The Midwife (20 page)

Wilbur Byler breaks eye contact and flicks his right blinker before turning down a road that is as flat as a Fruit by the Foot and goes for miles. Right when I’m thinking we’re never going to get there, the van’s headlights reflect off a large white sign jammed in the ground. It reads,
Welcome to Split Rock Mennonite Community
.

Lydie claps one hand over her mouth, struggling out of her seat.

I scream, “Stop the van!”

Wilbur slams the brakes. An empty soda can rolls to the front.

Lydie claws her way out of the seat and yanks the latch. Doubling over, she spews all over the road. My own stomach shudders, watching her barf with her hands on her knees. But I don’t know if Lydie needs space or comfort. I realize that my mom would give her space, so I do the opposite. I get out of the vehicle and gather Lydie’s braids. Holding them to the side, I rub her back in small circles until Lydie straightens and wipes her mouth. I am comforting her the same way Grandma Sarah used to comfort me when I was sick. I am comforting her the way my mom has never done.

“I’m fine,” Lydie whispers, but her face is pinched. “I’m fine.”

I wrap my arm around my little friend’s waist and lead
her back to the van. Again, Wilbur Byler doesn’t say anything. The two of us just climb inside, and he shifts into drive, crackling over the gravel lane. Wilbur takes another right and continues driving until the van lights sweep across a tall, clapboard-sided house. He wrenches the steering wheel and parks. No one speaks. The engine ticks. Black pants and floral cape dresses flap on the line strung between the house and the matching gray barn. A tiger tomcat cleans his paws next to a rosebush blooming in the mulch-lined flowerbeds leading to the house.

“It’s . . .” I pause, continuing to take it all in while comparing it to my parents’ brick-and-mortar McMansion and ruler-perfect hedges. “It’s magical,” I say.

“I know,” Lydie replies. “It’s home.”

After Wilbur Byler unloads our overnight bags and drives off, Lydie and I stand in the yard for some time, catching our breath and listening to the windmill creak in the breeze. Then Lydie touches my hand and we walk down the pathway to her parents’ house. Stepping inside, my eyes adjust to the light of the kerosene lamp hanging in the kitchen, dispelling the outer darkness. By its glow, I see the hardwood floor that is shiny with what smells like lemon polish and the windows that sparkle even against the backdrop of night. I look over at the couch draped in a knitted throw that somehow appears even prettier because everything else is so plain.

A number of bare feet patter halfway down the staircase.
I glance up. Lydie’s four siblings are peering over the railing at me. Sandy bangs hang over the little boys’ curious blue eyes. The preteen girl’s braids, and her younger sister’s, dangle over the tiger wood; their long patterned dresses can be seen through the slats.

Lydie’s mom, who Lydie told me is named Rebecca Risser, comes out of the door closest to the woodstove. She closes it behind her and looks up. Lydie walks toward her mother. Rebecca does not speak. She just moves her eldest daughter over toward the kitchen table so she can see her better by the light. Holding Lydie out by the shoulders, she stares down at her daughter’s stomach swelled beneath her apron. Rebecca then cups Lydie’s cheeks and whispers something only Lydie can hear. The two hug, looking more like sisters than mom and daughter, with their petite builds and blonde hair. Rebecca takes Lydie’s hand and leads her over to the door she just exited. She turns the knob and pushes the door open. Choking down a sob, Lydie lowers her head and follows. Inside, I guess, is where Rebecca’s husband
 
—Lydie’s dad
 
—lies dying of kidney failure at forty-two years old. He is younger than my own dad was when I was born. Understanding my parents aren’t going to be around forever makes tears come to my eyes. For the first time since I left Boston, I would give anything just to hug them both.

“What is your surname?” someone asks. I look away from the door and back at the staircase. The older boy comes down the steps with his arms crossed.

“Walker,” I say, wondering who’s called it a surname
in the last century. “Amelia Walker.” I’ve said it so many times, the lie no longer sounds so strange.

“My first name is Henry,” he says.

“Nice to meet you, Henry.”

“You as well,” he replies, like we’re having high tea.

With an encouraging lift of Henry’s chin, the three other Risser kids come down the steps, one by one, and introduce themselves. There’s Ruth at twelve, Mary at ten, and Benjamin, five. Benjamin clatters down the staircase and looks at me. With one hand, he flattens the cowlick on the back of his head.

“My
dat sterbt
,” he says.

“What did he say?” I ask Ruth.

The kids look at each other, and then they look down at the floor.

“Our
vadder
is dying,” Henry finally says.

“I’m sorry.” I pull on the hem of my shorts
 
—because I feel so indecent and because I have no idea what to do with my hands.

The bedroom door opens. Rebecca and Lydie come out. Lydie takes a hand away from her stomach to wipe her tears. She walks over to her brothers and sisters, who are still standing in front of me like a receiving line at a wedding. Lydie carefully kneels around the bulk of her unborn baby and opens her arms. The Risser kids hug her without hesitating. Benjamin even rests his head on her belly. Lydie glances up and meets my eyes, her own spilling over. The Rissers are holding each other up, even as they lean on each other for support through the pain that is ahead. I know,
as I stare at this show of unconditional love, that I would never have been able to leave such a priceless support system behind.

Wilbur asked, “How’d it go?” but kept looking through his truck windshield at the
Williams, Attorney at Law
sign.

I swallowed. “He said I have no case. I’m lucky the Fitzpatricks didn’t throw me in jail.”

Wilbur stayed quiet, and then he turned the ignition. The cab rattled as the V-8 flared to life. I pressed back against the seat as he shifted into reverse, orbiting the square with the mammoth courthouse as its keystone. The state and national flags cracked in the stiff winter gust, and I knew I would never willfully darken the courthouse doors. The law would never give me back my child, so I would not do anything according to the law.

My thoughts began to reel with absurd possibilities. Adrenaline slipped through my veins, the heady concoction blurring the lines of my perception, making me wonder if anything was truly black and white, or merely transmutations of gray. Was it possible that I could go up to Boston and kidnap my child a second time
 
—not because I was trying to preserve her life, but because, this time, I was trying to preserve mine?

I hedged, though my mind was already made up.
“Maybe . . . ,” I said, “if you talked to the Fitzpatricks, they’d let me come up to Boston and hold Hope one more time.”

Wilbur did not take his eyes off the road. “Maybe,” he said. I heard the dry click of his throat snapping open and shut. “I could drive you,” he added.

Fifteen minutes later, Wilbur gunned up the washout lane toward Hopen Haus. The pressure between us was as potent as the silence. Each of us stared straight ahead. I had written the Fitzpatricks’ home number on a paper napkin and slid it across the bench seat toward him. If the Fitzpatricks agreed to let me come, Wilbur would drive me to Boston. There I would hold my child again, and then try to run with her, though I knew an escape was senseless. But I was at a dangerous crossroads. I had already lost everyone I loved; therefore, I had nothing left to lose.

Fannie Graber entered my bedroom without the formality of rapping on the half-open door. She crossed the floor faster than I would have thought her able. Clutching my upper arm, she forced me to drop Hope’s clothes and meet her gaze. My eyes were stark reflections of the anger I felt. I broke her hold and placed the infant sweater set in the suitcase, belligerent about my lie and not caring if
 
—looking at the items I was packing
 
—she understood the truth: I was not going up to Boston to say good-bye; I was going up to Boston to take my daughter back.

I straightened the only regular clothing I hadn’t given
to the other boarders who, in the process of keeping their children, had lost almost as much as I. Shaking out a gray Simms University sweatshirt that had seen better years, I doubled it against my chest and tucked it back in the suitcase. Fannie didn’t say anything, but I felt her eyes tracing my disheveled hair and salt-stained face, which I hadn’t bothered wiping the last few times I cried.

“Wilbur drove up to the diner and called the Fitzpatricks,” she said. “And they . . . they said they will let you come say good-bye.” Fannie reached around my extended arms and touched my bound chest that was as hard and knotted as my heart. “I want you to have that closure, Rhoda,” she said, holding my gaze. “I want you to stare into Hope’s face and remember all the things you did together. And then you can leave. But as long as you have breath left in your body, you’ll not really have to let Hope go.”

“But she’s not
dead
, Fannie,” I spat, anger oiling my tongue. “And I’m not going up there just to let her
go
.” My voice grew with fury until it felt too large for the cramped room. I didn’t care whom I destroyed or used in the process of getting Hope back. Even if that meant hurting the midwife who had become more like a mother to me, even if that meant temporarily hurting the daughter I was trying to reclaim.

The midwife’s face fell. She clasped her ancient hands in front of her and bowed her head. “All right,” she said. Her thin voice wavered, and I knew she was afraid for me. “Just know I’ll be here, waiting for you, if you need to come back.”

Restraining my own tears, I focused on checking the accessory compartment where I’d stowed Thomas Fitzpatrick’s bundled hundred-dollar bills that I hadn’t touched in all this time. They were all there
 
—every last one a paper promise I hoped to make tangible. I snapped the suitcase closed and looked at Fannie. Heartbreak trickled from her crystal blue eyes.

“Why do you love me after I’ve been so cruel?” I asked.

The old midwife looked up and smiled sadly, cupping my cheek. “Because,
Liebe
, that’s what a mother does.”

I could not sleep on the drive to Boston. Part of it was due to the pain surrounding my departure from Hopen Haus and the anxiety regarding my destination. Part of it was because of the milk that kept surging in my chest, a relentless reminder that I had no baby to swill the sustenance her birth had taught me to make. I stared at the flakes that swept back toward the windshield and then were immediately replaced with another batch, like cotton pieces shaken free from a continuous factory loom. Wilbur kept driving until the gas meter again sunk into red. Then he pulled over and refilled the tank as I went inside to express milk while leaning over the toilet, and then reapply Fannie’s parting gift of comfrey salve.

At the gas station, I looked into a mirror for the first time since I had left Boston
 
—as Hopen Haus was devoid of such vanity
 
—and was startled to see the reflection of a woman far older than her twenty-four years. A few stray hairs at my temples were coarsened with silver. How had they gone unnoticed? I rubbed the fogged glass with my elbow and recalled that severe pain can drain pigment from hair follicles. I wondered if my own accelerated aging had happened in the past twenty-four hours. It seemed improbable, but if I had been put under the knife without an anesthetic, my body could not be under any more stress.

Outside, Wilbur was in the driver’s seat of his truck, unwrapping a piece of tinfoil that glinted in the lights of the gas station pavilion. I climbed in the passenger’s side, and Wilbur passed me an identical foil-wrapped sandwich.

“Thank you,” I said.

The intimacy of the cab increased with the outside snowfall spattered across the ink-black night. I shivered and heard the engine fan kick on as Wilbur turned up the heat. Though he spoke not a word, I knew he was attuned to my every movement, my every breath, as if this observance could also attune him to my thoughts. This unsettled me, but I tried not to act like it did. Regardless of my misgivings, I needed him to think he was taking me up to Boston to say good-bye and not to take my daughter back.

I must have nodded off, for when I awoke, the sun was a bauble suspended above the purpling horizon. I rested the back of my throbbing skull against the seat. Bobby pins, embedded in my
kapp
, speared my scalp. It seemed
ridiculous to keep up such a facade, but I found that the mantle of Plain life gave me strength to face the weight of this uncertain world. And I did not want to make Wilbur suspect my impending need to blend in by changing into
Englischer
clothes.

Wilbur asked, “You nervous?”

“Yes,” I whispered. He had no idea how much.

The truck entered the track-lit tunnel that was a vein leading to the fisted heart of the city. A vehicle behind us topped with the strapped luggage of tourists honked, the high-pitched sound clanging off the stone dome. Exiting the portal, we were only miles from Simms University and the Fitzpatricks’ elite neighborhood, White Swan Estates. The closer we drew, the harder it became to breathe. Wilbur did not ask me any more questions. He simply folded the map, stowed it in the glove box, and pulled up to the tollbooth, refusing my paltry offering of change. The tollbooth bar lifted. Unaccustomed to city driving, Wilbur white-knuckled the steering wheel as traffic zipped past us on all sides. Sweat stained the temples of his shaggy brown hair. He exhaled through his nose, but hardly sped up.

Somehow we made it to the fringes of Boston, where the elite Simms University was set like a multifaceted jewel. As we passed the campus, I stared out the rear window at the foot-tall letters glinting on the brick entrance accented by its curlicued wrought-iron arch. Less than a year since I’d fled those university gates. Yet already, I felt so fully removed from that person who’d climbed behind the steering wheel and let her roommate’s trilling flute serenade her
reckless departure from all her long-cultivated dreams but the one nurtured inside her womb.

I took a deep breath and pointed through the spiderweb crack branching across the windshield. “Park there, Wilbur,” I intoned. “Their house is just over that rise.”

He nodded and circled the wheel, parallel parking his rust bucket between a Jaguar and a Mercedes Benz whose sleek, low-slung roofs were capped with snow. I creaked open the passenger door to cycle in some fresh air. I closed my eyes and tried to pray for direction, but I was still too angry to converse. Just as I knew I would not relinquish my daughter to the courts, I knew I would never again place her life in God’s incapable hands.

“Want me to go with you?” Wilbur asked.

I shook my head and took the satchel containing my money, but left my suitcase under the seat so Wilbur wouldn’t guess that I was about to run with my daughter. Binding the woolen shawl around my shoulders, I clambered out of the cab and wondered if I was making the right decision. But I was out of realistic options, so I had to follow my gut instincts. I looked up. Extinguished streetlights stretched their nimble, dinosaurian necks over either side of the cobbled road. Ice crunched beneath my pilgrim shoes as I crossed the salted curb and minced down the sidewalk. I felt self-conscious as I looked down, as I touched the pleated back of my black bonnet hooked over my netted
kapp
. It was too early to be ogled by passersby, but the garments that had once made me feel protected now made me feel vulnerable, exposed.

From the street, the Fitzpatrick dwelling resembled more of a citadel than a home. Brick, cantilevered stories trimmed in enameled molding rose to a central point that was crowned with a cupola similar to those adorning the buildings on Simms University’s campus. Numerous windows gleamed with the dawn, moisture beading down the thawing glass. In the yard, a marble statue of a woman sensuously draped in a toga looked as if she should be balancing the scales of justice. Instead, her extended hands cupped decaying autumn leaves.

Looking at her, I had to resist the urge to flee and instead keep moving forward, up the paved path toward the front door. I don’t know what kind of security I’d been expecting around the Fitzpatrick residence
 
—police surveillance, perhaps
 
—but there was nothing. Or at least nothing that I could see. My shoes slid on the ice; I held on to the gate’s wrought-iron spires for support. Lifting the latch, I slipped inside. I continued walking past the yard’s entire, frozen splendor and stepped closer and closer to the front door.

“Beth?”

My entire body bolted with shock. I pivoted and saw Dr. Thomas Fitzpatrick walking out of the garage toward me. Thom stopped two yards away and folded his arms. He looked different than I remembered. In yesterday’s panic, I had not noticed that everything about him had been manipulated by the nondiscriminatory seamstress of aging. His jaw and abs were loosened; his hairline taken in. Stitches of anxiety were sewn around his eyes and mouth.
Perhaps he actually regretted his willingness to cast away the child he thought was defective. But looking at the determined set of his mouth, I knew that he was now making up for lost time.

“Meredith doesn’t know you’re here,” he said. “So you have to make this quick.”

I gripped my elbows, acid burning my throat. “Meredith’s not here?” I asked. “Is she at work? Are you telling me you took Hope yesterday, and Meredith’s already back to putting her job before my daughter’s life?”

“She’s
not
your daughter,” Thom snapped, all mercy gone. “You need to get that straight. I let you come, but you are not welcome. You will
never
be welcome. And if you show up again . . .” Thom pinched his hands beneath his arms and looked up. The green flecks in his eyes blazed with wrath, revulsion. “If you come back here again, I swear . . . we’ll get a restraining order.”

I didn’t know how to respond. I’d thought Thomas Fitzpatrick was a docile man browbeaten by his wife. But he wasn’t. His charming, absent-minded professor persona was as much of a subterfuge as my alias and Plain clothes. Now he wanted to discard me when I had provided him with his final pawn and all the pieces of his chess game were back in one place. I looked down at the driveway piebald with my footsteps and comprehended that I would be retracing the pattern with my arms as empty as when I’d come. Perhaps I’d know this all along. Tears glittered in my periphery, but I was too defeated to cry. “Can I at least see her like you promised?”

Thom didn’t say anything, and then acquiesced. “Just a second,” he said. “Wait here.”

Snowflakes drifted up behind his shoes as he plodded up the front steps and entered through the doorway. How had I ended up like this, starved for any breadcrumbs Thom would throw my way? How had
we
ended up like this? In him, I saw no traces of the man whose kindness had garnered my affection. Or had motherhood changed me
 
—my rebirth giving me new eyes in which to judge people’s character and understand their true forms?

I looked up when someone rapped sharply on the window. Heart thudding, I inched closer to the glowing panels of sunroom glass until the light shifted and I could see inside. All the blinds were pulled down except for one. Thom was standing in its view with Hope bunched against his chest. Her knees were drawn up, thumb corked, diapered bottom jutting in the air. She didn’t even know I was gone. This revelation brought both relief and a frantic ache.

With one hand, Thom awkwardly clicked the latches on top of the window and slid it up. Then he removed the screen. “I don’t want to take her out in the cold,” he explained. But I knew from the possessive way Thom held Hope that he could see the desperation in my eyes.

I stepped up to the ledge and breached an invisible barrier to stroke my daughter’s hand for what could be the very last time. I had won the fight for Hope’s life. But the battle I wanted to wage for custody of her now was lost before it could even begin. How could I possibly let her go?
How could a few months of memories sustain a lifetime otherwise spent in regret?

My wind-chapped face burned as tears dripped and melted the snow beneath my feet. And even then, I knew the grains of this child’s ephemeral infant life were slipping through both mine and the Fitzpatricks’ hands. I closed my eyes as revelation struck: if no one had ever uncovered what I’d done and my life with Hope continued undisturbed, I would have still raised her, loved her, only to be forced to let her go and live her own life once she was grown.

Oh, the exquisite ache of adoring someone you cannot fully have.

I leaned forward and pressed Hope’s hand to my chest, trying to brand my heart with the weight and scent and warmth of her being. Closing my eyes, I tried memorizing her scent that would soon be replaced with theirs. Stifling a sob, I held my daughter. But then . . . gradually I opened my hands.

“I know you won’t . . . tell her about me,” I said to Thom, though my words were halted with sobs. “But will you at least . . . tell her that she was wanted, always?”

In the beat before his reply, I heard a dog bark somewhere in the neighborhood. Then Thom murmured, “I will.”

Dashing tears from my eyes, I stared at Hope’s sleeping form once more and then turned, stumbling down the icy drive. When I looked back, the window was shut, the blind already closed tight against me. Though my daughter was only a few yards away in proximity, in my heart I knew that she was truly gone. Taking all hope of redemption with her.

My stomach queasy, I rest my forehead on the table and listen to the two youngest Risser kids, Mary and Benjamin, slurp cheese sandwiches they first made soggy by soaking them in beef rice soup and covering them with apple sauce sprinkled with cinnamon. I haven’t touched one bite. I dare to look up only after everything’s quiet except for in the bedroom, where Alvin’s death rattle has slowed to one nerve-racking gasp. The older Risser kids
 
—Lydie, Henry, and Ruth
 
—remain at the table with their backs straight and light supper not eaten. Henry and Ruth stare at their hands; Lydie stares at the farming calendar on the opposite wall.

Then Rebecca Risser comes out of the bedroom and stands before her family. She smiles, but her hazel eyes are wet with tears.
“Kumm, kinner,”
she murmurs. “It’s time.” Mary scrambles off the bench seat and buries her face in the skirt of her mom’s dress, clinging to the gathers without even crying. “You come too,” Rebecca says to me, like she knows I’m not sure what I should do. “This is no time to be alone.”

So from oldest to youngest, Alvin’s kids quietly circle their dad’s sickbed. Even five-year-old Benjamin doesn’t flinch. Having never seen even Grandma Sarah’s death, I remain near the door, knowing that I am out of place but not wanting to seem rude by turning away. Somehow, the news about Alvin must spread because the whole first floor begins filling up with members of Split Rock Old Order Mennonite Community. Moms carry babies, whose chubby
legs are pretzeled around their mothers’ hips. Toddlers nod off while sitting on top of their dads’ shoulders. Two sulky teenage boys stand near a corner, making it obvious that they don’t like this reminder of death when their lives are just starting. They remind me of the selfish girl I was just two months ago and who I hope to leave behind when I leave here. After everyone’s settled, the families stand in groups and begin to harmonize lyrics that touch my heart, though they are sung in a language I can’t understand.

I glance across the mattress and see Lydie Risser, haloed by an oil lamp burning on a nightstand beside the bed. My sixteen-year-old friend sits on the edge of the quilt, an old Bible perched on her low, round belly. The book’s titled spine glints in the darkness, and I see that it’s written in German. Lydie catches me looking at it. Her smile cuts through the darkness, revealing a strength I don’t think I could have if I were in her shoes. Lydie wipes tears as she looks down at her dad, who is swollen and yellow with jaundice. Seconds pass without the breath everyone strains to hear. Lydie’s uncle Titus takes out a pocket watch and cracks the dull gold case, tracking time with a device his brother-in-law will soon no longer need.