did not leave me alone for even a minute. I labored all through the evening, and, just past midnight on October 14, 1778, I was delivered of a fine, healthy boy.

37

THE CHILD LOOKED WHITE AT FIRST, BUT
Lizzie later said she knew at once it was a Negro child. At the time, however, I received only her jubilant cry, “It’s a boy! A fine, healthy boy!”

I wept with relief, and, propping me up with pillows, Lizzie helped put the babe to my breast, which he accepted eagerly. He and I both fell asleep, but when I awoke, the babe was gone. I panicked.

“Where is he? Where’s my child?”

Martha was by my side at once.

“He is well—just there, don’t you see?” Indeed, I could see him. He was in Lizzie’s arms by the kitchen door.

“Give him here!” I cried.

Lizzie was having none of my Cambridge ways, however, and I would soon learn that in matters of midwifery—well, in all matters, really—she could be as obdurate as Braintree’s granite.

“I prefer to wait until you have regained some strength. He will keep—we give him distilled water with a tiny bit of milk in it. It will do at least till tomorrow. And then there’s always Betty, a wet nurse in the South Parish—”

“Wet nurse? Oh, do be clear, Lizzie. My head aches. I can hardly comprehend you.”

Martha came toward me and gently wiped my brow with a cool cloth. “Lean back now. That’s it.”

As I became fully awake, I realized that something had changed while I slept. I felt shivery and could not stay warm. My head ached horribly; the light seared my eyes, and I closed them.

“Am I unwell?” I asked, covering my eyes with my forearm.

“Rest,” Lizzie said. “All will right itself in time.”

But all was not well. Thankfully, there is a special Providence that makes one unaware of the gravity of one’s own illness. I remained in bed a week, as Lizzie silently worked to keep a “slight infection” from carrying me off. In truth I felt very unwell. I lost my appetite and could not sit up to nurse my babe, who I named Johnny. Four, five, six times a day, Lizzie handed me strange teas to drink.

After several days in which neither she nor Martha slept, my fever eased. I knew this not by the abatement of my malaise, but by their relieved faces. Only when it was over did they reveal to me that I had developed puerperal fever, an often-fatal disease in new mothers. When they finally handed me my little boy, he seemed heavier to me, like a fat, delicious dumpling. Thank God for that!

During these early days, Lizzie was strict with me. She still “liked not my color” and was hourly on the lookout for fever. After a second week had passed, however, she allowed me to sit quietly in the kitchen while the babe slept. There, I helped her to grind spices or hang herbs to dry.

It should be mentioned that I had as yet not told either Lizzie or Martha about John Watkins. Perhaps I would in time share my story with them. But to Mrs. Adams? Certainly not. This conviction lasted all of a day—or slightly less. For, that same afternoon, as I was nursing Johnny, in strode a tiny person whom I at first mistook for someone’s servant. I marveled at Braintree’s easy ways, where servant girls could come upon one without so much as knocking first.

The woman wore a frock of homespun quite imperfectly woven, and her hair had not been combed through in some time. Her petticoat was soiled from various outdoor chores—feeding her animals, perhaps. Only when she looked at me did I see the hard intelligence of her brown eyes and knew who she was: Abigail Adams.

“Oh, what a beauty!” Mrs. Adams exclaimed, seeing Johnny at my breast just as Lizzie entered from the kitchen.

“Abigail!” she cried and hugged her gleefully. She then properly introduced us. Abigail paced the parlor until I had finished giving suck, at which point she said, “I should like to hold him, if I may.” Johnny had fallen asleep and lay with his arms akimbo. I nodded to her, and she sat on the edge of my bed and took up the sleeping child.

“I’ve had five children,” she remarked, “but none quite so beautiful as this child. What do you call him?”

“Johnny. After his father.”

“Oh, hello, Johnny.” She smiled down at him, playing with the fingers of one of his open little hands, which had turned palm-up in sleep. His fingers curled unconsciously around her gently prodding forefinger.

With Johnny, Abigail Adams was perfectly gentle and natural. Yet, when setting her eyes upon me, this esteemed woman reminded me of nothing so much as a hawk. Her small eyes saw everything, even from a great distance.

Speaking of eyes, my child’s were of a most unusual color, though I expected they would change and darken. They were the same aqua-blue eyes as John’s. Abigail could not help but comment upon them.

“Everyone here has blue eyes except for me,” she lamented.

“I don’t,” Martha said. “Don’t envy them, Abigail. For, in the sun, their eyesight is as weak as a ferret’s.”

“Ha—that’s true enough.” Her small mouth formed a tiny smile.

As Johnny slept, Mrs. Adams and I fell to talking. “You know,” she said, “of the past eight years, I’ve seen my John only four. And there have been many months—sometimes as much as six in a row, where I’ve not heard a word from him and knew not whether he was alive or dead.”

“What torture that must be. I’m learning . . .” I began, then admitted, “I’ve not heard from
my
John in many weeks, and it’s already more than I can bear.”

For a year I had kept my grief locked within me, and I could do so no longer. Abigail, sensing weakness, edged closer to me on the bed.

“Tell me exactly what troubles you, dearest.” She placed a dainty yet oddly rough hand on mine. “Spare no detail.”

I then proceeded to unburden my heart to Mrs. Adams in a way I had not done with Lizzie. In telling my story, I cried, and when I had calmed myself and thought I might sleep, Mrs. Adams kissed me on the side of my head and said she would return the following day. I dozed until Johnny’s cry woke me later that afternoon, to find Martha and Lizzie staring down at me.

“Yes?” I murmured. “What is it?”

The two looked at each other, then Lizzie asked, “How is it that Abigail Adams managed to get you to reveal that which you would not reveal to us, even in the throes of your travails?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes it is easier to unburden oneself to a stranger.”

Suddenly I recalled that I had a gift for Lizzie. I let go her hand and smiled. “As it so happens, I have something for you. Call it payment, if you like.”

“What could that be, I wonder?” she asked.

I pushed my bolster aside and stepped down from the bed. I pulled out my trunk, opened it, and removed Jeb’s portrait. Then I walked into the kitchen, toward the sunlight that streamed into the window facing onto the sea. Lizzie followed with a puzzled expression. Martha remained in the parlor, with Johnny.

As I handed my sister-in-law the gift, I suddenly feared it might discomfit her. Portraits were expensive and not so common in those days. What’s more, to see one’s dead beloved could feel like seeing a ghost. But it was too late.

“What’s this, Eliza?” she asked, staring at the smooth convex glass above the oval portrait. She held it delicately in the palm of her hand, like an egg. I knew not her thoughts or feelings. But after gazing at it in the brilliant light of the sun, Lizzie closed her fingers upon the portrait and lifted it to her heart. She looked toward me, her eyes swimming in tears, and she said, “Thank you. Thank you, Eliza.”

“It belongs with you. You knew who he was.”

“Yes,” she said simply. Then, suddenly, Lizzie called to Martha, “Martha! Oh, Martha, come see my Jeb!”

Martha appeared at the entrance to the kitchen with the sleeping babe in her arms.

“Come. Look at the handsomest man in the world.” A handsome man at this time was a rare sight, one to be greatly savored. Carefully, Martha lifted the portrait and held it by the window. The sun illuminated its details: his fine face, his resolute blue eyes, his thick blond hair.

“He
is
handsome. He has a strong, intelligent face. Is this your brother?” Martha turned to me.

“Yes. He was my brother, Jeb.”

Martha handed the portrait back to Lizzie. “Well, what he saw in
her
”—she thrust her thumb in Lizzie’s direction—“I know not.”

“Oh, you!” Lizzie said, charging at Martha. She knew Martha to be ticklish and went directly for her rib cage.

“Get away from me!” Martha cried, hunching over to protect her tender torso and Johnny, who started but did not wake. And they were soon happily laughing, cutting the heavy dolor of the moment with the bright citrus of youthful cheer.

Lizzie’s cottage was small, and Johnny and I were now its great spectacle. Indeed, we might have been Mary and baby Jesus in the holy crèche, so often did my new friends gaze upon us passing from kitchen to garden, or chamber to kitchen. We were the first thing they saw before dawn and the last thing they saw before mounting the stairs at night.

Beyond the cottage was a beautiful gray-blue crescent of sea. I had but to gaze out the kitchen window to see it there, across the dunes.

Within, the eye could feast as well: bushel upon bushel of apples. This bounty was due, apparently, to a certain Mr. Cleverly and his ingenious invention, a watering machine, which he had fashioned for Lizzie the previous summer while courting her. He then seemed to disappear, but my friends offered no further details, and the story trailed off.

“But did you love him, Lizzie?” I asked her one morning that first week of my recuperation. I was sitting up and nursing Johnny. It had now been three years since our Jeb had died, and the idea that Lizzie might come to love another did not seem unnatural.

“Mr. Cleverly was very attentive, very charming.”

“She didn’t love him,” Martha said, coming into the parlor. Lizzie set her bushel down and turned to Martha.

“How do you know?” I asked.

“I just do.”

“Would you have agreed to marry him?” I inquired of Lizzie, switching Johnny to the other breast.

“I thought—”

“No,” Martha interrupted her. “I would not have allowed it.”

“Allowed, indeed!” Lizzie finally got a word in edgewise. “You see, Eliza. Martha truly believes she has the power to determine whom I marry.”

“I certainly do,” Martha replied without smiling. “I liked him not. Mr. Cleverly, that is.”

Lizzie shrugged her shoulders. “My servant liked not my suitor. There’s an end to it.”

Martha shot her a baleful look, and I laughed. The two women reminded me of an old married couple: quarrelsome, yet deeply intimate.

Two days later, on October 27, I received word from Mama that my father had died. Her note was terse and factual:

Your father is gone. I have no expectation of your returning for the funeral, which is set for this Friday. I have sent word to Uncle Robert.

The note was not signed. I took the inward blow of my dear Papa’s death in silence; all my tears had already been shed. However, I resolved to go to the funeral, though I doubted that I should be welcome at the house. Nonetheless, I wrote at once that I would come, and that, in case Mama was curious, I had two weeks earlier given birth to a healthy boy.

Lizzie wished I would not go. She feared that, under such infelicitous conditions, and without my babe, my milk would cease to flow. She insisted on having me practice a particular kind of massage to make my milk come in at regular intervals throughout the day.

“I shall write to Bessie and tell her to expect you,” she said. Bessie was Judge Lee’s old servant, who lived with Giles, a former family slave, in Lizzie’s ancestral home.

“I don’t know what Mama shall do when she sees me. I should
like
to stay at my home, if only to see Cassie.”

“Well, then, I’ll tell Bessie that
possibly
you’ll come.”

I thanked her warmly and then returned to the issue of my milk. “But it
is
most inconvenient to have milk dripping everywhere, at all hours,” I sighed.

“It’s inconvenient to have a child, especially when one is unwed,” Lizzie reminded me pointedly. “But I don’t hear you complaining about
that
.”

“No,” I admitted. “I have no regrets on that score.” I was entirely smitten with my little boy, who ate and slept so well, and complained so little. Though it had been but two weeks since Johnny had come into the world, I could no longer imagine life without him.