The Midwife of Hope River (9 page)

13

Visitor

I'm in the middle of
“Star of wonder, star of night”
when the beagles start growling and run for the door. Someone knocks again, louder. My face goes hot and my stomach cold.

I have nothing on but my long johns with one leg rolled up above my knee, my camisole, and Nora's old red silk kimono. On my feet are wool socks with holes in the toes. I can't imagine who would make a social call on Christmas Eve. Maybe it's the traditional stranger you read about and I must let him in and give him dinner or it will be bad luck all next year. Realistically, I know it must be about some woman in labor.

“Who's there?” I wrap my kimono closer and pull my long underwear down over my cut.

“It's Daniel Hester. I saw your lights.”

The vet? Possibly he's passing this way after tending a sick horse, but the intersection with Raccoon Lick and Wild Rose is a half mile away. I crack the door and find him standing on the porch with a bottle of booze swinging in his hand, totally illegal.

“Where'd you get that?” I ask, indicating the glass container with a nod. “You could get arrested for violating Prohibition.” He's wearing a dark brown trench coat with his brown felt hat pulled low on his head and already smells like booze, but his stance is steady, and without asking he steps out of his rubber boots and walks in. “The music sounds great. You have a nice voice, and the beagles do too!” He smiles at his little joke and flashes his strong white teeth. (“All the better to eat you with, little Red Riding Hood,” comes to me.)

“Were you really making a sick call on Christmas Eve?”

“No, just lonely,” he says without embarrassment, looking round the room.

“What about your wife?”

“My wife?”

“The lady at the window . . . in your kitchen.”

“Nah, no wife. She's my part-time housekeeper.”

“So you thought
I
might want some company?”

Hester ignores my question. “I like your Christmas tree. Reminds me of when I was a kid. We made those colored paper chains in my one-room schoolhouse in upper New York State. Got colder than hell up there. Sometimes forty below. Coldest I've seen, since I moved south, is thirty below. What happened to your leg?”

I look down at my lower limb and notice the blood seeping through my long johns. Not a pretty sight.

“What happened?” he asks again.

“Cut it on some corrugated metal this afternoon. It's okay.” I don't mention the sledding. “I can get around. All I need to do is get to the barn and back.”

“Can I look?”

I feel like saying “Do you have to?” On the other hand, he
is
almost a doctor, and this is like getting a free house call.

“I guess . . . Will you make me pay with more veterinarian assistant jobs?” I think this is funny, but the vet is all business, leading me back to the sofa, sitting me down, picking up my ankle, gently removing my crude bandage.

When he gets down to the laceration, we both wince. It's an evil-looking wound, and the edges that I thought had come together are now peeling apart.

“I need to do something about this,” Hester says as he stands up and puts his coat on. “My bag is in the Ford.”

I contemplate arguing, but he's out the door.

When he returns, he goes into the kitchen, washes his hands, and sits down in the rocker. He reaches into his black doctor bag and pulls out one of his curved needles with suture, a glass syringe, and a vial of clear liquid.

“Is that numbing medicine?” I asked hopefully. If it isn't, I'd better find something to bite on, like in the old cowboy movies when the Doc gives Tom Mix a stick to grip between his teeth.

The vet looks at me. “You don't think I'd stitch you without topical anesthesia, do you?”

I shrug, thinking, Yeah, maybe; you didn't numb Moonlight!

Twenty minutes later, my cut is cleansed, dusted with some kind of antiseptic powder, stitched back together with black thread that makes my leg look like one of Frankenstein's limbs, and bandaged with a clean white surgical dressing.

The vet gives me a packet of the white powder from his bag. “In three days, remove the gauze and start dusting your wound with this on a daily basis. It might help prevent infection. You have to be very careful in the barn. Don't get the wound dirty. You could get tetanus or lose your leg.”

Is he kidding? The man has his back turned while putting his needle holder back in its case. Tetanus! I roll my eyes.

“You ever have a rum toddy? Holiday cheer?” Hester holds up his booze bottle.

My leg is throbbing, and I think that the alcohol might do me some good, but I remember what Katherine MacIntosh said about rumors. Did Mr. and Mrs. Maddock hear the vet's car come up the road?

I throw caution to the wind. “Okay.”

The vet steps back on the porch and brings in a bottle of fresh milk. “A Christmas present,” he says with a laugh. “If you didn't answer the door, I was going to leave it on the steps . . . Where's the sugar?”

I try to stand.

“Keep your leg up. I'll find it.”

Through the kitchen door I watch him pour the milk into a pot and stir the coals in the cookstove. “What are your dogs' names?” he calls over his shoulder.

“Emma and Sasha.”

“Like Emma Goldman? The anarchist?”

“Yes. How did you know that?”

“My grandmother was a Russian immigrant. Sasha was Emma's name for her lover, Alexander Berkman, wasn't it? My gram told me the story of the riot at Homestead in '92. How Sasha Berkman tried to assassinate Frick, Carnegie's henchman,
the dastardly opponent of the workers.
” He says this in a mocking tone, and I wonder whether he mocks himself for knowing this history, his grandmother for her tales, or the union men who struck Car-negie Steel and battled the private security guards in hand-to-hand combat. If he is mocking the unions, it pisses me off. The struggles of workers and labor unions have been dear to me for the last fifteen years.

A few minutes later he returns with two steaming mugs and his bottle of rum, which he sets on the floor near the sofa. I'm surprised and a little alarmed when he plunks down next to me, careful not to jiggle my leg.

“You know, the neighbors may have seen you coming up the road. You can't stay long.”

Hester grins. “I cut my headlights.”

That makes me smile. “What made you so sure I'd let you in?”

He shrugs and looks away. “I wasn't sure. Thought I'd give it a try.”

The warm milk and rum go down easy. It's the only alcohol I've had since the blackberry wine Mrs. Kelly made when we first moved here as grieving widows—but this is much stronger. One cup, I think, and this fellow will be on his way.

He swallows the sweet liquid, nods with appreciation, and goes back to his story. “My maternal grandmother was Russian and my grandfather Polish. When they first came to the United States, neither could speak English. They took classes at the settlement house in New York City. That's how they met.

“My grandparents on the other side were German farmers, here since the 1700s. I told you we had a farm in upper New York State? My parents met at Cornell.” He recounts all this as though I'd asked him for his pedigree.

Despite myself, I'm interested. “Did they both graduate from Cornell?”

“My father took a degree in agriculture, my mother in teaching. That was in the 1880s.”

“My mother was a teacher too.”

The vet picks up his bottle, reaches over, and, before I can say anything, pours another dollop into my mug, then pours a larger one into his own and knocks it back. Both the dogs stand with adoration at his knee, and he ruffles their fur. Even Buster has crept back downstairs. They must know he's an animal lover.

“Want to sing some more?” he asks, moving over to the piano. I could have guessed that with such hands he'd know how to play.

“I guess.” I'm already feeling the effect of the rum.

For an hour we sing while the horse doctor bangs out the tunes.
“Angels from the realms of glory, wing your flight o'er all the earth . . .”

“Good King Wenceslas looked out on the feast of Stephen . . .”

At first I just recline on the sofa like a good patient, but later I hobble over and sit on the end of the piano bench so I can see the words in the vesper book. We are careful not to touch, not even our shoulders. The man smells faintly of pine and fresh mowed hay. We have another drink.

“Okay, one more carol and you better go. Do you know this one?” I laugh. We are old friends now, thumbing through the hymnbook, singing in harmony.

“ ‘I Heard the Bells on Christmas Day.' It's one of my favorites. Longfellow wrote the words during the Civil War when he heard that his son had been wounded.”

It's so nice to talk to someone who would appreciate that bit of trivia or even know who Longfellow was. I have two other acquaintances in Union County who would be familiar with the New England poet: the pharmacist's wife, Mrs. Stenger, and my nurse friend, Becky Myers, both college-educated women, but I haven't seen either of them for months, not since my trip to town in November. Katherine MacIntosh reads books too, but only romances. Bitsy reads well, but so far just my medical textbook. She won't put it down.

“I don't remember this one. Go through it once.”

I sing the first verse while he plays the piano.

 

I heard the bells on Christmas Day

Their old familiar carols play

And wild and sweet

The words repeat

Of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.

Hester catches the tune and joins in on the second verse. It isn't until the third that his voice breaks.

 

And in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on Earth, I said.

For hate is strong

And mocks the song

Of peace on Earth, goodwill toward men.

He stops there with tears in his eyes and when he stands, he almost knocks the kerosene lamp over. The man sways and holds on to the piano, then plunks back down on the bench.

“I don't know what's gotten into me.” He tries his half smile. “Those words, ‘For hate is strong and mocks the song of peace on Earth'—for a minute I was back in the trenches with bullets flying over my head. I did things I'm not proud of, killed other men just to survive. They weren't
my
enemies; they were someone else's enemies.

“There was this one guy, a big German blond, he shot down my horse. This was at the Battle of Saint-Mihiel in 1918. I could have taken him prisoner, but I was so blind with rage, I bayoneted him three times. Blinded by fury . . . I think of it sometimes. He was a mother's son. There was no reason for it.” He shuts his eyes tight and swings his head as if to banish the vision. “I'd better go.” With one hand on the piano he lurches to his feet again.

“You'd better not!” I catch him in my arms to keep him from falling over. For a second we stare at each other, but it's only a blink.

“You're right. I'm in no shape to drive. Drink doesn't usually get to me.” We both turn to the empty bottle of rum.

“You can sleep on the sofa. Just wrap up in the quilt.” He flops down without argument.

What else am I going to do? I can't send him out on the snowy roads in this condition. He'd end up in a ditch.

“Here's a pillow.” I hand him the green quilted one from the back of the rocker and notice I'm none too steady myself. It would amuse me if it weren't for the worry that my reputation could be ruined; a midwife is supposed to be of
good moral character.

By the time I let the dogs out and get them back in, build up the fire, and blow out the lamp, Hester is snoring quietly. I dim the kerosene light and sit down in the rocker.
“Silent night, holy night,”
I sing softly, remembering what he told me about the bloody battles of the last Great War.
“Sleep in heavenly peace.”

In the morning when I limp downstairs with a headache, the veterinarian is gone.

14

The Vanderhoffs

I'm surprised to say that I'm counting the days until Bitsy returns. Only a few months ago, when Mary asked me to give her daughter shelter, I had reservations. Only a few weeks ago, I almost packed her suitcase and shooed her out the door. Now Christmas has come and gone and New Year's Eve too, which I spent watching the snow fly like sparks through the light from the lantern on the porch. I'm not sure why I put the Coleman lamp out there and turned it up high. Was it a signal to the vet that I might want company?

Whatever it meant, he didn't come . . . and I ate my black-eyed peas and home-canned collard greens alone.

Alone, I think. I was alone when I worked at the Vanderhoffs' home too, though a different kind of alone. Alone surrounded by people.

 

After working at the Chicago Lying-in Dispensary as a milkmaid for more than a year, I was hired by the mother and father of one of our premature babies to return with them, as a private wet nurse, to their Lake Forest home. It seemed, at the time, like a good plan. The pay was better, I'd have my own room, and they promised to keep me as a baby nurse and nanny when my milk ran out.

Unfortunately, my life in the three-story brick home on Colonial Avenue wasn't as pleasant as I'd expected. The rest of the house staff, the cook and the upstairs maid, resented me. Every three hours I breastfed the baby, as Dr. Shane from Lying-in had ordered, and kept the nursery and my adjoining sitting room tidy, but other than that I had no duties at all. When I offered to help in the kitchen, the cook turned away and Beatrice Vanderhoff, the baby's mother, shooed me upstairs.

Breastfeeding the infant around the clock meant there was never a day off. What's more, the couple's first child had died of smallpox and the parents refused to let me take Baby Gerald out in the pram. Augustus Vanderhoff, a lawyer with a firm in downtown Chicago, a heavy man with a handlebar mustache and an annoying tic that made him look like he was winking, had an expansive library next to the parlor, and I was allowed to read his books. Other than that, until the weather warmed up, there was nothing to do.

For five months, I lived there, lonely and bored, before I grew daring enough to explore the house. One Sunday afternoon, when the maid and the cook were on their half-day and Mr. and Mrs. Vanderhoff had gone to a charity tea for Hull House, I took off my shoes and tiptoed upstairs to the third floor.

The first room I entered was an empty round turret with windows that looked out in every direction. I thought of asking if I could have it for my sitting area, but it was much too far from the nursery. The other three bedrooms were for guests, nothing much there but empty armoires, soft beds, and velvet-backed chairs.

Back on the second floor, I ended my investigation by peeking into my employers' bedchamber, which was dominated by a huge maple four-poster bed. I'd never seen such a bed, and I crept in and lay down on it, smoothing the deep rose coverlet under my hands. Little Gerald was still sleeping in his wicker bassinet down the hall, so I continued to poke around. It was the first time I'd had fun for almost a year.

Pushing open the door to the walk-in closet, I ran my fingers through a row of my mistress's gowns. Some of the dresses I'd never seen her wear, like the blue satin floor-length one with ruffles and the deep purple velvet with leg-of-mutton sleeves. The far end held the master's clothing, only four suits, all black, a few white shirts, and a mourning coat.

Returning to the main room, I sat down at the vanity. The smell of my mistress's perfume, Lily of the Valley, in a frosted glass atomizer, intrigued me, and I gave it a spray. In the mirror, a young woman, pale from no sunlight, her hair wound up tight in a chignon, her gold wire-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose, stared back. Momentarily, I was ashamed to see myself snooping . . . but only a little.

 

Careful not to disturb things too much, I lift the lid to the embossed silver jewelry box and one by one hold the lady's necklaces up, imagining I'm a rich debutante getting ready for a party. There's one ornament I particularly fancy, an emerald pendant on a thin silver chain. On the lower shelf of the velvet-lined box, I discover a gold ring with a solitary ruby. I slip it on and admire my hand. Then the kitchen doorbell rings.

Red alert! I jerk up, almost tipping over my stool, and look around wildly to see if there's any evidence of my trespassing. When I try to slip the ring back into the box, it's stuck on my finger.

The back doorbell rings again. I lick and pull, lick and pull, but the ring won't come off! It's probably only a deliveryman at the back door, but if I don't answer soon he'll wake the baby. All the way down the back stairs, I keep licking and twisting the ring on my finger, and just as I skid across the kitchen floor it slips off and I stuff it under my chemise. It wouldn't look right for a lowly wet nurse to be seen with a huge red ruby twinkling on her hand!

I'm surprised to discover, when I unlatch the back door, that the person ringing isn't a delivery boy. It's Mr. Vanderhoff.

 

Betrayal

I should have known right away that something was off, but I'm innocent that way, always have been.

“Hey, thanks, kid. Took you long enough. You the only one home?” Mr. Vanderhoff slurs. He smells like he's been swimming in gin. This was before the Eighteenth Amendment, and alcohol was still legal. “I lost my key.” I stand back against the kitchen table. He's never called me anything but Miss Murphy before. “Mrs. Vanderhoff home yet?”

“No. No one's here but little Gerald and me. I thought you might be the coal man.”

For some reason Augustus Vanderhoff thinks this is funny. “Coal man! Give me a hand here, honey. I'm feeling kind of weak.” I offer him my arm as men do with ladies on the street. Not weak, I think. More like drunk.

“Upstairs,” he commands as we careen through the kitchen. Twice he almost falls, and he throws his meaty arm around my waist for support. Besides the stench of booze, there's the sickly odor of cigars and aftershave.

“I just have to get to my bedroom,” he mumbles.

The bedroom! I hope he's too inebriated to notice if anything's been disturbed. I can't even remember if I closed the door. If he passes out, I think I can put the ring back.

The master suite door is still open when we stumble around the corner, but Mr. Vanderhoff is too drunk to notice. He circles around, takes me in his arms as if to dance, and begins to warble a ragtime. That doesn't work. He can't get his feet to do the two-step, and he falls over onto the big bed, taking me with him. I jump up quickly and straighten my skirt.

“My shoes, kid.” The big man is lying on his back with his hands under his head.

Where does he come up with the “kid” appellation, anyway? I'm not a child, and I'm not a floozy he picked up at the saloon. He sticks his legs out over the side of the bed.

I step reluctantly forward and undo the laces of his high-top ankle boots while he pulls off his shirt collar and unbuttons his vest. As I yank off the second shoe and drop it onto the floor, his legs circle my waist and he pulls me toward him, laughing.

“Mr. Vanderhoff!” I shout into his face. His oiled mustache has a smell of its own, a sweet sickly cedar smell. “You don't know what you're doing!”

He yanks me down on him. “I know all right.”

I can feel his enlarged organ against my belly, and I'm sick to my stomach with fear. This man isn't playing around, and he's stronger than you'd think for his state of intoxication.

“Let me see those boobies little Gerald gets to play with.”

“Mr. Vanderhoff!” I shout again as he rips the buttons from my navy blue work blouse and gropes for my chemise. My milk is already leaking, and he squeezes my breast and licks his thick fingers. We struggle silently. What would a cry for help get me? There's no one home. No one to hear. I bring my elbow down on his nose, and that makes him bellow.

“You damn tart. Who do you think you are?” Then he gets rough, grips me tighter with his legs while his hands keep ripping at my shirtfront. My arms are now pinned, so I use my only weapon. I spit in his face.

This time there's no expletive, but his eyes darken. I can tell he doesn't care about intercourse, doesn't care about the cost to his reputation or his family, he intends to hurt me. He pulls up my skirt and rips down my bloomers, but instinctively I go for his man parts.

It wasn't like I thought to do it. My brain stopped when he first grabbed my breast, but my knee slams into his testicles.

“You bitch!” he growls, the fight suddenly out of him. While he rolls back and forth with his legs drawn up, I pull up my bloomers and run down the hall. Sobbing, I grab the crying baby, who was awakened by the commotion, and lock the door so there's no easy way for Mr. Vanderhoff to get in unless he crashes through panels like a rutting bull, and if he tries that, little Gerald will have to be my protector. Mr. Vanderhoff is a father, for God's sake, not crazy enough to attack me in front of his son. I don't
think
he is, anyway. Just in case, I take the baby with me into my small clothes closet and brace my feet against the door.

There are no words to my tears as I open my torn navy top for the baby. No need to unbutton. No buttons left. They popped off on the satin bed cover. As I pull out my breast, the ruby rings plops out of my chemise and falls into my lap.

“Rock-a-bye baby, in the treetop,”
I sing softly to quiet the baby,
“when the wind blows, the cradle will rock.”
Tears run down my face. I'm still afraid that Mr. Vanderhoff will find me, drag me out of the closet, and force himself into me.

It isn't as if I'm a virgin. I was with Lawrence. I gave birth to his baby. If I don't struggle too much, the rape itself might not be too physically painful, but there would still be injury, a wound that starts in the vagina and goes straight to the heart.

I slip the gem back onto my little finger. Now what? I can't get back into the bedroom to return it, and I can't stay in this home any longer. Seeing Mr. Vanderhoff every day at breakfast and dinner . . . I couldn't eat, couldn't sleep. My fate is sealed. I must leave tonight.

But what about the baby? I wipe my wet face. My little baby . . .

Not
my
baby, I remind myself, swallowing hard. Not my baby at all, though he feels like mine and I'm the one who nurses him and cares for him . . . but no matter. Gerald is theirs, the cold Mrs. Vanderhoff and the randy Mr. Vanderhoff.
Gerald is theirs.
I look down at the chubby-cheeked five-month-old. He lets go of my nipple, milk dribbling down his chin, and gives me a grin that would melt Antarctica. For a moment I think of kidnapping him, but that would be folly. I'd be hunted down and imprisoned for life.

At dusk, hours later, my head resting on my rolled-up wool cloak, I wake, still lying with the baby on the floor of the closet, and hear voices, then the
clip-clip-clip
of Mrs. Vanderhoff's hard high-heeled shoes coming down the hall. The door to her bedroom squeaks, and I freeze. Will she see on the bed the buttons that popped off my blouse? Should I try to tell her about Mr. Vanderhoff's behavior? Would she believe me? What if she notices that the ruby ring is gone?

“What the hell do you mean, leaving me at the tea?” she starts out on her husband in a high, insistent voice. “Even Mrs. Palmer could see you were soused, and she's half blind. I've never been so embarrassed . . .” Mr. Vanderhoff mumbles apologies. She yells some more.

I wait, but no one comes to my room. No one calls me to supper. No one asks for the baby.

 

At midnight, by the twelve chimes of the downstairs grandfather clock, I creep out of the closet, put the baby into his bassinet, and pack my few belongings. Then, in the still hours, while the rest of them sleep, I nurse baby Gerald one last time, wetting his golden hair with my tears, tuck him in, and slip down the back stairs with my old satchel.

Rain drips from the eaves as I stand on the back porch. I have forty dollars in my pocketbook, money I saved from my weekly stipend, the ruby ring sewn into the hem of my cloak, and nowhere to go nor a friend in the world.