Whitefern

  “Very well. I’m only doing what I think is required to get through this,” she complained. “I don’t want to be criticized for doing my job properly. I won’t stand for that.”

  “Don’t worry. She appreciates that as much as I do,” he told her.

  I retreated to my bed and sat waiting.

  He returned. “Okay, it’s all set. You will barely notice the dosage, and you’ll get through this just like I will.” He stepped closer and put his hands on my shoulders. “I can’t stress it enough. It’s very, very important now, Audrina, that you don’t upset her. All we would need is for her to quit on us.”

  “She won’t quit that fast, Arden. She would have a hard time explaining what she’s done here.”

  “Nowhere near as hard a time as we would have and nowhere near as much to lose. Do you understand? Do you?”

  “Yes,” I said, feeling like my arm had been twisted.

  “Good. All right. I’ve got to get back to some important things. Sit with Sylvia for a while. She was crying when I was in there just now. Try to think only of her.”

  I looked up sharply. “I don’t understand why you’ve said that and you say it now. When have I ever thought of myself before I’ve thought of Sylvia’s welfare?”

  “I’m just trying to keep everything in perspective. It’s what a good broker does, and most everything in life is in some way or another just another investment,” he replied, smiling. “Another thing your good old Papa taught me.”

  He kissed me quickly on the cheek this time and left.

  I sat there, stunned, angry, and, of course, very frustrated. I wanted to shout but knew that I couldn’t. I wanted to tear the blob of wool from my stomach, tear it into shreds, and see myself as I really was again, but I knew I couldn’t. I wanted to go find Mrs. Matthews and fire her on the spot, but I knew I couldn’t. I felt like I was in a straitjacket and wanted to rip it off. I got up instead and went to sit with Sylvia. Mrs. Matthews wasn’t in the room.

  Sylvia groaned deeply and looked at me. “It hurts again, Audrina,” she said. “Does it hurt you, too?”

  “Yes.” I hated to see her grimacing with pain. It did hurt me, too. I wasn’t lying.

  I put my hand on her stomach. I could feel the baby kicking and smiled in wonder.

  “The baby’s moving inside you, Sylvia. Feel it?”

  Her stomach hardened but only for a few seconds. “Baby’s coming,” she said, nodding.

  “Yes, soon.”

  “Fix her pillows behind her, and sit her up,” Mrs. Matthews ordered from the doorway as she entered with Sylvia’s dinner. “She hasn’t been eating well. I want her to finish all of this tonight.”

  I did as she asked. As soon as Mrs. Matthews put the tray in front of Sylvia, Sylvia looked at me. “Audrina has to eat, too,” she said.

  I looked at Mrs. Matthews.

  “Pull the chair up to the bed. Maybe she’ll eat better with you eating beside her. I’ll fetch your dinner.”

  “I don’t want to fall asleep too quickly tonight,” I said pointedly.

  She looked at me, her eyes narrowing. “You won’t. And you’ll be doing a lot more now.” She nodded at Sylvia. “There will be a lot more for both of us to do.”

  “How close is she?”

  “I doubt we’ll finish the week,” she said. “Make sure she drinks all the water,” she added, and left to get my food.

  Sylvia was very uncomfortable. She pleaded to be permitted to lie back, but I did what Mrs. Matthews prescribed and kept her eating and drinking. She was a little more cooperative when Mrs. Matthews brought me my tray and I began to eat. I ate slowly, suspiciously, wondering if Mrs. Matthews had indeed done what Arden had asked her to do and reduced the dosage of whatever she had given me. Perhaps she wasn’t putting anything in my food now. I couldn’t detect it, but then again, I never did.

  She returned to see how much had been eaten and nodded with approval. She took Sylvia’s tray.

  “I can bring mine,” I said, starting to rise.

  “Just stay there and keep her company. That’s more important. Now you can understand why I wanted her brought down to this bedroom. I can’t imagine running up and down those stairs. I hope you can appreciate everything I’ve asked you to do and everything I have done.”

  “As you’ve said often, Mrs. Matthews, you’re being well paid,” I replied with a cold tone of realism.

  Her face looked even tighter than it habitually was. I thought the skin would tear at her jawbone. Then she turned and left. She didn’t return for my tray for quite a while. I put it at the foot of Sylvia’s bed and helped her get as comfortable as she could be. Memories of my mother during the week before she was rushed to the hospital returned. She’d been in such agony sometimes, but the furthest thing from my mind had been the thought that she would die in childbirth. Every time Sylvia moaned, I was whipped back to that day Papa returned and Aunt Ellsbeth forced him to tell me the dreadful news. I’d thought my heart had been torn from my chest.

  I reminded myself now that if something so terrible was to happen to Sylvia, I would blame no one but myself. I had dropped my protective shield around her. I had provided the opportunity for this to happen. Papa would scream from his grave. Everything, everything possible, had to be done to ensure that Sylvia would not face a fate similar to Momma’s. For this reason above all others, I had to placate Mrs. Matthews and appreciate all that she was doing. I shivered at the thought that something I might say or do would drive her out of Whitefern and leave us panicking over Sylvia’s final moments.

  When she returned, I handed her my tray. She saw the look of obedience on my face and softened her eyes into her confident smile of self-satisfaction that only someone with her ego would enjoy. I avoided looking at her and sat down again quickly.

  “She’s at the point where she can’t sleep well,” Mrs. Matthews said. “Do your best to get her to doze as much as possible. We don’t give pregnant women drugs they don’t absolutely need.”

  “Okay.”

  “Tell her a story, or sing to her.” She shook her head. “A child giving birth to a child.”

  At least for the moment, she appeared to really feel sorry for Sylvia. Perhaps I was wrong to judge her so harshly, I thought. She was simply a woman with a personality that didn’t warm your heart. Maybe it was her way to get through the day, through each crisis, for her work was not work I would enjoy. Few would enjoy it. As Papa used to say, you had to have thick skin if you were going to walk among the bees.

  “How old was the youngest woman you helped deliver?” I asked. I was curious, but I also wanted to be sure she thought I appreciated her and her experience.

  “Woman? Hardly a woman. She was eleven,” she said. “Very bloody delivery and very painful.”

  “Did she die?”

  “No. Not in the sense you mean, but what sort of a life do you think came after that?”

  “Sylvia will have a good life,” I said. “I promise you that.”

  “As good as she might have, I expect.”

  “Better than she might have,” I insisted. “Better.”

  We looked at each other. Her face did soften. There was a surge of warmth in her eyes. I looked at Sylvia. We did need to save all our compassion for her. There was enough tension without my creating any between Mrs. Matthews and myself, especially in Sylvia’s presence.

  “Well, I will say one thing for you, Audrina. You have an extraordinary capacity for love.”

  I sat back, amazed. A real compliment? From her?

  “But then again,” she added, “it’s when we’re most desperate to please others that we’re in the most danger of hurting ourselves.”

  “Who taught you that?”

  “Life,” she said, and left the room.

  I turned back to Sylvia and smiled. I saw no way I could hurt m
yself by pleasing her, not now. She looked at me curiously when I put my hand on her stomach again. Then she turned to reach toward me and put her hand on my mound of wool. I watched her face. Would she realize now that what I was doing was a bald-faced lie? Would that frighten her? Would it make her feel silly and alone?

  She smiled. “She kicked,” she said, and lay back. “Baby’s coming.”

  I sat holding her hand and realized that the saying of my father’s that Arden had reminded me of was true: deception was sometimes good, especially if the end result brought happiness to someone who desperately needed it, someone as fragile as my Sylvia.

  She finally fell asleep. I sat quietly watching her breathe and seeing how her lips moved slightly. Somewhere in her dreams, she was talking. Was she talking to Papa? I envied her for her dreams. They were a way out of the web we were all caught in right now, at least for a few hours.

  I didn’t think I had been given more tranquilizers, but I did doze off. I woke when I realized Mrs. Matthews was standing beside me.

  “Go to bed,” she said. “I’ll stand by with her. I’ve decided you’re strong enough to contend with what is happening, and I will need your help. So get some rest, and be ready for what lies ahead.”

  “Her stomach gets hard for a few seconds, and she cries.”

  “This isn’t false labor. I think she might be delivering earlier than anticipated.”

  “Oh,” I said, the worry ringing in me like a bell.

  She smiled, not coldly, not warmly, just a bland smile. “Look at it this way. It will be over sooner than we thought.”

  Birth, a Step toward Truth

  Sylvia went into real, full-blown labor three days later. It happened late in the morning. She was screaming and crying so hard I could barely move to follow Mrs. Matthews’s commands after Sylvia’s water broke.

  “I didn’t pee!” Sylvia cried. “I didn’t pee!”

  “It’s not pee,” Mrs. Matthews said, and turned to me. “Clean it up,” she ordered.

  I started out for the mop and then stopped. “I should call Arden,” I said.

  She turned and looked at me with such disdain that I could feel the blood rushing into my face. “You want to call your husband? Will you be screaming and crying like she is but over the phone when his secretary answers?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then pray tell me how you intend to convey the situation we are now in. It is supposed to be happening to you.”

  “Oh!” I moaned. Of course, she was right. Dislike her as much as I did, I still had to give her credit for keeping her cool and never losing sight of what we had to do.

  “But he should know,” I offered weakly. Sylvia was crying so hard. It made me shudder.

  “Clean this up. I will call him when I get a moment here. Your husband and I planned for how to handle this.”

  “Why wasn’t I part of that planning?”

  “Do you want to have a long discussion about it, or do you want me to care for your sister?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  I ran out for the mop, and while she got Sylvia back into the bed, I cleaned the floor. I put the mop and pail aside. Sylvia looked like she was having trouble breathing. Her eyes rolled with the panic she was feeling.

  “Is she all right?”

  “Of course she’s all right. Keep this cool washcloth on her forehead, and hold her hand. The first birth for any woman is always the most difficult. Her next one will be easier.”

  “Next one?”

  “You never know,” she said, and went to call Arden, leaving me alone with Sylvia. Now I was sorry I had even mentioned calling Arden. Sylvia was clawing at my wool belly, begging me to stop the pain.

  “It will get better as soon as the baby comes,” I said, and repeated it like a chant. I had read about deliveries and seen them acted out in movies, but nothing had prepared me for this. Sylvia’s screams were so loud I was sure people working on the grounds outside would hear. I had no idea what else to do. I went to the door to look down the hall for Mrs. Matthews, but she was nowhere in sight.

  “Papa!” Sylvia screamed. “Papa!”

  I returned to her side and took her hand again while I dabbed her forehead with the cool cloth. What if her heart stopped? I thought. Momma had given birth too soon and died. History was repeating itself. If she died, I wouldn’t care about our precious reputation. I’d call the police and have Mr. Price arrested, stroke or no stroke, I vowed.

  As casually as she would have entered Sylvia’s room weeks ago, Mrs. Matthews returned.

  “She’s in too much pain,” I said. “Isn’t there anything else we can do?”

  “We? No. There’s nothing else to do but let nature take its course.”

  She took Sylvia’s blood pressure and then suddenly seized her shoulders and shook her so hard Sylvia stopped screaming.

  “Now, you listen to me, Sylvia. The baby is coming. Here’s what I want you to do,” she said, and began to give her instructions. She already had the bed changed into what looked like a hospital bed now, with something protecting the mattress. Beside it was a pan in case Sylvia threw up. Mrs. Matthews had moved a table and all the medical supplies she needed, turning the room into a delivery room. I felt helpless standing by and watching her as she told Sylvia to push. Sylvia’s eyes were still wide open and wild with fear and confusion. Her face was flushed, her forehead beaded with sweat. I continued to dab it with the washcloth. She looked at me with such pleading. I had always been there to help her, to wash her cuts and bruises, to hold her and make her feel better again, but there was nothing I could do for her now that would ease the pain.

  “Why is the baby hurting me, Audrina?”

  I looked to Mrs. Matthews. “It’s supposed to hurt,” she said sharply. “Just do what I tell you, and it will stop when the baby comes out.”

  Sylvia looked at me to see if I believed it. I smiled and nodded to reassure her, and for a few moments at least, she calmed.

  “What did Arden say?” I asked, my heart racing with the anxiety and tension Mrs. Matthews had predicted I would experience.

  “He’s on his way,” she said, sounding annoyed that she had to reply.

  Sylvia started to scream and cry again. Mrs. Matthews gazed at her with a wry smile on her lips, reminding me of my aunt Ellsbeth, who had seemed to enjoy Vera’s pain before her miscarriage. Agony was the perfect and just punishment for a woman who transgressed. I thought Aunt Ellsbeth saw herself as the voice of an angry God, enraged at the violation of one of his commandments. But Sylvia hadn’t transgressed. She had been transgressed against. Yes, God had punished Mr. Price by giving him a stroke, but now, if anything, Aunt Ellsbeth’s angry God should show mercy and reduce Sylvia’s pain to almost nothing.

  “She’s not trying,” Mrs. Matthews suddenly said. There was a little panic in her face. “I don’t like this. It’s almost as if she is deliberately holding the baby hostage in her birth canal.”

  “She can’t do that, can she?”

  Mrs. Matthews turned to me with the strangest look in her eyes. For a moment, I thought she had gone mad. It was as if Sylvia’s failure to do everything exactly as she wanted reflected badly on her. “There’s something else going on here,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Take off your skirt and panties, and lie beside her,” she ordered.

  “What?”

  “Don’t you see what’s happening? She’s constantly watching you. She keeps waiting for you to scream in agony.”

  I looked at Sylvia, who was staring at me now. “But—”

  “You have to give birth, too,” Mrs. Matthews declared.

  “Give birth, too?”

  It was one thing to placate Sylvia and keep her calm all these months, to go along with her belief that I had to be as pregnant as she was and that Papa had declared
it in one of those mysterious rocking-chair dreams, but to actually act out a delivery beside her . . .

  The look on Mrs. Matthews’s face was frightening and maddening. For a few moments, I wondered if she didn’t believe Sylvia’s dreams, too.

  “But I can’t—”

  “Do it!” she cried. “It will be your baby, won’t it? Deliver it!”

  My heart was pounding, just as I imagined Sylvia’s was. I looked at the space beside her, looked at Mrs. Matthews, who was poised and waiting, and then took off my skirt and panties and slipped onto the bed. Sylvia grasped my hand immediately. Mrs. Matthews nodded with satisfaction and then, shockingly, lifted my legs, spread them, and looked between them. I felt her fingers on the insides of my thighs.

  She is mad, I thought, as mad as a hatter.

  I looked at Sylvia. For a moment, though, she suddenly seemed to have no pain. She smiled at me and then turned to Mrs. Matthews and began to follow her orders. When she groaned, Mrs. Matthews looked at me expectantly, and I groaned, too. When Sylvia cried in pain, I did. It was a duet of agony.

  “Push!” Mrs. Matthews cried. “Push! I can see the baby’s head.”

  Suddenly, seconds felt like minutes. I felt my cheeks and realized I was breaking into a sweat. My heart was pounding. I took deep breaths. Did I feel pain? Maybe I was going mad myself, but I realized I was actually pushing. All I had read about giving birth ran through my mind. This was how it went; this was what to do. Finally, Sylvia and I let out a last, almost primeval scream, and then Mrs. Matthews lifted the baby, with the umbilical cord still attached, and placed the newborn girl, crying and covered in blood, on my stomach—not Sylvia’s. Mrs. Matthews expertly cut and tied the umbilical cord. I couldn’t move. Sylvia was just as quiet, watching.

  “I need to suction out her mouth and nose a bit,” Mrs. Matthews said.

  Both Sylvia and I watched her bring the baby to the table she had set up beside the bed. After she did the suctioning, she weighed her.