I was furious. He didn’t know anything about me or the day I was born or he’d never say such a foolish thing, sitting there so piously at his kitchen table, sounding for all the world like a Methodist preacher.
But then, oh, my blessed, he smiled. I guess from that moment I knew I was going to marry Joseph Wojtkiewicz—God, pope, three motherless children, unspellable surname and all. For when he smiled, he looked like the kind of man who would sing to the oysters.
20
It is far simpler to be married to a Catholic than anyone from my Methodist past would believe. I am quite willing for the children, his, of course, but also ours as they come along, to be raised in the Catholic faith. The priest frets about me when we meet, but he’s only around once a month, and Joseph himself has never suggested that I ought to turn Catholic or even religious. My parents showed their approval by making the long trip from Rass to attend our schoolhouse wedding. I will always be glad that my father and Joseph met each other that once, because this year, on the second of October, my father went to sleep in his chair after a day of crabbing and never woke up.
Caroline called me from New York. I couldn’t remember ever having heard her cry aloud before, and there she was weeping for the benefit of the entire Truitt village party line. I was unreasonably irritated. She and Call were going down at once and would stay through the funeral. It seemed wrong that she should be able to go and not me. I was the child who had fished his crab floats and culled his oysters, but I was so far along in my ninth month that I knew better than anyone how crazy it would be to try such a trip; so Joseph went in my place and got back to the farm four days before our son was born.
We thought he might bring Momma back with him then, but Caroline was making her New Haven debut as Musetta in La Bohème on the twenty-first. Our parents had planned to go before my father’s death, so Caroline and Call begged her to return with them and stay on through the opening. Since she would be coming to live with us soon, it seemed the right thing for her to do. Joseph did not plead my condition. He was already learning midwifery, and I think my mother understood that he would have been disappointed not to deliver our child himself.
I suppose every mother is reduced to idiocy when describing her firstborn, but, oh, he is a beauty—large and dark like his father, but with the bright blue eyes of the Bradshaws. I swear from his cry that he will be a singer and from his huge hands that he will follow the water, which makes his father laugh aloud and tease me about our son setting sail on the trickle of a stream that crosses our pasture.
The older children adore him, and, as for the valley people, it doesn’t matter how often I explain that we named the baby for my father, they are all sure that Truitt is their namesake. Their need for me made them accept me into their lives, but now I feel that they are taking me into their hearts as well.
My work did not, could not, end with my marriage to Joseph and his children or even with the birth of Truitt. There is no one else to care for the valley. The hospital remains two hours away, and the road is impassable for much of the winter.
This year our winter came early. In November I was watching over two pregnancies, one of which I worried about. The mother is a thin, often-beaten girl of about eighteen. From the size of her, I quickly suspected twins and urged her and her husband to go to the hospital in Staunton or Harrisonburg for the delivery.
Despite his bouts of drunkenness, the young husband is well-meaning. He would have taken her, I believe, had there been any money at all. But how could I urge them to make the trip when the hospital might well reject her? And without money where could they stay in the city until the babies actually came? I counted the days and measured her progress as best I could and then sent word to a doctor in Staunton that I would need help with the birth. But it snowed twenty inches the day before Essie went into labor, so when they called me, I went alone.
The first twin, a nearly six-pound boy, came fairly easily, despite Essie’s slender frame, but the second did not follow as I thought it should. I had begun to fear for it, when I realized that it was very small, but in a breach position. I reached in and turned the twi
n so that she was delivered head first, but blue as death. Before I even cut the cord, I put my mouth down and breathed into her tiny one. Her chest, smaller than my fist, shuddered, and she gave a cry, but so weak, so like a parting, that I was near despair.
“Is it all right?” Essie asked.
“Small,” I said and busied myself cutting and tying off the cord. How cold she was. It sent painful shivers up my arms. I called the grandmother, who had been taking care of the boy, to get me blankets and see to the afterbirth.
I swathed the child tightly and held her against my body. It was like cuddling a stone. I almost ran from the bedroom. What was I to do? They must give me an incubator if they expected me to care for newborn babies in this godforsaken place.
The kitchen was slightly warmer than the bedroom. I went over to the enormous iron stove. A remnant of a fire was banked in the far corner under the stove top. I put my hand on the stove and found it comfortingly warm. I grabbed an iron pot, stuffed it with all the dishrags and towels I could reach with one hand, laid the baby in it, and set it in the oven door. Then I pulled up a kitchen stool and sat there with my hand on the baby’s body and watched. It may have been hours. I was too intent to keep track, but, at length, a sort of pinkness invaded the translucent blue skin of her cheek.
“Nurse?” I jumped at the sound. The young father had come into the kitchen. “Nurse, should I go for the priest?” His eyes widened at the sight of the nurse cooking his baby in the oven, but, rather than protest, he repeated his question about fetching the priest.
“How could you on these roads?” I’m sure I sounded impatient. I wanted to be left in peace to guard my baby.
“Should I do it myself?” he asked, apparently alarmed by whatever it was he was suggesting. “Or you could.”
“Oh, do be quiet.”
“But, Nurse, it must be baptized before it dies.”
“She won’t die!”
He flinched. I’m sure he found me terrifying. “But, if it did—”
“She will not die.” But to keep him quiet and get rid of him, I poured water out of the cold teakettle onto my hand and reached into the oven, placing my hand on the blur of dark hair. “What is her name?”
He shook his head in bewilderment. Apparently, everything was left for me to do. Susan. Susan was the name of a saint, wasn’t it? Well, if not, they could have the priest fix it later. “Essie Susan,” I said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.” Under my hand the tiny head stirred.
The father crossed himself, nodded a scared-rabbit kind of thank you, and hurried out to report the sacrament to his wife. Soon the grandmother was in the kitchen.
“Thank you, Nurse. We’re grateful to you.”
“Where is the other twin?” I asked, suddenly stricken. I had forgotten him. In my anxiety for his sister, I had completely forgotten him. “Where have you put him?”
“In the basket.” She looked at me, puzzled. “He’s sleeping.”