Outlawed(7)

“Mama says at every birth, death is in the room. You can try to ignore it, or you can acknowledge it, and greet it like a guest, and then you won’t be so afraid anymore.”

Bee looked skeptical.

“How do you greet it? ‘Hello, Death’?”

“She pictures the last patient she lost,” I said. “The death that’s freshest in her mind. She pictures that woman standing right there in the room with her. She looks the woman up and down. She doesn’t say anything, but sometimes she gives a little nod. Then she’s ready for the birth.”

“Does it work?” Bee asked.

I had seen Mama enter a birth with fear in her heart, if the baby was early or breach or the mother was sick with sugar or high blood pressure. Mama’s face was as confident as ever but still everyone in the room could feel something was wrong; the aunties’ hands would begin to shake as they wiped the laboring mother’s brow. And then Mama’s eyes would focus on a point in the empty air, and she would nod, and then the whole room would pull together around her, and the birth would go as well as it could possibly go, because she was in charge.

“It works,” I said.

I bent to hug Bee, more for myself than for her. She smelled like soap and cedar, just like she had ever since she was a baby.

“When I’m grown,” she said into my shoulder, “I’m going to come find you.”

I pulled back to look her in the face.

“Bee,” I said, “I’ll be back before you’re grown.”

“Okay,” she said, not believing. “But if you’re not, I’ll get a horse, and a map, and I’ll come help you, wherever you are.”





CHAPTER 2




The Mother Superior of the Sisters of the Holy Child said I could have sanctuary as long as I accepted baby Jesus into my heart. Baby Jesus had not helped me conceive a child, but neither had drinking four glasses of milk every day or keeping my legs above my head or lying down with Sam or anything else I had tried. I had nothing against baby Jesus.

“I accept Him,” I said.

The Mother raised an eyebrow.

“You’ll have Bible study with Sister Dolores,” she said. “In six months, if she thinks you’re ready, you can take your vows. Then you’ll be one of us.”

In the meantime, Sister Rose introduced me to Goldie, Holly, and Izzy. Sister Rose was a skinny girl with a gummy smile. She shared my room at the convent—two narrow beds, two chamber pots, a washbasin, and a crèche.

She was a natural with animals. The cows calmed visibly when they saw her, and when she touched their backs and cooed to them she was almost graceful. Holly, the Holstein, was the only one who let me near her. The others switched their tails or kicked or jerked their dugs out of my hands. But Holly was quiet, her eyes big and droopy, almost like she felt sorry for me, and Sister Rose showed me how to squeeze so I didn’t hurt her, so milk ran in a clean stream from her teat to the bucket.

Milking was a good time to cry. I was hardly ever alone at the convent; at matins and breakfast and Bible study and vespers and dinner, I was surrounded by sisters. But at milking time, Sister Rose was focused on Goldie or Izzy, and the wind blew across the meadow and shivered the barn windows and hid the sound of my cries.

I cried out of pure sorrow. I kept remembering the softness of Bee as a little baby, the way Janie and Jessamine filled the house in the mornings with their voices. I cried, too, out of anger. I had never done anything in my life as bad as what Ulla had done to me. I knew that Ulla had only been trying to save herself—her mother-in-law was meaner than Claudine, her husband weaker than my husband, and she had been considered a risky match because she had only one sister, who had a clubfoot and breathing troubles. For some families one miscarriage was enough to kick a new wife out, even if it happened during a sickness. But none of this made me want to forgive Ulla, who had been my best friend since we were smaller than Bee, who had slept in my bed whenever her mother’s rages became too much, who had cried at night as I stroked her hair.

When all the sorrow and anger were wrung out of me and I was almost hoarse from sobbing, then, like the thunder that follows lightning, came the fear. I knew Mama was right, that the families who had lost babies would want someone to pay, and I was afraid they would turn on my sisters in their grief. I had seen it before—when Lucy McGarry’s neighbors miscarried, suspicion fell on her whole family, even her littlest sister who was barely five years old. Some people said Lucy ran a coven out of her mama’s house. But when she was hanged the rumors dissipated, and her family went back to their lives—her sister eventually married the mayor’s nephew.

I knew Mama must have thought it all through. She must have believed she could keep herself and my sisters safe once I went away. Probably she decided her position in town was secure enough that she could weather whatever came—people could whisper about her for a while, but eventually they’d realize Dr. Carlisle didn’t know the first thing about birthing babies, and they’d be forced to come back to her. But what if, instead, the mayor decided to send for another midwife? I didn’t know, I realized, what had happened to the one before Mama. But if Fairchild could find her, then it stood to reason they could find someone else, if their fears for their future babies came to outweigh her record of healthy babies born.